It is my understanding that sh.itjust.works is hosted on hardware that is in The_Dude’s physical possession, so I think we could manage.

Now let’s be clear here: I’m only inciting violence. My person committing violence may or may not occur, your honor/ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

You remember a few years ago when some random town in North Carolina made the national news because some Proud Boys shot out the substation because there was a drag show at a local downtown theater?

I’m from there.

What I learned in those four days without refrigeration or air conditioning is that substations aren’t bulletproof.

Whose this “you” you refer to? XD

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I always heard that quote attributed to Joseph Stalin, re the T-34 vs the German Panzer. I’m not one of the two worst men in history, so a pissing match between the worst man in history and the second worst man in history does not impress me, a better human than both. My name isn’t in a single social studies textbook printed anywhere on earth. Get on my level, noobs.

Oh no!

So we should just straight-up vandalize them? As much property damage as possible, forget the shotguns, bring bulldozers, gasoline and road flares?

…What forces defend these datacenters? Could a platoon of motivated civilians armed with pump action shotguns carry all the RAM out of one?

They get shot just for going to school. Or being brown.

I’ve barely ever used Discord, I’m not entirely sure I understand how it works, because individuals host their own servers? “Join my Discord server.” So, Discord as a business provides software and…user account brokerage? In terms of functionality, it does basically what an IM client/forum engine and Ventrilo did?

I’m going to take these out of order.

Why should I get a printer?

If you have a continuous and frequent need or strong desire for small plastic objects. If you have a hobby like cosplaying, cosplayers find 3D printers quite useful for making costume parts or props, tabletop players like printing minifigures or playsets, if you’re an electronics hobbyist it can be useful to print cases and enclosures for projects, if you’re a woodworker you’ll never stop needing jigs, brackets, vacuum hose adapters.

Or, if you’re interested in 3D printing itself. There are folks doing like, 4-axis non-planar stuff that’s industry leading, for the fun of it. Hell and gone smarter than I am.

Should I skip the owning part and just use commercial 3D print shops?

If you have one project in mind, or “might occasionally find a use for it,” hire it done rather than buying a machine.

There’s kind of a trap for newbies to 3D printing: Inexpensive printers tend to be projects unto themselves. Which can be a good thing if you’re interested in the hobby of 3D printing itself. If you want to buy a machine, plug it in and it just works, expect to spend $1000. Because you’re either going to buy a Prusa, which start at about $1000 for an assembled MK4S, or a Bambu Labs machine for about $500 and then they’ll getcha somehow. Bambu Labs sketches the fuck out of me, they’re trying to be the HP of FDM.

Even then, if you have one of the “just works” machines, you still have things to learn. What plastic to choose for this model that needs to be outdoors? Do you use a textured or smooth sheet for PETG? Can you print ASA without a heated enclosure? Should you use glue stick for TPU? Can you print PC-CF with a brass nozzle? What do the eight pages of print settings in the slicer do? If you can envision the printer sitting turned off for months at a time, does all that seem worth learning?

What do I do to make it more than a trinket printer?

Mainly, have something you need to 3D print for.

I have found that Thingiverse and Printables are both full of idiots. They let literally anyone on there, and I’ve found the dumbest shit.

“It’s 7% shorter in the X axis because my printer prints 7% long in that direction so I squish all my parts to compensate. And then I upload them like that because my mom let me eat paint chips as a baby” has to be my favorite, right after “This design relies heavily on trapping hex nuts in hexagonal recesses, and I looked up the “diameter” of M3 nuts and modeled that as the across flats dimension because my mom is my dad’s mom!”

If you want to print anything other than flexible dragons and Bender Bhuddas, and then actually use them, you’re going to need to know how to alter things other people ruined through incompetence, or design things from scratch. The ability to design the thing YOU need is what really unlocks the power of a 3D printer.

I would go so far as to say, if you aren’t interested in learning CAD or some other 3D modeling software, forget a 3D printer. Because if you rely on Thingiverse and Printables, your 3D printer is a trinket machine. You’re going to print a few toys, a benchy or two, a paper towel holder that doesn’t work, a shop vac adapter that’s the wrong size, a phone stand the $200 Creality you bought just cannot get through, and then it’ll sit gathering dust.

Entice? I thought it was fascinate.

It’s more like the RC Cola version of iPadOS but your main idea holds up.

You know, I have encountered a lot of “just pipe curl into sh” from people who absolutely should know not to do that.

Can’t; I dumped Windows 8 for Linux.

I saw a video a few weeks back of a woman cleaning out layers of “decent quality insulated cups” from her cupboard, several each of a decade’s worth of fads. Those are going in landfills en masse before the 21st century is out.

beat me to it.

Well, English isn’t a prescriptive language, so if we just start saying “dongus” they’ll put it in the dictionary.

Anyone got a recommendation for a good bluetooth dongus?