catherd

Joined 8 years ago

Karma
892
Submissions
174
Member since
Jan 29
I love working on difficult hardware projects that are well funded and need to be done (correctly) as fast as possible.

My sweet spot is leading a project from "no implementation spec but clear end goals" to a real supply chain shipping real products.

20+ years designing and building hardware, 10+ years building physical stuff in Shenzhen.

www.sizeabledesign.com www.mzjtechnology.com

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Recent submissions

Comment · 5 months ago
Your point might be better stated directly because attributing the characteristics of humanity to... humanity is the opposite of what anthropomorphizing means.
Comment · 11 months ago
A new ping pong paddle design.

My backhand is OK but my forehand sucks. Grip styles for standard handles usually end up favoring one side or the other. I'm making a handle shape that's easier to get the blade angle right on both sides. Hopefully a couple more iterations on the 3D printer and then I can have a functional prototype made.

Comment · 1 year ago
What I'd like is a tool that can be run on a fresh linux install to show what's not working correctly and maybe some diagnostics. Does that exist?

Things like suspend to RAM/disk working, GPU performance is reasonable, WiFi and disk speeds aren't slower than expected.

Comment · 1 year ago
There are safe (and unsafe) drivers contributing to both car and motorcycle statistics. Is this an argument that the skill curve for motorcycle driving is skewed towards highly unskilled drivers but cars are more evenly distributed?

I don't remember much about my statistics classes but even if you're a 99th percentile driver can't you still say there will be a large increase in your own personal probability of a fatality if you jump from the car curve to the motorcycle one?

Comment · 1 year ago
The effects of deliberate small scale atmospheric aerosol injections is something I've studied extensively. The short term results are often quite noticeable even by parties not directly participating in the study.
Comment · 1 year ago
Concrete foundations get stronger as the concrete cures (around a month).

Framing is much more resistant to collapse once you put sheathing on it, a roof, etc. Before that it is easier to fall over.

A half built wood frame wall only supported at one end is like a wet noodle if you don't put in some temporary braces.

Comment · 1 year ago
DHL B2C shipments to the EU are generally held in customs until the duty is paid, which makes it slow but ensures DHL isn't left holding the bag when people decide they don't want to pay unexpected import duties.

That's (historically) not the case for US B2B shipments. For those, DHL pays the duty as the shipment goes through customs and then sends an invoice after the parcel is delivered.

Comment · 1 year ago
Could be.

The carriers do already have practice ramping up and down for Christmas and Chinese New Year so it seems plausible they could absorb significant extra volume in whatever time it would take to negotiate the leases on the extra flights they use during those times.

For that matter customs processing also has experience managing the same surges.

I'd believe we might have some sort of own-goal planned for customs that could hang things up.

Comment · 1 year ago
Only if "utterly fucked" somehow means you can still pay a bit more to DHL and get packages even faster than USPS.

Your fast prototypes coming by air freight likely aren't routed through USPS at all unless it's the last leg of a consolidated shipment that's broken apart once it reaches the US. Those would be using some other carrier to get them from China to the US and then USPS only inside the US. USPS all the way from China is slow.

Paying ~$30 for express shipping through DHL (plus whatever the new tariffs end up being) will still get you those parts in 3-5 days to most major shipping hubs in the US, your suppliers will just need to start filing the export paperwork correctly.

These changes will likely have bigger impacts on cheap off the shelf parts from e-commerce places like Temu or AliExpress, who were previously taking advantage of both the de minimis rule and inequal international rates through USPS.

Your Chinese suppliers can still ship by any of the normal commercial express shipping carriers as long as they understand how to file export paperwork or have an agent who can do it for them. Previously this usually added 1-2 days to the transit time over shipping undeclared "samples". Last year DHL moved to a paperless system and that extra 1-2 days delay is probably going away anyway. They may have even done it because they saw this coming. People have been grumbling about the de-minimis stuff for a while now.

Comment · 2 years ago
"Better" depends on what you are after. In my world better means not being tied to using proprietary communication protocols over compromised networks with hardware I don't really own/can't control.

The makerphone was a learning tool and built to that spec. It wouldn't survive being carried around in your pocket, for example, but it was fine for teaching you how to program and how a phone works.

Comment · 2 years ago
Yes, most commercial SIP providers are required by law to support emergency services, at least in the US.

If we're getting technical it is a mobile phone, just not a cellular phone. A cellular phone will work anywhere it can get a compatible cellular signal and this will work anywhere with decent WiFi.

Comment · 2 years ago
How long ago was this? Our VoIP stack is completely custom and has taken a while to build. We've been putting significant work into it and lately it's better.

We've also specifically avoided adding many additional features while the calling and texting was brought up, so you aren't wrong on the philosophy, maybe you just bought yours before the work was done.

You can enable logging errors to a serial console. We don't add that by default because it slows down the OS. My email is in my profile if you'd like me to walk you through how to enable that.

Comment · 2 years ago
It's a forever loan for whatever your average payables total to over 90 days (so $10k every month would be a $30k loan). The loan lasts forever or until you close out that line of credit/wind up the company.
Comment · 2 years ago
As long as you are OK with destructive methods, grinding/sanding the board down gives you all layers. "PCB delayering" is the search term.
Comment · 2 years ago
How healthy would the economy be if 100% had no desire to work? That depends on why those people don't want to work and the overall situation, but until all of our needs are served by robots in reality likely not so healthy.

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