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teruakohatu 8 hours ago

It is easy to understand the impact this will be in people’s lives.

I think within no time it will be modded with motors, maybe salvaged from broken electrical appliances and it will come full circle.

throwaway173738 7 hours ago | parent [-]

You’d need electricity for that and a lot of places don’t have it.

AlotOfReading 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You'd be surprised at the places that have electricity, like houses in middle of nowhere, central asia. One of the challenges with engineering technology for the global south is that poverty is wildly different for different people. I met a professor working on flatpack windmills to pump water/electricity. The major challenges he kept seeing in the the Andes weren't the sorts of longevity/efficiency/logistics issues we usually solve with standard engineering, but how the products interacted with local politics and society.

makeitdouble 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

To add to AlotOfReading's point, many places have some electricity, just utterly unreliable.

It might be down a few hours every day, or completely cut for days after storms or infra degradation, or the current fluctuate too much for delicate electronics. Many places could also get hold of a gasoline generator.

These kind of variations could require more thinking on the design, but being able to use electricity when available and hand power when needed would be the best.

Ideally the people on the ground thinking about their specific issues and having open ways to adapt the machine for it opens the door for many kind of evolutions.