AlexMuir

> Although SpaceX stock has since fallen far below its IPO price

I'm a skeptic on SpaceX but the IPO price was $135, low was $108 and current price is $130. I wouldn't say that's far below.

Your mind produced a wonderful list of rabbitholes there! Lovely job.

I've had various levels of interest, optimism and investment in crypto from 2011 (quite a lot) to now (zero). Much of its promise has been undelivered and yet it has prospered. The people that I speak to who are involved have changed from developers/entrepreneurs/tech-savvy financiers into almost exclusively deadlegs, hustlers and grifters.

At the same time, I feel like it's a race as to whether Bitcoin comes tumbling down before it's revealed that a significant amount (most?) physical cash is being printed by adversaries, and the national mints merely act as a top-up/shredding service.

I wrote this eleven years ago and it's largely proven to be accurate. https://web.archive.org/web/20160305014736if_/http://alexmui...

Feel free to drop me an email - alex.muir@boxmove.com

I wrote the logistics platform for our company - UK-based, £4m revenue. I'll be happy to have an honest chat with you if it would be helpful.

Doesn’t need to go in the ocean to be useful. You wouldn’t want to take a Rib across the Atlantic but they’re still highly useful craft.

Great question! A lot of absolute shite in the comments here. If you dream about building a factory then here's my thoughts:

Read

- Read "Faster, Better, Cheaper in the History of Manufacturing" by Christoph Roser - it's an expensive book but gives a great overview of how we got to where we are in manufacturing. From stone tools through bronze casting, Venetian shipbuilders, Josiah Wedgwood, the Portsmouth Block Mill [0] and so on.

- Simon Winchester's "Precision" is a great book too - more concentrated on the emergence of machine tools which will be your BREAD AND BUTTER in a factory.

Steam engines are irrelevant to you but the tools they drove - the lathe, shaper, milling machine are still pretty much exactly the same. Big difference is instead of a man operating them they are CNC.

To know how to make stuff, you need to be able to look at anything and have a rough idea how it's made. What materials, what processes, and then you can figure out why it's done that way. You won't find a piece of solid wood wider than about 3" at Ikea. Why? Because wider wood is massively more expensive than narrow wood.

- Materials: metals, plastics. Wood and glass are a bit niche really.

- Essential machines: the bandsaw, angle grinder, drill press, the lathe, milling machine, angle grinder, tube bender, sheet metal brake.

- Joining metal: Welding, riveting, rivnuts, taps and dies.

- Casting and foundry work, blacksmithing (surprisingly accessible)

I'd say woodworking is a terrible entry into manufacturing. I went that way because it's useful for renovations. But working the wood is a craft, and I wish I'd started with fabrication and machining.

Likewise, very little is 3D printed at scale. It's great for prototyping and looking at things - that's about it. People will argue, but go to any big-box retailer and try to find something that's been 3D printed...

Electronics: You can now build a massive amount of useful consumer electronics without needing to design PCBs. I've built central heating thermostats, wifi-controlled extractor fans, infrared break beams etc. ESP32, ESP8266 platforms are great for playing with. ESPHome is software that makes programming these devices really easy: here's an example of what you can make https://esphome.io/guides/diy - they have a list of devices they support, that's basically a list of industry standard electronics building blocks for you: https://esphome.io/index.html#sensor-components . You'll quickly realise that a lot of electronics is just the same stuff.

I'm out of time so I'm just going to throw references your way:

- Fireball Tool: Successfully set up a factory https://www.youtube.com/c/FireballTool

- AVE Boltr: Tears down tools and products with good insight into materials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY7XO5H_6HY

- Brits get rich in China - a classic following three entrepreneurs trying to setup factories in China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKP40gLmVMY

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Block_Mills

How interesting that you're on HN. We regularly travel up and down the ship canal to/from Manchester. Give me a shout if you're ever in Manchester again, I think we'd enjoy a beer.

No leeboards I'm afraid - mine is a replica Luxemotor built in 2011. I have a friend with leeboards and they are beautiful but without sails they are just ornamental and one more thing to sand and varnish!

It depends on the level of comfort you want. If you're willing to shit in a bucket and shower once a fortnight then you can do it very cheaply and it'll be acceptable. Try that in a house and there will be concerns for your welfare. If you want a bathtub, on-demand central heating, a big fridge-freezer, bow thrusters, macerator toilets and a permanent mooring with mains electricity then you'll pay much more than you would for a house. Horses for courses. But doing things on boats is fun, and inventing solutions is great.

Edit: You wanted a figure - for the sort of boat you'll find on a canal in the UK. Bottom end: buy a small fibreglass boat for £5k, pay £1k a year for your licence (many at this end don't bother. Another £1k a year for maintenance and fuel )

Top end: Buy a big boat for £300k, £2k a year licence, £6k mooring, £1k insurance, £5-10k a year in maintenance.

Also factor in that boats mostly depreciate (though the last couple of years have been an exception). If you spend £100k on a boat today, you won't be able to sell it in 10 years get that £100k back. If you fail to keep on top of maintenance a boat will rapidly lose value.

Fellow boater here - I live on a Dutch Barge. Also awake at 0530 with creaking lines in this storm. Lovely lifestyle. We registered our new baby’s address as the boat on a birth certificate last week and had no problems. Good luck to any future researcher geocoding that! I expected a postcode to be required but it wasn’t :)

I didn't but it was worth the Google https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGFtV6-ALoQ

Yes - it feels like a lot of words around a shallow amount of knowledge. I was hoodwinked there - interesting topic, unsatisfying article. I also thought the image at the top looks AI generated.

Almost everything you see is residential. And in the case of the new office blocks (the Canary Wharf shots), the developers are seeking consent for residential conversions. Playing SimCity and building only residential zones doesn't tend to work out great.

No different than a house - you don't refer to the Left Wing, but the West Wing.

I've got a picoscope and it's not something I use very often at the moment. I've not looked at tablet stuff I'm afraid. It's one of those areas that's probably moving very quickly in terms of tech. The Picoscope is probably superceded at this point too. Sorry not to be more helpful!

Drop me an email and I'll sort it out manually - mostly it works but it's not great. The app ecosystem for this isn't worth the hassle any longer and I'll retire that app when I get the new version out.

Yes - I’ll move he videos across to Mux’s native player soon and that will provide what you need!

It’s absolutely useful for that! You’ll be on a carburettor instead of injection but that’s about the only difference! The Miata really isn’t much evolved from the 60s sports cars it’s based on.

It was $20 when I first started and about three years ago I put the price to $25 because I felt like I’d made a lot of progress. That’s the last time it changed.

Thanks! When I get more progress then I'll probably increase the price but in all honesty it makes enough money to cover the production cost and that's good enough for me. Regional pricing is a good idea!

I read the caption of the photo you linked to and my ex-employer is there. Wonderful!

Private education with that sort of facility is terrific value for money.

I too had that very book as a teenager. It's a small world - when I was at uni I was hired to build a website for someone. Their friend then asked me to build them a site and I recognised their name from the caption of a photo of a couple of schoolboys on the back page of that very book. Turns out they built the car at school and went on to build an automotive company.

Lots of this stuff surprises me too. If you haven't already - check out Tim Hunkin's Secret Life of... series. https://www.youtube.com/@timhunkin1

I'm so happy to hear that. The initial 20-hour estimate was just guesswork really. I made 14 hours so far and we haven't even got through the engine, never mind the transmission, steering, suspension, fuel, ECU, brakes, and so on. Probably be more like 50 hours in the end!

This is true - I can only speak about Europe but almost no young people have feasible access to either the space or tools to do any of this unless it's their career or they have family. I wish I could solve the space, tools, and money situation but I can at least help with knowledge.

I'm great thanks! It's been an adventure and that's what life is about, eh?

Loads to do! I am working on it. I have a pot of money set aside from the sales and my plan is to hire a production company and rattle through it in one long shoot, rather than do one video at a time and then do all the production.

Yes! I have a Westfield based on the same vehicle and it's the most fun vehicle I've ever owned - even if it's held together with Velcro and silicon.

I was lucky that I chose the Miata - it was an affordable car which I wouldn't need to cut the roof off to film inside. I knew nothing about them when I picked it but it really was the perfect choice.

It's a car distilled down to its essence and that's why it's popular for kit cars and conversions. The components are tough, readily available and dirt cheap.

I honestly think I might still choose a Miata because you need to understand everything on this car to go much further. If were were to take the engine out of the equation then I'm afraid I don't know - my recent engineering experience has been with boats and diesels, rather than electric.