Unauthorized Bread: Jailbreaking IoT toasters

In exchange for the subscription, your printer automatically requests replacement ink cartridge sets to be shipped whenever the installed set runs low. That doesn't cost extra, and if there's a rate threshold past which it stops happening, I've never hit it.

Ultimately, this works out, by design, as a terrible deal for printing documents, sold entirely on the idea of convenience. But if you're printing photos, in which every sheet that goes into the printer comes out with ink all over it, the deal turns upside down, because the incremental cost of that ink is zero. And, as a nice side benefit, you get fresh cartridges shipped to your door a little before you need them, without having to think about reordering at all.

Last I checked, MSRP for a full CMYK set of first-party cartridges for an Officejet 8610 is $160. At $3 a month for the "Instant Ink" thing, it takes a little over four years to add up to the same cost as one regular replacement set.

The only true drawback I can see here, for the photo printing use case, is that while a printer is enrolled in Instant Ink, it won't take cartridges not provided through that program. That might be a headache if you want to keep an extra backup set handy, but it's never been a problem for me since I set my printer up with the program some time in 2017. It definitely does prevent using remanufactured, refilled, or third-party carts - but, again, that's never been something I felt the need to do while getting first-party ones for ~free, and I doubt I'll change my mind on that as long as HP keeps playing themselves this way.

(For what it's worth, I thought twice about describing all this in such detail, just in case somebody at HP might notice and care enough to make a change. But what the hell, right? This stuff would take five minutes of BI work to find out, given the data they must certainly have for the program to operate as it does at all. That they leave it as it is tells me they don't care, and why would they? Almost all the program's enrollees are no doubt getting the bad end of the deal, and I'm sure it helps them sell printers, so it's no skin off their nose either way.)

I'm sure many people would happily shift from printing all black, to all cyan, then all magenta (yellow probably isn't practical) in an attempt to get maximal utility out of their color cartridge otherwise.

Can anyone comment on how it compares to a cheap laser printer?

My partner is lucky enough to have "very good" insurance through their employer. They recently had to have a scan done to check for serious problems. We got a bill for $500, half for the hospital and specialist, and half for the scan itself and the people providing it.

I took a look at how the costs broke down. In fact, the "real" cost was $5000, and the insurance company paid 90% of that. I started digging and discovered that they pay just about 90% of all medical treatment across the board (for a very small set of in-network physicians and hospitals). Even putting aside whether $5000 was a reasonable cost for this 1 hour procedure (probably not), this left me wondering, why 90%? Why pay such an extraordinarily high percentage, but not all of it?

After thinking about this for a while, I've come to the conclusion that it's a combination of two factors. One is that it's absolutely unacceptable to Americans for individuals to ever receive anything for free. You absolutely have to suffer in some way for every good thing you're allowed to have. The other is that I think they want to actively dissuade you from getting the medical care you need unless it's crucial, because someone worked the math out and putting a slight disincentive on medical care works out slightly cheaper for them than just letting people have what they need with the insurance they're already paying for.

The result in human costs is enormous. My partner has cried about this on and off for weeks because $500 is a very consequential amount of money for us, and we didn't have even a ballpark estimate before the procedure of how much it would cost.

So yes, it's radicalizing as hell. Burn this system to the ground.

I had this happen to me when I was younger. Lady basically said they only do eye exams and then they offer to sell you the prescription separately... some bullshit.

Not sure why they try to limit people directing their own care. Kinda like some states it's illegal to get bloodwork or other tests without a doctor, or even those DNA based heritage tests. Like there's some site that lets you measure your testosterone, but New York and like 2 other states banned at home tests.

Then there's some company now where you sit your laptop on a table and use your phone to go back so many feet, and can do an eye test. Some tested it and got the same results as their eye test done offline - but of course some states banned that site too. https://youtu.be/DTgmJqbXg1s talks about that case.

In the US, doctors seem to have 15-minute windows to diagnose and solve your problem.

My primary care physician seems more relaxed, but I think it might be - #1 that I organize everything before I see her (15 minute anxiety) - #2 she might actually have a 30-minute window. The only advantage I've noticed is that once I suggested an extra blood test done or something and she quickly acceded instead of taking the time to talk about it (I think).

It'd be much better to simply ban lockout chip type nonsense for 3rd party parts, though I suspect they'd still find ways to make compatibility difficult :/

I'm not sure how you counter the above, but it really needs to be handled, otherwise too much power will fight against it. If you can find a good way to handle this I'm all for it.