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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: December 14th, 2023

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  • You could end up working for a company that develops free software so that’s one way. My company develops an open source science tool and it’s free for anyone to hack on, run their own copy, and use for commercial purposes, but we sell support which usually seems to involve being paid to develop certain features and fix certain bugs, as well as advise on how to keep their system running smoothly.


  • I’ve even experienced this in the 3D printing community, where I design a highly parametric model and put lots of effort into making all of the major dimensions and qualities parameterized and dynamically adjustable, with lots of bounds checking and value clamping, with all the parameters at the top of my scad file with comments explaining what each variable does.

    And then someone comes along to remix my model, says I don’t want to install openscad, and just scales the entire output stl to change the dimensions, squashing all the features of the model in the process (instead of having the size gracefully adjust with all the features moving around to account), and leaving anybody starting from their work with a hard to remix mesh with no parameters.



  • I’m not a cook but just a general fan of commercial / industrial products (always getting jealous of the stuff I see in my engineer friends machine shops at work, materials science labs, etc), and one of my favorite sites to get ideas for when it comes to household / kitchen stuff is the webstaurant store. I don’t necessarily even buy much stuff because some of the items can only be bought by the case, but it’s fun to browse and if I see something I like I can check if it’s available anywhere else. I have bought a commercial style tall recycling bin and some generic 5 gallon bag in box soda syrups since you could just buy 1 of those, which save a lot of money if you carbonate at home compared to buying soda at the grocery store.

    Anyway they have a surface sanitizer section so you might get some ideas on what to get by browsing there. Again some are by the case but at least a few you can buy a single spray bottle or a single gallon: https://www.webstaurantstore.com/35535/surface-sanitizing-and-disinfecting-chemicals.html

    And of course be sure to read all the directions and warnings since they might be used differently than you would at home, or have different requirements.


  • I think they do this to game people who use the “rebuy” button without shopping around again. Several times I’ve bought a consumable and when I go back, the exact listing j bought from has doubled in price while many other listings are normal. That’s why I never use the “buy again” section, and if I can afford to wait I’ll find a lower or comparable price on eBay, and hope they aren’t just drop shipping me from a cheaper listing that I didn’t find on Amazon.