It really comes down to what you have on hand/ parts for and how much you want to spend. I'm currently rocking an orbiter 2.5 on my A4T v1 and have been pretty happy with it (most of my complaints are around interactions with my BoxTurtle - filament can sometimes get snagged on the lip that cradels the ptfe tube and I had to mess with the guide that sits after the gears for the same reason), it's a really good out of the box extruder, but does cost a bit more upfront (11/11 and black Friday aren't all that far off if you're looking for discounts on parts though).

Not to throw another hat in the ring, but if I needed an extruder in a pinch, I've seen folks in the BoxTurtle discord swear by the Wrist Watch extruder. Mostly because it uses the same BMG gears/ motor that stealthburner does, so I'd just need plastic parts and configs to get back up and running.

Unfortunately, I can't speak to the Sherpas. I've been meaning to throw one on my v0.2, but haven't quite gotten that far yet (currently on a side quest reworking my v2.4 and don't want more than one printer down at a time).

Az's comm is pretty dead, but I'll sound off

Kind of reminds me of something Quadropus Rampage would come up with. It's a mobile game by the indy studio Butterscotch Shenanigans (they're most known for Crashlands), where the player controls a octopus creature on a John Wick rampage to rescue their pet. Over the course of the game, each weapon that drops gets a random name (and stats) assigned to it, usually in the form of: adjective object qualifier, so you end up beating the tar out of random sea creatures that want to kill you with the "Inspirational Slothstick or Whatever" or the "Slaphappy Scissors of Witchcraft". The word bank is pretty ridiculous and it just leans into the game's wacky absurd humor.

There used to be a joke in the 3D printing community about buying a cheap printer just for the pair of flush cutters that comes in the box. They're super cheap, I keep a pair designed for first aid (mostly hang nails and splinters) and a toolbox pair for removing store tags from clothing, removing zip/ twist ties, small gauge wire cutting/ soldering, 3d print clean up- generally any time I need to cut something and don't want to risk cutting into something else.

Yeah, I can believe it. I imagine it's less direct damage and more being able to outcompete native species for resources like food or space. Plus they're probably tougher to prey on.

I lost control of my tank (went off to college and couldn't be around to actively maintain the tank + didn't know what I was doing) and mine ended up dying.

It's been years since I've tried to keep fish, but I'm not sure I'd recommend Plecos for a newbie. They can live a long time and it's easy to underestimate just how big they get (between 15 and 24in). Realistically, you can technically put them in a small tank while they're little, but they really should go into a large (80+ gallon) tank. They can also have a tendency to get more aggressive as they get older/ bigger.

Plecos are pretty easy to keep, but definitely something of a commitment. So, like most fish, it's best to know what you're getting into before you toss it in a tank and see what happens.

Source: was young, dumb, and thought putting a pleco in the tank would keep it clean and mostly just ended up with too big a fish in too small a tank with no real way to get rid of it. Also, this website to refresh my memory.

That's a good point! I saw the bit about a moving company being qualified to move the globe and totally missed the (alleged) replica part. I agree though, the current administration doesn't strike me as the type to "settle" for a replica, not when they could say the word and have the original 1 of 1 thing.

“An accident occurred while staff were transporting a replica of the Eisenhower globe as part of its relocation,” the official’s statement said.

“Accidents happen, we are grateful no one was harmed, and the globe is being repaired. It is unsurprising that the Washington Post is once again dedicating time to another inconsequential non-story.”

(Emphasis mine). Wow, just wow. It'd be an accident and non-story if they broke the copy machine or dropped a TV, but the whole point of historical artifacts is that they can't just be replaced. I'd say it makes my blood boil, but let's be real, it was already boiling, this is just fuel to the fire.

It's not just a camera angle, the globe isn't sitting in the cradle like it should be.

The metal band that runs the circumference of the sphere is supposed to fill the grooves in the base and rest on the nub by the floor. In the new picture you can see the band sitting lower and sitting in the groove and running in front of the nub on the base. I'd almost put money on the band getting bent and working out of its intended track causing the wood nub to get mashed into the plaster-like surface (guessing by the debris on the floor) of the globe.

Upvote, because I love Shakespeare and Hamlet is one of my favorites.

Fair, I'll never argue against learning as much as one can, but I'm also an intrinsically curious adult like that. That said, in the context of a 12 year old kid not interested in tech, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, even if it is really important water that prepares horses for the future.

I'd also like to raise the semi-philosophical rhetorical: does the robot know how to code or create images?

I'd argue that LLMs have the equivalent of text prediction on steroids as trained by pattern matching all the code on GitHub and Stack Overflow.* The second you do something outside the training data (like work with a company's super secret internal tooling, use a library that's fallen out of favor, or worse yet use a library with a confusingly similar name to another more popular library) that "knowledge" is less than useless.

Similarly, spitting out an image that looks like the training data doesn't imply an understanding of composition, lightning, color, alignment. leading lines, or any of the other things that make for a compelling image/ photograph/ painting/ etc. Nor does it implicitly translate to being able to create that image in any medium other than digital.

* there's technically also a semantic argument to be made about robots being able to code since the advent of the compiler, but I know that's not what you meant.

I'm not remotely a parent, but I wouldn't say that's the worst. Not everyone is into computers/ tech, and that's okay! Even if "AI" becomes magically reliable, affordable, cheap, and good, robotics is still REALLY hard*. So it's not like AI robots will instantly obsolete every job. As my uncle says "AI will never be able to rotate my tires or change my oil".

I wouldn't trust AI anywhere remotely near healthcare. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, veterinarians, etc. aren't going away anytime soon. The way they work will almost surely change, but the need isn't going anywhere.

Even in fields like art, where AI already has a non-zero market share, there will always be value in something made by human hands. I keep thinking of things like street art and murals. Like, sure, you could crib the design from AI and some people might be okay with that, but I imagine the folks with the cash to commission murals would generally want something with more emotional resonance** than "I put in word salad and got this out", but even then there's still skill in being able to paint said mural.

Sure, I'd argue that everyone using a tool should know exactly how and when to use it and what its limitations are, but that's true regardless of if we're talking about AI, table saws, hot glue guns, or hair driers.

* there's an excellent Tom Scott video on all the innovation that goes into strawberry farming, including robots to pick the berries. One of the things that is mentioned is building the robot so that it doesn't cost a fortune, because you can't just strap on every sensor in existence and then expect it to be more cost effective than paying humans to do the job (which they're currently better at anyway).

** Hell, that's about my approach to Kickstarter as of late: I don't back anything unless there's a disclaimer that they're not using AI.