In 5 years, either $400,000 or $50 and a hammer, depending on whether the core piece of the process aligns with the needs of some fast-growing consumer tech product like e.g. drones.
I was referencing my own realization earlier today, when I was wondering if I can DYI a ground-penetrating radar to scan the allotment garden for hidden "surprises". A ground-penetrating radar is something I learned about as a kid watching a popular science videotape, back then a stupidly expensive high-tech piece of professional equipment.
But it hit me that there are two main forces keeping such technologies stupidly expensive and inaccessible to general public over time: costs of knowledge that went into their design (protected by patents and trade secrets), and specialized parts made in unique way or from unique materials, that don't happen to have alternate applications.
Nowadays, knowledge is not an issue - 20+ years is enough for all the relevant patents to expire, and information to have seeped through to the Internet, available in a combination of Wikipedia articles, textbooks, scientific papers, and blogs, plus we have good LLMs more than happy to synthesize that and transform into a DIY tutorial for dummies.
Which leaves the parts. Whether or not you can DIY such a tech really hinges on whether you can find the critical components somewhere. If they're still unique, you're paying $$$ for procurement (and it makes more sense to try and score broken/used equipment off eBay or something). But there's a chance there's a close equivalent that's part of mass consumer or prosumer device, at which point you just buy it and strip it for parts.
(Which way it is with ground-penetrating radars? Don't know, didn't bother to prompt an LLM with that question yet.)
Radar is cheap now, thanks to semiconductors getting smaller and faster the analog front-end which used to be a long expensive chain of components is now much smaller, the ADC is now faster, more accurate, and cheaper, the processor is now fast enough to keep up with a higher bandwidth signal. You could probably drive a very rough radar system directly off a Pico's GPIO and ADC, maybe toss in a decently fast op-amp for a receive amplifier.
Where you will run into issues is processing radar signals into usable data. If you're happy with the results that radar was giving 30 years ago then it's fine and dandy, but the magic of modern radar is in the software, not the hardware.
Someone I know has developed radar hardware, specifically around signal processing, and while they couldn’t say much, my impression from them was that due the very large amount of data involved using off the shelf CPUs would be very limiting, which is why his job for a period of years was developing a design to be put on an ASIC which is significantly more effective at the task.
The more difficult part will be RF licensing. You'll probably need a ham radio license to get started that's somewhat near a band where you can acquire a commercial typerated license... but under no circumstances you can just go and try shit out unless you want to risk serious fines from your local authorities.
I thought it was a joke about inflation - the US is now trying to print its way out of debt as yields are soaring. This is the very beginning of how hyperinflation usually starts.
This position basically advocates that a substantial part of civilization becomes impoverished. There is not enough capital available to replace everything powered by diesel, let alone all of the other petroleum products.
On the contrary, the energy is free from the sun once the panels are up. There is sufficient capital, please prove your assertion that there isn't with citations.
The world is on an energy sovereignty trajectory. You will not be beholden to petrostates, you will be beholden to the great fusion reactor in the sky.
Sure. But we would need solar powered trucks, in quantity. (Or electric, same effect.) That takes capital beyond the solar panels.
Electric trains are a thing. Stringing catenary over all the mainlines in the US is not cheap.
Electric airplanes? Large capital outlay.
Electric ships. Electric river barges. Electric farm tractors.
There is far more than just putting up solar panels to generate electricity. The electricity may be free once the panels are up. That doesn't mean that we no longer need diesel - not until much more changes.
You see what you want to see. I am sharing objective facts and data. Low carbon energy economics are better, oil is dead, these are facts, it is what it is. If you think you can make oil cheap again, go for it, let us know how it goes. No one is going to make it cheap for you, it is economically irrational to do so.
The solarisation of Pakistan’s energy economy - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/the-solarisation-of... - June 25th, 2026 ("Pakistan deployed 27GW of distributed solar deployed in just two years, the same as all the operating coal, gas and oil plants built in Pakistan ever.")
It is you who sees what you want to see. I am pointing the reality of impoverishing a significant amount of civilization as a result of removing a critical part of the world's infrastructure.
My observation is your opinion is one from people who are completely isolated from the rest of civilization.
This is childish thinking, because as adults we have the ability to reason.
Those living near impoverishment and experience large increases in price or complete unavailability of critical infrastructure will then become impoverished.
Oil, notably diesel, is critical infrastructure for everyone not living in a pure state of nature or off the grid.
For example, the one at [0] regularly sees bendy buses[1] traverse it without any issues. The trick is that there's an outer ring of asphalt and an inner layer of paving stones: cars the asphalt as it is far more comfortable to drive, but longer vehicles like buses and trucks can let their rear wheels ride over the raised paved area as well.
And yes, it works the same when they are completely round instead of oval - this just happened to be the first clear example I came across.
These don't work in the U.S. as everyone fantasizes they do.
An important note: in the U.S., the vast majority of jurisdictions permit making a right turn on a red light, and some, including the state of Oregon, permit making a left turn onto a one way road from a red light. In high congestion areas, such as here in Las Vegas Valley, many drivers will not fill a right lane at a red light when they are not turning right as a courtesy to those needing to turn right at the intersection.
During commute hours, everyone disobeys all laws to get home or get to work. When there are regularly spaced roundabouts on a long stretch of road, drivers get exceptionally impatient and will drive at the performance limits of the vehicles, late-braking like they are F1 drivers. This ends up grouping all of the drivers into a very solid wolf pack who will not stop for anyone and will speed through the roundabout, making it impossible for pedestrians and drivers other onramps to enter the roundabout.
The vast majority of drivers do not know how to use the roundabout, as is evidenced when they enter from the left lane of a two-lane road and use the exit lane that is only marked for use from the right lane. Americans who know how to use the roundabout respond to this by habitually stopping at the roundabout entrance when they see a car in any lane entering the roundabout at high speed, which is most vehicles. Then the drivers behind the stopped vehicle think the stopped vehicle is driven by someone who doesn't know how to drive on a roundabout and begin honking incessantly or attempting to illegally pass the stopped driver.
Henderson, Nevada provides many such examples of this. Most interesting to me is that parts of the town have nearly identical roads that are served by either only traffic signals or only roundabouts. My experience is that the roads with traffic signals have far fewer issues than the roads with roundabouts.
I've definitely seen roundabouts that were a downgrade. Primarily these have been placed on rural highways where the cross road just had a stop sign before, which was good enough for the light cross traffic and did not impede the primary road the way a roundabout does.
The statistics and my experience disagree. Those stop signs lead to a lot of people blowing through them at high speed and plenty of deaths, especially in the dark.
Every time I find myself on one of the roads that has a series of roundabouts, I have to maneuver at least once to avoid getting into an accident with a driver who has no idea how to drive through a roundabout.
Especially with heavy traffic, the traffic all slows down, a lot, from the section before the roundabout. Everyone is always in a hurry, so likely 10-25 MPH over the recommended speed (not the speed limit) for the roundabout, and all of them are at a 6 foot following distance.
You are playing with death to step into that. It's no joke. You end up effectively waiting for the upstream light to turn red so traffic can clear and you can cross.
The only solution I've thought of is to put a large grocery cart full of paint buckets at the roundabout for pedestrians to push into the crosswalk without risking their own lives.
This is true if you can alter the properties of the physically existent universe, else it is not true, and, indeed, drivers do not even slow down largely because they feel frustrated when traveling along a road with a 45 MPH speed limit at an average speed of 20 MPH.
It would be nice if one the myriad projects to modify the HN feed would produce a feed of recently resurrected submissions and comments.
Flagging a submission into dead status makes it unvotable until resurrected (by a moderation team member, usually Dang, whom I am sure is buried and it's kind of a miracle to me they are able to get to such requests). This is usually a long enough period of time to place the submission so far back in the queue that it will never receive another upvote.
*currently
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