1. The fediverse works a little like email. You know how you can have an account with Google’s Gmail service and still send messages to your uncle’s Compuserve account, your work uses Microsoft’s Outlook service, and lots of businesses have their own domains? But they all talk the same protocol so these independent services can all interact? The fediverse does the same thing. The protocol is called ActivityPub, and it means that all fediverse systems can communicate to a point. You’ll sometimes see Mastodon users interacting with Lemmy. Lemmy is a Reddit clone UI wise. We call subreddits “communities”. The different instances are like those different email services, it’s why you, with an account on thelemmy.club, created a post on asklemmy@lemmy.world where I, a user on sh.itjust.works, saw it.
2. The environment here is yin to Reddit’s yang. On Reddit, Hitler did nothing wrong, on Lemmy, Mao did nothing wrong.
3. Same as Reddit, you can say whatever the mods agree with.
4. Don’t call communities “subreddits.” Don’t mention Nicole.

I’ll warn you now it can get a little tedious, because you refer to the data in a spreadsheet like referencing variables in a Python script. In most fields you can type in a dimension, you can click a formula button or hit the = key and then type in a formula. Or you can reference a cell in a spreadsheet. that might look like “=spreadsheet.A4” for the contents of cell A4.

That isn’t very readable and I don’t trust it not to break if you add rows or columns or whatever, so there’s an Alias function. You can give each individual cell a name. Which is slow and tedious. In the Addon Manager you’ll find some macros, one called EasyAlias which, select a cell, click the EasyAlias button, and the cell to the right of your selected cell gets the contents of the selected cell as an alias. In other words, if Column B is a bunch of labels and column C is the actual data, highlighting B2-B17 and clicking the EasyAlias button will automatically alias C2-C17. That feature should be built-in. There’s also a macro for clicking a dimension, clicking a sketch feature, and then semi-automatically applying a dimension. It’s slightly temperamental but it works faster than typing “Dimensions.notch_height” over and over.

My way into CAD software was 1. Dealing with DXF editors like QCAD. 2. Trying to tackle parametric CAD, I ran Onshape’s tutorials, they have pretty good technique tutorials, like how to draft a paperclip, that are applicable to most parametric CAD packages. Then learning how FreeCAD’s spreadsheet works.

FreeCAD has a full-on spreadsheet built in, now it’s feature poor compared to Excel or LOCalc but you can store and calculate dimensions there and then use them in the main drawing. Other software has features that accomplish this but it’s not as flexible and familiar as a spreadsheet. FreeCAD has some usability issues but everything else out there is either drawbackware or subscription.

I built one for my parents last summer.

I do have one myself, inherited from my grandmother, full of the dishes that are too precious to break out for Pope God The First because he’s not holy enough for early 20th century China my father “remembers from when he was a kid.” It’s not as large as the one I built for my folks though.

I do…kind of hate them as a trophy case of consumerism?

I’m a CFI.

when r/fuckcars thinks they know anything about aviation.

You’ll hit a point where the payload is so poor it isn’t worth operating.

Multiple redundant motors are heavy.

That ain’t gonna happen on a civilian airliner.

Blown wings are basically powered lift. You’re planning on bringing a civilian passenger plane down final approach at a speed it can’t glide at if the power plant fails?

I could see that for a carrier based aircraft where STOL is a factor but no you’re not doing that in airline operations.

Doesn’t really help that during the cooking process, and cheddar re-coagulates and gets kinda hard as the burger cools.

Doesn’t melt as well as American.

Every time I hear of an all electric aircraft of any size, I always wonder what they’re going to do about landing weight.

Every modern transport category jet has a higher takeoff weight than landing weight, because of the simple unavoidable fact that landings are rougher than takeoffs. Taking off, the load gradually comes off of the landing gear, on landing it’s suddenly applied. Jets burn tons, literally tons, of fuel enroute, so they’re considerably lighter on approach. It’s why aircraft have dump valves to jettison fuel overboard in case of forced landing early in the flight.

Batteries don’t get lighter as they’re discharged, so…?

Orion’s Belt is made up of three, or ten, stars, depending on how you count them.

We look up at Orion with the naked eye and see his belt as three “stars”: Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Alnitak, the left hand one, is a triple star system, Mintaka on the right, is a six-star system. Only the middle one, Alnilam, is a single star.

Out of all of them, only one, Mintaka B, is smaller than our Sun.

For similar reasons they insist on 3 is “tree” and 5 is “fife.”

When I taught flight school, we flew planes that ran on automotive gasoline. (see also: Rotax 912). Even then paying for fuel ate us alive.

On the US market, the Amiga was basically irrelevant. I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me Commodore did better in the UK than domestically. And Commodore made cool computers.

If anybody flips my table because I forgot to add bay leaves, they’re not getting invited back. Nevertheless I do keep them on hand because they’re not nothing.

It’s one of two objectively correct cheeses for a cheeseburger, the other being provolone if you’re going for kind of a philly thing.

It didn’t used to bother me on CRTs, but I do not want a flat panel blaring large screens of white at me.

Accurate statements of objective historical facts are not hot takes.

The Amiga had…probably the second best computer sound system ever made after the PC Soundblaster, and rather unique graphics performance for the time. It had potential that seldom got realized. Paraphrasing Ashens, most of the time Amiga games were ports from the Atari ST with added music.

Oh and don’t forget how big the 16 bit era of game consoles were. I’m a veteran of the SNES vs Genesis war, chiptune version of Fortunate Son starts to play YOU DON’T KNOW, YOU WEREN’T THERE!

My understanding is, the Amiga failed to find a niche. DOS/Windows PCs were heading toward monopoly, the Atari ST with its built-in MIDI support had a following in the music world, Apple at the time was big in education and desktop publishing and proto-content creation, and Dick Van Dyke had an Amiga.