Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

blog.adafruit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 861 posts

Re: New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

#771

Post by mrguyorama »

somenameforme wrote: post #469
int_19h wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I do not think the current government in the US is fascist, but electing fascists would indeed be an exercise in democracy. The entire point of democracy is that it's the will of the people, whether right or wrong. This is precisely why democracy was never seen as a tenable system for millennia. Thinkers of the past always assumed that the people would be incapable of picking the most skilled leaders, and would inste…

Democracy is not "Whoever gets half + 1 vote is king"

Winning representatives are still supposed to represent the people who didn't vote for them in fact.

Democracy isn't about picking the "best" leader because that's not necessary. "The best" is almost never necessary, and you are much better off building a system that handles regularly not getting the best, because no system reliably picks the best, especially since "The best" is a criteria that cannot be rigorously defined.

Re: New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

#772

Post by alt227 »

pjbk wrote: post #128
pjc50 wrote: post #33

This is insanely stupid stuff. Even the UK with our weird panic over Incredibly Specific Knives hasn't tried to do this kind of technical restriction to prevent people printing guns. Why not? Because nobody is printing guns! It's an infeasible solution to a non-problem! Someone should dig into who this is coming from and why. The answers are usually either (a) they got paid to do it by a company selling the tech, whi…

People print guns and gun parts. More than you think. Now even more since metal printing is starting to become affordable. I print grip and grip attachments for my 9mms and my AR15, trigger guards, barrel clamps, etc. I also find it stupid since, as the article suggests, what kind of algorithm can you implement to do smart detection of something that could be potentially dangerous? Will it also detect negative space?…

> people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives

People should not have to have great experience with killing machines to be able to regulate them.

Re: New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

#773

Post by Zak »

stefanfisk wrote: post #341
tbrownaw wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do potato cannons count?

The could if lawmakers wanted them to. Here in Sweden potato guns are actually illegal if the potato achieves 10+ joule.

That's effectively a complete ban as a thrown potato would have considerably more energy than that. A quick web search suggests professional baseball pitchers achieve ~130J, and a potato is roughly comparable to a baseball in mass.

Re: New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

#774

Post by rayiner »

Zak wrote: post #764
rayiner wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple polls have found that if everyone had voted, Trump would have won by even more. https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2... https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec... The average person who doesn’t vote is a low-trust individual who is skeptical about government and institutions. Those people are Trumpier than average.

I thought I had a decent understanding of the 2024 election; people were unhappy with the status quo, therefore mistrusting the people and institutions they believed responsible for it. Then I saw this and its supporting data in your first link: > Voters saw Harris as more ideologically extreme than Trump ... what?

According to Gallup, the record high support for increasing immigration was about 36%. Harris presided over an administration that saw a large increase in immigration. So believe didn’t find it credible when she said she wanted to control the border. And the position of wanting to increase immigration is more ideologically extreme than Trump’s position of wanting to shut down the border to illegal immigration just as a factual matter.

The latest Harvard-Harris poll, which isn’t good for Trump, still shows people want to deport all immigrants here illegally by a 52-48 margin: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/HHP... (page 24). I don’t think even Trump intends to actually do that. He would have to dramatically escalate what he’s doing now in order to achieve that outcome.

Re: New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

#775

Post by alt227 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #354
hyperbovine wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly, instead of having better laws we get fallacy rhetoric by people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives. Why is this the litmus test for being qualified to write gun legislation? Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities?

> Do we also expect our lawmakers to have tried heroin or downloaded child porn so that they can regulate those activities? It would be nice if they delegated to experts, instead of think tanks or populism, when it came to dealing with these. Both are examples of rampant regulatory failure.

Having first hand experience in contraband, and having the knowledge to create and pass laws are very different things. If you think that current lawmakers dont know enough about contraband to regulate effectively, what makes you think someone who knows loads about drug use and porn would be able to contruct decent watertight legislation?

Re: New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

#776

Post by NoGravitas »

thayne wrote: post #399
pjc50 wrote: post #33

This is insanely stupid stuff. Even the UK with our weird panic over Incredibly Specific Knives hasn't tried to do this kind of technical restriction to prevent people printing guns. Why not? Because nobody is printing guns! It's an infeasible solution to a non-problem! Someone should dig into who this is coming from and why. The answers are usually either (a) they got paid to do it by a company selling the tech, whi…

> who this is coming from and why I would suspect it is at least partly because the gun that killed the United Healthcare CEO was partly 3D printed.

Allegedly, given chain of custody concerns with the evidence.

Re: New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

#777

Post by alt227 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #746
randusername wrote: post #668

I saw a shirt one time that said something like "in just one generation user manuals went from showing you how to tune your carburetor to warning you not to drink the battery acid" Stupidity or nefariousness? Probably both. I don't feel like I can fix either.

> in just one generation user manuals went from showing you how to tune your carburetor to warning you not to drink the battery acid The truth is just that we don't have actual user manuals anymore. Either the things that went into the manual are now built into software, or they expect you to look it up on the internet. So the only things that remain are legal disclaimers and very basic instructions, like how to turn…

Manuals still exist, but they are relegated to:

1. Quick setup guides. 2. Warranty information. 3. Warnings of not trying to fix yourself.

Re: New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

#778

Post by alt227 »

mavamaarten wrote: post #532
alkonaut wrote: post #476

I could see why "people are making guns" would be at the top of the list of politicians' worries in places where there are almost no guns, and people want to keep it that way. But in the US?

Indeed. Don't want people making guns? Ban the making of guns. Banning the production of guns using a 3D printer makes zero sense, should ban CNC machines too then.

Just ban guns, simple! /s

Re: New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

#779

Post by regularfry »

crote wrote: post #522
vincnetas wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prusa is still kicking... if open source hardware is your priority.

Prusa had been moving towards proprietary licensing (if they release files at all) for a while now, due to their open source design files being used to undercut the original with cheaper clones.

I seriously doubt it's the undercutting that's the problem here. When they release a new model they can't keep up with demand anyway, they max out production capacity on legitimate orders.

I think, if anything, the problem is when people buy a cheap clone and blame Prusa when it fails.

Re: New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers

#780

Post by alt227 »

mghackerlady wrote: post #747
IFC_LLC wrote: post #259

So what's next? People will re-flash their printers with an open-source firmware that won't do the checks? Who's liable in this case?

That would likely fall under some DMCA like protection against circumvention. RMS is going to be pissed and I can totally see the FSF, EFF, and potentially the SFC having issues with this

So pretty much the same as jailbreaking your phone or something, which millions of people do without worry.
Post reply on HN