Today I learned ... šŸ¤“

The More You Know Nbc GIF by For(bes) The Culture

As the name of the topic suggests, what are one thing, or multiple things, that you learned about today? Feel free to share interesting and specific facts down below with us! (and they donā€™t need to be testing-related) :point_down:

Tā€™was today that I learned that inkjet printersā€™ cartridges are crazy expensive for what they offer (I am looking at you, HP :eyes:)

(the video above was about a Canon ink catridge, but letā€™s be honest, all ink catridges look and function the same way, regardless of the brand :person_shrugging:)

So, I have an HP Deskjet Ink Advantage 3775 printer that I bought for around $80 a year ago, and over the course of using it, I have spent around 150-ish just on ink catridges (around $10 per catridge, black and colors sold separatedly). Whatā€™s worse is that the catridges only last about 70 pages (black ink), and about 50 pages (for color ink).

In comparison, the replacement toner for my (recently-bought) Brother HL-2321D Laser printer cost about $20 but can print up to 2,600 pages :exploding_head:

Whatā€™s worse is that if I want to use third-party ink catridges to save cost, then HP would just brick them with a firmware updateā€¦


Luckily, I also learned that you can sort of refill an ink catridge by buĆ½ing third-party ink bottles and then inject them into the catridge using a syringeā€¦


Have you ever had any unmemorable experiences with your printer? Share with us here.

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An update on my quest to reduce the amount of money spent on ink cartridgesā€¦

So I bought these for bottles of inks of Shopee (Southeast Asiaā€™s Amazon), and also got 4 syringes ā€¦

Then I proceeded to take off the little piece of paper at the top of the ink cartridges and there were holes in there where one could inject ink into. I then injected about 1-2ml of ink into each hole in the colored cartridge (there was a little bit of overflowing :sweat_smile:).

What I noticed after I did a printing test was that I needed to lightly shake the cartridge in order for the ink to ā€¦ trickle down to the nozzles? And that the HP app on my laptop did not detect the extra ink :cry:

However, everything came out a-okay ā€¦ the paper on the left was before the ink injection (lots of magenta), and the one on the right was after.

All in all, I would say that it was quite a success. Though I will have to see how long I can force the existing cartridge to function with third-party ink.

Some (most) of the cartridges have a chip installed, so once it is emptied you have to throw it away and buy new one.
However, you can just ignore the alert, as long as it prints fine.
There are also hacks on how to by-pass that, search on www depending on your model.
As far as i remember it involves either to make a short-circuit between some contacts or to cut out a certain circuit.

Aside that, I do not recomend ink printers if are not to be used on a daily basis.
Once the nozzles are clogged due to long time not being used, it is quiet difficult to fix it, sometime not possible.
Usually, keeping the cartridge in distiled water for a while, before to refill it, it helps.

Search on youtube on how to do the refill properly. Again, from my memory, after you inject the ink you have to inject also a certain amount of air, depending on the cartridge size, to pressurize it.
So donā€™t inject it fully with ink only.

If you donā€™t actually need color prints, I recommend using a laser printer.
The toners are lasting by far more and do not have clogging issues (and the printing speed is better)
And can be re-filled also few times but not at home I think. In Romania we have specialized centers for this, and of-course it is by far cheaper than buying a new one.

I have an old Canon, ~ 8 years old which still works great (except the support for Linux OS, which is crap, but I can live with that)
I refilled the toner 3 times i think, after that I had to replace it.
So I buyed only 1 new up to now in addition to the original.

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One of the things I dislike about technology :cry:

Wow, now that is something new I definitely learned today. So, previously I only injected the ink, shook the cartridge the little, and then hoped for the best. Sometimes the prints would turn out fine, other times a color would be missing, either yellow, or cyan, or magenta. Thanks for the tip! :+1: :+1:

I am fine with black & white printing actually, though my mom sometimes want to print out some brochure and images to read, which is crazy since she also has an iPad :person_shrugging:

for ocassional color prints, just go to a print center and throw away the color printer you have, as i did. saves money and headache
or mhm, buy a color laser printer but that will be overkill for home use.
ink printers must die, are obsolete.

as for why your mom preffer reading on real paperā€¦ respect that!
i do have plenty gadgets, even a Kindle, but real paper still rulz in some areas.
There is nothing like reading on real paper.
(as you already saw my cooking books collection)

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Today I learned that there is this small application on MacOS called NearDrop that mimics Googleā€™s cross-device/cross-platform file sharing service Nearby Share, and it is a godsend. :raised_hands:

No more are the days of having to configure KDE Connect or sending images via Slack to myself on my work laptop (since Slack doesnā€™t seem to compress the pictures/videos when you send them there).

The app is not without its limitation though, such as only being able to operate with Wifi, and that your phone and the laptop need to be on the same Wifi network, but it is already leaps and bounds ahead of other file-sharing apps I have tried. :raised_hands:

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Yesterday, I learned during the last session of my German class, that Christmas in Germany is celebrated a bit differently.

So, apparently, in the 4 weeks preceding Christmasā€™s Eve, people would lit up a candle on the Sunday of each week, and when the 4th candle is lit, that means itā€™s Christmas time.

Also, Santa Claus is not as prevalent in Germany as in North America, instead theyā€™ve got an angel called ā€œChristkindā€ (translated to Child of Christ I believe) who would bring children their gifts. :exploding_head:

Are there any Christmas traditions/customs from where you live that may be a bit different to the North American ones? Share them with us below :point_down:

today I learned that to bypass basic authentication when testing a website in Katalon, you can use a technique like this:

hope this help :grin:

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Thatā€™s such an interesting tradition! The Advent candles and the focus on Christkind instead of Santa Claus really highlight the cultural differences in how Christmas is celebrated around the world. Where Iā€™m from, one unique tradition involves creating a ā€œStar Lanternā€ parade where kids carry handmade lanterns in the shape of stars to symbolize the Star of Bethlehemā€”itā€™s such a magical experience!

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Hi Beredis, :wave:

Thank you for sharing about the ā€œStar Lanternā€ tradition of where you come from. Is this tradition carried out on Christmasā€™ Eve as well?

In pic : Dal Lake , Srinagar , Kashmir (Jammu and Kashmir) , India

Chillia Kalan