There’s a good cyberpunk story in that premise.

Mint has its flaws if you’re running an RTX 3080. It’ll play games well but will show a black screen if you run it after waking it back up which requires a reboot to fix.

I was fresh out of college before finding my first job. A friend worked at a company that sets up large fancy decorations for all sorts of events and helped me get some overflow work. I was brought on as a freelancer for a 30 hour shift on a new year’s block party where we started that morning by making multiple trips to and from the site to bring our gear.

The first 12 hours went fine as we went to three different sites around the block but one of my new coworkers was a bit unstable to say the least. I must’ve rubbed him the wrong way because as we were sitting around eating dinner among some tables set up during the celebrations I mentioned I was so tired I couldn’t taste the food. Somehow that triggered the guy and he got up directly in front of me, shoved me off my chair, and just said “I don’t like you” then casually walked off. Mind you, this all happened in a large crowd so it caused a hell of a scene. My buddy and I were just left dumbstruck while a security guard came by and demanded to know who we were working with to report on the guy. We didn’t want to get into trouble so we just made up some info and got the hell out of there ASAP.

The last few hours were tense as my assailant and I avoided each other while we started tearing down the decorations an hour after the countdown. My boss saw some blood on my hand where I fell and I had to make up a story that I just scratched it against a post somewhere. I never went back to work at that company again. I later heard from my friend that the same guy ended up knocking down someone else at another job. I often wonder if he eventually got his ass kicked or end up in jail for assaulting the wrong guy.

Elementary is a great modern day Sherlock Holmes series. Way better than BBC’s contemporary counterpart IMO.

Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans, King of the Hill, The Man in the High Castle, Hot Fuzz, Gattaca, Office Space, Star Trek TNG.

• What do I do to make it more than a trinket printer.

CAD is just a tool. You can use it to make more trinkets yourself or create a special bed basket, custom camera bracket, etc. If you see something at work or home that could benefit from a product that doesn’t exist yet, you might be able to design and print a fixture for it.

• Why should I get a printer.

Unless you’re constantly coming up with things to print then you don’t. Plenty of libraries offer free 3d printing services but keep in mind you get what you pay for. If you’re lucky, some universities or hacker spaces might let you use their printers and are of generally higher quality.

• Should I skip the owning part and just use commercial 3d print shops?

It gets expensive very quickly. Most commercial places I’ve dealt with for work will rip you off because they’re targeting industries that have more money than common sense. I once needed to print a few simple boxes with ESD safe filament and they wanted over 400 dollars for just one. A lower end prusa costs the same as 3 of those prints so it made more sense for us to purchase our own printer and filament and make it ourselves. The cost of making additional fixtures plummeted too once we considered avoiding some traditionally machined parts in favor of printed ones.

3d printing, specifically FDM with PLA since I’m not down to mess with the chemicals for a resin printer. Keep printing until you’re out of an opened filament roll, otherwise your filament will absorb water and degrade. I often learn filament goes bad when a tiny piece breaks off in the feeder right above the heating element, requiring some annoying disassembly to diagnose and correct the problem. If you’re not sure what to build with the last bit of filament, a small square trash can/pencil holder is always useful.

Stick to a maintenance schedule. Putting off a lubrication or dusting can lead to debris getting stuck somewhere and ruining a print when you least expect it. Also learn about every component in your printer and how to get a replacement when it inevitably breaks. That way you can purchase a few of the more commonly broken parts to lower printer downtime.

Start off with a brand name printer that does auto leveling. That cheap CR10 you bought for a hundred dollars sounds like a bargain until you realize it can’t print a solid first layer, causing all sorts of other minor annoyances with your print quality. Trying and failing to fix the issues might eventually turn you off on pursuing the hobby.

I was already well versed in Solidworks, but learn how to use a CAD program. You can get a lot of use from the many publicly available models out there but you might eventually have an idea or require something that requires a custom design. Being able to physically manifest your own design ideas quickly was a big drawing point for me to get into the hobby.

Clearly not enough damage has been done since Nvidia’s stock price is still in the stratosphere.

Why won’t France and the UK state they’d nuke him back if he tried? They’re NATO countries too and need to stand by in solidarity with an ally being attacked. Letting the orange Hitler do as he pleases will only embolden him to go after them later.