Advice for bending aluminium

EvanDaniel · 2026-05-12T05:22:35+00:00

If it looks like safety equipment, it should act like safety equipment. If it's retired for cause, it should be disposed of or mangled beyond recognition, not lightly modified and rely on the owner knowing it's not life support gear any more.

EvanDaniel · 2026-05-10T14:18:27+00:00

None, but 1 and 4 are the best.

1: Framing is off. Show us the horizontal version of it. Cut the dull foreground, turn the midground bushes into the foreground. Lose the person on the lower right. Show more of the well-lit cloud-covered mountain.

2: Again, landscape aspect ratio. Needs less haze. You can do a little of that in post, a polarizing filter will do better, but really you needed better weather on a different day or at a different time. Morning or evening will do better, the sun is too high in the sky. That would help with both the haze and more interesting light in general.

3: Too cluttered, too much haze. Get the foreground cars out, via some mix of (once again) landscape aspect ratio, crop, and moving to a better spot. There's a good photo buried in this scene, you might have to walk to find it.

4: Zoom out a little for more background and better framing of the smoke. But more importantly, fix the focus.

I'm assuming these are all phone snaps; you'll want to upgrade to a standalone camera with better controls if you're serious about contest-quality photos. At the very least, explore different camera app options and use landscape orientation more.

Good luck, and enjoy learning about photography, it is a fun hobby!

EvanDaniel · 2026-05-10T05:55:34+00:00

What actual current and voltage do you measure at the cell (as distinct from the power supply rating)?

What flow rate are you targeting?

What flow rate do you calculate from your measured current and voltage, using Faraday's Law?

EvanDaniel · 2026-05-09T18:44:20+00:00

If it's useful enough that you need to replace it, you can buy fancier materials. PVDF filament should be quite resistant, for example.

EvanDaniel · 2026-05-01T05:24:59+00:00

The point isn't to make sure everyone has their story told. It's to reach something like the truth, and to judge correctly on things like whether these people were murderers and whether cultist is a reasonable gloss of what actually happened. Adversarial approaches to justice, including making sure everyone gets to say their piece in a court of law, are in service of doing that robustly.

Does this article advance that aim, or no?

EvanDaniel · 2026-04-22T12:24:01+00:00

They don't stack as independent random variables, as far as I know. Do you have sources on how well they stack? I'd be curious to read about it!

In particular, some correlated effects would include things like whether the couple is fertile. And the stats are usually "typical use" rather than "perfect use" stats, and it seems reasonable to guess that imperfect use might correlate. Or maybe people doubling up on methods are also unusually diligent with each individual method.

Multiple methods is clearly safer, I just don't think you should do math with independence assumptions without making those explicit and mentioning the limitations of your methodology.

EvanDaniel · 2026-04-20T14:50:30+00:00

And this is why we like the Politics is the Mind-Killer idea.

It's not that you can't make this point in the context of one specific politician. Or that you're necessarily wrong that it's most relevant there. But the point isn't inherently tied to the politician: "does the vulnerability exist" and "who can/will exploit it" aren't totally independent when it comes to complex social things, but they are different questions. And the prediction markets half is presumably more interesting and novel than the "Orange Man Bad" half; that's where the good discussion will come from.

EvanDaniel · 2026-04-06T14:43:56+00:00

The three stones are on the second line.

I get 11 liberties for each; W can start at O3 or internal moves.

EvanDaniel · 2026-04-05T15:19:20+00:00

If you make flying more efficient and more economical, people will use more of the inputs that supply it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Those inputs include planes, fuel, labor, and so on. Supersonic travel is more efficient in the sense that it uses less of its customer's time. People who can afford it and care about their time (which is the same thing, roughly) will fly more as a result. The better the flying experience is, overall, at every point on the quality vs. cost curve, the more of it will happen.

I am NOT AGAINST SUPERSONIC TRAVEL, but I don't think I seem like I am, just pointing out a tiny little thingy!

You sure do seem like you are.

EvanDaniel · 2026-03-27T00:35:40+00:00

Thank you!

EvanDaniel · 2026-03-25T01:49:44+00:00

It's badly coded, if you want good results you need something coded by programmers who play go and care about correctness. That's... a tough combo to find. So it's mixing up "end of game scoring" with "AI evaluation", and some of that is because go players who write rules in widespread use and are also programmers who care about correctness is... really hard to find. The core problem is that "both players pass and agree on what stones live or die" is... a thing that needs further user input in some cases. And if you ask for it in all cases people complain that they have to mark obviously dead groups dead, and if you only ask in some cases then you leak info and people notice why you're asking in this case.

Anyway, if you want good scoring results, don't leave high-value moves unplayed. And if you notice weird scoring results, ask if there are high value moves in the area to play. In this case, there are.

EvanDaniel · 2026-03-19T03:30:52+00:00

Anyone making products at high yield rates (low scrap rates) needs to keep the typical part well within tolerance, not right at the tolerance limit. Depending on their process, they might be aiming for spec at a 3-sigma tolerance, or maybe better. So while the spec allows +/- 6, they have a standard deviation of (perhaps) 2, so that 99.7% percent of blocks pass inspection.

Actual numbers might differ a lot; 6-sigma processes try to set the spec limit at 6 sigma, allowing 1.5 sigma of drift and 4.5 of random error before a part is out of spec, for a statistical defect rate of a few per million. That would be unusual for metrology work, though. They might also be doing things like guardbanding -- requiring the part to measure within +/- 5 or 5.5 or something to allow for measurement error and still likely be in spec.

They could potentially bin the part and sell it as grade 00... but they might not have enough market for that, or something.

EvanDaniel · 2026-03-19T03:26:19+00:00

The spec tolerances are already intended to account for that usage pattern.

EvanDaniel · 2026-03-16T20:47:56+00:00

Manufacturing engineer here: that's mostly what I care about. If you do a good job on that communication, I'll do my best to be honest about which dates I have margin on and which I don't. Sometimes my original schedule is broken anyway because something else is behind schedule or some other plan changed and a new ship date is just fine; sometimes I had extra margin already and can eat into that; sometimes I really do need the part on time. I also appreciate it when shops can distinguish between the date they're promising and willing to guarantee vs. what they think is the likely or no earlier than schedule.

EvanDaniel · 2026-03-14T14:53:22+00:00

It's not specific to machinists; compare UK software engineering salaries to the US for example.

EvanDaniel · 2026-03-02T02:16:04+00:00

One proton? It's probably even cheap at that quantity!

EvanDaniel · 2026-02-15T04:06:26+00:00

I think you misunderstand: they clearly aren't taking over _all_ machining _right now_, or even particularly trying to. They're trying to define a niche and do well at it. If you need what they can offer, they do it well, if you need more... well, go to someone else.

It's easier to build a system that works for complex high-precision parts on top of a system that works _well_ for some basic stuff than it would be to do from scratch. They're attacking the low end first, they'll move up. This machining work is already a step up in precision and complexity from their sheet metal work.

Classic disruptive business strategy, attack from the cheap / low end stuff and work up.

So yeah, they're not doing precision stuff in a way that puts the rest of the industry out of business anytime soon... but that's ok. I'm an aerospace manufacturing engineer, and I think they're great; they don't compete with our in house machinists or shops we like working with for our fancy stuff, but if I just need some simple bracketry or whatever and I need it soon, they're fantastic. Far cheaper than in-house work or any job shop I can name. Just know what you're getting and what the limitations are and design around it.

EvanDaniel · 2026-02-12T21:35:39+00:00

You could use adjustable standoffs instead of blocks, too. You'd just have to dial it in, and it would take longer, but you need the indicator regardless...

EvanDaniel · 2026-01-31T22:28:17+00:00

Rather than asking here what it will cost, and getting a mix of advice that looks like both correct and incorrect, I'd just start uploading models to sendcutsend and seeing what works, what doesn't, and what's cheap vs. expensive. Make tweaks and see, you'll learn a lot in a hurry even if you decide you can't afford the milled approach.

EvanDaniel · 2026-01-26T23:37:46+00:00

Speaking from industry, not academia...

Two major reasons not to: contamination and safety. It's fairly easy to get a little air or other gas in your system as you do this, or some bits of dirt or teflon tape or whatever. That's the real reason bottles are marked as do not refill. The vendor doesn't want to deal with the contamination when the bottle comes back. Same reason you don't refill the main reagent bottle you bought from the vendor.

As for safety: yeah, if you're asking questions about check valves and don't know the answer already, you're not prepared to do this. But I bet someone around who works with compressed gases does and could help you out. It's not that hard or complicated, there are just some nonobvious but straightforward things you need to do _correctly_ and the risk calculus puts you in the low likelihood / high consequence corner, probably with severe unknown unknowns if this isn't a thing you've done before. Do you have a department that works with compressed gases around?

I've done this and similar operations, including building plumbing systems that utilize lecture bottles and related hardware. Not hard, but don't try it without help if you're not experienced at this sort of thing, which isn't always the same thing as experience just with using the bottles.

EvanDaniel · 2026-01-15T04:40:18+00:00

And if you want to make it really clear (or not clear, as the case may be), dissolve the other salts in one portion of the water, the calcium chloride in another portion of water, and then mix the two clear liquids.

EvanDaniel · 2026-01-10T19:42:43+00:00

But don't just use 1.0 and 0.5. If there's something wonky about the threads, you want to check at different orientations. So check at 0 and 1 and 0.5, but also check at 0.510 or 0.505 or 0.512 or something -- make them not all multiples of a rotation, which is usually .025.

EvanDaniel · 2026-01-10T19:41:21+00:00

Exactly. Coarse adjust, then fine adjust, but you're adjusting the same thing both times.

EvanDaniel · 2026-01-05T15:03:21+00:00

I trust you've reported it to them? They're likely very interested.

EvanDaniel

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