flovec

> never really stunning.

This is relative. You might not think native flowers and plants are stunning, and that a manicured lawn is, but I do! And lawn rules might prevent me from obtaining my version of “stunning”. This is something…you want to defend? A lack of freedom to do what one wants with something they own?

I was looking into the MCP route too, and found some libraries abstracting mavlink for this use case (there’s at least one white paper documenting failure modes of LLMs trying to issue mavlink commands without an abstraction), but realized that autopilot like PX4 exists. My use case was more about autonomous flight, and it seemed better to just set waypoints and put some guards on other inputs. When paired with QGroundControl plans, all I needed to do for most flight paths was generate or update a .plan file using an LLM and other methodologies. I wasn’t super happy with the QGroundControl -> Gazebo rendering (no tie into real world terrain out of the box), but it did sort of work out of the box without too much effort!

I live in the US. There is a history of armed forces being used against the people generally striking. If you include large protests, even more.

> If your claim is that violence is justifyable - how makes the determination for such justification?

We authorize people in governments to make this determination, and increasingly machines. Should we? Do you think that it is acceptable to let a police officer justify force on behalf of the state? How about a machine? Mostly just trying to understand what you think is acceptable here.

But to answer...violence against human beings is indeed different than setting shit on fire, though the law certainly does not allow for the use of force against personal property either. And this difference is indeed the crux of the issue, depending on what your values are (though we seem to be in alignment on "life is valuable"). If for example (probably a bad one, but hopefully it gets the idea across), a group of people is committing a genocide, and you ask them to stop, and they do not, and so you interfere with the use of force...limited at first, maybe, but they do not stop: is their continued involvement not the justification for use of force, assuming other strategies are off the table? Different example than the thread, I realize, but my thought experiment is not tied directly to it, just at the sentiment.

I see quite a lot of "violence is never justified" sentiment throughout the comments. I ask as a "thought experiment" - why? At least from my understanding, the history of America is riddled with working class uprisings that resulted in the use of force (violence) attempting to make their lives less insufferable. If your government has failed you because it is a plutocracy enriching itself off of enacted hardships (the most general way I can put it), is force not the only thing left? You could argue that there are other possibilities - general strikes et. al. - but those often end in _the state using force_ against you. If the law allows for the use of force in certain circumstances (stand your ground), and there is an analogous situation at hand where there is no concept of justice (justice serving those in power), certainly one has to consider it as a tool for use _outside the law_? The "violence is never justified" comments read more like thoughtless propaganda to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Obviously a person's life is involved, jesus, so certainly there is an opposite camp we don't want to get to: "just nuc 'em". But it seems strange that you wouldn't debate the use of force, even if the answer is "the only winning move is not to play".

I find this quite cynical, but I also can't speak to half of your family, ha!

I am one of the folks who, in my youth, purchased land in between Fort Garland and San Luis, with dreams of off-grid living. I succeeded, mostly, but not without many hiccups - the locals being one of them.

For me, "off-grid" was about _control_: control over my mortgage (none!), bills (no monthly subscriptions to privatized power companies generating profit!), and, well, life in general. I'd say the general theme wasn't so much about "sticking it to the man" (what's to stick and who?) or "being self reliant" (impossible), but about fighting classism _to some degree_ via a veritable case of civil disobedience.

To my understanding, it is basically illegal OR extremely difficult to find a living situation where someone else (bank, etc.) isn't profiting off folks, and I find that, well, avarice. But you could find a situation like that out in the valley, because land was cheap and you could "get away" with a lot out there, which basically is just another way of saying folks could _afford_ to be poor.

America is entrenched in classism, and everywhere I look someone with less money getting fucked. And this is ESPECIALLY true when it comes to building code enforcement: wealthy folks pay the same amount as poor folks for things like permits, et. al. ($$), code means nothing when you can afford to hire engineers to prove its safe, pay for costly zoning variations, etc. So as harsh as the valley was in climate, it was basically an oasis of sorts to younger me for all those reasons.

All that to say: there are other genres of fiction worth exploring :)

100%. Lots of things work as markers, too! I ended up substituting markers for taped-on construction paper when scanning stainless steel surfaces with curves, the tape serving as feature for the scanner to pickup...worked well enough :)

Don't feel like a noob, SketchUp's interface and controls are AMAZING (or were in 2016, which is where I am stuck because I do not want to "upgrade"). I have tried many modeling tools over the years, but always come back to using SketchUp for moderately complex designs. I haven't seen a CAD tool that does exactly what I want yet, which is to be able to define geometry either via a GUI or code (e.g. build123d), but then to easily go back and forth between the two, say adjusting some geometry output manually with my mouse by dragging it, and having the code update as well (which I acknowledge is difficult).

The Einstar Vega goes for $1,799 USD, which is about 2x the price of a standalone iPhone. The scans will be better than anything you can get using a mobile phone (though it's essentially just that?). Lots of videos on YT comparing the Vega and OG Einstar, especially for automobile scanning.

The downsides of the Vega I mostly didn't see mentioned on YT:

- Required an account to use

- Required WIFI to setup (don't need WIFI past that except when updating)

- Required an app to get scan files off it, but will work for your OBJ use case

Battery life has been a few scans. Do the processing later and get the scans up front.