It really is wild what you can do in your garage these days. Since the early 2010’s there has been a true revolution in this space that has only accelerated over the last few years. I have an injection molding machine that I built in my garage for less than $1500 USD that has a 3 cubic inch injection volume, able to make a large variety of plastic components at small production scale using a mold I printed from my $500 USD resin printer. A guy I met at the maker space has a literal pick and place and wave soldering machine in his garage and he is etching wafers on his desktop CNC. Hardware has never been more accessible.
Hardware is still really hard. But it’s definitely something someone with a software salary can bootstrap in their garage these days. Especially because I can go to JLCPCB and get some reasonably complex fully assembled prototype boards shipped to me in a week or two for $5-20 USD per unit. Ridiculously nice
Recently moved into a four-bedroom home in a moderately desirable suburb of Los Angeles. I myself work in tech field and my spouse is university faculty. Our subdiv is a large tract of homes built 15-25 years ago, all in the mid six figures to just a hair over seven.
At least three of the neighbors within sight of my own house are some sort of residential construction or property trade contractor. Two are public school teachers. At least one paints houses for a living. It is apparently totally possible to work a trade and live a recently comfortable lifestyle. I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying that there is a straightforward path to break in to that lifestyle but it is evidently more than abundantly possible.
Most tradespeople I know can’t afford “hair over seven” figures for a home. Everyone in your neighborhood is house poor. They are banking on equity. They had a sizable upfront down payment.
Like I said, all the tradespeople I know are struggling with lower 6, much less hair over 7.
House poor and asking for family assistance is something thats common even where homes are $200k. More than half of american home buyers use family assistance. The fact they are in the market at all at nearly $1m median prices on trade wages is incredible, family assistance or being house poor while you pay down to get rid of pmi or not.
I don’t quite get why Australia is so expensive. It’s basically all empty land (bigger than the EU and the population of the Netherlands). Shouldn’t it be dirt cheap?
Honestly the big stark difference between Australia and the US seems to be immigration. There might be a fundamental lack of a labor pool that might have been building out comparable infrastructure and housing supply that we see in similarly geographic sized US.
Tara, QLD, is where people who want to be forgotten go to disappear. There are off grid shanty towns in the area, one of which was the site of a fatal ambushing of police officers last year.
The first town on the list is a place famous for building houses underground due to the heat on the surface being too extreme. It’s also in the middle of nowhere.
The rest are country towns, not suburban ones. Where you need to drive hours to get to anything approaching what you might think of as “downtown”, and even then there’s not gonna be a lot there.
The reality in Australia is that the vast majority of the population lives within 100km of the east coast. It’s not like America where there are literally thousands of decent-sized small towns (tens of thousands of people), there just isn’t enough population for that. Almost half the population lives in two cities (Melbourne and Sydney) and neither of these are affordable places no matter how far out into the suburbs you go.
If you work remotely (but don’t need a great internet connection to do so), don’t mind having absolutely minimal amenities, cultural activities (apart from a few tourist traps), international airports etc. within a day or two’s drive… then sure.
Usually these places are cheap because there is little economy (so few jobs), so most of the even slightly ambitious youth escape to the cities or larger towns in the area, which leaves them with ‘interesting’ demographics.
This is an interesting inversion actually, because things like meth and then the associated crime are much more of a problem in the country than the cities here, which is kind of the opposite of what you hear about the cities being dangerous in places like the US.
#3 Port Pirie is (in)famous for its lead contamination [1].
#5 Queenstown is also contaminated [2]. It's an interesting place to visit, as the surrounds look like the moon [3], since the contamination stop anything from growing.
# 9 Charleville - I've not lived there, but I've visited. For a sense of the remoteness, when the International Space Station passes overhead, it's twice as close as the nearest major city.
Interestingly, as a young Australian, I've thought about this a lot and I genuinely struggle to find a better country to live in.
We have our share of problems, but compared to the problems of other countries, I can't help but feel they're significantly less.
A large part of it being how isolated we are from the rest of the world and all the benefits that provides. Not to mention the low population density of the country as a whole.
It really depends what specific circumstances you are comparing.
If you are looking at trades, low skill full time, or casual work, I dont think there is a better place to be. If you are comparing the lifestyle available from a full time skilled job (tech especially) its honestly not great.
Work anywhere in Asia, and while your wage may be lower, what you get for it goes a whole lot further. Restaurants are a focus, but things like a regular cleaner, doorman, club memberships are a whole lot more accessible. Things that are really only available in Australia to generational wealth these days, are available to skilled employees.
Work in western Europe, and the wages are slightly higher, and the cost of living is slightly lower; however the expectation for work-life balance is far better. 38hr weeks are very strict, with an expectation of flex time and time in lieu. with more weeks off, and better access to things like parental leave and study accommodations.
People make poor comparisons to America, because its a very hard thing to generalize. From my personal experience as a skilled full time worker, there is not one metric where Australia is a clear winner, and many where its far behind. The top end of healthcare is better in the USA, and if you factor in the lower taxes cheaper too. Crime statistics are worse, but localized to places I have no reason to go... I would say that USA as country is worse, but if you only look at the experience of someone who already has a skilled job, then you come out far ahead in the states.
I would have to disagree about the full time skilled job comment.
I work remotely for a tech company and to say that you can barely work in Australia whilst earning a very decent salary, is an understatement. 2 - 3 hours a day, at most (at least in tech). Some days you don't even have to do anything. And this is most large companies (although it depends on your rank).
This factor alone makes Australia an amazing place to live, excluding all the other reasons to live here.
Compared to America and Asia, if I have to work 3-4 times harder than I currently am, what am I actually gaining? I'm just losing time to live the life I truly want. No thank you.
The 3 hour day is a rare thing, but I dont think that its more available in Australia than anywhere else... I know more people with that setup in the states, as an anecdote.
And fully remote in the states has the additional benefit of actual high speed internet.
Well all I can say is that I've worked at 1 startup, 1 agency and 2 very large tech corporates here in Australia, and I've been able to maintain only working 2 - 3 hours a day at each of those companies, as well as maintain a few days not doing anything at all.
And I wouldn't even consider myself top-tier at what I do.
Although to your point, I think Australian work culture is very flexible. You can work a lot if you want. You can also do the bare minimum. I've just noticed that there's no enforced standard, aside from doing literally nothing. In a lot of cases, the few people who do work a lot do end up making up for all the people who don't want to work, so it evens out in the end.
Instead of pointing out the problems, which provides nothing constructive to the discussion, can you please provide alternate countries which you believe might be better.
In addition, can you please also outline the problems of these countries, so we can properly evaluate and understand their problems objectively.
Come here to South Africa. In fact a lot of South African "expats" are moving back. Many, many places are extremely decent and lifestyle can be excellent.
Depends where you live. I don't live in a gated community and I am not affected directly by crime. Power blackouts is called loadshedding and has to do with capacity. Get solar and batteries and you will be immune to that. It's being fixed too.
But what you describe is so limiting, because you're forced in the one area. What if I want to leave the area and go for a road trip? Would I be safe travelling to the rest of South Africa, if there is crime, blackouts and a lack of water?
In Australia I can safely travel to anywhere within the country.
Where do you live btw? Would be interesting to research, happy to look into it more.
Not limiting at all, you can travel pretty much everywhere safety. The crime ridden areas are usually crammed into small spaces. Poor people in SA are pushed into tiny areas. Lots of tourists come here to drive around and go 4x4-ing and so on. I'm near Cape Town.
or any similar Shenzhen special. Buy bigger over smaller.
Buy, don't build. There will be a handful of recommendations for the Opulo Lumen/OpenPNP: avoid them. Avoid everything but ballscrew designs: you will spend an annoying amount of time trying to calibrate a belt-driven design and calibration will never stick.
Please, do not make the mistake I did: get something with CL feeders, make this investment. Drag feeders are not good - they are slow and the stylus will violently shake parts out of reels (or you'll spend time calibrating it to try and avoid this issue - don't waste the time.) Get something that can do 0201, even if you don't use it.
Ideally, get something that uses a separate, commodity host machine.
Independence is having the knowledge, skills, equipment to do it yourself if you had to - not doing something just because.
I didn't build my vapor phase reflow oven, either.
I'm trying to solve my own problems, not craft a basic piece of equipment for bragging rights; I just don't have the kind of free time to have things not work perfectly.
That works, maybe, if you're a giant of indusrtry... Hyundai doesn't have to buy ram for its cars, it can build it.
But if you're small, you can't build most of what you need, and you should not build what you can buy that's better than whaf you can build, and you may as well buy things that you can build as good unless the cost to build is much less.
Sometimes it's fun to build things instead of buying them, and that'a ok. But if your goal is to do X, you're better off spending time on X than spending time building tools you could have bought. (Unless building the tools builds requisite knowledge)
There is no bright line on the DIY spectrum between that injection molder and making your own charcoal to refine iron.
I love building machines - enough so that I never build anything with them. Maybe someday I will, but by then 15155 will have built hundreds of things.
I built a buster beagle. YouTube has a bunch of great guides from him plus what to buy.
Mold making is a difficult science of itself. I can’t point you in a general direction beyond what worked for me. I started with OpenSCAD then moved to FreeCAD then eventually ended up with Fusion360. You need to have a vision for what you want to make, or else you won’t follow through till the end with learning. There is some dude from Texas who wrote a textbook on the subject that was invaluable for me in learning how to design oxygenation and cooling techniques. This is hardcore industrial engineering stuff, the kind of thing that you don’t casually do.if you’re trying to learn and do this yourself you need to not be afraid of doing some applied physics.
There was a lot of crying and pain and trial and error for me to teach myself. If you know what you want I would instead go on fiverr or its equivalent of the day and hire yourself an actual mold designer and save yourself 90% of the pain and heartache that I went through. Mold designers are weirdly cheap for the insane amount of expertise they offer
Printing the mold is another heartache of itself. I used anycubic photon with a flex plate and Sriraya resin. That was a journey all by itself - I originally started with insanely expensive Formlabs stuff before getting to the Anycubic solution. Again it took a lot of crying and trial and error to get it right. But it costs a mere fraction of what it costs to do it the normal way at least
Given the linked article is about a 22 year old making a 1,500 transistor IC, etching wafers for a 40 year old with a FAANG salary doesn't seem that far fetched!
I think the CNC part is what’s interesting. A wet etch, or even a plasma etcher, is conceivable in a garage and are the traditional tools of the trade.
I assumed that they must have meant milling PCBs, because the only kind of “cnc-ish” way of manipulating things on wafers I can think of would be atomic manipulation with a scanning tunnelling microscope, which really doesn’t seem likely!
I still see that part as the most complicated and work-intensive in a small/home setting. I've been looking at ways, effort and prices for several years now and I'm still split between resin plus injection or just resin prints. And I am still end up with outsourcing as the result. But I'd really like to own that process... frustrating.
If anyone has a really feasible/well working solution for enclosures etc. please post them :)
That said, while I excluded the molding part explicitly, since I thought about CNC milling, pick /place and other computer-cobtrolled multi-axis applications, I think one could have used CNC and/or some kind of "sand" baking (negative) appoach. Not sure what kind of hard wood solutions might also have worked as some kind of medium for subtractive designing the negative for a small production run.
Still not something I would see as easily implementable. But I also have no lazy solution with nice results today. E.g. for implementing display windows some kind of professionally color-coated clear case seems the way to go to get to something that ressembles current standards (always the main problem, anyway). Hard to do that with limited space and without a professional absorber solution.
How do you get fully assembled PCBs at JLCPCB for $5. I just ordered one and it was $4.10 for bare PCB, assembly would cost additional $8 so minimum for assembled pcb is $12.
It's the software and IC knowledge that defines modern hardware. It's expensive IP and there's few open source references. You have to gain a lot of specific experience and by chance have an idea people will pay for. Even then, it's likely already patented.
Think back to the 2021-2022 pandemic-triggered supply chain chaos, when the media widely reported that car companies, for example, were all having very painful experiences with parking lots full of $50k trucks they couldn't sell due to a lack of $5 chips.
At the time I saw some of Sam's videos (I think I originally found them here on HN), and I had a big question: If a hobbyist can build 1970's era chips for ~$10k in his garage, and Intel can build 2020's era chips for ~$10B in state-of-the-art factories, why doesn't someone start a startup building 1990's era chips in a ~$10M facility?
Semi is the next big thing in distributed manufacturing you already have companies that offer what is essentially ride sharing for semiconductors they manufacture single IC/SoC with multiple blocks on them and you essentially pay for a % of the floor plan which can operate independently from the rest.
So whilst not quite garage ready we’re probably 2-5 years of you being able to order completely custom silicon form the likes of PCBway and have it shipped in the matter of days rather than months.
There’s no way it’s lower cost. However what it could be is guaranteed line capacity and delivery dates. And if you’re doing small orders from a large foundry you don’t get that. Those things have value too and someone might be willing to pay a bit extra to get them.
My main issue is semiconductor lines are fragile beasts that need constant tinkering. So if the system requires full time staff to keep running, that’s going to be really expensive.
We don’t know what node they’re targeting so this is all speculation but if it’s anything below say 22nm then that’s finFET, and there’s nothing low cost about finFET at prototype volumes.
If it’s not finFET then a non production mask set is much less than $50 million in 2023.
Also, keep in mind maskless lithography has been used commercially for roughly ten years now. And it’s been in Universities for significantly longer.
They're being very cagy, but it's quite likely they're working on "fast" maskless technology. Basically going from FPGA to chip in low enough volumes that maskless makes sense. It'd be a small, but lucrative, niche if they can get a good system at a decent node size.
My take was that a low and slow approach that did not involve the traditional dangerous chemicals was being developed. Currently TSMC etc processes require hydrofluoric acid and other things that can kill you.
You can get Hydrofluoric acid at the grocery store... it's used in "Wink" stain remover. It's strong enough to get the job done, but dilute enough to be... well, in the grocery store.
The stuff that you don't want to mess with is Silane, which Sam describes as "a toxic and explosive gas".[1]
For anyone else interested in him, Sam has a Youtube channel, but hasn't posted in awhile. He started this stuff as a teenager with a garage that I think many of us would envy now, let alone as a teenager. I've seen him on HN once or twice too. There's a whole world of these home built processors channels and they're pretty impressive. I know some others are posted in other threads, but this isn't my niche so I'll leave it to them.
Looking at their careers page the typical salary is $100,000 – $170,000 for SF. Seems a little low for SF no? Is this an indication that they are not well funded or going to have issues finding top tier people?
Its low if theyre paying 100k for people with a couple years of experience, but for entry level hardware jobs, 100k is about right.
Ive been looking for almost 5 months for an entry level hardware job (preferably in SF, but willing to relocate anywhere), and 100k is about what Im looking for based on what Ive seen.
Some go as low as 85, and some start at 120, but 100k is pretty standard.
I've been following home-made semiconductors since Jeri Ellsworth made her own NMOS FETs in 2010.[1] When Sam managed to make his own ICs, I was happy for him, and for the hobby. Now he seems to be on the verge of democratizing access to semiconductor production in very low volumes. I've got my own project to try out once I can get my hands on it.[2] Who knows, petaflop chips made in the garage could be right around the corner, in less than 2 decades!
If I read correctly, that concept maps really well to LUTs as used in FPGAs (but note it's not the same!).
Its author/inventor Mike Warot has the simple but useful idea of making the configuration space of such a device a simple memory array (like RAM or EEPROM cells). Write some bits to a memory location -> cell [x,y] in the device's grid is configured.
This would make it trivial to control/interface such a 'compute grid' to traditional cpus. To a cpu it would just look like regular RAM.
Anyone know if there's work towards applying that idea to FPGAs? It would basically evaporate the problem of [closed source FPGA vendor toolchains].
Obviously, bitstreams produced by FPGA vendor tools will do a somewhat similar thing. But what/how exactly is opaque. Not to mention encrypted bitstreams, read-protection & what have you. Hence require re-engineering effort for open source tool support.
Turning this into a dead simple 1:1 mapping would be a huge step forward.
I can't... you might be able to afford $10k, but right now, I had to think hard before spending $3 last night.
I hope to learn enough Verilog/VHDL/RTL to take advantage of the Free Shuttle program they have[1] eventually.
Currently, I'm wondering how to go from expressions to code I can load into a bitgrid. The thought of parsing code, building an AST, converting that to an acyclic directed graph of binary expressions, to actual bits to load the grid with.... overwhelms me, and has me putting it off. 8(
I do have a working simulator, written in Pascal[2], that can run fairly quickly for toy problems on my desktop PC. So, there's been some progress.
I strongly suspect I can get there, but need an accountability buddy to push me along. I used to be a self starter, but I stayed in an IT Admin job too long that crushed it out of me.
40 years ago, one only had radios to disect and fat circuit boards to etch. Access to docs was really bad. And people had to be pros at 22 to overcome these home/garage limitations.
Impossible for a teenager. This isn't like your everyday "kid makes a software startup" stories. He had to source all the machines, go through all the obscure documentation, understand how to test his yield, etc. He built his own photolithography machine ffs. I can't imagine the dedication required to go through this and believe in yourself every step of the way.
Helps to have some money too. I could just about afford to get some PCBs made for some RF work but ain't no way I was getting mum and dad to buy me my own electron microscope (or move house to have space)
As someone with 0 idea about semiconductors development: How does making your own chip compare to using FPGAs when you need low quantities? What things can you do with your own IC that you cannot do with FPGAs?
It's more of a principle achievement, like, "hey Intel, come cause a shooting spree at my local grocery store while I'm there, because, anybody who did similar DIY things in the automobile-hydrogen space met a similar fate from that industry!" [1]
I mean this is a great story, and I'm happy for this guy, but isn't this a super dirty process? Is he going to have cancer in 8 years but will have built a chip from 1971? Seems like a bad trade-off.
Isn't there PPE you can wear? How do they protect you in a real factory? There are gloves, suits and respirators, and it's all pretty cheap. Proper ventilation, that stuff isnt all that expensive.
If my parents had bought me a $30k laser cutter I would be too. But I can't even afford the garage.
If you want to worship a DIY-god then look up Jerry Ellsworth. She's the real deal, unlike this guy, and makes chips with her own dumpster-dived repaired machinery, not with contacts to the local University's million dollar research lab.
What a negative and off-putting comment. You are dunking on the work of a teenager putting in time and effort to do something incredible by any measure. You need to take a deep, hard look inside of you, what’s spilling out is not nice. Why do we have to pick between one or the other? I celebrate the work of both of them.
And with your attitude, no, most likely you wouldn’t have built anything with a $30k laser cutter.
He makes a point but it's better described as "it's awesome that this young man has had the drive and curiosity to do so well with the abilities and resources he's been gifted"
I hope he doesn't have to work these hours. That would be awful, even if you loved it.
The risk of burnout would be very high, and not reasonable for such a profoundly knowledgeable resource.
"We all take two years to develop one generation, how come you guys can do it in one or one-and-a-half year?" And they asked if some of your customer transfer technology to you or what not? And I told him, "No," I told him that, "That's not true." I think he probably implied we steal technology from customer, the way he talk.
And I say, "I'll tell you why." I said that, "When we develop one node, basically you have some learning cycles. First, you do some simulation. And you have some idea, then you run wafers to prove that. So, you run a group of wafers according to simulation and you have some splits. The wafer runs through the fab, they come out and you measure them, you analyze them, and you try to improve and you run this again. This again, you run. So, this is learning cycle." At that time, "It takes about six learning cycle, roughly, to complete one generation." Of course, you had some short loops and not just one. I said that, "My R&D wafer in the fab run much faster than yours, because my R&D engineer works three shifts and you only work one shift. So, your R&D wafer move eight hours a day, my work/move 24-hours a day. So, my wafers go three times faster, even if you are twice smarter than me, I still beat you up." <laughter>
On that thread, his garage is larger than the entire space I rented for living in when I was his age.
But the point I'm going on to make isn't just about how stupid the cost of housing is; it's that the high cost of housing comes with extra costs that we might not even see.
How many people would be doing all sorts of neat things, some of which would genuinely bloom into real advances and ideas and genuine new wealth (by which I don't just mean an income; I mean the creation of wealth) if only they could afford some goddamn space in which to do it, without having to move so far from the existing life they have that pays the bills and keeps them alive and sane (by which I mean to suggest that not everyone has the luxury of moving to where there is cheaper space, if their job and support networks won't move too).
You've just put me in mind of an different quote about impoverished geniuses:
"""I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.""" - Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History, 1980
World population has increased 60% since then, while extreme poverty decreased 66% in absolute (not relative) terms.
So, what I think would happen with more space, is that we would find the next limit, while mistaking the growth that improved conditions lead to as the natural state of affairs.
Back in the early 1970's at the university I used to hang out in the rapidly developing IC fab shop with a fellow student who was an EE major. It was a unique time when individual innovation was at its highest point, and crushing financial pressure nationwide was only beginning to force the downward trend since then.
This was pretty interesting to me as a chemist, and there were even more parallels once I went to work for a company specializing in emerging chemicals, where unending experimentation and innovation was essential to bring yields up to tolerable levels from starting points which were barely feasible. Similar to emerging semiconductor processes.
With all the effort Zeloof has put in, apparently single-handedly for the most part, in his garage he does have what looks like a more advanced facility now than they had then. With the ability to make repairs and do maintenance on the comercially available equipment of the time, to a degree and with determination that the leading professors did not even usually possess.
This is the kind of person that needs to be protected from potential disasters that could derail his continuous progress, especially with such an early head-start.
Very much of an outlier, but there are uncountable others who have always had to wait for the least bit of opportunity which never arose in any realistic way.
> if only they could afford some goddamn space in which to do it...
It doesn't even have to be own space... just places like repair shops that let you hang around, maker/hacker spaces would go a long way.
I learned / had so much fun just hanging out at "Radio"(/TV/Tape recorder) Repair shops when I was a kid. Of course most of things i built back there were silly things like lights for my bicycle, longer earphone wires etc... But it is a valuable experience for me.
Most would be, but that 0.01% are the ones pushing humanity forward. Let's figure out how to give them the resources.
And how do you know most/many people aren't spending their times scrolling tiktok because they don't have the resources to do something more worthwhile?
> And how do you know most/many people aren't spending their times scrolling tiktok because they don't have the resources to do something more worthwhile?
Because if that was it, most rich people, rich kids would be all doing crazy science experiments and advancing knowledge. But turns out they don't.
It’s also plausible todays rich kids are descendants of people who have optimized their lives for making money. I doubt such parents make the best role models for aspiring scientists.
It’s possible that a society that has a more prosperous general population will produce more successful scientists.
Yes, but more creative people would be making something new, even if most would use it for nothing. No matter the amount of additional innovators, the total would still be bigger than it is now.
On a more practical note: people lifted out of poverty that become innovators, are (more) likely to do so in a frugal manner. Because make do with limited resources was spoonfed from early age.
Read: they could make for some very cost-effective innovation.
Lifting other people out of poverty that don't become innovators, would be 'bycatch' from that p.o.v. But still a worthwhile goal.
They are just saying that if you assume this following:
* There is a rough fixed % of people that are capable of doing interesting things and maybe useful things
* There are minimum levels of resources, time, and comfort that enables you to do interesting things
* The current population that enjoys those resources isn't actually that different from the population at large in terms of that %
Assuming all of that, if you increased the welfare of the entire population to that minimum level (would be nice to do this anyway) then the absolute number of people doing interesting and maybe useful things would increase. I would say that most of human history and esp the past few hundred years has probably proven that to be true.
It is pretty clear from the photos that this young man is very fortunate to have well off and supportive parents. Very few working age adults in full time employment could afford the things shown in those photos let alone someone still in education.
Asimov in the 1950's was quite a visionary. I always liked this.
But I never heard him referred to as "shorty" before ;)
Don't want to be a spoiler but in his visions for an increasingly advanced technological future once the 21st century would arrive, here the dystopian elements that had unfortunately accrued had to be fed to an increasingly conformist society as a utopia instead. No surprise considering the attitude during the Cold War. While the outliers having the true creative potential were subjected to an artificially dystopian environment by comparison, from which only the most-ambitious few would have to break out of on their own accord, against all odds, motivated only by their own committment, to take their rightful place as professionals.
Didn't have to wait until the 65th century to make significant progress in this direction.
>It is pretty clear from the photos that this young man is very fortunate to have well off and supportive parents.
Good observation, and maybe that's about all that's going to be having such an early start for some time to come now. But we don't need photos to be well aware he is vastly outnumbered by tons of more fortunate youngsters who have accomplished absolutely nothing at that age, if not perpetrated destructive efforts instead. Photos of their "accomplishments" outnumber this type of posting a million to one.
Related, somebody referred recently to the device that plays YouTube as the "depression box", because that's what it creates in short order: "I am incapable of anything but scrolling". Yup: "Depression box."
If you want to compromise on neither location nor space, your only real option is to build upwards. Tall residential skyscrapers are the only way.
Personally I'm fine with that, but I get why people might have an aesthetic issue with it. They're of course allowed to compromise on one of the other 2 points to get a better looking neighborhood if they want.
I'd love to put a CNC mill there, but my apartment building doesn't let me use my parking space for anything except a car, unfortunately. I think that is quite common. :(
Remote work for the win. The older I get, the less I care about having a large variety of places to eat and places to go (i.e. city living) and the more I wish for some basic space to do the things I want to do. Be it a shop/shed/or generous garage (without a car in it I'm fine with my car suffering from California sunshine).
Going by the photos on that article, the garage is bigger than the 500sqft ex-council flat I rent with my girlfriend, for the equivalent of $2k/month, in London.
Oh man such a funny joke. It's funny because it's true.
That said, as a European the meme of "they started in their garage" always sounded so American. Maybe that's what Europe is lacking in terms of entrepreneurship - garages.
Yes, but also no. The US has a basic fluidity of business. You can build things at home (in your garage, if you have one) and try to sell them and establish a formal business later, if the business justifies the process. For a one person business, there's not really a lot of requirements to formalize a sole proprietor business either: often a local business license (which is mostly guaranteed issue and just a tax collection point), a 'doing business as' filing if not using the person's name, and obtaining a tax id if needed (the IRS will issue one online in minutes, as I understand it), hiring people comes with more requirements.
Being able to start small and informally allows many more businesses to start.
Worth pointing out the same is true in other countries - in the UK, a sole trader business doesn't need to notify the government they exist at all until tax return time.
Makerspaces are a godsend. I have 24/7 access to one for only $75/mo.
Not only do I host my own machinery there, but I have access to others’ and communal appliances and training on how to use them (as long as schedules line up).
In California you could totally build an advanced New piece of technology like a new IC machine or process in way less time than you could build a simple permitted barn.
I'm in a suburb. Not an expensive one. Downtown is a 20 minute drive in light traffic. Within a 10 minute walk there are office buildings, grocery stores, shopping mall, gyms, parks, hiking and biking trails, etc. There are many cities to choose from; some are better planned than others. Based on your comment I would guess that you've opted to live in one of the "cool" cities in America.
Price is relative. That could be Los Altos, California. Which is very nice, walkable with garages, great parks and outdoors, but not what most people would call affordable. :)
I would argue that it's objectively cheaper to live in the suburbs.
And I can assert with confidence that $100/mo in HOA fees provides walkable parks, trails, pools, gyms, tennis courts, basketball courts, etc. I vote on the financial management of all these things so I can be sure they are provided by that amount of money, objectively. Major builders do suburbs like this one across the country. And they make a killing managing them too.
Where are you? SF? SD? NY? Miami? You're paying a premium for the right to brag about it. Not for the amenities.
I won't. But I'm basically describing the entire USA except the coasts, and a few major cities in between.
For perspective, houses in SF sell for 10x the value per square foot compared with my neighborhood. And I'm not remotely in the cheapest place in the country.
America is big. Look around. There is a LOT of space in the middle.
Right, I'm calling bullshit. Suburbs in America don't have anything 10 minutes walk away. You're just confused what a suburb is. I'm honestly concerned that people like you are allowed to vote.
The comment got a lot of upvotes, so clearly many people are living in suburbs like mine. If it's unbelievable for you, you've failed yourself. Sorry to hear that. I'm concerned that people like you are allowed to perpetuate price gouging on real estate because of your incompetence. Cheers.
This is it. My garage is full of kid's stuff. I don't have a backyard for a shed, plus my landlords installed shelving on all three sides, some not above car roof level.
If we want to park a car in there, it's about an hour of moving stuff out of the way. I stand at the back as a spotter while my wife drives at me. Once she hit me, she turns the car off and climbs out through the back seat. I then climb over the roof of the car.
I wish I was making this up. Glad it's 12 years old with no sun roof. I don't have to feel bad about sliding over it.
Breaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned here. Please don't post like this, no matter how right you are or feel you are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Given whatever size of garage I have, being somewhere I can live without a car gives me more garage space, regardless of whether it's a suburb. If I want to maximize garage space given my choice of a car-free lifestyle, I would probably move to a suburb with a good train station, not one where "only 20 minutes' drive to downtown" is seen as the selling point. Those are subtly different kinds of places, in my experience, where most people are going to fill their garage space with cars.
Nah, I'm joking, hopefully not antagonizing.
My point was that since you're not downtown, you can park in the street.
Minutes to downtown isn't a selling point I'm making. I don't typically go downtown. I've put 10k miles on my car in 3 years. This was in response to someone saying they can't get exercise in a suburb, which I find absurd.
The antagonism is from effectively calling them immature (and thus implying that their opinion is coming from a place of naivety) and placing yourself above them. This is a pretty standard insult that people use to try to be persuasive.
I suppose you could say that posting that insult itself is so immature that readers should recognize it as a joke, but I suggest that you should try to stay away from sarcasm when posting in online forums. It can be quite difficult to detect the sarcasm of a bunch of people you don't know.
I could end my post by sarcastically saying "don't worry, you'll learn what a joke is when you grow up", but hopefully you can imagine how some people would take that as a genuine insult rather than a joke. Though it would be punchier ending.
Are you young? Because this comment shouldn't be offensive unless you're harboring doubt about immature decisions you've made. For everyone else, it's a tongue in cheek poke at the bad decisions I made when I was younger. Statistically, people tend to leave the city when they get older. If you're insulted by that, you probably still belong in the city.
Maybe you should look inward instead of downvoting, or offering explanations that presume a lesser understanding in your audience.
Looking up to experience isn't a bad thing. It shows maturity. How's that for a punchy finish?
>”I think the key is to have everything delivered to you.“
This is why we can’t have nice things. We simply can’t rely on a class of workers to dote on us simply because we fancy living in the burbs. The amount of waste just so you can get your instacart. The reality is near 8% mortgages have put suburbs with garages out of reach for almost everyone without a trust fund or selling their startup.
> We simply can’t rely on a class of workers to dote on us simply because we fancy living in the burbs
You make zero sense. Going to the grocery store involves the same workers helping you pay for gas and selling you groceries, or cooking your meals. Are you a recluse that interacts with zero workers? Who in their right mind calls someone else out for using a regular service? You'd prefer those people to not have jobs surely.
There's no end to that game of efficiency. You end up with either ascetic monk life people or asking for population reduction measures.
If you're annoyed about low efficiency of ordering food, what do you think of vacation traveling, hobbies, any sort of vehicles etc. Most efficiency would be to have no humans with our superfluous wants and needs. Otherwise you're just shaming others for doing things you happen not to like, while forgetting all the useless things you do. Surely you have done consumist purchases that weren't required for your immediate survival or health preservation before.
Possibly if that last mile delivery was carried out by people who were also practiced in logistics. This is never the case. It’s better for you to find a means of transportation to get your staples of living than to pay someone else to use any means of transportation to provide you your bananas.
The planet can’t take any more “conveniences” on our behalf. We need to find a more efficient way of delivering goods and getting our goods. Throwing your hands up and saying “I’ll just get everything delivered” is about the worst option you can do from a logistics perspective to reduce carbon.
If we had pick and pack robots and delivery drones that were powered by solar fields and alternative energy, I would say that’s about as close to carbon neutral logistics as we can get. Trucking and freight are still exorbitantly polluting but the heavy “last mile” pollution problem would be traded with increased overhead air traffic. The reality is: a self driving car with a delivery robot is probably going to be our answer in 2040.
American tech folks. In my part of the world, you either have good access to civilization, or your own land. Having both at the same time (buying land close enough to a major city) is prohibitively expensive.
I like the "concrete suburbs" we have here in Finland. I get why people born here don't have the highest opinion of them, but something about seeing identical 8-story high unadorned buildings for several blocks in a row, separated by little patches of park and forest sets me at ease. It feels like even if I were to lose my job I would still be able to pay rent here. Maybe it comes from growing up in an American city and seeing just how brutal the rent race can get firsthand.
Suburbs aren't defined by having personal space. That can be achieved in cities and small towns with in-fill development of high square-footage apartments, n-plexes, and townhouses, or collective workspaces. The suburbs that people complain about are car-centric and are generally underfunded in the long-term, putting significant burdens on municipal and state finances for things like infrastructure maintenance (roads, sewers, etc.). Every suburban garage/city parking space pair is a half-dozen kids without up-to-date science textbooks and equipment.
Plenty of car centric suburbs do fine with the budget too. You got suburbs in california where homes are $2m. They aren’t hurting for road budget. High school class offerings in such a district might look downright collegiate from the additional funding the parents raise for the local school.
There are several contentious aspects to this characterization:
1) California is a noted outlier. The tax base/road budget ratio does not scale well to the rest of the country.
2) The wealth of affluent suburbs is driven by the cities they surround. The cities generate enough wealth to nominally support the market rate labor that keep them running AND the professional/managerial class that cut and run.
3) The top quintile or two of earners are likelier to live in newer developments, where the cost of maintenance has not built up yet. As regions become older and less desirable, the affluent leave and are replaced by the less-so, just as replacement costs come due. This model is a burden on the state and national levels because it's so prevalent.
If, instead, the model were to have most people living were their wealth was generated - and therefore have amenities scale to means more closely - you would have fewer extremely wealthy individuals and families but a more sustainable and equitable society. I know this is anathema to many, who value getting ahead over getting together.
I have a feeling that making chips at home will require the ditching of silicon based technology. Yes, this will be accompanied by performance loss. Perhaps organic semiconductors have less complicated processes. Or techniques like molecular self assembly, nano imprinting, etc.
Hardware is still really hard. But it’s definitely something someone with a software salary can bootstrap in their garage these days. Especially because I can go to JLCPCB and get some reasonably complex fully assembled prototype boards shipped to me in a week or two for $5-20 USD per unit. Ridiculously nice