Top
Best
New

Posted by robinhouston 3 days ago

The Free Universal Construction Kit(fffff.at)
285 points | 55 comments
lucb1e 6 hours ago|
In case the authors are here, the first sentence contains the bytes e2 80 94 which would be UTF-8 for an em dash, but it has been reinterpreted as 3 bytes using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252#Code_page_layout and shown on the page as —. Further down, there's a lot of similar errors such as a single right quote (U+2019) in K'nex. Firefox seems to have first removed their encoding configuration menu in version 89, then introduced a new button in version 91, and that one is disabled now as well so there's no fixing this user-side it seems :/

Edit: ah the page is from 2012-03-19, from the <meta property="article:published_time"> tag

londons_explore 5 hours ago||
This is probably the case of a bodged migration from one CMS to another.

My blog suffered the same, and going through loads of old pages to check and fix them just isn't worth the effort.

QuantumNomad_ 1 hour ago||
The archived version from 2012 is showing the characters correct. So probably some migration like you said.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120319180000/https://fffff.at/...

The website itself has been closed since 2015 according to the front page.

https://fffff.at/

Which also suffers from encoding problems making weird characters show up.

But which was showing the characters the way it should on August 1st 2015 when the site was closing down.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150801234212/http://fffff.at/

Who wants to bet that at some point after the closing of the site, they switched over from a live CMS to a static copy of the site and in the process of doing so things got a little screwed up when exporting data from a MySQL database with the different encoding weirdnesses that can sometimes occur with MySQL and how the db schema was set there.

taneq 3 hours ago||
> Why shouldn’t we be able to?

I have no idea why but my brain immediately interpreted this as a Scottish accent, like ‘shouldnae’. Weird.

dasyatidprime 2 hours ago||
… because "â€" and "ae" are visually similar?
delichon 7 hours ago||
These kits can have extraordinary longevity. I was playing with Lincoln Logs in 1967. Turns out they got started in 1918. Lego bricks have been around since 1945. The moat created by seriously delighting your customers at a young age is large.
rapnie 5 hours ago||
It is a really nice concept. I had never heard of it. But then as GenX at young age I played with Fishertechnik [0] more than with Lego. Around since 1966 [1].

[0] https://www.fischertechnik.de/en

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischertechnik

eru 1 hour ago|||
> The moat created by seriously delighting your customers at a young age is large.

I'm not sure that's enough: most kids wouldn't be able to tell a genuine Lego brick from a knock-off.

(Lego famously has insane quality control on their tolerances. But I haven't had any trouble with knock-off bricks so far either.)

estearum 56 minutes ago||
I'm sure that Lego still captures virtually all of the revenue in this category, no?
reaperducer 6 hours ago|||
Don't forget Erector Sets.

I spend untold hours failing to build a cable tramway between my mother's dresser and bed.

But at least now I'm an expert at pylon design!

lostlogin 5 hours ago||
> The moat created by seriously delighting your customers at a young age is large.

I wish Meccano would get its shit together. I can’t see anything I want on their limited site and there is so much cool stuff that could be made.

https://www.meccano.com/

srean 8 hours ago||
Any zometool aficionados here

https://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/zometool.html

Duanemclemore 7 hours ago||
Zometool rules!

I run workshops about the use of modular systems in facilitating non-expert participation in architecture. One I did (at the CAAD Futures Conference in 2023) was with Zometool. It was a blast and really successful.

In preparation I also got to interview the late great Steve Baer, inventor of the Zome (among many other things - seriously look him up, he's one of the most brilliant people of the past 100 years imo). It was a huge honor.

The book chapter the organizers were supposed to do about the conference workshops never materialized (hrmph), but I've done other little collaborative build projects since, so one day I'll document them all together.

srean 7 hours ago||
Fantastic ! Would love to read more about your experiences.
analog8374 3 hours ago||
yeah I dig it a fair bit. It's good for making jigs for carpenting geometric stuff. Those funny angles.
datawars 8 hours ago||
Very cool. Do two copyright infringements (one on each side of the adapter) cancel each other out? I really like it!
Rexxar 2 hours ago||
There is some interoperability provision to patents and copyright in European union if I remember correctly but I don't know how broad they are and if they apply to this.
croes 8 hours ago||
At least Lego‘s patent on the bricks expired. You can’t make mini figures but bricks shouldn’t be a problem
sixtyj 7 hours ago|||
Well done indeed

I hope that Lego (not lawyers ofc) would appreciate such creativity approach and hire creators. (E.g. similar to acquihire of OpenClaw creator by OpenAI.)

How many of us do think this way?

I am always jealous (in good way) when I see similar projects.

stackghost 5 hours ago|||
Indeed Amazon is chock full of shitty Chinese Lego ripoffs. The bricks do indeed fit together but the quality is abysmal.
pennomi 2 hours ago||
Some of the Chinese brands have superior quality to LEGO these days.
tanvach 7 hours ago||
Super cool, lock-in is very real. We are overflowing with Duplo and Lego sets because I just don't want to deal with another system. There are, of course, other models on Thingiverse, Printables, etc., but knowing these are properly designed to fit and work is a huge plus. Cudos to the team!
cortesoft 9 hours ago||
No Construx? I built everything out of those as a kid.
wisemanwillhear 2 hours ago|
Ditto. My kids are still pretty young, and my old Construx are one of the favorite building toys.
tripdout 6 hours ago||
Wow, Tinkertoys, I still remember how the wood smelled and the big drum it came in.
fwipsy 9 hours ago||
Neat idea, but as an adult who builds little machines out of Lego Technic for fun sometimes, the adapter selection seems very limited. In order to make this idea "practical" you would need adapters with a variety of sizes, shapes, and orientations. I guess I'm not the target audience - I can definitely see this being cool for children.
mathgeek 6 hours ago|
That’s the joy of 3d printing. You can adapt these to any adapter if you need it.
flobosg 9 hours ago|
(2012)
More comments...