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Arch-TK 4 hours ago

EURion marks are a feature you must include on your banknote for it to even be considered real. And it's _one_ feature. It's relatively trivial to make a chip which can detect their presence.

On the other hand, if I need a replacement part for something, it's unlikely I will find the manufacturer giving me models for it. And if a manufacturer is giving me models for it, they probably do so with the explicit expectation that I might end up using them to manufacture a replacement.

In most cases either me or some other volunteer will need to measure the existing part, write down all the critical measurements, and then design a new part from scratch in CAD.

Even if somehow you are able to fingerprint on those critical measurements, that's just _one_ part.

The only way this kind of nonsense law could work is if you mandate that 3D printers must not accept commands from an untrusted source (signature verification) and then you must have software which uses a database to check for such critical measurements, ideally _before_ slicing.

Except that still doesn't work because I can always post-process a part to fit.

And it doesn't work even more because the software will need to contain a signing key. Unless the signing key is on a remote server somewhere to which you must send your model for validation.

This is never going to work, or scale.

There are even more hurdles... I can design and build a 3D printer from scratch and manufacture it using non-CNC machined parts at home. A working, high quality 3D printer.

Where are you going to force me to put the locks? Are you going to require me to show my ID when buying stepper motors and stepper motor drivers?

What about other kinds of manufacturing (that these laws, at least the Washington State ones, also cover)?

Will you ban old hardware?

What about a milling machine? Are you going to ban non-CNC mills?

These are the most ignorant laws made by the most ignorant people. The easiest way to ban people from manufacturing their own guns is to ban manufacture of your own guns. But again, this is a complete non-issue in the US where you can probably get a gun illegally more easily than you can 3D print something half as reliable.

anthk 2 hours ago | parent [-]

As an European I'd say any USAnite can almost get a gun with breakfast cereal boxes. But weapons' culture in the US it's obsolete. Militias can't do shit against tyranical govs because once they send drones it's game over.

joe_mamba an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> But weapons' culture in the US it's obsolete. Militias can't do shit against tyranical govs because once they send drones it's game over.

Pretty sure those 50 thousand or so civilians killed on the street in the recent Iranian protests/riots would have been a lot less, if all those Iranians had easy access to guns, and not just the government.

Drones are not enough, you still need boots on the ground for you to claim control over a territory, and boots on the ground think twice about signing up for service if that includes facing armed mobs with guns on a daily basis.

So no, mobs with guns are not obsolete.

anthk an hour ago | parent [-]

Mob with guns would be useless against the Iranian Guards which are pretty much elite commandos.

rayiner 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Goat herders with guns in Afghanistan kicked the U.S. army out of their country.

pegasus 8 minutes ago | parent [-]

But could they do the same to goat herders with bigger guns, drones, bombs, etc?

joe_mamba an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

What's the commando to civilian ratio in Iran?

mschuster91 an hour ago | parent [-]

Let's do some napkin math: Iran has about 94 million people. Iran's IRGC alone has a personnel count of 125.000 [1], of which about 2-5000 are estimated to be the elite of the elite ("Quds Force"). Together with the Basij (anywhere from 100-600k) that alone is a sufficient amount of force. And on top of that come maybe 400-500k of the regular Iranian Armed Forces [2], as well as about 260k active police+100k police reservists.

So, if one sees the whole of IRGC plus Basij as the "commandos", they alone form an active elite of about 0.5%, if one sees the entirety of the military+police we're looking at easily 2-3 million units, so up to 2%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Revolutionary_Guard_Co...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Armed...

rayiner 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s not obsolete. In a country where your military is farm boys, the important thing is being able to start the war. Eventually chunks of the military will defect. We saw this happen during the Bangladesh independence movement. The revolutionaries got lucky and knocked over a weapons depot early in the conflict. They started fighting and a large number of the Pakistani army that was of Bangladeshi ancestry defected. I am confident the same thing would happen if the government in DC tried to oppress Iowa or Texas.

Drones cut both ways. You’re correct that it allows a small number of people loyal to the regime to asymmetrically oppress a large population. But drone technology is in theory accessible to the populace in an industrialized country.