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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • I wouldn’t let multicolor be a barrier for entry for you. It’s something that can technically be added later*, but it is much more difficult to convert a printer to be able to work with engineering materials. Personally speaking, I also wouldn’t mix multicolor and engineering materials ABS is pretty cheap but anything that would need a hardened nozzle (like glass or carbon fiber reinforced filaments) is almost too expensive to waste purging. Plus, if I’m remembering correctly, color swapped prints aren’t quite as strong structurally as monofilament prints.

    * technically speaking as long as your printer can run Klipper, there are community projects like Box Turtle or Enraged Rabbit that are meant for more general use (if you’re okay tinkering with things) if Elegoo never gets around to releasing their multicolor unit.



  • I was content to let the other comments address the history since I’m not particularly well versed there (and there’s already enough confidently incorrect bullshit in the world). I mostly just wanted to interject on why there aren’t more chip companies beyond just hand waving it away as “market consolidation”, which is true, but doesn’t take into account that barrier for entry in the space is less on the scale of opening up a sandwich restaurant or boutique clothing store and more on the order of waking up tomorrow and deciding to compete with your local power/ water utility provider.

    The answer also gets kind of fuzzy outside the conventional computer space and where single board/ System On a Chip designs are common, stuff like Raspberry Pi’s or smart phones, since they technically have graphics modules designed be companies like Snapdragon or MediaTek. It’s also worth noting that computers have gotten orders of magnitude more complicated compared to the era of starting a tech company in your garage.

    If it helps answer your question, according to Wikipedia, most of the other GPU companies have either been acquired, gone bankrupt, or aren’t competing in the Desktop PC market segment.






    1. RimWorld - I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game care so much about making the player feel like part of the story; just all around amazing. Damn near everything is configurable and for anything that isn’t the modding community probably has a fix for (and then some).
    2. Terraria - Certainly has its quirks and annoyances, but I like that it has sandbox elements to be creative and do whatever, but also always feels like the game has an objective to work towards. I’ve probably played though at least half a dozen times between solo runs and multiplayer games with friends/ family and I just keep coming back to it.
    3. Stardew valley - it’s just cozy with a slight hit of nostalgia. I have childhood memories of staying up entirely too late monopolizing the TV/ GameCube playing Harvest Moon and this scratches the same itch. Beyond that you can feel the love and attention to detail that the dev has poured into the game. Plus the skill ceiling is pretty low, so even my non-gamer friends/ family can play and have a good time.

    Honorable mentions:

    • Factorio
    • Slay the Spire
    • FTL

  • Absolutely and more! We also have psychic powers, murder robots, friendly murder robots, vampires, genetic engineering, organized religion, semi-sentient plants, space ships, cannibals, space drugs, drugs in space, rabid woodland critters, eldritch horrors beyond comprehension, giant bugs, orbital bombardments, and also the looming threat of starvation as you watch all that you built burn. That’s all before we talk about things that the modding community has brought to the game.

    To be clear, the RimWorld doesn’t force you into any one play style, and most of the things listed above can be disabled or avoided if that’s not your jam. At its core the game is trying to tell a story, it’s up to the player to help shape that story. It’s absolutely fantastic; quite literally the best $30 I’ve ever spent on a game (if we’re talking hours played, I’m just about to turn the corner on 2,000 hours (in the spirit of disclosure, a chunk of that is also spent making mods for the game)).



  • I mainly use my printer as a tool to solve problems, so my decision process is very much grounded in arriving at a solution as opposed to just finding something to keep the machine busy.

    My usual approach is to cast a wide net and go through all the models* that might do what I’m looking for. If I’m lucky, I’ll find something that I like enough to print. If not I’ll use it as a brainstorming session and either pick out a model or two that I can adapt (or at the very least pull critical dimensions) or get a feel for what I’d like to do differently. From there, it’s off to CAD where I’ll fire off slivers and prototypes until I’m happy with the fit and function of my part.

    *printables is my go-to, but sometimes I’ll wander over to thingiverse if I want more options (and know I’m not working on something bespoke)



  • That sounds pretty similar to how I have my network setup:

    • PiHole has conditional forwarding configured (true,192.168.0.0/24,192.168.1.1,lan note: .lan is optional here, I uss it for my internal TLD) to get device names from router
    • PiHole uses Unifi as the upstream DNS and DHCP
    • Unifi uses cloudflare as the upstream DNS
    • Unifi hands out the PiHole as the DNS via DHCP config

    That way I get stats in all the places and can use Unifi for DHCP.



  • That’s kind of awesome! I have a bunch of home lab stuff, but have been putting off buying a domain (I was a broke college student when I started my lab and half the point was avoiding recurring costs- plus I already run the DNS, as far as the WAN is concerned, I have whatever domain I want). My loose plan was to stand up a certificate authority and push the root public key out with active directory, but being able to certify things against Let’s Encrypt might make things significantly easier.



  • Right? I tried to switch my primary computer (framework laptop) to Linux earlier this year and ended up going back to windows after I had absolute nightmares with my type-c KVM. Coupled with performance issues while gaming (and the absolute hassle of having to force games to use my graphics card). Add in whatever random issues I was getting trying to remote into other windows machines on my domain (for CAD work). My day job is in software engineering/ programming, so I’m not exactly a stranger to digging through documentation and fixing computer issues, but spending time fixing my computer instead of using it got old pretty quick.

    Perfectly happy with Linux in my HomeLab and on my steamdeck though!



  • True, I knew that my Voron would work out to be more expensive than the leading competitor, but I also highly value the open source ethos and saw it as an opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. No regrets and I’m happy to champion it, but I do try to present other options on the field.

    My broke college student days aren’t that far behind me and I can appreciate the hell out of a value option. I’m very curious what route you have in mind.

    spoiler

    The closest I can think of is maybe the Sovol SV-08, which gets you pretty close to a v2.4, but apparently not without it’s faults (comment). I’ll own seeing the budget and immediately thinking “you could build a Voron with that”.

    Alternatively, maybe doing a variation of the Ender 3 NG conversion, but I’m not sure how much traction/ review coverage that project has just yet.

    In either case, it’s hard to recommend something you’ve heard of, but haven’t personally used (experience bias and all). Happy to change my mind in the face of new evidence though!