Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open Source Tractor

opensourceecology.dozuki.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 213 posts

Re: Open Source Tractor

#191

Post by nelsondev »

gnramires wrote: post #172
vasco wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we could throw what generations of people collectively built for a concoction some random dude came up with on their own? What about using the same time investment to contribute to improving our current systems? Whatever you come up by yourself has zero chances of coming to fruition outside your apartment. Working on your local community to improve lives of real people or joining a political party and influen…

Oh yes, believe me, I have enormous respect for our current system. It works really well. It has amazing emergent behavior. In a way, I want to improve the current system; it's just sometimes an issue of branding, mental models, and compatibility, that it can be useful to think of it as something new . Like a new software that's inspired by legacy systems. For example, by now it's clear that Open Source technology is…

> One of the idea (please, give it a try as well!) is to have a decentralized network of adversarially cooperative evaluators for this (in a system that cross-validates itself and economically aligns estimation accuracy).

Isn’t this Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”?

Re: Open Source Tractor

#192

Post by f7ebc20c97 »

f7ebc20c97 wrote: post #190
gnramires wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to watch that! I'm developing an algorithmically-driven civilization architecture concept. (in the sense of, how to organize society from a blank slate point of view, while maximizing the wealth of experience for all individuals? I think we've gotten a little caught up in ideology and culture wars and stopped looking for ideas to move society forward with more efficient, humane, robust, collaborative (or adver…

You're in luck! We're in the midst of a transition to a brand-new architecture. You're going to love social credit. Expert social engineers (sociologists, psychologists, economists, environmental scientists, et. al.) will be chosen to define "well being" using the latest scientific research and data. Money won't exist. You'll have a social credit score from 0 to 1000 depending on your overall value to society, the ec…

Sorry for being cynical.

On the trajectory we're on, we're going to need people like you (OP) to figure out what we'll build on the ashes of our current civilization. I see you like diversity libertarianism / Archipelago. A more robustly decentralized version of the current US constitution, which was actually really good until the corporate coup.

Re: Open Source Tractor

#193

Post by mod »

User23 wrote: post #141

This is very cool. I wish I were more mechanically inclined. One of my fantasies is buying an end-of-lifed helicopter turbine and building a tractor around it, but I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I don't know enough to guess why this turbine is of particular interest to you--can you explain?

Is it highly powerful or something?

Re: Open Source Tractor

#195

Post by lazide »

coding123 wrote: post #125
lazide wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic tractors, like the AK-47, are also designable by most decent mechanical engineering students without a lot of work if they spent an afternoon googling first for prior art (and that prior art has long had any patents expire). Which if there is an ecosystem related to this, that’s great as the manufacturing is where you need economies of scale pretty badly and everyone benefits from it. There is no also no need f…

https://www.harborfreight.com/9-hp-towable-backhoe-62365.htm... You said basic. :shrug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fK6EtRXqS4

I'm not sure if it counts as an 'excavator' (towed digger maybe?), but that is still pretty neat. Thanks for the link.

Re: Open Source Tractor

#196

Post by theodric »

rmason wrote: post #51

This project is terrific. People are critical of what it doesn't do, I'm in awe of what it does do. You're going to have little two man shops in Africa and Asia cranking these out and changing agriculture in their part of the world. This demonstrates the power of open source. These engineers are to be commended.

I'm not sure we should be happy about adding many more potential petrochemical-consuming vehicles to the world

Re: Open Source Tractor

#197

Post by theodric »

kongin wrote: post #151
beckman466 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This demonstrates the power of open source. These engineers are to be commended. if you haven't seen the famous Open Source Ecology pitch by Marcin Jakubowski, you're in for a treat! Open-sourced blueprints for civilization | Marcin Jakubowski , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEMkvT0DEk

Way back when I reached out to them for getting the actual blueprints for a light industry coop - modular open source welders? Sign me up! Got a reply along the lines of "we are working with our sponsors and will not be releasing any blueprints". 10 years later you still can't get blueprints from their site: https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/gvcs-machine-index/ They seem like the solar roadways of open source ha…

No indication that they ever completed it. Almost seems, I dunno, scammy. The buzz machine works, but like-- where's the beef?

Re: Open Source Tractor

#198

Post by inciampati »

antattack wrote: post #58

Sorry, I don't see it. This tractor is too wide, has low ground clearance, too complex, hard to rustproof, seems to be hard to maneuver.

The ground clearance here is absurdly low. That seems like such a basic problem that it makes me wonder how practical this is.

Re: Open Source Tractor

#199

Post by [deleted] »

quickthrowman wrote: post #168
einpoklum wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do the power companies run electricity to those areas? They don't use DC, do they? Or do you mean individual houses are typically wired with just one of the phases?

US residential and rural areas typically have 120/240v split phase (single phase) 3-wire service, (2) 120v hots and a shared neutral. Commercial customers can usually get three-phase power.

[deleted]

Re: Open Source Tractor

#200

Post by User23 »

mod wrote: post #193
User23 wrote: post #141

This is very cool. I wish I were more mechanically inclined. One of my fantasies is buying an end-of-lifed helicopter turbine and building a tractor around it, but I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I don't know enough to guess why this turbine is of particular interest to you--can you explain? Is it highly powerful or something?

The power density is good, but the main appeal to me is the mechanical simplicity and that it can use just about anything that burns as a fuel.
Post reply on HN