Most smaller firms will require a retainer. $5k is fairly common. I've been able to work with several large firms for work, and several smaller firms for personal stuff.
Personally, I much prefer the larger firms. In general their work product, responsiveness, and timeliness is well ahead of small firms. They aren't even that much more expensive for some things. Unfortunately I don't know what the retainer $$ would be, if any, for a larger firm.
> bootstrapped startups from underprivileged people.
i dont think startups should be paying a retainer. You do this only after it's worth the money - ala, you either know your domain is a gray area and is definitely going to require a lawyer.
This has nothing to do with underprivileged people or not.
This might depend on where you are. In my area, it's unusual to have to provide a retainer at all unless you're doing something big or the lawyer suspects you might have trouble paying your bill later.
As the (non lawyer) who fell into managing all US legal firm interactions for my day job, I support this list.
If you are comfortable with legal documents; have a law dictionary to understand what specific language means; and read historical case law on the topic in question, you will be well prepared to have a seat at the table with your attorneys.
> read historical case law on the topic in question
Is this even at all accessible to anyone who isn't already in a major law firm? I'm assuming it requires some sort of thousand-dollar subscription to an exploitative publishing house?
Helmholtz absorbers have been used for some time in built spaces. Look for a pattern of slats or holes like perfboard, often on the rear wall of the space. Lecture halls, museums, performing arts, and the like.
The author acknowledges present use and also gives intriguing historical examples from Vitruvius and and Da Vinci.
An acoustic jar, also known by the Greek name echea (ηχεία, literally echoers), or sounding vases, are ceramic vessels found set into the walls, ceilings, and sometimes floors, of medieval churches. They are believed to have been intended to improve the sound of singing, and to have been inspired by the theories of Vitruvius.
Son of a COBOL dev... All this virtualization mess, minus the extra Java layer, started back in the 90s, courtesy of Unisys. I remember my dad pulling his hair out when I was in High School, though I did not understand why back then.
I think you get it now though. I've seen this whole industry up close for the last 40 years or so and it's absolutely incredible how we went from a machine with 32 M of RAM and 300 M of storage sufficient to serve 1400 branch offices of a bank to a phone with a very large multiple of that, that can barely serve a single user.
That is some thing that I can't stop thinking about. I get that banking software does more, like online banking, larger transaction volume, more account and loan types, but why is it that we can not run a small to medium bank on a single modern CPU and 1TB of memory?
FWIW, if this were my startup, I would probably use 10BASE-T1L. The programming model is simple, and cloud or other “smart” integration is natural if the system already uses IP. For that matter, one ought to be able to support wired 10BASE-T1L and wireless Matter/Thread thermostats without much duplicate effort.
BACnet allows multiple PHY implementations, including 802.3
I suspect that 802.3.cg is also kosher, but haven't looked in detail. It's been 5 years since I looked seriously at whether BACnet was the correct solution for a product family.
If 80/20 is new to you, then you might also be unfamiliar with its steel channeled cousin, Unistrut. https://www.unistrut.us/
Unistrut is used extensively in the US to build support structures for electrical switchgear and process equipment. You can get grades suitable for outdoor and corrosives exposure.
Unistrut is the Kleenex term, there are a number of work-alike / fit-alike systems.
For lighter duty, there is maker pipe: https://makerpipe.com/. it's nice because the bulk of the system is electrical conduit, which I think is one of the cheapest type of beam/tube available.
> electrical conduit, which I think is one of the cheapest type of beam/tube available.
There have been pretty serious PVC conduit shortages for the last year or two. In construction projects I've worked on, they've had to uprate to (much more expensive) fibreglass conduit as PVC was simply not available.
There is definitely an art to making accurate bends, especially in more than one plane! I have never had more respect for the conduit work electricians do every day with EMT than when I tried to learn how to do it myself.
Not sure why this is getting downvoted, it's true. I have been going down DIY rabbit holes and learning about a lot of stuff that I wouldn't want to DIY. I always thought that list included "AC/electrical work" but, actually, not really, except maybe the service panel itself. If anything, the work I've done is significantly more likely to be up to (current) code than what was already here...
Once upon a time DIYed a large tube structure (solar arch for a sailboat) and quickly realized why software is so cost effective. I'm so used to creating big structures with a few keystrokes. In the real world doing metal work, I would try to do stuff as quickly as I could but you can't escape the fact that sanding or polishing, etc... it all takes soooo much time! Just cutting the fish-mouths in the tubes to have them fit into each other took an eternity, and drilling holes in stainless steel is no fun.
For me, the simplest example was changing the oil on my truck; I could do it, but found it more than reasonable to pay someone else $20 to do it.
For other cases, sometimes I wouldn't mind paying someone else a good market rate -- drywall work comes to mind -- but the mental overhead of contracting and scheduling is currently high enough that I end up just doing the unpleasant work I'd rather pay someone else to.
Another extremely flexible lighter-weight structural tube fitting standard that’s widely available is the 1.5” tubing used for drum racks. Not sure if there’s a broader standard that the musical instrument industry is building off there.
Was pleasantly surprised recently to find that the same diameter of fittings was used in an adjustable monitor stand, so if you wanted to mount a cowbell above your dual screen mount the fittings are easily combined.
Depends on the job. Cutting unistrut is far more challenging than 80/20, it weighs a lot, and the connectors are expensive because they are engineered to bear significant loads. 80/20 is a little pricier per foot but it is much, much easier to work with for applications that don't need to withstand a nuclear strike.
Not sure if the throat is large enough but a portable electric bandsaw would be able to chew through the unistrut steel and in the jobs I've used them on they are precise enough.
I used to work in construction and the electrical trade. I’ve shown so many people the power of this seemingly esoteric item in the electrical aisle at Home Depot. It’s so flexible and you disassemble it with one or two tools depending on which fasteners you use.
I love the Kee Klamp system (or just 'steigerbuis' as we call it here in NL). I built furniture with it in the past, and also a bicycle caravan (https://www.theredpanther.org).
FYI, most hardware stores will have a selection in their electrical aisle, along with basic threaded connections for 1/2”, 3/8”, and 1/4” bolts, angle connectors, etc.
Unistrut (“strut”) also has trolleys that roll in the track (1). Very useful for overhead roller systems in a workshop. Be very mindful of fastener clearances if installing one.
I don’t have the handheld, portable bandsaw (“portaband”) that tradespeople usually use to cut strut, so I use a grinder with a cutoff wheel (noisy) or a sawzall with a metal cutting blade (more civilized).
>Unistrut is the Kleenex term, there are a number of work-alike / fit-alike systems.
This triggered a 20 year old memory. A former colleague used to refer to unistrut as kindorf. He was the only person I've ever met in 15+ years of engineering and construction to call it something besides Unistrut. It still bothers me.
Good to keep alternatives in mind. I have found unistrut significantly cheaper when you want to build larger scale or stronger stuff. It's not super versatile, but can still do a lot.
I bought a 10ft long piece of the strut from Lowes. I bought the slotted type, but I should have gotten the one without slots, the springs on the strut washers get stuck on the slots when sliding them. I cut the strut to length, I think it was 4ft. I bought longer bolts too, I think they are M6 and I bought 1 or 1.25 inches. I bought 1/4 inner diameter 1.5 inch outer diameter washers to attach with the strut nuts. I attached some D rings to those. I can answer more questions if you have them. I drive a 2022 Ridgeline for reference.
Almost all nuclear weapons rely heavily on fission of the tamper for yield.
Suggest "Ripple: An Investigation of the World’s Most Advanced
High-Yield Thermonuclear Weapon Design" from the Journal of Cold War studies to read about a predominantly fusion device family.
This seems to say to me that D-T reactions produce neutrons, and that the kinetic energy of the neutrons is smaller than what you get by hitting U with that neutron. You already have the energy from the neutron (which will land somewhere in the system eventually), and you might as well get a multiplier by putting a blanket of U-238 in front of it.
That could be carbon-copied to a fusion power plant, and indeed, there are many proposals of hybrid fusion-fission plants in the literature that only require Q values marginally greater than 1. But if you go that route, you have radiation just like a fission plant, and one starts to question why you don't just build a fission plant (indeed, why don't we?).
My personal pet theory of the future is that, one day, we'll progress so far in fusion research that we get economic energy. But at the same time, the line blurs between both fission and weapons technology, so people are unhappy with the result. This doesn't feel particularly contrarian but no one ever seems to bring it up.
Since you asked: We don't build fission plants because they cost more than every other energy source. Fusion plants, if they could ever be made to work at all, would cost a lot more. So, there won't be any.
I comment in geneal support of this advice.
We have started to submit a presentation that would be used for an examiner interview as our provisional application.