12 ms·

Simplifier

291 points by adrianN 6y ago

severine 6y ago
Be sure to check the About and Materials pages before you dismiss the site. Fascinating! https://simplifier.neocities.org/about.html https://simplifier.neocities.org/about.html https://simplifier.neocities.org/materials.html https://simplifier.neocities.org/materials.html
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  There's always the anecdote about USA not being able to rebuild some sixties nuclear bombs because some styrofoam manufacturer had gone out of business and nobody knew what the foam contained. This is an interesting subject. If you're building something very critical, you need to track precisely where your components come from, where the material for those comes from, where the raw materials came from etc. This is also one of the reasons why nuclear power or medical technology are so expensive. We have gotten used to having extremely low cost hardware, but that is because it's produced by obscure long subcontractor chains spreading all over the world, intense competition, constant optimization and churn.
  - tyingq 6y ago
    More detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK I believe it wasn't exactly styrofoam, but was rigid and low density. This suggests probably an aerogel: https://www.lanl.gov/science/weapons_journal/wj_pubs/17nwj2_09.pdf https://www.lanl.gov/science/weapons_journal/wj_pubs/17nwj2_...
    - sterlind 6y ago
      it's interesting to me how classified FOGBANK was, despite being apparently just an aerogel. I wonder why they couldn't replace it with something off the shelf.
      - tyingq 6y ago
        Probably just "that's what was certified and tested, probably with actual nuclear explosions we're not allowed to do again".
  - petra 6y ago
    Yes, electronic products are highly optimized. But I'm not sure I agree that using more generic components should make the technology so expensive.Especially if there was a demand for that. So using a versatile mcu, with lots of ram/flash, dual-core(big/little) for low power, and a rich set of peripherials, together with some affordable fpga, and some greenPak programmable gellybean logic, and some voltage conversion parts could be good building blocks for digital electronics. As for Analog, programmability exists too, in the form of via-programmable analog chips(laser programmable at the factory, I think for volumes of few thousands). That still doesn't cover high-performance parts but that would fit many projects. As for power electronics, I don't know much about that, but I do wonder.
marsknight 6y ago
Thank you! This is very interesting! <3
stanrivers 6y ago
As someone who finds most things at least a little bit interesting, this is pretty awesome. Love seeing someone doing what they love to do and sharing it.
mrfusion 6y ago
From the site: > Fundamentally, my work here is about creating a stable foundation of technology that is reliable, understandable, and practical for an individual to build for themselves. As of writing this, I believe I have done this on a conceptual level, but I intend to continue this work to the highest level of technology that I can achieve on my own. I encourage readers to utilize anything here which they find practical for whatever purpose they see fit, and to consider adopting a mindset of simplification in projects of their own.
mettamage 6y ago
Ha! This is coming from the second chance pool! I was there when I upvoted this article. Apparently, not many people go to the second chance pool, since today I didn't even know how to access it. IMO, it's at least as interesting as the actual front page. Go to /lists to see all the options or /pool directly to see the pool. Greetings from a fellow enthusiastic HN'er :)
genghisjahn 6y ago
I’m amazed at how clean and neat most of this stuff looks. The telephone (with light bulbs and wall switches) is really cool but it’s also very neat as in well made, uncluttered. Everything I try to build like this might work, but it’s ugly with tape,glue, torn cardboard and jagged cuts all over. I’m impressed with the build and the build quality.
ArtWomb 6y ago
+1 for the minimal, HN-friendly design ;) Actually have some light PVC plumbing work on the agenda this afternoon. And the research, as per most projects, involves an amalgam of downloaded product manuals, improvisation and youtube tutorials. And yes, a myriad of specialty products, fittings, tools and treatments. I see tremendous need for a resource like this. "How To Make Anything". Using what you have at hand. Readable on a phone with cellular internet. Great work and will surely inspire some wonderful projects!
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  > +1 for the minimal You used it correctly. The term minimal has been hijacked to mean something entirely different these days. It often means “I’ve thrown away important bits so the design looks sexy, I can list it on SiteInspire and get kudos from my friends for following too much white space and anti-functionalism trends”. > HN-friendly design We need to own this. When newcomers, youngsters and uninformed people want to be inspired, they’ll instead see this as “Old fashioned, grumpy, nerdy HN-friendly design”. There, we killed it already. That said - This web design has some short comings. For me the legibility is compromised by using a fixed width typeface, line-spacing is too tight and paragraph column width is too large.
  - teucris 6y ago
    While I generally agree with your sentiment, I did want to point out that you lambast the minimalist movement for adding white space, then critique this site for not having enough white space.
  - chapium 6y ago
    > "I’ve thrown away important bits so the design looks sexy" "Important bits" is just about as subjective as "looks sexy", is it not?
- rsync 6y ago
  "Actually have some light PVC plumbing work on the agenda this afternoon." I used to have that item on my agenda all the time ... and then I just started buying sharkbites and putting things together like Legos. It's not a solution for every plumbing and irrigation task I have - I still do find myself using PVC solvent from time to time ... but long gone are the days when I had to connect two pipes that were sort of off axis from each other and out of plane and how in the world will I put together 3 45s and 2 22.5 elbows to somehow make that connection. Get yourself a roll of PEX (Uponor is the nice stuff) and some sharkbites and these jobs get really easy ...
Scene_Cast2 6y ago
This really reminds me of "the old internet", where stuff like this felt like a higher fraction of content that surfaces to my attention. These days, something like this is a rare find.
- marttt 6y ago
  The Wiby [1] search engine / rabbit hole collects "old internet" sites like this one. 1: https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/
  - minnehaha 6y ago
    cool. time travel on the internet.
spiritplumber 6y ago
this is what i want the web to look like sometime. quality content, zero load time....
dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
From the "about" page: > No matter what skill I intended to learn, I found that its permanence had been eroded by the chaos of technology. Materials were replaced by brands, techniques replaced by accessories, and craftsmanship replaced by consumerism. Clearly, this was something that needed to be fixed. Clearly, this is what I had to do.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  > "No matter what skill I intended to learn, I found that its permanence had been eroded by the chaos of technology." I find this particularly correct. There are some technologies and/or things which are very simple, yet very hard to improve upon. Incidentally, these items are very durable too. Double edge razors and fountain pens come to my mind. Yet, these technologies and items are thrown away or forced to obsolescence just because they don't produce the profits today's corporations seek. I think it's a very sad outcome. One can say that modern razors or writing implements doesn't have similar disadvantages of vintage counterparts, but the contrary is also true. Not all modern technologies supersede older ones flawlessly, and older ones still had distinct advantages. Same is also valid for computing technologies, both in hardware and software side. Because of this reality, I find this kind of documentation projects very valuable and important. We need to address permanence of knowledge as soon as possible. It's a very hard problem, but we can start somewhere.
  - GrumpyNl 6y ago
    For example , controls in car, a few knobs and buttons will do, they are always there.
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      Yes, physical controls are also good and useful. IIRC, Ford has a simulator just for testing these controls in the cockpit. They design and implement a cockpit, mount it to the simulator and run some scenarios like animals crossing roads or someone braking hard in front of you. I drive a 2001 focus, and all controls can be operated so-called blindly. I can do anything (HVAC, hazards, lights, etc.) without moving my eyes from the road. I think it's very important.
phailhaus 6y ago
This is so hard to read. The font size is so small that the serifs make it cluttered, monospaced fonts are terrible for readability, and it's hard to read successive lines since they span the whole width of the page. I think it's ironic that other commenters praise this as "HN-friendly", when HN itself uses a sans-serif proportional font at a reasonable size, limited width and margins for legibility, and background color to reduce contrast.
- caslon 6y ago
  12px monospaced is really easy to read. The problem is not the website in this case. The website is fine. Consider pressing CTRL+ a few times if it is too small for you in particular.
  - phailhaus 6y ago
    It's pretty well known that monospaced fonts are harder for reading prose.[1] Why do you think that no books are ever written that way? [1] https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/48777 https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/48777
    - caslon 6y ago
      I actually have at least three books on my shelf right now that have monospaced fonts! Pre-TeX computer/engineering books tend to be that way. Monospace is legible, and 12px is a great size for web content.
      - phailhaus 6y ago
        It's just not very convincing given that basically no site, even the one that you're on right now, uses monospaced fonts for prose. By putting every character on a grid with each getting the same weight (even punctuation!), it makes text harder to skim.
        caslon 6y ago
andrewmcwatters 6y ago
A side note, this may be quaint to us in the developed world, but this sort of thinking separates impoverished nations from developing ones, which is a fascinating anthropological topic.

291 points by adrianN 6y ago

Be sure to check the About and Materials pages before you dismiss the site. Fascinating! https://simplifier.neocities.org/about.html https://simplifier.neocities.org/about.html https://simplifier.neocities.org/materials.html https://simplifier.neocities.org/materials.html

Gravityloss 6y ago
There's always the anecdote about USA not being able to rebuild some sixties nuclear bombs because some styrofoam manufacturer had gone out of business and nobody knew what the foam contained. This is an interesting subject. If you're building something very critical, you need to track precisely where your components come from, where the material for those comes from, where the raw materials came from etc. This is also one of the reasons why nuclear power or medical technology are so expensive. We have gotten used to having extremely low cost hardware, but that is because it's produced by obscure long subcontractor chains spreading all over the world, intense competition, constant optimization and churn.
- tyingq 6y ago
  More detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK I believe it wasn't exactly styrofoam, but was rigid and low density. This suggests probably an aerogel: https://www.lanl.gov/science/weapons_journal/wj_pubs/17nwj2_09.pdf https://www.lanl.gov/science/weapons_journal/wj_pubs/17nwj2_...
  - sterlind 6y ago
    it's interesting to me how classified FOGBANK was, despite being apparently just an aerogel. I wonder why they couldn't replace it with something off the shelf.
    - tyingq 6y ago
      Probably just "that's what was certified and tested, probably with actual nuclear explosions we're not allowed to do again".
- petra 6y ago
  Yes, electronic products are highly optimized. But I'm not sure I agree that using more generic components should make the technology so expensive.Especially if there was a demand for that. So using a versatile mcu, with lots of ram/flash, dual-core(big/little) for low power, and a rich set of peripherials, together with some affordable fpga, and some greenPak programmable gellybean logic, and some voltage conversion parts could be good building blocks for digital electronics. As for Analog, programmability exists too, in the form of via-programmable analog chips(laser programmable at the factory, I think for volumes of few thousands). That still doesn't cover high-performance parts but that would fit many projects. As for power electronics, I don't know much about that, but I do wonder.

marsknight 6y ago

Thank you! This is very interesting! <3

stanrivers 6y ago

As someone who finds most things at least a little bit interesting, this is pretty awesome. Love seeing someone doing what they love to do and sharing it.

mrfusion 6y ago

From the site: > Fundamentally, my work here is about creating a stable foundation of technology that is reliable, understandable, and practical for an individual to build for themselves. As of writing this, I believe I have done this on a conceptual level, but I intend to continue this work to the highest level of technology that I can achieve on my own. I encourage readers to utilize anything here which they find practical for whatever purpose they see fit, and to consider adopting a mindset of simplification in projects of their own.

mettamage 6y ago

Ha! This is coming from the second chance pool! I was there when I upvoted this article. Apparently, not many people go to the second chance pool, since today I didn't even know how to access it. IMO, it's at least as interesting as the actual front page. Go to /lists to see all the options or /pool directly to see the pool. Greetings from a fellow enthusiastic HN'er :)

genghisjahn 6y ago

I’m amazed at how clean and neat most of this stuff looks. The telephone (with light bulbs and wall switches) is really cool but it’s also very neat as in well made, uncluttered. Everything I try to build like this might work, but it’s ugly with tape,glue, torn cardboard and jagged cuts all over. I’m impressed with the build and the build quality.

ArtWomb 6y ago

+1 for the minimal, HN-friendly design ;) Actually have some light PVC plumbing work on the agenda this afternoon. And the research, as per most projects, involves an amalgam of downloaded product manuals, improvisation and youtube tutorials. And yes, a myriad of specialty products, fittings, tools and treatments. I see tremendous need for a resource like this. "How To Make Anything". Using what you have at hand. Readable on a phone with cellular internet. Great work and will surely inspire some wonderful projects!

systemvoltage 6y ago
> +1 for the minimal You used it correctly. The term minimal has been hijacked to mean something entirely different these days. It often means “I’ve thrown away important bits so the design looks sexy, I can list it on SiteInspire and get kudos from my friends for following too much white space and anti-functionalism trends”. > HN-friendly design We need to own this. When newcomers, youngsters and uninformed people want to be inspired, they’ll instead see this as “Old fashioned, grumpy, nerdy HN-friendly design”. There, we killed it already. That said - This web design has some short comings. For me the legibility is compromised by using a fixed width typeface, line-spacing is too tight and paragraph column width is too large.
- teucris 6y ago
  While I generally agree with your sentiment, I did want to point out that you lambast the minimalist movement for adding white space, then critique this site for not having enough white space.
- chapium 6y ago
  > "I’ve thrown away important bits so the design looks sexy" "Important bits" is just about as subjective as "looks sexy", is it not?
rsync 6y ago
"Actually have some light PVC plumbing work on the agenda this afternoon." I used to have that item on my agenda all the time ... and then I just started buying sharkbites and putting things together like Legos. It's not a solution for every plumbing and irrigation task I have - I still do find myself using PVC solvent from time to time ... but long gone are the days when I had to connect two pipes that were sort of off axis from each other and out of plane and how in the world will I put together 3 45s and 2 22.5 elbows to somehow make that connection. Get yourself a roll of PEX (Uponor is the nice stuff) and some sharkbites and these jobs get really easy ...

Scene_Cast2 6y ago

This really reminds me of "the old internet", where stuff like this felt like a higher fraction of content that surfaces to my attention. These days, something like this is a rare find.

marttt 6y ago
The Wiby [1] search engine / rabbit hole collects "old internet" sites like this one. 1: https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/
- minnehaha 6y ago
  cool. time travel on the internet.

spiritplumber 6y ago

this is what i want the web to look like sometime. quality content, zero load time....

dmitryminkovsky 6y ago

From the "about" page: > No matter what skill I intended to learn, I found that its permanence had been eroded by the chaos of technology. Materials were replaced by brands, techniques replaced by accessories, and craftsmanship replaced by consumerism. Clearly, this was something that needed to be fixed. Clearly, this is what I had to do.

bayindirh 6y ago
> "No matter what skill I intended to learn, I found that its permanence had been eroded by the chaos of technology." I find this particularly correct. There are some technologies and/or things which are very simple, yet very hard to improve upon. Incidentally, these items are very durable too. Double edge razors and fountain pens come to my mind. Yet, these technologies and items are thrown away or forced to obsolescence just because they don't produce the profits today's corporations seek. I think it's a very sad outcome. One can say that modern razors or writing implements doesn't have similar disadvantages of vintage counterparts, but the contrary is also true. Not all modern technologies supersede older ones flawlessly, and older ones still had distinct advantages. Same is also valid for computing technologies, both in hardware and software side. Because of this reality, I find this kind of documentation projects very valuable and important. We need to address permanence of knowledge as soon as possible. It's a very hard problem, but we can start somewhere.
- GrumpyNl 6y ago
  For example , controls in car, a few knobs and buttons will do, they are always there.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    Yes, physical controls are also good and useful. IIRC, Ford has a simulator just for testing these controls in the cockpit. They design and implement a cockpit, mount it to the simulator and run some scenarios like animals crossing roads or someone braking hard in front of you. I drive a 2001 focus, and all controls can be operated so-called blindly. I can do anything (HVAC, hazards, lights, etc.) without moving my eyes from the road. I think it's very important.

phailhaus 6y ago

This is so hard to read. The font size is so small that the serifs make it cluttered, monospaced fonts are terrible for readability, and it's hard to read successive lines since they span the whole width of the page. I think it's ironic that other commenters praise this as "HN-friendly", when HN itself uses a sans-serif proportional font at a reasonable size, limited width and margins for legibility, and background color to reduce contrast.

caslon 6y ago
12px monospaced is really easy to read. The problem is not the website in this case. The website is fine. Consider pressing CTRL+ a few times if it is too small for you in particular.
- phailhaus 6y ago
  It's pretty well known that monospaced fonts are harder for reading prose.[1] Why do you think that no books are ever written that way? [1] https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/48777 https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/48777
  - caslon 6y ago
    I actually have at least three books on my shelf right now that have monospaced fonts! Pre-TeX computer/engineering books tend to be that way. Monospace is legible, and 12px is a great size for web content.
    - phailhaus 6y ago
      It's just not very convincing given that basically no site, even the one that you're on right now, uses monospaced fonts for prose. By putting every character on a grid with each getting the same weight (even punctuation!), it makes text harder to skim.
      - caslon 6y ago

andrewmcwatters 6y ago

A side note, this may be quaint to us in the developed world, but this sort of thinking separates impoverished nations from developing ones, which is a fascinating anthropological topic.