On the positive side, kudos to whomever in marketing/pr at the design firm got this useless product so much press.
This is just the sort of "win" that a design consulting shop loves to have for actual briefs that lead to real moving-the-needle revenue. One example would be SmartDesign's modular slip-on "S-Grips" that led to the iconic vegetable peeler that then bled into the "design language" of every product at OXO.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90239156/the-untold-story-of-the...
I liked the part where they were looking for someone to manufacture the handles, and the Japanese machinist said "If he could make it, I can make it!".
Indeed, having gone down the rabbit hole of machining (both to see if it would be a viable hobby and if it could even be a career), this was the attitude of the shop teacher: "if you can think it, you can probably make it". I am far more surprised that neither the American nor the Taiwanese manufacturers said this. Then again, perhaps it was because management didn't talk to the guys who made things!
(Now that I think of it, had they done that, perhaps they would have gotten the answer "We can do it, but the fins will wear down the tool too fast, at least until we can figure out a better material for the tools!" instead of "Nope, we can't do that!")
0.96 GBP including VAT.
I had to replace the string this year though.
- on the practicity: i can do exactly what i want with a fixed one, without risk for the blade to slip
- small dust and bits tend to gather at the junctions and sit there
https://www.vitra.com/en-us/product/wiggle?srsltid=AfmBOooT-...
Expressing patronage of sustainability is emotionally equivalent to expressing patronage of artistry. Functionally a $10 chair from Goodwill will support a person equally well (and also be an expression of patronage for a person with options).
Apparently no one learned their lesson, because the cardboard olympic village beds were also (allegedly) pretty terrible.
Not only useless but also uncomfortable. My wrists get itchy when looking at those zigzag bevels...
The Bett 2.0 was one of the most comfortable things I’ve ever slept on. The Grid Bed was useless and fell apart.
This seems quite absurd. Whatever good you do the planet by using something out of recycled paper (thumbs up on the idea) will surely be offset by all the logistics of the shipping.
This should have been a tutorial, not a product.
My favorite was when I saw a jam that touted "upcycled" strawberries. When I looked into it, it basically meant that it was made from beat up ugly strawberries that would have been used for animal feed. Surely there would be cost savings in using reject fruit, right? No, an 8oz jar retails for over $8 compared to about half that to an organic no sugar added alternative (I think its cheaper since I last looked though)
They even get certified that they use the most undesirable fruit that they can find!
https://mleverything.substack.com/p/what-are-upcycled-strawb...
That's true for basically all processed food that contains fruit or vegetables, for obvious economic reasons. The stuff that looks good goes to the supermarkets who care very much about shelf appeal, the rest goes to the processors who absolutely don't.
A big problem with the food market is that people shop with their eyes, which leads to stupid amount of waste on fruit&vegetables section, as people prefer to go to another store than to buy veggies that look anything less than perfect.
I suppose this is because most animals in the wild are always couple hours away from starvation and just can't afford being picky eaters.
We definitely don't (generally) turn our noses up at various forms of rotten milk or the liquids of fruits rotten enough to be alcoholic.
The price isn't some random number attached to an activity. It captures the various costs associated with it and is helpful in directing behaviors for this very reason.
Recycling is more expensive, it likely means that there are associated costs (e.g. transportation, sorting, cleaning, processing, etc) that make it less economical than just throwing it in a landfill. And all these additional costs likely make it the "wrong" decision since they likely contribute to carbon emissions or otherwise wasteful use of the earth's resources
It doesn't capture all of the costs. Key term here is "externalities", which are things that should be priced into a transaction, but currently aren't. Like the environmental impact of manufacturing process.
If all major externalities were priced in, and recycling would still be more expensive, then we could confidently say that it's the wrong thing to do.
> And all these additional costs likely make it the "wrong" decision since they likely contribute to carbon emissions or otherwise wasteful use of the earth's resources
I think this doesn't often hold true, yes, an efficient market begets economically efficient resource allocation, but there's more to environmentalism than efficient resource allocation. Your example is good, it's certainly more economically efficient to use less petroleum when transporting goods, and that efficiency can be reflected in final costs. But let's look at another example:
Say you're buying lumber to build a house. There's a local lumber farm that sustainably grows and cuts down trees. Since its close, transportation costs (and associated emissions) are low - largely coming from amortized land costs and labor. However there's another company that buys cheap land from farmers in the Amazon, with cheaper labor, ships it up via freight, and sells it for marginally cheaper. The costs in the latter example are largely driven by transportation - and while cheaper, has a significantly larger carbon impact.
How does this apply to recycling though? Landfills in developed countries have little, if any externalities, because they're engineered to contain waste.
https://practical.engineering/blog/2024/9/3/the-hidden-engin...
That's the same thing I've seen demonstrated. It's really too bad that the plastics industry seized on the opportunity to greenwash wasteful amounts of plastic packaging by giving people a recycling bin that claims to do something useful with that discarded plastic, when in reality it's rare for post-consumer plastic to make any rational sense (other than those things like we're discussing, where people in practice waste even more resources in the recycling process just to feel good that the plastic material itself was technically not 'wasted').
Only if it doesn't offgas. Or leech.
If the price to companies profiting from plastics included exteralities I could possibly agree with you but as it stands these costs are normally paid by disadvantaged individuals or marginalized ecosystems.
Of course, the Soviet Union doing something doesn't automatically mean it's economical or sensible, but at least in premise it should be useful for something.
Or we could use a ton of energy and chemicals to recycle paper (and also to clean it since all consumer recycling in the US is "mixed stream" meaning someone's used dirty yogurt container and beer bottles are all over the paper), and produce much worse paper.
But all "recycling" is too valuable to helping people feel good about consumption, for us to be honest with ourselves about how pointless most of it is besides aluminum and glass, and maybe steel.
This does not have the effect on atmospheric CO2 that you implying, unless the resulting paper is deeply buried - not incinerated, or left to rot, or biodegraded in any way.
I'm fine with stipulations like using some kind of (economically-viable) filter on the resulting smoke.
All that I "know" about it is only based on vibes so that's why I'm asking.
Better to bury it. Put it back in the ground, where it came from.
The price isn't some random number attached to an activity. It captures the various costs associated with it and is helpful in directing behaviors for this very reason.
Collect enough, and you can melt them into solid blocks that could be used like this laptop stand. Recycling common plastic of the same type (PE, PP) is actually easily done with commonly available equipment, unlike paper.
There are certain exceptions to this -- nickel cadmium batteries come to mind -- but for things like this, the question isn't "is it more economic to produce it new than to recycle it?" so much as it's "is it more economic to recycle it than to dispose of it properly?"
Depends on the price of oil. Metal recycling is far more cost effective that extracting from ore. Glass, too, is very economical to recycle.
Plastic recycling was never about recycling, it was to convince people to use plastics.
However, in the interest of good faith discussion, I’ll offer a rebuttal to the argument you are making. The logic applies when (and this is very important) that food goes to farm animals which will be slaughtered of humans to eat.
“Waste” isn’t really the right word, more like “inefficient”, in the sense that the amount of food which takes for an animal to mature is orders of magnitude greater than what you take from it. In other words, you could feed significantly more people if they ate what you’re feeding the animal.
When you couple that with the environmental impact of raising animals as food, including deforestation and land use, which in turn affects us as well, it becomes a major issue.
That's just because of this new wave of eco-virtue-signaling that's become popular in the past few years. Before that, recycled meant lower quality and cheaper.
See also: "vegan butter" or "plant-based butter" instead of "hydrogenated vegetable oil".
https://www.flora.com/en-us/floraplant/our-products/salted-p...
that said, a tutorial to turn the shipping box for your laptop (or a flat of diet coke) into a stand would be good. useful in a pinch
edit: keyboard box might be the best box to print the fold lines on. you need that for a minimally ergo laptop setup anyway
It will outlast me, and folds into a smaller size that fits nicely in my laptop bag.
Laptops will probably go away, but it could be handed down for generations, and when it no longer can be used, the majority of the energy and resources used to make it can be recouped through recycling it’s intrinsically valuable metals.
This 20 dollar piece of paper will last until the first month in a humid environment.
This should be a tutorial on how to reuse discarded material into an improvised, impromptu laptop stand.
If I saw someone pull this out of a box and put their laptop on it, they would lose a great deal of credibility in my estimation. If I saw someone make this out of some waste paper in a coffee shop, I would be intrigued and compelled to seek an opportunity to see if that person was open to making new acquaintances and sharing ideas.
I love this. More tutorials, fewer products.
The plastic laptop stand you by probably also had to be shipped halfway around the world, so this one is probably a wash.
It doesn't seem too difficult to make something similar.
The seller is called “grape lab”, with a “g” as the logo, and “Sustainable Design Lab” as the tagline. Everything in English. How is that “intended for other people in Korea”?
USA folded paper is cheap cardboard. Asian folded paper is origami.
It is not aesthetically pleasing at all, which is important to me, for whatever neurological reason. Also, I consider a laptop stand as just a device to raise the screen to a better ergonomic level on the understanding that an external keyboard and mouse will be used to operate the device.
Otherwise, in a laptop stand, ergonomic keyboard use requirements pull the incline towards level, and ergonomic monitor height requirements pull the incline upwards, so there is no healthy angle for a laptop stand.
As already mentioned by andrei_says_, typing fingers should be below the wrist (as correct piano playing has proved for centuries).
Raising the monitor so that the top is as close to eye level as possible (while maintaining a straight back) is better orthopedicly.
It's impossible to achieve this and a good keyboard posture, so you must introduce an external keyboard.
Without an external keyboard, there is no value in using a stand, you might as well just keep the laptop in a neutral position.
Another piece of advice was that on a standing desk your forearms should not be parallel to the ground but slightly below your elbow.
Last I used a laptop at a desk on the regular, state of the art laptop stands were reams of printer paper. Worst case, you need to actually use the paper in the printer and you're out a stand until you restock.
I guess they are young and their bodies don't hurt yet.
I guess it’s better for people who only work on laptops and don’t want to have separate keyboards and pointing devices.
I travel a lot and I use a Roost laptop stand
https://www.therooststand.com/
A standard Apple keyboard and mouse, and a portable USB powered monitor that gets power and video from one USB cable and monitor stand
The problem with this paper one is that the paper will wear within a couple of years, and if you spill your coffee on it or anything like that or put it down on a coffee-ring stain, it's straight in the bin.
I fail to see the value in something made from recyclable that is essentially disposable rather than a roost which can be made from recycled plastic and last forever.
The roost also only cost about double to triple this to buy.
EDIT: I see the roost is quite a bit more expensive now, but longevity and ergonomics wise I'd say still well worth it.
It was a fair bit cheaper, I want to say more like $60, I suppose "inflation" is the reason.
EDIT: 2016 I bought my roost stand, it's still good as new.
The natural position of the fingers when typing is below the wrist not above it.
This seems very uncomfortable to me as resting your hands on the pointed edges of the folded paper seems like an awful user experience.
A laptop stand that elevates the laptop, placed on a table that is already too high, requires even more positive tilt.
And don't forget the large number of people who don't know how to touch-type and need clear visibility of all the keycaps.
Not sure what the thought process is behind the design of most of these things.
It's pricier but lighter and more compact.
However, more expensive than it so depends if shredding those grams is worth it or not
My preferred design is like https://amzn.eu/d/0KB8nGM (2x U shapes of metal), which lets you have the keyboard underneath the laptop , so the laptop is as close to the edge of the desk as if you weren’t using an external keyboard
I have a Roost stand and with my keyboard in front of it, the distance is mostly right (13” screen and it’s more comfortable if I scale fonts up by 20% or so). It’s actually closer to my eyes than my desktop setup (24” screen mounted on monitor arm)
If you're having trouble seeing clearly, you should use glasses and/or increase the system-wide font size (or decrease the "resolution").
Rain Design's mStand is my favorite, blends in perfectly.
The mStand is beautiful, but it's not portable.
At some point I'm sure I could easily recycle it.
The energy cost of buying this online, the carbon cost behind the $22 + shipping, the actual carbon cost of shipping this crap.
We are truly living in the most idiotic timeline.
Fwiw I do think that non-consumtion is a more 'real' protest than buying recycled but if you _have_ to get something
You don’t have to get it shipped, most of the time. Whenever you next go to town, go into any hardware shop and buy whatever they have.
Heck, hop on freecycle and you’re bound to see someone giving away one of these that you can pick up for free, in person.
Or buy one second hand.
Or use a large book.
Or, or, or…
I'm not sure that being shipped is much worse than buying from a store that also gets it shipped and wrapped in as much plastic. And if its a town over, you're driving there which is CO2 as well.
Using nothing at all is better for sure and I said as much. Second hand stuff rules.
All in all though, this sort of individual choice is peanuts compared to taking a single plane ride which is itself peanuts compared to what corporations get away with. So imo. having any sort of strong opinion on this is silly.
However, advertising yourself as sustainable (like this store does) is also a marketing move which caters to a specific type of audience. If your products aren’t actually sustainable, it is valid criticism to point that out.
Imagine having two companies selling candy. One says their sweets not only taste good but are good for you, while the other doesn’t make any kind of health claim. Both are bad, but one of them is outright tricking you, which feels worse.
Note I’m not claiming this is what this seller is doing. Maybe they think what they’re doing is sustainable when it’s not. But that’s all the more reason to point it out so they can work of something better.
Edit: Asus laptop had foldable stand included in the paper packaging.
- A shoebox
- An old binder
- A food container
- Some coasters
- Egg carton
- Jenga blocks
- Cereal box
- Legos
- Picture frame
- Tennis ball (cut it in half)
- Door stoppers
- Cake pan
- A screwdriver box
- A few junk mailer magazines
- Crumple up a couple newspaper pages
This $6 “fancy” cardboard box from Ikea has been doing the same job for me quite well. Can also discretely hide a power strip and hub inside, keeps dust off too. Just cut a small hole in the back.
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/tjena-storage-box-with-lid-blac...
Like someone else said, release the instructions.
If you want to make an environmental impact, you have to make something people are willing to buy. That's why Tesla became so successful, no one cared 10 years ago when it was a status symbol. Once it got to like $40k it sold like crack.
I'd always grab old books from school and work, but honestly they are horrible to learn from because things like java and c# have changed so much, you end up teaching yourself outdated stuff and then needing to relearn all of the new ways to do stuff. You're probably safe learning C from an older book though, as long as it's ansi c and not the original k&r book.
- C (post-ANSI) - fundamentals largely unchanged since 1989
- SQL and Erlang - basic concepts stable since 1980s
- Prolog and Forth - core concepts stable since 1970s
Although modern books might cover some improved practices or new tooling, older texts on core concepts remain valuable.
AAaand let the down-voting of my opinion begin....
It seems like an ok system if you don’t have to interact with your keyboard. But if you want to do away with the need to interact with the keyboard, a much more aggressive tilt could be used, right? This only gets you a couple inches. Ideally the top of the screen is around the top of your head, right? Of course this is for on-the-go use, so we don’t expect ideal.
Overall, it is art; I really do think it looks nice, but it is pretty impractical.
Do they mean a single sheet of seriously thick card stock? Sheets of paper do not weigh 45 grams.
also 22 bucks for a few grams of cardboard? seems excessive. but hey at least it'll break fast, cant handle moisture, and so on.
Yes, you can fold one yourself (will it be stable enough though?). Yes, I wouldn't use it for a laptop either. But for a tablet it could work really nice.
Also shipping it around the world is a bit silly, like with most things. Too many people will order on Amazon or buy fruits from the other side of the world without a second thought. Get off your high horse.
It's foldable. It's light. It's made of recycled material. It's cheap enough.
Seems pretty smart to me.
It looks like you're only straining your wrists against the increased keyboard angle.
Where is the tutorial for making this piece of shit, rather than shipping it halfway around the world on an exhaust-spewing, whale-killing freighter? Oh, it's recycled, pardon me.
> ignoring the fact that this was likely air shipped from Korea and then delivered by multiple trucks to you.
This presupposes the economies of scale. One plane is not leaving South Korea laden with just one laptop stand and nothing else, and one delivery truck is not leaving the Fedex or UPS depot almost entirely empty save for one laptop stand destined for the consumer's house.
Who do you imagine thought of it this way, and how does an objection to shipping trash require you to think this way?
What normal people imagine is that a package containing this displaces a package containing something else, and that an collective shipping container of these is a shipping container that wouldn't have been shipped otherwise.
What you seem to be theorizing is that if these weren't being shipped, some other product would have been invented to take up the volume that it uses, or all other products would expand in order to fill the space. That has a burden of proof that the normal people explanation doesn't require.
The argument being presented by the person I replied to said verbatim: "ignoring the fact that this was likely air shipped from Korea and then delivered by multiple trucks to you."
> What you seem to be theorizing is that if these weren't being shipped, some other product would have been invented to take up the volume that it uses, or all other products would expand in order to fill the space.
We don't need to theorize or invent, the plastic products already exist. Go to Amazon and search for "laptop stand" and you'll find a glut of them. So I ask again, if you're going to buy a laptop stand anyway and you have the choice between A) a plastic stand or B) this recycled stand, is it better, in terms of environmental impact, to buy one of the hundreds of plastic stands shipped from South Korea, or this recycled stand shipped from South Korea?
I mean, if you expect the cardboard one not to last very long, then yes. Yes it does "make more or less sense".
My reasoning for thinking it's safe is that 451F/230C would probably damage/burn/melt the cheap plastic table it normally sits on.
If the people who bought this cared about recycling rather than having a virtue signaling conversation starter they wouldn’t have bought it.
This is insane, the carbon value of $22 is high enough without the garbage of shipping this crap all over the country and possibly the world.