It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by forcry » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:09 AM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #16

Printers. Yeah. Herewith, my standard advice. Buy a Brother monochrome laser with duplex, an ethernet port, and BRScript/3 (their PostScript clone). Even if you're sure you will never need one or more of those features, get them all. Wifi and Bluetooth and NFC are strictly optional, and probably not worthwhile. If you need color printing, send it to a printing company. There might even be a local one. It will be done…

>Printers. Yeah.

And cars, for that matter. May be not right now, but soon enough.

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

#152

Post by Danieru » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:12 AM UTC

hug wrote: post #138

Danieru wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is that no one is buying a Playdate without being aware of what they're getting. Nonsense, no one knows anything about future subscriptions aka "what they are getting". How can consumers be fully informed when nothing is announced? The PlayDate will have an astronomically small install base. Amortizing a dozen game's developments over such a small install base without subsidy from Panic will surely lead t…

No one knows anything about the financials of the thing but you do know what you're getting: A unique little handheld, with 21 unique-to-the-platform indie games, at known price point, and a promise that they're gonna try to put out seasons of games. What you might get thereafter being entirely unknown (other than it being a device-bespoke set of games for some price) is exciting . Maybe the subscription will be too…

Yeah okay you've convinced me, the play date is pretty cool. Its working against the odds but I love the quirky and open platform aspects.

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

#153

Post by fencepost » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:13 AM UTC

NortySpock wrote: post #21

dsr_ wrote: post #16

Printers. Yeah. Herewith, my standard advice. Buy a Brother monochrome laser with duplex, an ethernet port, and BRScript/3 (their PostScript clone). Even if you're sure you will never need one or more of those features, get them all. Wifi and Bluetooth and NFC are strictly optional, and probably not worthwhile. If you need color printing, send it to a printing company. There might even be a local one. It will be done…

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…

The problem with color laser printers (at least from Brother) is that the lifespan of a bunch of the parts is quite a bit lower than for the mono printers (lower as in 1/4 to 1/3 the life), and in some cases you need to replace them in sets of 4.

My home color laser came from a client that replaced it with a mono multifunction - they rarely used color, but it was overdue for replacement of all 4 color drums and leaves a streak down the very edge of the paper. Replacing the parts just didn't make sense, so it got "recycled" to me instead.

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

#154

Post by Danieru » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:14 AM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #140

Danieru wrote: post #73

Semi-Off-Topic but related to Opex vs Capex: One of the weird aspects of Japanese tax law is the Capital Assets tax. Every year your local city taxes any capital goods at 1.5%. What is a capital good? Anything which takes multiple years to deduct. A couple examples: Cars, Machines, Factories. A couple odd examples: desks, chairs, TV, elevators. In the past other first world countries had such capital goods taxes but…

My US county (Wake County, NC) has such a tax... worse even. Each year I have to catalog every pencil, pen, paperclip and ream of paper in my office. The desk, tables, shelves, printer ink, bottle of windex, each of my books, even individual USB cables all need to be listed. I need years acquired and purchase prices for every little object owned by each of my 4 businesses. Each summer, a tax bill shows up for my pers…

Wow that is indeed horrible. In Japan anything under 3k USD (30万円）would be discounted instantly and thus not count towards the capital tax. Furthermore there is a 15K USD （１５０万円）cliff below which no capital is levied but reporting is still required.

Reporting down to the pen sounds horrible, and uncompetitive if other counties do not levy the same.

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

#155

Post by paulfurtado » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:16 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #102

gruez wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 also do it.

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

#156

Post by fencepost » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:17 AM UTC

Merad wrote: post #115

dsr_ wrote: post #16

Printers. Yeah. Herewith, my standard advice. Buy a Brother monochrome laser with duplex, an ethernet port, and BRScript/3 (their PostScript clone). Even if you're sure you will never need one or more of those features, get them all. Wifi and Bluetooth and NFC are strictly optional, and probably not worthwhile. If you need color printing, send it to a printing company. There might even be a local one. It will be done…

+1. I have a Brother HL-5250 that's 15 years old. I think I paid $250 for it, but it has to be one of the best pieces of technology I've ever bought. It's been a while since I looked at its internal counters but it probably has printed close to 50k pages. The printer itself is still 100%. About 5 years ago something gave out in the paper tray and it stopped feeding correctly, but these days I don't print more than a…

Brother HL-5250

Workhorses, I've seen one last until something well over 200,000 pages though it sounded terrible towards the end. When pricing them vs something like HP printers that take a maintenance kit, just figure the replacement cost of the printer IS the "maintenance kit" to replace worn parts.

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

#157

Post by geocrasher » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:20 AM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #16

Printers. Yeah. Herewith, my standard advice. Buy a Brother monochrome laser with duplex, an ethernet port, and BRScript/3 (their PostScript clone). Even if you're sure you will never need one or more of those features, get them all. Wifi and Bluetooth and NFC are strictly optional, and probably not worthwhile. If you need color printing, send it to a printing company. There might even be a local one. It will be done…

This is my exact advice (minus the duplex, ethernet, and brscript) and my friends are tired of hearing it. My HL-2170W from... 2008? is still going strong. I just spent $20 on THREE 2600 page refilled toner cartridges. The printer itself was free, and I had to put a drum in it once (which was the reason it was free).

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

#158

Post by solarengineer » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:20 AM UTC

ludocode wrote: post #18

Waterluvian wrote: post #2

A lot of good thoughts in here. The one I personally want everyone to take away is that most plastics are not recycled. Unless it’s glass, fibre, or aluminum, you are lying to yourself if it’s going into the blue bin. Glass-contained milk delivery seems great. Someone needs to start a company. Sure it won’t be sexy or use AI but it’s useful. I have a local co-op that delivers local produce. It’s amazing to see a pile…

We subscribe to a local CSA as well [1]. We chose to pick it up about a ten minute drive away rather than have it delivered. But we collect it in re-usable cloth bags so there's nothing disposable or recyclable. It's just food, and the trimmings all go in the compost. I highly recommend it to everyone. I get incredibly excited when I pick it up; I feel pretty ridiculous to be honest. But the food is so much fresher a…

Are aquaponics, hydroponics or vertical farming an option that the local CSA could consider?

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

#159

Post by voiper1 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:21 AM UTC

vvarren wrote: post #112

I just canceled one of my credit cards and then started getting DOZENS of emails from services warning me that they were canceling soon. It is absolutely stunning to me how many different subscriptions were flying under the radar. Sneaky sneaky! Huge shoutout to Adobe for making a stellar product but come on... I need it for so much that it is basically like paying rent.

I have capitalone configured to send me an email for any charge made on my card. (Now I get push too.) No reason for surprises.

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

#160

Post by forcry » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:23 AM UTC

tempest_ wrote: post #11

askvictor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the older double-edged safety razors were designed around such a model, but at least there is a 'standard' for those, with plenty of different companies producing interoperable consumables. Would it be fair to say that any product with consumables that are proprietary to the vendor, is a subscription?

I actually shifted to using a double edged safety razor when the cost of the disposable blades felt like too much. It isnt quite as easy, and I still cut myself from time to time but I also am still using the variety pack of 100 blades that I bought two years ago for like 10$.

>I actually shifted to using a double edged safety razor when the cost of the disposable blades felt like too much.

You should actually try straight razor that takes a half of a razor blade. It might appear very scary, but it is not, if you cover 95% with a straight razor, and cover the rest with a safety razor.

The point of using the straight razor to cover the 95% is that the safety razor tends to get jammed with hair, making it a frustrating exercise quickly, if you don't have a habit of shaving every day..