Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

calpaterson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 326 posts

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#201

Post by berkes »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #177
zizee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even for those non-professional uses it's probably better to put the PDF on a flash drive, walk into Staples and print it on their machines I'm not trying to be argumentative, and what I'm going to say might be a "well obviously, duh" comment: This advice is really only applicable to those who have convenient access to a "staples", which is probably only 20% of us here. It is also only convienient if you don't have…

Even the article fell into this trap. There's a good reason to own at least a B&W printer even if there's a Staples downstairs: your home printing needs will predominantly fall outside the business hours. After all, during business hours you are most likely at work . The need to print something is usually a result of some chain of actions. You noticed an interesting paper. You have a stack of documents to sign. Your…

My "local" print shop allows me to email the docs and will have them ready to pick up first thing in the morning.

It's all about planning. And when -like me- you live outside urban area's everything is about planning. I can't order a pizza when I forgot to buy groceries. I can't have a Gorrilla cyclist deliver some beer when I ran out. So I need to plan (and have a larger storage).

Sure, I've been in the spot where I needed to print something at 04:50 in the morning (and could not). But that problem was really just poor planning, and not lacking a printer at that time.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#202

Post by the-dude »

ludocode wrote: post #29
NortySpock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great advice, and I echo 95% of it. My observation is that I have found Wifi useful when I need the printer in an odd location in the house, and color is useful for non-professional usage like "the kids need to print out their report for school" and "the med school student needs anatomy diagrams in color" My trusty color Brother laser HL-3170CDW cost ~$300 at the time and has been trucking along for 7+ years now with…

Even for those non-professional uses it's probably better to put the PDF on a flash drive, walk into Staples and print it on their machines. For anyone who hasn't done it, it's incredibly streamlined. You don't have to talk to anyone and you don't have to wait in line. You just walk up to one of the many printers, put in your flash drive, tap your credit card and collect your printouts. I'm just not convinced that ha…

That totally depends on where you live I guess.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#203

Post by amelius »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #58

He mentions "Smart TVs". I always thought you could just buy a SmartTV and not connect the internet and have a dumb TV. Nope. HDMI changed that. I bought a TV a few months ago and it started showing adverts because it was connected to the internet through my ROKU via HDMI. That's right, you can't even have a dumb TV anymore. Someone needs to make an HDMI internet filter, stat. But Adobe? That smells like extortion.

Does your router show its MAC address, and can you block it?

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#204

Post by TeMPOraL »

odux wrote: post #42
gordon_freeman wrote: post #36

This would sound strange but the biggest subscription I pay annually (which does not seem like a subscription) is my DMV registration renewal fees. It comes around $300+ every year out-of-the-blue in my mailbox and I realize then that is indeed a subscription for a product which is my Car that I never thought about.

So taxes are subscription to living in a city/country? Kind of, but you can opt out of subscriptions.

Essentially, yes. Not for just living, but also for having free access to all the services provided by the government/municipality.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#205

Post by realityking »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #58

He mentions "Smart TVs". I always thought you could just buy a SmartTV and not connect the internet and have a dumb TV. Nope. HDMI changed that. I bought a TV a few months ago and it started showing adverts because it was connected to the internet through my ROKU via HDMI. That's right, you can't even have a dumb TV anymore. Someone needs to make an HDMI internet filter, stat. But Adobe? That smells like extortion.

It's much more likely that your TV either has some ads preloaded or it just joining an open WiFi network. While Ethernet is part of the HDMI standard, no products were ever released that support it.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#206

Post by zizee »

derefr wrote: post #52
zizee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even for those non-professional uses it's probably better to put the PDF on a flash drive, walk into Staples and print it on their machines I'm not trying to be argumentative, and what I'm going to say might be a "well obviously, duh" comment: This advice is really only applicable to those who have convenient access to a "staples", which is probably only 20% of us here. It is also only convienient if you don't have…

> which is probably only 20% of us here Uh. Shops offering printing-as-a-service are one of the most common things found in every small town, all over the world. They're one of the first entrepreneurialist ventures to be developed in developing countries after electrification (just buy a printer and a computer, and charge $1 to print a page.) Every Internet cafe offers printing. Every parcel shipping store (UPS, FedE…

I really didnt want to start a big discussion about this... but I just can't help myself, so i will dig in.

You're actually missing my main point. It really isn't about Staples, or North American vs the world, print quality, or preferences for B&W vs colour.

My main point is this: Don't fall into the trap of thinking your life experience always maps well to eveyone else you interact with in life.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#207

Post by michaelt »

gruez wrote: post #95
PostOnce wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other side of the coin: 1 truck delivers milk (and bread?) to an entire neighborhood, instead of 50 people driving 50 cars to get 50 bottles of milk.

Right but what's the ratio of people making dedicated trips for milk vs people who buy it with their other groceries? I'd think most people plan ahead to avoid dedicated trips, but that's just based off my experience.

It's pretty common for shoppers to do one large weekly shop, and a second smaller 'top-up shop'

Of course, you can do things like freeze bread - but if you're going into the store for milk anyway, you might as well pick up some fresh bread / bananas / avocados while you're there.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#208

Post by hyperman1 »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #58

He mentions "Smart TVs". I always thought you could just buy a SmartTV and not connect the internet and have a dumb TV. Nope. HDMI changed that. I bought a TV a few months ago and it started showing adverts because it was connected to the internet through my ROKU via HDMI. That's right, you can't even have a dumb TV anymore. Someone needs to make an HDMI internet filter, stat. But Adobe? That smells like extortion.

I got one too, so I found out which site was giving the ads, then created a script to do all kinds of invalid traffic on their port. Every hour or so I do 20 malformed HTTP requests on the ad server, after which their firewall locks me out for the rest of the day. The TV traffic gets locked out too as it shares my IP address. Presumably I violate some laws in some country on the other side of the planet, but as I don't respect shariah law I already did that anyway ;-)

I only get non-animated mostly black ads for a product named timeout now.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#209

Post by account42 »

paulfurtado wrote: post #155
PostOnce wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to keep milk and bread fresh as long as other things, so you don't buy as much in advance, and therefore run out sooner. I can buy several weeks of stuff in advance, but not several weeks of milk and bread, or it'll expire, especially bread without many preservatives in certain climates. Nevermind the fact that a lot of people live in an on-demand, last-minute world. A lot of people do a lot of things last-…

As someone who hates making frequent grocery trips and drinks milk too intermittently to ever finish a normal bottle before it goes bad, I highly recommend buying UHT (Ultra High Temperature) pasteurized milk which does actually often have 3+ week shelf life. In the US, typically the organic brands are all UHT since they often come from farther away and need longer shelf life, but some of the cheap brands like Hood a…

3+ weeks? Unopened UHT milk can lasts months, without refrigeration.

Re: It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

#210

Post by yosito »

greggman3 wrote: post #178
Ballu wrote: post #99

When I moved to US in late '90s, my mentor told the Milk distribution story/change (NY/NJ). During his grandfather times (I am sure around 1950/60s, Milkman used to enter the home and check how much milk is needed and change the bottle. With time, few crimes and privacy concepts started coming into picture, the milks bottles were left outside. And now Amazon wants to enterr your home to do exactly what milkman used t…

speaking of coming into your house (and completely off topic), TIFU by using a KeyMe kiosk. I needed a copy of a key. I expected it was a mechanical copier which I'd seen before. Instead it's some kind of digital kiosk that scans the key and then, sends the info to their servers and they mail you a key. In other words, they have a database of people's keys and the address those keys belong too. I feel so stupid. Time…

Jesus Christ!
Post reply on HN