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.
Devial@discuss.online 2 days ago
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.
Afaithfulnihilist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
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…
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 1 day ago
From TFA:
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.