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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

#251

Post by CRConrad »

trasz wrote: post #227
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…

Except this only makes sense in office-like environments. It’s not a solution for a typical home, simply because getting it to run is too complicated. Unless there’s a way to make it work like normal printer does, eg with AirPlay?

> Unless there’s a way to make it work like normal printer does, eg with AirPlay?

It wasn't your distant forefathers in their "brutish, short, and dark" lives, nor even your own boomer parents in the hilarious 1970s, but people alive and walking among us even now (your boss, your children's school principal, your next-door neighbour...) who once upon a time -- not even all that long ago, actually right here in this same century we're living in now! -- regarded occasionally connecting and disconnecting an Ethernet or USB cable not as some freakishly onerous imposition but actually rather "normal".

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

#252

Post by sokoloff »

trasz wrote: post #227
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…

Except this only makes sense in office-like environments. It’s not a solution for a typical home, simply because getting it to run is too complicated. Unless there’s a way to make it work like normal printer does, eg with AirPlay?

If you have any Ethernet network at all, it’s easy. Plug it into one of the unused ports on your router.

It’s really quite simple (and inexpensive even if you have to buy a cheap switch or wifi access point).

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

#253

Post by temporallobe »

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…

My wife started her PhD program a few years ago and printed nearly all of her resources on our inkjet printer at the time - only to recycle all of it after the class was completed. We were spending ridiculous amounts of money and constantly going out to buy the darn cartridges. I don’t know why, but I had completely forgotten about laser printers, then one day I suddenly remembered from my childhood school days that everyone used laser printers, did some research, and bought one. The cost was more than triple that of a decent inkjet, but nearly three years later, and she has only had to buy maybe two toner cartridges and the darn thing is extremely reliable. Personally I wish she didn’t have to print so much, but it helps her quickly annotate, locate, and visualize large amounts of literature.

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

#254

Post by pjc50 »

hyperman1 wrote: post #208
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…

This is absolute genius.

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

#255

Post by CRConrad »

SilverRed wrote: post #28
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…

I don't think reusable milk bottles and subscription vs product are linked together. There is no reason why a van couldn't deliver plastic milk bottles and there is no reason why a supermarket couldn't take a deposit for returned glass milk bottles. Supermarkets already do this, many will take back used sodastream CO2 canisters for a discount on the replacement. It just happens that these two changes happened at the…

> ...many will take back used sodastream CO2 canisters for a discount on the replacement.

Holy shit, are you saying they're sold any other way?!? What, like people just throw them away? Holy chrome-moly, that's one I'd never imagined.

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

#256

Post by simonh »

johnwalkr wrote: post #167
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…

In Japan virtually every convenience store has a self service printer (¥10/page for monochrome). For the cheap inkjets mentioned in the article, it’s even worse than the author states. I know people that think they are getting a deal buy buying a new printer every time they run out of ink because it’s “cheaper.”

Japan, and particularly Tokyo is special. Apartments are mainly glorified cupboards so most people will prefer to print out than dedicate precious space to an only occasionally used device like a printer.

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

#257

Post by ben_w »

nonameiguess wrote: post #241
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.

Property tax has to be more than that. Even if you don't own your residence, whatever the landlord passes through to tenants is going to be more than $300 a year.

Eh, as a landlord, taxes don’t determine how much rent I charge. I let the estate agent tell me what market rates are and go with that.

The place I own is in the UK so taxation is calculated differently (and as I don’t live in the UK, it’s confusing and that makes it a bit scary), but I don’t see how my decision making process of “delegate pricing to experts” would change if the UK hypothetically copied any of the American tax codes.

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

#258

Post by CRConrad »

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…

> TIFU

TIL.

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

#259

Post by mnadkvlb »

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…

Just want to add another advice for “brother” as well as any other brand laser printers.

If your printer says it cant print any more as the ink is gone, just go search to internet to find how to reset the cartridge counter, and then the same (wink) “empty” cartridge will print for another couple 100 to 1000 sheets of paper.

For me that meant 3 more years of printing and still going on reportedly “empty” cartridges.

What These companies are doing is criminal and no different than dieselgate. Mis-reporting wrongly to throw cartridges to landfills.

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

#260

Post by mschuster91 »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #246
mschuster91 wrote: post #192

> 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…

Despite having the capital, both of our cars were purchased on finance deals. For my car (3yo at purchase) an outright purchase was the same price as total cost of finance, so I financed. For my partners car (new) it worked out significantly cheaper to finance as they 'match' the scrappage deal of the old (very broken) car. Whilst most finance deals are scams, there are good ones. In our case double dipping on scrapp…

> Whilst most finance deals are scams, there are good ones.

It's hard to get these though. You need a combination of good credit scores, a lot of time, math knowledge and car knowledge and insider connections for that. Everyone else will get ripped off.

> Most independents are cheaper

I admit I'm a bit clueless about the US situation, but here in Germany if you have a new car it will lose resale value if checkups haven't been done at an authorized dealership in the prescribed intervals ("scheckheftgepflegt").

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