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You use protectionism like it's a bad thing, but I'm sure the folks in the military industrial complex see what's going on in Ukraine and realise it wouldn't be a bad thing if the US had some domestic small drone manufacturing capabilities. Banning DJI could both encourage some of that manufacturing, while also stemming the flow of data to China.

We used to spend ludicrous amounts of money to fly spy planes to map hostile countries - now a hostile country has a access to a huge number of drones providing live camera data. These drones are hard to track so the government doesn't always know if they've been flown near sensitive areas. It would be negligent of the government to not try to do something about it.

Same here, switched to a physical alarm clock after inconsistent alarm behavior post OS updates on my Samsung S22.

I disabled Smart Update after reading your post but considering my phone used to prompt me to update, then started doing them on its own - I wouldn't trust that setting to stick.

I love how utilitarian that rocket looks - still has all the layout marker marks and welding/grinding marks all over it.

Fwiw I can't find any data to back up your claim. Looks like in 2023 numerous models outsold Tesla Y and 3 (CRV/Rav4/Ram/Silverado). While Ford doesn't seem to release individual F-150/250/350/450 data, given the huge lead I'd bet the F-150 would still beat model Y even if split out.

Winter here is 4 to 5 months out of the year. When it snows, everyone goes about their day normally, just at a slower pace. The authorities have no problem with that, and having drivers on the road does not affect plowing in any meaningful manner.

I'm not sure why you are trying to justify such a large shortcoming - for most people having your car be randomly unusable for 1/3 of the year would be a big deal.

We're not really at self driving if the solution for poor conditions is "don't drive".

Snow drifts in the wind, side roads don't get regularly plowed, and conditions change rapidly so unless they can handle the majority of the list above then they won't be able to handle winter period.

Oh I'm also optimistic they can be overcome, I'm just less optimistic on the timeline. I'll be pleasantly surprised if self driving can handle winter a few decades from now.

Wouldn't take long before that gets abused I bet. I'm picturing a world where someone knows their ex uses Waymo to get home every day so requests rides around that time/place so they can report them as odorous/damaged/vomit/etc and get the prior rider banned.

I'm rooting for you, but I live in snow country and always have a chuckle any time someone says self driving will be ready soon. There's so many situations that need to be handled when driving in winter and some of them I can't even imagine how you'd address in software.

Winter here changes daily between

- no road lines visible

- snow packed into ice randomly making the road a a camouflage pattern

- snow is fresh/deep so no road is visible and you navigate based on the slight hump in the snow where you know there's a curb

- same as above, but instead of a curb a slight indent where there's a ditch

- slush piles outside the tire lanes, which if hit will suck you in or cause you to spin out

- ice/snow on hills, so time your arrival for rolling stops at intersections because stopping is not an option

- active snowfall (limited camera vision, and I'm guessing reduced/useless signal from lidar)

- hail

- sporadic black ice (its easy to slow down when its icy everywhere, but knowing when and where black ice is likely when it's sporadic is a skill)

- the "lanes" formed by peoples tires in the snow often don't align with the official road, and sometimes a lane goes missing in this situation

And all that's after you deal with sensor cleaning.

I've encountered the same difficulty trying to get my data from LexisNexis Risk Solutions, and I too suspect this is intentional. Though my recollection is the form allowed me to enter some identity verification info like ssn or dob, but whatever I entered wasn't sufficient for them.

While I have no plans to watch these, I have been very curious how they cover gasoline production. Fracking and cracking aint easy.

Theres a whole category of products that is just a keyboard with a tiny 3 or 4 lines of text lcd. (google electronic word processor, or Tandy WP-2). Probably not as popular today as they were back in the early 90s before everyone had a Pc, but I think they're still manufactured.

This comment thread is about cheap drones hunting down individuals. They are not using Shahed for that. You can easily build a small drone capable of carrying a grenade for under $300.

These are typically called "laser engraver" when you search for them but they advertise cutting features and cut well. 99% of them have a 5w laser diode, there are 10w and 20w models which just combine several 5w diodes somehow. Each one seems to double the price.

Searching for Comgrow, Creality Falcon, Atomstack, or Sculpfun laser engraver will get you pretty far.

Edit: I should add the more dishonest chinese sellers will advertise "20w or 40w laser engraver" and what they mean is the entire machine consumes 40w with a 5w optical output. Dont be fooled.

You can't cut sharp inside corners using a cnc mill (round bits), as one would want for tabbed fixtures.

Most sheet good are too large to be placed on or moved around by a cnc mill table.

CNC milling is a slow process (unless you can drop six figures on one).

CNC mills take a lot longer to setup and program, and also require more skill to have a successful result (no chatter, not breaking bits, ramping into the cut on interior features).

Good CNC mills that can handle steel are massively heavy and large machines which makes transport and setup difficult for the home machinist.

It can be pretty useful in offroading to hold a medium-high amount of throttle and use the brakes to modulate as they're more responsive, but it's hard to picture a cybertruck doing that kind of offroading. Not to mention it's only necessary due to the throttle/drivetrain response curve - that might be entirely negated if the low speed throttle response in the EV is decent enough for crawling.

The precision of a laser cutter would open up a lot of possibilities. Particularly making things that slot together with tabs - like fabbing my own welding squares and fixtures where a cnc plasma cutter would leave too rough an edge to have them slot together accurately.

Diode based lasers have driven the cost to laser cut plywood down to affordable levels (~$200 for a creality/comgrow/chinabrand 5w laser). I just bought two of them off ebay as "customer returned" for $75 dollars a piece. they work great on the 1/8in plywood and 3/8in foam i've been cutting. Haven't tried 1/4in ply yet but I bet going slower or multi pass and it will do it.

Edit: It easily cut 1/4 ply (used 2 passes, but judging by the burn marks behind it I only need one). And that's without air assist to clear to the smoke which would help it cut deeper.

If you are going to use a thief analogy at least make it accurate. Having a moral objection to defense is like objecting to doors and locks (defense against thieves) and so not only are you going to not work on anything lock related you are going to openly advocate no one else work on them or manufacture them as well, leaving us all at risk.

The hobbyist table saw owners I know (myself included) tend to be more careful around a saw. We have the luxury of time to setup and think about our cuts (and less complacency) than the folks shoving wood through a saw to meet a deadline or because the boss is telling them they need to make X amount of cabinets per day.

How often do you use a saw? At $3500 a saw I care. I saw a lot of wood and inadvertently hit at least one staple/nail/screw per year. Over the last 20 years of using my saw that would be tens of thousands of dollars if even a portion of them damaged the saw. It would essentially price me out of doing woodworking.

What does satin/gloss finish have to do with anything? That's a choice made at the finishing stage as to what clear coat to put on it for uv protection and scratch resistance. And while uni might be appropriate for parts of the violin, you still need to orient plys in multiple axis for flexural strength, so you might as well do some of that on the outer cosmetic layer to make the product more appealing to consumers.

Not trying to be flippant, I'm genuinely curious. If everyone was as honorable as you and decided to stop working for the military industrial complex - do you think China and Russia would just sit back and say "That's cool - we didn't want Americas land/resources/overseas territories anyway" ?

>>Manual release is required.

Is it?

Happy to be proven wrong since I'm far from an expert on FMVSS, but what I've seen specifies capabilities like ability to lock and amount of force it must endure, not the actual implementation (mechanical/electrical/etc).

Regardless the article only tells us the "emergency override mechanism did not work". Whether that is electrical or mechanical we can only guess (one would hope mechanical).

>> Every penetration needs grommets and strain relief.

You mean the grommets and strain relief that are already present for windows/speakers/locks? In most cases it's probably not even additional wires as power and control (either can bus or lin bus) are already established from the door to bcm (body control module).

Just looking inside a modern car door panel should give you some idea why. It's a 3d jigsaw puzzle of door linkages, switches, window lifter, speaker, etc and the metal stamping die to make the inner panel must be insanely complex.

An electric only latch would reduce parts count, simplify assembly, and ease door panel design for a new manufacturer. I'm also strongly in the "keep things mechanical" camp but I see the appeal to engineers making a new model car and wanting to keep things simple.

While the majority is bulk, the US does export a lot of industrial machinery. It's just not stuff you normally think about - like the large hvac systems on the roof of large buildings or the caterpillar earth moving equipment/parts to make roads.

The spring counteracts the weight of the door. In the event of motor or electricity failure a well adjusted spring/door will be easy to manually open. A direct drive/worm gear would require an uncoupling mechanism and the ability to lift the full weight of the garage door overhead to get out.

Attention is required when changing these, but they really don't pose that great of a risk. I've been present when one broke, and I've changed them myself. As noted by others - the spring stays contained by the metal shaft. They really aren't worth substituting with something that has more drawbacks when a spring's lifespan is on the order of decades.

Between my wife, dog, and I we've gotten about a dozen in the last three weeks (we are frequent visitors of forests/fields around here). One of them was in February which I've never seen before. Apparently it takes several days of 10 degree weather to kill them off so I doubt it will slow down much from the last couple days of cold.

Unfortunately one of them was a deer tick that dug into my armpit, so now I'm playing the "wait and see if it's Lyme" game :(

I would love to have this pill available and don't see this as an issue. The ticks numbers really spike for about a month in the spring when they come out in force which is when I'd probably try to be on something like this. When spring dries out and turns to summer ticks are far less common here (Wisconsin) so you probably wouldn't be on it. Sometimes you'll get a little uptick in the fall but spring is the only time I'm really concerned about it.