fotbr

Do you expect the homeowner that needs to mow their lawn to build their own lawnmower? How about the "tech savvy" homeowner that wants an automated lawnmower? Should they be derided for buying one of the robot mowers instead of building their own? Should the person that needs a hammer and nails to build a raised bed for their gardening hobby be required to make the hammer or the nails, in the name of "learning something new/valuable"?

It comes down to the fact that these things are tools. Now that reasonably affordable "turnkey" or "off the shelf" options are available, what you're really seeing is the divide between those wanting building the tool itself as their hobby, and those that just want a tool to use on their other hobbies. There was less of a divide previously because for most people, the "just buy one" option simply didn't exist. Now it does.

I spent a lot of time over the years wire-wrapping circuits, then manually laying out and etching/making circuit boards, then using software to do the layouts while still etching/drilling boards myself, then learning and switching the bulk of my projects to surface-mount. It was a necessary part of making electronic bits for stuff I wanted, but I didn't enjoy that part. Now that I can draw something up, send it off and for a few bucks have professionally manufactured multi-layer boards in days/weeks, with many/most components already placed and soldered, why wouldn't I cut out the part I don't enjoy?

I played with 3d printers off and on from about 2006 onwards, though I never kept one around for any real length of time. I found that while I really wanted the capabilities, I didn't want "building and keeping a 3d printer running" to be my hobby. 20 years later, there are options that don't require printer maintenance to be it's own hobby, and I'm much more willing to keep one around.

I've had a couple Chinese-made mini-mills since 2002 -- Sieg X2s, if I remember the old naming scheme correctly, though they were sold by various importers with their own names/model numbers. I converted one to CNC operation in 2004. While I appreciate the work done by others that I could learn from, I did not enjoy the process or the project. If there had been a reasonably affordable "turnkey" option with the capabilities I wanted, I would have 100% taken it. If I needed another one now, with the options available, there's no way I'd bother to build my own. Even then, I would have gone with sherline's early cnc offerings -- they fit my budget, but were just too small for what I wanted to do.

My first CNC router was scratch-built in the early 2000s. My current one came in a crate 4 years ago, and cost about half of what building a new one with the same capabilities from scratch would have. Instead of spending a several months' worth of weekends building it, I spent one weekend unpacking it and setting it up, another fine-tuning it and the software settings, and then was able to start using it for projects I enjoyed.

The ability for people to make things at home is expanding, just not in the way you'd like to see. That isn't a bad thing.

At the end of the day, time is what is ultimately valuable, and I don't have nearly as much of it as I did when I was younger. At this point, I'd much rather spend what time I do have enjoying my hobbies and creating the things I want to create, not building tools or suffering through tasks I hate simply because someone else thinks that is the important part. It seems I'm not the only one.

As for companies that "care" disappearing, well, that's just the current business environment. When the only measure of success that's deemed important is the stock value -- or potential stock value, in the case of startups -- customer service is an expense that can be cut to inflate next months' quarterly report. In exchange, the concept of customer loyalty is dying as well.

I have a relatively ancient 8086 I still use from time to time with plain text files and a simple editor.

It provides a distraction-free environment for writing.

Save it to a 720kb floppy that my linux box can still read, and move it to a "modern" system for editing and such.

They're looking at it wrong. The signs are operable by the flight crew.

Given: Aircraft power is on, signs are on. Aircraft power is off, signs are off. Aircraft power is operable by the flight crew.

Therefore: Signs are operable by the flight crew.

In addition to the aircraft main power system(s), there's almost certainly a circuit-breaker that would turn the signs off. It might turn other things off as well, and circuit-breakers are not generally designed to be used regularly as switches, but there's a circuit breaker in reach of the crew that would turn those signs off.

That's not worse, that's an outstanding mental image.

To pick on my favorite example,

Many years ago, my univerity's choice of calculus book also had the solutions to half the problems (evens or odds, doesn't really matter).

Department policy was also one of "we won't provide you the correct answers" even after an assignment had been turned in because the book was used for multiple years. The publisher had a new edition every year, but the university stuck with the same book because it was used for Calculus I, II, and III, which for most students was 3 or 4 semesters between starting I and finishing III, usually due to a scheduling conflict requiring a semester off between them, or because they had to repeat Calc II since the math department's selection of instructors was particularly bad for that course.

Those same (usually bad) instructors were all too happy to follow the department policy and not provide any feedback other than "correct" or "incorrect".

On the other hand, the university book store carried, and put on the shelf right next to the calculus book, the publisher's "teacher's solution guide", in two very reasonably priced volumes, which had the answers for the other half of the problem sets, as well as the step-by-step process for most of them, which was the valuable part, as you could see where you were erring.

Math department policy was that you weren't allowed to have those, either.

You can guess how well that policy was followed.

Those that put the effort in and learned the material did well. Those that just copied from the solutions book and turned it in did not.

Good catch. Curiosity got me and I focused on the distance aspect, missing the forest for the trees, so to speak.

Trivially defeated with a boot disk and ResEdit.

Breaking things with ResEdit was pretty much my jr. high school hobby. It took a bit before I figured out how to restore things when I was done.

Head "tech" guy in the building eventually figured out it was me, showed me a few things and ended up just giving me an un-limited login and a few rules. Also taught me how to intelligently use ResEdit instead of the brute-force method(s) I was used to.

First, I appreciate the answer. I didn't know about the "no large bodies of water" requirement. When then leads me to ask, what's a "large" body of water?

Second, and I'm not trying to be snarky, just trying to understand: What is the limit on size? I understand there's a point where physically building and maintaining it isn't practical, but is still theoretically possible.

As for defeating the point, I'll admit I only somewhat understand that argument.

As far as I understand -- and I'll readily admit I do not have a great understanding -- the whole concept of the eruv is specifically designed to "defeat the point" of another rule (or set of rules).

Why is "defeating the point" considered to be "ok" or not "ok" based on scale?

Likewise, if "defeating the point" is wrong, why is it not always wrong?

Again, my intention is to understand, not to be snarky or otherwise inappropriate about it, and I'll apologize in advance if my questions cross lines I was unaware of.

To which I ask: Why not place a small loop of (wire, cord, thread, whatever qualifies) on the ground in a park somewhere. Then define "outside" and "inside" the other way 'round from "normal", thus making very-nearly the entirety of the earth "inside", and the very small portion "outside".

It seems logical to me, and I've never heard a reason it can't be done other than "that's defeating the point."

Which I admit, it entirely is, but I don't see it as any more "wrong" than encircling entire cities, and it's a whole lot simpler to maintain.

Some states allow "one party consent" to recordings of communications (ie, phone calls). Extending that, as long as Company A is aware of FB's practices, then your wishes are irrelevant as far as the law is concerned.

I have no idea what California's laws are regarding the matter, or the laws governing any of the other participants. I'm just speaking in the general case, that some states allow it, and the argument that could be made.

All I see when I look at the JAXA logo is the blue Lockheed Martin star that they've used since the mid 90s, if not earlier.

I had a similar problem, several constraints (dozen or so, iirc), data set of a few thousand items.

I thought about finding an elegant solution, but in the end decided that just doing a (psuedo-)random selection of the remaining set and then running through the resulting ordered list checking each one for all the constraints (ie, random sort). As soon as it failed a hard constraint, or failed > x soft constraints, toss the list and do another random sort.

Ugly, but it worked. Chose this solution because 1) I knew how big the data set would be, and I knew it would not change size enough to matter; 2) The other, very jr developer could understand the method; 3) The constraints, while semi-complex, were simple to check; 4) would be needed once or twice a year, could run completely off-line, and could be started well in advance of when it was needed; 5) and finally computers are fast & cheap, while my time is finite and valuable

As a result, the decision that "brute force" running on any available workstation for a weekend was an acceptable solution. In it's lifetime, I think the longest time it took to find an acceptable solution was a few hundred thousand sorts, finished in a few minutes.

It's now been retired as the program it supported went away.

I wish I'd had the time to explore better, more proper solutions, but at the time, quick and dirty and done was more important.

Regarding other software / platforms, HTTP GET seems easy enough to work with.

My issue with wifi is really just a matter of too-many-networks and interference making it a bad solution for me.

But I understand the appeal of the ESP8266 (and the rest of that family of chips) and don't blame you one bit. IIRC it has a serial port on a couple of pins, so that's another comm option.

In any case, I look forward to seeing your progress. Good luck!