Whenever I looked at using IKEA stuff to hack or incorporate into a larger build, the cost, effort, and quality never seemed worth it to me.
I built my current desk from some butcher block counter tops and shelfs and 4x4's. I don't think it cost me all that much more from what I could have done from IKEA and the quality is astronomically better.
If you're already dealing with saws and drills to hack the IKEA stuff, you really only need to toss is a sander and maybe a router and you can just work with real wood.
A butcher block desk with 4x4s for legs is pretty simple and forgiving. Matching the quality of appearance of a lot of other IKEA furniture would require quite a bit more skill and tools.
Like a Kallax, unless you're a real wizard you couldn't cobble one of those together without a lot of skill.
I also did a butcher block top. Cut it down and routed to perfectly flow around what passes for a "straight wall" in this house, spent entirely too long sanding and finishing.
Then put it on some IKEA drawer blocks, because I want drawers, but I'm not equipped to build those in any reasonable timeframe.
Cutting down a desk top is something you can do with sawhorses and some good weather. More intricate things need an actual workshop for good results.
I have a few of those butcher block tops because I scaled down my shop, but I just can't throw them away. one was purchased 50+ years ago and my family used it as a breakfast table. they make excellent work benches and tables. they're robust and attractive. really all you need is a belt sander and some food safe mineral oil and you can completely resurface them if they get funky. I usually just weld a piece of 1/4" angle to a square plate for legs and weld a nut at the bottom for a threaded foot, but you can really do anything. it absolutely lovely to have a clean butcher block top for food preparation.
Unless you like the look of veneer on MDF instead of butcher block wood. I think anyone considering IKEA is probably interested in the IKEA finish. After sanding, stain &/ seal is another step people like to avoid
I did something similar, but just bought the wooden desk top from Ikea. Sanded/stained and added some standing desk legs. Perfect balance between customization and not building from scratch.
I'd be hesitant to recommend a novice to pursue a glue-up/planing project if they weren't already interested in woodworking.
Eh, most IKEA desk hacks is to buy the wooden kitchen countertop, cut it to shape, and put it on some drawers. So you're not really describing anything different.
On the Polymarket homepage right now, one of the featured markets is whether or not Bitcoin will be up or down over the next 5 minutes. It's hard to justify that as anything more than illegal gambling.
I find prediction markets to be interesting on two fronts:
1) They like a really good way to determine the probability of something happening, which is interesting for events like elections
2) It provides an avenue for smart bettors to take advantage and sharpen their skill, whereas they get severely limited or banned from traditional sports books
However, it seems like all incentive structures for the markets and consumer behavior will steer these things to degenerate gambling.
Polymarket is not CFTC regulated, it's considered illegal in the US. CFTC does not allow betting on securities prices. Cryptocurrency is a bit of a gray area because it's not considered a registered security.
N.B. it becomes a bit frustrating to talk about financial and regulatory things on this site because the level of knowledge is generally "I read some articles on social media about markets" level.
> Cryptocurrency is a bit of a gray area because it's not considered a registered security
Additionally, the SEC and CFTC guidance on what digital asset can be treated as a security and what can be treated as a commodity was only released a couple weeks ago [0].
Stuff is changing rapidly so it's best to keep an experienced regulatory lawyer on retainer.
> N.B. it becomes a bit frustrating to talk about financial and regulatory things on this site because the level of knowledge is generally "I read some articles on social media about markets" level.
Concrete counter top mixes usually use either much smaller, or no aggregate and use more sand. The mixes resemble mortar more than concrete and they are typically a little harder and less forgiving to work with.
Granted, my modeling skills begin and end with Tinkercad but I've actually created some really useful things for around the house and for hobbies -- a plug for my septic drain field distribution box pipes (one pipe was cut too short and there was no good way to plug it -- I tried lots of options before making one myself), jigs for drilling, pieces for a claw machine I'm refurbishing, cases for Arduino projects, etc.
The balancing act of figuring out what you can reasonably rely on from an LLM and what you need to be skeptical or dismissive of is not the type of experience an iPhone user should be expected to navigate.
>> Variant B improved conversion rate (CVR) or Add-to-Cart (ATC) rate? Roll it out.
Basing rollouts on add-to-cart rate is generally not a great idea, particularly for experiments on product pages. There are a variety of reasons why shoppers add products to carts that may only be loosely based on intent to purchase. In my years of ecommerce A/B testing, I've seen plenty of tests that improve conversion rate and/or revenue per visitor but negatively impact add-to-cart rates.
I get the sentiment but was this actually some big launch announcement? When I look at the store online, you have to dig a bit just to even find the product.
Where I live, bald-faced hornets and yellowjackets are very aggressive. Yellowjackets will also build nests inside of structures, in the ground, etc. where it's sometimes very difficult to even know they are there until it's too late.
This is much different than honey bees and other types of wasps who are much less likely to attack just by being near them.
I've used the Tacbo Bel AI drive-thru and came away with the same thought. I kind of groaned at first but it was very accurate, even when making adjustments.
> But actually, Amazon, Apple etc aren't natural homes for this, they don't need to burn money to chase it.
Why wouldn't consumer AI be a natural home for Apple?
Apple is constantly under blast for being slow to AI but if you look at the current state of AI, it feels like something Apple would never release -- the quality just isn't there. I don't necessarily think Apple only dipping their toes into AI is that poor of a decision right now. They still have the ability to blow the roof off the market with agents and device integration whenever the tech is far enough along to be trustworthy to the average consumer.
Apple's natural home is hardware, and the consume software integrated with that hardware. Off the top of my head I can't think of any "hard" software created by Apple, it's all about the UX and the integrations.
So unless Apple thinks it can outcompete it's BigTech competitors in something it historically hasn't done much of, best leave it to them.
> Off the top of my head I can't think of any "hard" software created by Apple, it's all about the UX and the integrations.
This sounds like you’re either unfamiliar with what software they make or underestimate the complexity of things like a modern operating system. For example, most people would consider Swift hard, or the various Core frameworks, or things like designing a new modern file system and doing in place migrations on billion devices, etc.
I built my current desk from some butcher block counter tops and shelfs and 4x4's. I don't think it cost me all that much more from what I could have done from IKEA and the quality is astronomically better.
If you're already dealing with saws and drills to hack the IKEA stuff, you really only need to toss is a sander and maybe a router and you can just work with real wood.
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