From what I gathered from the article, one of your problems is that you didn’t understand the economics before you launched, and therefore your pricing was disconnected from the true costs. Next time, try to anticipate these by breaking down the various input factors (material, machine wear, design time, desired profit margin, etc). You may get an answer that convinces you it’s not worth it before you invest time.
I way under-estimated how long it would take to actually design something. I did a cost breakdown ahead of time on printing time + materials, but at that time the designs were simple, just text.
As things advanced, we had people ask for logos, and recreating them is really what took time.
There is still one lever here, and that was to increase the price to make that design time actually worth it. If I had to continue, that's what I would have done, but I was still losing my weekends and my free time was just more valuable.
Lots of places charge a separate fee for the design aspect like this. Printing prices will stay the same as the time + materials is consistent, so that's what you charge the client. However, since you're having to do the design part, that's where you come up with a different pricing scheme. I've been in multiple places that had similar concepts that kept things somewhat sane.
This business ran from summer '24 to late winter '25. I looked at the time for AI generation tools, but things were pretty hacky then, and the general card stand shape had a lot of features built into it for better printing and assembly. I spent an weekend trying to do 2d to 3d on a pic of my Greyhound, and never got a 3d image that didn't have a glaring problem with it.
The one real optimization here, would be a tool that converts a logo into a multi-color print. There are some solutions like HugeForge that use height maps, or hacks you can do with an svg to convert it to an STL (shape) file, but I never found one that works. As with all this generation stuff, the killer is really the details: if things don't look good and you don't have an easy way to edit it, it's never going to work for the customer. Tracing is also just one step in the process, you still have to position it on the card stand and set up the multi-color print. That said, for complex logos, SVG -> STL might make sense.
I'm convinced I could vibe code something over the weekend that takes a logo, maps it to a set of colors using some sort of segmentation, then export that as a series of STL files that can be imported into Bambu Studio (or orca slicer) and then mapped on to a card stand.
If someone is looking for a project, an end to end "make a coffee table coaster from an image" would be a great web tool (or even CLI). Especially if you could enter the number of colors (or colors you have), modify the generated traces, and and export as a single 3MF file you can import into your slicer. That's complicated, but probably do-able in a few days.
FSD is great for me, although I mostly use it on the highways. But 90% of my driving is FSD now. It can be more conservative for my tastes with street driving
That’s conspiracy thinking. The absence of your question being addressed doesn’t mean it’s plausible. The ocean is generally a noisy place, and the activities of a small submerged vehicle likely won’t raise notice without active listening.
What's the conspiracy? That Coast Guard officials declined to say any more than is necessary?
Yesterday the Coast Guard spokesman [0] said he hadn't even heard the notion that the banging noises were made at regular 30-min intervals, even though Rolling Stone published a leaked DHS report the day before [1], something which completely dominated the news coverage and gave people hope that there were survivors. When directly asked about most anything, the officials frequently demurred. Giving out the least amount of info necessary is their standard operating procedure, not a conspiracy
> That's adorable. Meanwhile, the entire article circle is melting and fermenting.
yeah this guy is right. if we can’t fix it in a single swift stroke, it can’t be fixed. (i just gave myself a headache from rolling my eyes so hard.)
think of it differently, at least for a few seconds. what is significant change if not lots of small changes measured cumulatively? lots of individual people wanting gas for their cars contributed to oil companies (and others) polluting for profit; why can’t individual changes also contribute to a solution?
Also, doing a small thing personally can increase your commitment to the issue.
If you find yourself doing something you think people collectively shouldn't do, you work to excuse yourself. This is classic cognitive dissonance. It is unpleasant and makes you angry and cynical. If you find yourself doing the right thing in your own eyes, you improve your opinion of yourself and you may want more.
And the people who are still doing nothing and dealing with cognitive dissonance accuse you of virtue signaling, as though this, whether or not it is true, is a greater sin than whatever they remain defensive about.
It's part of a narrative to blame consumers for causing climate change, meanwhile industry pollutes far more. The pollution reduction per unit effort is much higher if you focus on heavy industry.
> It's part of a narrative to blame consumers for causing climate change, meanwhile industry pollutes far more.
True, but "ignore personal action and rail at industry" is part of another narrative that is probably still less effective at changing industry.
If you find a polity where consumers are not taking individual action to address climate change, you will find it is not applying more pressure on industry or politicians than a polity where consumers are taking individual action. If you attack the individuals who are taking action, you are attacking the political base that would support addressing climate change. Convincing them that their efforts are pointless, silly, and perhaps just vanity or arrogance, does not empower them. Industry is not quaking in its boots at the prospect that people will accuse all the composters and recyclers of virtue signaling and hypocrisy.
I agree with you but it shouldn't be overlooked that industry makes shortcuts which are disastrous for the environment to pad their margins very slightly so the executives can get a bonus.
The crux of the problem is the costs we allow to be externalized and the arduous legal process involved in getting a small fraction of the real damages paid. You shouldn't need a lawsuit to make a company pay for every penny of damage they did.
Significant change is global infrastructure level changes, like no longer needing to commute to work. Changes that individuals really can’t control. Your point is bad because most people and systems will not act until they feel the negative effects, so a few million people carefully composting might allow them to keep behaving irresponsibly for a few days.
Look at the relationship between the size of cars being sold and gas prices. Any slack your individual efforts introduce into the system will get chewed up by someone else.
I suspect the new normal of not requiring test scores has at least as much to do with university admissions feeling more free to mold their incoming classes without the pressure of maintaining a ranking stat (test scores).
I never understood the pressure for highest SAT average. There are way more people with lower scores who want an education, and they don't want to go to a school where they have the lowest "aptitude" or preparation.
I want to play professional basketball with players of extremely high aptitude but I’m 5 foot 7 and can’t shoot or dribble. Somehow the Bulls aren’t interested in me
My utility (SCE in the US) has traditionally had consumption based progressive tiered pricing for years (monthly basis). Recently, they have been pushing consumers to time of use pricing though (higher rates at peak time of peak consumption). So, consumers can adapt.
reply