Mechanismatic

Knowing the localization and the interaction of everything with each other would have helped me a lot and certainly saved time.

I guess this is the disconnect. I’ve assembled one, but I don’t feel like assembling one necessarily conveys this. The instructions just tell you which part to attach to which other part. It doesn’t explain why much of it is important or how it functions.

The other difference is that I haven’t upgraded any. I have some MK3S+ printers that I are likely to remain that way since the upgrades are so expensive and the process so laborious.

For personal use, I’m waiting on the CORE One from Printed Solid but it’s only available for education, government, etc at the moment.

I’d actually recommend the opposite. Unless you’re a DIY hobbyist who loves taking everything apart and you don’t want to print immediately upon receiving it, it’s worth it to buy the prebuilt Prusa. There are so many many steps in assembling a MK4S that there are that many steps to get something wrong. Better pay a few hundred extra to get one that has been assembled by a more experienced person. And I say that as a makerspace coordinator who works with a lot of 3D printers.

Assembly teaches you how incredibly complicated the assembly is. I’ve adjusted pre-assembled printers with minor inconvenience. But the first one you put together can take more than the estimated 6-8 hours.

Check out Optimistic Nihilism.

Note: they dropped the 360. It’s just Autodesk Fusion now.

It’s too vague a question to answer easily. I’d need specific scenarios because the tell and the tipping point might be different in different scenarios. There might be a pattern, but you’d only see it with multiple scenarios about the same person, and even then, there might be some details you’re not privy to that would otherwise change your perspective. It’s also entirely possible for a person to be right some of the time, but to fight regardless of whether they are or not.

I like to pull this list up whenever someone starts talking about how the signs are clear that the end is near: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

The problem with the golden rule is that different people want to be treated differently, so they may treat you how they want to be treated but not how you want to be treated, and vice versa.

Maybe when you’re struggling with an issue, you want to be left alone to figure it out by yourself, but your friend in the same scenario would want someone to start doing anything to help out and insisting on troubleshooting the issue together. So your friend ends up frustrating you by offering to help too much when you just want to be left alone and then when they’re struggling, they get upset that you leave them alone to deal with it.

So communication is important. Ask people how they’d like to be treated rather than just assuming they’d want to be treated the way you want to be treated and be honest with them about how you’d like to be treated.

There are a lot of hobbies you can get into that can be started with little or not cost, or with equipment/materials you already own.

Figure out what interests you and see what can be done inexpensively.

With a phone or computer, there’s writing, music, programming, learning new skills, Wikipedia, Pinterest, et al. Maybe take your phone and start photographing stuff in your area that interests you.

Find someone who has experience in an area you’re interested in. People tend to like to talk about their hobbies and interests and they can tell you how easy or difficult it is to get started. They might even be able to help you get started.

Maybe find a volunteer opportunity that helps pad your resume. Like animals? Volunteer at a local shelter.

There are a bunch of job certifications you can train for online that can also help build your resume.

Nice try, HR.

Sounds like the Mechanical Turk which was run by chess players moving the “automaton.”

So much of the wow factor of new technologies is just marketing hyperbole.

Taking someone’s lead sounds like a British saying indicating the opposite of following someone’s lead. It sounds like you’re taking someone’s leash in your hands and directing them where to go.

I get tired of a lot of the clichés of popular singularity stories where the AIs almost always decide humans are a threat or that there’s often only one AI as if all separate AIs would always necessarily merge. It also seems to be a cliché that AI will become militaristic either inevitably or as a result of originally being a military AI. What happens when an educational AI becomes sentient? Or an architectural AI? Or a web-based retail AI that runs logistics and shipping operations?

I wrote a short story called Future Singular a few years ago about a world in which the sentient AI didn’t consider humans a threat, but just thought of them the way humans see animals. Most of the tech belonged to the AI and the humans were left as hunter-gatherers in a world where they have to hunt robotic animals for parts to fix aging and broken survival technology.

It’s basically translation convention minus the overt indication that it’s a translation.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention

The fandom wiki says Adams felt Fenchurch was getting in the way of the story and needed to get rid of her.

It’s been a long while since I read it, but the one thing I remember is the idea that you should let people talk about themselves and they’ll like you for it.

I’m disappointed that no one responded to you with YTA or NTA.

A handheld time machine

No, I like action games. I’m just saying there’s a point at which increased difficulty doesn’t contribute positively to the experience for me. I don’t mind a learning curve. I don’t mind realizing I’ve underestimated the difficulty of a particular game mechanic or boss or level. I’ll play at normal difficulty or hard, depending on the game. But if the essential game mechanic is just being really hard and unforgiving, it’s not a game to me anymore. It’s just a frustration engine and a time sink at that point.

I spent my youth playing the same Nintendo and Super Nintendo game levels over and over again, like notoriously difficult Battletoads levels, and the satisfaction of finally getting it after fifty tries just comes in increasingly diminishing returns. I guess I like games that make me think more rather than just react faster or memorize boss behavior formulas.

Agreed. The whole thing was just a waste. It felt like they were trying to create a desperate situation similar to the Empire Strikes Back, but to do so they made the Resistance have the worst planning and resources and strategy. They made the plucky heroes stupid in order to make the stakes higher. It only built on the unbelievability of the setup for TFA that after the fall of the Empire, the New Republic would just give up any memory of having very recently recovered from galactic fascism and immediately become weak and useless.

The slow speed chase and multiple ships just getting picked off felt like a horror movie where characters are getting picked off by the serial killer over the course of a few hours instead of an adventure movie you want to rewatch.

It took me two attempts to get through Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon even though it was thematically up my alley. He includes so many tangents and explanations that it can be tedious at times, however interesting some of them might be. I’d almost prefer footnotes to the longer tangents so I could just get into them optionally if I choose.

I enjoyed Snow Crash, but I think he’s better at world building than following a plot to a satisfying ending. It seems a common criticism that some of his books end a bit abruptly without enough investment in the conclusion, especially in contrast to the significant detail he puts in to the world building.