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Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

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Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#141

Post by nicce »

MarkusQ wrote: post #66
nicce wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Private companies spending (and potentially wasting) money investors voluntarily gave them because they think it may lead to a big payoff down the road is capitalism. Companies doing the "same thing" with government handouts (where the ultimate source of the money had no say in the matter) is not. It's like the difference between companies that hire workers and those that use slave labor. They may have otherwise iden…

I don't really see difference.

If we would know the true motivation of the government, then we could make a difference, but until we don't know it exactly, then there really isn't.

It is entirely possible that that government is giving money against shares or future profits.

It gets problematic and different if, for example, let's say the motivation is to use it as political leverage or even installing backdoors and collect user data.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#142

Post by lunar-whitey »

megaloblasto wrote: post #79
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…

I have a feeling that soon, proprietary software won't be a business moat at all. No mater the complexity of your software, it will be too easy to replicate. That could be a good thing for open source. One way of staying ahead of your competition is to control the most popular open source repo.

Proprietary software has not been a business moat for decades. The moats are their complements: hardware, networks and protocols (including humans), data and formats.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#143

Post by ajmurmann »

dkdcio wrote: post #103
naasking wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that could be considered a planned economy, you're describing individuals creating startups of their own free choice and the government backing them with no strings. Individual choices are driving economic progress. A planned economy would be some government committee deciding what specific startups and how many of them should be started up in any give year, and no one else can create a startup.

"A planned economy would be some government committee deciding what specific startups and how many of them should be started up in any give year, and no one else can create a startup." no it would not be...where is this definition from?

That's how planned economies worked under "proper" communism in the Soviet Union or pre-Deng and how we ended up with stories about factories only baking giant screws to meet weight quotas to the switch to tiny screws to meet quantity quotas while no medium-sized screws people actually needed for produced.

Two distinct words night be useful to distinguish between planned without any market feedback and heavy industrial policy like we see in China now. In fact the CCP recently voiced their impatience with Cuba refusing to introduce market-oriented reforms.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#145

Post by slightwinder »

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…

> 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.

Humans have always done that, some are even low enough and blatantly copy the original apps assets & code. LLM is only speeding this up.

> People seems generally uninterested in fixing this too.

It's competition. It's in the nature of capitalism to support this. Of course, it sucks to be the one losing. And it's harmful if the winner-side is cheating. But it's not like there is a viable solution for this in a divided world full of Nations. You can't have everything cheap, and fair.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#146

Post by izacus »

AlexandrB wrote: post #104
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…

IP is just too strong. The terms are ridiculously long (especially for copyright), there are multiple workarounds for "fair use", such as DMCA, and patents on simple concepts like linked lists are not laughed out of the room. All of this stuff needs to be weakened (and shortened). Part of the reason Chinese companies are able to iterate quickly on technology like 3d printers or drones is that it's possible to simply…

The more I look into it, the more I'm convinced that current state of IP law is the rot at the core of western worlds technological stagnation. The rise of monopolistic megacorps, lack of independent innovation and enshittifcation can pretty much be traced back to the wide free market violating reach of current IP law.

This article just highlights it and shows how China weaponized this weakness of the west and is successfuly using it to pull ahead.

Meanwhile our own innovative companies and individuals get ground into dust by the boot of patent lawyers wielded by megacorps.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#147

Post by dcow »

reactordev wrote: post #48
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…

While I don't entirely disagree with you. You have to understand why the courts exist at all. To govern working class citizens. Laws are written by the powerful and wealthy - always has been - to control the working class (everyone else). You're freedom is an illusion. A social contract agreed upon by you following certain rules. Those rules, written by the wealthy, don't apply to the wealthy. In a just society they…

In the US, laws protect the franchise. The franchise may have wealth but at least at this point in history we have as a nation, extended it to everyone.

If the laws protect the wealthy then perhaps your cynical view misses the fact that there is more wealth held by the average US citizen than that of any other nation on earth. Are we trending the correct direction? No. But that’s not the result of injustice, it’s the result of an economic system that prioritizes wealth extraction.

Wealth and power aren’t entirely the same.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#148

Post by ajmurmann »

JimmyBiscuit wrote: post #130
mystraline wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is open hardware even possible at some point? It already is. And its been chaotic and amazing at the same time. We already have open source: 5DoF 3d printers with slicers Fixed wing and quad/hexa/octocopters Medical drug fabrication (Four Thieves) Electrochemical synthesis lab Open source flow batteries Stops and starts of industrial tooling (open source ecology) I'm going to say something that is becoming less and…

>As a creator, how am I supposed to create, when all avenues lead to "source it in China"? That... Is huge. Trying to make a thing and not sourcing stuff internationally is almost impossible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

I think "sourcing internationally" is one thing and avoiding China (or any single country for that matter) is another. The current administration puts a lot of effort on being independent from everyone else. I think that approach is misguided. We have allies and we need them anyways. Unlike the Soviet Union, China has 3x the population of the US. If we want to have weight on the international stage, we need our allies. If we can source pieces from multiple countries and ideally from allies, it's IMO a very minor issue. Always needing pieces that only come from a single country, especially one that's not a liberal democracy, is a much bigger issue.

That said, I think Chinese manufacturing has a huge advantage from factories being close to each other. Getting your PCB for prototyping in a few hours instead of 10 days is a huge advantage.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#149

Post by izacus »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #78
alnwlsn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese stuff these days has pulled far ahead of the Harbor Freight reputation of my youth. I can't remember the last time I've seen a proper "Engrish" instruction manual, most of the things are well designed and well built. Meanwhile, the "good old American brands" seem to just be selling out for cheaper and better profit margin products, so you'll be ending up with Chinese stuff anyways, which is sometimes worse th…

The Chinese stuff is now more often than not better. You cannot be the world's manufacturer for 30 years and not get good at making stuff.

It's very common to have multiple chinese brands competing against each other, throwing out better products every year... with western companies maybe having one or two products.

See something like Roomba vs. Xiaomi/Roborock/Deebot/Ecovacs/etc.

This is a real example how western IP stagnates western economy and it's making it not competitive - the IP law makes it easy for incumbents to kill of iteration and competition.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#150

Post by delusional »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #137
AlexandrB wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the standard, it's ridiculous to say we stopped being a just society in the last 50 years.

Magna Carta didn't make us a just society, it was the start of making us a just society. Being a just society is not a boolean. We never got 100% there. Nor is it along a single dimension -- you could argue we were more just 50 years ago, as long as you were white.

> you could argue we were more just 50 years ago, as long as you were white.

"Just" can't mean "in my favor" unless your also say that monarchy was very just, for the king.

Justice includes equality before the law. Without equality there can't be justice.

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