China's SMRs - small modular nuclear reactors. These are in rapid development, and are going to be the first commercially sold and mass-produced portable nuclear power stations. Going to revolutionize world energy. Imagine all of the global south's power needs satisfied.
this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2024
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Democratic Germany produced a brand of glassware named Superfest. Through an innovative production process it was eight times harder than other types of glass making a Superfest glass very hard to break.
Planners in democratic Germany believed Superfest to have great potential as an export since it was superior to competing products. It turned out they were wrong, western distributors of glassware were not interested in selling their customers a glass that lasted and reduced the need to buy replacements. Following the annexation of democratic Germany the organisation tasked with dismantling Democratic Germany's industrial economy, the Treuhand, shut down the plant and abandoned the patent.
And that's why we can't have durable pint glasses under capitalism.
Fun fact, those glasses are very similar to the gorilla glass that we use on phone screens
I saw a tiktok recently where a group was trying to revive Superfest as drinking glasses. No idea is it went anywhere.
Tale as old as time. (Time = post ww2)
Just like the instapot.
Why make it good when you can make it shit?
Man I want some of these
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Bicycles are pretty fantastic in how they allow you to travel further and faster than walking with only a couple of wheels and sprockets
In the assumed lifespan of nigh everyone on this here website chapo.chat, so since about the 80s, bicycle tyres especially have made insane heaps and bounds as per durability. The Schwalbe Marathon or Gatorskins are basically unkillable unless you drive a nail through them by chance but even the durability level 1 of 5 stuff is so much less prone to punctures than even stuff from the early 2000s and without necessarily feeling like riding brick over sandpaper
V-Brake brakepads have also gotten very, very good if you know what to buy and it's not even really the expensive stuff
Dynamo tech with the hub dynamo and then especially paired to LED lights are also a godsend from turning a bicycle light into "you can be seen and safely ride at walking speeds" to "just fucking bomb down this pitchblack road with" and again, this isn't like the expensive stuff from lezyne or whatever, it can be had on the cheap.
E-Bikes! My god what a revolutionary thing E-Bikes are, yet what potential wasted by dumbass laws and urban planning still.
The Schwalbe Marathon or Gatorskins are basically unkillable unless you drive a nail through them by chance but even the durability level 1 of 5 stuff is so much less prone to punctures than even stuff from the early 2000s and without necessarily feeling like riding brick over sandpaper
That was my number one reason for ditching bikes. I hated riding to a place and then walking home 12 km because I'd somehow gotten another flat.
Also riding on the footpath because I'm a slow cyclist and didn't feel safe riding with cats or other cyclists
To get retro, the question wasn't posed about new tech in sepcific, I'll add to say an internal 3 speed hub is magic so god damned nice. Especially one of those old bikes where the whole thing was made in 1 factory, they're like riding on butter.
E bikes are not my thing so far but seem to be the smart thing and opposition is blatant racism.
Low-end coffee hand grinders have gotten a whole lot better in the last 15 years or so.
Many years ago I bought what was a widely recommended coffee hand grinder made by Hario. It had a ceramic mill. It's frustratingly slow and tedious.
Got a Timemore like two years ago, which has a stainless steel mill and they added some teeth into the mill design, which does sort of a rough shredding of the beans before they go into the lower fine milling, which makes this super fast and quite low effort. Takes less than a minute per cup. It's also prettier and just better designed in every way when compared with the Hario. According to reviews the resulting grain consistency is pretty good and it can go quite fine, fine enough for espresso even, though I wouldn't know anything about that.
The home coffee game really has massively evolved in recent years. For a long time a Rancilio Rocky and Silvia were your way to producing a sort of crappy home espresso. Now there's too many options to name, and the affordability floor keeps coming down with higher and higher quality products. The Legato / Apex has a feature set rivaling machines three times the cost.
Got a 1Zpresso that I use for everything from espresso to French press. Perfect grind at any fineness
What... You mean I can't talk about docker and all the services I self host that make my life nicer? 👎
I tried to get a Docker container working once and I couldn't get it and just gave up on it =(. Maybe I need to try it again one day with a different container, or trying it on Linux (it was the Windows version).
Oh yeah, on Linux its much easier and every guide/blog you see assumes that's what you're doing.
The way China has incorporated drones into daily urban life is pure scifi. Like, the drones are just consumer electronics, but I'm also talking about the infrastructure that goes into making sure you can actually support thousands upon thousands of drones. The drones themselves should be seen as part of city infrastructure in the same way a bridge or a street lamp is as well.
How are drones incorporated into everyday life? I've spent a lot of time there and never seen them.
There is a vaccine for the common cold for babies. Its not a vaccine, its antibodies. Which is what you get from a vaccine.
And there is a malaria vaccine. And an Ebola vaccine.
And fuckin a: vaccines.
modern tubeless tires are fucking magic. I drove a screw into my fucking bike tire and not only did my tire self seal around the screw and leave a tap to unscrew it, but when I did unscrew it my tire fucking healed itself.
I need a pair of shoes like that
Hydroponics. Requires some setup but once it's in place you have plants growing while consuming up to 90% less water than traditional agriculture, and it's easy to make the whole system totally passive so that the only labor inputs are putting in new plants and harvesting old ones.
It also turns out that some plants really benefit from being grown hydroponically - put them under a grow light and in a greenhouse and you can grow multiple times as much produce on the same parcel of land while consuming less water and fertilizer to do it.
It's a process that can be scaled up industrially, but because of the high upfront cost it's fairly rare, the most mature industrial greenhouses are those in The Netherlands. Once a farm has made the transition there are logistical advantages to hydroponics as well - a farm can stagger grow times to have consistent smaller harvests instead of one or two massive harvests, making staffing and income more consistent.
Not every plant can be grown this way, but those that can absolutely should. Especially in places like California where I live, where we have the financial and technological ability to do so and our environment would greatly benefit from reduced water use.
Can you fit a current-day hydroponics rig for 'personal use' into an apartment? A lot of why my partners and I are trying to stick out a house for as long as possible is access to land we can grow herbs and veggies in; but having a way to do it in an apartment would be a considerable weight off my shoulders regarding a potential downsizing.
You could definitely put a grow light and a dutch bucket in a closet. My home setup started at about $100 and consisted of some white buckets with holes drilled into them (it's way more expensive now but that's cuz I bought a greenhouse, solar panels, space heater, a big battery...).
Ive yet to have a hydroponic tomato that tastes like anything
idk if it counts as technology, but cookbooks have gotten waaay better.
Speaking of cooking, I'm not sure when these came out, but the newer type of can opener that cuts the lid from the side so it sits on top of the can instead of falling in is great. I think I just happened to get one around 10 years ago when a friend moved and gave away a bunch of stuff. I almost threw it out because I thought maybe it was broken (I was using it incorrectly).
Every time I'm in a friend's kitchen and we open a can with the old style, it makes me want to get them one because the older style is harder to use.
How?
Very old cookbooks would tell you to cook food until it was done.
Old cookbooks would make assumptions about your skills and not explain what julienne was. Also a lot of volume measurements.
Modern cookbooks will frequently have instructions on the techniques they require, with images, and measure everything in mass units. It's a smoother experience.
Seems like a waste for every single book to explain julienne. Like 20% of you shelf space will be repeated in each book.
Maybe I'm telling on myself here but most people don't have so many cookbooks this is a problem, it's better for people who're trying to get into cooking
Trains: specially maglevs. To be kind of honest I’m a massive technophobe especially after feeling like I’m too stupid for STEM, but there are some tech I fully appreciate.
Prosthetic limbs: I don’t have any, but it’s pretty cool seeing how far medicine has come.
A lot of medical breakthroughs are very fascinating
Seeing advancements in green energy is always nice. For example, I really like Quebec’s hydroelectricity and hydro-quebec seems to be something they’re proud of. Makes my Ohioan yank ass very jealous.
I wish I was good enough for STEM, because working on some of these technologies does sound sincerely fascinating
Hydro Quebec and the North American hydro infrastructure generally are built on fucking over the indigenous residents of the land though. HQ in particular kept flooding sacred indigenous lands to make reservoirs, sometimes starting the projects without warning and sometimes breaking treaties to do it.
How to self-troll:
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Be north american
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Find something somewhat cool about north america (Cuba being the exception)
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Find out it’s a vehicle for colonial violence.
The technology of zea mays (corn). It was intentionally genetically engineered from the non-food Teosinte. I do not think the process by which this happened is currently understood by the collective of science. Then it formed a part of the Three Sisters. Unclear if this was part of the plan all along.
I read about it in 1491. New Revelations Of The Americas Before Columbus By Charles C. Mann which is largely about technology and changed the way I think about the concept.
And lets give it up for chemical dye. It's pretty cool. Also dyeing with indigo is a totally other thing, also very cool.
intentionally genetically engineered
No, it was domesticated
Do you have any specific info to share or just an opinion? Based on what?
I understand sea mays is different than the development of other grains because the original plant was not food. Corn is a totally different organizism, not just a more suitable variety. Specific traits that were not previously present were introduced.
An interesting example is maize (corn). Biologists have discovered that maize was developed from a wild plant called teosinte. Through traditional breeding practices, humans living thousands of years ago in what is now Southern Mexico began selecting for desirable traits until they were able to transform the plant into what is now known as maize. In doing so, they permanently (and unknowingly) altered its genetic instructions, allowing for new traits to emerge. Considering this history, we might ask the question: is there really such a thing as “non-GMO” maize?
Through traditional breeding practices, humans living thousands of years ago in what is now Southern Mexico began selecting for desirable traits until they were able to transform the plant into what is now known as maize.
the bit I bolded is the key difference. genetic engineering is the new technology distinct from just breeding, it requires specific technologies. while the creation of maize is an impressive achievement, it wasn't "genetic engineering".
I like the super-flexy rubbery ice cube trays where you can just push the cubes out through the bottom into the glass without touching them. Ice cubes in the fridge door are fine, too.
Silicone kitchen stuff is amazing. I have one of those trays and love it. I also just got a bunch of silicone ziploc style bags that are great.
Electric micromobility vehicles (e-bikes, e-scooters, e-unicycles, etc) are sort of consumer electronics, but they're still pretty great. The range and speed are much more able to cope with horrible suburban sprawl than an ordinary bicycle so they're more viable as car replacements for more people.
The CSIRO made a thing called RAFT that can sequence polymers however you want and it can help with everything from bank notes to vaccines. It's amazing stuff and needs to be known about more
I saw a prototype of a new type of single-thread chainstitch sewing machine. It has a swiveling part that twists the loop before the hook catches it, supposedly making it as resistant to unraveling as a standard lockstitch. There are probably good reasons why the inventor still hasn't attracted capital (or maybe shady anti-competitive ones?), but I'd still love to play with the prototype
edit: my bad it's actually a two-thread chainstitch
CNCs are like the peak of substractive manufacturing and they get no love here 😞
3d printers are also cool stuff
I always perk up around microbiology. I never went past my Associates, but it doesn't keep me from getting giddy on stuff involving algae.
Continuous blood glucose monitors and insulin pumps.
Drugs against high blood pressure.
Canes really help a lot of people.
I saw Porsche is prototyping a gear driven CVT. There's a YouTube channel that was given a prototype to explain the engineering, really cool stuff.
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