311–320 of 428 posts
I don't know if this would be within your budget but custom enclosures made of hot-bent plexi. they look really nice and I think there is demand within hobby electronic makers.
I convert old photo negative enlargers to UV enlargers for printing with alternative processes (cyanotype in particular). It doesn't take much space and I do it out of my small European town house basement. Which also serves as my photo lab for demonstrations.
That's neat. What do you use as the source? A bank of UV LEDs? Never really thought about that but can you get larger "flashlight" style UV-spectrum LEDs from cree/etc? Of course you need to diffuse it and fewer larger elements are harder than more smaller elements but the output power is probably higher with the big LEDs, and I seem to remember some of the alt-processes are quite insensitive (like, leave it outside…
Most people who do cyanotype print digital negatives with an inkjet printer as it has long been said that enlarging was not possible. Laser transparencies are too low in resolution to give good results.
The advantage of digital negatives is that you can adjust the contrast curve to match the response curve of cyanotype to get the best contrast, since it's different from that of silver.
But an all analog workflow is nice too.
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Huge benefits: Increase competition, overthrow incumbents, equip populace with basic skills and manufacturing capacity in case of when shit hits the fan, cheaper parts. Downsides I can think of: Exploitation of the program through various means by bad actors. It is no different than SBA low interest loans, just instead of capital, you get machines for specific purpose. Another one is injection molding, the entire ind…
Your reply in no way addresses my question...
I have a dream of producing custom recumbents. I don't know where to get thin-walled pipes, but a start capital is roughly as you have described.
Are you going to make the old-timey recombants with the steering below the seat, unlike the modern ones with the huge handlebars? I miss those. Like this one: https://www.cyclingabout.com/heaviest-touring-bike-ever-behe... (I met this guy in Cambridge Mass in the 80's).
I think that steer is something easily replaceable. I want to do lowriders - when the lowest point of butt is lower than a line between two axles. This is an incredible fast form-factor for totally good roads. Thanks HN for a discussion.
With a fairly basic set of woodworking tools, you can turn out high-quality cutting boards and charcuterie boards pretty easily. Advantages of these include the fact that they're easy to produce in batches and don't take up a lot of space to store (so it's straightforward to keep some inventory on hand). I've done this and ended up with a steady drip-feed of local sales. It's a nice source of pocket money, though not…
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Looking at human history, that will never happen. As long as there is scarcity in the world, and as long as sovereign states exist, geopolitics and thus the looming threat of war will always exist.
I don't buy that history is a good guide for the future here. All but the most recent history was in an era where we couldn't talk to eachother without physically travelling for weeks/months. The nature of diplomacy, politics, countries, and war have all fundamentally changed. The world has not "settled into" a new steady-state since those changes have been made (partially because significant changes are still happen…
How, precisely, does one extrapolate from the EU (of all places) to a one world government? The variation across the world in everything from cultural and religious norms to even technical approaches to solving problems is extreme, and it has been like this since forever. The genesis of the EU seems, in my view, an evolution of American dominance of the continent after WWII. Is that what you mean? Further American influence tends to encourage (or coerce) countries into further integration?
I’d put the odds of any of that happening on a global scale at approximately zero, because there actually have been globe spanning empires in the past (multiple iterations, in point of fact), and they all collapsed or shed their empires when it became clear ruling it was no longer in the interest of the Sovereign or the Subjects.
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The website and all the part details are amazing. I've made many purchases from McMaster for personal / hobby use so I'm surprised to hear about difficulties purchasing from them.
We are in Ontario, Canada, if it matters. I know Quinn from blondiehacks orders from them without difficulty, so I’m not sure what it is about us that they don’t like. They tend to be very curt/nearing unfriendly in their responses.
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> they're close enough partners that they don't need to I think that might be the crux of what GP was getting at. There's more to it than the ability to win (and in a hopeful dreamy world, I'd wish we can all get to the state where collaboration is always the obvious better choice, but that's obviously at least a few hundred years off... something to strive for, though)
To the US, "winning" is basically defined as having access to local resources (including workers) at market rates without the responsibility of governing. AKA -- free trade. Global free trade exists because the US wants it to. In that sense, it's currently winning/won. The size of the US military and economy (and it's close allies) are largely what enforces that world order. Personally, I think it's better than the o…
The past few years have seem drastically reduced US Naval spending, particularly on the protection of commercial shipping (the shipping and military news sites are almost ready to agree that the US Navy has abandoned this part of the mission entirely). Under Obama's administration we balked at protecting the commercial fishing rights of our allies in the Philippines and it's expected that this kind of policy in reaction to Chinese aggression in SEA will continue.
Then COVID hit us and we might actually see a real unravelling or the last 60 years of global economic policy.
This means that we should probably expect more conflict rather than less.