The tradional way of making plastics is to throw a bunch of chemicals in a vat and hope it dosen’t explode. Spiders clearly make silk the same way but we have never been able to reproduce the process until now. The technolgy is called microfludics and we should be able to make these devices the same way we make ink jet printers. Which means silk will be as cheep as plastic. Spider silk is stronger than steel. actually we can make it twice as strong by removing the sticky part. One mad scientist created a device that injected buckytubes into spider silk while they were making it. Scientists spin naturalistic silk from artificial spider gland
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This technology sounds pretty cool, but I find the comparison to inkjet printers to be a little funny. The cost of inkjet cartridges is basically a scam. I hope if this technology is adopted it has a better business model than printers. How many printers are in landfills because the cost of ink is comparable to an entire new printer on sale?
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A bit off-topic, but we have a really nice (and inexpensive) all-in-one printer and this the ink that I get…
This amount of ink lasts a very long time.
So it is possible to get ink relatively cheaply.
When choosing a printer, it pays to price the ink required for that specific printer before purchasing the printer. 
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Some inkjets will be more affordable to run than others, but in general laser printers are more economical. Either way, I wouldn’t hold inkjet printers up as business model that should be emulated by anything else.
The big advance of ink jet printers was microfluidics.
I find the thought of being surrounded by exploding spiders more than a little disconcerting.
Then again, those big-ass flying spiders that are on their way up here are creepy enough.
And hope that these 3rd party ink is fully recognized by the printer due to nasty proprietary microchips inside the ink cartridges. I already got some 3rd party cartridges which are not recognized by the printer, so it was waste of money. I hate printers. -.-
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Hmm…
I’ve been lucky because I’ve never had that problem.
I’ve been using 3rd party ink for about 20 years, and the printers have always fully recognized the cartridges.
I have heard that using 3rd party ink can decrease the longevity of the printer, but 1st party ink is so expensive that I don’t really care.
Of course, I tend to get fairly inexpensive printers because they don’t last forever (plus I’m budget minded.) 
…
What I kinda hate are electric shavers (even though I like them more than manual razors.)
I plan to choose between either a high end Braun or a high end Panasonic shaver.
The shavers themselves are fairly pricey, but what annoys me is that the 1st party replacement blades are so expensive, and from what I’ve read, the 3rd party replacement blades are worthless junk. 
I can’t remember what kind of printer it was, one by HP, several years ago. There were some printers which had these nasty microchips, don’t know which type they were. The dealer took the cartridges back, but it was quite a discussion until he did. In the meantime, I would probably go for a used/refurbished laser printer anyway, at least it doesn’t dry out after a few months (I print very little).
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Regarding printers - buy office b/w laser printers from Brother. Whatever is the cheapest when you buy. Usually that’s 120-150 bucks for one that can print front/backside of the same paper, and can’t do much fancy stuff apart from that. It has wifi and Ethernet.
My parents bought theirs after countless inkjets failing a few years back. Setup took 5 seconds - plug ethernet into the printer, and all apple/Linux/windows computers immediately recognize it as a network printer. No software, no drivers. Just works.
They’re still on the original cartridge since they bought it. Sometimes they print nothing for months, then they print hundreds of pages in a short time. It just works.
I really used to hate printers until I experienced this one. It’s so nice.
Yeah, I thought about buying a MFC-L2710DN. We have some in the company (which are sometimes not used for months also) and they just works.
But I still hate printers lol. I think these are just made specifically to make people upset 
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My experience is similar. I bought a Samsung laser printer for $140 in 2017, and I’m still using the toner cartridge that came with it. I print a tax document here and there, and I print packing slips, that’s about it. Maybe a random document here and there otherwise.
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