They're still making DVD drives. They're just mostly USB now. Ripping is pushbutton easy these days. No messing around with getting a copy of DeCSS and such.

This is the sound of the other shoe dropping.

I ALWAYS get the data. If you or your insurance are paying for an MRI, X-Ray, or other scan, it is your RIGHT by law to get a copy of your own medical records. They can charge you a small fee to cover the costs of, for example, burning a CD, but I've actually never been charged for it.

It's long past time we had a real debate about the law, too. Just because something has been the law for a long time, that doesn't necessarily mean it should remain the law as times change. Clearly there is a difference between the implications of casually observing someone as you pass them in a public street, when you probably forget them again a moment later, and the implications of recording someone with a device that will upload the footage to a system run by a global corporation where it can be permanently stored, shared with other parties, analysed including through image and voice recognition that can potentially identify anyone in the footage, where they were, what they were doing, who they were doing it with, and maybe what they were saying and what they had with them, and then combined with other data sources using any or all of those criteria as search keys in order to build a database at the scale of the entire global population over their entire lifetimes to be used by parties unknown for purposes unknown, all without the consent or maybe even the knowledge of the observed people who might be affected as a result.

I don't claim to know a good answer to the question of what we should allow. Privacy is a serious and deep moral issue with far-reaching implications and it needs more than some random guy on Slashdot posting a comment to explore it properly. But I don't think the answer is to say anything goes anywhere in public either just because it's what the law currently says (laws should evolve to follow moral standards, not the other way around) or because someone likes being able to do that to other people and claims their freedoms would be infringed if they couldn't record whatever they wanted and then do whatever they wanted with the footage. With freedom comes responsibility, including the responsibility to respect the rights and freedoms of others, which some might feel should include more of a right to privacy than the law in some places currently protects.

That all said, people who think it's cool to film other human beings in clear distress or possibly even at the end of their lives just for kicks deserve to spend a long time in a special circle of hell. Losing a friend or family member who was, for example, killed in a car crash is bad enough. Having to relive their final moments over and over because people keep "helpfully" posting the footage they recorded as they drove past is worse. If you're not going to help, just be on your way and let those who are trying to protect a victim or treat a patient get on with it.

First,mandatory screen time needs to be limited. If they want text books in ebook form, great, but they'll need a way to restrict school issued pads to school work during the school day.

On the flip side, I have more than once heard a parent complaining that homework is being given that requires a computer to complete where a school doesn't allow chromebooks to be taken home. That's equally absurd. Not every family can afford to give each kid a computer, and sometimes computers break. It's not like parents can just grab an extra one at the corner store like they would a pack of pencils or paper. If school work requires a computer and/or internet connection, the school should provide it. If that includes homework, the students must be allowed to take it home.

If the schools don't like that or can't afford it, they can issue text books and homework that can be completed with pencil and paper (yes, that includes accepting hand written essays).

And as for not letting parents view the assignments, that's ridiculous. Of course the parents have a right to see it. If some company wants to claim that to be proprietary information, I guess the school can't use it at all.

It's crazy to complain about students on their screens too much and then have mandatory screen time. It's equally ridiculous to complain that parents need to be more involved and then shut parents out.

/rant

I'm thinking very very stupid. No sprues for casting.

Agreed. This is all stuff that at MOST should be accessible over the LAN. The ESP32 is cheap and provides the WiFi and enough power to run a simple RESTful web app. If I actually need/want to access it remotely, it'll be through a well protected integrated web servie on a jump box.

A cheaper manufacturer could probably make the ESP32 do double duty as the primary micro-controller with a suitable interrupt routine.

The situation was worse than I thought. According to the AAIB report, they tested the material and found the glass transition temperature to be about 53C, so the jackass printed it in PLA.

Also, since it's Poly Lactic Acid, our metabolism is already well equipped to deal with the breakdown product.

It's great for things that will be indoors at room temperature. I made a snap-on camera mount for my monitor that has held up great. But if it was a dash mount, it would need to be PETG or CF-PA6 to not sag in the summer.

Getting their jobs sent to American AI won't be noticeably better for American workers than getting their jobs sent to Chinese AIs.

According to an AAIB Field Investigation report (pg. 4), two samples from the intake were tested and found to have a glass transition temperature of 54.0C and 52.8C

So some idiot printed them in PLA. PLA is great but is very much NOT temperature resistant. It has been known to sag in a hot car.

Now look at the ratio of human driven cars vs. Waymo cars.

The question was literally, "What happens when all car manufacturers are displaying ads?"

The problem was using a cheap substitute part. I'm guessing an injection molded ABS part would also have failed in that scenario.

CF-ABS is NOT like fiberglass at all. The CF is chopped into fine bits. They lend some stiffness at room temperature but not strength to the part. Certainly the carbon fiber bits don't lend any heat resistance.