First thing I do when I get a smart appliance is scan it with nmap. This has revealed some interesting Easter eggs, like my Davis instruments air quality sensors having a local REST API.

Doing the usual scan against my GE washer and dryer shows that port 53 is listening. What could that be for? Is there a way I can at least query their status locally or something?

When I got the washer and dryer I was excited about the smart home features because getting an alert when my laundry is done or starting the washer remotely so the clothes are done when I get home are genuinely useful features. However, last time I checked the app none of that was available, so I just have these Trojan horses in my home spying on me with no benefit in exchange. Their app wanted my freaking mailing address when I signed up for their mandatory account, so the features mentioned above are the least they could offer in exchange for my digital soul. But I digress.

My fridge is in a similar situation. It commits the additional cardinal sin of ONLY being controllable via the app, with no on-board temp or filter status indicators whatsoever.

I am not an engineer. I'm not even good at math, and my spatial reasoning skills are nonexistent. With that in mind, here are the CAD programs I've tried.

Blender, Pros: Free, surprisingly comprehensive. Cons: Not parametric, can't precisely measure or constrain models, all the extra stuff you get like rendering has no use in 3D printing.

Onshape: Pros: Easy to use, convenient (I've successfully edited a model on my phone), free*. Cons: Runs ~~on someone else's computer~~ in the cloud, not private, enshittification is sure to come shortly if history is any indication.

Fusion360: Pros: seems to be what everyone else is using. Cons: enshittification is already happening, runs locally with limited saves in the cloud so you don't own your files but also don't get the run anywhere convenience of the cloud.

Plasticity: Pros: buttery smooth workflow, pay once run forever, runs and saves locally. Cons: Not peremetric so hard to go back and adjust things later.

FreeCAD: Pros: free, open source. Cons: workflow as rough as sandpaper, constantly crashes.

Plasticity and Onshape have proven to be the most productive choices for me. If only Plasticity were parametric it would be the perfect software for me personally.

I want to like FreeCAD, I really do, but it's so hard to use. I love Plasticity, but it's meant for making 3D assets for games etc. using hard surface modelling, not so much for manufacturing.

If I may digress for a moment, I work as a network admin. I'm familiar mostly with Cisco at work, but use Ubiquiti at home. Cisco equipment is monstrously expensive from a consumer or prosumer perspective, and the only way to get true hands-on experience is to buy used equipment from ebay which may still be pricey.

Ubiquiti's market strategy seems to be to make the kind of gear that a network admin would want in their home. It's inexpensive relative to the big fish like Cisco, but has a fairly comprehensive feature set. The idea is to entice Joe IT guy to buy Ubiquiti gear for his house, fall in love with it, then push for the company to switch to Ubiquiti the next time they upgrade.

What I want is the Ubiquiti of CAD programs. Easy to use, low barrier to entry but comprehensive enough to use professionally.

Suggestions/comments?

Designed in Inkscape and Blender. Printed on Bambu Lab A1 Mini with AMS lite.

I'm starting to run up against the printer's small build volume. This is my first 3D printer, and I was attracted to the easy out of the box experience. I actually intended to buy the A1, but got its smaller cousin by mistake. I could have sworn I clicked the right button, but everything from the emailed receipt to my order history on the Bambu Lab website says I ordered the mini.

I decided to keep the printer even though I knew I'd eventually outgrow it. I told myself this was my toe in the water for this hobby, and I'd re-evaluate in 6 months to a year whether upgrading to a larger printer would be worth it.

I bought the printer in November, and since then Bambu Lab has begun the enshittification of their products[^1]. If I upgrade, it will have to be to a different brand.

So I like the A1 mini's ease of use and no brainer setup, but don't like its small build volume, the new restrictions placed on it by the manufacturer, and the fact that the printer is not enclosed. A better camera is a nice-to-have but not necessary. Any suggestions for an upgrade?

[^1]: Follow-up question so as not to double-post, IIRC the A1 mini was not included in the initial enshittification rollout earlier this year. I put my printer in LAN mode and blocked outgoing traffic from its IP on my network as a precautionary measure anyway upon hearing the announcement. Have the changes made to the other products trickled down to the mini yet? Can I safely upgrade still or should I keep it isolated?

Simple concept, say I have two columns. The first contains a time or date, and the next a word or two describing an event.

1970, born
1987, graduated highschool
1991, graduated college

Does there exist a program, or a feature within a program like Excel, that takes this data and spits out a timeline where the dates are spaced proportionally and not just evenly spaced? Something like this:

                                          1991
                                          Graduated college
+----------------------------------+------+
1970                               1987
born                               graduated high school

The best solution I've found, at least in Excel, is to treat the dates like a histogram or scatter plot so the dots show up in the right place, then add labels after.

I want to create, sort, filter, query, update, etc. hierarchical data like JSON or XML or YAML with the same ease as a spreadsheet. Does such a thing exist?

Bought a bed in a box from ~~Dr. Evil~~ Amazon. It's been expanding for about a day now. How long before I can sleep on it? Do I really even have to wait? I remember hearing you have to let it expand all the way.

Here's a list of communities related to conlanging (the art of creating languages) and conworlding (worldbuilding for its own sake rather than for a book or game.) These communities are fairly quiet, since these hobbies are quite niche, but I thought I'd put this out there.

• !worldbuilding@lemmy.world
• !worldbuilding@lemmy.ml
• !conlangs@mander.xyz
• !conlangs@lemmy.world
• !neography@lemmy.world

Maybe this is more of a home lab question, but I'm utterly clueless regarding PKI and HTTPS certs, despite taking more than one class that goes into some detail about how the system works. I've tried finding guides on how to set up your own CA, but my eyes glaze over after the third or fourth certificate you have to generate.

Anyway, I know you need a public DNS record for HTTPS to work, and it struck me recently that I do in fact own a domain name that I currently use as my DNS suffix on my LAN. Is there a way I can get Let's Encrypt to dole out a wildcard certificate I can use on the hosts in my LAN so I don't have to fiddle with every machine that uses every service I'm hosting? If so, is there a guide for the brain dead one could point me to? Maybe doing this will help me grock the whole PKI thing.

UPDATE:

Here's what I ended up doing:

1. set up cloudflare as the DNS provider for my domain
2. use certbot plus the cloudflare DNS plugin to create a wildcard cert. Because I want to use wildcard certs and because the web servers are on a NATed private LAN, HTTP-01 challenge cannot be used. Wildcard certs use a DNS challenge. From what I understand of the certbot docs, the HTTP challenge makes a certain HTTP resource available on the web server, then requests that resource, presumably via an external client, to verify that you own the domain. the DNS challenge works by temporarily placing a TXT record in your DNS server. This method requires your DNS provider to have an accessible API that allows the modification of resource records.
3. Once the cert and key are generated, I place them on the servers I want to to make use of them and set up the web server accordingly.
4. Visit the websites and confirm that HTTPS works.

There are some other hiccups that I'm guessing aren't related to HTTPS. Per My earlier question about self hosting, I'm experimenting with NodeBB. I cannot get the two test instances to federate, which I initially assumed was an issue with HTTPS. That's a question best asked elsewhere, though I thought it relevant to note because it was my initial purpose for setting up HTTPS.

I've wanted to do this for a long time. My current ADHD hyperfixation is NodeBB, but I think my questions fit most anything that you want to be available to the general public and not just yourself and your friends.

Basically, I want to host a NodeBB instance intended for the general public out of my house. What are the risks of doing this? In particular, what are the risks of doling out a web address that points to my personal IP address? Is this even a good idea? Or should I just rent a VPS? This is 80% me wanting to improve my sysadmin skills, and 20% me wanting to create a community.

I have a DMZ in place. Hosts in the DMZ cannot reach the LAN, but LAN hosts can reach the DMZ. If necessary, I can make sure DMZ hosts can't communicate with each other.

I have synchronous 1 Gb fiber internet. Based on the user traffic of similar forums, I don't anticipate a crush of people.

I know the basics of how to set up a NodeBB instance, and I've successfully backed up and restored an instance on another machine.

I'm not 100% on things like HTTPS certs. I can paste a certbot command from a tutorial, that's it.

Anything else I should know? Thanks!

EDIT:

I also have a domain, a couple of them, actually. They're like potato chips; you can't stop at just one.

I don't plan on self-hosting email used for forum registration and announcements. I'm not a masochist.

Some text from a constructed world I play around with that leans into an 80s tech aesthetic. FTL communication exists, but the data rate is comparable to a dial up modem. Vibrant multimedia experiences like we see on the modern web do exist, but isolated to planet-wide internetworks. Interplanetary communication is a purely text-based affair.

The text is read from right to left, and is just the word for operating system in one of my conlangs.

I absolutely love wiki walking through random obscure fan wikis, but I hate how most are on Fandom.

I think a federated wiki solution makes sense. I could see it as an evolution of the interwiki concept.