9 ms·

When nearly any service, technology, or community hits an eternal September critical mass, there's going to be people who don't adhere to the "don't be a dick"

• pen2l 11y ago
  I can see drones hitting that... I can envision lots of drones in the sky, and some falling down and hurting someone, but 3d printing? Who could ever be pissed off about that? 3d printing is very akin to a molding-clay hobby, I just can't conceive of any harm done through 3d printing. (Hobby CNC milling is getting big these days... now that I can imagine being dangerous/too noisy, but even those complaints are small)
  • NathanKP 11y ago
    There is already FUD about 3D printing being used to create untraceable weapons for criminals.
    • quasse 11y ago
      Lathes should also be outlawed, they've had the capability to create untraceable weapons for decades!
      • untog 11y ago
        You can't make a handgun with a lathe, though. Look, I get the point - excessive regulation is silly. But the idea of a 3D printed gun is without comparison in today's society.
        • pen2l 11y ago
          It's not without comparison in today's society. Because, well, guns exist. Equipment that gun manufacturers use (which is probably a combination of lathe machines, milling machines, etc.) are not illegal for someone to have. There is probably regulation that those big machines have to be installed in your facility to some codes, but nothing that a normal person couldn't have have if they had the will and the money. Anyway, that said, I think you're wrong factually too -- 5-axis milling machines have existed for a long time and they can create practically anything a 3d printer can (with much, much higher resolution if you've got the money).
          • untog 11y ago
            This is going down a needlessly technical route. The overarching point is that it's possible to create something that is normally sold in a regulated, tightly controlled setting. Now, either everyone should be allowed a gun without background checks etc., or lathes/3D printers/whatever that can manufacture a gun are a problem.
            • salgernon 11y ago
              More likely, the 3d printed gun fanatics will be evolving themselves out of the gene pool as their printed receivers fail to contain the charge and they all wind up with stumps for hands or worse.
          • batbomb 11y ago
            The difference is the learning curve and cost. It was the same thing in 1993, connected computers existed for a long time before that, but they were pricy and there was a steeper learning curve in the 80s to getting online. Even if the learning curve itself didn't drop, it's easier to surmount the learning curve when there is a critical mass. With computers, prices dropped and the learning curve wasn't much of an issue anymore. CNC Mills and lathes still require a much greater skill and up-front cost than a 3D printer needs. With CNC machines, there's usually still an additional necessary step required to turn a model into a tool path, based on your machines. So you still have a learning curve no matter which way you cut it (pun intended). I don't think 3D printing will be a viable way to distributively mass-produce weapons, it's the fact that somebody already has been able to produce functional weapons with 3D printing, and it's comparatively much easier buying a $10K mill and generating tool paths.
    • pdpi 11y ago
      "FUD". So you think that the worries are unwarranted?
      • spacemanmatt 11y ago
        "FUD" is a totally loaded term. Unwarranted doubt is pretty much exactly what is meant.
  • sologoub 11y ago
    As, @NathanKP said, there's the gun debate, but there's also copyright (and other IP) debate as well, which I feel is far more dangerous to the technology because there is a lot more money behind that and seriously entrenched interests. Instead of looking at it as a licensing opportunity, they are doing the same as music industry did with every new recording medium that came about.
  • hkarthik 11y ago
    3D printing will have a "Napster" moment where some technology comes along and raises awareness to the mainstream level, and suddenly all the big IP holders will be up in arms and come after that technology. But by then it will be too late, and the true disruption will happen and change everything about manufacturing small goods at home.
    • pen2l 11y ago
      I'm not sure if it'll have a Napster moment, or a moment quite like Napster. Napster was about having specific songs that other people made. Most of the makers in the 3d printing scene are not exactly printing from cad files stolen from manufacturers, they're building the models themselves with Autodesk software and Solidworks and Blender and so on. So there isn't going to be any day in which a manufacturer sues little folks to get money like companies were and still are able to do, because the manufacturer didn't create it, or have any part in creating it.
      • bryondowd 11y ago
        I think he was talking about objects that have value because of their name/brand. Someone could probably print little Jedi action figures far cheaper than they cost in the store, because in the store you're paying for the IP, not just the plastic or the design work. Even if I'm designing my ripoff action figure myself, I'm modeling it after one I see in the store.
      • toomuchtodo 11y ago
        > Most of the makers in the 3d printing scene are not exactly printing from cad files stolen from manufacturers, they're building the models themselves with Autodesk software and Solidworks and Blender and so on. So there isn't going to be any day in which a manufacturer sues little folks to get money like companies were and still are able to do, because the manufacturer didn't create it, or have any part in creating it. New sensors coming down the pipeline will allow your smartphone camera to image objects down to micron resolutions from ~1 meter away. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2906232/camera-chip-could-turn-phones-into-3d-scanners.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2906232/camera-chip-could-tur...
  • blackkettle 11y ago
    drones will really 'hit that' when they shrink to the size of a large [fairly quiet] bug, and the ML gets good enough to follow someone around without incident... yikes.
  • URSpider94 11y ago
    3D printing isn't going to harm the neighbors. It has the potential to disrupt existing product development and manufacturing economics if people can easily and accurately create copies of physical objects at home. If 3D printing becomes common, we will have to re-think how we regulate intellectual property around the design of phyiscal objects, in the same way that digital music and cinema have forced us to re-think how we pay for and get paid for those goods.
    • jarrettc 11y ago
      I'm skeptical that 3d printed objects could replace very much of what we now obtain from factories. In industrial design, the materials and fabrication process are (supposed to be) selected very carefully with an eye towards cost, physical properties, chemical properties, etc. Even my phone case, which might be the simplest product I own, was made not just from any old plastic, but from a very particular plastic that's optimized for phone cases. Whereas with 3d printing, we're currently stuck with a kind of plastic that's optimized for compatibility with a 3d printer. It's unclear whether we'll ever be able to print from other, better plastics. And that's saying nothing of other materials like steel, glass, and ceramic, which are often necessary in useful consumer products.
  • snarfy 11y ago
    http://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/IMG_1259_zps950e6e59.jpg http://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/IMG_1259_zps95... I'm not sure I'd want an amateur's DIY 3d printer in a 40 story apartment building. These things are usually left running unattended overnight.
• ghaff 11y ago
  It's also just a scale thing. Activities that most people are OK with as a occasional and informal person-to-person thing turns into something else entirely when "there's an app for that."
  • zippergz 11y ago
    Yes. When I lived in an apartment building, I wouldn't have cared if one of my neighbors occasionally rented out their spare bedroom to a friend of a friend. But when half of the units in the building are renting out rooms, and some of them are 100% dedicated to short-term rentals, it gets to be too much. In other words, ruining it for everyone...
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
      • refurb 11y ago
        I'm confused.. tragedy of the commons is when nobody owns something thus nobody takes care of it. Folks who rent on AirBnB either own it or have defacto control over it. This isn't an example of tragedy of the commons at all.
        • dragonwriter 11y ago
          > I'm confused.. tragedy of the commons is when nobody owns something thus nobody takes care of it. "Tragedy of the commons" is a common name for a multiparty game that bears some relation to the two party Prisoner's Dilemma, wherein each party has a dominant strategy of defection, despite the fact that the resulting universal defection has a lower utility for all parties than universal cooperation would. (In more economic than game-theory terms, this is a situation where cooperation has an internalized cost and an externalized benefit, and the reverse is true for defection.) The situation where nobody owns exclusive rights to common grazing land and thus everyone overgrazes their sheep on it and wrecks it, resulting in harm for everyone, is the typical illustrative example from which the name is drawn, but the "Tragedy of the Commons" doesn't refer exclusively to the situation where waste results from the absence of exclusive rights.
• TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Problem with Uber is not users or drivers. It's the Uber upper management itself that's being dicks. Scale or lack of it won't make a difference here, unfortunately.
• mirimir 11y ago
  What externality about 3D printing did you have in mind? Sorry about going off-topic.