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It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

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

#191

Post by yunohn »

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…

+100 to this, not sure why these simple usecases are being ignored by the other commenters, most of whom think people are printing for “ignorant” purposes.

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

#192

Post by mschuster91 »

> At the end of their 4-5 year contract these secret renters are bamboozled at the dealership and convinced to just "roll over" their deal onto a new car with much the same monthly payment and, again, no ownership. It costs considerably more to do this great rigmarole than just to buy outright.

And yet, about 1/4 to 1/3rd of new cars are leased (https://www.statista.com/statistics/453122/share-of-new-vehi...), and probably more than that are financed by actual loans.

Unfortunately I couldn't find data on how much of these cars were leased by companies (where it makes sense to lease that 7 series BMW for the C-level exec) and how many were leased by consumers.

In any case, the why is the important thing: 70% of Americans don't have more than 1.000$ in savings (https://www.statista.com/chart/20323/americans-lack-savings/), and probably 90% of Americans require a car because public transport is inefficient and/or unusable for their daily lives. These people don't have a realistic choice between taking on debt or not taking on debt (they need a car and don't have savings), and the result is an immensely profitable racket - the market for consumer car loans alone is 1.17 trillion $ (https://www.statista.com/statistics/453380/outstanding-autom...). Even at a measly 5% interest that's 85 billion $ a year that banks extract from the poor (and likely more, given that lower credit scores yield over 10% interest!

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

#194

Post by AnthonBerg »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #181
AnthonBerg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, except: Get a HP color laser printer that does duplex printing. (“Duplex”. Funny word. It seems to be latin for “can slurp the paper back into itself to flip it and print on both sides of the page”.) In all earnestness, I am 100% convinced that yours is the best possible printer advice for many people! Maybe the majority? People like me might have the competitive disadvantage of lower reading speed of black-and…

My last HP colour laser was a nightmare. It cost a fortune to run and was unreliable. The mono Brother I replaced it with has never missed a beat in the ten years I have owned it.

uh-oh – I hope mine is different! And generally, I hope that we as a society can build some form of composable structure for gathering and discovering objective information about how to live efficently. So we can stop having to waste resources on individually discovering one bad printer after the other in an uninteresting and dreary process.

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

#195

Post by knuthsat »

PostOnce wrote: post #92
gruez wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Glass-contained milk delivery seems great ...until you realize that having a dedicated truck driving around delivering milk is probably going to cause as much oil usage (if not more) than picking up a plastic jug of milk on your weekly shopping trip.

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.

Another side of the coin, the cow milk production obliterates any savings on transport of the milk to the consumer. It's one of the most energy intensive ways to produce food. (impregnating the cow every year, feeding the cow to support more than 7 gallons of milk a day, creating insane externalities by mishandling cow poo).

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

#196

Post by TeMPOraL »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #190
TeMPOraL wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree, though I personally stopped caring and learned to love my non-Duplex Brother. We've all been conditioned to believe the bullshit about saving the trees, despite the reality being, paper manufacturing is very efficient and mostly uses its own specially-grown trees these days; plus, a typical office worker in a bank will print more paper a day than you'll use in a year. Point being, you aren't killin…

Ah, makes sense – I am just now becoming aware of the fact that practically speaking, I print duplex only because it … reads nicer? The printed product is lighter and smaller and easier to staple, and feels like a book . For me the effect is like a “cleaner workspace” for reading. I’m sure this varies between people. (Incidentally, it seems that individual variety is most clearly represented in abstract activity. As…

To be clear - I find duplex prints more convenient to handle too :). If I were in a market for a new printer, I'd go for duplex now. But I have a perfectly fine Brother laser printer, and it turns out that single-sided prints are not big enough of an issue to me to justify the effort of selling it and getting a new one.

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

#197

Post by saulhoward »

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…

There's nothing like milk in pint bottles on the doorstep. I use https://www.milkandmore.co.uk

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

#198

Post by TeMPOraL »

yunohn wrote: post #191
TeMPOraL wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

+100 to this, not sure why these simple usecases are being ignored by the other commenters, most of whom think people are printing for “ignorant” purposes.

There's definitely more need for empathy (or life experience) all around :).

Having recently lived for a few years in a small town (population ~16k), I'll also add that the two or three printing shops that are in the town are absolutely not a viable option for most people either. They're always too far away, and closed when you need them.

Also, "ignorant" use cases have their value too. People underestimate the impact of trivial inconveniences[0]. My wife likes to print out interesting recipes she spots on-line. I wouldn't have eaten half of the good stuff I had over the years if she had to go to a copy shop every time she spotted something interesting to cook.

--

[0] - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-tri...

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

#199

Post by wutwutwutwut »

yinyang_in wrote: post #90
PretzelPirate wrote: post #20

> …so if you are into your environmentalism then milk is the SaaS for you. Dairy isn’t know for being great for the environment.

Imo dairy isn't good if done via industry model i.e. central company provides value for all. All cow in central place, profit oriented. Old cows thrown for slaughter, it becomes very inhumane. Coming from village where cow is part of family and treatment like family and has name as we do, then same dairy become very beautiful relationship.

Why would having the cow part of the family be any better from an environmental point of view?

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

#200

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

Right. It's a scary world these days. I've recently noticed that my first, instinctive reaction to any new business idea in physical space is to look what information about me it can observe and where can it go. I started to actively avoid anything involving Internet-connected computers.

As in your case: the kiosk sends a key scan and your address to some company. It's just one infosec fuckup from giving your local thieves a time of their lives.

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