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Not asking for cynicism about clickbait. I feel a degree of emotional blindness about what makes some content creators popular. No one is universally popular. Demographics determine much. What drives a channel like Kurzgesagt or Veritasium over others?

I find it funny that I intuit how think tanks have a popularity formula they are following, but the second I find out about that relationship, I tune them out. The only exception I know of is Dr. Ben Miles. Prager trash was the first one I recall encountering ages ago with their spurious nonsense.

I have no interest in emotional empathy driven stuff. In terms of technically interesting content, I feel totally blind to the popularity rules. Do you know? Please explain them.

1. How are you focused mentally?
2. Do you think about other things at the same time?
3. Are you focused on the lines, the imaginary half line, the staring points, the previous letter alignment, spacing, what comes next, what will fit on the line, the artistic expression of style, or simply the pure minimal effort required to communicate written thought?
4. Do you often find yourself bored and evolving or changing your style of writing as an outlet of secondary creativity along with whatever task is at hand?
5. Are you concerned with the impact your writing style has upon others, or are you only concerned with the expansion of your own short/long term memory and usefulness?
6. Are you aware of the loose correlation between intellect and handwriting? What does that mean to you personally.
7. Are the ergonomics a point of conscious focus?

I watched Anton Petrov's last upload on the impossible merger of intermediate mass black holes,(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p6PgXqL6OQ).

Do two orbiting black holes have a gravitational resonant effect that is different than a single object of an equivalent mass?

I woke up to this idea for some reason. I come from having owned an auto body shop twice and doing custom graphics and airbrush work for a decade. One of the biggest expenses in auto body work is abrasive sandpaper. Few people ever take prints to anywhere near the finish quality of automotive paint, but that is another thing entirely.

In optics, metrology, and machine tools, often reference flats are made by rubbing two objects together by various means of lubrication.

Likewise with auto body refinishing, I am always thinking in terms of sanding blocks. Sanding blocks are either bought or custom made. Commercial blocks are usually foam or rubber of various hardnesses. Sandpaper is attached or just wrapped around the sanding block by hand. The purpose of the block is to only sand the high spots without touching the low spots, kinda like a bridge. The flexibility of the block allows it to conform to the broader curves of panels, but its overall length determines the size of depression it will bridge.

This is super important for auto body work where the clear coat reflections will be plainly visible in the end, and depending on the color, will show several types of errors that other categories of finished objects are never subjected to by critique.

So, if you follow thus far, let's go one level further. The next level of block sanding involves reproducing positive contours that a block cannot bridge. Most jobs can be sculpted freehand, but sometimes this just doesn't suffice and it still looks wonky. The way to fix this is by making a custom shaped sanding block. Often balsa wood is a good choice for making a custom block by cutting thin boards in a stack of contoured profiles. At least this is how I did it back before 3d printing was a hobby accessible thing, and if I couldn't use another method. The most common method I used was simply a collection of oddly shaped and contoured objects I kept around for the purpose of sanding.

The purpose of my bla bla bla is to contextualize this overall post idea and abstraction. This is a very advanced and niche concept involving high quality finishes. So let's combine the ideas.

1. Like polishes like, or precision abrasion is possible with similar objects and abrasives like with optics.
2. Sanding is about bridging to abrade the highs without touching the lows, and following contours.
3. If fiber infused filament is much more abrasive than regular filament, it has potential to abrade a part as a tool.

So my idea here is that there are many potential small run applications where a sanding form could be printed that will shape or finish the final print. There are many possible techniques I can think of for this type of application.

If you have messed with sanding ABS, you may realize it has a somewhat unique texture and feel. It is the primary plastic used in automotive bumper covers and trim parts. The reason why it is used is because ABS has very similar thermal expansion and adhesion properties that make it compatible with automotive paint refinishing systems. It would be my choice for the best plastic to use for this idea of a fiber infused print as a sanding abrasive.

With any type of sanding, special care is required to ensure finer sharp details are retained. Like on an automotive panel, I often turned any sharp transition like a crease or corner into a sharp edge throughout the filler and primer phases. I only shaped these contours at the end, just before the final primer sealer.

With a print, let's say something like a chess piece, I should be able to print a 2 part shell out of a fiber infused ABS. This should have a small gap that surrounds the final print. Then print an abrasive version of the final product. If these are fastened to something like the sanding surface of a dual action power sander, the two like forms should smooth any layer lines without requiring effort from me. Then once the final part is printed without any fibers infused, is placed inside the shell and the DA sander is run, the extra abrasiveness of the shell should last for a small production run. Adding water into the process like wet sanding would likely speed up the process and make the abrasive shell last longer.

Overall, the complex formed abrasive might enable an unique form of manufacturing process. The potential for automation greatly reduces labor costs in time. Even just as a basic abrasive material, it may be cheaper to print something than it is to use sandpaper in some applications. I have no idea how effective it will be overall. If mostly automated, the time does not matter.

The Ultimative Filament Drybox

Introduction

So... I saw those filament dryboxes. Of course I'd wanted to design one by myself so badly…

And here it is! Let me introduce an overengineered but cool looking drybox spool stand!

• Does it print fast? No!
• Does is has bearings? Damn, yes!
• Will I need metal saw? Of course yes!
• Can I insert a hygrometer? I've got you covered!
• And silica gel? What's about silica gel? Put it into the included container!

Motivation

I designed this quad-roller-spool-baseplate with maximum spool width in mind for a 4L cereal box. The four rollers have small but sufficient shoulders, so any spool smaller 68mm in width can fit.

All parts are designed to fit into 4 liter "Skroam" cereal boxes with three finger grips, you can find these at the big A.

For my Prusa Core One an outlet on the top is perfect. This way I can put the box besides the printer. If I'd like to store a spool for a longer period, I swap the printed cover with the original one, and the box is 100% air tight.

BOM

To build one box you'll need:

Printed parts

• 1x BasePlate (Filabox-BasePlate.stl)

• 1x Cover (Filabox-Cover.stl)

• 1x Silica box (Filabox-Silicabox.stl)

• 1x Silica box cover (Filabox-SilicaboxCover.stl)

• 4x Roller (Filabox-Roller.stl) Additional parts to buy

• 1x 4l cereal container, obvious

• 1x 4mm PTFE tube of your needed length

• 4x bearing 685ZZ (5x11x5mm)

• 2x M5 threaded rod L=62mm max. (61.0mm to 61.8mm will fit best)

• 1x digital rectangular hygrometer

• 1x bondtec push-fit pneumatic coupler (PTFE ECAS04)
  Optional parts

• 2x Roller Tool (Filabox-RollerTool.stl), it's a tiny allen key to mount the rollers easily

• 1x Cap (Filabox-Cap.stl) to close the PTFE tube

• 1x PC4-M6 pneumatic coupler for the cap How to print
  I printed my parts with PLA:

• Base: 2 perimeters, lightening infill, 15%, support for the hygrometer-bridge, 0.25mm layer height

• Rollers: 3 perimeters, infill 30%, change scarf joint placement, 0.2mm layer height

• Other parts: 2 perimeters, infill as needed, 0.2mm layer height

• However, if you'd like to change anything for your needs, go for it.

For your convinience: I've added a 3mf file with all parts for one box and appropriate settings!

Assembly

• Print all parts
• Cut 2 pieces of a M5 threaded rod to a length 61-62mm (max.)
• Insert all 4 bearings as shown in the pictures
• Screw the threaded rod pieces in one roller each (thread will cut into plastic)
• Get the rollers with mounted rods into the bearings (gently)
• Screw the second roller for each axis very carefully until no gap is left
• Insert hygrometer
• Finally, fill your silica container and put all together Rollers should turn easily! Don't screw it tight, the bearings are tiny and should not give you any resistance!

Appendix

You may ask... What the heck are the V-slots for? Why is there a notch on the top? Well... You'll might surprise me with your addons for smaller spools or clip-on filament labels :)

We need a system like a RockChip processor based single board computer, paired with a trusted protection module, and all fediverse services prepackaged for minimal user input required to self host any fediverse services. All updates should be safely installed over the air via the TPM chip based encryption just like with Graphene OS. All of the necessary connections should be preconfigured to punch a hole for the port into the internet. The hardware should be completely locked down with an immutable base system and SE Linux fully configured. There shouldn't be any accommodations for obscure edge cases outside of the base configuration. It should not require any further payment or services.

A RockChip RK3588 is fully documented with a 3k3 page long full datasheet. As I understand it, this chip is open hardware, though it still has the ARM proprietary blob (TrustZone), similar to the x86_64 Intel Management Engine, and AMD Platform Security Processor. I have not heard of a similar system present in RISC-V processors, but I also have not seen RISC-V SBCs that are more than alpha prototype dev kits. Unlike other single board computers, the RK series has the documentation required for community based Linux kernel support. No one could pull kernel support that they are the only ones providing using a proprietary datasheet.

There are many RK3588 single board computers available for around $100 already. As a back of the napkin quality idea using baseless imaginary statistics, I bet we could get around 3-5% of regular users to purchase hardware within a year if it was within a $250 price point. This should be set up for one click image and video hosting, threadiverse, mastodon, file sharing, git, blogging, etc.

This is way outside of the scope of a project I am qualified to manage; I am no real developer, just a sloppy hacker type. I'd volunteer to do a hardware design, or at least the bulk of the tedium for someone more experienced with production stuff to review. I would not mind playing the glue between those that have more limited time. If LW has 6k plus active daily users, and 3-5% of these purchased the hardware, the rough margins are nowhere near a viable business. Still, something in the back of my head says the only thing actually impeding internet freedom with the fediverse is the challenge of self hosting, and this is like the issue that Android addressed with mobile hardware. If people could one-time purchase the hardware, and only pay for their regular internet connection, I think they would buy straightforward honest open hardware they fully own.

I don't know if it is possible, or if the fediverse projects would participate in some kind of automatically updated end point. This was just a fantasy shower thought that I have been mulling over all day. It addresses all of my personal hesitations and insecurities about self hosting, and is simple enough I can imagine my techno illiterate family giving it a try. It is the kind of project I would like to be a part of.

I'm specifically looking for small microcontroller implementations for a simple clock project. I want to use a good temperature compensated real time clock and/or network time protocol-only (no sunrise/sunset APIs), to calculate local solar noon, sun rise, and sunset times. Then I want to make my own local time where midnight/bedtime is simply 9 hours before sunrise on any given day. I am in special life circumstances where I have no real use for daily coordinated time. This is a little psychology experiment more than anything else. I'm super rusty on the math.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7191309/files

Looks small. Around 1.25kg of filament + 0.5kg for a stand. 12 servos, Rπ 4, Arduino. No link to software that I saw, and no real pictures of a verified print. Model was posted to thingiverse November 5th 2025.

Like how would I find the entry point in memory, and then capture the returned values. Or for instance, how would I determine the input variables locations that the compiled C code is expecting as inputs, albeit special registers or the stack?

This is an abstract conceptual question with no actual goal or project application at the moment. It would be nice to utilize Arduino libraries in FORTH by writing a function and then encapsulating the compiled binary in a FORTH Dictionary Word definition.

Obviously measures must be taken to preserve the FORTH interpreter's pointers, stacks, and special registers. Is this ever worth the effort as opposed to sucking it up and rewriting the whole thing from scratch, delving into all the underlying mess of peripheral hardware documentation, or is there some typical way to streamline?

As a further aside, does one ever do this within a Unix like system? Like let's say I want to only use a single python method present in llama.cpp in the source that has been compiled and cached in another directory. I want to call this method from inside a function written in my .bashrc file. I have called Python executables from bash functions many times, but never some random subroutine.

California fuckwit OS age verification means I'm going offline soon. How do I get an archive of all of GNU, Python libraries, and C with all documentation? What about all of fedora dnf, and arch's aur? I need all documentation and source.