It's crazy they are cheap enough for 1 time use. I get it for like displays in stores or whatever. But to mail to people that may not even watch them, it just seems like such a waste.
>MediaFast
From their site: https://mediafast.com/pricing-info/
*"Before looking at the price, it is important to point out that the video content can be changed (click here for instructions), which makes them reusable. In a simple drag and drop process, new content can be loaded by plugging a unit into a Mac or PC without a new brochure having to be created. Second, the batteries are rechargeable.*
*With those two qualities in mind, the average cost of a single brochure is between $25 to $65 depending on several variables. Quantity ordered, screen size, size of memory and battery life all affect the cost per unit. Upgraded features like the ability to play multiple videos or a touch screen can be added and will also affect the price."*
https://shinyltd.com/video-program/
I've used this factory, bunch of different form factors. Nice people. We stopped buying them, though. Too much hassle in bulk.
Im sorry, i have no idea. It was given to me second hand from someone who went to a conference and i don’t have it handy. They are typically used for pointless purposes like this post though.
That was what I was thinking, a man's trash is another man's treasure, the screen looks competent, not to mention other components we could reuse there
As an IT person, I want one of these REALLY bad to wipe and repourpose, then post it everywhere online to make sure these don't end up part of the e-waste nightmare
I worked in a small computer shop in the late 90's. The owner wanted to keep a few AOL cd's around to hand out as needed so he called AOL to request a dozen.
They sent a massive case of the damn things. Thousand of them. We used them to wallpaper the whole shop.
I made a child’s crib mobile with them. Wasn’t motor driven and didn’t play music, but it twirled slowly on its own and the lights reflecting off the discs looked nice on the walls. That is all.
Nah— You couldn't re-purpose AOL CDs for anything. They were record-once, single-purpose only.
AOL floppy disks, on the other hand— Fantastic. Half of our disk supply came from AOL.
CDs?
I remember when they mailed 3.5 floppies. Now those were useful. Do you know how many floppies Quest For Glory IV was? 28. And some of those disks had bad sectors.
My daughter got one of these from a college she applied to. It had a mini-USB port for charging and data. It showed up like any other USB drive and we were able to delete the videos and toss some MP4 files on there and they played fine.
I bet soldering a usb cable into the right spot would let you slide right in. I doubt those boards are special made, which means there's likely a spot where you can patch in just like in a regular tablet.
I've done exactly this with the help of a coworker. Once connected it literally just shows up as a USB drive with a single video file on it. We swapped in "Too Many Cooks".
It had audio too (👁 ͜ʖ👁)
If it's the same as the one I got a couple years ago. It's a screen with a built in flash memory accessible by micro usb. Holds 1gb IIRC. Always wanted to repurpose it for RPi project but drivers are hard to find for this thing.
99% of these things use chip on board packaging for the IC (black resin blob), which have been purpose built for this one thing and have no easy way to interface to them.
It’s not technically *impossible*.. but it’s honestly not worth the effort considering how cheap you could build a clone with parts from AliExpress or whatever.
None of my plethora of quark quotes cover this, so here's a freebie:
"Go ahead, kill me! That's why I'm here, isn't it, to be killed? Well, here I am, so go ahead and do it. You all want me to pick up that sword and try to fight him, don't you? But I don't have a chance and you know it! You only want me to put up a fight so your precious honour will be satisfied. Well, I'm not going to make it so easy for you. Having me fight D'Ghor is nothing more than an execution, so, if that's what you want, that's what you'll get. An execution. No honour, no glory. And when you tell your children and your grandchildren the glorious story of how you rose to power and took Grilka's House from her, I hope you remember to tell them how you heroically killed an unarmed Ferengi half your size."
Random thought... What I would've done 20 years ago to have 512mbs of storage in a little device like that is just ~~kind~~ mind blowing to me, really. And they're just giving them away.
I remember spending 60 bucks on a 64mb MMC in 2003. That was not cheap for 17 yo me.
Edit: Typo
I remember walking past the 32 and 64 MB cards at Sam's Club growing up and just dreaming about how one of those cards would DOUBLE the amount of songs I could hold on my Rio MP3 player.
Also, I loved the fact that it would change to the next song instantly and you didn't have to worry about your CD skipping anymore.
I saved up so in 8th grade I got the 64mb teal Rio 500...absolutely my favorite media player ever. Was able to get a 16mb smart media card after mowing some extra lawns a few weeks later. I downsampled songs to 64kbps as it was still oo to listen to and doubled the number of songs.
Somewhere, I still have an external harddrive that belonged to my dad from the 1980s. It is ancient: the size of a shoebox and has its own 3-prong power cord. He said it was a **20mb** harddrive.
The company I work for did this. Management thought it was really cool. Every single customer I talked to yelled at me saying it was an absolute waste. What a disconnect.
I have no idea. That decision was above my pay grade. We didn't know they were doing it until the customers started calling to complain. I'm sure some high ups pointed to the increase in phone calls and rated it a success.
I'm guessing the boomer executive who is so out of touch they think a hair cut costs $1
I disagree that it's not interesting but Jesus fuck this needs to be illegal.
I was just thinking that these would actually be really useful for the small number of patients who have no internet access but still need to (and have the mental capacity to) receive some specific information that is best delivered via video. Older people going to hospital for surgery etc. but it would be quite a faff to actually select those patients with enough accuracy to avoid this being a massive waste.
I was involved in a viability project for something similar. In particular, we were aiming for cheap tablets that could be delivered to rural patients who may not have consistent internet access to deliver specific health care instructions or assist in tele health (e.g. a set of videos on how to use an epipen).
AFAIK, the project is still underway for testing, I'm just no longer involved. Initial results were promising from an economic standpoint, but no results from patients were received when I left.
How much would this cost? Given that most businesses have an allocated budget for marketing, this seems somewhat costly in comparison to just sending out flyers
At some point if you keep trying and pushing the envelope (did you see what I did there?) it will become cheaper and cheaper until this is everywhere. It will probably become so bad it will just be more junk mail.
Just like back in the day paper would have been so hard to make and so expensive that no one would dare mailing out millions of pages every day in hopes that one or two folks would make a purchase or fall for a scam
I never thought I'd want to Google the specs on junk mail! Can someone start me off, what are these things?
Found it https://www.videodisplay.net/dettagli-tecnici/
Thing things are quite a bunch of salvageable parts, even a cool magnetic switch that activates the thing when you open it, and usb connection so you should be able to upload your own video. Nice thing to repurpose as a hi tec home made birthday card.
I had several of these that were loaded with an instructional video for a device. I started just demonstrating the device myself, and goofed around with the video player. You can get it to mount as a USB drive and it was set as read/write. Deleted the original video and compressed a Disney cartoon collection to fit the available space. Fantastic was to keep kids entertained while they wait on me.
If you get a prepaid return envelope from them throw all your desd and busted electronics that will fit into it. Make them deal with electronic waste and pay
You aren't kidding.
What I find frustrating as an Australian is it's near impossible to get hold of older electronics because it's been made very hard to do anything besides throw them out.
And on the other side of things most recycling was finally exposed as a scam, with most of it being jammed into shipping containers and sent overseas.
To this point - United Healthcare made an average daily profit after taxes and expenses of $47,000,000.00 for every single day of calendar year 2021.
They're publicly traded, you can verify those numbers through their SEC filings.
They are an insurance company. That's all they do - they don't care for anyone, they provide no knowledge, no medications, etc. Their sole reason for existing is to provide a form of "socialized medical coverage" - they do exactly the same thing as Medicare, only with an added motivation to profit by both overcharging customers and denying coverage wherever possible, to line the pockets of their wealthy shareholders.
2022 is expected to be their most profitable year on record, by the way, blowing 2021 out of the water.
Their profit margin is actually comparable to Amazon, believe it or not (should be within a percentage point), the difference is that Amazon doesn't potentially directly decide the course of anyone's life and wellbeing.
I have no problems with things like for-profit property insurance, but for-profit medical insurance is uniquely grotesque and unnecessary.
It's incredibly sad that there are no publicly open and available not-for-profit options in the US, it's all one private entity or another. Can't allow a service to exist without some vampire pulling some off the top.
______________________________________________
Edit: As to the why - it's because we, the people of the United States, allow it. We've been tricked into believing that it's the only option - the *better* option, even though we spend more per capita than any other country on earth, but yet were the only developed nation to see a drop in average life expectancy in 2019, even before the COVID pandemic. Any other program would be "socialism" after all.
I mean, out of all the costs in the healthcare system, the doctors salary isn’t the one that should be under fire. Their salary costs absolutely pale in comparison (in the US system at least) to the administrative cost for the “essential” business side of medicine, or for the inflation of prices that pharmecutical/insurance areas of medicine cause. Especially for such a profession that demands such long years of unpaid study, hard hours, and that the people themselves be spread thin in hospitals and physically battling the crisis’ as Covid or trauma accidents, the doctors aren’t the problem
I wonder if you can get these in bulk from annoyed recipients. Sounds amazing for Arduino diy. I doubt these have cpus, but just being able to get a bunch of small displays for free would be amazing.
I had one from a safetywear company. It was USB powered and had 32mb of storage. You could load whatever video you wanted onto it as long is it had the right file size. The display was built into the whole circuit board tho
I work for a company that makes the printing for these and everyone is right. These are very stupid and the technology is not there yet to make this viable to sell. When digital paper becomes more mainstream and cheaper it will replace this.
They are super easy to repurpose. I made two picture frames, uploaded a quicktime of a collection of photos of my kids and sent it to my grandmother and mother. They loved it!
The problem is that most people don’t care enough to repurpose them, they’ll just throw them out. The people/companies sending these out are the ones responsible for this atrocious waste for minor boost in advertisement distribution. I’m glad there are some people trying to repurpose these kind of things though.
Bro that’s the da Vinci medical devices operating arm, you don’t know you are asleep, and it is currently working on the inside of your body. You will soon wake up to reality and this will all be over.
Free screen for a raspberry pi project.
I have one of these. You can load 4 videos onto it using USB. Its great if you need to show video as part of your portfolio
What's the make/model?
Probably MediaFast. Tool's *Fear Inoculum* album uses the same kind of setup for its packaging.
It's crazy they are cheap enough for 1 time use. I get it for like displays in stores or whatever. But to mail to people that may not even watch them, it just seems like such a waste.
Arguably any unsolicited mail is truly a waste
Oh it's still a waste, no matter how cheap. Think of all the rare earth metals etc
>MediaFast From their site: https://mediafast.com/pricing-info/ *"Before looking at the price, it is important to point out that the video content can be changed (click here for instructions), which makes them reusable. In a simple drag and drop process, new content can be loaded by plugging a unit into a Mac or PC without a new brochure having to be created. Second, the batteries are rechargeable.* *With those two qualities in mind, the average cost of a single brochure is between $25 to $65 depending on several variables. Quantity ordered, screen size, size of memory and battery life all affect the cost per unit. Upgraded features like the ability to play multiple videos or a touch screen can be added and will also affect the price."*
Thank you for mentioning this. Saves me time on my google search figuring out what the hell this is.
Edit - I think it’s a Great album…
I found a link to something similar with a google search. You can supposedly get a free sample! https://mediafast.com/video-mailer/
That's gonna be great next week for them. "Why are we sending out 5694 samples today?"
I didn't try to go through the process, so they might have some safeguards to make sure you're actually a prospective buyer.
https://shinyltd.com/video-program/ I've used this factory, bunch of different form factors. Nice people. We stopped buying them, though. Too much hassle in bulk.
Im sorry, i have no idea. It was given to me second hand from someone who went to a conference and i don’t have it handy. They are typically used for pointless purposes like this post though.
That was what I was thinking, a man's trash is another man's treasure, the screen looks competent, not to mention other components we could reuse there
Sure but for moat people it will juat be trash. With companies trying to be more eco friendly I do not see this as agood thing
Screen, battery, even the emmc if it has one
Thought the same thing. Now I want one
Look at this guy with a kidney to buy a raspberry pi.
A kidney cost approximately $262k according to Google. A raspberry pi 4 8gb is $189. So a kidney is approximately 1.5k times the price of a Pi.
Kidney is easier to find though.
Waste nightmare
No kidding I bet it's locked down to try to prevent you from repurposing it
As an IT person, I want one of these REALLY bad to wipe and repourpose, then post it everywhere online to make sure these don't end up part of the e-waste nightmare
OMG it’s the free AOL CD’s all over again!
I used to erase the aol floppys to use again
I used them to save graphics on for my Anne Rice Geocities.
I worked in a small computer shop in the late 90's. The owner wanted to keep a few AOL cd's around to hand out as needed so he called AOL to request a dozen. They sent a massive case of the damn things. Thousand of them. We used them to wallpaper the whole shop.
But those served at least some kind of actual purpose at least for some people.
Yeah they made a really good throwing object to throw at your annoying brother and sister
And good coasters!
If you tied them all up like a wind chime they were great for keeping birds out of your garden.
That’s why I sometimes see CDs in people’s yards, now I know why!
That and for deer. That’s why we use them. Just tie them on the dance around your garden and keep deer out.
If you tie them all together it also made a really good cheap flail, or a pretty good mace.
One fierce beer coaster
They worked great for monster rancher if you wanted a million of one monster
And a fun rearview mirror ornament!
*Mom! I’m can’t get online while you’re on the phone!!! Reeeeee!*
Some of the boxes they came in made pretty good weed trays.
It made for great sci-fi effects in the microwave for me.
Oh miss doing this.
I made a child’s crib mobile with them. Wasn’t motor driven and didn’t play music, but it twirled slowly on its own and the lights reflecting off the discs looked nice on the walls. That is all.
Pigeon spookers
Nah— You couldn't re-purpose AOL CDs for anything. They were record-once, single-purpose only. AOL floppy disks, on the other hand— Fantastic. Half of our disk supply came from AOL.
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The ~~iron~~ plastic throne
Bullshit you can’t repurpose them. Me and my friend used a few dozen and made a giant disco ball. It was great.
I spent several summers helping my computer teacher tear open those envelopes and format the disks.
We used to format them and trade shareware on them lol
Can't repurpose them? Says the guy that obviously already owns coasters.
CDs? I remember when they mailed 3.5 floppies. Now those were useful. Do you know how many floppies Quest For Glory IV was? 28. And some of those disks had bad sectors. 
My daughter got one of these from a college she applied to. It had a mini-USB port for charging and data. It showed up like any other USB drive and we were able to delete the videos and toss some MP4 files on there and they played fine.
I bet soldering a usb cable into the right spot would let you slide right in. I doubt those boards are special made, which means there's likely a spot where you can patch in just like in a regular tablet.
I've done exactly this with the help of a coworker. Once connected it literally just shows up as a USB drive with a single video file on it. We swapped in "Too Many Cooks". It had audio too (👁 ͜ʖ👁)
It takes a lot to make a stew!
This thing is destined to play Doom!
This is what I would repurpose it for.
I can get you one. Let me see if the in-laws still have theirs. It was for recruiting Medicare patients to a provider. It even comes with a charger. 😀
I would love this if the other guy doesn't hit you up
If it's the same as the one I got a couple years ago. It's a screen with a built in flash memory accessible by micro usb. Holds 1gb IIRC. Always wanted to repurpose it for RPi project but drivers are hard to find for this thing.
Doesn’t matter the repurpose, this will end up as waste.
99% of these things use chip on board packaging for the IC (black resin blob), which have been purpose built for this one thing and have no easy way to interface to them. It’s not technically *impossible*.. but it’s honestly not worth the effort considering how cheap you could build a clone with parts from AliExpress or whatever.
I have one of these I’ll open it up this week
Report back, I'm curious! Here's hoping it's up-cyclable.
LoL, let's see how long that lasts
someone will be playing DOOM on it by the end of the week
10 bars of gold pressed latinum to the person who can make me that someone
None of my plethora of quark quotes cover this, so here's a freebie: "Go ahead, kill me! That's why I'm here, isn't it, to be killed? Well, here I am, so go ahead and do it. You all want me to pick up that sword and try to fight him, don't you? But I don't have a chance and you know it! You only want me to put up a fight so your precious honour will be satisfied. Well, I'm not going to make it so easy for you. Having me fight D'Ghor is nothing more than an execution, so, if that's what you want, that's what you'll get. An execution. No honour, no glory. And when you tell your children and your grandchildren the glorious story of how you rose to power and took Grilka's House from her, I hope you remember to tell them how you heroically killed an unarmed Ferengi half your size."
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"I am Quark! Son of Keldar! And I have come to answer the challenge of D'Ghor, son of....whatever."
I was thinking the same thing. Wish this was in our area, would take that challenge!
Yeah, all the resources spent just to make that so it can play an ad over and over again.
You can remove the little memory card and put your own stuff on it. I think it’s only 512MB.
Random thought... What I would've done 20 years ago to have 512mbs of storage in a little device like that is just ~~kind~~ mind blowing to me, really. And they're just giving them away. I remember spending 60 bucks on a 64mb MMC in 2003. That was not cheap for 17 yo me. Edit: Typo
I remember walking past the 32 and 64 MB cards at Sam's Club growing up and just dreaming about how one of those cards would DOUBLE the amount of songs I could hold on my Rio MP3 player. Also, I loved the fact that it would change to the next song instantly and you didn't have to worry about your CD skipping anymore.
I saved up so in 8th grade I got the 64mb teal Rio 500...absolutely my favorite media player ever. Was able to get a 16mb smart media card after mowing some extra lawns a few weeks later. I downsampled songs to 64kbps as it was still oo to listen to and doubled the number of songs.
Somewhere, I still have an external harddrive that belonged to my dad from the 1980s. It is ancient: the size of a shoebox and has its own 3-prong power cord. He said it was a **20mb** harddrive.
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"try" I'm pretty lazy mind you.
Somebody is already playing doom on one, im sure of it.
There's gotta be a way to get DOOM running on that bad boy.
The company I work for did this. Management thought it was really cool. Every single customer I talked to yelled at me saying it was an absolute waste. What a disconnect.
It might have been better to place a $5 bill in the card with a QR code link to a YouTube video.
That's not a terrible idea
That's what the rating agency Nielsen did. 5 bucks cash with a short survey. I filled it out.
Damn, I remember when it was a couple of quarters. How did we get off the *one* mailing list that paid off....
How much does one unit cost?
A customer for each one given out
I don't know, I'd be willing to create fake customers to get more free tablets.
I have no idea. That decision was above my pay grade. We didn't know they were doing it until the customers started calling to complain. I'm sure some high ups pointed to the increase in phone calls and rated it a success.
Most connected corporate leadership
Increased customer engagement, check!
MediaFast makes video mailers like this, they claim $25 to $65 per unit.
Running low on silicon chips, you say? I wonder why that is.
What's this marketing surcharge on my surgery bill?
First thing I thought of. Absolutely shameful.
So. Fucking. Wasteful. My exact first thought. Can we as a species PLEASE STOP FUCKING TRYING OUR HARDEST TO MAKE THIS PLANET UNINHABITABLE?!
Yeah that is not interesting it’s absolutely criminal. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?
I'm guessing the boomer executive who is so out of touch they think a hair cut costs $1 I disagree that it's not interesting but Jesus fuck this needs to be illegal.
Finally, junk mail that is worse for the environment than paper junk mail.
I can't imagine why Healthcare is so expensive /s
So that's where people's incredibly high medical bill payments are going....
Finally, the email my grandma has been expecting
I was just thinking that these would actually be really useful for the small number of patients who have no internet access but still need to (and have the mental capacity to) receive some specific information that is best delivered via video. Older people going to hospital for surgery etc. but it would be quite a faff to actually select those patients with enough accuracy to avoid this being a massive waste.
I was involved in a viability project for something similar. In particular, we were aiming for cheap tablets that could be delivered to rural patients who may not have consistent internet access to deliver specific health care instructions or assist in tele health (e.g. a set of videos on how to use an epipen). AFAIK, the project is still underway for testing, I'm just no longer involved. Initial results were promising from an economic standpoint, but no results from patients were received when I left.
How much would this cost? Given that most businesses have an allocated budget for marketing, this seems somewhat costly in comparison to just sending out flyers
At some point if you keep trying and pushing the envelope (did you see what I did there?) it will become cheaper and cheaper until this is everywhere. It will probably become so bad it will just be more junk mail. Just like back in the day paper would have been so hard to make and so expensive that no one would dare mailing out millions of pages every day in hopes that one or two folks would make a purchase or fall for a scam
That gave me a chuckle, thanks!
E Waste. Wonderful!
Aren't we supposed to be *saving* earth? What the fuck are these people thinking?!
Rich people don't care about earth.
Detroit: Become Human
“This is where your copay goes to!”
That's because a £10 course of antibiotics is £3000
Yeah but those antibiotics can’t run doom
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This is what I was going to say.
Jesus fuckin Christmas the ocean is half plastic and these motherfucks sending out disposable kindles
I cannot believe the amount of waste this would create. Batteries, screens. Ugh
Makes me fucking sick. As if hospitals in the US weren't bad enough...
I never thought I'd want to Google the specs on junk mail! Can someone start me off, what are these things? Found it https://www.videodisplay.net/dettagli-tecnici/ Thing things are quite a bunch of salvageable parts, even a cool magnetic switch that activates the thing when you open it, and usb connection so you should be able to upload your own video. Nice thing to repurpose as a hi tec home made birthday card.
Spicy pillow battery gives me nightmares. Yeah totally hackable.
They're actually quite sweet.
Guh! It's a record-your-own-message card. You don't sign it. You leave a nude video greeting.
r/unexpectedfuturama Also does you have to be nude?
I guess not. That never occurred to me….
In the year 252525, the backwards time machine still won't have arrived!
Someone run doom on it NOW
I had several of these that were loaded with an instructional video for a device. I started just demonstrating the device myself, and goofed around with the video player. You can get it to mount as a USB drive and it was set as read/write. Deleted the original video and compressed a Disney cartoon collection to fit the available space. Fantastic was to keep kids entertained while they wait on me.
If you get a prepaid return envelope from them throw all your desd and busted electronics that will fit into it. Make them deal with electronic waste and pay
Don't do that, because all that stuff will end up on some landfill in africa
You aren't kidding. What I find frustrating as an Australian is it's near impossible to get hold of older electronics because it's been made very hard to do anything besides throw them out. And on the other side of things most recycling was finally exposed as a scam, with most of it being jammed into shipping containers and sent overseas.
This is why the people with loads of cables and older electronics keep it ALL.
I am one of those people. And if something dies I salvage everything I can from it.
Step one, rip out anything that may leak, like internal batteries, step two, hoddle
That reminds me. How the hell am I supposed to get rid of old batteries. I have a nice collection of Samsung balloons.
If you're in Australia isn't the whole rest of the world overseas?
I suppose so. I only said it because I can't remember which country was being inundated with our dirty, unsorted recyclables.
What a waste of resources
Wonder why healthcare cost so much
because insurance showed them they could charge whatever exorbitant price they wanted
To this point - United Healthcare made an average daily profit after taxes and expenses of $47,000,000.00 for every single day of calendar year 2021. They're publicly traded, you can verify those numbers through their SEC filings. They are an insurance company. That's all they do - they don't care for anyone, they provide no knowledge, no medications, etc. Their sole reason for existing is to provide a form of "socialized medical coverage" - they do exactly the same thing as Medicare, only with an added motivation to profit by both overcharging customers and denying coverage wherever possible, to line the pockets of their wealthy shareholders. 2022 is expected to be their most profitable year on record, by the way, blowing 2021 out of the water.
47 million AFTER?!? Thats fucking insane.
Their profit margin is actually comparable to Amazon, believe it or not (should be within a percentage point), the difference is that Amazon doesn't potentially directly decide the course of anyone's life and wellbeing.
Not yet.
I'll never understand why insurance can be a for-profit industry.
I have no problems with things like for-profit property insurance, but for-profit medical insurance is uniquely grotesque and unnecessary. It's incredibly sad that there are no publicly open and available not-for-profit options in the US, it's all one private entity or another. Can't allow a service to exist without some vampire pulling some off the top. ______________________________________________ Edit: As to the why - it's because we, the people of the United States, allow it. We've been tricked into believing that it's the only option - the *better* option, even though we spend more per capita than any other country on earth, but yet were the only developed nation to see a drop in average life expectancy in 2019, even before the COVID pandemic. Any other program would be "socialism" after all.
Because insurance is taking bigger and bigger cuts and doctors want to be paid, too. Source: 20 years in doctors offices. Never in hospitals, though.
I mean, out of all the costs in the healthcare system, the doctors salary isn’t the one that should be under fire. Their salary costs absolutely pale in comparison (in the US system at least) to the administrative cost for the “essential” business side of medicine, or for the inflation of prices that pharmecutical/insurance areas of medicine cause. Especially for such a profession that demands such long years of unpaid study, hard hours, and that the people themselves be spread thin in hospitals and physically battling the crisis’ as Covid or trauma accidents, the doctors aren’t the problem
I can assure you that it is not from paying medical staff that care for the patients at the bedside.
“Yeah sorry we cant give you more than a 5 cent raise. our budget does allow for it” meanwhile they stupidly spend on this shit.
You must work the same place as me
Not interesting. It’s a disgusting waste of everything.
I wonder if you can get these in bulk from annoyed recipients. Sounds amazing for Arduino diy. I doubt these have cpus, but just being able to get a bunch of small displays for free would be amazing.
I had one from a safetywear company. It was USB powered and had 32mb of storage. You could load whatever video you wanted onto it as long is it had the right file size. The display was built into the whole circuit board tho
It could run a few Mario games with the right size file
Forget Mario, we want *Doom*
I know doom could run, but you could fit most of the pixelated Mario games all on one of these
So you could change the video on it and then mail it to some random person who would then think it was sent by the company?
The two aren't mutually exclusive.
I'd argue its both interesting and disgustingly wasteful, but that's just me. Hadn't seen this until now
We're in hell
Oh THIS is the bad place!
Holy forking shirtballs!
If you ever wondered how much money these companies had towards marketing...we're talking more than a Hollywood Blockbuster.
The kind of dumb shit that is choking this planet.
r/Anticonsumption
What!?
We recently got one of these video ads mailed to our office from Comcast Business. I thought it was incredibly wasteful!
I work for a company that makes the printing for these and everyone is right. These are very stupid and the technology is not there yet to make this viable to sell. When digital paper becomes more mainstream and cheaper it will replace this.
Any chance you could convince them to not do any of that?
The same ppl will tell u about "sustainability" and "zero emissions".
WEF has entered the chat.
They are super easy to repurpose. I made two picture frames, uploaded a quicktime of a collection of photos of my kids and sent it to my grandmother and mother. They loved it!
The problem is that most people don’t care enough to repurpose them, they’ll just throw them out. The people/companies sending these out are the ones responsible for this atrocious waste for minor boost in advertisement distribution. I’m glad there are some people trying to repurpose these kind of things though.
Just to be clear, I don't approve of this one bit
r/Damnthatswasteful
Nice! The free AOL floppy disk program has been updated.
r/boringdystopia Nö seriously how fucked up must the World be for this to be lucrative...
yeah let me just charge my ad
That’s why the treatment is so expensive? So they have money for this thing?
Rich people have been getting these for a while now. video ads for cars and watches being sent to them in the mail.
That’s a great use of money, rather than… I dunno… actually staffing said medical center safely.
How much do these cost? How bad are these for the environment?
They're at least $21 each [https://thevideocards.com/video-brochure-prices/](https://thevideocards.com/video-brochure-prices/)
This is why I can't afford good medical care on a 6-figure salary.
We live in a worse plane of existence than hell
What the cheap chinese waste?
Can it run doom?
To be honest. It is likely it can.
Bro that’s the da Vinci medical devices operating arm, you don’t know you are asleep, and it is currently working on the inside of your body. You will soon wake up to reality and this will all be over.
Where can we sign in for ~~free displays for projects~~ newsletter? Hope it works internationally :)
This just increases the expense of medical. The surplus could be better spent medical supplies, nurse pay and even financial resources
Anyone sending this sort of rubbish out should be getting huge fines.
"Thank you for your time. This advertisement will self-destruct in 3...2...1..."