I’m a mech E in the medical field. We’re consistently understaffed. If I validate an Excel worksheet in Excel '08 or a Python program in 3.5 with a specific version of NumPy, we’re probably sticking with those versions for a while. Every time I bring up re-validating with the latest version, keeping one old system running the old software requires fewer resources than me or a colleague re-validating.

My whole department is stuck on one version of Python because that was the most recent version when I had an emergency project and developed a data analysis algorithm. We validated it, then as new members were added to my team, they needed a copy, so we had to keep using it. I’ll probably re-validate it to the next Python release. It’s not only unit tests, or we could automate validation. Unit tests are a tiny part of validating software for making medical decisions. And software that directly runs a medical device (like firmware on an insulin pump) is an order of magnitude more rigorous than what I do.

Side note: there are people who somehow root their insulin pumps and run algorithms on them. There’s a group that can get a PID control loop on an insulin pump that has a more simple control scheme on it (because that’s how the FDA approved it). The company has been trying to get approval to use PID control in the US for years.

The business strategy decisions behind CPU fab is really interesting over the past 15 years.

AMD made a budget clone of Intel two decades ago. Then Intel made a misstep and released Northwood Pentium 4. AMD used less power and was faster. And AMD decided to go with DDR memory, while Intel went RDRAM. Then AMD was king when they went AMDx86-64 for 64 bit and Intel went Itanium.

Then AMD made a huge miscalculation on the future of multicore computing and designed Bulldozer, while Intel got their shit together and went down the hyperthreading route and released CORE/Core2/Core2Duo chips. And Intel was king for a decade.

I don’t know the exact timing, but AMD needed cash and sold their fabs to raise money, which became TSMC GlobalFoundries, sorry. GF learned how to make stuff small since smartphones became a huge market. Then AMD let an engineer run the company and she invested in the Zen architecture, which could be made by GF with their lessons from the mobile world.

This is my take. By AMD turning GF loose, GF could date other people work on mobile projects, which helped them learn.

It’s a side note now, but Intel hung on to their fabs and lagged behind GF. AMD let their fab go and benefitted from it. EDIT: I had some facts wrong. It’s possible Intel fabs are ahead of GF.

As a side note, Intel did try fairly hard to get into mobile like GF. They had the Atom chips and went for tablet, Ultrabook, netbook, and mobile. I had an ASUS Android phone with an Intel SOC. So it’s not like they ignored mobile, but it didn’t benefit them as much as TSMC.

I love MPFC, but some of the sketches are “meh”. For every “Battle of Pearl Harbor”, there’s a “Confuse-a-cat”.

Fawlty Towers is great. Mildly racist against the Spanish and Irish.

It takes 4 episodes to really build into the complexity. Then season 2 turns it on its head.

Red Dwarf is pretty good. Fawlty Towers is great. Someone recommended “Yes Minister” and the first season is awesome. The Hallmark of great comedy writing is if it holds up, and Yes Minister still is hilarious 40 years later.

Dark is a German Netflix show. It unfolds into something akin to “Lost” over the first four episodes. The ending doesn’t suck, and they set up the end to where it’s almost impossible to get it right. It’s not an amazing ending, but it’s impressive that they managed to make it not terrible, since it builds up to a near-impossible ending.

Squid Game is pretty great but gory. Letterkenny and Trailer Park Boys are quirky comedies with some rough language throughout.

Look at Sovol or Anycubic in that price range. I don’t have direct experience with either. A good friend of mine had two Anycubics at one point last year and he said they were easier than his Creality.

My third printer, I paid $70 for, used (ender 3 pro return). It was missing several small components, one big part (top aluminum extrusion) that required some machining with a drill press, and had a bad thermistor.

I don’t think you can get a beginning printer for $100 unfortunately. Sovol and Anycubic make printers among the cheapest that are more beginner friendly (I think) than Ender, for roughly the same price. I have a friend with a Creality and an Anycubic Vyper, and the Vyper seems to be more beginner-friendly. I have two Crealitys and I love them, but both required a ton of modifications to become reliable.

Can you check your area for a local maker space? My local library has 3D printers for anyone under 18. Universities typically have a few of different technologies (SLS, SLA, FDM)

There are methodical ways of valuating a private (and public) company. Some are pessimistic and some are wildly optimistic. Your can legally use whichever one you want, only you must only use that valuation method for everything. It’s illegal to value the company low for taxes and high for loan collateral. And if you sell it, you can owe back taxes if your valuation was off (sale price is the new valuation).

This is overly-simplified US accounting rules (from finance class 10 years ago)

He took it private so, although there can be shares, they aren’t traded on the open market. So no positions to short.

If you have a filament runout sensor, the klipper default settings aren’t great. If the sensor activates, the printer shuts down after about an hour, losing your home position. With a part on the bed, you can’t re-home, so it’s a wasted print.

The mesh leveling isn’t automatic either. You might want to add either auto-load your default mesh leveling if you always use the same print surface, or put mesh leveling codes in the starting G-code section of your slicer.

I ran the pressure advance tuning and found that I needed a ton of pressure advance. My prints turned out much better.

I also got improvements by reducing the allowable deviation in the slicer (G-code files get much bigger, though), and I load files as STEP files directly in Prusaslicer. STL doesn’t have curves, it’s a series of planes. STEP files have geometric primitives and can have curves.

Out of curiosity, have you watched the Simpsons recently? I think, after season 31 or 32, it started getting better again. There are some really great episodes from two seasons ago.

The latest season of Futurama had two good episodes, but the rest were kind of weak. About the same level as season 9-10(Hulu season numbering). Those seasons were “meh” mostly but with three really amazing episodes (Free Will Hunting, Game of Tones, Meanwhile).

I watched Futurama trying to stay sane in grad school, as it was released on DVD. It’s straight-up comforting to watch now. Watching it when I’m stressed connects me emotionally to almost 20 years ago. I was stressed then but I made it out ok.

Seriously? I was looking at a Surface product recently, and it appeared to have an access panel for the NVME drive. I read a ton of complaints about the dimensions of the drive being unusual, but access to it was easy. I don’t think I was looking at a Surface pro though.

If a surface pro wants to be a full OS and not a tablet OS, it should be easy to replace the storage device.

This looks like it would work with any E3D V6 heat break, right?

After CNC Kitchen’s review of the orbiter, I want to add one to my CR-10 V2. Its OEM heat break is an E3D V6 design.

3D Print General had one video where I recognized an AR-15 lower being printed in the background. The voice over was on the printer or filament (I forget).

Hoffman Tactical is still on YouTube. I was made aware of this channel when researching CF Nylon. HT has several promotional videos of his 80% printed AR rifle, and long discussions about which filament to use for which part of a rifle.

It’s very inconsistent.

The one thing I didn’t like about klipper firmware on my CR-10 was the default filament runout setup. One of my first big prints (with expensive ApolloX filament) ran out. The default klipper setup waits something like an hour, with the hot end still hot, then completely shuts down.

So my home position was lost, and with a partial part on the plate, there was no way of re-homing, so it was a wasted part.

Make sure your filament runout timeout is set to 24 hours (and I think I might have made the temp lower so it didn’t burn?)

I like klipper on mine, too. I do wish the default mesh would be loaded at startup, but it doesn’t load any mesh. Which doesn’t really matter, I guess. I have four build plates, three different styles, so I’m running bed levelling pretty much every print anyways.

His childhood primed him for comedy.

Polymaker polylite PLA pro. The Polymax PLA is more expensive and less rigid. The PLA pro is only $2 more a kilo than regular polylite PLA and significantly stronger. Many colors are more matte than esun PLA + which is similar in cost and performance.

Relationships take effort and luck. You have to work on yourself to be prepared, put a lot out of effort into social things to meet people and develop relationships, and then most don’t work out and you’re sad for a bit.

The luck part is a huge part of the equation. Two people are perfect on paper but the “spark” doesn’t happen. Maybe they could have a great relationship but the starting conditions weren’t right to form a relationship. Having a close relative die, or having a mental health issue really early in a relationship can force a wedge that can’t be overcome yet. A normal wedge that all relationships deal with regularly once they’re established, but can’t deal with in the first few weeks.

The only advice that worked for me (I was raised with very few other kids my age) when I started dating in college was that the skills to make a romantic relationship were just people skills. That I should intentionally strike up conversations with anyone I don’t know. Most people have something to occupy their time. I try to find that out in the first conversation I have with someone. You can see when someone’s expression changes when the ice breaks and they shift into excitedly talking about a new personal best in a 10k run, or getting a major part in King Lear, or published their first full comic book or novella.

I had to hone my ability to talk about my hobbies. At the time I was finding gargantuan prime numbers. I had to work on how to describe it to people to make it slightly approachable.

I also figured out that a huge part of wanting to be in a relationship was family pressure. I had to be at a place where I wanted it, and not because aunts and uncles poked fun at any young single people in the family.

I don’t think a lot of thinking was part of that equation.

Second this. If it’s PLA, improving layer cooling might help stiffen the last layer before the next is applied. If it’s not PLA, slowing the print down can reduce the horizontal forces for slower-cooling filaments like PETG/ABS. If there’s any warping or over extrusion leaving little blobs on the surface, your nozzle can bump into them, breaking cantilevered features like this one, or breaking the part off the build plate. Getting retraction to blob less or making sure no over-extrusion exists could help. If it’s PETG or Nylon, printing slightly wet (where the surface doesn’t look bad) can cause blobs on the top layer that the nozzle hits and causes those horizonal forces.

Drooping like this means something is too soft (speed up cooling on PLA, reduce print speed to give more cooling time and better layer adhesion for any material)

Prints like this aren’t impossible. I’ve printed a PETG storm drain that had vertical slots like this when I couldn’t buy one I needed. It turned out great but I had to print really slow.