We did this at uni - hpmprinter on twitter and it was on GitHub as twinter :)
I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
61–70 of 119 posts
Re: I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect the author, like nearly all of us here will get more exposure to BPA from handling supermarket (etc.) receipts than from this gimmick.
Worse: I worked in grocery stores for years as a cashier lol
I did too but the printers were still dot matrix with ink ribbons then.
Re: I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
#63For the many posters recommending BPA free paper - does anyone have suggestions / a link for a reliable seller? I looked on Amazon after another receipt printer post on HN but couldn’t find anything that provided confidence in the BPA characterization. ULINE is quantities are absurd for personal use. Imagine their most be a decent alternative but never see any named.
https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-... (scroll to "Use alternative receipt paper": "Companies that offer phenol-free alternatives")
Phenomenal. Thank you.
Re: I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
#64I've wanted to make a project w/ a receipt printer for a little bit now. Does anyone have any good suggestions for printer models?
Re: I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
#65There was a REALLY cool project by the design firm Berg in the UK about ~13 years ago. Cute little thermal printer with online services that allowed you to have scheduled printouts of things like weather reports, horoscopes, etc. And... oh my goodness, I was looking for pictures of it and it turns out some kind person decided to put work in on having a way to do onprem services for it! [Check it out here]( https://no…
> The team at Berg invested a lot of time developing the visual language and aesthetics of Little Printer, across the physical device and their web service.
Shame they didn't bother to invest any time in making sure their expensive devices wouldn't end up as paperweights. Seriously, it's infuriating that they were lauded for the creativity of this project but it's fallen to hobbyists and volunteers to engineer an entire suite of software to make this dead hardware work again, just because the initial developers were either too lazy, too shortsighted, or too restricted by bean-counters to develop open source (or at least self-hostable) software for these machines. You can't even change the server address of these things without hardware flashing and risking bricking your hub.
Re: I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
#66If you do this be sure to buy BPA free receipt paper Handling receipt paper is what turned out to be the cause of the high BPA numbers when boba tea was tested https://x.com/natfriedman/status/1899641377002025252
this one time when i was young and dumb and into smoking weed, i remember running out of rolling paper so i rolled a joint using a supermarket receipt i had and smoked it this was like 20 years ago, still makes me shudder after i learned about the BPA stuff
The products of combustion you inhaled are likely far worse.
Re: I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
this one time when i was young and dumb and into smoking weed, i remember running out of rolling paper so i rolled a joint using a supermarket receipt i had and smoked it this was like 20 years ago, still makes me shudder after i learned about the BPA stuff
The products of combustion you inhaled are likely far worse.
I mean... the weed was going to get smoked, it was definitely the receipt that was the foreign invader here.
Re: I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few years ago my friend's mother started using medical marijuana for pain management. My friend had to explain that no, you should not make a pipe out of a coke can because of the plastic liner, go to a head shop and buy a glass pipe like a normal person!
> you should not make a pipe out of a coke can because of the plastic liner I'm fairly sure it doesn't make much of an health impact considering the hot smoke you pull into your lung, but when I was kid and we made pipes out of cans in "emergencies" we'd use the outside of the can as where you put anything with fire, you don't have to turn it inside out to be able to smoke out of it.
> we'd use the outside of the can as where you put anything with fire, you don't have to turn it inside out to be able to smoke out of it.
This is what I pictured, but now I'm curious how you'd use the inside of the can.
Re: I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few years ago my friend's mother started using medical marijuana for pain management. My friend had to explain that no, you should not make a pipe out of a coke can because of the plastic liner, go to a head shop and buy a glass pipe like a normal person!
> you should not make a pipe out of a coke can because of the plastic liner I'm fairly sure it doesn't make much of an health impact considering the hot smoke you pull into your lung, but when I was kid and we made pipes out of cans in "emergencies" we'd use the outside of the can as where you put anything with fire, you don't have to turn it inside out to be able to smoke out of it.
Heating up plastic gives off all kinds of really nasty organic compounds, far worse than the drug... doesn't need to be direct flame.
Re: I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
#70It's kind of nostalgic and make me curious: Were there many magical things like this in the early internet days.