wonder what the 'industry' thinks in this regard. also leery about how the 'Nannie state' believers would consider this: Nannie over nuthin' or nothing Nannie about unnecessary risks?

it is disturbing. just the tangle of extension cord thing shows how institutionalized this fear, or known risk, has been installed into the public. would reasonably assume this is traceable to having been taught in schools. echoed also in many ads, manuals, etc. although have difficulty understanding why putting inexpensive safeguards would be a bad thing?

but have always believed it's easier to change systems than people. am joining the Nanny crowd.

[also think BSR's advice is worth noting. maybe when the speaker starts in w/the technical jargon, a smaller window opens with a 'normal' person translating the message. i.e. "wire gets damn hot" or "could shock the crap outta yah". maybe not so perfectly clear, but succinct and truthful.]

I think there are 3 real issues with 3D printed guns that are genuinely new dangers worth being concerned about.

1. They completely avoid background checks.

2. They're untraceable to a gun seller.

3. They could lead to relatively inexpensive and unregistered fully automatic weapons.

It does seem that plastic guns are not worth worrying about because they're so terrible. But, metal shaping CNC Mills aren't that expensive and can do a decent job of printing guns at home.

I can't really buy the argument that no one will be interested in printing out machine guns because of the existing criminal penalties. If someone is planning a murder or bank robbery or terrorist attack, they're already expecting a life sentence if they're caught. And, even if they plan to get away with it, a gun that can do the job really well, has no history to trace, and can be destroyed or disposed of right after could just make the crime easier to get away with.

Regardless of the numbers, I certainly love the idea of replacing expensive medical equipment with super-inexpensive medical equipment for places that don't have access or can't afford the expensive stuff. Bravo!

Actually, the load shift problem has been solved. You use a dual reservoir small hydro system, pumping water uphill with surplus daytime power and generating it on demand. It takes space, but is relatively inexpensive and is essentially a near maintenance free battery that's as big as your reservoirs and pumps.

If you are a Seattle resident, and I know some of you are, I recommend visiting Future Vapor in Capitol Hill. The owners are all about reaching that 0% nicotine level, and will hook you up with what equipment you need for the budget you can afford. I can't praise these guys highly enough.

If you are not in the area, you can get a decent starter kit and a popular e-juice from mtbakervapor. They are a reliable and relatively inexpensive ecommerce outlet.

That said, if you don't smoke period, don't start vaping. Don't be a tool. Life is hard enough as it is without giving yourself one more fiddly-assed thing to worry about.

If these are polyethylene or polypropylene, they are both highly hydrophobic in their pure form and water will not wet the surface of these materials. Given their color these are obviously not from pure polyolefin streams, so could perhaps be more hydrophilic, but it's very hard to get a PE or PP substrate to totally wet out even with high loadings of traditional fillers and reinforcements. Some folks have asked why they are black... which is indeed odd and perhaps not conducive to minimizing evaporation... and I can only imagine that the source of the polymer used to make these could be a scrap stream as they would be wanting to keep costs low, and in comingled streams the ultimate color is often dark - black, deep blue, browns etc. - when the stream is extruded and pelletized. If money was no object and they had to go with balls, then black would likely be the last choice, not the first (white - well loaded with inexpensive TiO2, or in some future universe... reflective silver!) Have fun.

I recall this being a thing about 20 years ago ish. It came in handy once when my friend lost her key on a ride we went on.

From Wikipedia

Until 2004, Kryptonite locks used the tubular pin tumbler locking mechanism. In 2005, after it was demonstrated that some tubular pin tumbler locks of the diameter used on Kryptonite locks could easily be opened with the shaft of an inexpensive Bic ballpoint pen of matching diameter, Kryptonite changed their locks from the tubular to a disc mechanism, preventing the use of cylindrically-shaped objects to defeat the locking system.

Emo meets SF.

It's a nice job of inexpensive world building, and the visuals do a great tone-setting job, but I was expecting some kind of plot development for 15 minutes.

As an interesting parallel; my dog started losing his hair. I went online to figure out the cause and learned a lot of good information. Food sensitivity causes canine hair loss, corn based diets are bad for dogs, large inexpensive name brands use suspect ingredients...there were tons of forum discussions available with information. Pages of talk with people's experience trying to correct the problem. Inevitably, they fed the dog such and such terribly expensive food and the problem went away...then the manufacturer must have changed the formula because it came back...tried new ultra expensive dog food which fixed the problem....

Everyone obviously loved their dogs and they were doing everything they could to fix it. Same story over and over, tons of money spent.

Until I noticed one random comment that was different; "seasonal pattern baldness". Nothing you can do, it's incurable and comes and goes with the seasons.

So all the anecdotal experience, one food fixed it then the brand changed and it came back...all of it was random chance as the problem naturally came and went. But when the answer was provided, you can't fix the problem, it was completely ignored.

I believe people reject that they can't control things in life. Isnt this what makes people reject science and turn to naturalism and religion? The idea that you can reshape the world, in your own mind, into something you can control.

This is unbelievable. In this video some PEOPLE are stopping some other PEOPLE from giving food to hungry PEOPLE. Did they get so obsessed with their shiny blue uniform that they forgot that they were people with freedom to choose whether to let hungry people eat or not?

I feel like if i'd been one of the police there, i'd have had a sudden existential crisis - what the fuck have i been convinced to do here? I'm here in an authoritative capacity to stop desperate, hungry people from getting access to food. Shit, i'd have tried to organise a mass human shield around them.

I think everyone should take 5 seconds and just think exactly how this came to pass - from the law being written by the guys we endorsed, right down to the chain of command commanding these people apparently raised to obey orders unflinchingly - and then collectively feel embarrassed about it.

Sure, this may have been avoided if the proper 'housing'(?) could be arranged and it may have been inexpensive, but did it really fucking need to when it was going more smoothly than anything the government could have arranged?

People think of self-driving cars as something we'll have in the future. With systems like adaptive driver assist, they are pretty much already here. Hell some cars even steer for you. It'll take a generational shift before people are comfortable in cars they aren't driving but I suspect we'll be seeing automated vehicles in action before long, especially in commercial space. Once people realize just how much more safe they will be, it'll really catch on. Eventually the idea of a vehicular accident will be nearly unheard of.

This is a future that is already becoming a reality, and it will arrive with inexpensive electric vehicles driven by a competitive revolution started already by Elon Musk.

John Oliver is wrong.

Yes, some supplements (say, the milk thistle found in Rockstar Energy Drink) are just snake oil. But other supplements have clinical effects, such as St. John's Wort (http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/st-johns-wort) for minor depression and, arguably, glucosamine and chondroitin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trials_on_glucosamine_and_chondroitin)

Here's the thing though - if the FDA regulates supplements in the same way they do drugs, the price of supplements would go through the roof. It costs 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS to get a new drug approved by the FDA. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/01/24/shocking-secrets-of-fda-clinical-trials-revealed/)

So the supplements market provides a very useful alternative, something that John Oliver simply doesn't understand. You can either pay ten bucks for a 300 pack of St. John's Wort, or you can pay ten times that amount for the FDA approved antidepressant, Zoloft.

The sad truth is that the FDA really does overregulate the drug market, which is one of the major reasons health care is so fucking expensive in this country. John Oliver lives in magical fairly land where regulating supplements would come with no cost, but in reality regulating it would just close down the only inexpensive drug system we have in the world.

Scientific studies do exist for supplements (I read through the studies while my wife was at UCSF Pharmacy School taking their mandatory alt med class), and if you do your research, you can distinguish the snake oil from the supplements that have real effects.

Get me started on pretentious children's names ....Lets share, shall we??

From bad to worse with three ratings, 1 being wannabe beat generation, 3 being, the only cure for you is checking-into a bar fight for some inexpensive therapy and the only hope for your kids being foster homes with white supremacist lesbians.

It's a contest people, submit entries below

1 g Sky, b Helms
2...

What blows me away is we have gone from goods being expensive, 1-off, completely custom items, to inexpensive, mass-produced, one-size-fits-all items, to inexpensive, 1-off, completely custom items.

A 1930s hand crafted wind up watch -> a Timex quartz watch -> a self-designed, 3D printed, wind-up watch that looks identical to the 1930s handcrafted one.

I wasn't suggesting going to war with 22's-I was merely pointing-out the efficacy of an inexpensive, readily available all-purpose round that will never go out of style for small game hunting should the grocery trucks ever stop rolling....

My suggestion for preparation for the coming invasion-occupation??

To parents of newborns:Teach them Mandarin, it will serve them well as the new world unfolds-Oh, and definitely do what albrite30 suggested and purchase real estate: It's what every able-bodied, bouncing, banking Chinese national is doing with their worthless paper....China owns us, and they work on a 1000-yr-plan, unlike the United States, with our "see how this goes" 250-yr experiment.