Hackaday Links: June 17, 2018

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Do you like badges? Of course you like badges. It’s conference season, and that means it’s also badge season. Well good news, Tindie now has a ‘badge’ category. Right now, it’s loaded up with creepy Krustys, hypnotoads, and fat Pikas. There’s also an amazing @Spacehuhn chicken from [Dave]. Which reminds me: we need to talk about a thing, Spacehuhn.

On the list of ‘weird emails we get in the tip line’ comes Rat Grease. Rat Grease is the solution to rodents chewing up cabling and wires. From what we can gather, it’s a mineral oil-based gel loaded up with capsaicin; it’s not a poison, and not a glue. Rats are our friends, though, which makes me want to suggest this as a marinade, or at the very least a condiment. The flash point is sufficiently high that you might be able to use this in a fryer.

[Matthias Wandel] is the guy who can build anything with a table saw, including table saws. He posts his stuff online and does YouTube videos. A while back, he was approached by DeWalt to feature their tools in a few videos. He got a few hand tools, a battery-powered table saw, and made some videos. The Internet then went insane and [Matthias] lost money on the entire deal. Part of the reason for this is that his viewers stopped buying plans simply because he featured yellow power tools in his videos. This is dumpster elitism, and possibly the worst aspect of the DIY/engineering/maker community.

Elon Musk is the greatest inventor ever. No scratch that. The greatest person ever. Need more proof? The CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and our hearts has been given the green light to build a high-speed underground train from Chicago O’Hare to downtown. Here’s the kicker: he’s going to do it for only $1 Billion, or $55 Million per mile, making it the least expensive subway project by an order of magnitude. Yes, Subways usually cost anywhere between $500 to $900 Million per mile. How is he doing it? Luck, skill, and concentrated power of will. Elon is the greatest human ever, and we’re not just saying that to align ourselves with an audience that is easy to manipulate; we’re also saying this because Elon has a foggy idea for a ‘media vetting wiki’.

There are rumors Qualcomm will acquire NXP for $44 Billion. This deal has been years in the making, with reports of an acquisition dating back to 2016. Of course, that time, the deal was set to go through but was apparently put on hold by Chinese regulators. Now it’s the same story again; there were recent rumors of Qualcomm buying NXP, and the story was later changed to rumors. We’re waiting for an actual press release on this one. It’s just another long chapter in the continuing story of, ‘where the hell are all the Motorola app notes and data sheets?’

16 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: June 17, 2018

  1. ” It’s just another long chapter in the continuing story of, ‘where the hell are all the Motorola app notes and data sheets?’”

    Which will be worse if Qual-NDA-comm get’s ahold of them.

  2. 1. Matthias Wandel: It’s not dumpster elitism, did you watch the video you linked? He understood exactly what happened, and explained it. He specifically said in the video that he was making a sponsored video, and people thought that he was on Dewalt’s payroll. Because of that, people who were supporting his work and buying his plans specifically to support him tapered off because they saw he had a sponsor that was bankrolling the projects.

    Notice he never said that he dropped subscribers, or video watches, he just lost the personal ‘sponsorships’, because those ‘sponsorships’ saw that a big name had stepped up to do what they were doing, so they fell back. To me, that’s economics.

    2. Elon Musk is a pretty typical inventor. He’s spectacular coming up with ideas. This makes him a great inventor. But his implementation holds a lot to be desired. For starters, this whole “model ___ production hell” they do with every new model shouldn’t happen. every line needs tweaks and adjustments, but if pre-production planning is done correctly, production hell doesn’t occur.

    1. 1. Exactly this- he never blamed his supporters, nor should they be blamed. Furthermore, he mentions that he didn’t go through the proper procedures for releasing the sponsored videos, so he lost out on even more revenue. All that said, I hope he’s able to regain many of his supporters, since he does really cool work.

  3. Elon musk can make it cheaper because for him this is an investment. When the transportation system will be in function his company will have a share of the sales profits. Like any investor he but money in front for profit later.

      1. For a couple of months I’ve been adding capsaicin oil to my birdseed to discourage squirrels (birds are oblivious to it). It used to work quite well, but recently I’ve seen the squirrels (somewhat gingerly) munching away on the laced seeds. Humans can develop a tolerance for it, so I don’t know why rodents wouldn’t also.

  4. Elon Musk is by far not the greatest human ever. He might be a skilled businessman and showman. However, might stand on the lower scale of integrity : Was it him that declared that Earth would become inhabitable because of CO2, so we have to make Mars habitable by removing the CO2 from it’s atmosphere ? :-)

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