Components are just as crazily marked up in the U.S. I wouldn't be at all surprised that the Chinese manufacturers can get even better pricing then an individual could from a Chinese supplier due to volume.

If you want a fusion power reactor, by far the most viable fuel is D+T. You'd need orders of magnitude more tritium than is could ever be extracted from trace fission byproducts.

The idea to obtain this much tritium is to use the extra neutrons from the fusion reactor itself to breed it from lithium. This is supposedly a demonstration of that process.

So clueless.

The fact is that the trade imbalance is the largest single factor that makes the US dollar the world currency -- and also helps to keep the federal debt cheap. All of those countries that have a trade surplus with us send us lots of goods and in exchange they get lots of dollars. What do they do with them? They buy US-denominated securities, including treasury bonds. So many people and organizations around the world holding large reserves of US-denominated securities is what makes the dollar the world's default currency.

To the extent that he succeeds at "correcting" the trade imbalance, he'll undermine the dollar's status. And trying to bully countries into sticking with the dollar by threatening action that will make the dollar worth less to them is just... clueless. And that's assuming his actions to explode the debt while escalating financing costs doesn't result in enormous devaluation of the dollar, which would make it worthless rather than just worth less.

On balance I think I'm mostly glad that Trump is a moron, because if he weren't he would be really dangerous. On the other hand, if he had either a brain or the humility to listen to people who do, he might understand that he's trying to destroy what he's trying to control, and that winning that sort of game is losing. Probably not, though. He's amoral enough to be okay with ruling over a relative wasteland, because he and his will be better off.

The 1890's called, but it turns out they DON'T want their 16 hour work days back.

It's on you to present actual evidence.

That depends on the work. For maintenance, you don't care if he labors like a madman for hours a day, or if he reads a magazine all day, then takes out his wand and says "REPAIRO" with a flourish. So long as shit works.

But it DID. Better performance is a real and measurable result.

And get a lot less vacation days.

Tell that to the back to office zealots that expect 8 hr/day 5 day/week attendance.

The process of board FAB is now mostly automated. I honestly think much of the difference is that thChinese companies don't have to tithe to the toddlers of Wall Street (The yachts for tots program) so they can do it MUCH cheaper.

I would also help friends with such a thing. None of them are on /.

Others might decide to make it into a business or at least a side hustle. They could easily make some spare bux while saving their customers some money.

The OEMs wouldn't like that, but the laws are supposed to be what's good for the society as a whole and it's economy, not just what makes manufacturers the most money.

Agreed, having the CAD files is best, but since that pre-supposes having the same CAD program available, STEP should be included as well. STL can work in a pinch, but if you have STEP, you can convert to STL easily, but not the other way around.

Often, even re-producing the part will prefer a STEP file at least. Odds are, the original was designed for injection molding and will do better as a 3D print with some modifications that don't affect function but help printability.

I use FreeCAD as the base here both because I use it regularly and like it and because anybody can obviously afford FreeCAD. Solidworks, not so much.

Because the Apple Genuses are mostly trained to tell you you need a new one and help transfer the data over after you buy it. Rossman's videos are full of repairs done for vastly less tn Apple wanted and corresponding customers that chose that option. As a bonus, no lost data. The phone repair places obviously do enough business to keep the employees paid and the lights on, so while YOU may not want that option, obviously plenty of people do.

The formal labor fraud would be that there aren't enough hours in the day to be a full time employee of 4 employers at the same time. If he was doing contract work or part time, there wouldn't be much case for fraud though.

Of course, as a matter of practicality, the only real recourse U.S. companies have is firing him.

Yet somehow, FreeCAD does a decent job with the STEP files on McMaster-Carr. I've seen it import STEP files from F360 and Solidworks. Perhaps the problem is Solidworks.

It actually seems to be getting less rare now that so many companies (mostly Chinese) will happily make you a custom PCB for under $10 if you populate it yourself. The needed tools are sold on Amazon now. There are a number of instructional Youtube vids.

There are 5 places in my local area who will happily replace a screen, battery, or USB connector on my Android should I need it. The USB connector is surface mount. Apparently they are able to find people who can do it. They could probably do a lot more if they had schematics and access to firmware and test points.

Part of why it's niche is because of the difficulty in getting replacement parts and schematics. Look at Rossmann's videos. In spite of having to salvage parts and use bootleg schematics, he was often ably to repair for under $100 when Apple said replace was the only option. A nice side benefit is he could do it without data loss.

Which is my point.

Actually, it's mine. Apple should be prevented from having such a grip on replacement parts.