This is likewise part of someone's living room, they can spend whatever they like on it as a matter of taste.
Also it is the frustration, that eInk prices should have come down further and there should be more eInk powered devices available on the market. There are a lot of really great things one could make, if eInk would be more widely available.
You can be the visionary that makes the segment happen. :)
My wife repairs (upholstery) furniture and car interiors; with european wages, refurbishing, say, your designer-office chair or sofa easily costs upwards of €2000
(the answer, I'm afraid, is that "manufacturing" is cheap because of defacto slavery (sweatshops) of state subsidy (China), that "waste" and ecological footprint is not included in the price, and transport also subsidised by both the far-too-cheap "overseas" labor, and often even direct from states.)
It'd be cool if couches came as a kit with an order sheet for you to source the foam locally. The frame and coverings would fit in a door-sized package. Hmm.
"Oh that's really cool I could do X with it." Looks up price -> closes tab.
I wish I could just drop that kind of money on what is essentially a piece of art.
You sit on the couch every day, with other people. It’s very useful.
This, not so much. Visually it’s not far from a framed newspaper and its utility is limited.
It… looks cool and I wish I could afford it though.
I can also see it as part of a news diet: get the headlines and major trends of the day while waiting for your coffee and toast in the morning, then you don't need to be distracted by news websites when you're working. That's actually how the morning paper was meant to be consumed: get info early in your day. If you want the whole paper, the software could be modified to load the entire paper PDF and have a control to page through.
It could cost 15 bucks and people would comment about the fact that it uses a cloud CMS. Or be disgusted by the PHP snippet.
It’s just the culture of HN. You can’t change that anymore.