[HN Gopher] Simplifier
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Simplifier
Author : adrianN
Score : 260 points
Date : 2021-04-29 11:09 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (simplifier.neocities.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (simplifier.neocities.org)
| genghisjahn wrote:
| I'm amazed at how clean and neat most of this stuff looks. The
| telephone (with light bulbs and wall switches) is really cool but
| it's also very neat as in well made, uncluttered. Everything I
| try to build like this might work, but it's ugly with tape,glue,
| torn cardboard and jagged cuts all over. I'm impressed with the
| build and the build quality.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| This really reminds me of "the old internet", where stuff like
| this felt like a higher fraction of content that surfaces to my
| attention. These days, something like this is a rare find.
| marttt wrote:
| The Wiby [1] search engine / rabbit hole collects "old
| internet" sites like this one.
|
| 1: https://wiby.me/
| minnehaha wrote:
| cool. time travel on the internet.
| marsknight wrote:
| Thank you! This is very interesting! <3
| ArtWomb wrote:
| +1 for the minimal, HN-friendly design ;)
|
| Actually have some light PVC plumbing work on the agenda this
| afternoon. And the research, as per most projects, involves an
| amalgam of downloaded product manuals, improvisation and youtube
| tutorials. And yes, a myriad of specialty products, fittings,
| tools and treatments.
|
| I see tremendous need for a resource like this. "How To Make
| Anything". Using what you have at hand. Readable on a phone with
| cellular internet. Great work and will surely inspire some
| wonderful projects!
| rsync wrote:
| "Actually have some light PVC plumbing work on the agenda this
| afternoon."
|
| I used to have that item on my agenda all the time ... and then
| I just started buying sharkbites and putting things together
| like Legos.
|
| It's not a solution for _every_ plumbing and irrigation task I
| have - I still do find myself using PVC solvent from time to
| time ... but _long gone_ are the days when I had to connect two
| pipes that were sort of off axis from each other and out of
| plane and how in the world will I put together 3 45s and 2 22.5
| elbows to somehow make that connection.
|
| Get yourself a roll of PEX (Uponor is the nice stuff) and some
| sharkbites and these jobs get really easy ...
| ThenAsNow wrote:
| Research indicates PEX leaches significantly.
|
| E.g., https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S
| 00431...
| nitrogen wrote:
| _> As TOC decreased, the ultraviolet absorbance at 254 nm
| increased. Pipes consumed as much as 0.5 mg /L as Cl2
| during each 3 day stagnation period._
|
| Both of those results mentioned in the abstract are really
| fascinating. I'm really curious _why_ UV absorbance
| increased as leachates were released, and the chlorine
| consumption kind of makes me think that if I ever have a
| house with PEX, I will want to install a whole-house
| purification system to remove chlorine, or run copper to at
| least all drinking locations.
| rsync wrote:
| I was not proposing replacing proper, copper drinking water
| lines with PEX. I was proposing replacing PVC lines with
| PEX. I'm thinking irrigation, utility supply, etc. ... I
| wouldn't expect a house to be plumbed with PVC for drinking
| water ...
|
| Although the sharkbites are also really, really handy to
| have in your copper water system - if only to have a
| handful of caps in case of line breaks ...
| webmaven wrote:
| _>... I wouldn 't expect a house to be plumbed with PVC
| for drinking water ..._
|
| Manufactured (AKA mobile) homes are typically plumbed
| with PVC or PEX[0], and PEX is pretty popular for
| traditional (AKA site-built) houses as well[1].
|
| [0] https://mobilehomeliving.org/plumbing-in-
| manufactured-homes-...
|
| [1] https://www.bobvila.com/articles/pex-pipe/
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yes, most new homes are plumbed with PVC (or actually,
| CPVC, which is a variant that tolerates higher
| temperatures and is sized like copper pipe) or PEX.
|
| I wouldn't trust sharkbite fittings for anything really
| permanent (inside a wall, etc) but they are super handy
| for quick repairs.
| ThenAsNow wrote:
| Understood. I wasn't trying to shoot down your point with
| a drive-by, just want more people to be aware that PEX,
| which is quite common in new construction for household
| drinking water plumbing, is a questionable choice for at
| least that purpose.
|
| PVC, CPVC, and PEX are all commonly used in drinking
| water plumbing.
|
| I can't offer a qualified view on irrigation or utility
| plumbing; not sure if PEX leachates are worse than PVC,
| etc.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > +1 for the minimal
|
| You used it correctly. The term minimal has been hijacked to
| mean something entirely different these days. It often means
| "I've thrown away important bits so the design looks sexy, I
| can list it on SiteInspire and get kudos from my friends for
| following too much white space and anti-functionalism trends".
|
| > HN-friendly design
|
| We need to own this. When newcomers, youngsters and uninformed
| people want to be inspired, they'll instead see this as "Old
| fashioned, grumpy, nerdy HN-friendly design". There, we killed
| it already.
|
| That said - This web design has some short comings. For me the
| legibility is compromised by using a fixed width typeface,
| line-spacing is too tight and paragraph column width is too
| large.
| teucris wrote:
| While I generally agree with your sentiment, I did want to
| point out that you lambast the minimalist movement for adding
| white space, then critique this site for not having enough
| white space.
| chapium wrote:
| > "I've thrown away important bits so the design looks sexy"
|
| "Important bits" is just about as subjective as "looks sexy",
| is it not?
| mettamage wrote:
| Ha! This is coming from the second chance pool! I was there when
| I upvoted this article. Apparently, not many people go to the
| second chance pool, since today I didn't even know how to access
| it. IMO, it's at least as interesting as the actual front page.
|
| Go to /lists to see all the options or /pool directly to see the
| pool.
|
| Greetings from a fellow enthusiastic HN'er :)
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| From the "about" page:
|
| > No matter what skill I intended to learn, I found that its
| permanence had been eroded by the chaos of technology. Materials
| were replaced by brands, techniques replaced by accessories, and
| craftsmanship replaced by consumerism. Clearly, this was
| something that needed to be fixed. Clearly, this is what I had to
| do.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > "No matter what skill I intended to learn, I found that its
| permanence had been eroded by the chaos of technology."
|
| I find this particularly correct. There are some technologies
| and/or things which are very simple, yet very hard to improve
| upon. Incidentally, these items are very durable too. Double
| edge razors and fountain pens come to my mind.
|
| Yet, these technologies and items are thrown away or forced to
| obsolescence just because they don't produce the profits
| today's corporations seek. I think it's a very sad outcome. One
| can say that modern razors or writing implements doesn't have
| similar disadvantages of vintage counterparts, but the contrary
| is also true. Not all modern technologies supersede older ones
| flawlessly, and older ones still had distinct advantages. Same
| is also valid for computing technologies, both in hardware and
| software side.
|
| Because of this reality, I find this kind of documentation
| projects very valuable and important. We need to address
| permanence of knowledge as soon as possible. It's a very hard
| problem, but we can start somewhere.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| For example , controls in car, a few knobs and buttons will
| do, they are always there.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yes, physical controls are also good and useful.
|
| IIRC, Ford has a simulator just for testing these controls
| in the cockpit. They design and implement a cockpit, mount
| it to the simulator and run some scenarios like animals
| crossing roads or someone braking hard in front of you.
|
| I drive a 2001 focus, and all controls can be operated so-
| called blindly. I can do anything (HVAC, hazards, lights,
| etc.) without moving my eyes from the road. I think it's
| very important.
| vidarh wrote:
| As much as it's a fascinating project, a lot of the things
| described are things you can easily find described by looking
| for just slightly older books and magazines.
|
| E.g. my dad had a series of books from his childhood setting
| out "experiments for boys" from the 1950s and 1960s, that
| because they were targeting low cost and ability for children
| to reproduce them (though by the time I got them in the early
| 1980s some materials were already tricky to obtain because they
| were considered too dangerous - the books contained plenty of
| experiments including fireworks and e.g. acids for example).
|
| It was how I learned both to make carbon microphones like the
| one he described, and other fun things like electroplating
| (unfortunately I learned how to do that by toying with
| electrolysis with lead electrodes and accidentally covering one
| of my mum's silver spoons in lead - it was not popular)
|
| Combine those kind of books with a good guide for how to safely
| extract the chemicals etc. that are now a hassle to come by,
| and you'd bootstrap a very substantial amount of processes and
| skills.
| mrfusion wrote:
| From the site:
|
| > Fundamentally, my work here is about creating a stable
| foundation of technology that is reliable, understandable, and
| practical for an individual to build for themselves. As of
| writing this, I believe I have done this on a conceptual level,
| but I intend to continue this work to the highest level of
| technology that I can achieve on my own. I encourage readers to
| utilize anything here which they find practical for whatever
| purpose they see fit, and to consider adopting a mindset of
| simplification in projects of their own.
| phailhaus wrote:
| This is so hard to read. The font size is so small that the
| serifs make it cluttered, monospaced fonts are terrible for
| readability, and it's hard to read successive lines since they
| span the whole width of the page.
|
| I think it's ironic that other commenters praise this as "HN-
| friendly", when HN itself uses a sans-serif proportional font at
| a reasonable size, limited width and margins for legibility, and
| background color to reduce contrast.
| caslon wrote:
| 12px monospaced is really easy to read. The problem is not the
| website in this case. The website is fine. Consider pressing
| CTRL+ a few times if it is too small for you in particular.
| phailhaus wrote:
| It's pretty well known that monospaced fonts are harder for
| reading prose.[1] Why do you think that no books are ever
| written that way?
|
| [1] https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/48777
| caslon wrote:
| I actually have at least three books on my shelf right now
| that have monospaced fonts! Pre-TeX computer/engineering
| books tend to be that way.
|
| Monospace _is_ legible, and 12px is a great size for web
| content.
| dflock wrote:
| It's interesting, and rather ironic, that this use of monospace
| is an affectation that makes the site's HTML _more
| complicated_!
|
| It's been done by wrapping everything in <tt> elements, adding
| an extra layer of indentation and more code. If that was simply
| left out, the browser would use its default stylesheets - and
| the preferences of the reader - to display the text.
| severine wrote:
| Be sure to check the About and Materials pages before you dismiss
| the site. Fascinating!
|
| https://simplifier.neocities.org/about.html
|
| https://simplifier.neocities.org/materials.html
| Gravityloss wrote:
| There's always the anecdote about USA not being able to rebuild
| some sixties nuclear bombs because some styrofoam manufacturer
| had gone out of business and nobody knew what the foam
| contained.
|
| This is an interesting subject. If you're building something
| very critical, you need to track precisely where your
| components come from, where the material for those comes from,
| where the raw materials came from etc. This is also one of the
| reasons why nuclear power or medical technology are so
| expensive. We have gotten used to having extremely low cost
| hardware, but that is because it's produced by obscure long
| subcontractor chains spreading all over the world, intense
| competition, constant optimization and churn.
| tyingq wrote:
| More detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK
|
| I believe it wasn't exactly styrofoam, but was rigid and low
| density. This suggests probably an aerogel: https://www.lanl.
| gov/science/weapons_journal/wj_pubs/17nwj2_...
| sterlind wrote:
| it's interesting to me how classified FOGBANK was, despite
| being apparently just an aerogel. I wonder why they
| couldn't replace it with something off the shelf.
| tyingq wrote:
| Probably just "that's what was certified and tested,
| probably with actual nuclear explosions we're not allowed
| to do again".
| petra wrote:
| Yes, electronic products are highly optimized.
|
| But I'm not sure I agree that using more generic components
| should make the technology so expensive.Especially if there
| was a demand for that.
|
| So using a versatile mcu, with lots of ram/flash, dual-
| core(big/little) for low power, and a rich set of
| peripherials, together with some affordable fpga, and some
| greenPak programmable gellybean logic, and some voltage
| conversion parts could be good building blocks for digital
| electronics.
|
| As for Analog, programmability exists too, in the form of
| via-programmable analog chips(laser programmable at the
| factory, I think for volumes of few thousands). That still
| doesn't cover high-performance parts but that would fit many
| projects.
|
| As for power electronics, I don't know much about that, but I
| do wonder.
| stanrivers wrote:
| As someone who finds most things at least a little bit
| interesting, this is pretty awesome. Love seeing someone doing
| what they love to do and sharing it.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| A side note, this may be quaint to us in the developed world, but
| this sort of thinking separates impoverished nations from
| developing ones, which is a fascinating anthropological topic.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| this is what i want the web to look like sometime. quality
| content, zero load time....
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(page generated 2021-05-01 23:01 UTC)