To be perfectly honest nothing even comes close to the level of productivity I get in Solidworks. And I’ve tried them all.
Fusion360 is a great alternative if you don’t mind depending on cloud-services for your software to work properly. It handles some things in a more modern way than Solidworks does, and I really like some of the features, it’s just the way the software is built cloud-first that really pisses me off.
Then there’s Inventor, which is actually has some interesting features if you’re a mechanical engineer. The current version is perfectly capable of most things you can do with Solidworks, although I would argue drafting parts is much more of a pain.
If you’re into open source software there’s always FreeCAD, which is what masochists use for their fix. (Honestly it’s not that bad, but there’s absolutely no polish to the user experience)
If you like to use tablets or phones for anything, you could give Onshape a go. It’s a pretty great lightweight replacement, all things considered.
Last, but not least: Altair Inspire. If you like working with generative design this might be the alternative for you. Really fun to work with, but not a full-blown replacement for everything Solidworks offers.
There are plenty of ways to do open source, and the differences mostly come down to the license something is published under. Some licenses prohibit redistribution, while others restrict commercial use. One of the more popular permissive licenses is the GNU General Public License (or GPL for short). Which you can read up on over here.
Technically there’s nothing stopping you from ignoring the terms of the license agreement and just doing whatever. Think “agreeing to the terms without actually reading them”. While the licenses are usually proper grounds for legal action, it depends on the project and the resources associated wether actual legal action is within the realm of possibilities.
When it comes to “everything is open source”, you’re technically correct in the sense that you can reverse engineer everything and the amount of work you’re willing to put in is the only limiting factor. Compiled code and techniques like code obfuscation and encryption will pose barriers, but they will not protect from someone determined to get in. In the same way a door lock will not protect you from someone who brings a blowtorch.
Some code is technically not open source, but is delivered in human-readable form. This is the case for things like websites and scripts in languages like python. Other software is compiled (pre-converted to specific instructions for your processor), and is delivered in binary, which is not particularly human-readable. But with the right tools even binary applications can be “decompiled” and converted into something slightly more closely resembling the original source code.
So, in summary: It depends how you look at it, generally speaking open source means that te source code is available for the public to see and that you’re free to submit any suggestions or improvements to the code, no matter who you are. In practise the source code is sometimes visible (out of technical necessity or for troubleshooting purposes) even though the product is not open source, in which case the end user license agreement will likely contain a clause prohibiting you from doing anything with it.
Either that, or if attached to a pole/bike rack with a chain or bar lock, they’ll just pull out the old angle grinder and go to work.
Happens everywhere, happens in broad daylight, happens when there’s people around, and usually doesn’t raise a lot of suspicion because “might be someone who’s lost their keys”.
Since there’s 4 bicycles for every person living in the Netherlands, the key strategy is just making sure your bicycle is a little less fancy than the one locked up next to yours. Thieves tend to go for the ones they can resell for the most amount of money. In other words: Hide in the numbers.
While I admire your stance of being the bigger person, there’s also the alternative of politely moving the bicycles. Doing that doesn’t make you the asshole, you’ve taken away a source of frustration, and the chances of the owners having memorized to the centimeter where they’ve parked their bikes are very low so there would be no harm done.
There is the whole getting caught in the act and being screamed at by Karens or incels, but I do feel most people will accept your actions along with the explanation.
Wow that’s a cool setup, I’ll definitely steal some ideas.
I’m used to slinging lots of data around and one of the more helpful tools for general purpose automation has been n8n. Though it might have limited use if you’re not trying to glue all kinds of services together. I also host actualbudget to keep track of finances. Both are running comfortably in their own little docker containers.
I’m currently looking into setting up Nextcloud and experimenting some more with presence detection for Home Assistant. I’m considering CO2 sensors, which will either tell me my home is ventilated properly, or which rooms are occupied.
Reddit is now randomly refusing to show posts without login. In iOS, it’ll redirect me to App Store (i.imgur.com)
I use RSS to fetch reddit posts for subs that are not active in Lemmy....
Isn't technically everything open-source? (kbin.social)
I don't know (but wanna learn) programming, but, for example, can't you inspect the code of an app if it's installed?...
Some people truly believe the whole world exists just for them (lemmy.world)
Yes, I know I can walk around it, hence the mildly infuriating. Still a d*ck move
New house, new server - step 1: update diagram (lemmy.world)
Hi all, new to Lemmy but this seems to be the best community for this that is decently active. Apologies if not!...