How to live forever. Oh wait…

If they weren’t on X and were reading reality-based information, they would already know the entire world hates Trump’s politics, and I certainly don’t blame anyone for hating the entire US in general. Too many people here will gladly hate an entire country even when they had no say in choosing their leaders, so it’s only fitting to see that attitude thrown back at us.

On the other hand, the exposure that all these Trump-supporting “influencers” are foreign bot accounts is hilarious, and I love that MAGA is finally being shown exactly who they’ve been listening to.

Your server needs to have a static IP address. Once you have that, and have your DNS service set up, then you should be able to update your domain(s) to point to the new DNS. This new server doesn’t have to be your primary DNS entry for the domain(s), but it should be one of the first two entries. And that’s pretty much all you need to get started.

One other consideration is setting up the master/slave status of your DNS servers so you only have to make updates in one spot (helpful to ensure everything stays in sync). This isn’t a requirement, it just makes your life easier.

Nope, programming is like a black hole – once you’ve entered the event horizon it’s too late and you’ll never escape.

What do you mean by “traditional cad designers” and why is that important? I’m not really sure why that is something that should matter to me?

Aww man, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone was going to “force” me to learn python. Thanks for the link, I’ll take a look at this after dinner.

Another consideration… If you are a programmer type then OpenSCAD is a language-based program. I’ve been using it heavily for the past week designing a dual-filament extruder for my Ender 3, and last year I designed and built a utility trailer. As with anything it has its quirks, but I’m much more comfortable writing code and I always found the other GUI-oriented programs to be unintuitive.

I think my suggestion would be to use the PC as a dedicated firewall, but you will need at least two ethernet ports for that (one to connect to the ISP router, and the second for internal network). This lets you learn network security and control the traffic that can actually get to your other computers. You could also set up KVM to start running virtual machines here. The idea with a VM is to keep services separate and isolated, so like one VM to manage security cameras, another VM to host a game server, another one to host sonarr/radarr/jellyfin… etc.

When you are able to expand, your second physical machine should be your NAS. Get your storage space started, share it over NFS or samba, and move your backup/security camera/sonarr VMs over to this machine for direct access to the larger storage space. Pay attention to system usage and move your VMs to balance the cpu/memory resources. Eventually you may want to get a third machine dedicated more for hosting the game servers, maybe a web server to view the security camera feeds, or whatever.

You mentioned backing up Wikipedia… Have a look at the Kiwix project, you can already get access to regular backups for a lot of information sites.

Meh there was nothing important about him and no reason for anyone to care. On the other hand, there was another school shooting in Evergreen, Colorado, at nearly the same time, and THAT is what everyone should be focusing on. Of course the cantaloupe in charge still hasn’t said a word about THAT because he couldn’t make that tragedy about himself.

Why does everyone think the term came from Star Wars? I know it was used in steampunk before then, and google suggests it goes back to a 1958 article about robots. Sorry, not trying to be pedantic, just feels like a lot of people give Star Wars unjust credit for things they didn’t actually create.

Don’t forget that managers think the same thing – if it’s free then it is somehow an inferior product but if you pay for something then that automatically makes it better. This applies forward as well… the more they pay for something, the “better” it must be.

For example… Cybertruck.

From my perspective, open-source products are greatly superior because you have the entire community of users and engineers working on a known issue, rather than a few paid engineers who may not even use the product. Even more importantly, the community will solve problems that a corporation has decided aren’t worth the effort or are “obsolete”.

I can understand why some programs only allow a single copy to be opened at once, something like email makes sense. However on Linux they got this right… if you try to open a program that is already running, it switches to the screen that program is on and restores the program window to the desktop. There’s no guessing why the program “won’t open”, it just makes the logical choice that you want to see it.

Heh that reminds me of another detail from that call… the guy also wasn’t willing to reboot his computer (which would have solved the problem as well), but berated me for not knowing what I was doing for making the suggestion. Dude, it’s Windows, things break constantly and a reboot generally resolves the issue.

Oh I have no doubt he got angry that the IT guy made him look stupid. Everyone on the support desk already knew his reputation so it wasn’t going to get any worse with us. I wish I had been around long enough to see what happened with his next demotion, because there was no possible way he was going to last even a year, I just can’t figure out how he made it to such a high initial position in the first place (unless he fudged his resume and got hired into it).

At one time I worked for IBM, supporting a nationwide company. There was a top guy who (like in the above story) thought he was hot shit. I think he was something like the CFO, but his ineptitude was recognized and he was pushed out. This company allowed people to move to a lower position, and he always thought he knew more about computers than everyone else, so he took the position of CTO.

One day I got a call from him, ranting that Outlook wouldn’t open and these computers were hopelessly broken. The normal procedure was to remote connect into the caller’s computer to directly fix any problems, but he decided he was smarter than the tech support people, and refused to allow me to access his machine. Fortunately I had direct contact with the on-site tech guy, who knew what he would be facing and went to the CTO’s office.

When he got back a couple minutes later, I asked him what the issue was. “Outlook was already open, it was just minimized to the task bar.”

What kind of crops are you going to grow at 125°? That’s still within OP’s specification of triple digits and with temps getting hotter we’re likely to see a lot more of this happening within our lifetime.

Yeah I think there’s some good ideas that have been built up with the ABL devices over the years, and that mesh leveling seems great. However I also feel like more people should take the time to get their beds physically as flat as possible first, because otherwise your printer spends a lot of time micro-stepping the Z, and I’ve seen some mesh maps that looked absolutely horrible.

Playing around with arduino devices, I have some laser rangefinders that seem like they could work well for an ABL. That might also be a good way to map out the idea I mentioned about creating a thin full-bed shim to get a truly flat bed, and after that perhaps you would only need to do a fast four-corner calibration with the ABL to make sure nothing has changed.

I’ve never had auto-leveling on my own printer, but the one at work has it and I wouldn’t want it. It was great for the first couple years, then the sensors started suffering from corrosion and now it just doesn’t work for crap.

So on my own printer (fully manual) I have always treated the paper test as nothing more than an initial step to make sure the nozzle doesn’t plow your bed during the leveling process. It will get you close, but not close enough. To really dial in your bed, you need at least a 5-point 1st-layer print test so you can really get that initial layer adhering nicely at all points, and this of course performs the calibration with the bed at full heat so it matches conditions during actual prints.

The biggest problem I had was my aluminum bed was badly warped when I got it, but fortunately just bowl-shaped. I cut CD-sized discs of aluminum foil to build up the center – 13 layers in total, then put a glass or G10 bed over that to really get a flat surface. I finished mine with a PEI sticker on top of the G10.

Another problem is that all beds will be completely unique from each other. I have one of the original Ender 3 Pro printers, and purchased a Creality glass bed with it. There was nothing that wouldn’t stick to that bed, and I used a 10mm calicat (which has 4mm feet pads) as my tests for all new filament. Clean the surface occasionally with 91% ISO, and life was good… but after a few years the surface wore out and I was forced to get a new bed. Ordered directly from Creality again, and man, nothing at all would stick to that piece of glass, even for large prints. I tried everything down to brake cleaner to solve the problem and finally gave up on it. That’s when I started working with the G10. The point of this is that you can tell someone a particular bed will solve all their problems, and you will be wrong. The reality is that sellers use different manufacturers to make their product and you never know what you’ll get.

Your observations about the bed warping from the tightness of the screws is interesting, I never thought about that part before. I have heavy springs under my bed, and I have always suggested people get those springs as tight as possibly without being completely closed, then adjust the Z-switch to that point before you start your leveling process. Tight springs means the screws should never wander. It’s been around 3 years since the last time I even touched my leveling screws, and I just fired up the printer and ran some new pieces last week without any issues. A good tool is one that you can ignore for a year, then use it without having to recalibrate. Anything else is just frustrating!

There are a lot of suggestions we can make to help newcomers get their bed leveling correct, and there are a lot of variables that we simply can’t account for including manufacturer defects. One idea I had years ago but never got around to trying is to print a thin sheet of filament the size of the entire bed, ironed to create a top surface perfectly flat to the nozzle but taking up any imperfections in the aluminum plate. Then put a thin bed over the top of that, and you should have a perfect surface that lasts nearly the life of the printer. Seems like a good idea, but how do you figure out where to fill in those first layers until you have a final layer that covers the full bed?

Oh I have a pretty good idea about that… But I was actually referring to the fact that Trump’s platform was the first thing attacked after he bombed the country. Yeah it would be great if we had a government that was focused on letting the various agencies do their jobs rather than dismantling everything that keeps us safe and healthy.

When they’re talking about “poorly secured US networks”, they’re referring to Truth Social, right?

Now if only Sony would get their shit together and start making a compact version of the Xperia line again.