Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | TrevorFSmith's commentslogin

I 3D print items that aren't mass produced, either because I'm one of few people who wants them so there's no market or I'm the only person who wants them because they're customized for me. Most reasonable 3D printer users don't believe they'll replace mass production. They use them for parts you can't buy.

Once you get a 3d printer, you do tend to find many uses for them for things you could easily buy (organizing bins and the like) but I don't think anyone is buying them with this in mind.

100% agree

I built a four-poster bed, and 3D printed the fittings for the curtain rails and the attachment point for the fan.

I built a desk, and 3D printed the entire shelving system for it.

I designed and 3D printed an entire range of boardgaming accessories (storage bins, dice towers, meeples, etc)

I only bought the thing as something to do while in COVID lockdown. But it's been really useful.


I see it as the most important home maintenance tool. Saves hundreds per year on little things that break. Like a wall patch, small o-ring for a toy, drawer slide mount, basement light mount, etc. I will say though that the learning curve is a bit rough if you don’t have CAD experience.

I am a subscriber but still would love a tarball of PDFs of each issue.

If AI feature are on by default then no thanks!

This is how to burn what little trust remains: "AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off."

It has to be opt-in or you're not worthy of trust.


I find this whole "I gotta be able to turn off AI!" thing to be silly, personally. Do you also want to be able to turn off anything that uses binary search? Perhaps anything written in C++? Ooh, maybe it's nested for loops! Those kinda suck, give me an option to turn those off!

My indelicately expressed point is that the algorithm or processing model is not something anyone should care about. What matters? Things like: is my data sent off my device? Is there any way someone else can see what I'm doing or the data I'm generating? Am I burning large amounts of electricity? But none of those are "is it AI or not?"

Firefox already has a good story about what is processed locally vs being sent to a server, and gives you visibility and control over that. Why aren't the complaints about "cloud AI", at least? Why is it always "don't force-feed me AI in any form!"?

(To be clear, I'm no cheerleader for AI in the browser, and it bothers me when AI is injected as a solution without bothering to find a problem worth solving. But I'm not going to argue against on-device AI that does serve a useful purpose; I think that's great and we should find as many such opportunities as possible.)


It's a shame they didn't ship an EV that fit the uses the F-150 serves. The Lightening is a luxury item. The F-150 is a tool, regardless of whether it's ICE or EV. I hope this puts more people in the market for the Slate truck. It won't serve everyone with an ICE F-150 but I suspect a bunch of farm and ranch vehicles that don't do many highway miles could be Slates.


I'm a happy Kagi subscriber and look forward to Orion on Linux. Every well supported browser other than Chrome is a win. I'd love Kagi to fund people working full time on web standards in the W3C and WHATNG, too.


A similar result can be found by reading coverage of events you witnessed or topics you know well.


Reading mainstream coverage of tech is certainly what made me lose confidence in much of their other reporting.

Back when tech was this niche thing 20+ years ago, media's illiteracy on the matter was forgivable. Now that it's omnipresent and represents a huge portion of the economy, not so much. Yet the accuracy of the reporting on events that I have familiarity with has barely improved.*

* Acknowledging that this is subjective and I don't have any way to quantify it.


The Verge's infamous "how to build a gaming PC" tutorial video made me stop visiting their site and mostly stop trusting most tech news.


Its the same in many areas. You have just escaped Gell-Mann amnesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Inaccuracy is a common complaint about science reporting.

If you look at how a country is reported in another country, it is often highly inaccurate. In my case its mostly been how Sri Lanka is reported in the UK, but I have also seen lots of inaccurate reporting of the UK in American media (and not restricted to any type of media or political side.)

I have seen quite a bit of inaccurate reporting of business and finance.

Lots of bad reports of survey data, especially related to things like religious and political attitudes. Often the result of badly (or dishonestly) crafted questions.


> just escaped [..]

About 20 years ago, haha, but yes. Am familiar with that term from Crichton.

> [..] UK in American media

If it's any consolation, much of the reporting I see on America in American media is also inaccurate.

> survey data

To me this is perhaps the most egregious bad faith reporting I see. The survey questions themselves are often designed in a way that will likely produce a given result, whether through malice or incompetence. Then the reporting on those results buries the actual questions asked.

I saw one recently, from the early 2000s, that said "majority of Americans cannot locate the Middle East on a map".

But the actual survey's findings were "the majority of Americans can not identify the Middle East on a map".

And what did it mean by that? It was a multiple choice question and if you failed to include the correct extent of North Africa that is regarded as the Middle East, you were considered unable to identify the Middle East.

Something like 85% correctly included Saudi Arabia.


Reading almost any mass media article on encryption makes me want to scream.


The classic Murray Gell-Mann amnesia effect


That's a sweet idea and I'm glad to see your comment about maintaining it as a patch on top of Firefox sources so you can roll in their security fixes.


This reminds me of gas station pumps that play ads on sub-par displays and tiny crackly speakers. I'm already paying for gas and now you think you can force crap ads on me? If an ad starts I immediately stop pumping and go to a different gas station. The fridges in people's homes. Expensive fridges! That's a hard pass.


I'm ready to print off some stickers that say "FUCK YOUR ADS" and stick them all over the gas pumps that do this. Probably get me arrested for vandalism though. I want to just smash those fucking displays every time.


One more reason to charge at home with an EV.


You realize your EV (or any new connected car) is next, right?


Cross my fingers, but I think my Nissan Leafs aren't "connected" enough to ever have to worry about ads. Certainly not during charging, when you just walk inside the house.


I would really love for new projects to find their own name instead of calling themselves the next version of something they don't like. "Web3" has never been a new version of the web, just a way to inject undeserved clout into a (IMHO fundamentally flawed) experiment. There are so many great unused names! Please pick one.


I don't know why people gave you that advice but it's pretty easy to tell when a designer hasn't spent enough (or any!) time defining their target market and then spending time with those people to listen instead of force fitting a technology. Without that up front work we're all just rolling the dice. That said, building stuff is fun by itself so it doesn't always need to be about money and growth. Just know it's a hobby.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: