papasquat's recent activity
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Comment on California’s new bill requires Department of Justice-approved 3D printers that report on themselves in ~hobbies
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Comment on California’s new bill requires Department of Justice-approved 3D printers that report on themselves in ~hobbies
papasquat Link ParentI'll point out that ghost guns != 3d printed guns. The vast majority of ghost guns are built from 80% kits and have no 3d printed parts at all. Besides that, the US is a country that's absolutely...I'll point out that ghost guns != 3d printed guns. The vast majority of ghost guns are built from 80% kits and have no 3d printed parts at all.
Besides that, the US is a country that's absolutely inundated with guns. Guns are more accessible here than anywhere else in the world. Professionally manufactured guns are cheaper, more reliable, and safer (for the operator). If I were doing virtually any kind of crime, it would be a much better option to just go to a gun store or gun show to get one.
It seems a lot better use of our effort to make that part harder before we start instituting authoritarian mandates on people who have no interest in guns at all.
Otherwise it seems like we're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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Comment on California’s new bill requires Department of Justice-approved 3D printers that report on themselves in ~hobbies
papasquat Link ParentGood to know, I didn't realize how far the liberator has come. I will say that this still takes a considerable amount of skill and experience to do though. Until someone can go to Walmart, buy a...Good to know, I didn't realize how far the liberator has come.
I will say that this still takes a considerable amount of skill and experience to do though. Until someone can go to Walmart, buy a Bambu printer, download an STL and have a functioning gun the next day, this really isn't a big concern of mine.
For it to matter, you'd have to make it harder to just skip all those steps and buy the gun from Walmart instead.
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Comment on California’s new bill requires Department of Justice-approved 3D printers that report on themselves in ~hobbies
papasquat Link ParentI mean, it'd make it an airgun. If you added a way to hold a cartridge and a firing pin, you'd have a firearm. Zip guns are still guns. It wouldn't be a good or accurate or reliable or safe gun,...I can kill someone with a bit of pipe, a ball bearing, and my air compressor. Doesn't make it a gun.
I mean, it'd make it an airgun. If you added a way to hold a cartridge and a firing pin, you'd have a firearm. Zip guns are still guns.
It wouldn't be a good or accurate or reliable or safe gun, but it would be a gun. The metallurgy in the iron hand cannons used by the ming dynasty was far inferior to modern steel plumbing pipes, and they definitely weren't rifles, but they were still used effectively to kill thousands of people in warfare.
I don't think we're anywhere close to the danger of unskilled laymen being able to produce reliable, high performing modern firearms with cheap off the shelf 3d printers. You can produce something pretty decent, it still takes a good amount of skill though.
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Comment on Magical stones from the mall! in ~talk
papasquat Link ParentPositive thinking works, sure, but that doesn't mean you need to go buy a rock to make your life more positive. If you like rocks, by all means, buy rocks, but the thing that's making you think...Positive thinking works, sure, but that doesn't mean you need to go buy a rock to make your life more positive. If you like rocks, by all means, buy rocks, but the thing that's making you think more positively is your own thought patterns. You don't need rocks for that. If you truly feel like you need a totem or something, you could just go outside and pick up the first interesting looking thing you see.
I have very little patience for woo, not because it's offensive or dangerous in it of itself, but because it opens the door to all sorts of "vibe based" thinking. It's the sort of justifications that make people radically alter their diets due to chakras or not take medicine because it lowers their vibrational energy.
Skepticism and rationality is what brought us out of untold millennia of lynching people that acted differently from us because of demons and all sorts of other nonsense based on what feels right rather than what has been methodically proven right.
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Comment on California’s new bill requires Department of Justice-approved 3D printers that report on themselves in ~hobbies
papasquat Link ParentYou can make reliable guns with 3d printed parts, but you can't print an entire gun that lasts more than a few rounds with a 3d printer yet. At least not without some extremely expensive, advanced...You can make reliable guns with 3d printed parts, but you can't print an entire gun that lasts more than a few rounds with a 3d printer yet. At least not without some extremely expensive, advanced metal sintering printers that are way outside the range of non professionals.
Building a decent gun out of mostly 3d printed parts is still way harder and more expensive than just buying an 80% lower kit as well.
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Comment on California’s new bill requires Department of Justice-approved 3D printers that report on themselves in ~hobbies
papasquat Link ParentThis kind of reminds me of something that went on a few years with my hobby, FPV Drones. A few years ago, the FAA passed a regulation where drones above a certain size (250g, extremely light; most...This kind of reminds me of something that went on a few years with my hobby, FPV Drones. A few years ago, the FAA passed a regulation where drones above a certain size (250g, extremely light; most FPV freestyle drones are around 700g) needed to have a remote ID module. This module hooks into your flight controller's telemetry and constantly announces the drone's position, altitude, speed, the position of the operator, and an ID number that could be read to find who the operator is. These things are broadcast cleartext and can be picked up by phones over wifi.
There's a big fine if you don't fly with the module, but the module adds weight, is expensive, and most crucially, announces your presence to people who have no idea about UAV laws, safety, and what you are and are not allowed to do with a drone, but they just don't like the idea of drones so that information gets used to harass you.
Predictably, virtually no one in the hobby uses them. The FAA is spread far too thin to enforce this regulation on hundreds of thousands of people that mostly aren't causing any problems. Local police don't even know about that regulation, and regulating airspace is out of their jurisdiction anyway. If you buy a prebuilt drone from a big company like DJI, they have them built in, but a lot of the hobby is building your own drones, and no one ever includes a remoteID module in their parts list.
I doubt this will ever change, unless something dramatic like terrorist attacks with FPV drones ever become common.
I see this proposed legislation being the exact same thing if it passes. If I buy a Bambu printer and then jailbreak its nanny gun reporting software, who is going to know that? If I build a printer and don't include the gun reporting module, how would anyone know? Are the police going to go door-to-door searching for illegal 3d printers? Probably not. This is just another law without even an inkling of a realistic enforcement mechanism that gets passed so that a legislator can pat himself on the back. It goes into the endless corpus of state law that no one pays attention to or cares about until it gets used to make some political point one day, but realistically it's just a waste of everyone's time.
I personally think there should be a bar that needs to be passed for legislation; if it's not realistically enforceable, it shouldn't be constitutional. Otherwise it just gets used to selectively persecute people you don't like.
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Comment on California’s new bill requires Department of Justice-approved 3D printers that report on themselves in ~hobbies
papasquat Link ParentI mean... it depends on the barrel. In their most basic form, they really are just a tube with a hole through a middle. You can happily fire shotgun shells out of most 3/4" ID metal pipe, and a...I mean... it depends on the barrel. In their most basic form, they really are just a tube with a hole through a middle. You can happily fire shotgun shells out of most 3/4" ID metal pipe, and a lot of them won't even explode, and it will definitely kill someone looking through the other end. Firearms aren't fundamentally that complicated.
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Comment on California’s new bill requires Department of Justice-approved 3D printers that report on themselves in ~hobbies
papasquat Link ParentThe thing is, this does absolutely nothing to stop ghost guns. 3d printed guns are still wildly impractical. They're weak, they're unreliable, and they break after a few shots. The most practical...The thing is, this does absolutely nothing to stop ghost guns. 3d printed guns are still wildly impractical. They're weak, they're unreliable, and they break after a few shots. The most practical and reliable ghost guns are those produced from 80% lowers. They require extremely minimal tools and skill to assemble, and there are some states that regulate them, but lots of states where they don't, and they're extremely easy to get on the internet.
The fundamental problem is that guns really are not very complex. They're tubes that have a mechanism to hold a round in place while the primer is struck. You can build one out of a pipe, an end cap, a rubber band, and a nail. We're not talking about regulating nuclear weapons here.
There's literally nothing the government can do that can effectively stop sufficiently motivated people from building unregistered firearms in their garages. Screwing over everyone else who has no interest in doing that sort of thing makes absolutely no sense, and until there's widespread violence as the result of 3d printers, which we haven't even seen a shred of, the whole thing is a pointless, silly idea.
Especially when you consider that this is the fucking united states we're talking about. Virtually any adult in the country can drive 10 minutes to their nearest Walmart, and walk out 10 minutes later with their choice of firearm and ammunition for a hell of a lot cheaper and with way less effort than all but the most barebones 3d printers. Why are we worried about 3d printing?
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Comment on I built a space simulation that runs in the browser and it feels good enough to share it now in ~space
papasquat LinkSweet! I don't know a ton about astronomy, but the one issue I noticed is that the moon doesn't appear to be tidally locked to Earth. Maybe it's rotating in the wrong direction?Sweet! I don't know a ton about astronomy, but the one issue I noticed is that the moon doesn't appear to be tidally locked to Earth. Maybe it's rotating in the wrong direction?
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Comment on Swedish heavy metal band Avatar cancel London concert mid-performance after the stage at Exhibition White City became electrified, shocking two crew members in ~music
papasquat Link ParentBizarre! Aren't guitar strings electrically isolated from the actual electrical components in the guitar?The guitarist could feel something through the strings too
Bizarre! Aren't guitar strings electrically isolated from the actual electrical components in the guitar?
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
papasquat Link ParentI think a lot of people in this thread are zeroing in on your usage of that statistic and painting you with a slightly unfair brush because of it. Its an extremely commonly used white supremacist...why is it that so many people are willing to accept the exact same kind of distortion when the narrative blames men instead of black people?
I think a lot of people in this thread are zeroing in on your usage of that statistic and painting you with a slightly unfair brush because of it. Its an extremely commonly used white supremacist talking point, to the extent that citing it virtually always paints someone as a white supremacist, but I understand the point you were trying to make, so I'll take a stab at explaining the difference in how those two statistics are taken. I won't comment on whether either is true or not, so for the sake of argument I'll pretend they both are.
First, black people in the US, as a whole, on average, are disadvantaged to this day. They have lower overall wages, higher rates of poverty, higher obesity rates, shorter lifespans, lower rates of literacy and so on than the general population. This stems from either modern racism, or the echos of historical racism that propogated until the modern day. You can't divorce crime statistics from those facts.
Men are not disadvantaged all in all. There is no pervasive discrimination against men in modern society.
Two, historically, black people were imported to and enslaved in the US. That one fact influenced everything about US race relations. It influence black culture, it influences white culture, it has far reaching implications 200 years later in incomes, development patterns, living situations, and crime.
Men have never experienced shared trauma like that that would explain negative outcomes today.
And finally, and perhaps most importantly, black people are white people are almost identical, biologically. Overall, similar brain sizes, body sizes and configuration, hormone levels, and so on. The only real differences are superficial.
Men and women are not biologically identical. Their bodies are quite different. Their brains are different. One isn't better than the other, but the idea that men are more inherently prone to violence is wayyyyyyyy better supported in science than the idea that black people are.
You can't really compare the two statistics then and call someone a hypocrite because they think one is racist but the other one isn't sexist. They're completely different axes of comparison, so one is more problematic than the other.
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Comment on Opinion piece: I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day. in ~life.women
papasquat Link ParentI'm sure it was a topic of conversation, but it just didn't come up that much. Like, I've never really thought to ask anyone I was with, and I've never been asked by men or women. If I found out...I'm sure it was a topic of conversation, but it just didn't come up that much. Like, I've never really thought to ask anyone I was with, and I've never been asked by men or women.
If I found out that some girl I was interested in slept with 200 guys or something ridiculous in highschool, I'd have concerns and so would most people, but it's just not something that really came up that much. It seems like the main thing that young people talk about now though.
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Comment on Opinion piece: I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day. in ~life.women
papasquat Link ParentI'll add that misogyny and sexism doesn't even just affect women. The prescriptivist idea that gender x is like this and gender y is like this negatively affects both men and women, and is...I'll add that misogyny and sexism doesn't even just affect women. The prescriptivist idea that gender x is like this and gender y is like this negatively affects both men and women, and is propogated by both men and woman as well.
When a boy wants to act in a play but doesn't because "that's gay", it's a big tragedy, just like when a girl doesn't pursue engineering because it's "for men".
Showing men good examples of men who are secure with themselves and can do the things they want to do regardless of prescribed gender norms can go a long way.
At the end of the day the thing that's missing is empathy. Boys aren't thinking about what it's like to be a girl and have your every move judged through a lens of "slut" versus "virgin".
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Comment on Opinion piece: I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day. in ~life.women
papasquat LinkI have a lot of disorganized thoughts about this, but it kind of touches on something that's I've noticed about the modern internet that's really disturbed me. When I was growing up in the late...I have a lot of disorganized thoughts about this, but it kind of touches on something that's I've noticed about the modern internet that's really disturbed me.
When I was growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s, there was obviously some of this, but things felt a lot more progressive to me back then.
My friends and I were aware of some girls being labeled as sluts or whatever, but none of us cared at all about "body counts". That wasn't even a term. I never even thought to ask any girl how many guys she slept with.
Our moms were mostly feminists, and it was just taken as an assumption that women liked sex just like guys did, and judging them for it made no sense. It wasn't perfect, and there were still obviously guys that cared about that stuff, but to me it felt like sort of a fringe, backwards opinion.
Similarly, online, most people seemed to mostly be on the same page. There were places back then filled with violent misogyny like 4chan, and on games, people would be sexist or racist, but it feels different now.
The internet after smart phones became proliferated seemed to just get way more conservative. It was shocking to me the first time I heard the opinion that ideally, women should stay home and not get jobs being parroted by men and women alike. It made no sense to me, why would a man want a woman that he has to fully support financially?
Over time, this just became the prevailing background opinion of the internet, which was just total whiplash for me, growing up in a pretty conservative place and always thinking of the internet as fairly progressive.
It's not just online now though. On reality TV shows, on dating shows, in movies, everything just seems... conservative. Women brag about having rich boyfriends and not working. Men talk about how pure and innocent women are.
It feels like over the course of 20 years, we've socially regressed 30.
It's overall just really tanked my opinion of western "culture". Being able to shout at the void and have an algorithm figure out the most engaging shouts have distilled online content into something that's simultaneously oversexualized but also over judgemental. It's like the absolute worst aspects of the human psyche are put on display for the world to see online and rewarded.
I don't even know how you fix it. It feels way too fundemental for the normal incentive tweaking via regulation or public awareness to resolve.
Like, how do you encourage people who are being complete assholes with no empathy or drive beside their base instincts to behave?
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Comment on The AI disruption has arrived, and it sure is fun (gifted link) in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentThe prospect of essentially becoming a mindless automation at work all day following the orders of an unthinking unfeeling AI boss is even more depressing than just being exterminated by the...The prospect of essentially becoming a mindless automation at work all day following the orders of an unthinking unfeeling AI boss is even more depressing than just being exterminated by the machine uprising, and infinitely more ironic.
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Comment on The AI disruption has arrived, and it sure is fun (gifted link) in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentI'll also add, even though most people don't care about these particular things, they care about the consequences. They just don't have the expertise and interest to connect the two. Like most...I'll also add, even though most people don't care about these particular things, they care about the consequences. They just don't have the expertise and interest to connect the two.
Like most people don't care about 2FA, but they do care about their bank account being hacked and losing their balance. Most people don't care about public transit and bike lanes and walkability, but they don't like sitting in traffic, having lung diseases, getting hit by cars.
All of those things are things that affect almost everyone, they just don't care about the root causes of them.
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Comment on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested and in custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office in UK in ~news
papasquat Link ParentPeople are very good at rationalizing the horrible things they do. No one sees themselves as the villain of their story, so they tell themselves stories to make themselves the good guy. In the...People are very good at rationalizing the horrible things they do. No one sees themselves as the villain of their story, so they tell themselves stories to make themselves the good guy.
In the case of these pieces of shit, it's usually something like "she's so into me" or "I'm giving her financial opportunities beyond her wildest dreams" or "this is way better than the alternative she'd face in <developing country I lured her from>" it doesn't matter that they're all obvious nonsense. They don't have to be convincing, they just have to be repeated to oneself over and over to soothe the psyche.
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Comment on I hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI – and it only took twenty minutes in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentIt gets ignored regularly every day. Every god damned day I have to spend time researching and refuting AI slop from people I work with. It's a never ending battle, because it's a lot quicker to...It gets ignored regularly every day. Every god damned day I have to spend time researching and refuting AI slop from people I work with.
It's a never ending battle, because it's a lot quicker to generate slop than it is to validate it, so if the trend continues, it will eventually be what I spend all of my time doing.
Somehow, people have internalized an idea that because it's a computer, it's never wrong. Like they have access to a crystal ball that knows everything, but no one else has figured out that it exists yet. It's become a little insulting, because the subtext is that I somehow haven't thought about using AI to answer this question we have. I've thought of it, obviously, and don't use it because it's mostly bad at answering complex questions accurately.
I don't need it for simple questions either, because I already know the answers to those.
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Comment on I hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI – and it only took twenty minutes in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentEvery site on the internet is cached by so many different services in so many places that an LLM scraping a site may not result in a 1:1 web request. In the case of Gemini, they already run a...Every site on the internet is cached by so many different services in so many places that an LLM scraping a site may not result in a 1:1 web request. In the case of Gemini, they already run a massive web crawler, so it would make sense to not make an additional web request each time AI prompted for it.
Aside from them I'd imagine all of the large AI companies run their own caching services for that purpose. At a certain scale it becomes more cost effective to cache the whole internet every day rather than paying for the extra bandwidth and other considerations that come from trillions of web requests per hour.
Regardless if if you think it's reasonable or not, it's impossible to enforce. Yes, you can force big manufacturers to build the technology into their consumer drones, but you can't force smaller ones to, especially ones based outside of the US, and you can't force independent builders to, which a huge percentage of hobbyist drone pilots are. Same goes for people into 3d printing as a hobby.