I am thinking back to an IOS game called FlappyBird. The creator intentionally aimed for game dynamics that would hook users in the first 30 seconds. As a result, the gameplay mechanics were quite shallow and limited. But on the flip side, the game gained a huge following. You might do some balancing here, not to say there must be instant gratification but a better lead into the gameplay might help.
Parent is not trying to draw similarity, but contrast: Edgar takes while to get to rewarding feedback (but has rich gameplay), while Flappy Bird gets to gratification immediately (but has shallow gameplay)
There's maybe like 10 steps of the intro prompts to get to a place where you can make a choice and if you pick wrong it makes you re-run the ~2min of "simulation".
Possibly a neat concept, but a game needs to lead with the game part.
The intro spun up my fans then crashed Firefox when I tried to resize the window. Switched to Chrome, still spun up the fans and was extremely slow even when just rendering the slowly appearing text. Clicked through a few of the prompts then quit when it seemed like there was no game and it was struggling to just display text, lol.
OK, so I tried it on an iPhone and it is super smooth and the text typing renders at a reasonable speed. For some reason on Windows in either Chrome or Firefox the whole thing runs at like 5 fps and is super bugged. This is probably the reason so many people gave up on it. You can't just click through the text, you have to wait for it to slowwwwly type out each page which for the first one takes minimum 30 seconds, even while clicking and pressing enter to speed up the text.
What was considered high-end precision machining a few decades ago is now standard and easily reproducible in cheap labor markets. For example, guitars made in SKorea used to be a bad joke. Their machining tolerances were too big and too inconsistent. Much like storage and bandwidth what used to be exotic cost-prohibitive is now cheap.
Yes. But really Indonesia has taken over from South Korea (and China and Mexico for some parts of the market). E.g. PRS used to make their SE line in South Korea and the quality was excellent. "Good guitar" is somewhat subjective. US brands like PRS, Gibson and Fender are still able to charge a premium for a US made instrument. This isn't necessarily because the US has some abilities that the foreign makers don't, it's more of a marketing strategy.
Fun to see this issue get talked about. Ancedote- I bought some car parts from a semi-scammer. Not a full-on scam but the guy wouldn't ship the complete order even though he had my money for several weeks. We had communicated on a few different platforms. Each platform offered up a little piece of his identity. Last four of this. First four of that. It was enough to piece it all together.
I gave him a call at his place of employment which happened to be in the exact same industry as the parts that were being sold. I asked him to ship the parts and casually asked if his employer was involved in the sale. He perked right up and the next day he shipped everything I had bought and a few extras.
I re-read this, not to fire back but to understand how you arrive at your conclusion. I think you are interpreting (or assuming maybe), from when I asked about his employer, that I suspected he stole the parts from his employer. That's not the case at all. I just needed a pressure point.
From a legal standpoint blackmail requires the "receipt of money or valuable thing". Because the thing being received is an even exchange of goods already agreed to by both parties, and the threat on not receiving is not an illegal action in itself, it is not likely or plausibly blackmail.
I read it multiple times and fail to understand this interpretation at all. Even in context, I don’t see even a drop of “reasonable suspicion”.
Is it a possibility that the goods were stolen? I suppose, but that’s the case with literally anything you purchase online. I wouldn’t have even thought twice about it. I bought stuff, you didn’t send me stuff, so now I’m upset and want you to send me my stuff.
A more reasonable interpretation is that he was attempting to steal goods or time from the customer by dragging his feet on shipping; 'sorry, item is backordered' often results in the sale being lost, and salespeople are known for sometimes making promises to close deals, without regard to whether they can actually deliver.
Explain the knowingly part. I never suspected he did not own them or that they were stolen. Just knew that he took my money and didn't ship a complete order.
It's not like it's uncommon for folks to leverage employee discounts as arbitrage opportunities for a side hustle. Maybe it violates their terms of employment since they're competing with their employer, but it's not stolen goods.
Why assume that person was stealing anything from the employer, rather than simply being a shitty reseller that only ships when they get a good discount from working in the industry.
A call like that can incentivize them to buy at full price and sell at a loss when their inventory is lacking.
Nicely written and the author clearly has more experience than myself. I did, however, get hit with a data breach via SQL injection, and everyone I spoke to (not vendors or sales folks) seemed to agree that a WAF would have blocked the attack outright.
Sometimes one has to host an application and has no control over the details of how that application is developed or configured related to parameterized SQL queries.
Yes, those are needed too. And static analysis and dynamic analysis, etc.
Despite all of that we just found a SQL injection that existed for years somehow. Luckily the WAF blocked attempts to exploit it until we could issue a fix.
Success often arrives through pre-established channels. If there is something you are already good at, maybe direct your efforts there. Employ some other data scientists and a sales person and you can run the show. Or use your cash to swoop in on some down markets. Essentially stick to a workflow you are already familiar with.
So you were able to sue, for example Google or Qualtrics because a spammer sent you one of their links? I'm confused on that part. Or did the legit company reveal the identity of the spammer to you? Seems like the case would get tossed because the entity you're suing didn't send the spam? How did that part work? Thanks
Similarly, when a store annoys me for an address or phone number, and won't take "no" for an answer, I look it up on Google Maps and give the clerk the store's information.
Edible Arrangements is the most recent place this happened. The store wouldn't sell anything to me without an address and phone number, even though I was paying cash. The manager said the POS wouldn't even let him start a transaction without collecting the information.
So Edible Arrangements' marketing department is now spamming my local Edible Arrangements store.
1212 Main St, City, St
(area code) 515 1212 for phone
I gave up trying to explain why I prefer not to have that info, so I just give them obviously bogus info that I can remember. Most people don't even realize what you're telling them. They just robotically enter the numbers. They just want to get on with their day as much as you do, and really don't want to hear your diatribe about big brother tracking blah blah, can you hurry up the line is backing up.
Yup. When I was signing up at MEC I gave the clerk a fake number but accidentally included both the area codes for my city as the first six digits: “Whoa that’s weird, never seen them together like that before.” It’s easy for me to remember now at least.
I always do this, but I don't give them back just what they sent (minus anything with an ID or name on it) - I'd stuff it with all kinds of other junk mail, cardboard - anything to bulk it up. Once I dropped in a scrap of floor tile. I don't know if it arrived or not, but I really tried to take "junk" mail to a new level.
Have you ever seen a MagLite flashlight? (Or a clone)? The batteries are kept in place by a threaded cap which is spring loaded. My neighbor manufactures the caps, alone, in his garage. Cuts the threads and installs the spring. As far as noise I do hear his air compressor occasionally. You can buy quiet air compressors but they are orders more expensive than a standard unit.
One of my favorite ideas was told to me by my uncle who works in the die cast industry. He met a guy who made lug nuts for Semi tractor tires in his garage. One item, and he made a living off of it. I have always thought that this idea was the perfect example of how to get started in an industry. If you were ambitious you could start adding more spare parts one at a time.
To expand on this, there are entire "fan clubs" around old military trucks - for example https://www.steelsoldiers.com - so you could infiltrate said groups and find what parts are starting to become rare/hard to find NOS anymore (new old/original stock) and start making replacements.
There is a big fan club for Kubota kb250 tractors on Facebook with people making custom mods and implements. I'm sure there are lots of similar things out there
This is the way in. Garden tractor enthusiasts, VW camper van enshusiasts, vintage motorcycle enthusiasts -- they all want to customize, and will spend to get it.
A trivial electronic gadget to turn an oil cooler pump on and off is a good start. Electronic assembly isn't noisy or stinky. At most you might need to bend sheet metal for a case.
Guitar players love audio processing gadgets they can turn on and off with their toes. Make something that can be adjusted to give them a unique sound. Distortion is easy to layer on.
I think super-niche small-run hobby/lifestyle/specialty products are the big answer if you want to monetize your skills and experience.
I'm really into analog photography and I can think of several products that people (including myself) would pay for but that it's just not economically feasible for a big company to hire a bunch of people and pay them wages, health insurance, and 401ks to make, on top of the actual cost of the product. I'm looking to gradually put together a workshop to try and make some of them, and if I do them, I might as well sell them. Even if it's $100 out the door for a $5 piece of metal, there's actually a market for that in terms of hobby income, it's just not a market that will sustain full-time employees and mass production.
Between 3d printing, stamping, a CNC mill and lathe, casting, a laser cutter, and a vacuum oven, you can really do a tremendous amount of stuff in your garage, especially if you are willing to leverage these tools together. 3D print a part and then cast it in a durable metal, machine it to clean it up. CNC mill yourself a stamping die. Use the vacuum oven to cure things, or dehydrate your filament, etc. Like on paper that's pretty much a tool-and-die shop, given sufficient effort you can make things that will let you make whatever else you want - much like chemistry you're never more than a couple tools away from the thing you want, you just have to make the thing that will let you make the thing you want.
Optical lithography is not that hard either as long as you're not working at semiconductor scale. There's that kid that is making chips in his garage over in the UK or something. But you can use that as a manufacturing technique for other stuff. Or use resist etching like for PCBs.
In a lot of cases, really the only limit is when you bump into something that's restricted or too hazardous to keep around even if it's unrestricted. Like boy, mercury intensifier works great but... I like my nervous system the way it is. Even selenium intensifier or pyrocat developer are pretty yikes in terms of the MSDS, very much a "better have a fume hood" thing, or do it outside (in a daylight tank).
Incidentally, but, my most insane "I'd love to do that in my garage" is custom lenses. I know the accuracy is probably just not there compared to what you'd realistically need for good results, but it really seems like single-point diamond turning should be something that is achievable with a high-end setup (say $25k) in this era of solid CNC mill or lathe setups for half that price. Maybe it's something you could build out of a CNC setup but again, is it accurate enough to make it worth it (not sure of the tolerances required, at least 1/1000th, probably 1/10,000 is better, 1/100k or finer should do it, which I guess isn't too far out of what you can do with a lathe, it's all just end work and you have to be precisely optically centered and aligned). Coating is one where you'd need the vacuum oven for sure, assuming it wasn't too toxic (iirc coatings are fluoride based). Growing optics-grade fluorite or calcite crystals also might be possible for lens blanks (although again, maybe too nasty) - or glass casting too. You'd need an optical bench too of course.
There is definitely a market for that I think - all-fluorite lenses are excellent for wide-spectrum photography (UV to IR in the same lens without focus shift - see the Coastal Optics lenses f.ex) and people (companies) pay big bucks for those, like $50k is entry-level for something in that class if you go out and buy it new. And with single-point you can make aspheric lenses as easily as spheric, so you could do all-aspheric designs that aren't commercially viable for mass-market lenses... as well as super-high-quality repros of classic lenses that are obscure or just classics. People would pay for a neo-retro Hypergon or modern takes on sonnar/heliar/etc if you could produce good results. Or you could make tools that let you do it in the traditional fashion with spheric surfaces.
Anyway though another place where some of this ends is "too difficult to make at home"... that's actually a more interesting question in some ways, a dedicated hobbyist with tool-and-diemaker level machinist skills fluency with modern CNC and 3D printing and the techniques enabled by that, and enough knowledge of chemistry/optical/electrical/RF to get yourself in trouble, can of course make an enormous amount of stuff. But things like single-crystal turbine blades for micro-turbine designs are difficult and without the "real deal" you are leaving performance on the table. In some cases (again, things that are too toxic to handle, or illegal) you do basically hit a wall, not all projects scale down to the hobbyist level.
Similarly - I was recently looking for a replacement pivot for my mountain bike, and found a machine shop in Whistler, BC (arguably the current Mecca of mountain biking) that specializes in making upgrades for parts that regularly fail in current models, as well as specialized accessories.
Yeah! For photography there is SK Grimes who does the same kind of thing - they're really a make-to-order machinery shop who just happens to be involved in photography stuff. They have both "standard" stuff they do all the time, but if you have some novel idea that you really need manufactured, they'll do a one-off for you.
I think specialist components for niche hobbies is a great niche generally - especially when the hobby has the potential to blow up into something bigger.
Bikepacking bags (and to some extent ultra-light hiking) are good examples that come to mind where people started things as hobby businesses in their garage and they quickly expanded because of demand.
