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Comment by amanvir_ | Hacker News Reader

Hey, I'm the creator of Guten!

Thank you, OP, for posting this, and thanks to the community for all your support!

To answer some common questions/comments/concerns:

- Totally agree with the sentiment regarding screens being a big problem in today's day and age. The main reason I wanted to make Guten was so that I could start my day off reading something on paper instead of staring at my phone. It also helps that you can't doomscroll on a receipt ;)

- I also love Little Printer - it seemed like such a cool product, but I unfortunately never had the chance to purchase one before it got discontinued. This is my attempt to bring back some of the functionalities in Little Printer that I'd find most useful in my day-to-day.

- BPA in thermal paper was a concern of mine as well, but I thankfully found some BPA-free thermal paper on Amazon!

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Epson still makes a two color impact printer as well in this form factor.

https://epson.com/For-Work/POS-System-Devices/POS-Printers/T...

I'd be very interested in a "supply your own printer" version of this as well - either using these two color printers or thermal.

I suspect there isnt a ton of money to be made in selling printers, but rather the aggregation services needed to drive it. Let people buy a commodity printers, or a variety of them - if you use CUPS as an abstraction layer, you can basically run anything, and the CUPS turns the actual output device into an abstraction.

A dot matrix at 7am would also solve another problem I have.

I fondly remember a dot matrix printer that looked a bit like a single slot toaster from many decades ago, long before the internet and doomscrolling. You sat it above a stack of fan fold paper. My memory claims it was called Tiger, but what brand it was I have no idea. It was incredibly loud but also very fast.

This Tiger? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8I6qt_Z0Cg

No :-)

But thank you for the link, it's a long time since I'd heard that.

I've just asked ChatGPT to find it but first it just gave me information about tractor feed printers. Then I asked if there was such a printer called Tiger; it then found the same Eye of the Tiger video!

ChatGPT is a bit like a literal minded child: you have to keep varying the question to get it to give the right answer. I at last remembered that it was called Paper Tiger (of course) and asked ChatGPT about that and it found it:

"Yes, there was a dot matrix printer named the Paper Tiger, produced by Integral Data Systems (IDS). Models like the IDS 440 and Paper Tiger 460 were designed for use with continuous fan-fold paper, utilizing a tractor-feed mechanism to handle such paper efficiently. Internet Archive

These printers were popular in the 1980s and 1990s, especially among users of systems like the Apple II series. They were known for their durability and compatibility with various computer systems of that era. SETI@home

For more detailed information, you can refer to the Paper Tiger 460 manual, which provides insights into its features and specifications. Internet Archive"

You can get used impact printers fairly cheaply off eBay. They still have a use case in restaurant kitchens - where heat doesn't play nicely with thermal paper, and the noise alerts you to a new order. In Europe where fiscal printers are becoming the norm, it's usually cheaper to buy a new printer than repair and recertify it, if it breaks.

Most receipt printers support the ESC/POS protocol, so an abstraction isn't really needed.

French company Exacompta makes a line of BPA-free and sustainable thermal receipt paper: https://www.exacompta.com/en/recherche?search=Thermal The EU banned BPA in receipt paper since 2020, so any European supplier should work.

What? That's fantastic news! I've been uncomfortable handling receipts ever since (a long time ago) I learned about BPAs in them.

Unfortunately it seems it's largely been replaced by (equally?) toxic BPS https://www.fidra.org.uk/bisphenols/bps-joins-eu-candidate-l...

Thanks for sharing, interesting read.

> In January 2020, BPA was restricted from use in thermal paper, including tickets and receipts, across the EU (3). As a result, another bisphenol, Bisphenol-S (BPS), began to take its place. In fact, an ECHA survey estimated that 61% of all thermal paper would contain BPS as a substitute for BPA, despite concerns of BPS being equally as harmful (6). Fast forward three years and BPS is now recognised as “toxic to reproduction” and a hormone disruptor, and has been added to the EU’s candidate list for Substance of Very High Concern (SVHCs), a common first step on the road to restriction (7).

This thermal paper from Germany which another commenter mentioned upthread

https://www.oekobon.de/

claims "no BPA/BPS" and "phenol-free". (Hopefully that doesn't turn out to mean that they found something even worse to make it out of!)

The mentioned company above (Exacompta) also make some without BPS (they say "sans phenol"). No idea what they use instead, for all I know it could be worse ^^ but I think the made in France is encouraging, we tend to have safer norms than EU which itself tends to have safer norms than the world.

do you know why merchants prefer to sell or why customers preferred to buy BPA/BPS instead of paper drenched in ascorbic acid (vitamin C)?

It even seems easy to make you own DIY version: squeeze some lemons, unroll, drench, dry and reroll a properly sized roll of normal paper in it.

The blue one has neither

>BPA in thermal paper was a concern of mine as well, but I thankfully found some BPA-free thermal paper on Amazon!

Cheers to that. A note about buying BPA-free thermal paper on the site might be nice, especially for those who plan to have children interact with your project.

The EU banned BPA in receipt paper 5 years ago. French firm Exacompta makes good options in blue and standard white: https://www.exacompta.com/en/recherche?search=Thermal

Yeah it's the bpa more than the waste that would bother me.

Honest question, isn't the bpa free paper just using something else than bpa that is unregulated and potentially even worse?

Depends what you mean by worse: ink is a big problem for recycling paper (along polymer-filmed "papers"). Thermal ink isn’t an exception and contrary to other printer types, it need to cover the whole page for the printer to work.

I don’t think it’s a major health problem if you don’t consume your daily newspaper after reading.

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