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gueloyesterday at 10:55 PM4 repliesview on HN

Photocopiers and printers have included anti-counterfeiting tech for decades, so there is precedent for this kind of thing. And this is addressing a real growing problem:

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/santa-rosa-167-gun...

https://da.santaclaracounty.gov/da-task-force-seizes-ghost-g...

https://www.vvng.com/3d-printed-firearm-recovered-after-man-...


Replies

alright2565yesterday at 11:17 PM

Here's a series of models, which of these is a gun part? https://imgur.com/a/p3UtJqW

Money anti-counterfeiting is trivial, it's just 5 dots arranged in a specific pattern. Deciding what is a gun part is impossible, even for an expert human.

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gmuecklyesterday at 11:13 PM

But money counterfeiting is a different proposition: the printer is blocking exactly known patterns found on real currency. In fact, many bill designs incorporate patterns that are easily machine detectable for this purpose.

Blocking the printing of parts of mechanisms is a completely different beast, because the functionality is only discernible after final assembly of the individual parts, which can be shaped in a variety of ways. Most of these parts are unique to guns or at least usable in other kinds of designs. E.g. the same trigger lever design could be used for a ghost gun or a nerf gun or a water pistol. So where would yiu draw the line of all the classifier sees is G code that combines support structures, the actual surfaces and infill of some arbitrary collection of parts?

I'm against guns in generally, but this classification problem seems particularly ill posed and I don't want it to result in tamper-resistant printers stopping people from tinkering and taking the fun out of printing. The US should just outlaw the casual carrying of guns of individuals in public. That's not a violation of the second amendment.

rangestransformtoday at 12:24 AM

Yellow dots doxxing me whenever I print something is equally despicable, client side scanning on my iPhone is equally despicable.

Some crimes are not worth it to eliminate, and western liberal society should just accept that the optimal amount of crime is non zero.

mvdtnzyesterday at 11:07 PM

Until America bans actual guns I don't want to hear about the "growing problem" of 3D printed guns.

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