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Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

josefprusa.com

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Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#221

Post by happymellon »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #162
klntsky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if you have to pay a fee for each patent application that gets rejected?

Then companies with deep pockets can reapply, while individuals who get rejected due to mistakes won't be able to afford it.

The problem is the size difference between the applicants, and just saying "charge by their income" wouldn't help when a shell company with no income applies.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#222

Post by Polizeiposaune »

simpaticoder wrote: post #84
AlexandrB wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a just society they would be, but we have ceased to be a just society for the last 50 years. When did we start being a just society would you say? WWI? The Civil Rights Act? Unless you really stretch things, saying that justice declined in the last 50 years - even if true - means that justice "peaked" for a short period of maybe a generation. I suspect if you actually lived in that era[1] you wouldn't think that…

Arguably justice in general started declining with the invention of the typewriter, and injustice accelerated with the invention of the word processor and will get far worse with LLMs. The cost and time of litigation scales like n^2 where n is the textual length of the law. Personally I'd like to require that laws be written out by hand by the lawmaker(s) proposing them (NOT their staffers), and read aloud by them be…

That limits the rate of change of the law, not its total size.

In medieval Iceland, the lawspeaker -- the leader of the parliament -- had to recite the law from memory every three years (one third in each year).

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#223

Post by M2Ys4U »

the_af wrote: post #181
clarionbell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dependence on foreign power with potentially misaligned goal? Collapse of manufacturing sector, leading to rise in poverty?

> Dependence on foreign power with potentially misaligned goal? Collapse of manufacturing sector, leading to rise in poverty? Note that this has been the reality of countries in the Third World who aligned themselves with the US, a foreign power whose interests were misaligned with theirs. The US is now having a taste of their own medicine.

Not just the third world. Plenty of first-world countries too.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#224

Post by thatnerdyguy »

sarchertech wrote: post #159
hyperbovine wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want so much to like Prusa ... but the Bambu printer at my local makerspace costs half as much and is better in every way than the MK3S+ sitting in my basement. I'm fully aware that this is the result of shrewdness on the part of the Chinese, plus incompetence in the West, and it's so frustrating.

It’s not better in every way. For long term reliability and ability to repair and upgrade, Prusa is far superior.

If your hobby is 3d printERS sure (and more power to you), but for many people (me included) the hobby is 3d printING

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#225

Post by BeFlatXIII »

RobotToaster wrote: post #40
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)

I hope that's the outcome. Down with intellectual property!

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#226

Post by anon-3988 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #140
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…

To be fair there is a lot of talk about "bringing manufacturing back". IMO what the government is doing in that regard is more than misguided but other efforts exist. I'm optimistic about efforts like https://californiaforever.com/solano-foundry/ . Permitting reform is a key piece which they work around, synergy from physical proximity is another. Both are addressed by the Solano Foundry project. One might see US lab…

> To be fair there is a lot of talk about "bringing manufacturing back".

The reality is that you will also have to bring back less worker protection to make this competitive. The way I see it, it doesn't matter how good you are, if you have invest in R&D, China will simply spend 1/10 of the effort to copy it and produce it for less. What is your recourse here? I am pretty sure they are working their damnest to copy semiconductor manufacturing and if they can fully scale that up I can safely say the West is screwed technologically.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#227

Post by unethical_ban »

tempest_ wrote: post #123
Workaccount2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always think it is amusing that some people make the mistake of thinking that the Chinese can only make cheap crap(forgetting all their cell phones and apple laptops come from there). The American market only wants to buy cheap crap so that is what is made and sent. Usually though the skills involved in making something cut-rate are just as applicable to making something top notch. American manufacturing skills hav…

I was thinking a snarky thought reading another comment in the chain: "DJI and Anker aren't Chinese brands, because they're good and they have brand reputation".

"Chinese" in my ape brain is Harbor Freight junk, or cheap houseware from Amazon with names like "KRLFOCGY".

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#228

Post by WillAdams »

pixl97 wrote: post #201
martin-t wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a binary too string / too weak. It's that _copyright_: - protects the wrong entities (corporations instead of individuals who did the real work) - IP should be collectively owned by the people who created it and selling it should be illegal, - is too long, yes - DMCA can be used to harass without actually owning the IP and there are no penalties - the fair use exception can be used to allow clear cases of pl…

>And obviously China is a global parasite. Britain said the same things about the US in the early days. We told them to f* off about copyright/patent stuff quite often.

Britain was also putting into place laws/regulations/policies requiring that the U.S. purchase from British manufacturers rather than developing native production --- there's a reason why the first printing press in North America was in Mexico.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#229

Post by mlyle »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #217
AlexandrB wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be fair, in the States, you can own a small business, come up with a good idea, and someone can just copy it and compete against you regardless if it's copyright infringement or not. And that's in the context of a domestic legal issue. You have to be able to defend your intellectual property, and that's expensive, which is the parent comment's point. I mean, imagine you, AlexandrB, come up with some good idea, sta…

The deal is supposed to be that there's a trade:

* You are given an exclusive right to exploit a work, for enough time to make it worth your while.

* Everyone gets the work in the end.

We're not succeeding at this. The terms are a little too short for biotech. They're wayyyyy too long for software. The barriers to entry to get and enforce IP are too large for small businesses. But it's also too easy to figure it all out and generate tons of fake IPR to harass real business with.

Re: Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead?

#230

Post by mlyle »

londons_explore wrote: post #220
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…

Time limits on cases would really help. Ie. Each side has 15 minutes to explain their side, then the jury has 15 minutes to discuss, then a vote is taken and a decision made. Sure, some more subtle outcomes would be 'wrong' - but does it actually matter?

Usually we need evidence to make a decent decision. It's not debate club.
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