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22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

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Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#81

Post by _Microft »

dvh wrote: post #68
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #4

It really is wild what you can do in your garage these days. Since the early 2010’s there has been a true revolution in this space that has only accelerated over the last few years. I have an injection molding machine that I built in my garage for less than $1500 USD that has a 3 cubic inch injection volume, able to make a large variety of plastic components at small production scale using a mold I printed from my $5…

How do you get fully assembled PCBs at JLCPCB for $5. I just ordered one and it was $4.10 for bare PCB, assembly would cost additional $8 so minimum for assembled pcb is $12.

They are waiving the assembly setup fee at the moment.

https://jlcpcb.com/blog/4-Free-Assembly-for-Your-PCB

The GP commenter also wrote about a price "per unit":

> get some reasonably complex fully assembled prototype boards shipped to me in a week or two for $5-20 USD per unit.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#82

Post by vasco »

reactordev wrote: post #66
dottjt wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key is to have everything delivered to you. Once you figure that out, suburbs are great. Of course, it's not equivalent to being able to walk to places, but I feel the pros outweigh the cons in terms of what you do get from the suburbs.

>”I think the key is to have everything delivered to you.“ This is why we can’t have nice things. We simply can’t rely on a class of workers to dote on us simply because we fancy living in the burbs. The amount of waste just so you can get your instacart. The reality is near 8% mortgages have put suburbs with garages out of reach for almost everyone without a trust fund or selling their startup.

> We simply can’t rely on a class of workers to dote on us simply because we fancy living in the burbs

You make zero sense. Going to the grocery store involves the same workers helping you pay for gas and selling you groceries, or cooking your meals. Are you a recluse that interacts with zero workers? Who in their right mind calls someone else out for using a regular service? You'd prefer those people to not have jobs surely.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#83

Post by _kb »

femto wrote: post #77
_kb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a write up of number #4: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-18/tara-isolated-rural-b... . There's a reason for that pricing.

#3 Port Pirie is (in)famous for its lead contamination [1]. #5 Queenstown is also contaminated [2]. It's an interesting place to visit, as the surrounds look like the moon [3], since the contamination stop anything from growing. The rest could be nice? [1] https://theconversation.com/lead-poisoning-of-port-pirie-chi... [2] https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/tasmanian-lakes-metal-c... [3] https://www.google.com/sear…

# 9 Charleville - I've not lived there, but I've visited. For a sense of the remoteness, when the International Space Station passes overhead, it's twice as close as the nearest major city.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#84

Post by vasco »

15155 wrote: post #55
ip26 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a mask set is 50 million and you only need ten chips, these guys would only need to come in under 5 million per chip to win on cost.

If you only need 10 chips, you may just be able to use 50 or even 500 FPGAs. 500 VU19P will cost less than 5 million.

Not if you want to put it somewhere small like a satellite or bunch of other things.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#85

Post by femto »

_kb wrote: post #83
femto wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#3 Port Pirie is (in)famous for its lead contamination [1]. #5 Queenstown is also contaminated [2]. It's an interesting place to visit, as the surrounds look like the moon [3], since the contamination stop anything from growing. The rest could be nice? [1] https://theconversation.com/lead-poisoning-of-port-pirie-chi... [2] https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/tasmanian-lakes-metal-c... [3] https://www.google.com/sear…

# 9 Charleville - I've not lived there, but I've visited. For a sense of the remoteness, when the International Space Station passes overhead, it's twice as close as the nearest major city.

Sounds like astronomy heaven.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#86

Post by jeffreygoesto »

dbtc wrote: post #76
reactordev wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>”I think the key is to have everything delivered to you.“ This is why we can’t have nice things. We simply can’t rely on a class of workers to dote on us simply because we fancy living in the burbs. The amount of waste just so you can get your instacart. The reality is near 8% mortgages have put suburbs with garages out of reach for almost everyone without a trust fund or selling their startup.

What if robots did it?

Worse. The main damage is done building things and robots have a much higher total cost of being developed and built.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#87

Post by thalassophobia »

vasco wrote: post #79
EliRivers wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that thread, his garage is larger than the entire space I rented for living in when I was his age. But the point I'm going on to make isn't just about how stupid the cost of housing is; it's that the high cost of housing comes with extra costs that we might not even see. How many people would be doing all sorts of neat things, some of which would genuinely bloom into real advances and ideas and genuine new wealth…

> How many people would be doing all sorts of neat things, Not many, same distribution would apply to that population. Most would scroll tiktok in a larger house.

Yes, but more creative people would be making something new, even if most would use it for nothing. No matter the amount of additional innovators, the total would still be bigger than it is now.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#88

Post by ben_w »

EliRivers wrote: post #78
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #6

Indeed. The hardest part these days is getting access to a garage.

On that thread, his garage is larger than the entire space I rented for living in when I was his age. But the point I'm going on to make isn't just about how stupid the cost of housing is; it's that the high cost of housing comes with extra costs that we might not even see. How many people would be doing all sorts of neat things, some of which would genuinely bloom into real advances and ideas and genuine new wealth…

You've just put me in mind of an different quote about impoverished geniuses:

"""I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.""" - Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History, 1980

World population has increased 60% since then, while extreme poverty decreased 66% in absolute (not relative) terms.

So, what I think would happen with more space, is that we would find the next limit, while mistaking the growth that improved conditions lead to as the natural state of affairs.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#89

Post by rwmj »

15155 wrote: post #55
ip26 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a mask set is 50 million and you only need ten chips, these guys would only need to come in under 5 million per chip to win on cost.

If you only need 10 chips, you may just be able to use 50 or even 500 FPGAs. 500 VU19P will cost less than 5 million.

There's a large number of applications which cannot be done in an FPGA, for instance any complex GHz-clocked digital circuit, or many analog circuits.

Re: 22-year-old builds chips in his parents' garage (2022)

#90

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

kiwih wrote: post #43
OccamsMirror wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in Australia. Even rural is expensive.

How about the following list of 10 cities/towns in Australia with property around 100-300k AUD? https://www.mpamag.com/au/mortgage-industry/guides/what-are-...

Tara, QLD, is where people who want to be forgotten go to disappear. There are off grid shanty towns in the area, one of which was the site of a fatal ambushing of police officers last year.

https://inqld.com.au/insights/2022/12/14/police-shooting-tra...

There's a reason these places are cheap.

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