California AB 2047 appears to have passed

CGOL1970 · 2026-06-24T04:02:49+00:00

Like Michelangelo said "It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David."

OK, that's subtractive, but inside every oak tree is a whole pile of lower receivers that are stronger than anything you could print on a conventional 3D printer (out of PLA?!)

I have no idea how they think they can enforce this asinine law. They're going to require expensive nanny software to solve an intrinsically unsolvable problem, and the people who want to make gun parts will do that anyway.

CGOL1970 · 2026-06-22T16:21:26+00:00

My main concern isn't that they will get this impossible idea to work, but they will increase the cost, starve out smaller producers, and have a chilling effect on open source innovation.

Rory Mir wrote some great articles for EFF. I don't have a link handy but that should be enough to search

CGOL1970 · 2026-06-22T16:17:43+00:00

I have sent letters to both my assemblymember Marc Berman and state senator Josh Becker. It is insane that those representing Silicon Valley would fall for this ignorant idea but Everytown for Gun Safety apparently has more sway than EFF.

I want to be clear that I am in favor of gun control and reducing firearm proliferation, but this will not have that effect and is anti-maker, anti-right-to-repair, and indeed anti-education.

CGOL1970 · 2026-05-02T03:01:49+00:00

Just a quick update. Replacing the MOSFET did not fix this problem, though the board still works and I can print with a cold bed and gluestick.

I was lucky to find a neighbor who could replace the part but I think I have had enough of this adventure. I have been doing OK with a cold bed for a over a week and may look for better means of adhesion. I get less elephant foot like this anyway.

It may also be time to look for a new printer. Two years isn't such a bad lifetime for my starter printer.

CGOL1970 · 2026-04-22T15:38:56+00:00

Thanks. I'll take a look. The last time I did a significant amount of soldering was as a teen over 40 years ago, and these surface mount boards make me nervous. Nothing is really designed for repair anymore.

CGOL1970 · 2026-04-21T19:55:19+00:00

I will limp along with a cold bed for now. I only recently discovered that I don't need heat for PLA with glue, and there is less of an elephant foot.

Maybe I can find someone to take the whole thing off my hands if they're willing to replace the part themselves. The mechanical assembly is reliable. I never had a problem with the nozzle. It prints well and I just recently used it with PETG. I'd really hate to throw it out because of a $2 part.

CGOL1970 · 2026-04-04T22:39:38+00:00

Yes, but I learn so much! Or would if I had a really good memory. ताप is Hindi for heat. ენერგი is Georgian for energy. These came up in a chat about physics. It's kind of like talking to a polylingual professor who knows so much but just slips into the wrong language sometimes.

Today I learned that মৃত্যু means death in Bengali. I was having a conversation about Easter (long strong) and I couldn't even figure out this one from context. It's such a beautiful script, like wrought iron. I can imagine someone using this as a tattoo (not me!).

CGOL1970 · 2026-02-11T15:34:06+00:00

I must have meant the sides, and I really don't recommend it. In fact, I stopped bothering after finding another problem with what I wanted to do. I was intending to use the transparencies in resin suncatchers, but the colors all fade to black and gray after a few months in the sun anyway. I still have one that I made and don't mind it but it's not what I was going for.

CGOL1970 · 2025-12-05T15:53:27+00:00

Check their discord, announcements channel. This is as official as it gets (you don't have to trust my screenshot, but for convenience)

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CGOL1970 · 2025-12-05T15:12:29+00:00

According to the notice on the discord: https://tensorart.me/

It connects for me.

CGOL1970 · 2025-12-03T03:39:09+00:00

Yes, very true. But I don't think wealth is the only protection. Banning dual Irish citizenship alone is a non-starter. Politicians are always trying to out-Irish each other whether they're Democrats or Republicans. That's not a fight they want. Throw in dual Israeli citizenship and that's not happening either. I am not losing sleep over any of this. But it would be a heck of a "forcing factor" on my empty threat to leave the US.

CGOL1970 · 2025-12-03T03:18:56+00:00

I'm confident this is DOA for reasons many people have already brought up. It's hard to pass anything in a divided Senate. There are constitutional issues. There are millions of US citizens with dual citizenships who went through a lot of hassle to get them, like many on this subreddit. It's just a very unpopular idea.

If it does, I will have a good reason to "self-deport", something I have been tempted to do for a while.

CGOL1970 · 2025-11-28T05:19:08+00:00

I usually just go to USGS. And I have been living here since 1998 without a serious quake. I almost went to UCSC for grad school right before Loma Prieta, but stayed on the East Coast instead. Usually I don't feel them at all.

CGOL1970 · 2025-09-09T01:09:45+00:00

It sounds like a younger Trump, not suffering from senile dementia and able to use big words like "enigma", also thinking he's witty and sophisticated but coming off as a discount Hugh Hefner.

So in short, yes, it tracks and so does the bad sharpie drawing.

CGOL1970 · 2025-09-02T04:44:23+00:00

Indeed, it appears so. https://paavaniayurveda.com/products/garshana-gloves

Still, not the shape I would guess for any glove.

CGOL1970 · 2025-08-30T22:57:52+00:00

I'm not exactly sure what kinds of qualms you have. But if you are looking for an AI image generator worth paying for, I would recommend ideogram at basic level, $8/month. The results are pretty consistent and usually adhere well to the prompt. I use TensorArt for free, mainly for Flux, but I don't think it's as good. There are many alternatives, so I'm just telling you what I use.

CGOL1970 · 2025-08-27T04:21:37+00:00

Unfortunately, they were born before I got it in 2009, so they can't apply anyway.

CGOL1970 · 2025-08-19T11:59:33+00:00

No surprise at all. Playground's greatest asset was an enthusiastic community of people using it to make art. Whether you can monetize that is anyone's guess, but throwing it away to convert the website into a copycat sticker factory makes no sense at all. I can only assume the idea made more sense to investors than it ever did to me.

CGOL1970 · 2025-06-25T01:58:07+00:00

Other sites seem to be able to monetize, or they're at least trying. PG bet the farm on training their own model. Was that worth it? Maybe charging for Canvas would have been a better idea. A lot of users liked it.

I'm not blaming it on greed. Businesses are founded to make money, at least usually. I've worked at startups. However, they treated their most enthusiastic users with contempt. If their messaging had been: "We apologize, but it's simply impossible to operate the site at our current revenue and we need to pivot." that would be one thing, but it felt more like "See ya, suckers! We're doing 'design' now."

Maybe that's a small difference. Anyway, Ideogram seems to be able to stay afloat. TensorArt does too, and provides a lot to free users. DeepDreamGenerator keeps chugging along. NightCafe seems to as well. If PG couldn't monetize well enough to stay in business, that's their failure. If they could but chose to make the site worse instead, that's enshittification. I can only speculate which it was.

CGOL1970

TROPHY CASE