I hate to point this out, but it’s 2026.

Everything else is great though.

This was at CES, it’s basically one massive advertisement for trendy bs. Most of the american firms represented were there for AI and wearable tech, since the push for consumer robotics is mostly a dying fad in the US and AI is the hot new thing.

It super does though the specific characteristics vary depending on where it was extracted (iirc crude from the canadian oil sands is borderline explosive)

Okay the sentiment is fine but what in the fuck is this template??

Yeah, there’s tons of plans out there for DIY helicopters you can get from the hobby aviation community. Usually the sticking point is making the rotor blades themselves, but I’ve seen some people get off the ground with carbon-fibre laminate blades. Not sure I’d trust them personally but it does work.

Oh, I love how rabbit-holey metallurgy can get. One of my favorite topics is the processes used to cool hardened gears that have to be ground. Keeping the temperatures below a certain point so that they don’t lose the temper is surprisingly difficult even with external flood cooling (or working fully submerged), so you wind up with insane looking profile cutters that have cooling lines built into them directly.

Also the techiques to monitor the diameter of abrasive grinding tools get wild, like monitoring the capillary pressure of the coolant spray and similarly insane feats of precision.

Industrial high precision lost-wax usually has a mold made from many layers, often either done in traditional monlith casting frames (big slabs of cement or plaster or casting sand or etc) or formed by dipping the parts into various cement slurries (a bit like a candle. The first few layers are generally a low-additive “print coat” made from ceramics akin to porcelain (that won’t react with the material being cast), and then for strength they’re bulked up with thick layers of stuff that usually has been bulked up with sand and recycled shells of precious castings that have been crushed down.)

It’s a fascinating process.

Oh lol, mixed up you and bizarroland.

No, but metallurgy isn’t a straightforward peocess like they were kinda implying. Gears, especially extremely high performance ones like in aerospace, have partial hardening, surface treatments, even exotic things like mixed alloys to ensure they meet the mechanical demands required of them. You can’t simply cast a gear and expect it to work - in this case if you tried as they were describing you’d likely just have the teeth shear when you tried to take off and you’d be fine, but there’s a real good reason that part costs as much as it does and it’s not just the administrative costs that come with aviation part documentation requirements.

Casting itself is fine for many applications, and advanced casting techniques are incredibly complicated and suitable in one form or another for many applications, but not all things should be cast.

Discover that 3d printing can’t meet the precision requirements and cast metal won’t meet the mechnaical requirements, gear shears, make peace with your fate, fall from sky onto local orphanage’s annual puppy adoption drive.

Its a casserole.

SMCF is trollin’ as usual and this one really seems to have landed.

Yes, those are all great points that make up a good portion of why they should probably revisit the design.

While noble, that was a tongue in cheek diminutive and I was including myself in that category.

Wildly appropriate username here. Also, 100% correct.

5.6 - 9 - 5.6
hip - waist - bust

If it’s good enough for girls it’s good enough for phones

It slightly does me, given that the Air was (apparently) a huge commercial flop. You’d think they’d revisit the soundly mocked design instead of recycling it, or at least change it? The renders may very well be overstating it, of course, but still it’s an odd feature to carry over.

But it’s not stupid thin, it’s got a giant lump on it?

The marketing about it being an incredibly thin phone was a misstep - it just looked absurd to have such a chunky lump stuck onto it, and it felt very much like they were attempting a have cake / eat cake situation by claiming it had incredible camera stats (which werent very good) to justify the bump on an otherwise amazingly thin phone, and then that giant electronics bump had an external lens on it too.

Had it just been an ugly phone, I doubt it would have met with anywhere near the same criticism, but all the adcopy about how thin it was overtop of photos where you could see it had a giant lump on it felt really dishonest, and if this article is accurate it may count among the biggest apple flops ever.

(The thickness may just need to be accepted at this point. The S25 Ultra is 8.2mm, which is thinner than the Air if you include the bump. It seems like the camera wasnt the issue then, but that they hamstrung their design team with their drive for a thin phone. What elegance might even an extra millimeter of chassis space produced?)

Assuming he’s right (and boy, being sued by apple is a huge boost to his credibility), they’re keeping the stupid camera bump thing from the air???