I think the amount of time Trump gets to contest this election should be no more than the Democrats took contesting the last one: four years.

😁

Related

Work-related

Yesterday, one of my co-workers mentioned that he might miss the morning meeting because the construction on his street was so annoying that he was going to drive down to his parents’ house in Salinas to work. Spotting this, I suggested lunch. Proving that I’d picked the right group to work with, he suggested The Meatery’s deli.

His parents live at the south end of Salinas, so it was a lot closer for him than for me, but c’mon, with a name like Meatery, of course I’m going.

They’re primarily a butcher shop and have no indoor seating, and of course Covid, so we parked our cars side-by-side and ate outdoors in the sunshine.

Next time, we’ll have to pick something closer to my house, but next time I’m in Seaside, I’ll definitely eat there again.

“​…where the dead vote early and often”

If you don’t want to be accused of shenanigans, don’t do things that look like shenanigans. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Also, don’t spend four years actively engaged in obvious shenanigans and then accuse your target of being paranoid.

Me, too

Adjacent articles on Slashdot:

• Android Turns 13 Years Old

• Netflix Targets Critical ‘Cuties’ Tweets With Copyright Takedown Requests

I guess Android’s too old to run Netflix now? 😁

If your election stays up for more than four days, consult Rio Teramoto.

As for the ongoing clusterfuck that is the US presidential election, Larry Correia weighs in.

Speaking of security…

In the nearly-there Big Sur release of MacOS, Apple won’t allow third-party software to even see the network traffic from their applications and services, much less block it. If, for instance, you’re on an expensive or slow wifi connection, and iCloud or Software Update decides to slurp up all your bandwidth, well-known tools like Little Snitch, TripMode, and even your VPN software won’t know about it.

I haven’t seen anyone mention tcpdump or Wireshark yet.

Remember: it ain’t over until the body-positive female-identifying person expresses themself vocally.

Unrelated

I just had to delete and re-add my Gmail account to Apple’s Mail.app, because they were arguing so fiercely about moving a single message between IMAP mailboxes that my fans spun up to full speed and stayed there for well over an hour.

To vote in person in California, as I just did, you must not only surrender the ballot that was mailed to you on the sole authority of the governor rather than by any law, but also the empty return envelope that came with it. No voter ID, though; that’s crazy talk.

Disease with no Cura

I experimented a bit with Meshmixer to optimize the orientation and supports for a model before slicing and printing with Dremel’s software. Pro: it was easy to remove the tree-style supports it generated. Con: the surface quality was no better for all the extra work involved, and actually required a bit more sanding to be usable.

So I tried the current version of Cura (which has a bewildering array of tree-support options) with the machine definition copied from Dremel’s older version and the built-in generic filament and quality definitions. The print took just as long as with the Dremel software, but practically crumbled in my hand. All the small parts could be snapped off with very light pressure, and the main body’s 20% infill wasn’t enough to survive squeezing between thumb and forefinger. Definitely need to import the Dremel-specific filament and quality settings before I try that again.

Then I tried to decipher the UI for Autodesk Fusion 360, which honestly looks like it was designed to sell training classes. Also, it has a fairly short list of available machine, material, and quality profiles, so I’d have to enter everything by hand for my printer. Yeah, no. If I can manage to figure out how to use it before the mouse bindings drive me to throw a laptop out a window, I’ll try designing a part and exporting to Dremel’s software. It also really, really wants to keep everything in their cloud, which you have to manage from a real browser; it took me a good five minutes to figure out how to completely delete one accidental upload.

Then I took a brief look at FreeCAD, where instead of having their own UI paradigm, they simply emulate everyone else’s and allow you to pick one. Or more. Initial impression: the 2D tools make Illustrator look like the easiest-to-learn drawing software in the world; I didn’t get to the 3D tools. I did like the Bézier curve visualization, though.

CorelCAD is a full-featured 2D/3D package, and for $700 it ought to be. In prehistoric times I found CorelDRAW a lot easier to learn than Illustrator and used it a lot, but then they had a very, very buggy major release that drove me away, and I never looked back. They have free trials of all their software, and a subscription model for some of them, but the very first question on their FAQ page is:

“How do I turn off popup ads in CorelDRAW?”

’nuf said.

Video killed by radio star

The Dremel’s camera went offline during one of my prints, and since nothing was listening on the port, obviously the software had crashed on the printer. There’s nothing checking for this and restarting it, so the only way to get the feed back is to power-cycle, which had to wait until I was done sending test prints for the day. The printer still printed, and the status API kept reporting correctly, so it was no big deal. Their app doesn’t really know what to do when there’s no video feed, but it still functions.

By the way, extracting the Busybox image from the latest firmware update and running strings on the binaries revealed a few additional commands in the API: GETJOBSTATUS, CANCEL, PAUSE, RESUME, NOZZLEHEAT, PLATEHEAT, STOPNOZZLEHEAT, STOPPLATEHEAT; I have no need to try most of those out. A quick tcpdump while I was driving it from the GUI showed the two-part command to print across the network: you upload the file by POSTing to /print_file_uploads with name, filename, and data fields, then POST PRINT=filename to /command (and then spam it with GETPRINTERSTATUS every few seconds, at least if you’re Dremel’s software).

Update: unofficial official GCODE/API manual

So, if I ever get another slicer that generates good code for this device, I won’t have to walk the gcode over to the printer on a thumb drive, through the snow, uphill both ways. That will matter more once I move it upstairs into my office, because while it’s not loud, it is audible, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to turn off the built-in lighting. Closing the office door will make lengthy overnight prints less intrusive.

…unless I ever have a houseguest again, because the guest bedroom is right next to the office.

…unless the guest is my sister, who stubbornly insists that my couch provides a much better sleeping experience. Honestly, if I ever win the lottery and build my dream house, her room will just have a sectional sofa, large-screen TV, and a bookshelf. And excellent wifi coverage. Maybe its own kitchen. Oh, what the hell, just make it a studio apartment without a bed.

Little Monsters

If it ever becomes possible to play tabletop games in person again, mz4250’s extremely large set of free miniatures will be useful. The detailing on some of them is nice enough to scale up for decoration, and it’s not just the complete set of D&D monsters and an ever-increasing set of module-specific characters. There are other genres, as well as disturbing nightmare creations.

No Magic Bullet

I think I’ve gone down enough software rat-holes for now. Back to just coding up shapes in OpenSCAD and printing them with the supplied software and its “old-fashioned” support structures.

Cognitive Disinfectant

Remember when everyone was up in arms about the antibiotic-resistant bacteria crisis, and we all needed to stop using antibacterial products right now? Corona-chan really kicked the pins out from under that campaign. Now it seems like everywhere you go, assuming you’re allowed out, there’s a hand-sanitizer station every 20 feet, and every public surface is being wiped down dozens of times each day with strong disinfectants.

True Lies Matter

On the off chance Trump beats the margin of fraud, I’d like to remind everyone in the “punch a nazi” crowd that A) you’re not very good at nazi-identification, B) the ‘nazi’ gets to punch back in self-defense, or shoot if your attack is serious enough, C) you’ll be the one facing felony charges, D) if you go out in force to protest the election results, 10USC331 could make those charges federal, which means no catch-and-release by the local po-po, and E) that felony conviction may stop you from voting or owning guns.

Software update not found

Turns out Dremel’s software is based on Cura 2.7, and the current version is 4.7. Settings extracted from the various resource directories don’t quite work as-is, due to substantial changes over the past three years. Cura silently ignores non-compliant materials and settings files, so a bit of trial-and-error will be necessary. I was able to import the basic printer definition by changing two lines, but not the materials or quality settings.

I’m honestly surprised this hasn’t been done by someone yet. It’s not hard, just tedious, and there will likely be times that the features in the newer software will be useful. I haven’t found anything wrong with the current version, but 3 years is a long time in this sort of software.

On the plus side, getting direct network access to the Dremel’s status and video without using their app is refreshingly easy:

# retrieve status as JSON
curl -d GETPRINTERSTATUS $IPADDR/command | jq .

# watch the video in any browser or VLC
http://$IPADDR:10123/?action=stream

Looks like you can also upload files and start print jobs through this API, too. Downside: so can anyone else on your network. Not a problem for me, fortunately.

On a whim, I installed Slic3r to try it out, but when I launched it, the embedded Perl interpreter started grinding on my CPU. I couldn’t decide if it was mining cryptocurrency, encrypting my hard drive, or just bad code. The latest 1.3.1-dev release started up instantly, which is suggestive. As a true open-source project, it comes with a completely empty printer and materials library, making it more of a lifestyle than a tool.

I searched Pixiv for a nice 3D-created illustration to insert here, but the ones that weren’t loli porn were bondage porn, so here’s a perfectly innocent picture from Genshin Impact.

Not much of a cheese shop, then, is it?

The Internet Archive has implemented “fact checks” and “context” for The Wayback Machine. They now confirm that the chocolate ration has been increased to 20 grams/week.