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

Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

josefprusa.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 450 posts

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#31

Post by Palomides »

simpaticoder wrote: post #11

The real story here is that IP ownership is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. Open-source and community-led IP contributions are grossly under-protected because of this, and those with capital become unopposed predators. This is a special-case of the more general observation that the justice system is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. The answer is something you very rarely hear: the US (especially) needs…

partial disagree, I think the issue is how the patent office abdicated any but the most superficial effort to validate patents onto the court system

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#32

Post by RobotToaster »

klntsky wrote: post #19
simpaticoder wrote: post #11

The real story here is that IP ownership is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. Open-source and community-led IP contributions are grossly under-protected because of this, and those with capital become unopposed predators. This is a special-case of the more general observation that the justice system is capital-intensive when it shouldn't be. The answer is something you very rarely hear: the US (especially) needs…

That would bring down the price of patent spam even more. The problem is the cost of protection relative to the cost of attack, you can't do much.

It would allow anyone to patent spam though, that could be a good thing.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#33

Post by Workaccount2 »

BoredPositron wrote: post #12
Palomides wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is an article about patent trolling and government involvement, not innovation or competition on price

It's deflection.

Getting government money to develop products without needing to ever be profitable is a pretty huge hack.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#34

Post by Palomides »

vhab wrote: post #24

This could have been an interesting take from anyone but Prusa. While they've earned themselves a great deal of goodwill from past contributions to the ecosystem, they're a failing company pivoting to dark patterns in an attempt to cling to relevance. It's heart breaking to see they still haven't been able to take a good hard look at themselves, and understand their own role in why they are scrambling. Blog posts lik…

what dark patterns?

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#35

Post by the__alchemist »

vhab wrote: post #24

This could have been an interesting take from anyone but Prusa. While they've earned themselves a great deal of goodwill from past contributions to the ecosystem, they're a failing company pivoting to dark patterns in an attempt to cling to relevance. It's heart breaking to see they still haven't been able to take a good hard look at themselves, and understand their own role in why they are scrambling. Blog posts lik…

And with Prusa, falls non-Chinese 3D printing.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#36

Post by fidotron »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #20

As a hardware guy, and someone who loves coming up with fun product ideas, China is the ASI LLM of the hardware world. Like don't even bother trying to compete, they are faster, cheaper, have better yield, and don't really need to be profitable. Imagine what the software industry would look like if an LLM could look at any completed software product, and a few weeks to a month later have made a perfect copy of it. It…

> People seems generally uninterested in fixing this too.

I mean, people can argue about how misguided it is, but this is one of the key motivations for the tariff arguments now going on.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#37

Post by nicce »

jeffreygoesto wrote: post #17
tw04 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I'd lean more towards plain ol' capitalism as the reason for small market players going under He seems to point pretty directly to Chinese subsidies allowing those printers to be sold under cost. That’s not capitalism.

It is. Maybe not the capitalism you like.

Not much different that using ChatGPT/any commercial LLM. They are not really profitable. They want to capture the market.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#38

Post by roflmaostc »

bluGill wrote: post #16

For most people this is just fine - your goals were not to build a 3d printer it was to build something that just happens to be build able on a 3d printer. That is the something you are building is the goal, not building a 3d printer. If the goal isn't building a 3d printer then buying a 3d printer that someone else has already debugged and made to work is the better way to get to what you really want to do in the fi…

> There are plenty of other ways to build something other than 3d print.

Yes but the fewest come at the price and versatility as 3D printing. Injection molding is very expensive and hard to do in the basement. Wood working too, requires lots of time, skills and many tools...

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#39

Post by toddmorey »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #20

As a hardware guy, and someone who loves coming up with fun product ideas, China is the ASI LLM of the hardware world. Like don't even bother trying to compete, they are faster, cheaper, have better yield, and don't really need to be profitable. Imagine what the software industry would look like if an LLM could look at any completed software product, and a few weeks to a month later have made a perfect copy of it. It…

That software reality you describe is not too far off. Not with LLMs alone, but definitely seen the software copy machines accelerate. Any novel idea launched on an app store that sees any traction or attention will be flooded with close imitations in weeks.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#40

Post by RobotToaster »

transcriptase wrote: post #18

One must admire China’s pivot from 30 years of essentially ignoring IP and patent law to the detriment of Western companies, to now weaponizing IP and patent law against the rest of the world.

They even copied lawfare techniques from American corporations, lol.

It will be "interesting" where this takes us. If the American government decides to just ignore Chinese patents then we could see the Berne convention become a paper tiger (or even more of one than it already is)

Post reply on HN