Nick Foley (@nhfoley) / X

Nick Foley

2,994 posts

Nick Foley

@nhfoley

Hardware Cofounder @Seneca_Systems Firefighting Drones / forager.school / staymoonside.com Ex: @Uber / @gravisrobotics / jumpbikes.com / denizen.works

Gualala, CA

Joined August 2010

Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Sep 18, 2024
A friend’s been quietly building insanely capable autonomous excavators & visiting SF end of this week — help me connect him with people in robotics, seed stage deep tech, huge earthmoving needs. They dig load etc but this retaining wall from found material blows my mind:
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Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Nov 2, 2024
My only degrowther fantasy is to assemble the last surviving members of the early 90s Toyota engineering & design team to start a new car company.
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Nov 7, 2024
Underrated in our mastery of the stainless steel tech tree (see: Starship!) is it being now economical in totally mundane uses, like plumbing. Hugely satisfying to replace my traditional plumbing (which sheds lead & microplastics) with truly clean SS that will last centuries.
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Dec 8, 2024
Replying to @duncancampbell
High status as we still haven’t cracked making it cheaply
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Jul 9, 2024
Still amazed that one can buy bulk used Japanese chefs knives on eBay, sharpen them, and for <$10/knife, cook with tools in an entirely different league than the random stainless slop you might have been gifted over the years. Globalism ftw. ebay.com/itm/2262243632…
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Mar 20, 2025
Replying to @nwilliams030
100% why conflating homelessness with housing affordability does real harm to homeless people, homebuilders, and everyone who lives in a city. They are not going to have their problems solved or really even helped by just housing until other things are addressed first.
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Nov 28, 2024
My radical opinion, hated by both left & right, is that we should all be legally mandated vegetarians at 18, and only unlock meat types by first killing + butchering them once ourselves to see if we're actually OK with how it feels.
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Mar 4, 2025
Replying to @___frye
The one place they have been too scared: run desktop apps
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Oct 16, 2024
Back in 2012, a friend & I built a printer like this, wrote a patent, walked away & just published as prior art b/c we were bitter with Stratasys FDM patents holding back decades of 3DP progress. Below - a test part, of a hopeful future of incredible things from vats of goo.
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Brian Roemmele
@BrianRoemmele
Oct 15, 2024
The 3D Gell Printer.
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
May 6, 2024
Weekend project all-electric pizza oven using a novel high-temp ceramic cook surface to rip out pies at 950F. Gas, coal, wood are DONE.
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Mar 12, 2025
Replying to @bryan_caplan
This sentiment always leaves me disappointed at how little people appreciate the wonders of modern engineering & manufacturing. Yes luggage wheels could have existed earlier (in fact they did, metal wheels could be found on trunks since their inception) but they fundamentally
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Jan 3, 2025
Replying to @_deepfates
We're going to find that one of these startups spent 10's of millions, not on training their model directly, but on bribing Will Smith for real video of him eating spaghetti in different scenarios
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Aug 7, 2024
Replying to @mttgrmm
“We deliver a novelty tungsten cube paperweight to within 1m radius of your desk in under 15 minutes”
Nick Foley
@nhfoley
Nov 4, 2024
My off-grid solar produces an excess 50kWh a day of electricity - what’s the most interesting thing to do with it? Considering: GPU cluster Methane synthesis Seawater desalination Aluminum foundry Bitcoin mining Feels like appliances for this will be big in the next decade.