Instead of doom-scrolling through my phone in the morning, I built an alternative with a Raspberry Pi, a dot matrix printer, and some PHP.
  • cmnyboEnglish
    15·
    2 months ago

    I can’t stand the screeching of a dot matrix printer. The correct way to print the news is with a teletype.

  • hotspur@lemmy.mlEnglish
    10·
    2 months ago

    Man, I wonder if it’s challenging to source a steady supply of paper for that thing…

  • essteeyou@lemmy.worldEnglish
    157·
    2 months ago

    I was interested until I hit this sentence:

    I use PHP as my language of choice in a day-to-day basis, and this is no exception.

  • geekwithsoul@lemm.eeEnglish
    44·
    2 months ago

    So, a newspaper with a lot of extra steps? I understand the gee whizness of getting this all to work but not really sure there’s a solid “why” to this.

      • geekwithsoul@lemm.eeEnglish
        74·
        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.

          • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialEnglish
            4·
            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.

        • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          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.

    • Quik@infosec.pubEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, but I don’t know whether you’ve recently taken a look in one of the local newspapers— being able to select topics you want to read about may very well be worth the extra effort (also, fun of course)

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        You aren’t actually forced to read every article in a newspaper. Though you will have to scan over the headlines, so you will have a small awareness of things happening in the world. But is that a bad thing?

    • Abnorc@lemm.eeEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      There are pictures and ads in a newspaper. This is much more minimalistic.