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.

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 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.

That's why I suggest a mitigation to the increases for industry based on local employment. Data centers employ very few people per-Killowatt and so contribute a lot less to the local economy compared to those other industries.

It would make sense in conjunction with an employment based mitigation. Data centers employ very few people once operational (they're not called lights-out facilities for nothing), so no mitigation. Major manufacturer provides many steady jobs, more mitigation for them.

Of course, things get complicated. There are mini data centers being set up in people's back yards where the waste heat warms the home owners house. That doesn't employ a lot of people but gets effectively double use of the energy for at least a good part of the year, offsetting other energy use, so it should see some form of mitigation as well.

The bigger question though is how long until the data centers are abandoned? The big AI companies and their investors are operating at a loss as they jocky for market share and train ever larger models. But will people actually find the AI useful enough to pay for it once the investors start demanding their ROI? Will managers come to realize that they might be better off hiring people suffering schizophrenia with frequent psychotic episodes?

End to end encryption, for a toilet? Frankny I do not want a TOILET to connect me "end-to-end" with anybody. They're doing it wrong.

Time to pull up the sheet on IOT. Not only has it gone up it's own backside, now it's trying to go up ours too.

How about "hit", the most common word used to express the concept.