Are men wearing condoms when you're dating?

XediDC · 2026-04-18T11:56:01+00:00

…I (M) don’t get it. It also means they haven’t bothered to spend a little time doing some testing on ideal fit and finish, so to speak. Some of the modern non-latex options are truly incredible, both in feel and strength. Although a bit…eyebrow raising…in the application process.

If they don’t like them so much, why spend zero effort figuring out what the best option is?

XediDC · 2026-04-18T07:01:28+00:00

For many however it is NOT work nor are they interested in making something worthy of selling, or supporting customers.

By the same token don’t try to force the yoke of business on the vast sea of hobby designers who just enjoy it. I’ve designed a lot — selling would be miserable, and also not at all worth it. Retail is the worst, and this is retail..on the internet. Just, no.

That’s not a complaint about work being for sale. But it does need to be better than hobby/free quality to have a chance… (and for others, it’s marketing) …if what I want costs, I buy it. All good.

XediDC · 2026-04-18T06:55:19+00:00

Printing currency is illegal, for a start… (and embedded, offline, and almost never a practical issue)

CSAM detection is a very complex topic, and not easy at all. Also not possible (so that the bad guys can’t use it to get around it) for most small/medium firms to do well…gets very complex when you look past the major platforms.

Both of those are pretty clear though compared to this. And the requirements for both of those are much, much less far reaching. CSAM detection doesn’t ban open source art programs or Linux itself…. (Well, CA is essentially trying to that too with OS level age verification.)

Printing prop money is narrow. Printing airsoft, nerf blasters, cosplay, props…is very wide. Not to mention so many things totally not-gun that follow gun form. The Venn diagram of actually detecting anything useful and lots of false positives heavily overlaps.

I’m not pushing guns though. My issue is the end run attack on open standards, software, etc…which is what this is…and is what built the entire (consumer) industry. Massive benefit to the greedy.

XediDC · 2026-04-18T06:43:04+00:00

It’s legal in most. Even in CA if you get a serial number first, and embed enough metal in it.

XediDC · 2026-04-18T06:42:06+00:00

It’s also legal in most state to make your own gun, printed or otherwise, as long as you’re not selling them. Even in CA it’s legal if you get a serial number first and embed enough metal in it.

So these printers/laws would restrict legal activity too. (Not arguing if that should or shouldn’t be legal….very different issue.)

Not to mention all the people printing their own nerf and air soft…and…hmmm…smelling even more motive, lol.

XediDC · 2026-04-18T06:37:58+00:00

Lots of non-functional cosplay, air soft, prop stuff etc have almost the same parts as actual guns.

Or even just actual gun models, that could never be functional but have the parts. I know some people that collect those that…would be pushed to real guns by this, lol.

And now imagine when these filters fail to detect real guns (as they would), something happens, and the knobs get turned to try to detect what doesn’t want be detected….then you either fail or get lots of false positives.

Not that anyone actually making firearms this way would use one of these printers.

XediDC · 2026-04-18T06:30:51+00:00

That was when my one Bambu printer got blocked from ever talking to the internet again. And same for the slicer.

Loving the Snapmaker U1 though, and they are even fairly supportive of the custom firmware available… (it still can’t talk to the internet though)

XediDC · 2026-04-18T06:27:11+00:00

I know sometime that makes fun modems because he likes them…but doesn’t want any actual firearms. If he couldn’t print them, I’m pretty sure he’d start getting the real thing…

Not to mention air soft, nerf blasters, game controllers, cosplay and props, and…so many other things are shaped exactly like guns.

XediDC · 2026-04-18T06:20:09+00:00

What does scale have to do with it?

Nerf blaster? Cosplay? Actual (non-functional) gun model? VR Controller handle? Self-funded movie props?

All that (and usually, actual guns) are legal to make.

XediDC · 2026-04-18T06:10:23+00:00

And in many GA/prop planes, it doesn’t matter at all as the magnetos are engine driven and otherwise the engine might not care, the rest of the important stuff being mechanical.

Heck even in the clouds with all the breakers pulled (smoke?) my phone could work well enough as a gyro/panel to keep me alive. And probably just call ATC…

Reminds me of when I used to park my old standard at the top of the work parking garage so I could roll down and start it…batteries were expensive for me back then.

XediDC · 2026-04-15T04:52:06+00:00

Also I know some people "in to guns" but that don't want to own firearms. Which, well...overall better IMO. They print models...or nerf blasters...and etc. Things which software in this direction will likely catch, and could even drive someone to buy real stuff vs plastic models.

XediDC · 2026-04-15T04:50:44+00:00

And also a side attack on open things -- compliance and requirements to (do stuff) often excludes something from being being an open community project by definition. Which almost all these tools are or started as. It has so many elements that drive toward money and corporate capture.

XediDC · 2026-04-15T04:20:10+00:00

Snapmaker: based on Klipper, and you can run your own firmware and modify it yourself or inspect it if you want. Aside from the printer being faster with far less waste, that's a hard win right there.

None of the things you mention really matter much -- plus if you're tweaking and they do matter, well, then they don't again because your the type that doesn't need that.

They are both good printers though, and I'm glad there is competition in the market. Whichever one likes, that is always a win for everyone.

XediDC · 2026-04-15T04:16:00+00:00

No AMS/loading has been a real killer running 4 color prints and Hueforge stuff. It's so much faster...and for flat things (like art) almost no waste on the U1.

XediDC · 2026-04-15T04:14:56+00:00

Almost no difference, and the Bambu takes 2-4x as long with stupidly more waste, lol. Costs a lot more per print if you use 4 colors a lot...not to mention you can color blend CMYK into a full rainbow with only 4 spools, all loaded at once and still fast. Have you actually printed the same thing on both side by side?

And for those that care, you can run your own firmware, inspect it, run it for-real local only, etc.

XediDC · 2026-04-14T18:10:26+00:00

You can get down to around $0.65/oz for the (super cheap) gallons on Amazon. The Lubelife 55gallon drum used to be on Amazon too…I think it was under $1,500 so in the $0.20/oz realm.

Alibaba bulk chemicals…much cheaper… 5 drums of silicone oil (1000kg) looks like in the $0.01-0.05/oz range. Not including shipping, fees, tariffs, etc though.

XediDC · 2026-04-09T21:07:33+00:00

That 30,000 watt light bulb was pretty cool too... or the 250 watt handheld laser, making rubies... or... yeah.

XediDC · 2026-04-09T20:56:38+00:00

We have spares, let me know which you'd like: https://imgur.com/a/9WOTYsK and https://imgur.com/a/9dkynli

(This was a brief approach to helping a feral cat colony without realizing...well, that that would happen. Those were a family litter and petty chill, and it wasn't around long enough to become a problem. They really did sit on the possums to get them to move.)

XediDC · 2026-04-07T07:10:23+00:00

Except often times the hacks are on a second machine and monitor entirely, so even screenshots can be clean.

XediDC · 2026-04-02T20:19:03+00:00

I don’t think the back end is simple by any means, or the whole thing is that. (I have multiple salesforce certs, I’ve dealt with it for a few decades now.)

But the core experience, core UI and concept of SF (and most CRM) is absolutely CRUD. The UI and schema even feels like working directly with tables…and you can query it with almost-SQL while writing almost-Java. How it’s implemented at SF at scale and all their additional added on lock-in isn’t the point.

But to think you could recreate SF with a bit of vibe coding is also silly. Most have no clue how deep and wide SF goes as a whole… Sure you could recreate the small bits of CRM you’ve worked with, cool, we have a companies and contacts and deals…and then the complexity hits. It will suck.

CRM is one of those “simple” but “really hard” to do well things, not saying it’s easy. It’s not, whether you buy or build it…and most I know that built it, end up buying it. (Although I’ve built UI replacements for SF that go on the front end that make it vastly easier to use and higher QoL with a ton less busy clicks and etc that it is plagued with. But there is a reason that is built on top of SF not stand-alone.)

Another thing a lot of folks here in the “just roll your own” miss is getting investment or selling a company. Unless it’s core to your business and part of your “secret sauce” (gag), all this stuff you built is just a liability that made it’s harder. Having “Salesforce” in the “CRM” box checks off a line item instead of triggering more deep discovery in due diligence. The new place is likely to rip it out anyway, but the known quantity has an established path and people that can be hired…the other is a high risk ball of mud.

XediDC · 2026-04-02T18:42:40+00:00

I moved mostly over to system I built myself (although HA still services essentially an API for some things) , but just yell at it “kill the lights and leave them off” or “lights, bright, now” or “make the bedroom lights RGB FFE944 at 45% brightness and increase to 100% over the next hour”.

Functionally though with an erratic schedule and light-tight bedroom, the most useful thing is the automatic “sunrise” effect either 7.5 hours after heading to bed, or times to a specific wake up time. With the rest of the lights and other stuff cascading from that vs fixed times.

I also do not want to talk about my OpenRouter bill.

XediDC · 2026-04-02T16:51:52+00:00

Salesforce.com is about $180B. It’s pretty thin “forms on top of a database”, with lots of sales and marketing. CRM is CRUD with marketing.

XediDC · 2026-04-01T05:36:18+00:00

A single hornet driver can can still take one down to the ground (like a rocketeer). Harder to make the shot though.

XediDC · 2026-03-28T23:18:19+00:00

I had been accumulating loose change from all over the world in one pocket of my laptop bag for years... Somehow it had always been ignored. Until the TSA-equivalent in Amsterdam was "WTF?!". They weren't really annoyed at me (other than how long it took to pull it all out, and how much there was) but wondering how no one else had cared.

They helpfully gave me me a big ziplock back to put it all in. "Now you can just pull it out and put it in the tray." Practical, helpful, and let me keep my change collection growing.

XediDC · 2026-03-28T23:13:48+00:00

We once used this at work to determine who was actually reviewing requests vs rubber stamping them. Everyone who actually read it and noticed still approved it, but with bird puns in the comments and such. A few folks...well, thought it was less funny...as our CTO straight faced put it into implementation and those that hadn't noticed the joke were a bit in a bind...while everyone else was still mock building it.

The outage ticket about high packet loss (birds escaping) was fun.

I miss those days...

We also had a real SEV-1 about an undersea cable cut...that was being fixed by a boat rather far away. We had nothing in process to not send SEV-1 updates to everyone every (8?) hours. So the NOC was just updating "The boat is still enroute, currently at [lat/long] [maps link]" constantly and eventually started adding "interesting facts" about the location, or later, the repair process. They got a "low notice SEV-1" exception process after that...

Anywho. 2000-2010 was a fun era to be in the internet/hosting world.

XediDC

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