some people on IRC

Well there’s your problem! (just kidding)

Honestly though I don’t know why you would pick Perl unless you want to learn an obscure language that is both painful to read and write. May $deity have mercy on your soul.

I was quite amazed reading NopHead’s blog a while back because he uses OpenSCAD exclusively, even managing to design an entire printer and its upgrades in there. I didn’t think any sane person could do this.

I should have prefaced that I did not actually run this myself, but I did take a note of it, it looked promising. Sorry for the false hope!

I would expect it to work after a lot of fussing about, and then break at the slightest update. Easier to run it in a VM (which is also not easy in order to get GPU acceleration without dedicating a card to it - I never managed to get Intel GVT-g nor GVT-d to work reliably).

It looks like Fusion 360 runs fine on Linux these days, I don’t know how reliable that is in practice (I would expect not very much).

OnShape is a great option if the licensing terms are compatible with what you are doing. They used to have similar licensing terms as Fusion 360 where you could still get paid for your work with a free version (i.e. YouTube) but changed the terms to remove this loophole. Fusion still allows this with the Startup license but of course could change their mind at any time, then you’d be out of luck.

I dislike the lockdown of Fusion 360 but its mental model works with my own (I can’t “get” SolidWorks and never remember how to do anything). Speaking of SolidWorks, they added a reasonably-priced license for DIY/hobbyists, but it’s the same lockdown as Fusion 360 and still Windows only.

I’m in the same boat as you, just a hobbyist doing this for my own use, I have no interest in becoming an industrial engineer. For now I will keep using Fusion 360, and when that stops being an option I’ll move on to something else. I can whip out models for my prints easily enough and the 10 documents limit is just an annoyance, not a real limitation.

At the very least whatever you design in Fusion 360 or OnShape won’t be stuck in there, you can export it out via .step files. You lose design history (if applicable) but not the model itself.

I thought the main issue with NordVPN was, good luck trying to close your account once you’ve signed up.

I don’t really remember, I use another provider and would avoid NordVPN if only due to their aggressive YouTuber push, they must be a scam!

To be fair, USB-C didn’t exist when Lightning was introduced, and it was vastly superior to Micro-USB.

It doesn’t really have any reason to exist now…

Agreed with your other points though!

I have an old iPad that I try to reuse for another purpose and all the locks to stop me to keep using it make it such a pain in the butt, when the alternative is simply to enable developer mode on an Android tablet.

Thankfully I remembered when buying a laptop and skipped the very enticing M-series hardware, because in 5-7 years that thing is a brick destined for the landfill.

This is the way! I did this recently with a recent Win11 Pro installation.

This is also the proper way to name the user’s folder yourself instead of letting Microsoft decide. The auto namer often makes poor choices and renaming it breaks a lot of stuff unless you wipe and reinstall.

I used to limit myself to the card that didn’t have any annual fees. Practically all my purchases are made with a credit card (all paid back in full by the end of the month), so it turns out to be really worth it to take the card with the most advantages and highest cashback rates. They pay me back the yearly cost of the card many many times over.

The catch is, if the amount of transactions starts to drop below a certain threshold, it might not be worth it anymore.

Note that I am in Canada, not the US. Not sure if that makes any difference here.