jonahss (u/jonahss) - Readit News

jonahss commented on Sharpie found a way to make pens more cheaply by manufacturing them in the U.S. wsj.com/business/sharpie-... · Posted by u/impish9208

jonahss · 2 months ago

One thing that China has, that the US does not is a marketplace like Alibaba. It's simply incredible how you can place an order for any component with a quantity slider that goes from "three" to "three full train-cars a day".

When starting a hardware product, it's so easy to buy small quantities at commercial prices, no questions asked.

In the US, it seems all sales is relationship-based. I need to fill out forms on bad websites, wait for emails from sales reps, who sniff out immediately that I only want a small order. The overhead for processing an order isn't deemed worth the time, and any US-based small-time project ends there.

jonahss commented on Sharpie found a way to make pens more cheaply by manufacturing them in the U.S. wsj.com/business/sharpie-... · Posted by u/impish9208

stavros · 2 months ago

> There are only a few plastic injection manufacturing companies left, and they are either fully booked or on the path to shutting down.

How does this work? How can a market have half its supply be fully booked and the other half not have enough work?

jonahss · 2 months ago

If anyone is interested, I know someone in San Francisco who built a full injection molding shop in their basement and is happy to take orders.

Also I know a 3d printer that can print molds for injection molding, and I know a guy with a set of printers who'd be happy to take orders.

jonahss commented on A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs geoffreylitt.com/2025/04/... · Posted by u/stevekrouse

jonahss · 8 months ago

I think the best part was the little video-game video of Stevens checking different datasets by walking around. Love it.

jonahss commented on The industry structure of LLM makers calpaterson.com/porter.ht... · Posted by u/paulpauper

jonahss · a year ago

These companies are not trying to be companies that sell an LLM to summarize text or write emails. They're trying to make a full Artificial General Intelligence. The LLMs pull in some money today, but are just a step towards what they're actually trying to build. If they can build such a thing (which may or may not be possible, or may not happen soon), then they can immediately use it to make itself better. At this point they don't need nearly as many people working for them, and can begin building products or making money or making scientific discoveries in any field they choose. In which case, they're in essence, the last company to ever exist, and are building the last product we'll ever need (or the first instance of the last product we'll ever produce). And that's why investors think they're worth so much money.

some ppl don't believe this cus it seems crazy.

anyways, yes they're trying to make their own chips to not be beholden to nvidia, and are investing in other chip startups. And at the same time, nvidia is thinking that if they can make an AI, why should they ever even sell their chips, and so they're working on that too.

jonahss commented on Trading cards with e-ink displays (2023) howtoware.co/wyldcard... · Posted by u/edye

piyuv · 2 years ago

> I drew inspiration from the fictional games I wished existed when I was in school, like Yu-gi-oh

Yu-gi-oh exists though, there are lots of tournaments around the world and even world championships. The game is pretty similar to the one played in the anime, if not the same

jonahss · 2 years ago

No way, the real Yu-gi-oh is played with hologram projectors and the cards have personalities. Plus the rules aren't ever quite explained.

jonahss commented on Trading cards with e-ink displays (2023) howtoware.co/wyldcard... · Posted by u/edye

NikkiA · 2 years ago

I'm sure this could be done, today, much more elegantly, flexible e-paper is available without being attached to some heavy clunky PCB, and flexible PCBs are easily do-able, you only need a fairly small/simple mcu and power the whole thing by inductive loops. I reckon you could probably get something close to the size/feel of a credit card, if not more bendy/flexible.

(you might even be able to get away with a tiny capacitance to hold enough power to reset the display to a 'back pattern' when it's removed from the inductive loop 'board', depends on the mcu I guess).

A button to update the card shouldn't be needed, you can detect it via whatever NFC you're using.

jonahss · 2 years ago

I've heard that switching to all of that will add 20-40 seconds of dead time waiting for the display to change, as the NFC transfers power to run the whole procedure. That'd be too long an interaction time with no feedback.

And of course the cost goes way up.

jonahss commented on Trading cards with e-ink displays (2023) howtoware.co/wyldcard... · Posted by u/edye

bena · 2 years ago

And that's fair enough.

The larger point of having a platform without a product still exists.

And I think this is still something where the idea is cooler than the current reality. Mostly because you can vaguely imagine the coolest version of this and you aren't being asked to put anything on the line for it.

Is there some version of this that's genuinely fun and engaging? Maybe so. The potential of non-destructive persistent changes to physical game pieces you own is pretty appealing.

Would I spend $300 for it? Hard no. Especially since the plinth has four slots, but they only give you cards in sets of three. I'd add a fourth card to the base sets and sell the cards in single units and in sets of 4. Three is really weird. It's a hot dog/bun situation.

But that doesn't even address the core issue. For the same price, I can get a game console. I can also get an Android tablet and a couple hundred NFC tags. The only thing you lose is the ability for the card itself to be a small pixelated image.

They claim they've raised $7277, which comes out to 21 base sets at $299 ($6279) and 2 deluxe sets at $499 ($998). And then he spent the last year delivering those 23 units. He claims 25 units sold, but I can't make the math work for that. 25 units at $299 would be $7475, so I'm going to have to guess that the prices have changed over the course of time. Which is normally fine, but that means the cost of these things have already gone up.

It just seems that from every angle I look at this thing, I see clear problems with bringing it to market as a viable product.

jonahss · 2 years ago

>> It just seems that from every angle I look at this thing, I see clear problems with bringing it to market as a viable product.

Yeah, the goal is to make a cool thing, and then make a fun game.

jonahss commented on Trading cards with e-ink displays (2023) howtoware.co/wyldcard... · Posted by u/edye

bena · 2 years ago

And that's fair enough.

The larger point of having a platform without a product still exists.

And I think this is still something where the idea is cooler than the current reality. Mostly because you can vaguely imagine the coolest version of this and you aren't being asked to put anything on the line for it.

Is there some version of this that's genuinely fun and engaging? Maybe so. The potential of non-destructive persistent changes to physical game pieces you own is pretty appealing.

Would I spend $300 for it? Hard no. Especially since the plinth has four slots, but they only give you cards in sets of three. I'd add a fourth card to the base sets and sell the cards in single units and in sets of 4. Three is really weird. It's a hot dog/bun situation.

But that doesn't even address the core issue. For the same price, I can get a game console. I can also get an Android tablet and a couple hundred NFC tags. The only thing you lose is the ability for the card itself to be a small pixelated image.

They claim they've raised $7277, which comes out to 21 base sets at $299 ($6279) and 2 deluxe sets at $499 ($998). And then he spent the last year delivering those 23 units. He claims 25 units sold, but I can't make the math work for that. 25 units at $299 would be $7475, so I'm going to have to guess that the prices have changed over the course of time. Which is normally fine, but that means the cost of these things have already gone up.

It just seems that from every angle I look at this thing, I see clear problems with bringing it to market as a viable product.

jonahss · 2 years ago

So, the goal was to build a devkit so that I could use it to develop my own game. I wanted the physical things to exist, so that I could try it out with people and find out which interactions are fun, vs which aren't.

Well the internet liked the idea, and saw some of the same promise in it that I did (plus HN is a sucker for e-ink). With all the interest, and people asking how they can get their hands on one, I ran a crowdfunding campaign to make devkits for everyone who wanted.

Turns out making 25 of something is way more work than making 2 of a thing. The supplier changed the display firmware on me, I had to make things to more exact measurements so parts were interchangeable, I had to write docs and make videos, etc etc. Took a whole year.

Now the pressure is off and I don't owe people products after they gave me money for them, so I can take a break to clear out my backlog of minor projects, then get onto designing my own game, using my own devkit :)

Once I have an actually fun game, I could increase volume and bring down the costs. My goal is to make the game accessible for $80. I'll need the e-ink price to come down a little, and use injection molding instead of resin casting and wood. Plus the base won't need a Raspberry Pi, that's just for my quick iteration. Final product will need to be embedded.

(Almost all the devkits sold were to friends and family, with only a few going to actual game designers. CrowdSupply itself puts in an order for more units along with the campaign, so that they can stock them after the campaign ends and initial delivery is over. Except they negotiate a different price for those because the margins work differently)

jonahss commented on Trading cards with e-ink displays (2023) howtoware.co/wyldcard... · Posted by u/edye

bpiche · 2 years ago

I live here too. I'm biased, but 1) this place is not full of awesome engineers, it's mostly full of overworked contractors and newbies with eighth grader syndrome. And 2) you can't just walk up to them and ask them to explain everything about their project. That's a huge security issue and if it were true it would be a lot easier to social engineer places today. Not to say that it isn't possible, but this comment paints an unproductive, idealized, and inaccurate view of the bay.

edit: it is a very cool e-ink project, and there are some cool communities like the maker faire. Reflexively reacting against the generalization

jonahss · 2 years ago

I didn't mean people who work at Uber explaining how their load-balancing works.

I meant walking up to a super cool music visualization at an outdoor art festival and they guy there happily explaining to me their entire system built out of a node flow diagram implemented on Max but adapted to visual graphics using a plugin called Vsynth.

Or going over to a friend's house and seeing their modular synth system and they happily explain to you how it works for an hour.

Just this weekend I met an amazing engineer with a street-legal steam-powered motorcycle which he patiently explained for an hour.

jonahss commented on Trading cards with e-ink displays (2023) howtoware.co/wyldcard... · Posted by u/edye

awinter-py · 2 years ago

looks like there is still a pcb within the enclosure?

not sure exactly how e-phoretic screens are driven, but I wonder if you could remove the controller entirely? have just a loose eink screen with a zif that you pass around

like this thing is 0.25mm thick https://www.adafruit.com/product/4262#technical-details

jonahss · 2 years ago

The pcb on the card is just a charge pump that the display demands in order to regulate its voltage. If I shipped that off the card and onto the base, I'd need more contacts.

Those flat flex displays are awesome, though way pricier. Then I'd lose the nice stiff pcb board which allows all the contacts on the back to mate. I could go wireless, but then the power delivery needs to charge a capacitor and the delay between button press and display refresh will go to 30 seconds or beyond