I saw a similar design theme on Dan Brown's personal site recently and was wondering if it was one of those trends to feed off nostalgia or just a coincidence
https://danb.me/
While watching I was comparing the entire build to 3d printing. More specifically the process knowledge gained doing this in CAD and then 3D print vs handy making parts from PVC.
He had demo videos on how to build similar applications. From what I understand the first cohort was made up of people from all manner of professions, notably consulting, finance, academia, manufacturing etc.
I knew it was only a matter of time before we see clones offering this as a service. To put it mildly, some even went as far as copying his code verbatim and using it to launch such services without acknowledging his effort.
One major downside of releasing content and open source code is the handful of users who copy and paste for commercial use without giving credit.
All of a sudden there's a wave of "chat with pdf" youtube videos using my exact content, diagrams and images.
I subscribe ťo the same service and I find it pretty handy. There's no way to stop the incessant junk mail so it helps me filter what needs prompt pickup and the junk that can stay a couple days before I check the mailbox.
The world is such an odd and funny place now. My 2007 Toyota Avalon Touring drives pretty well with none of those 'trinkets'. The utilitarian value of a car seems to be an outlier to a lot of people these days.
I wonder if we'll be able to get back to the place where products we manufacture will span decades and commands good value.
Electric cars in my opinion should have fewer points of failure but here we are, hankering for adornments.
I personally find it quite refreshing to see accessible hardware projects showing up once again. The ensuing discussions are full of nuggets and somewhat esoteric recommendations that always draws me down the rabbit hole where I end up discovering a lot of things I wish I could visualize when I was much younger.
It's only a matter of time, there's gonna be physical casualties at some point in time. We've all seen it in the movies. Experts have warned of the dangers of tethering vital utilities controls to the internet.
Is it not possible to develop protocol or device that operates outside of the web but functions like the'two-man' rule used to launch nuclear bombs?