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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)N
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  • Finally, dynamic language support should make it easier from here on out for Beamdog to add new translations to the games without the need for a full patch "on most store fronts". Instead, the developers anticipate being able to drop in new languages "on an ad hoc basis". Speaking of, patch 2.7 adds community-made Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, and Ukrainian translations to Baldur's Gate 2, plus Hungarian and Japanese ones to Icewind Dale.

    THIS worries me a lot. Either the language packs become DLC (good) or they are going to be streamed from somewhere and the game lasts as long as the content server does.

    Still, awesome. People shit on the Beamdog releases because "I can just run this with these forty mods and hacked binaries and a syncthing server and...". But they are incredibly competent remasters/ports.

    Just a shame Icewind Dale 2 is still in the "forever lost" state source wise. The Twins were actually a really fun set of antagonists.

  • I mean... people using Firefox are doing it because of all the shit Google is shoving down chromium. Firefox has a LOT of room to fuck up before that is going to impact that demographic.

  • Hopefully this helps.

    But there is a LONG history of progressive legislature to minimize harm that cops just actively refuse to enforce. And considering this would require them to stand up to people in tacticool gear with a track record of murder...

  • Nah nah nah nah. THIS campaign of hit pieces where apparently EVERYONE hated her and she is singlehandedly the cause of all the world's problems is legit. Obviously.

    Don't get me wrong. She and Spencer are grade A assholes and should rest in piss for all the damage they did to the games industry and all the jobs that have been destroyed. But holy fuck is it depressing how quick The Internet is to leap on "Yeah. Absolutely everyone hated everything she did".

  • Tor exit nodes are vulnerable to various levels of attacks.

    But it also doesn't change the underlying problem. If you put ALL of your traffic through Tor? Cool. You have accomplished nothing (other than flagging yourself because of what exit nodes you are accessing from) because your cookies and even behavior are still being correlated.

    Like... it doesn't take much to question why FightThePower_6969 looks at both /r/antifa101 AND /r/denver, for example. Ooh, and they also look at /r/warhammer40k and have a cookie from this website listing bus schedules and...

    I do agree that tor is an amazing (if problematic) tool and it is generally the gold standard for when you need to obfuscate traffic in a way that doesn't involve giving mullivad your credit card number. But people still need to understand what traffic they are putting into each different port. And even realize that there are some truly nasty tracking methods out there that can do nasty stuff with even OS level DNS caching between browsers.

  • And why would you trust your own ISP more than reputable VPNs?

    1. Define "reputable VPN"? There is little to no meaningful third party auditing and mostly all we have to go on is if they are on the record for having "cooperated with law enforcement"
    2. The point is you need to actually understand what you are trusting who with. You want to watch AEW for cheap? Cool, whatever. You want to masturbate to porn without providing your ID? Maybe think about who is more likely to get a call from what orgs. And if you are doing something truly sensitive? That is when you need to learn a WHOLE lot more about what privacy and personal security actually are.

    The point is that people just say "linus rogan had a promo code and this solves all my problems".

  • Heh.

    Our IT department is so incompetent that... let's just say I have made it a point to leave a paper trail in my inbox of me highlighting issues and complaining because I can't rule out a full investigation.

    Last year we had a "technical all hands" which basically means IT have fucked up to the point that engineering/platform are now responsible for untangling the mess from first principles. And we actually were allowed to look at the logs and were seeing "attacks" from all over Western Europe. I suspect IT would still be trying to call the FBI for help if one of our PSEs hadn't sighed and said "how much of our staff are running VPNs?". And then we had to explain what those are... to the people who actually manage the VPN we use to remote in.

    STILL not sure if I am more horrified that they didn't understand that VPNs exist or that they had just not noticed that much mystery traffic until that day.

  • From what I can tell... that is actually what most people WANT in their VPN. They don't care about privacy or anonymizing data. They just want to hide information from the LAN admin and/or appear to be in a different region for the purposes of content (used to be so they could watch European Netflix. Now it is so they can watch Colorado Pornhub...).

    I dunno. I've been in far too many Internet Arguments (TM) with people over what they ACTUALLY think a VPN is. People watch ltt's ads and figure they just pay for a VPN and leave it on 24/7 and that will solve all their problems. When the reality is that they are actively ignoring their actual cookie and activity based footprints and it just means that Google et al have a note that says "John Doe of 123 Fake Street in Bumfuck Wisconsin connects via an endpoint in Denmark".

    And while I wouldn't trust microsoft at all for... anything? Do y'all really think those black box companies paying youtubers to lie to you about what VPNs do aren't collecting your data?

  • You don't need to watch the whole video. Mostly it just highlights why FreeCAD is VERY capable but not a great First CAD Tool.

    And Fusion 360 is the best, period. But OnShape actually might be better for a purely FDM workflow. Most of Fusion, and FreeCAD, strengths are in being able to simulate stress and strain and having ways to design a part to incorporate the cuts that a CNC/Mill would be doing. And OnShape is fully browser based for good and for bad.

  • One of the games is Police Quest: SWAT 2 which is just delightful.

    Half of it is copaganda of the highest level as presented by one of the evilest cops to ever live (seriously...). Like... a LOT of the LAPD's reputation for police brutality and corruption can be tied to him. But it was a solid, for its time, squad tactics game that I do wish more modern takes on the genre would adopt. Having a "slice the pie" button is just so nice.

    But what makes SWAT 2 so good? There was the SWAT campaign where you go through a series of police calls relating to an evil terrorist cult. And there is the Terrorist campaign where you play as the cult and are taking people hostage, indoctrinating them, and otherwise attacking SWAT. And the best tactic to even out the campaign (because you are up against the poster children for militarized police over spending) is:

    On the second mission you do a home invasion where you take a family hostage. Take a LOT of explosives with you. While you are leading the cops on, plant explosives on the walkway to the house. Let negotiations fizzle out and when the swat teams come to raid? Blow them the fuck up. Double tap any survivors. Wipes out the LAPD which translates to an insane amount of money to equip your crew for the rest of the missions.

    Back in the day? SWAT 2 was one of those "if you know you know" games across the late stage usenet/early stage gamefaqs discussions.

    I desperately need some kind of an Oral History on how the fuck that game got made.

    Also, as a bonus: My dad was annoyed I was playing too much XCOM and JA2 (mostly once he figured out I used female mercs in that...). So he got me a nice manly game about how great cops are.. and boy howdy did he whup my ass when he realized I was mostly playing the Terrorist side and popping cops left and right.

  • Incorrect.

    Only a subset of tariffs were ruled illegal. Mostly because of the method they were declared with.

    Others are, as of now, perfectly legal and will remain in place. And expect many of these to just be declared in a different manner to maintain them.

  • Do yourself a favor: Learn on TinkerCAD/Fusion 360 or OnShape. No, they are not open source and both have some REALLY nasty caveats for free users. But both of those are THE most user friendly CAD tools out there and you'll be able to google anything you need. Learn the fundamentals and the language first.

    Once you have that down? FreeCAD is surprisingly not horrible these days and I think I even actually like it. But FreeCAD is still heavily restricted by being "for users, by coders" as it were. So operations that might take one step in every other tool could take three or four because that maps a lot better to the underlying math libraries. And you'll need to constantly translate between what everyone else calls something and what FreeCAD calls it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaTNTUzA5dM is a very good video comparing the two (just watch it at like 1.25x because Deltahedra has a very very very slow speaking cadence...). But they key is that if you know what you are trying to do in the language everyone else speaks, translating that to FreeCAD becomes super easy. Rather than not even knowing how to ask for help in the first place.

    OpenSCAD is REALLY nice for building something in a vacuum where you know every dimension you want and have very clean (or nonexistent) interfaces to existing geometry. But, odds are, the vast majority of what you are going to be doing is matching to reference images or even reference parts.

  • On a warm and dry day? Maybe?

    But if it is cold? Some printers have built in heaters. They aren't strong enough to handle that. And if it is moist? You ACTUALLY will be someone who needs to dry your filament and good luck.

    As for fumes and microplastics? That is the other big advantage of the enclosures (that I tend to try to avoid mentioning because people are fucking stupid). Even with no filter you are going to be getting a lot of benefits from the residues and the like hitting the walls first. And most of the CoreXYs can trivially add an actual filter to the vent... many that you print yourself.

    It isn't the same as a proper exhaust system but.. ain't nobody doing that.

  • You can still get an Ender 3 (essentially the end result of RepRap). Every vendor has their own.

    That said? If you buy a printer in 2025 (let alone 2026) and it does not have an integrated enclosure, you are opening yourself up to a world of hurt. The price difference isn't that much anymore and even just having a box to hold the waste heat in solves like 90% of print problems.

    Bambu are, above and beyond, the best bang for your buck. They ALSO are ahead of the curve on locking things down to support only their networked slicers. Which... is a huge concern with stuff like this.

    Personally? I love the Qidi printers. I have a Q1 something or another and convinced a friend to get a different model. They use a semi-open fork of Klipper so you can theoretically make something work when it is abandoned. Which is good because the various CoreXY printers are no longer all based on the same standard so part kits aren't (easily) interchangeable. And, of course, you can use Orcaslicer or whatever else you want.

    Keep in mind that is all FDM. For Resin (SLA?), the ship has already sailed and people are genuinely happy to run slicers with literal fucking ads in them. Assuming the vendor doesn't lock them out of even that garbage.

  • Assuming you get a hold of a human:

    Be nice to them. Be assertive but also be nice. That will get them to go off script if they are allowed to or escalate you if they aren't.

    If you treat them like "monkeys who aren't allowed to go off script"? They will GLADLY repeat the same questions over and over and make your life a living hell. Because with customer support? Their metrics often benefit from you getting angry and hanging up.

  • Yes and no.

    Let's focus solely on pricing first. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epm0_pte_nus_dpg&f=a is a good resource for that (dot gov so... grain of salt). In 1998, the "retail gasoline price" was 1.072 $/gallon. That is approximately $2.11 in 2025 dollars according to a random website. But whatever metric that site is using says 3.224 $/gallon.

    Because, yes, under pure microeconomics, it is all about supply and demand. But that just isn't reality. Instead we have prices skyrocket because of economic/geopolitical turmoil... and then The Companies use that to experiment to figure out what the new price floor should be. Prices go down, but not that much.

    Now let's talk about bubbles. Two of the biggest bubbles in the past 30 or so years have been the Dot Com Bubble and The Housing Bubble. Both were quite brutal on the economy and working professionals and that is why houses are worth jack all now and nobody has a website.

    Wait... That isn't right?

    Because take the dot com bubble in particular. Yes, a LOT of web based companies were deeply stupid. But the fundamental concept of "order it online" is a very good one that, ironically, benefits more rural people more than anything else. Yes, it continues to ravage brick and mortar and contributed a lot to the destruction of "Mom and Pop" stores. But also... how often do you actually need to touch a product before you buy it? Incredibly valuable when you do, but you are likely to get MUCH better data from a youtube review than from trying to feel how clicky a button is while the sales associate keeps telling you that you need a gold plated HDMI cable to go with that stereo.

    And... Amazon and Google essentially became the megacorps they are because of it.

    Which is what we are expecting for The AI Bubble. Most of those "AI Assistants" are going to crash and burn because they are insanely expensive frontends to the same voice assistants we have had for closer to twenty years than not. Search engines may or may not stay in their current form. Generative AI is anyone's guess (and mostly about legislature) but you can bet there will still be a cottage industry for sex pests.

    But much of what is driving the data center boom... isn't that. It is the kind of machine learning we were doing 10-20 years ago and is mostly about pattern matching. AKA "Big Data". Companies will realize that they can't fire their entire fraud investigation and cybersecurity teams. But they can very much only hire a fraction of their previous workforce and have them interpret/validate the "AI" results. Same with coding.

    And, regardless, if there is an economy/world there is going to be social media and ecommerce and media. All of which benefit from lots of servers.

    So I do disagree that this is the cheapest they will ever be again. But I also suspect we are looking at a baseline closer to late 2025 than 2023/2024.

  • That is kind of the thing.

    Getting the image is trivial. The real effort is getting it printed and getting a frame for it. And the cost of that tends to be pretty close to just buying a pre-print. And stuff like this tends to be sold in museums or other local/government buildings and genuinely goes towards some great community programs.

    That said, there are some great sites for this. There are cheaper websites, but Stackhouse is generally a great choice for printing. Especially if ou want a canvas print. Frames you are almost always best off going to a pawn shop or local art supply store, but even amazon is not a bad choice for that.

    Combine that with realizing just how many museums upload high quality scans of genuine works of art and...

  • Careful not to cut yourself on that edge

  • I assume you are a hardcore "The God of Capitalism Will Provide" person but... that isn't how it works.

    Youtube is an insanely expensive service to operate. That is why basically every other attempt failed miserably. Google is able to offset the cost due to their datacenter requirements as well as being able to sell those targeted ads. Even for google it is highly suspected to be a loss leader.

    It is like people forgot that microsoft/azure tried to make their own twitch... and it failed horribly even though it had definitively better tech.

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    Locked

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    Good blogs or youtubes for peripherals on Linux?

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    Posted without comment

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    Sites For and Experiences With tabletop miniature STLs?

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