Those are the lazy people. Lazy people refuse to learn new things. You don’t sound lazy.

Don’t be like them. Hang out with those people that piss excellence.

I suspect it might be easier to teach high school students. You get them younger and they don’t know no better. Fewer things to unlearn. But the skill gaps can be eye opening for sure. I’m old as dirt. I got my feeble tech start in front of a printer terminal-- we didn’t have such things as monitors. I don’t think I saw my first DOS prompt until I was maybe 19 or 20. But we stilled played Oregon Trail and some Space Invader game. And we loved it!

And the first rule of KDE is “There is ALWAYS a widget!”

As an old toolmaker who might have dabbled in accuracy. I just shake my head when people complain about things like this because they think absolute accuracy --an impossibility-- is the important thing, (you can’t afford anything close absolute accuracy), when it’s repeatability that matters the most. Choose the one that repeats the best, toss the rest. Then learn what the “magic number” is that makes you happy to read and need to get the results you are looking for. Learn to apply some bloody “windage”.

Remember: Rick Sanchez is a dumb-ass. And you only need to be 5% smarter than the tool you are using to be successful. So be smarter than the tool and understand the process.

You are looking for perfect here where you probably should be looking for “good enough”. You will never build a chamber insulated well enough to hold temperature for hours or even perhaps a 24hours+ without cooling. Plus, you are never going to build a perfect vacuum chamber to prevent fresh air leakage or venting air the hot air into the room and that will also add to the cooling effect. If you have ANY opening or seam, there will be leakage.

Now consider just how big and bulky such an enclosure would need to be with the materials that a commonly available to you that you can afford. Is it really worth it for the small gain in finished product? Even manufacturers of high end printers accept the they will only get ‘good enough’ and that they need to have the heater cycle on and off to keep a steady temperature.

As a “boomer” myself, I do know the secret of the ‘right click: Save as’. Who do you think thought up the idea-- that’s right, a Boomer. And we taught Gen X about it. Not my fault they didn’t pass on the ancient and now arcane knowledge to future generations. But I suppose you need to know how to use a mouse before you can right click anything. Having attempted to teach 3D CAD to high school students, my first job was to show them how to use a mouse and why fingers and CAD don’t mix. And do it before we could actually move on to the subject matter they were supposed to be learning.

Still I do use an app for rotate my backgrounds and quotes. The app Variety works well with KDE Plasma with a large selection of repositories to choose from with beautiful backgrounds without taking up extra space on my drives. But what do I know, I’m just a boomer.

I do enjoy all the NASA photos and National Geographic backgrounds served up to me on a rotating basis without needing to take up local storage space to do so. But I ain’t running Windows either.

Simple parts for 3D printing can be done with TinkerCAD. A free and basic CAD program that can do what you want. It runs in your browser window so it’s platform agnostic also. Though I will tell you phones and tablets are very poor tools to do CAD work in. Larger screens and a mouse are virtually a necessity if you intend to not get frustrated.

After that, Fusion 360, (Windows only and a bastard install of local and cloud requirements), is popular with 3D printer enthusiasts. It’s a stripped down version of AutoDesk’s professional tool. There is also OnShape, another full CAD program that has a free license that runs in a browser window like Tinker CAD. The UI is a bit harder for newbies to navigate than Fusion. But there are limitations to hobby users.

FreeCAD is open source and a local install with support for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Newbies tend to find the CAD concepts difficult, (mostly because they are based on more proper workflows and design knowledge. FreeCAD will often punish sloppy workflows of beginners). And newbies tend to find the UI confusing. But they are working on it. The latest 1.0 release features a lot of improvements that user have complained about for years. But the learning curve is still steep and it takes some effort for those without real CAD experience and an unwillingness to practice the craft.

It’s actually not. Tesla just won’t care until the feds sue them in court for it.

The data on that is all there. Records like car fatalities are collected mainly through law enforcement reports and states have registration numbers. But the question is, how centralized is the data? City, county, state, or federal? There is a lot of data that simply isn’t required to be collected to a central agency to keep track of.

Tesla’s do cost more to insure than ‘average’ cars. But, that extra cost reflects more the cost to repair minor/moderate damage than cost of fatalities. Since fatalities are just a smaller subset accidents. Tesla’s are extremely costly to repair and often get totaled vs repaired. Premiums reflect that cost of loss.

3% of 250 million could very well be the approximate number of cars on the roads that are involved in a fatal collision. And that is the only consideration of the article in this study.

Been there done that. Got the tee shirt.

While good support to customers is very valuable, trying to support a product that is decades old and shares nothing in common with current products is a plain waste of time energy and money.

It would require someone to search out all the documentation needed to make that one part, then you need to figure out the correct process to make said part, determine if you have material on hand or need to special order something, then try to find that one old jig/fixture needed amongst a building full of 100’s of such items for the right one. Then you need to be sure that the the complete fixture is there and nothing is worn out beyond use. Then you need to make time to insert this one-off semi-custom part into the manufacturing process.

By the time you do all this, that one 20 year old obsolete part will have perhaps cost you thousands of dollars and you still haven’t made the first piece of swarf. Imagine the shock and surprise that customer would have when they get the bill that accurately reflects the true cost.

Much the Scots ruining Scotland, liberals seem to delight in ruining liberalism. As time passes, I see liberals more worried about some other liberal’s little slot in life. And less and less concerned with getting things done. The Big Picture is eschewed in favor of fighting over minutia.

We get what we are asking for.

I always wanted a beige tower big enough to need wheels.

Not an IP lawyer, (those people are EXPENSIVE), It’s perhaps less about the idea than it is about the process to get there. And yes the patent office does make mistakes at times. It’s just expensive and hard to correct those mistakes because it generally takes a judge to do so. And I’m willing to bet this patent is valid in the EU also due reciprocity agreements and trade deals. It would take an EU judge to invalidate the patent, which would cost as much as doing so in the US.

One thing that I have learned over the years is that no patent is actually really valid until a judge bangs a gavel and says yea or nay to the patent, (I’ve held a couple). Until then, it pretty much just a piece of ass-wipe paper you can wavy around and hopefully scare off others that don’t have the money or want to spend the money to challenge the patent.

Oh I’ve seen pictures of them. Just haven’t seen one in the real world nor seen one tossed on the ground. I do suspect they just aren’t popular around me. Smokers around here probably prefer real cigarettes.

I live closer to Winnipeg than I do to my state capital. We are often referred to as “Canada Lite” by other states.

I had that misfortune when I was teaching math at my local school for 4 years.

I probably spend more time you side than you do. I just mostly do it in a forest.

I wouldn’t claim to be all that enamored of humans as a rule. But I’m not a hermit in the classic sense.

Yeah, I live in legal weed state. The nearest dispensary is a mere 20 miles away. I’m not even sure they sell vapes. Flower and edibles for sure, but I have no idea if they sell vapes. (I’ve never been there-- weed just ain’t my thing). But I still don’t see any used ones tossed out. Maybe we are just neater people here and don’t litter.