That makes efforts far more durable.

Than it’s a matter of showing up in court to defend attacks against the law(s) that protect it.

In this way, we can have durable change, but it’s a high cost road. By design I am sure.

The law doesn't care about licensing, there are just 2 groups of printers - those that follow the law and implement effective blocking technology and those that don't.

If BBL sells an open source printer that allows someone to trivially bypass proposed mandatory blocking technology, they'll be fined and held liable for any crimes that result from guns printed using their 3D printers.

So BBL, as open source as they might want to be, is not allowed to sell such a product.

To give another example, the whole modern anti-vaxxer movement was started by a doctor to sell bogus tests.

I think, if anything, the problem is when people buy a cheap clone and blame Prusa when it fails.

I’m really liking my (better specs for less money) elegoo centauri. I compiled the slicer from source because there weren’t Linux binaries.

All problems solved. It even happily prints exotic stuff like TPU, which I guess bambu has been cracking down on for unclear reasons.

Maybe I don’t know what I’m missing, but I’ve had zero issues downloading files (even from bambu-centric websites) and running them through the slicer.

I can’t imagine wanting to use their cloud whatever thing, or it providing any value beyond the open source stacks.

You can still make an open source printer with some extrusion and stepper motors, same as always.

I will always admit that maybe I was just unlucky with my S1 but both the printer and the ACE was horrendous experiences and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone based on my problems with them.

Prusa is king. High quality. Open source. EU made and engineered. Slicer is a market leader (Bambu's a fork of it).

But it's a premium brand now. For lighter use by hobbyists, Bambu is the clear winner on price/performance. The 'less open' downside is not a factor to most people, and the printers generally work so well out-of-the-box that repairability isn't as much of a concern as it was on printers of the past.

Personally I went from a Prusa MK3s to a Bambu P1P (after looking long+hard at Prusa options), and so far, no regrets. (Although I've kept the old Prusa as a 2nd printer and upgraded it to a MK3.5, but mostly just because I do enjoy a bit of tinkering with them)

Yes, the initial purchase price is higher, the lifetime price might not be.

The upgrade kits are definitely a good thing, going from MK3 to MK3S to MK3.5S was a worthwhile upgrade path and has prolonged the useful life of the printer. But they have their limits.

(And with 3D printing going more mainstream, there's a large segment of the market that has no interest in building printers from kits or stripping down printer to install upgrades - even though some of us find that quite enjoyable)

Their QC and customer support has gradually been getting worse. Their printers are rarely competitive feature-wise. Several printer lines are quietly being retired - with bugs remaining open for years and new features only occasionally being backported from other printers. The open-source part is mostly abandoned due to cheaper third-party clones abusing it.

Don't get me wrong, I really like my Prusa printer, but in 2025 I'd have a really hard time justifying buying another one. The "Prusa premium" just doesn't seem to be worth it anymore.

(And I stayed once I saw the quality. Likely Prusa can match or exceed it, but not with what I was willing to lose from my wallet.)

I bought the Core One kit to understand better how the machine works, which reduced the price delta somewhat.

It remains to be seen over the long term which way is actually better financially, as Prusas have historically had long lives, while there is only limited data on the Bambu Lab side yet.

So far, I am quite happy with my decision. But competition is on. I am excited about the upcoming INDX system for the Core One: if it delivers on its promise, it will be fantastic!

My Ender that I had purchased years earlier sat in the closet gathering dust because of how much of a pain it was trying to dial in the bed to level, etc. I took a second chance at 3D printing on the Bambu, but might not have if it were costly.

If someone now tells me a Prusa (or whatever) is as good as and simple as the Bambu, I would not hesitate to spend even double.

I'm new to 3D printing, so grains of salt abound, but since I started in on the hobby this Christmas, I've purchased four 3D printers. 3 budget-but-highly-regarded kings to start, but they all gave me tons of trouble. The Elegoo Centauri Carbon I got for Christmas that sparked this mess is a budget knockoff of the Bambu X1C, but in the first 30 days of ownership, I experienced 2 hardware failures that (thanks to having to ship parts from Mainland China) have resulted in 16 days of downtime.

To deal with the downtime, I bought a stopgap Qidi Q2, but it had tons of problems -- problems which, according to the reviewers, have all been solved for. Ambiguous error messages. Poor English. Choices between "OK" and "Confirm", neither of which advanced the system. Mainboard errors. Extruder failures. Boot failures. Firmware upgrade failures. I experienced all of these within the first 3 hours of ownership, and filed for a return.

I was working on a project that needed a printer, and now despite having bought a bunch of printers, I didn't have any printers that could print. Looking around locally at what I could buy that day amounted to either a Bambu P2S or a Sovol SV08. I struggled here, because I would _much_ rather be the Sovol owner than the Bambu owner, but I needed a printer, not a project, and so I decided I'd try out the Bambu until I got done with what I needed it for, and then I'd return it.

But it turns out it was amazing. The others (admittedly, budget units) were loud and cantankerous, but the Bambu was only uncivilized for a few minutes of each print, and the rest of the time you barely noticed it running. The ecosystem is obviously great. Being able to monitor jobs or initiate prints from my phone is admittedly a novelty, but it's a nice one, and one that speaks to a consistency of integration. But the important part is that it just worked. There were printable upgrades available, I didn't need to print modular pieces to fix design flaws like the other units. I didn't need to move it further away to deal with the noise. I didn't need to investigate arcane error messages because none ever arose.

Now, I haven't owned a Prusa, so I'm not trying to compare them. I understand that Prusa hardware quality is amazing. I believe that. I'm also wildly interested in the community efforts to implement tool-changing with INDX and INBXX, and they're the kinds of projects that I want to tinker with. But if I'm to own a Prusa, or a Sovol, or a Voron, it'll have to be as my second printer (well technically third, because I still own the Elegoo because it's too cheap to bother trying to return) because most of the time I want to print things, not tinkering with the printer. But while the Prusa machines might be amazing, the Prusa XL is wildly expensive for 5 colors, and the Core One right now can't be bought with multi-color capabilities.

I'm not trying to argue against Prusa here, but the idea that only shills are into Bambu seems flatly wrong. I am ideologically opposed to how Bambu got to the market position they've reached, and for sure they've undoubtedly got a fair amount of shills in their employ but sadly, their products more than live up to the hype.

In the last decade, most 3d printer users were hobbyists and liked to know the internals of the machine they were using.

That's why there are so many useless models of random gadgets on thingiverse. People didn't care about the output, more about the process.

With the arrival of bambu and the last Creality, the market has shifted to a plug and print model where more and more buy the printer as a tool to produce and output and they don't care about the internals or gcode.

They must be able to control their printers from their phone.

The people that started in 3d printing when they had to assemble the whole machine by hand are now sad to see their hobby replaced by something too easy, it feels like cheating.

"How come you don't know how to level the bed and measure the offset with a piece of paper? "

Just like senior dev are sad to see vibe coding replace "true development craft".

Why can't you be both. I loved my time with my Ender 5 Pro, I had it for 3 years and I will always freely admit that 90% of the fun was with the tinkering to make the machine work correctly. But you know, you get bored of it. I got an H2D just before christmas and it's incredible to have a machine that "just works". I can print things for myself and others and not worry whether it's going to work or not - it just will.

Same as I used to tinker with my cars when I was younger, now I want an appliance car - I want to get in, press start and drive across europe not worrying whether I'll have to fix it on the roadside or not. I would say it's just getting older, but I Don't think it is - I think everyone goes through stages of developing things they enjoy about their hobbies.

I have a 10 year old kit-built prusa I3 sitting next to me. Its brother is in the basement next to a kossel. It's been years since they have seen action, there is a litany of small bits of work they need.

I unboxed an A1 Mini and it's been like an epiphany. I've been printing almost nonstop. It's so much FUN. I just send from my phone and it just works. Everything has been nearly flawless until last night where half a batch of mini utility knife frames started to spaghetti, probably my fault for not fully cleaning the build plate in a bit.

Beats the hell out of glue stick or blue tape, fussing with slicer params, babysitting the first layers, etc etc. Fuck that, gimme the cheat.

I might be a software engineering but I’m not going to waste time writing a bootloader for my next PC when it is a solved problem.

And the Prusa is a real workhorse. I’ve only had a couple problems in almost a decade.

A lot of the hobby is people printing out useless things. But the it doesn’t even work for people who are interested in learning CAD. There’s no surprised everyone is turning to Bambu. So will I when my Prusa breaks or there’s a sale too hard to pass up.

But if nobody was fixing the problems everybody was experiencing except Bambu, then frankly, good for Bambu.

Boo to the gate-keepers. Vorons still exist and likely always will for those that want to dork around with printers, but for the rest of us, printers that work empower the field. In the past 5 weeks, I've started to learn and understand how 3D printers work, I've started to do some simple 3D modeling, and I've begun making models with OpenSCAD, which wasn't a thing that I knew existed before. Those parts are currently on Github.

I've organized a billion things. I've modeled a corner for my weird desk's keyboard tray so that it stops cutting my knees when I swivel my chair too quickly. I've delighted my wife by printing some conveniences. I have (admittedly infinitesimally) advanced the availability of 3D models in a way that I simply would not yet have if I were still messing around procuring the Voron parts list. Quality tooling advances the craft as it makes it more accessible.

But the main thing is that it doesn't actually help anybody for 3D printing to be more difficult, nor does wanting Bambu to be bad make them not good. They are good, and they're leaps and bounds better than most of the products in the field.

Around 2021 I spent quite a lot upgrading and dialing in an Ender 3 V2 so it was repeatable, whisper-quiet, and dead reliable.

That's it. This doesn't end with me buying a Bambu. It's still all of those things. I'm very happy with my printing appliance, and also that its only data connection is via microSD sneakernet.

They are feral dogs. IE wolf -> domesticated dog -> became wild again.

They’re being beaten on every front.

Tesla Robotaxis are fully operating in Austin since November and they are running a pilot in San Francisco with safety drivers?

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-opens-robotaxi-access-to-eve...

[0]: https://www.jalopnik.com/2063124/tesla-austin-robotaxi-fleet...

[1]: https://www.automotiveworld.com/articles/waymo-confirms-flee...

https://robotaxitracker.com/

176 tracked Tesla Robotaxis vs 51 tracked Waymos in SF, with 1000 claimed SF fleet size by Waymo

90 tracked Tesla vs 134 tracked Waymo in Austin.

They claim their data is incomplete and uses indirect app tracking to guess the numbers

FSD is good in video, given. But its not full self driving as it still requires you to keep an eye on it.

Real FSD for me at least, means I can sit in a 'car' open a laptop and work. But honestly working with a laptop in a car makes it dangerous when driving fast.

For my work commute, I don't need a FSD. For my holiday also not.

What I want is real and save FSD something which has proofen on the road that it is really really good.

We are far away from this. 5 years minimum if not 10. And while Tesla is playing around with FSD and putting it now behind a subscription and fooled everyone with the promise of FSD with HW3 and below, it will not suddenly make Tesla the single leader in FSD at all.

Waymo is working on it, Xpeng can do it, BMW, Mercedes and Nvidia.

For Cybertaxies alone you need a lot of infrastructure (parking spots), cleaning crew, management software etc. you need the legal framework to be allowed to drive them (not going to happen anytime soon in europe) and then you only compete with normal taxis and uber.

Sure. Meanwhile, I'm literally using FSD 90% of the miles driven in my Y (the last update added a counter). I can appreciate a non-existant better product as much as the next guy, but as it is my daily commute is vastly improved.

FSD isn't perfect (probably about 90%!), but it's everyday amazing and useful.

Last time I went 5 hours to Raleigh and back I let it drive door to door and it was incredible.

What do you do know why sitting in front of your stearing wheel?

I listen to music and audibooks and I would not have a device between me and the airbag.

I'm still convinced we are going to need dedicated roads - or lanes at the very least - and dedicated parking/waiting areas for this to be feasible on a truly large scale.

However, it may be easier than we think-- they've already done something like this for rideshare drivers in many places, and it wouldn't necessarily need to be much more complicated than that.

Beyond that the fact that both Google and Rivian are so sure LIDAR is critical it suggests that the LIDAR-less solution is unsafe and kept afloat by musk hype and neutered USA regulators.

https://www.tesla.com/fsd/safety

AI bot of course. Assuming it can move fast enough and is powerful enough, won’t work without competent AI.

We used to have a few days set aside regularly to fix things that would never get prioritised.

Little a agile is about pushing back against dysfunctional business dynamics for the sake of humanistic goals like employees’ mental health and doing right by customers.

Big À Agile co-opts that, and is more about squeezing as much money out of everyone as possible while wearing the trappings of agile values to make it seem more palatable.

Now when I fly I have to be careful. When they ask purpose of visit I say sightseeing. I used to say tourist, but with my accent that once caused alarm when the agent thought I said terrorist.

For the individual employee the cost of wasting someone's time by escalating the case and detaining them is zero, the potential cost of letting someone slip by is realistically tiny but potentially huge

Unfortunately you give your fellow humans way too much credit.

Much like the people that rob a bank by writing a note saying to hand over all the money... on the back of their own deposit slip.

Its like those stupid questions on US immigration forms, e.g.

"Do you intend to engage in the United States in Espionage ?" or "Did you ever order, incite or otherwise participate in the persecution of any person ?"

It's like, really ? Do they seriously think someone who should answer yes will really answer yes ?

Might as well just turn up at the immigration desk, slap your wrists down on the counter and invite them to handcuff you .... why bother with the form !

No, they do not think anyone will check 'Yes' to that box.

The purpose of the box is that it's a crime to lie when someone checks 'No', and that tends to be an easy charge to bring.

So, the purpose of the form is to generate convictions for lying on the form.

Yeah but if the immigration officer has reason to question you about those sections of the form then surely they have more than enough evidence of the underlying crime anyway ?

Lying on a customs form is a valid reason to revoke a visa, and it’s an open and shut case.

It basically unlocks a second set of potential facts that they can use to bring a criminal case (or revoke a visa, etc).

You sure about that? Many other countries have what would be considered odd questions on their forms.

Also, saying "every other country" is a mighty wide brush. There are a whole lot of countries where the rule of law doesn't come first and they can simply do what they want if they suspect you of anything regardless if they have a law or not.

Instead of politics being about setting policy to work toward desire outcomes, politics becomes about ensuring the viability of future political processes. Instead of the legal system being about defining crime, establishing punishment and carrying out said punishments it becomes about ensnaring others in legal "gotcha" moments like lying on a form. Society is not safer because of the outlawed nature of lying on a form. Society is not better off because someone is convicted of lying on a form. The individuals who participate in the prosecution are better off because it gives them an opportunity to advance their career.

You come to the US and make a social media post saying Trump is a big fat dummy head.

You get deported for lying about being in a terrorist organization.

This pattern of government behavior is everywhere. One common one is the yellow sheet (form 4473) for buying a firearm in the US.

Here is an example of a question

> “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”

No matter the state law, federal law says it's illegal.

So, what happens. At some point you buy a gun in Colorado. Then lets say you get on the news and talk about legalization, or you talk about anything that catches social media popularity and someone in the government doesn't approve of. Well, you better not have any record of a marijuana purchase anywhere, or pictures of you doing it because you've just committed a federal crime and the ATF/FBI can kick down your door as they please.

But is insulting the president evidence of being in a “terrorist organisation” ? I thought free speech was the one principle that is untouchable in the US

I’m like, uhhhh, I dunno, maybe? A little late to inform me that I was supposed to be asking/testing everyone.

One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. An easy way to keep communists out of the country.

And we've seen how easy it is to expand that list with "antifa" groups just recently, with antifa groups in Germany having to deal with their banks closing their accounts because the banks were afraid of getting hit with retaliation in their US business.

Not sure how they would handle dye in a paper coffee cup though.

However, these guys aren’t Mussolini, Franco, Salazar, etc. on their rise to power. The guy at the top is starting as a struggling octogenarian who even in his prime had an entire professional career based not on hard work but tax evasion and barratry. Most of his top delegates were selected for their social media profiles, not competency, and even within the right a lot of people disliked them personally even if they’re willing to overlook that for power. His supporters are quite loyal but are also being hit by a lot of his policies in ways which are hard to ignore.

That makes me think there are a range of scenarios where this does matter, as we can see right now. Cops tend to support Republicans but a number of them are stepping up to say this is outside of their professional standards. A lot of “law and order” suburban voters are seeing these videos not just as something they don’t approve of–especially the “he had a legal gun so we had to execute him” defense–but also recognizing that the administration completely lied about that and we know only because of the kind of evidence at risk here.

The Roberts court has taken significant moves to empower Trump, but it seems like they’re hedging their bets in key areas: note how the shield against prosecution was conditional leaving them an easy way to find the opposite in any future case, and how much of their support has been shadow docket moves designed to delay without setting a permanent precedent. I think they’re recognizing the fragility of the current administration and leaving a backup plan for the autogolpe failing.

Things like this force the administration’s supporters to be more open about what they’re doing, in ways which risk losing their less die-hard supporters. Blowing off a court order forces SCOTUS to either rule against the administration or go on the record inventing a new way the executive branch is above the law. I think they know that’s risky at a time when a majority of the country is starting to realize exactly what’s at stake.

New word for me, thanks for that one. I'm sure it will come in handy.

I'm still so confused how the issue became "her emails" when they were basically turned over, dealt with. Where-as oops, the Bush White House "lost" literally millions of emails & allowed people to delete whatever they wanted. This is the sort of hiding in the shadows evil shit that I wish Obama had tried to bring to light, tried to prosecute some people for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...

Marimar Martinez is trying to make public the records of what ICE did after they tried to kill her & accused her of being a terrorist. That would be interesting to see. Liars liars everywhere, no respect for society. https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2026/01/26/marimar-...

This is all assuming Robert's plan was ultimately to give this admin enough rope to hang themselves with; and holding onto the "official duties" definition hitherto deliberately left undefined to act as the trap spring.

I wouldn't put money on that though. This SCOTUS other decisions have me thinking their a little more cushy with the Cheeto than not.

this should just be a formality. However if someone is trying to cover sonething up they can't say it wasn't because they throw everything away.

It requires a strong design system and it probably makes it harder to use some web APIs but those can be reasonable tradeoffs

EDIT: Found one that's going v5 soon, looks nice. https://www.nativewind.dev/