this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 83 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Good luck with that given 3D printers are full of open-source software.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Don't bring that to their attention- they'll start banning open source too.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

POLICE, HE RELEASED HIS SOFTWARE FREE FOR ANYONE TO USE, SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Death by being SWATEed after a Github commit.

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, because it's so difficult to get a gun in America any other way /s

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Probably the gun industry lobbying for this 🫢

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Clearly she has no idea how 3D printers or guns work

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

or the us, isnt it easy to just get a regular gun in there?

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Are they going to require government monitors if you own a CNC machine next?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

Ban pipes when?

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (10 children)

Taking this purely as an engineering task, how is this remotely possible? I can barely begin to imagine how restrictions on what can be printed could be set. Am I missing something obvious? Some kind of contextual understanding of the object seems to be necessary... please don't tell me their proposed solution is AI.

In any case it will never work because 3D printing is so easy for makers to do from scratch, so any solution will fail to prevent printed guns from being made.

Again, this is just the pragmatic engineering angle. Please don't respond with political arguments.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Just spitballing but you'd have to align the desired shape somehow, perhaps with a singular value decomposition. Once its transform was normalized you could compare its shape, or perhaps its convex hull, with a database of banned shapes.

The problem is this is pretty easy to defeat (by adding extra sprues and spikes to the object, breaking it into two shapes, etc) and the more aggressive you get with the check the more you risk false positives.

An AI training set would involve creating a dataset of all the banned shapes, then generating tens of thousands of permutations of them however you believe people might try to trick it. Ultimately the AI would lock onto some small feature of the shape that scores it as positive, perhaps something trivial. That also leads to weird false positives. This also creates an arms race as people figure out what that feature is subvert it.

This problem is much harder in 3D than in 2D (currency). Since you can also cut, file, and glue shit that comes out of a 3D printer later I don't think this is a solvable problem. Like most gun control measures in the USA it appears to be aesthetics.

You could also just aggressively go false positive all over the place and say "fuck the users", with exceptions for cops. This is basically the USA's approach to drones.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Since the best available firmware is open source I don't see any way of imposing limits on it.

The printer itself doesn't even know what it's making since it's reading directions one by one, so any limits would need to be implemented at a slicer level, which are also basically all open source (at least any worth using).

The only way I could see it working would be mandating that all printers sold in the US come with software checks against it and be non reflashable, but considering a new driver board that would be able to drive 95% of printers is about $25 it is nothing more than screaming into the void.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You can also build a 3d printer from scratch pretty easily. Would need to regulate random electronics and robotics components

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (6 children)

They should put controls on lathes and mills to prevent making guns. Metal guns are a lot more effective than plastic guns anyways. /s

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There is essentially no way to enforce, or even monitor this, like it's fundamentally impossible without controlling everything from stl creation, to weapon construction.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Hit the nail right on the head for what they want. Why do you think they are making laws to ban porn? It's a hide behind think of the children to get your foot in the door to control more

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I love technological non-solutions to social problems. They are the only thing the work better then passing more laws that say you can't murder people with guns.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You can't 3D print a gun, but you can buy one without a background check. Brilliant.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago

I see 10,000 forks in the near future, and fully decentralized ways of hosting them. God forbid we actually try to regulate real guns, no it's those damn hobbyists who spent thousands on printers!

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Trying to stop a printer from printing sounds like a tough ask.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago

The pressure behind a bullet ~14,000psi. The pressure that a 3D resin can handle ~ 200psi. Any questions?

Oh yeah, how do 3D printed guns kill? 1) use non 3d printed parts or 2, hold the bullets in the gun-like case, carry a hammer, if you need to shoot the bullet just get the bullet out between two of your fingers, run like crazy towards the target, then bury that sucker with a real nice hammer thud. If you practice real good, you can hit a good 3 or 4 target spots. If you do it it slow enough you can probably hit one bullet with another bullet! Well, you can always do that. Heck you can put 10 bullets or more in a baggie and they will all hit each other.

I guess if you need a ruzzian war diy survivor gun, just go-to the hardware store and get a pipe. No 3D printed stuff. You can make the handle from wood! That's literally all a 3D printer is good for in gun making, the handle. But you can carve one out with a router. Are routers illegal yet because you can make a gun .... handle....?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

Yeah like that won't be bypassed in about 3 seconds.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Damn it's been a long time since I've had to use the whole thing:

Rolling on the floor, laughing my ass off.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Now available as a .stl file!

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

Maybe the dumbest possible idea here from government regulators. You think you're going to somehow legislate certain geometry out of existence? "Sorry, you can't print that ILLEGAL SHAPE with the printer you own!" Same vacant headed assholes that think they can ban encryption. Fuck off, shrivel up and perish, please.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They can explore the requirement, but they will get lost during their expedition.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Never stopped them before from still passing half-assed laws.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I built my own 3d printer 👉 👈

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

Boy THAT will work! Good idea government!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

Lol, most of this crap is DIY, good luck with that

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Was there a shooting with a printed firearm recently?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Irrelevant: the goal is not preventing shootings (I mean, they would go for the obvious solution otherwise)

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Normally this is when the "small government" Republican party says "let's not get government that too involved"....

...that is if they didn't go full reich

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Somebody needs to be seen doing something before the next election.

Incidentally, 3d printed parts aren't used for conversion kits. They're machined out of metal stock (and occasionally re-machined original parts).

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Prop guns for cosplay gonna get a lot more difficult for now reason if this passes.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

where are people distributing 3d printed gun models? I'm guessing thingiverse has already cracked down on weapons

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

What if you 3d print a 3d printer?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Given my skill with 3d model creation, i'd be more likely to create something that would hurt me than inflicting harm on someone else. Mostly when I take that razor sharp tool to remove anything from the build plate, but also just my awful measurements and tolerances.

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