Go outside. Experience sunshine.

In London in the winter? How???

What's weird is the lack of unified electronic system.

Over here for example, you can simply transfer money to someone's account using their sort code (i.e. numeric bank id) and account number. We also have a related bill paying system.

One referendum, one general election. Both in favor of Brexit.

Oh right we're into la-la-land invention of reality. There was not a general election in favour of Brexit. That's a made up fact.

And the referendum was ruled to be flawed because of irregularities.

This is relevant, I promise. Just today, I received a Shelly H&T (humidity & temperature). They have s cloud service and spot, but explicitly explain that you can set it up purely locally. I did, and attached it to my OpenHAB installation.

Every IoT device should offer this option.

I think that's just a symptom of the user base growing smaller. Decades ago articles had far more comments. There were always troll posts but there was a lot more discussion to make those seem more inconsequential. Even if posters disagreed politically (I'm sure 2000 election threads are just as bad as any of the recent ones) there was a shared for in Microsoft that everyone could unite behind. Since then open source has won in a lot of ways. It generally rules servers and mobile phones. Even if the Year of the Linux Desktop never really arrived, every year makes it less and less relevant. Without that, the user base will find something else to squabble over.

There's also the vicious cycle that's created where this sort of behavior drives away others and leaves a larger proportion of users that engage in that behavior. It's not so much different from a neighborhood that doesn't solve its crime problems or other issues facing it. The good people slowly leave for greener pastures, but the problem causers stick around or grow worse. If it goes on for long enough you get the dilapidated ghetto or gutted trailer park that no one wants to come to and who the bitter denizens are often resentful to have visit. It's somewhat worse with internet communities because one person can use bots or sock puppet accounts to have an oversized impact.

There's also a tendency for any internet community to become a hive mind. Slashdot, for example, was never going to become a forum where Microsoft was well regarded. Anyone who really liked Microsoft quit posting here shortly after joining to find something else other community that was more open. Any community that slants towards anything will tend to continue heading in that direction as it slowly drives away whatever outgroup is has identified. This can happen along political lines as well, with Reddit and Something Awful before it being examples of this. Slashdot seems more immune to this to some degree. It's not really designed to be as much of a social media site as most other internet communities and was built at a time when no one cared about trying to generate engagement so much as fostering discussion. I don't think that prevents the problem, but it does slow it down considerably.

The user base here is likely much, much older than the average internet community. I don't think previous generations were any better than the current or upcoming generations, but they are all different in their own ways. A lot of us grew up before the smartphones, the internet, or perhaps even ubiquitous personal computing. I think that does have some impact on how we engage with others socially. However it also means that we're a lot closer to the grave than other communities. I've often wondered about some posters who have disappeared over the years. Even people I might normally have disagreed with vehemently on some topics often had insightful or interesting things to say about other topics. Over the years many have dropped off and while it's always possible that they got fed up and got the hell out of town as it were, I think the more simple explanation is that they got old and died. The internet hasn't been around long enough yet for most communities to go through this process where the people who started it all pass away. Slashdot is old enough where that's starting to happen. Anyone who was in their mid-20s when the site was started will be approaching 60 by the end of the decade. A lot of the early users were older than that.

TLDR: Slashdot is dying. Netcraft confirms it!

Most people who have (not so) fond memories of the BSoD predate that era and experienced it on a daily basis. The problem was drastically reduced going from Windows 95 to 98 to 2000/XP, to the extent that it's impossible for hardware to be the primary culprit. Windows dominated the landscape, but they weren't the only OS around and nothing else was that unstable despite using the hardware of that era. Before NT, Windows was an absolute mess. I think the only reason most people put up with it was that they didn't know anything better was possible and since Windows was so widespread it was a misery everyone shared

I've done my first test of buying a whole pallet of filament straight from a Chinese manufacturer.

I'm curious what the shipping is like. I've looked at Alibaba and Aliexpress for buying certain items, and over a certain size, the shipping is quite punishing. For something like a side channel blower (i.e. palette sized, 15-20kg or so), the prices are a lot better in China, but the shipping eats up the difference, to the point where local vendors are competitive price wise but with faster shipping and better certification.

I imaging if I was buying a container load it would be a different proposition, but it's one at a time at the moment.

it could be all junk - but if it's usable, the price advantage is insane. Like $3/kg for PETG at the factory gate (like $5/kg after sea freight and our 24% VAT). Versus local stores which sell for like $30/kg.

Yeah that sounds about right! There's probably plenty where it's really good, and you get a massive bargain. For me, the 3D printed parts are one of the lower cost items in the bill of materials even with brand name Prusament filament.

Yeah it's weird stuff. I've done a of normal fiber reinforced composites, and to me the filaments just feel like completely normal filaments with the same kind of different tradeoffs you get switching between plastic types, such as more yield strength, lower toughness, less surface detail rather than a whole new material like the macroscopic type.

I didn't know that about glass vs carbon. At the moment, I'm printing for business reasons so I'm sticking to things where I have a reasonable expectation of being able to get more of the same filament in a year's time. This limits the amount of experimentation from smaller suppliers since I can't rely on the parts if I can't reliably get the filament.

Really it's mostly Prusament right now...

The fumes thing is overrated - typical measured levels in a room printing ABS are in the ppb range

Fair enough. I've not got any measuring kit and the printer I used most for that is not enclosed, so I erred on the side of caution.

Main annoying thing is that ABS is hard to print. I mean, it's far from the hardest, that'd be something like polypropylene or whatnot - but vs. say PLA and PETG, there's a learning curve.

I never had thaaat much problem, but I was printing my own parts, so designing in part for printability. I always went for plenty of supports and when I was printing a lot of ABS, I had a dual head printer so I used tight supports in HIPS (yay more styrene) soluble interface layers.

I'm mostly printing Prusament Galaxy Black PLA at the moment, with a bit of CF-PETG. I've got a reel of polycarbonate blend to try out.

Wake me when we can have small, cheap gas/diesel pickup trucks like the classic S10, Ranger, Hilux, Tacoma, Brat, etc.

You probably do have them, they're called "vans": I'm pretty sure Ford sell their Transit series in the US. Here, they are available in many configurations, such as standard box van, flatbed, drop side, and optionally with crew cabs too.

A drop side van is the same as a 2WD pickup with a more flexible bed (because the sides drop too) and better forward visibility.

For stuff that sits in a car and likely won't warp in the sun, I just go ABS or ASA.

Either print in a well ventilated garage or get an activated carbon filter. ABS gives off toxic fumes, so take care. Otherwise I think it's a bit of an underrated plastic.

It adds stiffness and some creep resistance. It usually adds a bit of strength, but it's not like epoxy/fibre composites where the majority of strength comes from the fibres. It's A bit more strength, maybe 50% depending on the formulation and part, but often lower. But also, it depends on if you mean yield or ultimate strength.

It's also a good way of trading toughness and stiffness and yield strength. PETG is incredibly tough, not hugely stiff and moderately in ultimate tensile strength. But the toughness is such that the ultimate tensile strength is not that useful often since it's so distorted by then. CF-PETg is rather less tough, similar ultimate tensile strength but a somewhat higher yield strength and with less creep and more stiffness. It also maintains the excellent impact resistance of PETG.

I can't speak for Europe / England and their repair laws, but everything in America is required to be approved by the FAA for use in aviation

He bought it at an airshow in America.

A part they bought at an airshow?

It's not even that so much as it is making change for the sake of change as opposed for the sake of improvement. Every company is guilty of this to some degree, but everyone can name a few that keep shuffling things around for no good reason. A lot of the time it's worse from a productivity perspective, but I guess that at least it looks flashier.

I'd respect the field more if they told management that the current design is good and that it can stay that way for the next five years while they work out something that might be better and go through the process to verify that. Too often it's them doing stupid shit that screams of them trying to justify their own job position or so that marketing has something to talk about for the next product release.