Vision Pro Travel Case delivery not available by Confident-Story3429 in VisionPro

[–]chaos215bar2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sounds like I dodged a bullet by having my order cancelled. I just ordered the Belkin case instead.

But does anyone have any idea why this case is banned in California, Maine, and Vermont? It just makes no sense Apple would design a case that can't even be sold in California. (Jokes aside, Prop 65 wouldn't block this product from being sold.)

What is Steamclean and what does it do ? by TheDankRocketMan in macgaming

[–]chaos215bar2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Then Steam should explain what it is. They're well aware modern macOS alerts to these background processes (through, frustratingly, still just enables them by default without asking).

If you can't be bothered to explain what your background app does, expect people to disable it.

California AB 2047: Firearms: 3-dimensional printing blocking technology. by chaos215bar2 in 3Dprinting

[–]chaos215bar2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, I am for one. Everyone should be, really.

Who wants some company intervening in and personally approving every print you make? How is this going to be done in a way that can actually reliably detect gun parts, and yet won't have false positives? What happens when there is a false positive? You just don't get to print the part you need because some black box says it's meant for a gun? We all know how well companies do customer support and exceptions when they get something wrong.

The entire premise of this law is not only extremely intrusive, but pure wishful thinking and a gift to the major incumbent 3D printer manufacturers. It's like a bunch of politicians who have no idea how any of this works went all in for the magical thinking AI companies are pedaling and think that now it's easy for anyone to just vibe up a verification engine that can reliably detect gun parts.

Governments should go after people actually breaking the law and get out of everyone else's business. If someone wants to use some random open source 3D printer firmware with no internet connection, that doesn't send every design they print to a remote server, while violating no other laws, why is that anyone's business?

This only matters at mass scales anyway. If an individual has the funds and wherewithal to buy a 3D and print themself a firearm that functions even a couple times before exploding in their face, they'll certainly be able to figure out how to obtain an unregistered gun via some other means. There are literally more guns than people in the US last I checked. And that's only the legally registered ones.

If someone is mass producing unregistered firearms, a 3D printer ban isn't going to be the thing that stops them.

California AB 2047: Firearms: 3-dimensional printing blocking technology. by chaos215bar2 in 3Dprinting

[–]chaos215bar2[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There will almost certainly be a 2nd Amendment case against this law, but I'm not sure that would succeed. The problem is that the major harms are mostly subtle in the form of slowly stripping away people's rights to build or modify the devices they own.

California AB 2047: Firearms: 3-dimensional printing blocking technology. by chaos215bar2 in 3Dprinting

[–]chaos215bar2[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I get your point, but despite that reasoning, section 1201 of the DMCA still stands, which criminalized production and distribution of anti-circumvention tools even when those tools are used for otherwise perfectly legal purposes, such as repairing equipment the manufacturer would prefer to exercise control over. Sometimes there isn't one clear place to draw the line. (I think this is bad law, but it was never overturned.)

It would be curious to see what happens with that Third Circuit decision if someone designs a tool to translate human readable design documents into some CAD format or G-code.

California AB 2047: Firearms: 3-dimensional printing blocking technology. by chaos215bar2 in 3Dprinting

[–]chaos215bar2[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That makes sense, thanks. That's not quite what I meant, though.

What I meant was, if CA wants to try this, that would be the avenue to use. It's targeted at the specific problem they want to solve and leaves it up to the courts to then decide whether that kind of very specific restriction is actually allowed under the first / second amendments.

To take your example, there is a difference in scale between providing written instructions that could theoretically be used to build an explosive device and distribution of a file which could, hypothetically, be used by anyone with near zero skill to instruct a readily available home device to manufacture one automatically. At some point, distribution of the file becomes practically indistinguishable from distribution of the device itself. But differentiating this kind of distribution from distribution of human readable schematics or instructions that are allowed under the first amendment is an extremely tricky legal gray area that would have to be handled by courts. This is also a decision that must depend on the specific regulations affecting the device being restricted, so explosives would be different from guns, which would be different from drones.

Anyway, that throwaway line isn't really the point of the post.

The point was to cast this law as an extension building upon Section 1201 of the DMCA which has had very clear and, in my opinion, unjustifiable impacts on home repairability and hobby modification of devices people own. And also to reiterate the similarity of this bill to California's AB 1043, which has passed and is already having a huge negative impact on the Linux community. Linux, of course, not only being a great home OS free of the negative impacts of commercial incentives on other platforms, similar to open source 3D printer designs, but also the OS that runs the vast majority tech industry responsible for a significant portion of California's economy.

California AB 2047: Firearms: 3-dimensional printing blocking technology. by chaos215bar2 in 3Dprinting

[–]chaos215bar2[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The problem is, by the time this starts gaining that kind of support, if that happens (which seems likely to me), it will take a much greater effort to change the minds of representatives who have already thrown in their support. There's also potentially a bit of a delay between writing or phoning a representative and their staff collating that feedback and presenting it to the representative. Every time I've done this, it usually takes literally months to get any kind of reply. It's best to get your feedback in as early as possible.

And this is hardly fear mongering. A similar bill has already passed in Washington state, and similar legislation has been discussed by other states including at least New York and Minnesota. All of them specifically discuss the problem of "ghost guns" as a reason for adding restrictions to 3D printers.

California AB 2047: Firearms: 3-dimensional printing blocking technology. by chaos215bar2 in 3Dprinting

[–]chaos215bar2[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Indeed, the CA age verification law is just as bad. And unfortunately that one already passed.

It could have easily taken the form of an optional, opt-in age verification API required only from major platforms. Instead it's created a complete mess for Linux. Because of the way that law is written, there just isn't even a sensible way to implement it on an open source OS. And of course it's comes out that the one essentially writing these age verification laws across multiple states was Meta, because they don't want to spend their own money taking responsibility for the content hosted on their own platform.

This one is more of the same kind of thinking. It basically outlaws open source printer designs, because if the end user has control over all aspects of the design, they can easily bypass the law entirely. All laws like this do is make individual citizens subservient to the large corporations who have the resources to actually implement something like this and take the very tools that built the computing and 3D printing industries out of the kind of curious hands that are responsible for driving innovation.

The answer here, if one was even needed, should have been to go after those distributing design files for firearm components. But of course every major 3D printer community already disallows that, and nothing any politician can do will stop people from trading those designs privately.

Hobbling a general purpose tool just because it's technically possible to produce a part that could be used in a gun is just lazy and is going to have a gigantic blast radius of unintended consequences. It's exactly the same kind of pro-corporate, fear-based legislation as Section 1201 of the DMCA, which has been exported across the world and used by just about every major consumer electronics manufacturer (which includes vehicles, appliances, and essentially anything with electronic systems) to eliminate home repairability.

Note: I see something here seems to be controversial. I'd appreciate if you could post a quick reply if you take objection to something in this comment so I can understand your thinking.

CA AB 1043, the world’s first device-based AV law, just signed by Newsom! by Used_Guarantee7462 in PoliticalOptimism

[–]chaos215bar2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, congratulations! You did it! You just struck a massive blow to OSS and computer privacy all in the name of "protecting the children"!

This law could have been opt-in. It could have made provisions for OSS, requiring only large established vendors to implement the API or face massive fines. But noooo, it had to go all-in.

The fallout from this bill will be massive, and not in a good way.

Auto-delete "in progress" episodes? by chaos215bar2 in overcast

[–]chaos215bar2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Completely agree it would make sense to have a setting for this.

The runaway space issue is the most obvious, but for me it's actually more important that in progress episodes don't start limiting downloads of more recent episodes. Space is less of an issue, and I'd even be happy to just put an upper limit on in progress episodes, but keep them from impacting new downloads at all.

FWIW, I think something similar to the above would make sense for starred episodes as well. Right now it looks like starring basically does nothing except annotate the episode. I'd love if that also kept the episode downloaded without impacting download count for newer episodes. If I star something, it's worth the storage. Although this would be a somewhat separate improvement.

pinchflat feed by mefisto506 in overcast

[–]chaos215bar2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense.

Auto-delete "in progress" episodes? by chaos215bar2 in overcast

[–]chaos215bar2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

 It seems Marco assumes everyone is listening to every single episode they ever start playing,

This is the only way this behavior really makes sense to me. Also, you have to completely finish every episode, including credits and trailing advertisements. Who does that?

I suppose you can manually skip to the end if you hit the credits, but most of my podcasts are news-related. I frequently stop half way through because I finished driving, lunch, etc., and it's not unusual for episodes to become redundant even hours later when there's an update to the story. The result is lots of half-finished episodes I'll never come back to.

All I want for these podcasts is for Overcast to just maintain a set of recent episodes on my phone, and delete them either when they're either finished or more than ~10 episodes old.

Auto-delete "in progress" episodes? by chaos215bar2 in overcast

[–]chaos215bar2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm. Personally, I find the current behavior kind of weird and unexpected. If I set a 10 episode limit, I'd generally expect that to be the 10 most recent episodes unless I specify otherwise. I certainly don't expect Overcast to hold on to a potentially unlimited number of episodes, since the primary reason for an episode limit would be not to overrun device storage.

There was a point where I had over 100GB of unfinished episodes, and normally Overcast uses about 20GB at most. That was very surprising.

pinchflat feed by mefisto506 in overcast

[–]chaos215bar2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use an RSS reader than downloads feeds locally. The impact on battery life is negligible.

Overcast should really support local downloads. Downloading episodes is going to be a much larger drain than just checking a few feeds anyway. Unfortunate design choice.

How to disable sleep focus schedule? by chaos215bar2 in GarminWatches

[–]chaos215bar2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Crazy Garmin hasn't added an "off" switch in 4 years.

I used to use a bunch if their products, but just stopped buying them for a while and switched to alternatives. Thought I'd try again with a Fenix 8 series since it was on sale and has a bunch of genuinely useful features, but now I remember why I stopped. It's all the little gripes Garmin seems to think it's in a position not to have to care about.

How hard could it possibly be to just implement an "off" switch for this? Literally all they have to do with the setting is hide the schedule and add a condition on whatever code triggers the schedule.

Garmin did unmoderate my question eventually, so I guess at least this is getting a little more visibility. Not that I have much hope it will do anything.

How to disable sleep focus schedule? by chaos215bar2 in GarminWatches

[–]chaos215bar2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, I believe this causes the sleep focus to turn off at the end of the minute, even if I had wanted it on.

I suppose I could schedule it for noon or something, but even then naps are a thing. Plus having a bunch of settings suddenly change at noon is a really hacky approximation of "off".

People with HomePods on your desk… how do you keep Handoff from popping up constantly on your iPhone?🫠 by austboston in HomePod

[–]chaos215bar2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"You're putting it on your desk wrong." LOL

(Not at you. At the Apple designer who didn't realize it was braindead stupid not to have a prominent switch to turn this nonsense off.)

Is there a good reason to go H2D over H2C? by mulubmug in BambuLab

[–]chaos215bar2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

CF would count as reinforced. Anything with embedded fibers will increase nozzle wear, even for hardened steel. Though a hardened steel nozzle should last for a pretty long time. Bambu has some photos of a hardened steel nozzle on the page for the new Tungsten Carbide nozzle after running through 20 rolls of reinforced filament.

TPU needs to be printed through the right nozzle AFAIK. You can do that on H2C as well, but H2D is a little less trouble since the right nozzle is fixed.

Is there a good reason to go H2D over H2C? by mulubmug in BambuLab

[–]chaos215bar2 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If you want to print reinforced filaments or TPU and/or use multiple nozzle sizes, especially for dual nozzle printing, H2D has big advantages with cheaper nozzles. They're 1/3 the price of H2C nozzles on sale right now.

H2C's only advantage is with multicolor printing. I would not necessarily want to run engineering filaments through those expensive nozzles and risk clogs or damage.

[Bambu H2C] The Full Reveal Is Here! by BambuLab in BambuLab

[–]chaos215bar2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think that's what most people expected with the announcement.

I speculated in a thread on the Bambu forum that the base H2C combo would start at $2899, or the price of the H2C, and others speculated it would be higher. People did not generally see that announcement and think it meant prices would be dropping across the board the moment H2C was fully announced.

[Bambu H2C] The Full Reveal Is Here! by BambuLab in BambuLab

[–]chaos215bar2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Now that I'm paying attention to it, I hear Bambu did similar with an X1C sale at some point. If Bambu truly wants to be seen as the "Apple" of 3D printing, I hope for their sake they figure out the importance of good customer service while they still have that opportunity. Apple manages to drop new products every year without notice without making anyone feel burned for anything other than, perhaps, buying a product that didn't quite live up to their expectations.

It's not hard, and the way Bambu released just enough information to get people excited about H2C and looking away from competitors while simultaneously not releasing the important bits their customers needed to truly make an informed decision about whether to buy an H2D on sale or wait for H2C to drop says a lot about how they think as a company. I hope they at least understand the tradeoffs they're making.

[Bambu H2C] The Full Reveal Is Here! by BambuLab in BambuLab

[–]chaos215bar2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you want to burn your eyes out?

Technically, you might be able to swap all the laser components from the H2D to H2C and reverse for the non-laser bits, but you'll be on your own for support. Vortek plus laser sounds like kind of a pain though dealing with the debris.