'Bird Man' Hoaxster Comes Clean on Dutch Television - <AUTHOR> http://wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/birdman-admits-hoax/

<comment><USER3> I think I speak for most when I say that my reaction to this news is "expected disappointment". I never truly believed it was real, but I _wanted_ to. Dearly. I very much wanted to believe that some Dutch guy had realized the dreams of Icarus. I wanted to believe that it was possible that I, too, could soar through the clouds with nothing but my own body and some nylon keeping me aloft.

Regardless, let us not deride the filmaker, nor undeservedly dismiss his goals. He wanted to make us dream, and in that he succeeded. Let us take from this a renewed sense of the possible; let us allow our doubts to float away and think once more as children. Let us see in this a promise, perhaps not of human-powered flight, but of the power of human imagination. Let us realize that the reaction to this video reflects a deeper yearning, and let us strive to fill that hole.

We will likely never achieve the dream of unassisted flight, but we may yet achieve other dreams as seemingly hopeless. Let us not allow ourselves to be too greatly constrained by what is, that we miss what might be.

<comment><USER4> Why _not_ deride the film maker?

The problem i have with him is the same problem that i have with _all_ liars. Namely, that the world is such an interesting and fascinating place, that wasting time on hoaxes and stupid "ha ha! i tricked you!" sorts of media is largely pointless.

This dude can claim that his effort was really an "experiment" about online media and how to tell a story, but frankly, I think that's bullshit. This guy isn't doing research about what it takes a viral video to study viral videos so that society might better understand how it is that information is passed between members of a network (and there are folks who study this sort of thing).

This dude is just trying to make a project of his go viral. I really see very little distinction between this project and any other sort of fame-whoring, save for the amount of effort put in.

So, please tell me if you can, why this hoax is an improvement, or even a useful fiction in the face of _real_ science/engineering awesomeness like this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E77j1imdhQ>

<comment><USER5> High art = trolling. This has been true at least since Derrida, possibly since Marcel Duchamp's statement that an artist is legitimate only in how much he challenged accepted notions of art.

<comment><USER4> I don't have a problem with artists needling society (and you're absolutely right, there are a lot of amazing artists who have been epic trolls).

I have a problem with artists needling society solely _because they can_.

As a work of inspiration/aspiration, human bird wings is rather underwhelming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I still am completely confused at how professional editors at both Wired Science AND Gizmodo that must see loads of fake videos every day were unable to tell the video was a fake. Especially the takeoff had the obviously-CG look about it -- didn't it?

It is so strange that it makes me genuinely wonder whether they didn't actually realize it was fake and just wanted to generate controversy and page views.

On the other hand, even Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters said there was "nothing about the video that seemed fake" to him. Wha...? Seriously?

<comment><USER7> I was just as baffled as you.

The only thing I can think of is that people want it to be true so badly that they don't really _want_ to look for errors.

<comment><USER8> It's not like anything actually changes for most people. Judging wrongly carries virtually no cost at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When Jesus Diaz posted it on Gizmodo, the immediate response from commenter's was suspicion. Diaz responded by lambasting the critical readers. Here's a choice quote:

 _"It is doable and he did it. It's not fake. It's been covered by the euro press and it's real."_

Have a read of some of his other less thoughtful comments: <http://gizmodo.com/people/jesusdiaz/comments>

<comment><USER10> I saw his responses and realized how fortunate I was to not have read Gizmodo in several years.

Here are some of my other favorite quotes from him:

"The burden of proof is on you. These guys did something, showed it to the world, and the typical armchair experts who usually scream PHOTOSHOPPED! or FAKE! are doing exactly that from their offices, dens and basements."

"Yes, and the go camera video is also faked. And all the newspaper and TV coverage. I'm so tired of the armchair FAKE experts who don't have a fucking clue."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The whole "bird man" incident does a lot to illustrate why The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths by Michael Shermer

[http://www.amazon.com/Believing-Brain-Conspiracies-How- Const...](http://www.amazon.com/Believing-Brain-Conspiracies-How-Construct- Reinforce/dp/0805091254)

may be the most important new book published in the last year. I had just finished reading the book when the "bird man" story broke, and what did I see on Hacker News threads but many people saying that they believed the story because they wanted to believe it, and they would believe a single, otherwise unevidenced claim in a self-produced video rather than the whole body of tested theory from currrent physical science. This is the usual observation of human behavior: people form beliefs first, for largely self-reassuring reasons, and then strive mightily to hunt up rationales for maintaining those beliefs, despite contrary evidence. Really, to raise the quality of discussion here on Hacker News, we all ought to read The Believing Brain at our earliest opportunity and think about all the threads we have seen here where participants conclude first and ask questions later.

<comment><USER12> Another good book with a chapter on this is "Thinking Fast and Slow".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Discussion on the original claim: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3732385>

</comment><comment><USER14> I do remember reading a book as a kid, where it explained that our human muscles are relatively x70 less stronger to birds when compared to the body weight - e.g. you need on average to be x70 stronger with your hands to be able to flap and fly.... But I'm not sure how accurate that is. It was fun fact (or not? not sure... but when I saw the guy flying, I guess it might've been faked)

<comment><USER15> I remember seeing a similar calculation that for a human to fly using scaled bird wings one's pectoral muscles would have to be about 6 feet thick.

So we're not talking arc reactor levels of power, but probably more than one can output from a small backpack of batteries like in the vid ;)

<comment><USER16> > but probably more than one can output from a small backpack of batteries > like in the vid ;)

Actually, Lithium-Polymer battery packs capable of a sustained output in excess of 2kW weigh only a few pounds.

<comment><USER17> People can do 2kW for a little while, you need closer to ~50kW or really really big and light wings. At which point your 200lb of battery's and moters bump that to ~100kW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Checkout his amazing fake documentary Metalosis Maligna: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHtKMS1kjlo>

Be warned, it's pretty graphic stuff.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't think anyone is really surprised, but there's certainly a place in my head which wishes it had been real. Oh well.

<comment><USER7> It can be real. Just add a motor with a fan in the back.

Your arms and legs can still do all the steering and altitude control (which is where the fun lies).

It's the flapping that is impossible. It's so incredibly clear than the kind of flapping shown in the video can not provide lift (no matter how strong your motor, and no matter how large the wings) that I don't understand how anyone was fooled for even a second.

If you want to flap then on each upstroke you have to either fold the wing or rotate it. Otherwise you get nothing except an up-and-down bobbing.

If you ever get a chance to hold a bird extend its wings and look at the construction and the way it moves. Notice especially the "elbow" in the middle of the wing.

<comment><USER20> Also see Yves Rossy. He's flying with a tiny jet-powered wing and does all the steering with his body (there are no other control surfaces).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIJLLkTrF4w&t=1m10s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIJLLkTrF4w&t=1m10s)

<comment><USER21> Ted talk with Yves, lacking a bit in technical detail but worth a watch. <http://www.ted.com/talks/yves_rossy_fly_with_the_jetman.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Think of the shame people are facing who posted the story to their social network and backed it up with spirits uplifting comments like "if you have a dream, you can fly"! - reassuring faith in engineering and hard work(8 years he said). One particularly missing feature of the feel-good video was the lack of technical details ... but then you believe the source from where it came and your brain accepts it based on the established trust relationship with the source (in this case, hackernews/weird science) - and more importantly a video.

The difference between watching news and movies - is what we should compare this video to. When I'm seeing the space station in a news clip my brain is telling me this is legit because what I have seen previously from this source has proven to be legit. But when I see death star being blown up, I'm realize its fake because it comes from a source which, well, told you Jedi traits were real. :(

Whatever you proved bird man, you won't be able to sleep at night. Ever.

</comment><comment><USER23> Eight months of work to produce an obviously fake/impossible low quality video? It's surprising that it took so long.

</comment><comment><USER24> > I think I speak for most when I say that my reaction to this news is > "expected disappointment". I never truly believed it was real, but I > _wanted_ to. Dearly.

This was exactly the point. The guy is a movie maker, a story teller. By positioning it as real instead of a hollywood blockbuster, it got these emotions going inside a lot of people. Moving people is the goal of any story teller, and by doing it this way, and this well, the impact was much bigger than if the film had been called "My Special Effects work: flying like a bird".

Neo does a lot more spectacular things in _The Matrix_ , but it moves us less precisely because we _know_ that it's all CGI.

I say, a massive success.

The only way to tell a more moving story is to tell a real story of something spectacular. This is what all the war journalists are doing - genocides and floods always do well on public TV. Essentially, you could call the Bird Man hoax the "good news" version of the same goal.

<comment><USER24> huh? what was not fit for HN about my comment?

if you disagree with the content, how about your respond instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "People are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true." - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER26> Oh wow, this is the same guy behind Metalosis Maligna. That was a fantastic faux-documentary.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd like to chime in as one of the folks who was ardent in the defense of the possibility of the birdman and who turned out to be wrong.

It's a shame that this ended up being faked instead of real, but I would like to point out to the community something before we all start talking about how easy people are to dupe, how easy it is for people to ignore reality for something they believe, and how some folks were _right all along_.

The way the (original, I think?) thread went down was a mixture of claims that it was obviously fake, backed by some comments and notations basically of the variety of "It looks shooped, I can tell from some of the pixels."

There was absurd amounts of unsubstantiated criticism, and very little criticism based on anything other than the video.

There was not "this is fake, but technically feasible for these reasons."

There was not "this is fake, and technically infeasible for these reasons."

There was not "this is fake, and obviously infeasible for these reasons."

The handful of attempts that people made to explain why it was physically impossible (beyond the mere statement of "lol y u no physics education") oftentimes ignored the claimed evidence and circumstances of the act (e.g., asserted manual power instead of assisted flight) or tried to base it on some weird analogy using the natural world (e.g., a bird's weight scales thus-and- such a way) or just plain appealed to authority (e.g., in the whole history of human flight we've never gotten this to work).

There was an equally poor showing on the part of people arguing it was possible (I among them). Very few real numbers were pulled out, and more thorough analysis would've been appreciated.

But, at the end of it, here's the core narrative we need to question:

1\. Person does something seemingly impossible.

2\. HN says it isn't possible, can't be possible, _appealing solely at first to the video and the shooping_.

3\. HN minority tries to reason that it might be possible, is met with bad analogy and analysis.

4\. Person turns out to be fake, lots of sorrow and/or "We were right!"

Folks, we need to do a better job of 2 & 3\. We can't just jump on things as impossible without doing the math, without doing the numbers. We need to be honest in our critiques, and distinguish between "impossible in general" and "impossible for this implementation".

We don't judge our code by some of the pixels--why do you want to judge engineering writ large this way?

</comment><comment><USER28> what can i say? this is certainly not funny

<comment><USER18> Do you think perhaps the project was not about "funny"?

<comment><USER28> This man work 8 months rather than 8 days, just to make a fake video, so it is stupid. To make people dream? watch real birds fly is the best way.</comment></comment></comment>


What the Hell Happened at General Electric? - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/longform/ge-decline-what-the-hell-happened/ <comment><USER2> So the moral of the story is, if you're in charge of a huge corporation make sure you give your lieutenants some leeway to practice their capital allocation skills before they're elevated to the top job so you can judge their skill. Kind of like how Warren Buffet is doing things these days at Berkshire.</comment>


Tsundoku - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku <comment><USER2> Guilty. Even in a digital age, there is just something about paper.

But I have the same issue with digital reading, as well.</comment>


Data Mining Reveals the Extent of China's Ghost Cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/543121/data-mining-reveals-the-extent-of-chinas-ghost-cities/ <comment><USER2> original Chinese site seems to be at [http://bdl.baidu.com/ghostcity/](http://bdl.baidu.com/ghostcity/) (bad link in article)</comment>


Ask HN: How to get into the space industry as citizen from 3rd world? - <AUTHOR> I'm a web dev in my mid 30s and my country doesn't have a space program. I've always been fascinated by space but it was never a realistic nor possible route in my youth. Now that I'm somewhat settled in my current career, I wonder if it's possible to pursue breaking into the space industry.<p>Specifically, I _want_ to go to space. But I am willing to settle for a career that helps send people into space and hoping to get a trip as a retirement gift before I die. <comment><USER2> You may be able to help, but may require you to move and apply for citizenship in a country that has a very mature space program due to ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulation) and EAR (Export Administration Regulation). After you do get citizenship you might be able to work for a private space company (e.g. Tesla) but if you want to work for a government agency or government contractor you will have to eventually get a security clearance.

Now with that out of the way, you would need to look around at the jobs available and check to see if you meet the requirements for the type of work you want to do. If not you can start working on those skill sets now so you may be eligible later on to apply for the job.

I would recommend using your web development skills to help you get in the door as you work on enhancing the skill sets you want for other opportunities.

<comment><USER3> You only need a green card to work on ITAR restricted materials at companies such as SpaceX

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since your country doesn't have a space programme and based on what you've told us of your background you're probably not particularly likely to get a visa to go and work (or study to work) on somebody else's, I'd probably try journalism/blogging related to the space industry.

If nothing else, it's an outlet for your interest. But if you start writing really well-researched stuff on space company supply chains, rocket technology and the missions/experiments that aren't mainstream news, people in space companies might start to notice your passion. And they're going to be spending a lot more on PR if/when they start making space travel accessible to the paying public in future. The aerospace media companies' (Flightglobal/AvWeek) space output is pretty weak and they have been known to acquihire bloggers too.

If using space related byproducts (satellite images etc) is space related enough to excite you then there's plenty of future money and scope for outsourcing to your country in geospatial analysis etc too.

</comment><comment><USER3> You would definitely have to do a pivot into more hard aerospace engineering field. If your country try has a defence industry, you could work for them in improving their missile technology (our early rockets were just missiles anyways).

The other option is to get rich and then just found your own space company

</comment><comment><USER5> You could try to get into studying aerospace engineering in a nation with ties to ESA. I've seen students go straight into industry-related jobs from being good assistant researchers here (Germany) - of course there'd be the age gap. I've personnaly seen people getting into those in their 30s (doing their thesis in an applied research institute closer to industry).

The university even had voluntary student programmes that were designing microsatellites (which actually got built and sent to space) and you could join the teams if you simply were up to it and put in the effort.

</comment><comment><USER6> it is very very unlikely that you will achieve this in your current life. lol. the easiest approach for you is to get rich and buy a ticket to space. ( e.g. like the south african guy who created ubuntu he paid millions of USD to go to space)</comment>


Beyond The iPhone: A World of Opportunity (An absolute joke) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/03/beyond-the-iphone-a-world-of-opportunity.html

<comment><USER2> I think that's the most wretched tech article I've read this month.</comment>


Lottery Math 101 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/lottery-math-101-801/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if you created a giant supercomputer to do the statistically right bet on thousands of lotteries around the world if you would even break even or not.

I mean is betting the most statistically lucky numbers give you a better chance of winning than blind luck, or is the lottery just seriously futile.

<comment><USER3> huh? it's a random draw and each drawing is an independent event.

The "statistically right bet" is zero.

<comment><USER2> I was proposing a thought experiment: create a program that bets the lowest frequency numbers and see if it is even capable of breaking even.

Right now the Ontario Pick 3 has a frequency deviation of 1/20th from norm, in that the number occurrences have been >5% off of a 1/10th share between the 10 numbers. Would betting the three most statistically likely to occur numbers change your lucky enough above random probability.

To put it even simpler: after 100 coin flips and 57H/43T would betting T give you greater odds than betting H, or are you equally as likely to win as if you flipped a coin yourself to decide your bet?

<comment><USER3> "Would betting the three most statistically likely to occur numbers change your lucky enough above random probability."

No. It would not. The drawings are statistically independent events. Same thing for your coin flip example. If after 100 flips of a coin you have 99H/1T, the probability of the next flip being H or T is still 0.5 (assuming your coin is fair).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Wall Street Journal has built a paywall that bends to the individual reader - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/after-years-of-testing-the-wall-street-journal-has-built-a-paywall-that-bends-to-the-individual-reader/ <comment><USER2> Here's my idea for all these publications. Make it possible for paying subscribers to post links to articles that are free to anyone if they click through. That increases the value of being a paid subscriber way beyond just being able to read the article. They can post to Twitter/FB and people will (eventually) know they can read whatever that person posts. Ultimately the WSJ/WashPo/Atlantic could gamify it and give reduced costs or even money back to the most prolific people on social media. Turn their readers into affiliates. Get more readers. Get more subscribers.

<comment><USER3> Seems like an odd incentive structure: You have to pay to _be able_ to post free links, but then you _get paid_ if you do it a lot?

<comment><USER4> I see it more as a matter that some people read to actively source news, but not everyone does. These people are likely origin points for sharing news more broadly, so you want to make it easy for those key users to generate potential traffic for new customer acquisition.

I think the problem is that it's a bit easy to exploit, and articles from the major publications get shared enough anyway that I don't think giving everyone the ability to "sample" really changes the decision to buy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bookmarklet that unlocks WSJ articles (may require FB acct):

      javascript:window.location.href='https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

<comment><USER6> You can also edit the URL and replace wsj.com with fullwsj.com, which employs the same redirect technique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting approach. So I need to appear as an unlikely customer even though I want to read their content.

Can't wait for the browser plugin that facades being a cold customer. I foresee a cat and mouse game in the future where my AI is presenting me as beneficial to me as possible while their AI is trying to figure out if I'm real.

<comment><USER8> Something similar to this is explored in Permutation City (a book), where "smarter" emails won't disclose their message unless they think they're disclosing it directly to you, so people train AIs to run the emails in a sandbox and pretend to be the actual human operator to detect spam, and the emails are trained to try and figure out if it's the real intended recepient before getting to the spam part, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fascinating. It's a shame that it's so hard to get people to pay for quality journalism. The world will be a dark place if the only news sources left are blogs by self-proclaimed journalists.

<comment><USER10> The best news source in NZ currently (in my opinion) is not behind a paywall, nor is it funded by advertising. It is the publicly funded Radio New Zealand (they have a news site along with the radio stations).

Similar could be said for Australian news sources (the publicly funded ABC and SBS networks being the two best sources of news there in my opinion).

<comment><USER11> I am so grateful for Australia's ABC News [1], on the web and TV.

For those who don't know they have a program called Media Watch which calls out biased reporting in the media - sometimes they even criticise their own organization when backed by evidence.

[1]: [http://abc.net.au/news/](http://abc.net.au/news/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a reasonable application, but AI-powered price discrimination definitely raises some ethical questions. What if we find that one ethnic group is being charged more for a product? That would certainly be illegal for a traditional store, but would be difficult to detect online.

Sadly it's already happening and is impossible to regulate for electronic products.

<comment><USER13> One of the benefits of using a model like this is that it can make recommendations that are contradictive of human biases but still high quality.

For any hypothetical situation, "What if AI makes this unethical recommendation?", we can't actually answer this question unless it happens, because as humans, the reasoning behind such a situation are hard for us to imagine in a hypothetical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always thought that a possible compromise between per article micro- payments of a few cents and monthly subscriptions might be daily or weekly one off payments.

You could visit a site and read an article or two for free so you have some idea of the quality and then have the option of paying something like $2-5 for full access for a day or week with no obligation to unsubscribe because it really is a simple payment - like purchasing the daily/weekly paper.

This might work better for online magazines or blogs that publish relatively few articles than for newspapers that feel they may have a better chance of attracting traditional subscribers.

<comment><USER14> Like paying $1 for today's print paper at your local news stand?

<comment><USER10> Exactly.

You wouldn't have to use this as a replacement for the more traditional subscription because that would still offer much better value (just as subscribing to printed newspapers does).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Meh. I get to see the front page, but can only read teasers, not full articles :( And it did try to grab a screen fingerprint. I'm using Firefox in private browsing mode, through a VPN service with an exit in Germany.

<comment><USER16> How do you know it tried to do that?

<comment><USER15> Canvas Defender warned me.

<comment><USER16> Wow, everyone is trying to fingerprint me, even sober journalism sites like the Neiman Lab. Thanks for pointing me to this tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really really hope that the "propensity score" doesn't try to check whether you have subscribed to other news sites in the past. I'm worried that a) it would work pretty well in the short term, and b) because it works it would spread.

In a few years, if all the sites were doing this, then anyone who pays for journalism at at one site could find their propensity score raised, and encounter paywalls everywhere else. The last thing we should want is for consumers to internalize the notion that "only suckers pay for journalism because then you get locked out of the rest of the internet".

Sort of like how people can be reluctant to ever give money to any charity because they know it will sell their info to other charities and they will be inundated with junk mail.

<comment><USER18> How would it determine whether or not you've subscribed to other news sites?

<comment><USER19> Correlate your unique identifier with credit card transaction data? Maybe ad networks provide this information as part of a profile?

<comment><USER17> Bingo. I get mailed magazine offers that can only be because of other magazines I subscribe to. If that sort of info sharing is already happening in the print world, it must be happening on the digital side as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> just use [http://outline.com](http://outline.com)

</comment><comment><USER21> Long ago, news ltd offered me a 10:1 pricebreak to sign up for a year. I got the national flagship paper delivered all week including the saturday funnies for a dollar.

It was a classic 'boil the frog slowly' campaign. I boosted their print circulation numbers and over the next five years I barely noticed the increments until I paid full price.

I stopped because Murdoch press is toxic. But the trick undoubtedly worked.

The up front paywall costs we're exposed to are far higher than the 'free option' choices. 2c is closer to free than $2 is in my own mental barrier. If we had a sensible marginal cost micropayments framework, I would subscribe initially to a lot of press for 2c per day, and probably tolerate the incremental costs.

the WSJ headline offer is $1 for two months. Thats damn close to my margins. I think they've got the message.

The AFR, an Australian equivalent, want to give me a month free but then $69 per month. I don't think they understand kitchen-sink economics as well as either Mrs Thatcher, or the WSJ.

</comment><comment><USER22> I would never subscribe to the WSJ. Wonder if they will pick this up?

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if they plan on selling this approach to other companies?

</comment><comment><USER24> I have to commend WSJ, not a fan of paywalls but at least they're trying to innovate within the space.</comment>


CjsSS.js: Use JavaScript in Your CSS (Don't Call It a CSS Preprocessor) - <AUTHOR> http://opensourcetaekwondo.com/cjsss/ <comment><USER2> I guess I wonder who this is valuable for? If you're not using a framework, I guess it's ok, but if you're using react or angular (or probably anything else really), you're already likely binding your data to reflect styles in the html, so it isn't valuable to add that here.

If you're doing straight javascript, this might help you from doing a whole lot of `el.className = ...` but it seems like this is trying to do a whole lot more than that.

I guess I'd like to have seen a use case rather than so much documentation.

In fact, I think the amount of documentation and different ways of using CjsSS may be the most troubling part. I don't want to 'learn' a new library, it should be self-explanatory with a few good examples.

How long did it take to pick-up jQuery's dom query syntax? You didn't need all the documentation, mostly just '.' for class, '#' for id. Sure, it was more complicated than that, but all the complexity didn't need to be taught from the start, you could do a ton with very little exposure.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading the headline, I expected parody. It looks.... real?

I'm sure many will enjoy the contribution, but I'll be letting this one slip by on the first pass.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you wake up? - <AUTHOR>

I was thinking about this the other day. How you you guys wake up in the morning? And/or what is a routine you all know of to work better for you to get you started on the right foot? <comment><USER3> How do I wake up?

I realize the inherent nonexistence of all entities and how they are all impermanent, and thus that all striving is striving for temporary results; the only true achievement is to dissolve one's karma and be liberated from the Wheel of Rebirth, never again to be born & suffer.

Then I have some tea and check my email.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try to get used to waking up always the same time. Every time I wake up early in the morning, I kiss my girlfriend, then get up, and after the bathroom I do some workout. Nothing serius, just to make myself fresher. And then, for about an hour, I work on my private project(s), until my girlfriend gots up too (she's a little sleepy :) ). Then have breakfast (ALWAYS have a substantial breakfast), and then I go to work (I always get a shower before I go to sleep). This way I always start my day with good mood, and by achieving something, which makes me confident.

<comment><USER5> I'm going to sleep right now so I can try this in 7 hours.

<comment><USER6> You are going to try waking up and kissing his gf?? Good luck.

<comment><USER7> Well, the other guy will make sure that he wakes up when he kisses the guy's gf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a small 3 year-old walk into my bedroom ~6am every day and jump up and down on the end of the bed saying, I want to have breakfast/watch Bob the Builder/brush the baby's teeth..

Funnily enough, this perfect alarm-clock never fails to wake me up!

<comment><USER9> That sounds like how I wake up on the weekends, except mine is also normally shouting, "The sun is up!" He never seems to realize that I know, but don't care that the sun is up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find when I wake up at the same time each day I do a lot better. Weekends completely throw me off cause I can usually sleep in until 7, sometimes at the latest 8.

I have a few methods of waking up.

1\. Cell phone alarm set to 5 a.m, this is hit or miss. Sometimes I actually wake up a minute before the alarm even goes off. 2\. A 2.5 year old who wakes me up with a plastic golf club or other blunt instrument on the weekends (this is the whole sleeping in part) 3\. Instances like this morning, where I was up at 3:15 because I stopped breathing...

The last one is not recommended but it always wakes me up. Thankfully it does not happen too often, just now and again.

Routine is get out of bed, roll the arms around to get the blood circulating, make a nice breakfast and prepare a lunch to take into the office. Drink a bottle of water, turn the coffee pot on, knock out a set of push ups, hit the shower, get dressed, get in car, get 2 blocks down the road and realize I forgot the lunch or my pants, turn around, get item, head to office.

Weekend is fairly void of a routine with the exception of my son waking me up, and taking him to Starbucks in the morning to flirt with chicks.

Ultimately, My routine during the week is the best one for me. It make's me pretty productive, and I really enjoy being the only one in the office for a few hours. It's amazing what you can get accomplished when no one is around to interrupt you.

</comment><comment><USER11> If it's a good day and I'm paying attention to my body, I just get up whenever my I first wake up, usually before my alarm goes off. Sometimes I think it is the cats that wake me, other times I think I wake the cats... I can never tell. If it's a bad day I don't get up right away and then proceed to sleep through multiple alarms; often I will snooze them and go back to sleep until I run out of snooze cycles and then wake up hours later wondering why my alarm went off. I sleep snooze.

I have noticed though, that when I wake up first without (before) an alarm and promptly get out of bed and start my day I am usually less groggy and more inclined to be productive. My body has ~1.5hr sleep cycles, meaning if I sleep in increments of roughly 1.5hrs I tend to get better sleep. I learned all this about myself when I was practicing a polyphasic sleep experiment. I don't recommend this to anyone as an actual method of sleep or rest (my experiment was less than successful) but I sure learned a helluvalot about my body and tolerances.

Read more at <http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/> or on <http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/15/103358/720>

</comment><comment><USER12> I've learned (and adapted) to the fact that I just can't get any reasonable work done in the first 3 hours or so of the day. I can ingest massive amounts of caffeine, go run a marathon, or whatever, but my brain just needs a few hours to get up to speed.

<comment><USER13> You might find that, like myself, you function much better in the evening and night. Even though I keep a normal daylight schedule for work reasons, I long to fall back to my natural rythmn: rise at 4pm, and sleep at 7 or 8am.

<comment><USER14> For a long time I thought I followed the same schedule. Since I'm in grad school, I decided to experiment with that. I found that I was not a night person after all. Rather, anxiety and thinking about a given problem kept me up indefinitely.

I even tried the experiment where you stay up until you are tired, then repeat. It was terrible. After a week I could not sleep at all. I'd get tired when the sun set, as we are supposed to. But despite being tired, no sleep came.

Through much pain, I discovered that the major source of my sleeplessness was a lack of social contact. Now this varies immensely by individual. But the moral of the story is that every sleep problem is unique. Your solution is not my solution. And mine is not yours (I don't have a good one btw).

I'll guess that sleep researchers already know this. Best of luck hacker news!

<comment><USER15> While writing up my PhD I went through three different sleep styles, each time for four months.

The first was to work nights. I'd get up at 15:30, "breakfast" at 17:00, socialise from 18:00 to 20:00, then go to work. I'd eat my last meal at 07:00 (bacon eaggs and toast are an interesting "last meal of the day") and go to bed at 09:00.

The second was to sleep every other night, sleeping for 12 hours when I sis sleep at all. The night I stayed up I'd catch a cat nap at about 03:00 for 20 minutes. This was effectively a 48 hour day.

The third and most interesting was to stick to a 28 hour day with 8 hours sleep. This gives a 6 day week, and I'd drift in and out of phase with normal people. That really suited me, and I wish I could do it more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> First alarm: iPod plugged into a stereo playing something pleasant. (7.20am)

Second alarm: iPhone alarm 40 minutes later. I now mega-loathe the "Harp" alarm tone. (8.00am)

Third alarm: Girlfriend kicking me out of bed between 5-10 minutes later. (~8.10am)

Works like a charm every time.

<comment><USER17> After ~6 months of using my call phone as my alarm clock, I now have a strong pavlovian conditioning to several of the Verizon ringtones, especially "rings"

I'll hear it randomly in public in the middle of the day and immediately get a rush of adrenalin -- "oh fuck I'm waking up 6 hours late _aaaahhh!!!_ " -- and it will take me at least 15 minutes to calm down fully. For hours afterward my ears will parse any plausible input into phantom ringing (that happens randomly by itself too).

<comment><USER18> Spot-on, I like to change my wake-up alarm tones frequently to prevent my brain from filtering them out + preventing the effect you describe here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have always had a lot of trouble getting up in the morning, and when I started working at a company where I'm expected to put in normal hours, I changed my wake-up routine quite drastically.

I use my computer as an alarm clock. This has a few benefits:

(1) It's on the other side of the room. After 10 years of having a clock/phone by my head and hitting snooze (I'm capable of snoozing easily for 1 hour) or, worse, off, having to actually get out of bed to turn off the alarm is enough to wake me up past the point of getting back into bed.

(2) I have a different alarm noise every day. I found myself getting conditioned to whatever sound my clock/phone was using, and especially with snooze, after hearing that 30-odd times a week, I'd just sleep through alarms. A different sound each day is _excellent_. Highly recommended.

(3) I keep a small bottle of water on my desk, which I drink right after turning off the alarm. I once (and only once) tried this when my alarm was by my bed and soaked an iPod in a groggy swat to snooze my alarm. I find that the water makes me feel much better. The first week or so without this, I walked around like a zombie until I got to work, but simply drinking the water makes me feel better. There's probably some logical biological explanation to this.

I'm still not really a morning person--I miss my sleep schedule from college-- but it's the most effective solution I've found to waking up at 7am.

The easy solution is obviously just sleeping early, but I find myself unable to sleep before midnight at the earliest.

<comment><USER20> The "sleeping early" solution requires a few tricks, the most recent of which claims that you shouldn't eat between 12-16 hours from when you need to wake up.

Of course, the real reason you can't sleep early is because the most "interesting" stuff is done just before you fall asleep. You need to move the interesting stuff to the morning, even if it means watching a silly children's cartoon; when I stopped watching said cartoon, my wakeup time drifted to beyond 8am, since I was only barely interested in going to school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Go to bed and wake up at the same time every night/day. Also, avoid using 'snooze' and taking naps. If you're not used to it, then you really have to be determined at first, but there's definitely a noticeable difference after a week or two. If you're consistent, your alarm will become obsolete.

<comment><USER22> no naps? booooo

<comment><USER23> Really? I never take naps. My wife will, but I just can't do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> snooze my iphone about 3 times, zombie walk to the fridge for some orange juice and then a shower. it's not recommended.

<comment><USER25> Doesn't the iPhone alarm kick ass though? It's the best alarm clock I've ever had.

<comment><USER24> You have no idea how many times I've turned my blackberry alarm off and thought I had hit snooze. the iPhone alarm is a thousand time nicer with 2 different mechanisms, touch snooze and slide off.

<comment><USER26> You can also hit the volume buttons on the side to snooze it.

<comment><USER25> Just having an unbounded number of alarms puts it ahead of any other alarm I've had. I have alarms set for 7:01, 7:10, 7:20, and 7:45 (when I finally have to be on my feet to get the kids out the door to school).

<comment><USER27> I have a Palm Centro and I just have to tap the screen anywhere to snooze. To turn it off then requires a second tap to a specific button on the screen. Best I've used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Live at home and my Mum wakes me up.

</comment><comment><USER29> If I have an obligation in the morning my girlfriend wakes me up, since she is the one who hears my alarm. I am a really heavy sleeper and usually require something around 200 dB to wake me up. I used to have my speakers do the job but the risk of breaking up one morning grew daily so I stopped.. Plus, I think she'd hate CPR with morning breath :P.

Afterwards comes my ritual, 1 cup of coffee, breakfast, another cup of coffee with my pipe, all while reading emails/news etc. If I skip any of that, especially coffee, I'm grumpy all day long (and with a headache for some reason).

Although I live like a night person I've found that if I get used to waking up around 5-6 am I'm much more energetic and feel like I'm really seizing my day. The problem is that it's really easy for me to break the habit of rising early so I've only accomplished that for month long periods followed by trimesters of sleeping to noon and more.

</comment><comment><USER30> I set several alarms (alternating cell phone and clock): 0645, 0650, 0655, 0700, 0715, 0730, 0750. All of which I'm nearly immune to now. I've started setting my phone alarm as my actual ringer so I can trick myself into thinking someone is calling me.

If my wife wakes up before me, she usually kicks me out of bed. I get up, shower, make sure my bag is packed, get dressed, maybe inhale a quick breakfast, ride my bike to work (usually quite late and still in zombie mode), have a cup of coffee, check feeds+email, and then finally start working on real work by 1000hrs.

I'm a slacker, I dislike my job, and I'm a heavy sleeper. I have a little trouble getting to sleep, but once I'm there, it's over.

</comment><comment><USER31> Alarm goes off at 7:22 (for some reason the snooze uses 8 min intervals - <USER2> if I'm tired I'll have 1 snooze until 7:30 otherwise I'm straight up). Pee, puke (morning sickness), shower, get dressed, breakfast.

I don't have any problems getting out of bed.

</comment><comment><USER32> Fun trick my dad taught me. It's inconsistent, but when it works, it's pretty cool.

Before bed (when you're done reading and ready to flip out the light), close your eyes and visualize a clock (old kind, with the arms). Picture it at the current time, then slowly rotate the dial until it's your wakeup time. Repeat a few times. Something is pretty cool about literally setting your wakeup alarm, and waking up within a few minutes of that time.

Also it's a good time to meditate / focus / relax before bed, which is probably the most helpful part of it.

</comment><comment><USER33> I take a bath ALWAYS around 11pm to 1 am on weekdays and wake up at 5:30am... Kiss my girlfriend goodbye, get dressed and head to the office. Her iphone and my blackberry both have alarms at 5:30ish. The reason I take a bath always before sleeping is because although I wake up at that time, I am really just asleep and on automatic. I wake up, get dressed, have coffee, drive to the office, have a morning cig, power up my hardware, and then like at 7:30 or so I start going out of automatic mode and wonder how the hell I keep getting to work and not noticing.

</comment><comment><USER34> Two alarms: One within arms reach, and another that I have to get up for, set 1 minute later than the close one. Always make sure you have an alarm out of arms reach from your bed.

</comment><comment><USER35> My radio alarm clock goes off at about 8:30am. The radio slowly soothes me awake, so that I gradually wake over the next 30 mins or so Using this method puts me in a better mood more consistently than when I used to get up immediately and/or earlier. I would love to get up early and work on some personal projects before I went in to work, but my brain just doesn't start running until about 11am, and I cant figure out how to change this.

</comment><comment><USER36> The cat needs an insulin injection every morning before she is allowed to have breakfast. She crawls up onto my chest and paws me in the face until I wake up (no joke). When she first started doing this - years ago - I would keep my eyes shut and pretend I was asleep, but to no avail. The moment she knows that I'm conscious, she starts meowing, jumps off the bed and heads for the kitchen.

</comment><comment><USER18> I become conscious sometime in the afternoon, take a quick look at my phone for any missed calls/e-mails/text messages etc, and if they need immediate attention, I pop open my macbook pro and go to work. If there are no critical issues, I usually jump in the shower and "meditate" for 30 minutes to an hour. Then I usually get to work or whatever I planned on doing that day.

</comment><comment><USER37> Yawn, stretch my arms, glance up from my computer and realise it's daybreak and that I've been up all night...again.

</comment><comment><USER38> Sleep in a room with a window facing east, get up when the alarm goes off, drink a cold glass of water, take some deep breaths, hop on the computer and drink a cup of coffee, then go for a run. By the time I'm back from my run, I'm "very awake".

</comment><comment><USER39> At 6 AM, after 8.5 hours of sleep and after a sunrise alarm clock has been getting brighter for about half an hour. Then I make breakfast and coffee and try to have an uninterrupted 2 hours of working on personal projects before going to work.

</comment><comment><USER40> I have one of those alarm clocks that lights up the whole room over a 30 minute period - that makes it easier to get up in Winter. It also plays the radio gradually louder. I also have my iPhone alarm set on my desk "just in case..."

</comment><comment><USER41> Set a recurring alarm on my phone, snooze it a couple of times, head to the restroom, freshen up a bit and go play squash for an hour. Come back, take a shower, have breakfast and then get to work.

</comment><comment><USER42> Haven't used an alarm for i don't know how long. Wake up at desired time, although often wake up earlier and try to sleep a little more.

Then walk to the next room and log on.

</comment><comment><USER43> I leave my curtains open and wake up around 6:30 when the sun starts shining. No alarm clock. Then I work out for 30 minutes, eat a light breakfast, and walk downstairs to work.

<comment><USER44> This sounds wonderful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> My alarm goes off at 7:55 pm. Work starts at 8 pm so there isn't much time for messing around. This is by design. I work support and sign in, start work- related tasks etc.

</comment><comment><USER46> Coffee and a grapefruit.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've noticed I don't need an alarm to wake up. If I keep my blinds open, the sunlight along w/ any ambient noise always wakes me up after about 7-8 hours of sleep.

</comment><comment><USER48> Badly.

</comment><comment><USER49> I make myself smile, which in turn triggers a good mood, which in turn makes me think about the interesting things I could be doing if I were up and about.

</comment><comment><USER50> mpd + cron + some hard rock... i'm a heavy sleeper :D

</comment><comment><USER51> Sidenote: Mega annoyance. Why does the iPhone not wake for an alarm. I think pretty much every other phone in existance has nailed this?

<comment><USER52> If you want to take it off the grid (versus letting it ring out in silent mode), you could put it into airplane mode.

<comment><USER51> That's a good idea, but it's also battery conservation and the knowledge that it's also OFF. Certain processes can hang and chew through your battery until you restart, which is also why it's nice to turn it off of a night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Lots of sunlight in the face, then about 20 minutes later an alarm to unwrap the last bits of stupor

</comment><comment><USER54> Usually about 5 minutes before my real alarm goes off...

</comment><comment><USER55> iPhone alarm set for 6:30am.

Usually try to get some fresh air, eat some breakfast, go through RSS reader, then get to work.

</comment><comment><USER6> I haven't used an alarm in about 10 years, and always manage to wake up at the correct time, even if it is 5am. My girlfriend is always amazed. I get up, have a shower, then go straight to work. I can be out of the house in 10 minutes. I find my housemates strange, the ones who fool around in the mornings having dinner, watching tv. I know I used to when I was a kid, but not anymore.

<comment><USER56> so you are kind of like a robot now no?</comment></comment>


Peachy Printer - The world's first $100 3D Printer - <AUTHOR> http://www.3ders.org//articles/20130921-the-peachy-printer-the-world-first-100-dollar-3d-printer-scanner.html <comment><USER2> Kickstarter link @ [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy- pri...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the- first-100-3d-printer-and-sc)

This is such a cool concept -- I backed it! I do not want to highjack the conversation, but I think it is worth mentioning, that this is kind of a _" grinds my gears"_ [1, 2] moment when someone links to a summery, which borrows the video and images of a Kickstarter campaign, you are essentially diverting the campaigns traffic, why not just link to the campaign? This article was kind enough to at least link to it in the _last_ paragraph. This summery is currently #1 on HN, which it likely driving tens of thousands of people to this suboptimal page [3, 4].

[1] [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grinds%20my%2...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grinds%20my%20Gears)

[2] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHtRnOXXZ0w](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHtRnOXXZ0w)

[3] [http://aberrant.me/front-page-of-hacker-news/](http://aberrant.me/front- page-of-hacker-news/)

[4] [http://www.backwardcompatible.net/179-traffic-hacker-news- ef...](http://www.backwardcompatible.net/179-traffic-hacker-news-effect)

<comment><USER3> Indiegogo link @ [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-peachy-printer-the- fir...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-peachy-printer-the- first-100-3d-printer-scanner)

I really like what i've seen so far :)

But i do not understand why they are running a kickstarter and an indiegogo campaign at the same time for the same product with the same setup and rewards. Only the campaign duration is slightly different. Anyone got any ideas why this would make sense?

PS.: On indiegogo the early bird special is still available ...

<comment><USER4> Advertising in two similar, but not exactly the same markets at once?

Although, I feel like the indiegogo should have some sort of outreach to it as well. Like, "$25 gets you resin or a t-shirt and you (along with 5 other people) will sponsor a printer for a school" or something like that. Or perhaps focus on how the money from indiegogo will be used to make the software more accessible and easy to use for all people, not just those skilled in CAD.

EDIT: The indiegogo uses a fixed-funding model like kickstarter. I wasn't aware that projects could do that there.

<comment><USER5> It's strange that they chose a fixed-funding model for indiegogo. Even though the kickstarter has reached its goal, the indigogo project might not.

Aside from the lower price of the remaining early bird specials, is there any reason to fund it through indiegogo instead of kickstarter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the first 3D printer I've been excited about since the very first one I saw maybe a decade ago.

The reason is that it is actually a novel approach that I can see is in its very infancy...and it's clever as hell. The reality of 3D printers is that at this stage of their development, they aren't useful for a lot of people; at least not useful enough to make them a cost-effective purchase.

This, however, begins to make it seem a reasonable purchase for a wide variety of people. Any hobbyist or artist that builds things would find this an awesome tool for taking their ideas to the next level. Table top gamers can make their own models. People who work on electronics can make their own boxes and internal parts. The possibilities are pretty broad. They've always been broad...but the printer options have always been expensive, or required you to build it yourself.

We're getting close to a 3D printing revolution. I'm not the first person to say that. But, this is the first time I've ever said it, because it's the first time I saw a glimmer of hope that it would actually soon be in the same league as laser and inkjet printers in terms of cost.

And, this may be the time when I finally opt to jump into the pool and try out this new tech. If I can think up something I'd actually want to regularly use it for, I probably will.

Anyone know how tough the resulting objects are? Could I use it for something, such as gears or a chassis for an outdoor computer, that needs to take a lot of abuse and expect it to hold up?

<comment><USER7> I've heard the resin resultant objects are pretty brittle at least on the Form1, so I'm not sure it could do what you're hoping.

You would be better served with an FDM printer if you want to be able to use it as you describe, but then you need to be careful of the direction of the grain (or rather, the layers) so that they're opposite the direction of stress if there's specific ways it will take stress.

<comment><USER8> > pretty brittle at least on the Form1

This is true (at least on the SLA printer I've used). The problem is that the resin never stops UV curing, so it just gets more and more brittle over time. Small parts get _really_ fragile (Maybe you can paint/cover them to avoid this - I'm not sure). FDM or SLS printers are _generally_ better with functional parts, while SLA is better for prototypes that don't need to last.

<comment><USER9> What if you use a spray primer to completely coat the object?

<comment><USER8> Not a clue! You'd have to ask somebody more qualified than myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Damn I didn't quite realize the ingenuity of using a mirror instead of fixed axis until I read this:

>Build volume: There is no certain limit on build volume. In the same way that a flashlight beam gets bigger the further it shines, so does the build volume of the Peachy Printer. Although this has not been tested, we have high hopes to print a full size canoe! This will require a build volume of approximately 3'x3'x16'. The real limiting factor in build volume is time... It could be possible to calibrate the Peachy Printer to print a house, but it would take years![1]

And here I am thinking it was to save money on the rods and stepper motors.

[1]: [http://www.peachyprinter.com/?_escaped_fragment_=printer- spe...](http://www.peachyprinter.com/?_escaped_fragment_=printer- specs/c1gk6#!printer-specs/c1gk6)

<comment><USER11> But the larger the build area, the harder it would be to control accurately. If you double each axis, could this printer still hit the previous layer when making thin walls?

<comment><USER12> You're right but the thing is if you're printing some object that is 5x5 feet you probably don't need 0.5 mm thin walls and if you do need smaller features on a larger design you can print the object with the precision portions directly under the center where you have really fine grained precision and the bulk of the object can still be a couple of feet from the center as long as you don't have a need to print a canoe with 0.5 mm walls.

The resolution will look like the graph of dθ/dx with theta being the angle of deflection of the laser. The plot of the resolution with respect to height and displacement can be seen here: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=h%2F%28h%5E2+%2B+x%5E2%...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=h%2F%28h%5E2+%2B+x%5E2%29+x%3D0+to+5+h%3D1+to+3)

What would be awesome is if they made their model printing software optimize the placement of the model in order to maximize accuracy where it was needed but without putting the laser so close that the outside features are crappy including rotating the model maybe upside down if the more precise portion of the model is on the bottom and it is physically possible to print it that way. That'd be a really interesting software engineering project in my book.

P.S. in case anyone was wondering about the math behind the plot, if you integrate the function for a fixed value of h and take the area from x=0 to h you get pi/4 for any value of h which lines up perfectly for a 45 45 90 triangle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hmm, this is pretty much getting into impulse buy territory (for a 3D printer), and it even helps with my #1 problem justifying getting one which was that I haven't really learned any 3D modeling, by being capable of scanning (though I guess you could also do something similar with a Kinect). Could anyone with more insight into these things explain further why this is unique and whether there might be drawbacks? This almost seems too good to be true.

(for background, I just want a 3D printer to tinker with, and if it works at all for $100 I'll be satisfied - I might have as much fun building it as using it)

<comment><USER7> If you watch the videos in the kickstarter and on his site, you'll see he removed a ton of parts every other printer has to have. For example, the Z axis is now _water_...that's a lot cheaper than all the parts you need for a bed and the precision motors to normally raise/lower a platform. He did this in quite a few areas, which quickly plummets the price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how much error is introduced by the use of the headphone jack to drive the printer - you've gotta deal with line noise from the computer's sound card, mixing latency/glitches from the OS, and the device sampling rate, along with any noise introduced on the audio cable.

Does a 3D printer like this not actually require high-precision data to work correctly?

<comment><USER15> Line noise is a bit of an issue, but that's usually quite high frequency which means it can either be filtered or that the errors will be correspondingly small. Latency and glitches are not likely to be an issue at all, even the crappiest computer nowadays can handle multitrack audio and delays of a few milliseconds that would interfere with music performance are not going to have any impact here. Likewise sampling rate shouldn't be a problem, anything above 8Khz or so should be adequate for purpose here and most cheap uCs could handle that. Cable noise is generally negligible over short runs. A bigger problem would be ground hum from poorly isolated transformers/power supplies, but that is on a fixed frequency and can be eliminated with a HPF. Certainly the output is a little crude but it will be 'good enough' for many purposes.

Note also that the audio input allows playback from an mp3 player or other sources, suggesting the audio can be wholly precomputed. Imagine how useful that could be in places like Africa so that you could print thing without necessarily needing a high-power device like a laptop.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the points on how trivial it would be to handle line noise and playback glitches. Makes sense to me; I just don't know my hardware and analog circuits well enough to know how cheap it is to filter that stuff out.

<comment><USER15> No problem. Sorry if my other comment wasn't informative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's the "Woz-est" engineering I've seen in some time.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is great stuff. I have no idea what I'd use a 3d printer for, but this guy's awesome approach to engineering has me wanting to buy one just to reward his work.

<comment><USER18> Where I work (large university) the instructors and professors teaching engineering labs build pretty much all the setups for the experiments using 3D printers and off the shelf components. It allows them to iterate very fast on designs and can also change the experiments year after years, since they are not stuck with some expensive machine or piece of equipment. It really is an amazing technology.

I used one for a personal project I'm working on. I'm building a robot and had trouble finding wheels for it that fit my design, so I just made my own!! Got some silicon rubber strips from McMaster-Carr and now I have very fancy and functional wheels! Of course I am very fortunate to have access to a _very_ good 3D printer, which is a few years out for most people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> After a close look at the simple and clever design and the not quite practical printing method, I'm about to say this is the ZX-81 of 3D printers. Not quite an Apple II, but cheap and may serve to ignite some imaginations.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Grayson wrote an add-on to blender which translate 3D model into an audio waveform".

This guy probably has a t-shirt that reads "What would McGyver do?"

<comment><USER21> This guy probably _printed_ a t-shirt that reads "What would McGyver do?". Using a waffle iron.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> this may be obvious to everyone else, but took me a while... stereo!

[there are two mirrors to drive (or, equivalently, a point in 2D to target with the laser) and i couldn't see how to do that with a single audio signal.]

<comment><USER23> It's even called stereolithography :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> At this price - I would love to see an array of these printing into a larger vat to produce large objects.

This will make it so meta-printers can be hacked together:

Mount the Peachy onto XY motion capabilities (whats the word for this?) axes? -- and it should be trivial to make a hydrolically lifted resin system that is quite large indeed. (that was the most ingenious part of this design, IMO.

It should be easy to create a resin vat calculator where you simply provide the XYZ dimensions of your container and it will calculate the drip-resolution for you so you know at what rate to adjust the flow to get whatever resolution you need.

I'm getting several of these.

</comment><comment><USER25> I was just talking to my mom about 3D printers on Friday, trying to explain the processes of the different types, and how the most accurate ones like this (lasers, laser-sensitive liquid, directed high precision curing) are the best but also the most expensive. That conversation would have gone much differently had I seen this project a few days ago.

One hundred dollars is a major game changer. I've been somewhat reserved on the 3D printing hype because of a lack of necessity for most people, and a lack of precision/usefulness at the lower price range. This can change all of that. For one hundred dollars you no longer have to worry about longer term entertainment value or interest for children. It's the cost of a couple of video games. And for project work, you don't have to worry about needing it for multiple projects. At $100 a single use justifies the cost many times over. I'm looking into spending $400 right now on a single 3D print for a small product I'm working on.

I love rewarding ingenuity. BACKED!

</comment><comment><USER26> > The software we wrote as an add on to blender takes the data from that 3D > model and translates it into an audio waveform. It then plays the audio file > out to the printer through the headphone jack in your computer. This > waveform drives a pair of electro magnetic mirrors. The higher the volume, > the higher the voltage, the more the mirrors move. The purpose of these > mirrors is to reflect and control the path of the laser beam. By using the > audio waveform generated from the 3D model data to drive the mirrors, we are > able to get the laser beam to draw out the shape of the object. That's takes > care of the X and Y axes.

I look forward to people doing weird interesting things with this!

I have no idea how lissajous figures could work, but they're cool and in 3d resin print they'd be cooler.

<comment><USER27> _I look forward to people doing weird interesting things with this!_

my first thought was: do they have a reverse add-on as well? And then: I would love to see the output of various types of music :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a bit too good to believe, but at $100 i'll bite. I've been into 3d printing for years now, and my main concern is material. If this resin is durable, and doesn't get soft in the car on a warm day, this design could be really groundbreaking. If not, it'll be a waste of everyone's time. The quality looks pretty decent given how awful low end 3d printers can be without a ton of tinkering. My current printer cost me about 2K and ABS/PLA at $40ish/kg actually adds up when prototyping. I'd love to have something really cheap like this to test out prints before finalizing them in ABS.

<comment><USER29> It looks like the resin they are using is "Makerjuice" ([http://makerjuice.com/](http://makerjuice.com/)). I don't know anything about that resin though.

<comment><USER30> $40/liter for small prints

$45/liter for large

Not cheap if you want to print anything larg-ish.

<comment><USER31> Eh, only if you make the large-ish thing _solid_ \- this can easily make hollow / drain-able structures. And since it's partially supported by the liquid as it's built, you don't need as much temporary supporting structure as an extruded plastic version.

<comment><USER32> In this case, the suspension is some with salt water, which would provide very little support.

<comment><USER29> The resin is buoyant in salt water; is the cured resin?

So long as the liquid resin floats on salt water, I don't see why salt water should provide less support than liquid resin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Awesome product! The beginning of the video needs to be redone, stop switching the camera angle and get rid of the techno music. I'd recommend starting the video with a timelapse of a printing with some basic explanation audio.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mount a Raspberry PI to the side of it (with a USB microphone)and you could treat it as a network-attached printer :-)

<comment><USER34> The Raspberry Pi only has 12 bits of audio output resolution and - at least historically - has had problems with latency-related audio glitches due to Pi- specific drivers spending too much time with interrupts disabled.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if the precision would matter a lots.

Lots of lag may cause problems:-\

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why when I visit this website I get a torrent downloade automatically? widgets_tweet_button.html.torrent

</comment><comment><USER36> It's clever and really neat. That said, please don't think you are going to get parts of the quality, accuracy, surface detail and durability attainable through other more established methods.

The only reason I am funding it is to support someone thinking outside the box. I really have no use for it due to the issues listed above. I'll probably gift it to someone who might. I've done that a number of times with KS projects.

<comment><USER25> If you wouldn't mind, could you indicate which other methods you are referring to? I'd like to check them out. As far as I know stereolithography is the most accurate method known. And I can't foresee any accuracy issues inherent in this particular solution that can't be improve with a slight increase in materials cost.

<comment><USER36> In talking to a number of people who've purchased or built a range of what I would characterize as hobby machines the common thread is that they are nearly unusable or a complete pain to use for real commercial work. Everyone I know who uses 3D printing for non-trivial business purposes either contracts out the work to 3D printing service bureaus with heavy duty commercial grade machines or they actually invest on such machines to do the printing in house.

That's not to say that hobby-grade machines are useless. The degree of interest these projects garner on sites like KS means something. Perhaps it means that people are clamoring for significantly cheaper solutions. Or, perhaps, it means they are happy to have 3D printers that perform reasonably well with some TLC.

At some level I equate it to what happens with CNC machining equipment. I've built and purchased many low cost home-brewed CNC machining solutions. In retrospect they were always a pain in the ass to use in one form or another. It was always far more time and cost effective to send parts out to have them machined by capable shops with capable industrial-grade machines.

I eventually purchased my own industrial-grade machines. I had Haas VMC's and a lathes in house. That's when I saw the light. The difference between the hobby/garage machines and what the pro's are using is massive. It went from screwing around with the machine to make it work, maintaing tolerances, deal with software issues, repairing it, etc. to just using it and producing very high quality parts every single time.

CNC machining, at that point, became a source of creativity that did not detract from the design process but almost added to it.

This drip 3D printing gizmo is great. Like I said, I am supporting it. I could be lots of fun. A professional tool it is not. Not at this stage anyway.

<comment><USER21> This is perhaps a bit like how an SLR-owning photographer would have looked at cameraphones when they came out. Or how a mainframe programmer looked at microcomputers.

They, and you, were absolutely right to observe that these devices were massively less capable than the existing devices, and to foresee that they would never become as capable, and to explain that the reduced capability translates directly into less freedom to create, and to predict that they would not replace the existing devices.

Where they might have gone wrong (i note that you do not!) would be to conclude that these devices were therefore never going to be successful. They did not displace the existing devices from their niches; they carved out an entirely new niche, surviving by making small profits from huge numbers of people.

The boosters are talking rubbish when they say that 3D printing will revolutionise manufacturing. But it might just revolutionise DIY.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I got my first ever 3d printer today (Makerbot Replicator 2). It is seriously the coolest piece of tech I've ever seen, which is really saying something. I can't wait for the price to drop, and for damn near everyone to have a 3d printer of some sort.

</comment><comment><USER38> I really like it and its entirely analog nature is refreshing. It makes sense to set aside something like a raspberry pi for it (I would never use a PC, especially on update tuesdays. And I would not want to set my PC audio to full blast so the output swings the full +-2.5V).

Mechanically delicate though. Vibrations disturbing the surface of the liquid will skew the print and cause poor layer adhesion. And you have to make sure your surface is perfectly level.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is rad! As I looked through the list of people involved, I learned that one of the guys doing it was a close friend of mine through EE school.

And I have to chuckle a little bit about how much of a prairie farmer hack this is. People around here build crazy hacks like this all the time on their farm equipment, glad to see them getting some publicity!

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if this will work with a combined headphone/microphone jack.

Regardless, I love the approach taken here; really quite clever.

</comment><comment><USER40> Awesome idea. But isn't mirror inertia a problem?

Also constant velocity of z-axis movement might pose some inefficiencies because if you want to print a box you have to set the rate of ascend low enough for the laser to create full bottom and you can't speed up when you are building sides of the box.

<comment><USER41> Just print the box titled a few degrees :-)

<comment><USER41> s/titled/tilted/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is the resin for this a standard type of resin? Seems like you don't get much of it with the kit.

<comment><USER43> Yes. [http://makerjuice.com/](http://makerjuice.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> why does the site, before it finishes loading, want me download a *.torrent file?

<comment><USER15> Not here (and I tried it with my sandboxed adblock-free honeyypot browser). Maybe an ad?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I wonder if you're able to get accurately sized objects for gears and such. The resin for photolithographic printers normally suffer from shrinkage after printing.

<comment><USER12> On makerjuice.com you could get the SubG+ resin that shrinks "less than 3.5%", but the shrinkage should be consistent enough to compensate for that by printing slightly oversized parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It should also be noted that this guy seems to be a genius.

</comment><comment><USER47> I just heard a few weeks ago that the patents on laser 3-D printers expired. I really hope this freedom from lawsuits will inspire many more Inventors.

physibles!

</comment><comment><USER48> Nobody seems to get that this is the first 3D printer with which printing can be easily parallelized! This is going to be huuuuuuuge!

</comment><comment><USER49> So why does it have to use audio? And why can't it use servos to move the lasers?

<comment><USER50> Both were due to cost, especially the servos. But I think a microcontroller capable of usb would not be particularly expensive, though more expensive than not having it.

<comment><USER51> It also removes a lot of code complexity, or at least moves it to the computer where it's easier to write and update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Very clever ideas in this design. I hope it can scale up the way he suggests!

</comment><comment><USER53> I wouldn't trust the dimensions of things made by this one millimeter.

</comment><comment><USER54> beautiful approach. love the audacity 'model preview'.</comment>