As a modeler, 3D printers are a bit like AI art to an artist. It’s fast, it can do some things that are nearly impossible to replicate, but it feels like a hack or a crutch at times. Part of the thrill of old-school modeling (for which I’m neither old enough nor patient enough) is taking very basic, simple shapes and making something realistic out of seemingly nothing. Adam is absolutely from that school. And - like AI art - to go from almost good to presentation quality is nearly as much work - or more - that just building from scratch. As a long time model rocket enthusiast, my printer is an amazing utility. But for some of the really intricate models, I have a lot less pride in the final product because I know I just pressed a button and it popped out.

Yeah, I made nearly that mistake. Twice, actually. First with a monoprice, then a creality. I probably have more money in upgrades on my CR10s than I have in the purchase, and I still haven’t upgraded the board. I keep thinking I’ll fix it but I’ve resolved to strip a couple of parts and throw it away. My Prusa XL preorder came last month. I made one update to it (for better TPU performance), and printed one QoL add-on (nozzle wipers). That’s it. I’m done. It prints like a dream, multi-material supports are indistinguishable from magic, and even swapping nozzles is fairly quick and easy. Now I’m (almost) exclusively printing things for my other hobbies rather than worrying that something on my CR10s will fail or need re-tuning.

Don’t care. I will watch every second of every build project Adam Savage does in his shop.

Me: Should I buy a prebuilt 3D printer?

Reddit 3D printing sub: Oh, heck no. I put mine together for $18.22 plus some spare parts from seven printers I got of craigslist for $1 from some widow. Only took me three weekends to do it, plus a couple hundred hours to update the firmware to match the parts and troubleshoot it.

Me: Uh, so does it print better than the one I could just buy?

Reddit: Well, I’m still tuning it for all my filaments. I’ve been through about 40kg, and I’ve got a trashcan full of benchys though. The last few have been pretty good.

Just wanted to drop you a thanks for starting this sub-thread. I also recently finished W3 (after a couple of false starts) and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I know it’s just a step-and-fetch game, but the storytelling has spoiled me for shallower content (plus I suuuuuuuck at aiming a firearm with the joystick so I’ve yet to get into Cyperpunk). Anyway, Nier GOTY is in my catalog so the responses to you have been illuminating.

Undercover Brother

Say your pc torrents 2 TB of media

those people in engineering and comp sci who have massive files of projects

Neither of those people are using windows as an appliance.

because they already use backups to github

This is where everyone who loves Linux - and nearly everyone who works in IT/CompSci fails to understand the rest of the world. If you have to do anything from the command line - or if anything is easier from the command line - you’ve excluded roughly 90% of the population from calling it “easy”. You may as well tell someone how to adjust the fuel mix in their carburetor or set up a bridgeport mill to make a quick replacement for the plastic buckle that broke on their backpack (and much stronger/durable to boot!). Not only does nobody today want to, they’ve probably only seen exist in a movie.

Tinkerbell was OG thicc

This is nearly identical to the Apple ecosystem. Everything gets virtually pathed and saved to your iCloud account unless you direct it to do otherwise. Oh, and you can’t manage iOS to do otherwise, short of disabling the iCloud uploads. In Windows, for people who blindly (or intentionally) choose OneDrive for their cloud service, it’s essentially transparent. I’m not saying it’s right, but for the pc-as-an-appliance crowd, it’s pretty smooth when it works.

Refund request time, you mean, right?

I was going to say “old age” but, yeah, stubborn is definitely the personality trait. :-)

I was in the middle of Witcher 3 when I got my deck, and pausing during a cut scene (and some are feature film length, it fells like) caused the video to go slide-show and the audio to get choppy, and there was no recovering the game. I basically had to go back to the previous save and play back to that point. PITA. Something similar happened in one other game (can’t remember at the moment) and I just gave up suspend unless it was something simple / mindless like Yoku’s Island Express.

Usually I just suspend in-game to the game’s menu, then hardware-suspend. That’s pretty reliable.

It would be better if I could boot up and chose my launcher just like I choose Netflix, HBO, or Hulu from my Roku home screen. Of course, that could be accomplished with a custom front end / explorer in Windows, but since MS is pushing more into the OSX “we own the experience” with tons overhead and reduced customizable UI, and none of the other launchers support Linux, it’s pretty much just a pipe dream.

My experience with suspend has not been good - causing glitching and requiring shutting the game down and reloading from a previous save whenever I suspended in a cut scene. As a result I haven’t used it much due to those first couple of trials; maybe it’s better now.

Questionable whether it’s actually better for the environment as the truck runs every day.

Albert Heijn makes me think Netherlands, and tall building probably means big city (Amsterdam or maybe Brussels in Belgium…i think AH is big there too) so there’s a good chance it may be a cyclist / cargo bike delivering the food. It flips the American shop-bulk-and-store method on its head.

You laugh, but I ordered an $800 watch for a friend. USPS lost it. Not just lost it but lost it so hard that the tracking number - which showed “delayed in transit” 6 days ago - isn’t even in their system anymore. Gone. MFers.

By default you only have access to Google Playstore apps

Yes, but for the purpose of video content, those aren’t “games” in the context of the steam deck. For the steamdeck (or any console) you have games and launchers instead of shows and apps. Steam loading Gog or Epic or Uplay as the interface from an initial “home” menu, analgous to the home menu for Android TV (not Android), Apple’s TVOS, or the Roku home page loading Netflix, HBOGo, Prime, or AppleTV+. None of those are “games” - you don’t do anything with them - they launch the content from their catalog - content which competes with the hardware/OS vendor’s own catalog. I can buy a movie from Apple or Roku or Amazon from within their launcher, even though I could have bought it through Youtube.

So I might load up my SteamDeck and choose Epic as my Launcher. Then the Epic Launcher shows me all of my games and allows me to buy new ones or collect Epic Points (IDK, I don’t use their launcher, tbh) and chat with all my Epic friends. If I want to play a Steam game, I press Home and select the Steam interface (which is the only one on the real Deck) and then I have the familiar Steam launch interface.

Epic v Google was about Fortnight and the 30% fees on in-app purchases which had to go through Google with no way around it. Same with Apple. This same problem might exist in SteamDeck if Steam required that any purchases made in the Gog or Epic launcher had to be processed through the Steam store and Steam took 30%. And, of course, the only reason this doesn’t exist for the steam deck is because you can’t even buy Fortnight on Steam. I don’t think, if you purchase a video through Amazon Prime on AppleTV or Roku, if Apple or Roku get a cut. If you subscribe to their monhtly license, they do - but not for discrete purchases made. The gaming angle - and fortnite’s fight with the stores, is about this cut applying to everything.

I still say it’s semi-walled. It has a bunch of gates in and out but and, unlike the Switch or iOS, there are no locks on the gates or gatekeepers. But the gates are latched in a way that requires specialized - if freely available - knowledge to open.

I can’t really think of anything other than somehow enabling anyone (e.g., GOG or Epic) to add their store as a Steam app

No, no as a Steam App, but as an alternate startup interface. I would say that the garden is open if there were a startup screen allowing you to pick the launcher of your choice. For argument’s sake, I’ll say Android TV. You can one-click download any content launcher with no technical ability. You can watch content (“play games”) purchased at Amazon, or on Netflix, or HBO Go (or whatever they call themselves now) and it’s the native store interface. You can do the same thing with Google’s in-house launcher. An acceptable alternate would be any other content player - like Apple’s TVOS, Roku, or Amazon’s FireTV. You can’t just load anything you want like it’s Linux or Windows, but the startup page lets you select a content provider and then you use their interface to navigate your content. It’s a good analogy as the same content is available from multiple providers, and all three (four if you include Google/Youtube) have their own in-house content libraries - which often overlap with competitors. I have both Roku and Apple actively on my TVs and I don’t purchase any content from either one of them except the hardware.

I should say that I don’t blame Valve for not including competitors stores. It’s a cleaner interface not to have a loading or Home screen. They also have customized their interface for optimal user experience. And, if they are still selling at a net loss (after engineering, marketing, and distribution) then this is a loss leader to drive gamers to their store. You could say, of course, they have done it on an OS that doesn’t natively support other game launchers and therefore it is impractical, but Linux also doesn’t natively support the vast majority of major game titles, so that’s a little disingenuous. And that partly wraps us back to the Fortnight topic at hand.

Sure. By default you get the Steam store. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s the only option to load games from the default Gaming interface. There is no option to load from Gog, Epic, Uplay, Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, or any other 3rd party store. If you are not willing (or able) to manage the deck in desktop mode, you can’t install non-Steam games so - as a console - it’s a walled garden. I say semi- because it’s not terribly difficult to switch to desktop mode and install other applications, launchers, and games - but if you’ve never used Linux and are not computer savvy, Steam is the only way to get games onto the device.