If your don’t mind assembling the printer yourself, get a Voron 2.4 kit. It’s an open-source 3d printer, perfect for getting your hands dirty. Much easier to upgrade and repair than a Bambu.

Edit: I believe Voron printers are typically used over a network, but you should be able to just plug a monitor into it and do the slicing and printing on it directly. They typically have a Raspberry Pi or a Pi clone built into them for running Klipper.

I’m personally quite partial to Fennec.

He also makes some pretty cool music under the name The Flashbulb.

You should definitely start with small projects to build experience. Modern passenger vehicles are extremely complex. To get a feel for this complexity, it would be a good idea for you to start doing basic maintainence on your own vehicle if you have one (oil changes, tire rotations, etc). Invest in some good quality tools if you can afford it.

I knew very little about cars until a little over a year ago when I started watching Garbage Time. This YouTube channel is a very entertaining way to inadvertently learn every aspect of how cars work. Because of this channel, my partner and I have started doing all of our own car maintainence and we fixed a very poorly maintained Toyota Celica that had a spun bearing.

If your goal is to actually design and build a fully open-source passenger vehicle, you may want to collaborate with Open Source Ecology. I believe they already have an open-source truck in the works as part of their Global Village Construction Set.

Their goal is to create an open-source version of civilization’s 50 most important tools. This is an extremely ambitious goal, but it’s technically possible given enough time and effort.

You are right that this sort of project should not be attempted by a beginner. It would have to be a collaboration between several experienced engineers. OP should not attempt this alone.

My hope is that by the time these surveillance systems become mainstream, OP has enough experience to collaborate with others on such a project.

And since you mentioned throwing Arduinos at cars, I thought I’d mention that there’s apparently over a thousand cars that have had their ECU replaced by a specially-designed Arduino. I guess there’s several open-source ECU projects out there. Might not be street legal in all jurisdictions though 😅

If you want to get involved in open hardware, a good first step would be to learn KiCad. It’s is used to create electronic circuit schematics and turn them into printed circuit board (PCB) designs. Here’s a pretty good tutorial to get started with it. Please ignore the instructor’s obnoxious Ronald Reagan quote in the second episode.

A PCB is usually not enough, of course. You should also learn FreeCAD so you can design the mechanical aspects of the hardware, whether that be a simple enclosure, or a more complex system with multiple moving parts. Here’s a good FreeCAD tutorial.

I mention KiCad and FreeCAD specifically because they’re both free and open source. You can check out this awesome list for a list of cool open hardware projects and learning resources. Two projects that really stand out to me are the LumenPNP pick and place machine and the Voron 2.4 3D printer.

For in-person groups, see if there are any makerspaces/hackerspaces in your city. That’s where you’ll most likely find like-minded people.

I wonder if it’s genetic, or just very common. All five of my siblings and I have had this.

If you want a genuine answer, people are upset because you’re expressing a centrist opinion. Centrism more or less advocates for maintaining the status quo. The status quo sucks for most people.

You’re also equating the far left with the far right. To understand why this is upsetting, we can look at some basic definitions. If someone is on the Left, they are generally in favor of more equality, while those on the right want more hierarchy. Equality and hierarchy are opposites. You can see this in a more concrete way by comparing the goals of far-left organizations to the goals of far-right ones.

I think a lot of the confusion comes from the Cold War. Countries like the USSR and China would claim to have far-left intentions while acting in right-wing ways. You cannot achieve left-wing goals through right-wing action.

Even the term “Communist country” is an oxymoron, because Communism advocates for a stateless society, and governments never voluntarily give up power.

Neoliberals?

sudo rm /bin/evil-age-verification-binary

Or if it’s done through systemd: git clone, remove the offending code, and compile.

I got into MeshCore after Benn Jordan mentioned it in a recent video. Turns out there’s already a network spanning hundreds of kilometers in my area. I’m making a couple companion nodes so I can communicate with my partner, who lives an hour away, in the event of an emergency where there’s no power or internet. Also making some solar repeaters to improve coverage in my area.