And, with Alzheimers, he might have gone through grief and panic multiple times.

Shining3D also makes professional-level scanners that cost as much as a car, so I banked on them putting some of that expertise into their consumer models and went with the Einstar.

Seems like you were correct.

hardware is fine. If you’re not experienced the 3000km will fuck you though. Stuff will arise where you will need to get at it.

I’ve been using two laptops als “servers” for years.
well, the first one died after about 6 years of use.
But I can get at them reasonably.

that is more editing and good lighting.
there are always layer lines.

Depending on you I would recommend
Voron (DIY, will take about a week to build and a week to tune),
Prusa (depends on your preference, assemble yourself or built, depending on required time a mk4s with mmu3, or the core one which will take several months to get to you, and the mmu3 later when it will become compatible)
Qidi (cheap, chinese, will likely work decent after some tuning)

there isn’t a “best” really. Depends on your wants/needs.

for true Openness, I don’t think anything beats a Voron.
Prusa is great (good track record, good support, Hardware is not open anymore though, can work out of the box), but expensive.
plenty of others get you something largely decent for low prices (qidi, creality for example) but long term support seems likely to lack, and there are always reports of some issues for some and great results for others.

The Security argument doesn’t hold water when you’re pushed toward the cloud use for transmitting data over your own network cable would suffice.

Define APIs and API keys (local and cloud).
Instant safe communication, local and/or cloud.

I don’t see it this way, for multiple reasons.
If my understanding is correct, they are (imho) misleading if not lying in this post, when they say:

these claims are entirely false:

Bambu Lab will remotely disable your printer (“brick” it).
Firmware updates will block your printer’s ability to print

But they integrate a certificate which has a validity date.

Once that update is on, you’re kind of locked to their releases. Yes they now, after the backlash have realized that they are putting up the walls a bit too quick. But I do not see anything in there that says “we were wrong to do it this way” - which they are.
There is little reason to - by default - put the cloud inbetween your PC and your Printer, which may sit 2m or less apart. That never makes anything more secure.

Neat.

Curious to see if the reliability of ejection (and adhesion) really will end up being worth the added mechanical complexity.

remember, most prints take hours, and taking them off plates takes… a few seconds to minutes.

cool, thanks!

so hopefully they can maintain a sufficient market share to keep a sustainable business going

When the market grows, one can lose market share and still have a sustainable business ;).
You don’t even need a growth in revenue for sustainable businesses either.

If Prusa went under, I still think I would have a better chance of maintaining a functional printer than if e.g. I had a Bambu printer and they went under (although that does perhaps not seem so likely at the moment?).

That seems reasonable. Let’s not forget that Bambu only increased their Firmware-Feature update promise from 2 years (march 2025) to 4 years (march 2027) after community outcry.

btw (I do not know either way) did a bambu printer ever get a firmware feature like Input Shaping, Phase Stepping, Crash Detection etc. as an update? For example does their LIDAR now work on textured plates? (I think it didn’t in the beginning)

I think you have it down pretty well.

It’s not perfectly open Source. Upgradeability can be reasonably expected, it’s not the cheapest, but a very good option.

One more thing that could be considered is if one believes Prusa may die as a company. That would of course reduce the aspect of upgradeability. Personally I believe they are fine, and just growing slower (more organically? Than Bambu for example).

Also Bambu will bring out another printer in a similar timeframe as Core 1 will come out. Depending on priorities it can make sense to wait to compare the offerings.

But I don’t think, given your reasonig you’d be making a mistake if you could buy now.

Well seems like all car companies are somewhat subsidized/supported. I don’t know how difficult to detangle the presumably many different levels of that are, especially internationally.
But if the EU were to subsidize “just” 500$ per car sold, and China 50.000$ per car, it would be impossible for european car makers to compete on an otherwise equal field.

Now I have no Idea how supported which markets are, and I’d presume I grossly exaggerated the difference, and it may well be the other way around. I have not found detailed analysis of this though.

It depends.
I’ll use some abstracted and simplified version to explain my point of view.

If Wakanda and Middle Earth mine Vibranium (which is Mithril btw), and both sell internationally for 100USD/kg+shipping, both get similar market share, depending on details like proximity to the customer, different grades, personal preferences etc.
Wakanda now invents a new mining laser, which reduces their cost/kg to 85USD/kg.
Middle Earth doesn’t want to lose the entire market and risk an uprising of the dwarves, as they just lost their entire industry. Middle Earth decides to pay the drwarves 20USD/kg of exported Mithril, so that they can try and improve their efficiency, and still keep their families fed.
Now Wakanda is undercut, and losing massive amounts of sales, Companies start layoffs, and Wakanda injects 20 Million USD in new refineries, increasing their output.
People not just internstionally but even in Middle Earth start buying Wakandan Vibranium. Instead of constantly increasing support, Middle earth decides to put Tariffs on Wakandan Vibranium, to protect at least the national market from Wakandan influence.

surprisingly not most of the time I checked.

Laptop/Mobile x86 seemed rather competetive to Laptop/Mobile ARM in performance/Watt

I wonder what the effective radius of these things was (and what it wad expected to be)
low amount of explosives + low density shrapnel may have made this basically a touch-distance weapon.

We can reliably screen for HIV (all blood donations are) why the fuck are homosexuals discriminated against over this.

except that the tests are (per cdc) up to 90 days late in detection. So you may get infected and spend 3 months testing negative.

And judging by OPs being german, where the rule (admittedly only since 2021) is “you may only have fucked one guy for the last 4 months”, this seems like being on the safe side, but not completely excessive to me.

I’ve donated plenty of times, because it makes sense that there is no other way to save lives than to donate.

On the other hand, I’ve been wondering for years, that while I’ve been told a million times that “blood reserves are low - donate blood now!”, I’ve not ever heard that a single person died due to lack of available blood.
Why would something like that not be reported if you want to motivate people to donate?

My personal guess is that this comes because “lack of avaiable blood donations” isn’t a valid cause of death, the cause of death is whatever else (gun shot wound, knife severed artery / complication during surgery etc), thus it’s hard to pinpoint. Also Doctors may try to “save” blood, when they know little is available, and people may die that may have lived if they had gotten (more) blood, but also they may not have and it is hard to tell.

Unless they change CPU architectures.

well. there’s already winlator (basically box86 / wine-wrapper for android).
Not as polished and far as Proton is, but the bones are there.

A CPU architecture change wouldn’t be a deathblow.

Also the price scales wayyyy better. Steam Deck starts at 313,65€ now.

if you have less money, buy that, get an sd card, and if you enjoy it put an ssd in later.

I still wait for the day where smartphones become the only computer for most people.
dock it, (maybe cool it) and the available power is significant.

google is definitely taking steps there with their virtualization work and desktop mode, just slow.
Apple may be too, with their switch to ARM on desktop.