[HN Gopher] I invited strangers to message me through a receipt ...
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I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
Author : chrisdemarco
Score : 135 points
Date : 2025-10-19 13:13 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (aschmelyun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (aschmelyun.com)
| ge96 wrote:
| I wonder if you can see what was sent by others
| aschmelyun wrote:
| They're being stored redundantly on a sqlite db. I'll think
| about adding some kind of feed to the page if others are
| interested.
|
| I don't know, I kind of like having a place for some people to
| anonymously vent (as more than a few have).
| xandrius wrote:
| I'd love to see others!
| bstsb wrote:
| saw this project on TikTok when it went viral, love both the
| concept and implementation. the creator could easily overengineer
| something simple like this, but looks like the Pi stands up well
| with high load.
|
| the only problem i had with the site itself was actually
| accessing it - TikTok doesn't "do" links so i kept having to
| check if i'd spelt their name right!
| ben-gy wrote:
| That's awesome - I did a similar thing recently by replacing my
| sticky notes with receipts - https://github.com/ben-
| gy/thermalnotes
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I love all of the HN receipt printer posts, keep them coming
| please. There is something delightful in this analog experience.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
|
| (if you build yourself, source non-phenol [made without BPA/BPS]
| thermal paper rolls)
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| Yes, the use case of receipt printers is really intriguing ..
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45698598) .. I find
| myself wondering what other simple micro-printing things might
| be worth the effort. The offline nature, the anonymity of the
| reader - this makes it an appealing media, suddenly, in the
| storm of digital life.
|
| In my case, I will probably try to use my receipt printer as a
| zine production line. The nature of the format inspires some
| great article writing ..
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Something to note is the impermanence of the final product,
| as thermal paper does not have longevity (only ~1 year). I
| have not found a similar solution (printer + media with a
| similar form factor) where the print lasts longer, so open to
| suggestions for such use cases. I suppose in the short term,
| including a QR code in the print job that links to a
| perma/deep link online might work from a publishing
| perspective for bookmarking purposes.
| b0rbb wrote:
| There was a REALLY cool project by the design firm Berg in the UK
| about ~13 years ago. Cute little thermal printer with online
| services that allowed you to have scheduled printouts of things
| like weather reports, horoscopes, etc.
|
| And... oh my goodness, I was looking for pictures of it and it
| turns out some kind person decided to put work in on having a way
| to do onprem services for it! [Check it out
| here](https://nordprojects.co/projects/littleprinters/)
| aosaigh wrote:
| I remember wanting the Berg printer but it was crazy expensive
| foresto wrote:
| I wonder if the author is aware of the health effects of handling
| thermal paper.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5453537/
| hagbard_c wrote:
| I suspect the author, like nearly all of us here will get more
| exposure to BPA from handling supermarket (etc.) receipts than
| from this gimmick.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I typically decline those.
|
| Thermal paper was widely used for fax machines and portable
| printers years back as well.
| aschmelyun wrote:
| Worse: I worked in grocery stores for years as a cashier lol
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I ate some as a bet in high school.
| flobosg wrote:
| BPA/BPS-free thermal paper exists; both chemicals are banned in
| the EU.
| odysseus wrote:
| Anyone know where you can buy the wall map shown on the page?
| jer0me wrote:
| It looks like this one from National Geographic:
| https://www.natgeomaps.com/re-world-decorator
| qwertox wrote:
| That is a good map. So many recognizable names. Not that I'd
| recognize many, but those which I've searched for, they were
| present.
| aschmelyun wrote:
| That's the one! Got it from a local B+N.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| I did that once. Spammers found it within 15 minutes.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Were you getting random text? Or actual targeted spam?
|
| For some reason I find it really funny to potentially be
| getting printed out adverts for shady boner pills or singles
| near you.
| ok_dad wrote:
| This is really cool! I sent you an (hopefully) uplifting message
| for the week's end. I know I shouldn't but I really want to buy a
| receipt printer now!
| derwiki wrote:
| They are well within the impulse buy zone, and it's really easy
| to programmatically use with Python. Do it!
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| I have a clockworkPi dev console which has the built-in printer,
| and it has always been a 'quaint' accessory, but lately I have
| been looking at it with glee and wondering what strange and
| fruitful things I could do with it .. the first is of course a
| zine, for which it is the perfect printing device .. just carry
| it with me, print out this months issue, stable the whole sizzle
| together and duct-tape it in some random loo somewhere, as
| deserves all good zine format ..
|
| So, yeah, there could also be a window of opportunity by which
| other readers of the zine could send their own message to be
| included in the distribution channel (i.e. the bog roll) and
| things could propagate.
|
| Well, I guess the point is, that suddenly I think that receipt
| printers are really the only printer I want to deal with,
| ultimately. I've gotta stock up on rolls.
| James_K wrote:
| His printer prolly blowing up right now.
| qwertox wrote:
| Wasn't there someone who had printers connected to the internet
| and a live video stream of the printers printing the messages?
| brightbeige wrote:
| This one? https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/the-making-of-a-
| dumpster-fire/
| wonger_ wrote:
| Good Enough did something similar:
| https://guestbook.goodenough.us/
| joshu wrote:
| receipt printers are a blast. at one point i was livestreaming
| chatgpt talking to humans via a printer:
| https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr04ofLsxtl/
|
| at the time, the openai API and the printer max speed capped out
| at roughly the same time and would use up an entire roll in ~ 10
| minutes. if you didn't wind the paper back up it would fill a
| whole garbage bag.
| intheitmines wrote:
| If you do this be sure to buy BPA free receipt paper
|
| Handling receipt paper is what turned out to be the cause of the
| high BPA numbers when boba tea was tested
| https://x.com/natfriedman/status/1899641377002025252
| aschmelyun wrote:
| I did! I also use gloves when handling a large amount of the
| receipts.
|
| I worked as a cashier for years in my teens and twenties
| though, so it's probably already in my blood.
| thousand_nights wrote:
| this one time when i was young and dumb and into smoking weed,
| i remember running out of rolling paper so i rolled a joint
| using a supermarket receipt i had and smoked it
|
| this was like 20 years ago, still makes me shudder after i
| learned about the BPA stuff
| cluckindan wrote:
| Fun fact, that extremely thin paper used in bibles is usually
| hemp paper.
| vscode-rest wrote:
| Genesis 1:29, anyone?
| why_at wrote:
| I'm surprised they didn't mention anything about preventing spam.
| The biggest thing that deters me from doing something like this
| is the idea that not long after I opened it up it would get
| hammered by bots so much that it would make the whole thing
| unusable.
| aschmelyun wrote:
| Hey it's me, the author! That was intentional as I honestly
| enjoy the trolling.
|
| There's a basic rate limiter set up to prevent misuse, and a
| character limit, but beyond that I just kind of wanted to see
| what people would send.
|
| It's been surprisingly chill, and I've only had to handle a few
| nonsensical text dumps or garbage messages.
| Animats wrote:
| Somebody did that back in the 1980s. They put a small printer
| into a phone that had the same form factor as a Western Electric
| model 500.[1] This connected to a PBX and printed "While you were
| out" slips. It was a real product, but did not catch on. Anyone
| remember that thing? I saw ads, but never one in person.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone
| aschmelyun wrote:
| I have a rotary phone, a voip adapter, and have been writing a
| local SIP server for another experiment. I am insanely tempted
| to replicate this.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I've fantasized about fax phone banks for artists to send things
| out periodically.
|
| The idea of a machine unexpectedly popping out a sheet of paper
| has gone from "this is all spam" to delightful again.
|
| Physical items in a physical space whereby you call a place and
| not a person.
|
| We've digitally moved from spaces to individuals and I think
| that's the main critique of the modern web: somehow networked
| ourselves but abandoned the networking of ourselves.
|
| You could even do it all digitally somehow and just hook it up to
| a modern network printer. Whitelisted senders get printed while
| unrecognized ones enter a digital backlog.
|
| The real desire is to explore the psuedo anonymous nature of the
| early web in a way that is robust to abuse.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I think the key point that would make this delightful is the
| whitelist. Lord knows the moment its opened up it'll be spammed
| with the worst things bored teenagers can find.
| ianbicking wrote:
| I have wanted to do experiments with a receipt printer hooked up
| to a Raspberry Pi, with some simple controls... but every time I
| look up the cost of the printer I balk. It's probably not fair,
| but I guess in my head it feels like they should be cheaper. Or
| at least the cost then makes me question how much time I'm really
| ready to put into stuff like debugging the printer drivers and
| putting together a case, etc etc.
|
| The thing I actually want to play with is probably some kind of
| board game that incorporates the printer... ideally with bar/QR
| codes so the computer can print out money, IOUs, instructions,
| etc., and have this computer mediation that still gives people
| physical items to manipulate.
| aschmelyun wrote:
| While not an outright solution to the fact that they _are_
| expensive, if you don't care about them being second hand or a
| little older you can score a pretty good deal on sites like
| eBay.
|
| For instance, TM-T88V printers can do more but cost around 3x
| as much as the one I got, a TM-T88IV which is the older
| version. Not perfect, but beats the like $200 price tag brand
| new.
| ValdikSS wrote:
| I wrote a CUPS (Linux) printer driver for Xiqi cheap ($10)
| Chinese label printers if anyone interested
|
| https://github.com/ValdikSS/printer-driver-funnyprint
|
| I use it to print barcodes, and it's very handy compared to
| serious enterprise printers: it's lightweight, battery-powered,
| and works over Bluetooth.
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(page generated 2025-10-24 23:00 UTC)