I have been to some interesting places in my own brain with the help of psychedelics. While I have experienced different levels of self-awareness, the possibility of that “filling up my brain” is likely not possible.

There is a part of the brain that psychedelics specifically affect that functions as kind of a traffic regulator. It typically only directs signals from one part of the brain to another part. Psychedelics open these pathways up and allow for information to flow to in all kinds of directions. (Synesthesia, sensory confusion, is an example: Feeling colors and seeing sounds.)

What the experience does for me, is that I seem to gain more awareness into how my brain works. It’s like I can stand back and watch how my brain processes things. My subconscious is pulled into full view and I can almost tinker with it, in a way. Some theories suggest that the colors and geometric patterns people tend to see is our actual brain operations being leaked into the visual cortex and/or the fractal patterns are the result of actual “data loops” caused by psychedelics allowing information to pass around freely. (Not my theories, btw.)

Now, you may read this and think: That dude is just tripping! (And you would be very much correct.) The thing is, every experience I have and anything that I feel is already in my brain. The data is already there, but how that data is processed is vastly different. Even if I am perceiving parts of my brain that I couldn’t before, it’s still just the same neurons that were always there.

So, what I am basically saying is, is that my self-awareness temporarily becomes self-aware. It’s a shitty description, but it’s the closest I could get to matching the situation you were asking about.

I still develop memories, almost as normal. Some memories stick and some fade. All that really happened is that a few neuron weights got shaken up and it all becomes a few new pathways with a similar number of neurons as before. (Neurogenesis and dendritic growth as a result of psychedelics is a different subject and I wouldn’t think it would be part of the recursion-type situation you are asking about.)

Memories become integrated with existing ones, basically. While vastly different in many ways, our current AI tech has a set number of “neurons” it can work with in any given model. You can train those same bunches of neurons with millions of different patterns, but the actual size of the neural network doesn’t change, no matter how much data you cram into it. With slight changes to when neurons fire, you are using specific pathways of neurons to save data, not necessarily using the neurons themselves.

It was on old 3.5" drives a long time ago, before anything fancy was ever built into the drives. It was in a seriously rough working environment anyway, so we saw a lot of failed drives. If strange experiments didn’t work to get the things working, mainly for lulz, the next option was to see if a sledge hammer would fix the problem. Funny thing… that never worked either.

I used to take failed drives while they were powered on and kinda snap them really with a fast twisting motion in an attempt to get the arm to move or get the platters spinning.

It never worked.

Did you get bad sectors? Weird things can absolutely happen but having sectors marked as bad is on the exceptional side of weird.

Maybe? Bad cables are a thing, so it’s something to be aware of. USB latency, in rare cases, can cause problems but not so much in this application.

I haven’t looked into the exact ways that bad sectors are detected, but it probably hasn’t changed too much over the years. Needless to say, info here is just approximate.

However, marking a sector as bad generally happens at the firmware/controller level. I am guessing that a write is quickly followed by a verification, and if the controller sees an error, it will just remap that particular sector. If HDDs use any kind of parity checks per sector, a write test may not be needed.

Tools like CHKDSK likely step through each sector manually and perform read tests, or just tells the controller to perform whatever test it does on each sector.

OS level interference or bad cables are unlikely to cause the controller to mark a sector as bad, is my point. Now, if bad data gets written to disk because of a bad cable, the controller shouldn’t care. It just sees data and writes data. (That would be rare as well, but possible.)

What you will see is latency. USB can be magnitudes slower than SATA. Buffers and wait states are causing this because of the speed differences. This latency isn’t going to cause physical problems though.

My overall point is that there are several independent software and firmware layers that need to be completely broken for a SATA drive to erroneously mark a sector as bad due to a slow conversion cable. Sure, it could happen and that is why we have software that can attempt to repair bad sectors.

In addition, I can’t tell people enough that most "specialty’ tools are most likely common tools from other fields, but maybe include a fancy adapter or something. And yes, I don’t want to know how many times we have solved problems that were already solved. (A benefit is that we understand the true problem to its core and integrate those solutions much more efficiently into future projects.)

My “jack” is printed in PETG as it has a higher glass transition temperature (80°-85°C) than PLA. I have had PLA prints on my shelf start to sag due to age but most of that is likely negated by additives in new generations of PLA+. (or PLA Pro, or whatever buzzword is currently used.) PETG should be just fine for this. ABS would be another option, too.

I currently have a Prusa Mini that is my go to, but a large format Prusa XL with 5 separate hotends is squarely in my sights at the moment. (I have had several other printers that eventually got disassembled for parts.)

The threads on my print are super tight and no post processing was needed. It just screwed together after it was done. I did go to the trouble of designing a shoe looking adapter thing for more surface area against the card, but the weight of the card is enough to keep it from moving around. The thread angle is such that the downward pressure keeps enough friction on the threads so it’s not going anywhere through any jostling. (Rough threads are a feature, in this case.)

But yeah, printers these days are much more accurate and less prone to errors. Just 10 years ago, every other print I did was a failure. Now? Failures are quite rare and that is mostly because of the tech. Now that layers are consistent enough these days, most threads I print are with 0.2mm layers which is good enough if I keep the tolerances wide enough in CAD. (My go-to is 0.25mm tolerance for fitted parts or less depending on the application.)

Yeah! I remember those wrenches quite well. Print-in-place models are somewhat mainstream now. I randomly put one on Printables and it is far more popular than I ever expected. The success rate seems quite high given the number of random printers that are out there: https://www.printables.com/model/489431-print-in-place-hinge . I only bring this up as it’s a testament to how far the tech has come, and only recently.

I literally just got my first resin printer and have yet to have a failure. Getting consistent prints at 0.03mm has been a breeze and quality is limited by the model, not the printer. (Resin printer fanatics are likely to argue with me on that point.) Getting ABS plastic strength with hyper-detail is amazing! However, it’s messy and smelly, so that sucks. (I am going to setup some real precision testing this evening as I have had some projects on hold for a couple of years due to FDM limitations.)

Here ya go: https://www.printables.com/model/926491-anti-sag-gpu-stand-aka-machinists-jack

Thanks for the kind words!

And yes, I designed this in a vacuum, but it is actually a common machinists jack, it seems. Minus a few neat features I saw around the web (like a lock screw component) it’s a 1:1 match for functionality.

Like you, I have a love for projects and tools that are shared across different fields. Mostly due to my ADHD, I have a slew of hobbies that focus around mechanical engineering, chemistry and biology. It’s extremely cost effective to commingle different hobbies, actually. My 3D printing and CAD work is universal, my collection of chemistry glass is used for rando chemistry things as well as mycology. All of my fittings, connectors and electronic components are also universal… etc. etc.

As requested: https://www.printables.com/model/926491-anti-sag-gpu-stand-aka-machinists-jack

I’ll get it shared tomorrow. It’s designed after a bottle jack but is completely threaded to allow for adjustment and doesn’t have any of the handle components, obviously.

Yeah. I got one and it’s a beast. I had to design and print a support for its ass to keep it from sagging.

Tin the wire and the pin first and then touch the iron to them both quickly. They should stick fairly well without needing to add additional solder. Also, like someone else mentioned, flux can help quite a bit. (Maybe even a cupped soldering iron tip might be useful, depending on the situation.)

Learning how to solder SMD components will get you extremely familiar with how solder behaves at that scale. Let’s just say it’s significantly different than just doing basic wires and THT.

(Well, the solder doesn’t really act different, but at smaller scales it looks like it does.)

I just let it run without the resin vat and the RERF default print (with the characters) does actually trigger different exposures.

But yeah, the filename is super important as it triggers a test mode where the plate is exposed at 8 different spots at 8 different times per layer.

I’ll need to create my own test file and test it with and without the characters. It’s something I can test, but was hoping someone knew off the top of their head. (I was in the middle of my first ever resin print when I banged out this post, actually.)

Nah, this is not really a tech support community, but whatever. (Unless it is a tech support community? I always thought pcmasterrace was supposed to be a hair on the sarcastic side.)

It looks like a self-signed cert that is on your DSL modem (The subdomain was ‘dsldevice’…) and I am guessing you are trying to use the web interface for your modem?

If you aren’t making a connection to that device (which would have an IP address in 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x or 172.16.x.x) and you are trying to browse to an external site, then:

1. There is no internet connection and your device is injecting a local address for an external DNS query to give you a hint that you need to fix yo’ shit or
2. Your device is super old and cannot handle HTTPS correctly. (Unlikely)
3. Your DSL device is hijacked and is doing an MTM attack on a HTTPS connection. (Highly unlikely, but you never know.)

Do regular web sites work correctly, or does this happen regardless of the site you are attempting to browse to?

Quick addendum: Cheap digital hygrometers from Amazon can be off by as much as 10% or more and are kinda pointless, poorly designed and a waste of batteries.

Simply using some color changing desiccant will save you a few bucks. (It’s something I use here in Colorado for my jars of… “entertainment products”… that is legal here, in addition to my filaments.)

There is desiccant available that is formulated to hold specific humidity levels but filament is better served by pure silica gel.

To be fair, some of their contests are not thought out very well and usually don’t have enough constraints defined. (It’s kinda pissed me off before too.)

I started to design one myself but realized it was a bad idea. For starters, and effective design wouldn’t use much plastic: Bamboo or other kinds of material used for the tubes already stack together really well and it is much easier to stack them in a box glued together or use thin wire to bind them. Any additional design components translates to waste, IMHO.

And like you said, the plastic is bad to keep outside. If it wasn’t for the moisture, direct sunlight would deform most common materials.

Yeah, I got several replacement bits from them for no charge. It’s also super easy to get past their level 1 support if you present an issue clearly and with evidence. (… as opposed to being forced to perform every step in a level 1 playbook. (DiD yOu tUrN iT oN aNd oFf agAiN?))

I have been following the power loss recovery issues on GitHub for a while. They finally came out and said, on GitHub, that they can’t implement. It was super shady of them to just quietly delete that feature from their product page.

However: If your first layer is tuned correctly and you lose power long enough for the bed to cool down, the print (depending on the material) will likely pop off the bed anyway so power loss recovery is moot. IMHO, if the print is super important it should be supervised and attached to a beefy UPS.

Random rambling and opinions ahead.

It’s $10k if anyone was wondering but as far as commercial products go, that is still peanuts.

Prusa acquired the companies responsible for this product a couple years ago(?) and I believe it is a good thing that this product was in limbo for a bit. (It likely means a more refined product, but just speculation.)

Unfortunately, Prusa is not beyond beta testing with their customers or making false promises about future product features. (re: Prusa Mini, as a good example.) I only say this because if you were planning to buy this for production immediately, I would personally wait a few months.

That previous paragraph sounds bad, and it is, but their support channels are amazing and that is where most of the product cost is. My personal experience with Prusa support has always been excellent.

(I was a Mini early adopter, so I expected some rough edges. Power loss recovery functionality was quietly buried over the last couple of years as their original board+psu wasn’t up to the task.)

There is a large collection of poorly written articles/blogs on LinkedIn, actually. They are just bad enough to be good enough for Google.

Strangely enough, LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. If Microsoft actually let Google use it as a data source, it was to sabotage Google’s AI training.

It’s been around for a while. It’s the fluff and the parlor tricks that need to die. AI has never been magic and it’s still a long way off before it’s actually intelligent.