Maybe? But in the article he was talking about his priority being that he wanted to disconnect from his phone but still wanted news. Just seems there’s been a solution for that for a few centuries now. His solution seemed to me at least to be a lemon that wasn’t worth the squeeze as it were.
I’d actually be interested to see a cost breakdown between this and just buying a newspaper subscription; it looks like he spent about $100 on materials, plus then there’s the ongoing costs of electricity (negligible), printer ribbons, and paper. Ribbons appear to be about $1 / ea if you buy in bulk, and I don’t recall how much printing you get out of a single ribbon, but let’s assume a 24 pack is enough to last you a year. Paper seems to be about $30 / 1000 sheets, so assuming he sticks to the single-page-per-day format, that’ll last almost 3 years.
So up front costs, $100
Ongoing costs, $35 / year, roughly.
Newspaper subscription is about $150 / year, so this’ll actually be cost effective if he keeps it up. Of course, you’re getting a lot less news than you would from a newspaper subscription, so the relative value is questionable there.
I’m assuming they still print newspapers, but I can’t remember when I last saw our local paper for sale at a store. The vending machines are long gone.
geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Maybe? But in the article he was talking about his priority being that he wanted to disconnect from his phone but still wanted news. Just seems there’s been a solution for that for a few centuries now. His solution seemed to me at least to be a lemon that wasn’t worth the squeeze as it were.
praise_idleness@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
So there was two solutions for them:
I choose 2.
KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 2 months ago
I’d actually be interested to see a cost breakdown between this and just buying a newspaper subscription; it looks like he spent about $100 on materials, plus then there’s the ongoing costs of electricity (negligible), printer ribbons, and paper. Ribbons appear to be about $1 / ea if you buy in bulk, and I don’t recall how much printing you get out of a single ribbon, but let’s assume a 24 pack is enough to last you a year. Paper seems to be about $30 / 1000 sheets, so assuming he sticks to the single-page-per-day format, that’ll last almost 3 years.
So up front costs, $100 Ongoing costs, $35 / year, roughly.
Newspaper subscription is about $150 / year, so this’ll actually be cost effective if he keeps it up. Of course, you’re getting a lot less news than you would from a newspaper subscription, so the relative value is questionable there.
praise_idleness@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I mean clearly this is more of a fun little project than not. What I wanted to say is that it’s a bit missing the point if all we talk about is money.
jqubed@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m assuming they still print newspapers, but I can’t remember when I last saw our local paper for sale at a store. The vending machines are long gone.