And it is not always cosmetic either

Which is why I specified cosmetic surgery.

The word plastic in this case does not mean that actual plastic was inserted or injected.

And that is new to me! That makes more sense, plastic surgery being named after plasticity since it’s changing the shape of something and having it stay like that. Plasticity is the converse of elasticity (the latter describing a material that goes back to its original shape when deformed). I have added an edit to the post now.

Ok that’s pretty cool :0

One more thing, if there is a drastic colour change (i.e. between darks and lights) then there needs to be additional stuff for the prime tower (which is why in many multi-colour prints, the prime tower has “infill” rather than being hollow)

If it was using many small bits of poop, the printer is more like “poop clean - pause - poop clean - pause - poop clean - wait a bit more - now I print” since if the poop gets too big it could damage the nozzle/clog it.

If instead it was a prime tower, the printer is like “whirr prime towerrr >> actual print immediately after”

Oops, I think I misremembered. I fixed the comment now. I typed it when I was very tired.

Now that I see your actual question, the main reason it’s a tower and not “poop” is because simply creating poop would mean the little wiper that pushes out excess filament to the poop chute needs to be used, increasing the time as there is a brief pause.

If it was poop, the printer is like “poop poop clean - wait a bit - now I print” between each layer

If it was a prime tower, the printer is like “tower tower >> actual print immediately after” between each layer

I think I understand now, dang, this is a pretty deep topic. Did not know that different parts of the body usually use different materials, but that makes sense I think

Ah okay that makes much more sense. Interesting, I did not know that!

Oh, so they’re way down below the muscle mass? Did not know that. And yikes, salt water leaking out into your inner bits sounds bad. (but presumably if you were to have such a large injury you would probably also be bleeding and such)

edit: Oh wait, the salt water is low concentration. It’s not like seawater, ok, that makes much more sense.

In a nutshell, the prime tower lets the printer print a basic shape, and if it doesn’t look right, either you or the printer (depending on the model) can stop the print. It also it ensures that filament is flowing right between each layer change.

edit: Fixed. The first point seems to be incorrect, but the second one is okay

And Central America is part of North America! The North and South Americas is split by the Panama canal (which is located in Panama. Central America is usually defined as the bits below Mexico and above Colombia (but it occasionally includes parts or all of Mexico too, depending on who you ask). Belize is right next to Guatemala and below Mexico, so it’s considered part of Central America!

Even more confusing, “Latin America” is pretty much any country in the Americas that speak either Spanish, Portuguese or another Romance language, excluding of course the English speaking nations of the US, Canada, Guyana, and Belize (as well as a few Carribean islands), as well as the Dutch speaking Suriname. It does include French Guiana (since French is a Romance language). Hispanic America is all the Spanish speaking nations in the American continent(s)

Another thing to add, FelixCress is a moderator of the community “OPisafuckingidiot”, along with a user called “MeatEater” (hmm I wonder what their shared belief is)

And it seems like they are the main user of that community, with a majority of posts posted by them. The community is intended to mock certain Lemmy comments, mainly replies to their own posts that they disagree with. Mocking people is generally seen as not very nice :(

Looking a bit into this Pablo Stanley guy, he seems to be a vibecoder, and is a dev at “efecto” (an “AI-native tool” that is designed to that lets you “tell an agent what to design”, and without the buzzwords, basically LLM website design). Stanley is also a huge “AI creator” in a platform called Lummi, which advertises itself as a site for these “AI creators” to share AI-gen stock images. He has over 15 thousand images with 3.6 million views, which seems to be a lot (unsure if this is normal though, given that these are all AI generated. I don’t explore these kinds of platforms so I have no idea. They are big numbers though)

Plenty of his comics, articles, and posts are all about “agents”, “context engineering”, those sort. The comics seem to be human drawn though (there’s no explicit mention of image generation for making the comics, but I can’t find anything that makes it clear it’s not though), and in one article, he mentions how the use of AI is like a “slot machine” (addicting but harmful). This is then followed by him stating that, even still, he “loves to create with AI”.

Take it for what you will. Some sources I looked at:

https://medium.com/@pablostanley

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablostanley1

https://www.lummi.ai/creator/pablostanley

I found the relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1361/

The DNS server is, in a nutshell, the middleman between your computer and the web server you want to access. It lets you use URLs (easy to remember words) to access web servers, which have IP addesses (usually difficult to remember). The browser sends the URL (which includes the protocol, usually HTTPS, as well as the domain name and other bits) and the DNS server checks it against a list of IP addresses.

If they find a match, the request is sent to the correct web server and a connection between the browser and the server is established. When no match is found, other DNS servers are contacted to see if they have the entry. If there is still no results, you get an error telling you the URL does not exist.

As others have mentioned, it’s a bit like a phone book where you look for somebody’s name (the URL) to find the phone number that you can use to communicate with them (the phone number). But I think it more resembles calling a friend (the DNS server) for the phone number of the person you want to contact (the web server), and the friend can either tell you what it is, if they know this person, or call other friends to see if they know their phone number.

The most common DNS service is Google’s, so if you’re not using Cloudflare, NextDNS, or similar, Google is the middleman yet again! You might have seen that xkcd on the “8.8.8.8” DNS service, where all other products are hypothetically killed to focus on their Google DNS.

Oh, whoops! I will fix that now

Most computers should be able to run Nextcloud, but to double-check, look at the minimum requirements for Nextcloud. I run my instance using an old laptop I had lying around, and I think it has an 11th gen Intel processor of some kind and 8GB of RAM. It runs fine with plenty of headroom for many other services

There are other Chinese companies that produce 3D printers that aren’t acting in a similar way, like Elegoo and Qidi. Of course, they aren’t the most open (closed firmware and such. Corporations be corporate) but they do still support third-party slicers and all that. Perhaps this could play a part in Bambu’s decision, especially given that they are a larger player in the space, but it can’t explain all of it.

OrcaSlicer is a fork of Bambu Slicer (which is a fork of Prusa Slicer, and that’s a fork of Slic3r). There was a fork of Orca that used the same (GPL licensed, mind you) code that Bambu Slicer uses to access their cloud service, since OrcaSlicer removed that functionality last year. There’s no foul play here by the devs, it’s just Bambu blaming their security issues on a small community project. Very much against the ethos of open-source, picking on smaller members of the community is very much not nice.

Disroot is based in the Netherlands and claims that they don’t track users or use their data for any purpose. They believe in open and federated software that respect freedom and privacy.

Autistici is based in Italy and also claims not to sell your personal data. They manually verify every user registration. Autistici believes everyone has a right to free communication, and their website states that they are anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, and anti-militarism, and that you can only use their services if you agree with those principles. They also offer other services, like blogs and web hosting.

I personally don’t really like Proton and Tuta due to their lack of support for IMAP (and with Proton’s paid plan, you need their Proton Bridge app to do so)

There’s a bunch of providers out there. As for paid providers, posteo and mailbox (both based in Germany, so GDPR) seem quite good, but haven’t used either myself. You also have Fastmail, which is based in Australia (no GDPR)

For providers that have a free plan, I have used Disroot before, and they also offer other services along with it like cloud storage. Autistici is another option and is the one I currently use. There are plenty of others, but just know that, for most free email providers, you are the product and your data will likely be sold to third-parties.

Personally, I run my self-hosting setup using an old laptop I had lying around, and if you have an device you no longer use, it’s a really good option hardware-wise!

I would recommend Debian, it’s stable and it works well enough. I’ve heard Yunohost being a nice option, but I was unable to get it to install. Maybe my particular hardware didn’t play nice with it, or perhaps I just did something wrong in the install process. The majority of services I’m running use docker, since it’s convenient and automatically updates itself.

As for the stuff that’s nice to run, you of course need file storage. I use Nextcloud, but it was a pain to set up (if you need any help, I would guide you towards LearnLinuxTV, who has great videos on setting up NextCloud). In hindsight, I probably should have installed something lighter weight since I don’t use any of Nextcloud’s extra features, but it works and many apps gives you options to use Nextcloud sync which is convenient. I also use Syncthing for syncing my notes and other bits between my devices.

I would also recommend Immich for photo hosting. It works really well and the mobile app is fantastic on both Android and iOS (I use the former now and the latter in the past). It doesn’t have a client for desktop though, so that could be a dealbreaker.

Forgejo is really good, I use mine for local project backups, with Codeberg acting as the cloud backup. I don’t have that much more to say, it works well!

Running a Minecraft server is also very fun. I use Paper to run a vanilla survival server that’s just for me and my siblings, and I have the plugins Geyser and Floodgate so that the littlest can play with me on their tablet, which runs Bedrock rather than Java Edition.

I don’t currently run this myself, but Pi-hole seems amazing, being able to block ads and trackers on the network! I will have to try that out in the future…

If you have (definitely legally obtained) media, like movies, shows, anime, etc., Jelkyfin seems like a great option. Lots of people rip content from DVDs and Blu-rays that they have bought.

I also use Radicale, a CalDAV calendar service. It can sync all the events I have in the future between all my devices, and it’s the first I have used that syncs properly among all my devices. Previously, I used two local calendars, adding the event on the device where it is most appropriate (for instance, school stuff on my laptop and social gatherings on my phone), and it was a lot of hassle. Having one calendar between all my devices is very nice indeed. On Android, I found Etar to be the most functional client, while on desktop (currently running EndeavourOS, previously Fedora), Thunderbird is probably the best option and the one I use. If you use GNOME, you could get by with their calendar app that is minimal+, and on KDE, you have KOrganiser that has a bazillion different features crammed into the interface.

One more thing, if you have spare resources, you can always run BOINC or similar in the background. Lending some of your unused compute helps out science :D I personally run Asteroids@home and Milkyway@home since I’m interested in astronomy and such, but there are BOINC projects relating to medicine, biology, and other fields of science too!