You’re right. No shame there, but definitely knocks a $100 or more off the price.

Scandalous!

True. I was mostly thinking about having to buy keycaps aftermarket when the prices double/triple and having to source all the different kits.

Personally, I think I have three times as many keycap sets than I do keyboards.

Yep! This is far from the strangest layout and keycap use out there, but you’ll find that Enter and Shift keys are more common for split spacebar layouts on larger (and saner) 40% keyboards.

This is still a split spacebar layout though, the person on reddit who built this thing even said that they just didn’t have the right sized blank keycaps. This is very normal for small keyboards since keycap sets usually are designed for regular layouts and don’t always have the right size, sculpt, and legend for weird layouts.

Don’t forget keycaps! It’s where the real money is lost.

That set looks like GMK Blue Samurai, which sells new for $150.

Split spacebars are thing mostly because of layouts that won’t support a normal spacebar key. But, since most of these keyboards have user created and designed firmware, one could assign those spacebar keys to do anything.

I have a few keyboards with split spacebars where the “right” spacebar is normal; it’s just a spacebar but small. The “left” space does dual duty; tap it and it’s a spacebar, hold it down and it becomes a modifier key for a custom layer. Custom layers are used on small keyboards to make the “missing” keys available, sort of like how a phone keyboard has number layer and symbols layer.

I fully embraced this habit of split spacebars because I cannot train myself to use my left thumb to hit space for the life of me even though I’m a touch typist. Since my right thumb is the only digit hitting space, may as well get some use out of the rest of the space taken up by that spacebar.

I think the difference is that one case is a collective noun and the other is a fallacy.

Contrast with using females as a collective noun which can been seen as reductive or offensive on its own without the fallacious logic.

I’m bothered when ever I hear someone use females as a collective noun for women. Not necessarily because it offends me or because I’m offended on behalf of someone else, but because it sounds so strange to me and the context where it is used is often wildly inappropriate.

The usage is odd; in my experience people who refer to women collectively as females often do not refer to men collectively as males which is often telling about other beliefs and ideas. Also, male/female and man/woman are dichotomies, and using men/females sounds really off.

Referring to people using technical terminology feels reductive and weird to me. Replace female with any other technical identity term and use it the same way: it will get really awkward really fast.

I am aware that the majority of people who use females collectively are not doing so to offend. Hell, the other day, I heard a teacher refer to the girls in her class as females. I doubt she was using it as a pejorative, but she referred to the boys as… boys. The whole thing was weird to me.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that a lot of sites are starting to disallow aliasing with email addresses. So annoying.