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Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#391

Post by AWildC182 »

tgv wrote: post #141
cranium wrote: post #121

I'm surprised nobody mentioned radio communication. The AM (Amplitude Modulation) transmission is even quite simple to understand and build. You can even create an electric arc between the ground and the transmitting tower as a cheap (and dangerous) receiver: https://youtu.be/uo9nGzIzSPw

I don't think a layperson can understand even the basic principle behind AM, let alone the actual device. It's not as "simple" as washing your hands.

Back when radioshack existed they used to sell kits where you could assemble a crystal radio out of a handful of simple parts. This was the first real project my dad and I ever did and I was just a little kid at the time.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#393

Post by war1025 »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #240
estebarb wrote: post #73

"simple" is a strong requirement. I don't know how to make anything of most things proposed!!! If we were thrown to the Earth 10000 years ago, we would be able to bootstrap our current tech in less than a century?

Yes. So long as we had a few reference works, freedom from attack by competing tribes, and landed on productive agricultural land. Simple radios are very easy and allow us to stick together over wider ranges than the locals, knowledge of simple medical concepts and sanitation keeps us alive and healthy longer. Understanding how to build effective shelters and storage systems allows us to keep an agricultural surplus…

The thing you are missing, which is a massive hurdle that is underappreciated, is that you need access to raw materials. Most of the modern gadgets we use require things that you can't just find out your front door.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#394

Post by kragen »

dTal wrote: post #176

3D printing. I know, I know - overhyped. But you know what's a funny thing? It's incredibly basic tech. Stepper motors and thermoplastic. We could have had something like it at pretty much any time over the past century, and in its modern form from about 1960 or so. It has unquestionably revolutionized prototyping and short-run manufacturing, and we just didn't think of it . The idea was just too zany and expensive -…

I followed the RepRap blogs closely during the late noughties, up to about 2010, and there was a lot more to it than just thinking of it, even 20 years after the FDM patent. The use of PLA simplified a lot of curling problems, but even so, rafts and brims were also necessary inventions without heated beds. The pinch gear extruder design took a lot of debugging. It took them years to get a reliable hotend design because they didn't know about Kapton, which also helped a lot with bed heating. Bed leveling, stringing, and filament diameter consistency were hugely underestimated problems. And a lot of trial and error was needed to get good slicing and PID parameters.

The end result of all this, plus some design errors from learning mechanical engineering as they went, was that for many years the mean time between failures on a RepRap was a few hours.

Other than that, yeah, you could have done it with a $30k PDP-8.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#395

Post by AWildC182 »

cuspycode wrote: post #168

The condition "you can pretty much build it yourself" forces me to exclude many things with important impact like for example nuclear reactors, LSD, birth control pills, and the silicon transistor. But I think steam engines (or Rankine cycle engines in general) and penicillin are simple enough to qualify.

Depends heavily on your definition of "build yourself"...

The airplane is a big one and I'm building one myself in my garage, as did the inventors of the first airplane. Hell, a solid chunk of all other inventions were created in someones garage. Compared to a full scale airplane, making nuclear reactors or transistors yourself is even easier and the transistor is easily the single biggest invention of the past century.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#396

Post by blompa »

sevilo wrote: post #335

Pads and tampons. Some argue these are environmentally unfriendly and produce too much waste, but you have to think, not everyone is privileged enough to own a washing machine in their own home, particularly those in 2nd and 3rd world countries. I genuinely believed pads and tampons allowed women to be more productive in the work force and eventually lead to more equality, just hearing my mom and grandma's story of h…

Menstrual cups are a step up from this!

They produce much less waste, are much less messy (almost never leak), and don't need to be changed as often (once every 6 - 12 hours and without the TSS risks that tampons have).

It's better to use running water to wash them out, but simply wiping them with tissue paper can work too (albeit a little messily), if water is scarce.

A downside that I've read about however is that just like with tampons, some cultures consider inserting anything into the vagina as losing your virginity so using them may be considered taboo.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#397

Post by karatestomp »

war1025 wrote: post #327
wikibob wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An HOUR? To do the dishes? That seems like an enormous consumption of time. I would suggest that you might consider reallocating this time. For example, if you have three children are any of them old enough to help do the dishes? Initially it will take you more time, but children love to contribute to the household at first, until they are taught not to by being told they're doing it wrong.

> An HOUR? To do the dishes? That seems like an enormous consumption of time You will note that I said "less than an hour", which in my life basically equates to "a trivial amount of time". Most days it's probably closer to a half hour. It's also a fairly leisurely process of me listening to whatever they are talking about on the radio. When the kids are bigger, I'm sure we'll teach them how to do the dishes and othe…

IMO the main benefit of a dishwasher is giving you somewhere to stick dirty dishes that’s not the sink. I agree that it’s not particularly time consuming, and prepping dishes for the dishwasher and loading them probably takes about half the time of hand-washing anyway.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#398

Post by oska »

war1025 wrote: post #282
webmobdev wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... but the truth is most clothing doesn't need to be washed nearly so often as people do. Didn't exactly understand you ... I mean, I can't wear any shirt more than two days in a row before it picks up my body odour and starts stinking (India; hot climate - and this is after 2 baths a day too; no deodorant). So if I don't wash and wear it, I am pretty sure it would bother a lot of people. I can wear pants and trou…

As a counterpoint, here in the US Midwest, I currently have three pairs of jeans, two thermal shirts, and two button downs that I rotate through and wash honestly maybe quarterly. Other clothing items I go through more quickly, but I'm planning to start giving my undershirts a couple rotations before washing them as well. Same with socks. The main thing I've noticed is that natural fabrics don't pick up smells nearly…

> The main thing I've noticed is that natural fabrics don't pick up smells nearly as badly as synthetics.

This is especially true of wool.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#399

Post by kragen »

richk449 wrote: post #383
romwell wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with that. It has also transformed hobby/craft markets and arts. The only thing stopping it is UX at this point (you still need to have both craft and computer skills to use them). I have very little use for paperclips, actually, but if I needed one, I could easily 3D print it. And that ability - to imagine things and have them come out of the machine - gives the magical empowering feeling that most of the…

> I have very little use for paperclips, actually, but if I needed one, I could easily 3D print it. Out of curiosity, how good would a 3D printed paperclip be compared to the metal ones I am used to? I suspect the performance would be significantly worse due to material properties.

You could make it stronger and more durable, but it will definitely be larger and heavier if you make it out of PLA, and more expensive than a bit of bent wire if you FDM it.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#400

Post by AWildC182 »

mNovak wrote: post #272
hoistbypetard wrote: post #237

I think the soldering iron has to be in the hunt on all three (important, modern, simple) counts.

Sort of implies that electricity was really the important innovation, to warrant the need for soldering? (Unless I'm totally missing the important application of soldering.) I'd argue basic electric applications are pretty simple, and easily made by hand.

Sort of implies that copper smelting was really the important innovation, to warrant the need for electricity?

In all seriousness though, the printed circuit board might be a good one to bundle with that. The old methods of creating a mechanically robust compact electrical package were nowhere near as efficient. They're also very recent and very easy to make yourself, even if it's thin plywood with tinfoil glued on.

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