California’s bill, AB 2047, will not only mandate censorware on all 3D printers; it will also criminalize the use of open-source alternatives. Repeating the mistakes of DRM won’t make anyone safer, but it will hurt innovation in the state and risks a slew of new consumer harms ranging from surveillance to platform lock-in. California must stand with creators and reject this legislation before it’s too late.
Back when 3D printers were brand-new, I was at a college event where the Engineering Club had one on display. I stopped to watch it, and spoke with the kid who had built it. He was a Freshman, and had built it during the previous summer, because he wanted to come to college and make an instant splash in the Engineering Department.
He certainly succeeded, because he was the one in the booth that everybody wanted to talk to, while the upperclassmen that hadn’t accomplished anything, sat in the back of the booth and glowered at the Freshman upstart.
So anyway, if they ban them, we’ll just build them.
This is called the proliferation of technology, its useless to fight it, and also one of humanities greatest existential threats.
Sooner or later building a nuke in your backyard is going to be just as easy.
Just FYI, I am full pro 3d printer, love mine. Looking into a second one now.
No. Even if you would get your hands of enough base material (impossible and would also be bigger than your backyard in volume). The energy you need for sorting the isotopes would be more than you could pull out of your power wires.
This isnt a question about technology but physics and energy, no matter how good consumer tech gets. NO you wont build a nuke in your backyard.
The same way as you will never build a moon rocket in your backyard, some things just require a fixed amount of energy, and putting that amount of energy in your backyard just wont happen.
I believe the entire goal of RepRap was to build a machine that could build all the parts needed to build another machine. Most of the parts for a lot of machines are either 3d printable or bog-standard off-the-shelf parts that could be used for millions of other things. I have a feeling the really scary target would be software, something similar to the draconian age-verification BS being run around.
Targetting commercial offers would not cut it though. They would have to make octoprint, open source firmware etc a crime. A lot of printer run exclusively on non-commercial software and on Chinese control boards, with or without raspberry pi.
“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble…”