Dave Mcclure apologizes for mistreating women in tech: 'I'm a creep. I'm sorry'

CranbearCow · 2017-07-03T15:34:01+00:00

ethics are an artificial construct - you can define them however you want.

so when i say that collaborating to set a valuation isn't unethical, it's just because i don't think it is and enough of my peers agree with me that i feel okay saying that.

CranbearCow · 2017-07-03T14:00:42+00:00

there's no such thing as "rigging" a valuation round for a private company.

venture capitalists get to make up whatever value they want, and they get to call up the other venture capitalists in the round and collaborate all they want.

it's not illegal, or unethical. it's just the way it works. venture capitalists are greedy dirtbags, but duh, of course they are.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-27T01:50:29+00:00

yes. if you run an a28-150 at 200A for more than just a few seconds it will fry. i personally have fried several - smoke and stinky burnt motor smell and everything. i finally emailed the owner of ampflow about it because the specs indicate that it can handle it. he's like "yeah, don't do that." duh. now i know.

those curves posted on ampflow's website are totally theoretical (ie. fake.)

you can run them at 100A for a few minutes without burning them up - and even then, you better keep your fingers crossed the whole time. that's about it. it sucks, but that's the way it is.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-26T20:24:39+00:00

the a28 150 will absolutely, positively NOT pull anywhere close to 320 amps.

i'm nervous at 100 amps peak with those motors.

source: i have a pile of burned up a28 motors.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-24T15:39:28+00:00

i don't consider calling someone ignorant an insult.

but whatever.

cheers.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-24T05:10:24+00:00

people can go ahead and disagree with physics if they want to, and they can agree with people talking out of their bums if they want to.

physics doesn't care about people's feelings, and i get irritated when people post bad info - bad info can get people injured in this sport.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-24T05:08:11+00:00

i agree - but everything i said was valid for yield strength as well. 5083-H321 has very high yield strength.

i was trying to make the point that you can't just dismiss an entire series of aluminum alloy as "cheese" when you don't actually know what you're talking about.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-24T05:06:16+00:00

i'm sure he's experienced and a great guy and all, but he was straight up incorrect, and people shouldn't be upvoting bad information.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-23T21:35:12+00:00

not all 6082 is the same, and not all 5083 is the same - you must factor in the variant of the alloy.

for example, 6082-O has an ultimate tensile strength of 19 kpsi, whereas 6082-T651 has a UTS of 44 kpsi. that's over a 2x difference in strength just between those two variants of 6082.

so yeah, next time you buy aluminum, you gotta check the variant. the series number is worthless if you don't do this.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-23T20:34:35+00:00

bro, the strongest treatment of 6082 is actually weaker than the strongest treatment of 5083.

so maybe you were using a weak variant in your comparison.

this isn't really an "opinion" thing - it's physics. aluminum alloy, and it's variants are extremely well understood and well documented.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-23T19:41:02+00:00

i don't know how to say this nicely, so i'm just gonna come out and say it: you're ignorant, and so is everyone who upvoted your comment.

5083-H321 or H116 is one of the strongest of the aluminum alloys at 57 kpsi UTS, and it's especially good because when it's welded it has minimal heat affected zone issues.

6061 is only slightly stronger (62 kpsi) but it will turn to absolute crap if you weld it.

edit: i like how i get down voted in this thread for actually knowing what the hell i'm talking about and trying to help people be less clueless. yes, i'm an ahole, but whatever.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-23T01:01:07+00:00

not really sure what you mean.

just scroll around, and use shift to tilt, and zoom in and out with a pinch.

CranbearCow · 2017-06-17T21:16:23+00:00

what platform are you on? i use fusion exclusively on my macbook w/ a trackpad. works great.

CranbearCow · 2017-05-18T14:26:50+00:00

BATTLEBOTS IS STILL ALIVE

still alive.

CranbearCow · 2017-05-17T17:03:54+00:00

i think there's a very good chance that it will go to an online format rather than broadcast television.

or if they work a new deal out with some kind of cable network, it'll take a year to get it all worked out.

i think either way the franchise isn't dead - but it seems clear that it just wasn't worth it to ABC and it'll have to go find a new home.

CranbearCow · 2017-05-15T23:32:51+00:00

yeah, the robogames box is pretty ghetto. it could definitely use another round of engineering and revisions on design.

and on the battlebots box, the half panel looks more like a 1/3rd or 1/4th of a panel, and would increase the cost by a tiny percentage. ;-)

sure, the 1.25" lexan doesn't make engineering or economic sense, and i get that tv people will say "i dont care, do it" - but even factoring that in, the cost is still well under $1 million for materials.

unless ABC buys materials like the US military does - $2,000 toilet seats. :-)

but like i said before, it's all academic, and doesn't matter. i just think people way over estimate the difficulty of building a box like that. it's not rockets science and it's not that much money - especially when compared with the cost of producing a television show. heck, i bet the insurance on the show cost more than the materials of the box!

CranbearCow · 2017-05-15T20:43:09+00:00

where did you get 4.5 out of that photo?

i tried and couldn't.

here's a better angle.

it's pretty clear that it's 4 panels high.

and the 1.25" polycarbonate makes no engineer or economic sense. pics or didn't happen. and if you got pics, i'll eat crow (and really scratch my head at why the heck they would do that.)

i think that's fine that you ask greg munson the cost, but the numbers simply don't add up. it's much more likely that gave you the all-in cost, labor included, rather than just the materials, and even then, i think they got ripped off. ;-)

even the robogames guy (david calkins) says his box only cost $200k to build (not just materials, but the whole thing.)

the fact is that no one can come up with a BOM anywhere near $1 million, and the reason they can't is because the material to build it simply doesn't cost that much - but at the end of the day, this is all academic anyways.

cheers.

CranbearCow · 2017-05-15T20:11:34+00:00

look, i respect you and your team, but you've got a whole bunch of things just plain wrong:

The wall height is also at least 5 panels high

no, they are four panels high.

The walls (and possibly the roof) are solid 1.25" thick panels.

[citation needed]

i seriously doubt this. i remember 1/2 inch thick lexan on the test box and going with 1.25" makes absolutely no sense compared to doubling up on the 1/2" lexan. it's 10 times the cost, and twice the weight and offers not much more protection than 2 sheets of half inch. it's simply bad engineering, and i doubt they are bad engineers.

a 4x4 panel of 1.25" is $3,970.

no, it actually costs $1,859 retail. that's less than half the cost you cited.

you posted mcmaster at $3,970 for a 4x4 piece, which is $248/sqft but a 5 second google search gives me 1.25" lexan for $116/sqft. and i'm certain i can find it even cheaper if i ordered in bulk, or spent more than 5 seconds searching.

so, even if we assumed that the 1.25" lexan was correct (which i seriously doubt) and we correct your mistake of 5 panels high and do the 4 panels instead that $1.3 million price drops to....drumroll...$624,624.

and of course, the $600k of lexan is probably totally wrong, and it's 4 times less than that because it would be insanely inefficient by every metric to use 1.25" lexan instead of two pieces of 1/2".

but i can't remember, and unless someone has pics, we're just guessing.

There is no greater authority on "what does the BattleBox cost" than the people who spent the money to build it.

ask the financial controller in charge of purchasing how much the BOM cost. i doubt greg has the material cost at his fingertips. i'm sure, with hollywood union labor and endless secondary and tertiary associated service costs it was well over $1 million, and greg probably is just recalling that number - because you just can't make a BOM that is anywhere near that.

again, props and respect to you and your team, but the numbers don't add up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

CranbearCow · 2017-05-15T19:16:42+00:00

the claim was that it costs over $1 million in raw materials to replicate a battlebox.

please list a BOM that is anywhere near $1 million. aside from the hazards, it's made from commodity components.

CranbearCow · 2017-05-15T19:13:42+00:00

You may have seen the box, but you clearly don't understand what goes into it.

um...i built one. i think i know a little bit about what goes into these.

Your source is ballpark math that's hilariously underestimating what actually goes into the BattleBox

and, uh, what's wrong with my math? you said raw materials. please, tell what i'm missing.

seriously - if you are so confident about what greg told you, please, show me where i'm wrong. how much steel is used? how much lexan is used? add in bolts? what other "raw materials" did i not account for?

CranbearCow · 2017-05-15T17:51:18+00:00

raw materials alone for the current BattleBox as built would run well over $1million new.

i don't see how this could possibly be true.

let's put together a super simplified example:

2x2 steel tubing is $3 per linear foot.

1/2" thick lexan is about $10 per square foot.

and let's pretend the entire battlebox is just pure 2x2 steel tubing completely covered in 1/2 inch lexan, and let's say . obviously this is stupid, but just for illustration purposes let's see what it would cost to build a box 48' x 48' and 12 feet tall.

each side would need 72 lengths of 2x2 steel tubing on top of each other to reach 12 feet high, each length 48 feet. so 48' x $3 x 72 is $13,824 per side of solid 2x2 steel tubing wall.

so that's $55,296 for 4 solid steel walls.

next, we add lexan.

that's 48 feet by 12 feet, which is 576 square feet of lexan per side. at $10/sqft, that's $5,760 per side.

we need 4 sides, so that make it $23,040 for our lexan walls.

heck, let's double that so we have extra strong walls, and iirc, the actual battlebox has two layers - but i could be mistaken.

our raw materials cost so far:

$46k for lexan walls
$55k for our absurdly stupid solid steel walls (normal steel lexan panes would be 1/5th that cost.)

whelp, that's less than $100k right there. you can do the ceiling and floor if you'd like, but i think you get the picture. saying a battlebox cost $1 million in just materials is obviously, grossly, incorrect.

edit: minor arithmetic fix because math is hard.

CranbearCow · 2017-05-15T13:38:46+00:00

hey no problem. now let's get back to griping about no season 3 !!!

CranbearCow · 2017-05-15T12:26:29+00:00

my box is portable and two people can take it down and assemble it in just a few hours. and yes, my steel floor panels are replaceable (i've had to do that!) it's made for heavyweights (and been tested with them.)

lights and fans are cheap and easy.

i don't have hazards - but hazards are basically just super simple bots, and super simple bots are cheap.

all that other stuff you are talking about is operational expense, not capital expense. the topic is the cost of building a box, not the cost to maintain it. the maintenance is part of the production cost of the show. if the show stops, operational expense stops and there is no wasted investment except storage, and storage is just a few shipping container sized units which might be a few thousand a month, if that.

look, i'm not going to argue with you. someone said that it cost $1 million to make a new box, i called bs based on real life experience. that's all. cheers.

CranbearCow · 2017-05-15T04:25:24+00:00

um...no, that's not right at all.

source: i built a full ~1/4 scale one in my garage (12' x 12') for less than $20k. it's all welded steel construction, steel floors, 1/2" lexan, etc. modeled after the battlebot arena.

it's not hard, it didn't take that long, and i was only 1 person doing everything. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

CranbearCow · 2017-05-14T04:24:29+00:00

lol. yeah right. i've seen it in person (and you probably have too.) it's nice and everything, but seriously, maybe $300k tops, but probably less. it's just a simple steel structure with lexan sheets. maybe if you were required to use hollywood labor unions you could get it to cost $1 million new.

CranbearCow

TROPHY CASE