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Build an Open-Source Electric Car In About One Hour
First time accepted submitter joe5 writes "Like what Elon Musk has done and want to go all Etsy and build your own electric car? That's apparently now possible now thanks to the OSVehicle Tabby — dubbed the first "Open source vehicle" (memo: it may be cool, but it ain't the first). The OSV guys are taking pre-orders for the Tabby starter kit, with both the two-seater or four-seater configurations going for €500. Then you click to add options. (Note: seats is an "option" so that's the level of luxury you are dealing with here.) When the transaction's complete, OSV sends the parts to your home and you can download the plans and start building. Since the Tabby is open source, OSVehicle will also look to a community of owners and tinkerers for suggestions and recommendations."
that the motto for Slashdot should be changed from the beloved "News for nerds, stuff that matters" to "FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHY"
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
Seriously, it is terrible.
It still looks like ass though. It blends well with Metro UI at least............
Why don't we make our own Slashdot (with blackjack & hookers)? What IP is there in the site that we couldn't take with us? Could we take the moderation system (it's the only thing I can think of on Slashdot that's good and that no other site does as well)? I can't code for toffee but I'd be happy to make coffee & buy pizza for those who did.
The meat of Slashdot, the substance that draws viewers here instead of the alternatives, is the comments. Lose those comments and you will lose the eyeballs. Lose the eyeballs and you will lose the ad revenue.
Alternatively, you can accept that you made a mistake, keep Slashdot classic, and keep the steady flow of cash. Make the right business decision, here, Dice. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
If you move me to the beta slashdot abortion i'll add this place to the block list and never visit again.
Too many other news sites regurgitate the exact same storys i see here. And all of them don't look as shitty as the beta slashdot.
Stop being stupid.
Perhaps we should just fork slashdot and name it Plusdot. I have a sneaking suspicion that we could get a big company like Rackspace to sponsor the servers for the project.
Spread the word by mentioning this in every article's comments.
Here is Dice's "Contact Us" page. Everybody be sure to call them tomorrow using whatever numbers from that page you can get to ring. Tell every darn receptionist in every darn one of Dice's holdings, along with anyone you can get them to connect you to, that the Slashdot beta is terrible and you won't shut up until it goes away. Fax them a well-illustrated complaint or two or three. Send them a choice letter via snail mail, along with whatever memorabilia you wish.
They keep soliciting our feedback, they can get our feedback, right where it counts.
The most obvious contact points are:
Dice Holdings Inc.
1040 Avenue of the Americas, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10018
T: 212-725-6550
F: 212-725-6559
Slashdot
594 Howard St Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94105
Tel: +1-877-433-5638
www.slashdot.com
I will quit reading Slashdot if that stupid Beta shit is implemented. It's horrible. It fixes nothing. It is not an improvement in any way.
How did you go from "with blackjack & hookers" to the guy that makes coffee and buys pizza? I already hate your version unless you at least spring for the hookers.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
SIMMARY
FUCK BETA
That vehicle would never get approval where I live, because it does not have suitable protection for driver and passenger. It would get bootstomped the moment an inattentive soccer mom in a big assed hummer H3 started yelling at her "adorable" group of kids, while trying to enter the roadway from the drive-through lane at the fast food gorge-and-puke she stopped at to get "food" for all her "little superstars."
Just like Dice, while performing fellatio on its advertising partners is simply too distracted to pay any attention to the angry mob forming on slashdot until after they find themselves stranded with a poisoned asset after running over all the useful commenters with its big assed hunk of shit: "beta."
The idea is good, but I think I would be better serviced by seeing high capacity battery and charger tech hitting the open maketplace rather than seeing kits like these. There are already very nice high-torque, and high-rpm (and some that are both!) Electric motors on the open marketplace in use in agricultural settings, as well as in other markets, such as elevator drive motors and the like.
The major impediment to major DIY auto conversion is not the availability of body frames or motors, it is the lack of suitably dense power packs. Get the prices down on high capacity electrical storage and charging systems, and get them on the open market, and the conversion kit industry will boom.
Take for instance, things like the greasecar kits, for converting diesel engine vehicles to run on amost pure refuse vegetable oil. Things are really inexpensive. Very popular with the DIY tinkerer demographic.
A whole community could be formed around just providing links to suitable already on the market motors, coupled with the "killer app" of high volume sales of high capacity powerplants and chargers at consumer friendly prices. You'd see plans for engine mounts and drive line converters in mere days if you included a community forum.
Unlike this kit, which is quite clever but little more than an electric golf-kart, selling and making open hardware conversion kits for existing autobodies, and providing sourcing services through the community to locate suitable frames for conversion would get the tinkerer high availability of aftermarket parts for brakes, shocks, struts, bearings, wheels and other accessories, and would get them bodies with well established crash test ratings. (Though performance in crashes would almost certainly change from moving the weight around in the vehicle from the conversion. Even with that caveat, the vehicle would still be designed to attempt to save the driver and passenger's life far more aggressively than this open hardware kit ever will.)
But, wishing for a good, high capacity, and inexpensive powerplant for vehicles on the open market is like trying to collect unicorn sperm, or getting Dice to actually listen about the forced Beta (and Mobile) UI deployments.
Will you will actually leave if Beta is implemented?
A) Yes.
B) I'm already working on a Slashdot alternative/competitor.
C) I'm not even here now. I left when it was clear user feedback would be ignored.
D) Rage has limited my response to a constant and inarticulate, "Fuck Beta." Ask me nothing more.
E) I'll say I will but force of habit will prevent it.
F) No.
G) Ever notice how there are no longer any Cowboy Neal options? Guess what made Cowboy Neal leave.
Yeah, it might not have all the features you want. As a matter of fact, it might be the opposite of what you want and what you actually like in a car. But, hey, it's a beta. Which means nothing will change and your input will be ignored.
So on an earlier thread I mentioned starting a kickstarter to buy Slashdot off of Dice. Many of us love the community here and would hate to see it killed off due the the incompetence of some Dice MBAs. I have no idea what a good number to start such a kickstarter at would be so I started by looking at the latest Dice quarterly report. I still haven't found numbers that are particularly helpful but I did come across a few interesting things that might help explain their seemingly inexplicable actions.
From the Operating Segment Results section:
"Corporate & Other segment revenues decreased 9% year-over-year to $4.3 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2013 from the comparable 2012 period, due primarily to the financial results at Slashdot Media."
From the recent Recent Developments section:
"Slashdot Media was acquired to provide content and services that are important to technology professionals in their everyday work lives and to leverage that reach into the global technology community benefiting user engagement on the Dice.com site. The expected benefits have started to be realized at Dice.com. However, advertising revenue has declined over the past year and there is no improvement expected in the future financial performance of Slashdot Media's underlying advertising business. Therefore, $7.2 million of intangible assets and $6.3 million of goodwill related to Slashdot Media were reduced to zero."
It seems they valued the goodwill of us Slashdot users at $13.5 million USD! Unfortunately it looks like they've already written that off?
Also, for Slashdotters who like to Slashdot things:
Investor & Media Contact:
Jennifer Bewley
Vice-President, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications
Dice Holdings, Inc.
212-448-4181
IR@dice.com
Oh, and a couple of their bigwigs will be at a conference in San Francisco in a couple of days:
On Monday, February 10, 2014, Mr. Durney and Mr. Roberts will participate at the Stifel Technology, Internet & Media Conference 2014 to be held in San Francisco. The fireside chat will be held at 2:45 PM Pacific time/5:45 PM Eastern time and will be webcast live from the Company's website.
Maybe a few of us would like to participate in that fireside chat, eh?
Cheers,
Greg
Tried posting, "Fuck Beta"
Received error: "This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original..."
Okey Dokey then..... Fuck Beta Sideways
After reading all the up-roar about beta I had to check it out.
Yup. It sucks.
Its.....amazing how bad it is....is it coded by Gitmo guards that want to torture us?
I feel bad for the person who thought Slashdot Beta was a good idea. That person is like the kid on South Park who shit his pants in the middle of class.
However, unlike the kid on South Park who shit his pants in the middle of class, it's not too late for the Slashdot Beta designer. Sure, we have all seen Slashdot Beta, we have covered our eyes, held our noses, and screamed "WHAT IS THAT!?" But unlike a turd splattered into one's pants, Slashdot Beta can be undone. It can be returned to the place from which it came. And then it can be crafted into something that isn't a turd.
Don't destroy a good pair of pants for nothing. You can stop this.
If we had hookers, why would we need blackjack or Slashdot?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
This looks like a reinvented sand rail, except not as safe, and not road legal.
I've seen sand rails on the road in some states. Check with your DMV to see about registering "experimental", "homemade" or "homebuilt" vehicles.
You can get a rolling sand rail chassis pretty cheap, and put in your choice of engine, transmission, seat(s), lights, etc. Just like the vehicle in the article, you could assemble one in a few hours.
In my state, besides the obvious (engine/motor, steering wheel, etc), they require: headlights (2), turn signals (4), brakes (2), bumpers (2), fenders (all wheels), horn (1), seat, seat belt (if not a motorcycle), tires (2 or 3 for motorcycle, 4+ for cars). All lighting must be DOT approved, which is easy enough to get from auto parts stores. Lighting and bumpers have to be within a certain height from the ground. I think that was all the requirements. That's from memory.
Pretty much, you just build it. You then go to the DMV and fill out a "Statement of Builder".
http://www.flhsmv.gov/dmv/form...
You can then drive it (or trailer it) to the DMV for a safety inspection.
They get a lot of homebuilt motorcycles, since you can buy every part without a donor vehicle.
Homebuilt cars are usually custom cars built on existing chassis. If you're building on a sandrail chassis (like this almost appears), you just can't provide the source chassis VIN. If you're proficient with welding, you can build your own chassis, but that takes some skill.
I've put a few homebuilt trailers on the road legally. Pretty much those just required me to go in with a weight and length, and sign off on some papers. It was up to me to affirm that I complied with the safety (lighting, hitch, etc) requirements.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
...to have stolen your 1 week boycott idea about an hour ago, without knowing at the time that you'd suggested it first.
Actually, with the 14th in the middle of that time span, we can call it the Slashdot Valentine's Day Massacre if enough of us participate to kill beta off.
(I notice that sigs don't show up in beta)
(and that you have to put in manual paragraph breaks to get proper spacing--apparently the plan is to become more like HuffPo )
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Trust me on this.
It's the resemblance to WP sites and HuffPo that makes beta so objectionable in the first place.
I get 15 mod points at a time on a regular basis, by the way, even though it's been a while since I submitted anything.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
What would help is for some php coders to get together and come up with a website that has the look and feel of classic,and is scalable. Register a domain name, and have it waiting in the wings.
Or better yet, approach the guy who runs xkcd with it, and take it from there. He's shown that he can do well enough with what he had.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Let's start a sig campaign, prefix your's with [FUCK BETA]. This way you can stay on-topic and still protest.
As a first step, I suggest suffixing your normal link to Slashdot with "/?nobeta=1". At least until Slashdot decides to fully pull the plug and tell us all to go fuck ourselves, that will keep you from having to ever see the abomination they call the new beta site. And as a bonus, whether or not they care, they'll get the message loud and clear when 90% of their inbound traffic explicitly rejects their crappy beta.
That said, thanks for the idea - Though to hell with sigs, make it the start of your SUBJECT for every post. I will use it until they listen or make it a moot point - Though from past experience, I fully expect the latter, because they just don't care in the least about what we think.
Wow, somebody that wants to discuss the car, instead of the beta.
You raise an interesting point. The question is, when does that start to matter? Is it a problem if the electric motor is patent encumbered, but there are 7 other drop-in replacements you could use, and 27 adaptable replacements? After all, at some point we all post our Slashdot rants using computers built around a patent encumbered CPU built in a US$3Billion fab, not one built in our basements. (I've built CPU's from buckets of parts... it's a lot of work.)
Personally, I'm more concerned about the CAD files. Are they in a proprietary format? Are there open source CAD tools that can edit them? If not, it really isn't open source. For me, the tool chain matters hugely more than the components designed into the end unit. With the CAD files, you can redesign around parts you like better. I am astounded at the number of nominally open-source hardware projects that used closed-source cripple-ware CAD tools (ie: Eagle). At least two good open source alternatives to Eagle exists for ECAD: gEDA and KiCad. 3D mechanical cad, not so much, although I have hopes for FreeCAD.
I once had this debate on line with Lady Ada, calling Adafruit to task for not using open source ECAD tools. She said, and I quote directly and accurately: "Tools don't matter." Her myopia in this regard astounds me..
The only thing that makes her position defensible is that hardware designs have a much shorter life span than software designs. You can be very successful doing hardware having a short attention span, since the technology moves so fast. In fact, a short attention span probably helps minimize distractions. With software, you must take the long view or die -- how old is errno.h?