JackMcMack

I've often felt frustrated by the processing fees. Can you elaborate on handling this yourself? Which EU country are you based in?

Interesting read. Though it says the nuclear fission happens in the crust and mantle, not the core.

Was this before the introduction of the IOSS rules? I can't imagine picking something up directly at customs. International shipping volume has increased a lot, customs does not have the capacity to store much.

The new rules have actually made shipping from Aliexpress easier. VAT is displayed and payed to Aliexpress, they handle customs (as long as total order value is less than €150). In practice they consolidate packages from several sellers into one shipment where possible (although of course with a long-tail delay), and fly it to their new distribution center in Luik. Customs has a small presence, but because VAT is paid they're mostly concerned about other things such as counterfeits.

Last-mile shipping is then done by postal service, without any additional fees.

That actually is via the postal service (BPost). The postage rates are reasonable, it's just the fee that they add for handling the customs administration that is unreasonable.

And this is more or less the same for the other shipping companies such as DHL, UPS, and FedEx.

Because the fee is per shipment, it's not that bad if you're receiving several hundred euros worth of products. But if you just want to receive a book, it can easily double the cost.

The issue isn't the import duty and VAT, the issue is the 20€ or more fee that the shipping companies charge for the privilege of handling the customs administration for you.

In Belgium for example books have 0% import duty and 6% VAT. Adding 20€, long delays, and a terrible customer experience (good luck trying to correct any data submitted to customs) to that is rarely worth the hassle.

> Correlation is correlated with causation!

That's a great quote. I think I'll use that instead of "where there's smoke ..." from now on.

Inflation is irrelevant if your stable coin is pegged to the currency that is inflating.

Displacement is 1000nm, so 3 orders of magnitude less than 1mm. As for frequency response, looks like they tested up to 1000Hz. I see no reason why it wouldn't work at any frequency from 0Hz up to 1000Hz, and even higher. But because the displacement is so small you really need the higher frequencies to be able to sense the actuation.

That's just piezo's, you need to stack several layers to get a usual displacement. You do get high force, so they're typically used for high precision positioning.

I've been looking at piezo bimorph actuators as used in braille displays. Because they're cantilevered you're trading displacement for force (and size). That could perhaps be used to create a high resolution array with enough displacement at low frequency. Not really wearable like a glove, but certainly portable.