You’ll have people selling custom eproms and/or firmware to bypass it.
Do they not understand how this works? People will just stop buying printers and switch to building them.
Then they’ll make owning an unregistered 3D printer a felony.
Lmao no they fucking won’t. I mean maybe like 0.5% of consumers, or less, will. Some number that pales in comparison to the amount that just buy a bambu because “it’s just easier, FOSS needs to get on usability and make it so that it just works 🤷♀️” while failing to see that their utter laziness and incompetence to solve even the mildest of problems and expecting everything to “just work” in exchange for money always means trading their rights and privacy away.
Look at the people that complain about jellyfin but then also complain about plex becoming increasingly hostile. Look at the people complaining about Linux but also whining about windows descent into madness. Etc etc. and in cases like this the buy in cost is nothing but your time! You think the average consumer, who openly invites corporations to fuck them, is gonna be like “hmm I’m gonna spend money to build a solution.”
No goddamn way. They’re gonna bitch about the legislation, they’re gonna bitch about how things got this way, then they’re gonna give bambu and anycubic and Microsoft and openai and Google and apple etc etc all their money. They’ll probably sign up for subscriptions with each company
It’s time I’m fine running Linux I’ve done 3d printers for decades. But my god if I don’t like bambu with their just works. I want to print not mess around with hardware. Done it and it turned me off if printing for tired of always tweaking stuff.
When was the last time a legislator understood the legislation they were passing?
Sigh
Take your filthy upvote
I’ll take your filthy upvote. Not from a big truck, through a series of tubes.
So reading the commentary in the first link, if you flash your printer with new GPL firmware that bypasses these restrictions, you’re now in violation.
And what if I move (back) to WA with my printer purchased out of state that I’ve already modded?
I see what they’re trying to do, make ghost gun production illegal, but turning makers into criminals for flashing their printers with new firmware seems the wrong way.
Or if I have a printer now and don’t update it.
it is, and they don’t understand that the hardware on a 3d printer isn’t capable of analyzing what it’s about to print like that, it’s not even close. People average laptop couldn’t even analyze a random part and give a reasonable estimate of how likely it is a gun part unless it’s an exact match, but if you tweak 1 thing it would be lost.
I don’t think these lawmakers have any clue how anything works. 3d modeling, slicing, and firmware would all have to have spyware in it and be uploading data to the cloud to be analyzed for this to be remotely possible. Not only is that financially impractical, it’s logistically impossible.
There’s definitely a little bit of this going on.
I wonder if Nvidia is leaning on them a bit. Like, create a regulatory requirement for something for one of their bullshit datacenters to do now that Microslop has said “we need to find something useful for AI to do or we’re not going to be able to live the lie much longer” out loud almost verbatim?
I outright don’t know if this is even possible. I mean…
What’s that? I bet 60% of people who have touched one of those couldn’t identify what it is by sight. Should I be allowed to print that?
Well you’d know if you upgraded a Prusa MK3 and had to print that part. Other than that? I doubt even those who built MK4 from the kit would recognize it.
It always is. Always blanket laws that cover so many legal things to get normal law abiding citizens in a bind.
For a printer to be compliant, it mustn’t be possible to bypass the restrictions. So your printer might not even be legal if it allows you to flash custom firmware.
identify and reject print requests for firearms or illegal firearm parts with a high degree of reliability and cannot be overridden or otherwise defeated by a user with significant technical skill.
Everything is about surveillance nowadays. Doesn’t anyone worry about being vexed anymore? Are there nanobots in my Snickers bar checking out my duodenum?
So Amazon can buy the data, know what we’re printing, steal the designs and make a product for it, capturing the market they only know existed by spying on us. Knowledge is power and I’d rather not further empower the psychopaths who are primarily responsible for the widespread reduction of our qol. But the idiot masses won’t give a fuck because they’re foolish and never think anything they want to do is bad.
You do know that any regular printer you have/use, for at least a decade, has an identical feature against printing/copying currency ?
Doesn’t it just have the yellow dot pattern.
That’s something highly specific that was carefully designed to only activate on currency. They added highly unique dot patterns to currency that scanners could detect. And the printer doesn’t (at least by law) spy on everything you do. The printer will just refuse to copy a dollar bill. The printer doesn’t refuse to operate unless it has an open communications line to the FBI.
If they wanted to do something similar with 3D printers, I would have no objections. Others have pointed out the technical problems with preventing any form of 3D print, but I’ll speak conceptually here. There are 3D printers that print metal. Countries with high-denomination coins might find it useful to bar 3D metal printers from printing those coins. You could assumedly create some sort of 3D version of the dot patterns used on paper currency. Then you pass a law stating that any 3D scanner must refuse to scan an object if it detects those very unique dot patterns on it. Then countries with high-value coins could mint them with these unique dot patterns or other features. If anyone tries to scan a coin to reproduce it, the scanner just refuses or outputs only noise. No need to phone home. No need for mass surveillance. Just a simply refusal that would only be active in this very specific case.
If someone wanted to implement a feature like that into 3D printers, technical problems aside, I would have no objections. That would be directly analogous to the 2d printer example, and it would represent no escalation in spying or restrictions on freedom of use.
Yep. The way that is accomplished is that practically all governments that issue paper money add a specific pattern of five circles to it somewhere, often in numerous places. American 10, 20, 50 and 100 bills use repeating patterns of those numbers to disguise it, others hide or celebrate it in various ways. Any scanner, copier or printer is looking for that pattern, and if it sees it, it refuses to print it.
The problem to solve there is “is this 2D pattern present?” It’s like asking if the word “soup” is printed somewhere on a page in Courier New, in terms of the computational power it takes to solve; it’s just optical character recognition.
Prusa is evidently stupid enough to bake a bitmap image of the object to be printed in their G-Code file, but that could be stopped. The printer doesn’t get to see the model file, only the hundreds of thousands of lines of G-Code that it is expected to obey as perfectly as it can.
There are still printers for sale today that run on Arduino Mega-based control boards; you want them to try answering “is this G-Code going to make a part of a gun” as a function of the firmware? Psh.
Tell me how many handmade 2D printers are out there with this restriction?
How many 2D printer building kits have you seen online?
Ever seen open source sold with censorship built in? How would that work?
It doesn’t block open source firmware. It just requires a detection algorithm for the factory default firmware on new printers sold. Did any of you geniuses actually read the article ?
There is no algorithm for that. That’s just technobabble. In order to detect if somebody is trying to print any specific shape you’re going to need software that can look for that shape in an arbitrary cloud of point data. That software does not exist.
No one has developed that kind of software and in order to develop it would require a tremendous amount of research and development. Who pays for that?
Now let’s say you were the company who did that research and development Do you build the cost of developing this anti-product into a line of products that you will sell? What’s the market for that product? If you sold the printer with no chip at all are you exempt from that requirement?
Will a device that has to include the additional cost that comes with all of the additional needed computer hardware, software development, and anticircumvention technology be in any way competitive on the market against models that don’t include these additional unnecessary expenses?
How long will people be allowed to make aftermarket modifications to their 3D printer if the aftermarket modifications don’t also include the additional computer hardware needed to run software that could arbitrarily detect gun parts in 3D printed designs?
I don’t think you understand how completely insane and unworkable a plan like this is because you’re comparing 3D printers to 2D printers. That’s a little bit like comparing paint by numbers to scratch and sniff.
There’s a much simpler and more horrifying solution here, that would actually be technically possible. All 3D printers sold must have a sort of cryptographic lock on them. Only safety-verified prints are allowed to be printed on them. The code running on the printers themselves will still be dirt stupid, but there will be a software lock on the thing preventing uncertified prints from being printed. Every 3D printer sold is locked down tighter than a John Deere tractor.
Every 3D print company would offer a large number of pre-verified prints. (AFAIK many already have libraries of print files.) But you as a user wouldn’t be able to just print anything you wanted. At best, maybe 3rd-party verification services would exist. Model what you want, then pay 20 bucks to some company for a print verification. You send them the file, they screen it for any contraband, and they send you a cryptographic key that lets you print that file and only that file. Long term they would hope AI can do the screening. For now it will be someone’s job to just stare at 3D models all day and to figure out if it’s a gun or not. It would start with screening for guns, but it would inevitably expand to things like intellectual property protections.
They won’t have to change the fundamental deep logic and operation of the printer itself. Just like the fundamental mechanisms inside a tractor haven’t changed. They’ll just make it a felony to sell a 3D printer that isn’t locked down to Hell and back.
And?
And you don’t see Amazon using that feature to spy on everything anyone on earth has ever printed, do you ?
Will building your own regular printer (making you the manufacturer of the device) and loading your own modified firmware on it make you a criminal?
I bet HP would try to have you jailed for it if you threaten their ink racket.
Jokes on you, my printers are 100% opensource and I program them with the code I want.
And really, the politicians are fine with that. The goal isn’t the complete elimination of 3D printed ghost guns. The goal is to greatly increase the skill level required to print a 3D printed ghost gun. With relatively modest tools and enough skill, you can machine your own gun from scratch in your garage. Yet the barrier to entry is so high that few who seek guns for evil ends use these methods. A random street drug dealer might find the idea of printing a gun at the push of a button very tempting. But they are unlikely to find the idea of building a machine shop and learning machining appealing or practical. Or in your case, learning all about open source 3D printers and their software. Yours is just the 3D printer equivalent of the home gunsmith. Yes, you and people like you exist. But the politicians aren’t aiming for complete elimination, just vast reduction.
Accessibility matters. It’s why the printing press was such a big deal.
I’m sure this has absolutely nothing to do with ghost guns. “Ghost guns” is just another way of spelling “protect the children.”
When was the last school shooting that used a ghost gun? No, they use Bushmasters, Rugers, Smith & Wessens, Glocks. Because you can just…buy those. In a store. When’s the last time a serial number stopped a shooting?
Get on the ground, hands behind your back! Bang bang bang bang bang!
Yup, we got another suicide on our hands…
Sprinkle some coke on him and bake him away, toys
He shouldn’t have resisted.
That’s Washington state, not DC.
Surveillance capitalism and the fascists always find a way to debase everything good that people like.
Until they can wring money out of it
Uncommon Washington State L
O just love that true one single product bthat allows you to replicate itself in an open non spy way now must have spyware.
Politicians are idiots
They haven’t stopped at printers, they have everything now constructed to spy. Even a lot of things that have no legitimate purpose being connected to the internet. Soon we will not be able to find the non “smart” devices. We can’t take batteries out of electronics that can spy on us anymore. It’s a federal felony now to alter the programming on an electronic you bought as well.
It’s a federal felony now to alter the programming on an electronic you bought as well.
I can’t find any evidence for this; it would also be a nearly unenforceable law if it was actually a thing. What’s going to happen, the device calls home and says help help I’ve been reprogrammed!
Now altering the programming only for re-saling might have some legal issues.
Idk if there are newer laws, I think there is, but a 1998 law makes it illegal to break a digital lock, very broadly defined, to protect cd’s but applied to all electronics.
But the law was mentioned by an author interviewed on democracy now this fall.
Idk if there are newer laws, I think there is, but a 1998 law makes it illegal to break a digital lock, very broadly defined, to protect cd’s but applied to all electronics.
Sounds like one of those laws that’s never applied by itself, but instead is always sprinkled in on top of another more well defined and detectable crime. In the case or CDs it would have been against piracy groups who not only cracked CDs, but also distributed.
Without the distribution, that law would have never seen enforcement.
We could also argue that cracking software protections isn’t reprogramming, it’s a precursor to do so and isnt always necessary to reprogram a device. Someone could absolutely pop the computer out of a Samsung smart refrigerator and replace it with a Arduino and reprogram the device, which for personal use is legally bulletproof.
Idk some states carved out exceptions to it with right to repair laws.
Read some Cory Doctorow.
Read some Right to Repair U.S. law. There’s absolutely nothing illegal about reprogramming any device for personal use.
Tell that to every farmer in the US. Do you seriously not know about the DMCA?
Tell that to every farmer in the US
Every farmer in the U.S. has the right to repair and reprogram their vehicles. They do not however have the right to force John Deer to provide access to their proprietary software.
Not being able to reprogram something, and it being a literal crime, are absolutely different things.
People who can’t imagine that should try buying a non-smart TV. It’s fucking impossible, unless 24-32 inch are enough for you (PC monitor size).
Washington state.
Heeeeeyyyyyy. I have a k1c with cfs, is there open source support? I’m dumb, I like the printer, and the cfs is alright. Not thrilled about the opaque software and definitely not thrilled with ‘cloud intrgration’
I have a Prusa XL, and the reason is, Prusa is (still) mostly open-source. And quite frankly it’s the only reason why I stick with Prusa, because technically they’re behind the curve.
Same. Still like their support and community too. It’s not so far behind that I feel like it’s a compromise to the point where I can get it to do everything I want it to do. I’m paying for my open source preference and the support / community instead of the most modern fancy features. I want both, but I’d still choose the former especially when the latter seems to involve more and more privacy infringement.
I’m paying for my open source preference and the support / community instead of the most modern fancy features. I want both, but I’d still choose the former
I try to apply the same logic whenever I can too.
For instance, my laptop is a MNT Reform: it’s a very good laptop, but it’s literally 6 times the price of a comparatively-specced laptop from a big-box store.
And my cellphone is a Fairphone 5 running Ubuntu Touch. I chose the Fairphone for the repairability and increased openness, but it’s also 2 to 3 times the price of a more common brand cellphone with similar performances. And Ubuntu Touch itself comes with its own set of restrictions, but that’s the price of trying to be as free from the Android ecosystem as possible.
So yeah, you can do open, but the choice is very limited and you pay a lot for the privilege.
I chose the Fairphone for the repairability and increased openness, but it’s also 2 to 3 times the price of a more common brand cellphone
Only outside of Europe or their free-trade partners, in Europe I can get a Gen 5 for 400€ and Gen 6 for about 550€. It’s extremely annoying for most countries, but regarding the US it’s 100% their regime’s fault for not having any comparable company (they get immediately smushed by Google, Apple & Co by any means necessary) or at least low / no tariffs with the EU zone (Trump literally killed a done deal in this regard one week before ratification with his threats of invading Greenland).
For instance, my laptop is a MNT Reform: it’s a very good laptop, but it’s literally 6 times the price of a comparatively-specced laptop from a big-box store.
Now that’s really special. :D There are a lot of “normal” (x86) devices on the market that are way more affordable as well. For a while Slimbook offered a modern native Linux laptop for <500€, and there are also companies like System76 (US), NovaCustom (NL) or Star Labs (UK) with laptops running on open firmware that come with less restrictions and powerful hardware.
For people who aren’t (yet) poor it’s mostly a problem of discoverability and lack of knowledge not to go with the more sane products. We get bombarded with ads promising the best experience on the usual platforms (that are as manipulative as possible). BambuLab also plays this game perfectly, their influencer marketing paired with VC-funded undercutting prices are top notch in getting people locked into their garbage.
I don’t get why they insist on sticking to their own somewhat inferior software platform when a good, 100% open source, and better performing alternative exists with klipper.
🩷🩷🩷I’ll check it out! Thanks so much!
Helper script (2nd link) is easier to use. simple AF (first link) is fully open source, but requires you to use another bed leveling probe - no open source „driver” for prtouch- the built in one (which is slow and not terribly accurate anyway).
Creality Helper Script is a must have. My K1C has run it through the very first second. Getting as much open source (for a reasonable budget) and control on my marines is the main decision factor for my purchases.
It’s not really spying, it’s not it like it reports to the government what you print.
This is literally an identical feature to what is already in every single ink printer on the market, that blocks printing or copying of currency.
Obviously you are not at all familiar with how 3d printers work, how that currency counterfeit prevention works or how the limits of it mean that they had to put tracking dots into the machine as a backup, but here’s a dirty secret about it:
The reason printers are so expensive, you have limited options for brands, no one has an alternative open source version and they can’t be built at home is because of laws that make it a requirement to have this technology that restricts their use.
It’s dramatically easier to prevent a two-dimensional printer that requires proprietary software from your computer to prepare the prints to send to the printer. For starters, that proprietary software is only available from The printer manufacturer and it weighs hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of megs. The printer also has on it a pretty powerful chip to receive all that information and instructions and pretty powerful DRM to make sure that you can’t access it without jumping through their hoops.
Most 3D printers are made from components that can all be taken out and replaced individually. They run software that is custom built and available open source. By their very nature nearly every model of 3D printer is much more customizable and It is widely understood how to build one from scratch.
Making a law like this is a kin to making a law that says it’s illegal to sell a notebook that people could use to plan a crime. It’s unworkably restrictive and in order to pull it off you’re going to have to violate a whole lot of rights.
Obviously you haven’t actually read the article.
The technical feasibility has fuck all to do with the fact that this bill doesn’t want your 3D printer to spy on you. There is zero requirement whatsoever in the bill for reporting or storage of data on what you’ve printed. The headline is just a straight up lie.
Good thing I didn’t bring up spying at all or you might have a point that somehow speaks to a thing I said.
What the bill does include is a wish list of stupid things you could only want if you didn’t understand the technology.
It’s also the thin end of the wedge meant to create a context for an excuse to further restrict these devices.
Most 3D printers run software that is smaller than most 3D prints.
I’m going to say that another couple of different ways in case you didn’t understand it, The software that runs on these devices is measured in the hundreds of kilobytes. A 2-in wide Batman symbol with no flourishes or extra details is going to be 10 to 30 times that size. There’s not even enough memory on the device to hold the entire print so it reads the instructions on how to make it one line at a time.
Those instructions are written in G-Code and g code is older than even the concept of most computer peripherals. G-Code can be written by hand, and is a technology older than computer monitors, digital audio, the mouse, or The indicator light.
So you want to add more computer to a device than the device normally costs so that it can run software that no one has written or knows how to write so it can detect shapes based on their future intended usage to prevent people from using their highly customizable home manufacturing device to Make single use firearms in a country that already has more guns than people…
From TFA:
Manufacturers may comply through three methods specified in Section 6(2) of the bill: integration of the algorithm in the printer’s firmware, integration in preprint software, or a handshake authentication design between software and printer.
Nobody’s going to do this in the printer itself; the spyware will be built into the slicer.
Ultimately this will be trivially easy to defeat no matter what moronic legislators who possess no technical knowledge think. The real dangers are more subtle, not least of which being the chilling effect if this passes effectively instructing all 3D printer manufacturers not to sell anything in Washington state since total compliance as the bill proposes is indeed effectively impossible, and the penalties for presumed lack of compliance are high. The most realistic outcome for a private individual vis-a-vis potentially printing a ghost gun is not necessarily having their printer tattle on them, but the state having yet another byzantine felony they can charge people with if they get caught after the fact with whatever-it-is they have. Never mind the 1st and 2nd amendments, the only realistic avenue for enforcement of this on private individuals will run afoul of the 4th.
Am I understanding this bill wrong? (Not English native)
This is bill is about blocking ability to print firearms related stuff and not about spying customers?
How do you block firearm parts at the printer level without analyzing and judging the files a user provides?
Even if this was possible (it’s not), most printers don’t have the kind of processing power needed to reverse slicing back into the solid object so that it can be compared with banned parts. They’d either have to put in much larger computers and spike the cost per unit or do it server-side and be always-online.
This is exactly correct. Its like these people are not giving it one thought.
There are two bills one says to not sell to criminals and to not allow them to operate the machines…hmm okay…
Hey, I’m selling my Bridgeport!
Hey I want to buy it!
Are you a Felon?
No
Prove it, please fill out this application form so we can send it off to the government for review.
No thanks!
Wait so are you a Felon or just because its stupid and intrusive?
Stupid and intrusive!
Okay thanks!
Hold on, my raspberry pi just got done comparing the model to one of a million different barrels. This will take a while…
Ten years later…
The new raspberry pi 34 can do 3 comparisons per day! And on just 10mW! Wow!
The new raspberry pi 34 can do 3 comparisons per day! And on just 10mW! Wow!
10 milliwatts is pretty good TBH, it definitely deserves a wow!
LOL.
You block a printer from making cylinders
I totally agree with you, like always politician have an idea but don’t even state how to realise it… So possibly this will actually never happen.
One thing that come to my mind is that manufacturer could maybe use some kind of hash database of firearms related files. While printer are not very powerful, that’s something that could be done on slicer but that would mean the death of open source software (at least in USA) as to implement this every manufacturer would need to force customer using their slicer. Also, wondering how much power demanding it is for printer to recreate solid object, could they just read gcode to analyse object? and since guns are not 25cmx25cmx25cm, it’s not like this would take ages to analyse.
