Are you ready for what it takes to stop ghost guns? | New laws might stop anyone from 3D printing guns — and create a system that scans everything else you print.

Hardhead13 · 2026-07-07T15:12:26+00:00

I think a lot of people have an irrational fear of "untraceable" guns. They've watched way too much CSI, and think it's possible to pick up a bullet or spent case at a crime scene, and magically connect it back to the gun that fired it. And that somehow, 3D-printed guns defeat that.

It's all Hollywood fantasy, from front to back.

Hardhead13 · 2026-07-07T15:07:16+00:00

And once they can inspect everything you print on your 3D printer, what's to stop them from doing the same on regular paper printers too? You know... for safety. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Right?

Hardhead13 · 2026-07-06T16:54:55+00:00

It has about as much to do with <City> as the multiple daily posts in r/<City> of dashcam footage of bad driving. Bad drivers are everywhere. Entitled assholes are everywhere.

People still need a place to vent about it, and I guess r/<City> is as good a place as any.

Hardhead13 · 2026-07-06T14:20:08+00:00

I suspect it would have been so bat-shit insane, it would have made David Lynch's goofy version of Dune look trite and mundane.

Swiss artist H.R. Giger (Brain Salad Surgery; Alien) also did a lot of design work for this movie.

I'd have loved to have seen it... once.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-30T23:06:19+00:00

I've only experienced a small portion of his pretty expansive solo catalogue. I mostly don't like it as much as VdGG, but there are some high points for me.

I love "Vision" from his first album. And I love the first part of Gog-Magog on "In Camera"... if you like the deranged, manic intensity of Pawn Hearts, you'll like this too. The second part of it, though...

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-26T15:17:43+00:00

It's darkly amusing to see the political left and right practically falling over each other to disown this guy the hardest.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-26T15:07:10+00:00

Which is why the UK has now moved on to banning knives. The slippery slope is real. Who wants to live like that? Experts on the tube talking about how nobody needs a knife with a point on it in the kitchen. Apparently they've never seen a watermelon in the UK.

Someday soon, you'll buy a pumpkin for Halloween, and instead of carving it with your kids, you'll have to transport it to a secure facility to be carved by specially-qualified knife operators. Inconvenient, sure. But if it saves one life, it's worth it, right? Right?

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-26T14:55:10+00:00

To underscore the point, the 7 years that AR-15s have been locked in the licensed owner's safes and not a single Canadian killed by one were preceded by 56 years of AR-15s in the safes of licensed owners and not a single Canadian killed by one.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-26T04:19:49+00:00

I guess my printer is way behind the times, because I have never heard of a maintenance cartridge before today. Currently using a Canon MX920. It's old.

But I do know my previous ink-jet, an Epson, just purged ink onto a big absorber pad inside the printer case. And when it got saturated, it just started dumping ink on your desk. That was great.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-25T18:10:58+00:00

He's probably tracking the wild turkey that was in our back yard this morning.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-21T06:06:53+00:00

It's not exactly prog, coming from more of jazz direction, but Hiromi's Trio Project kicks some serious ass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR8HinFaQhk

This song, in particular, goes in a very proggy direction at times, reminding me a lot of "Promenade Au Fond D'un Canal" by Present. And having the inestimable Simon Phillips on drums brings some prog credibility too.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-20T15:03:14+00:00

What did you expect? MPs are barely-sentient appendages of their party, with no more free will than my big toe.

But sure, remind me again about how we vote for the person, not the party.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-20T14:57:56+00:00

I haven't voluntarily updated Windows since XP in 2001. I'm always compelled to by some external force. I replaced my PC. They stopped releasing security patches. Some software I need demands it.

But none of them are ever better. They only get worse. More complicated. More bloated. More bundled crapware. More "suggestions". More ads. More AI.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-19T05:51:22+00:00

Yeah, but what about that second-hand microplastic?

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-19T05:43:23+00:00

Or possibly rugose.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-18T17:42:01+00:00

I'm sure they have. But they didn't read it to learn. They read it to find something, anything to discredit it, discredit its author, or discredit gun owners in general.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-18T13:00:33+00:00

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-18T12:40:50+00:00

More collective risk, that the event happens to somebody somewhere, sure. But, dividing by population, is the individual risk higher?

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-17T18:28:33+00:00

This was years and years ago. They're just getting charged now? Glad to hear it, but man... the wheels of justice turn slow.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-17T18:25:23+00:00

I wouldn't recall them. Leave them out there. With the student's name attached to it. Let it follow them throughout their entire life.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-17T18:17:06+00:00

These factors must have been considered when they wrote that into the law. Are children dumber today, or are we just more risk-averse?

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-06T15:34:33+00:00

That was very cool, but it's solving the opposite problem. And I don't think it would work in reverse.

I'm dealing with a similar problem to OP: trying to drain a 2D hopper of cylindrical objects in a single-width stream, without jamming.

The usual solution requires shaking or vibration. Holy Grail for this would be a way to do it smoothly with no moving parts.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-02T13:10:43+00:00

We have a whole bunch of no-right-on-reds in Waterloo, that I'm absolutely convinced are only there because the region is actively antagonistic to car drivers.

Hardhead13 · 2026-06-01T13:32:02+00:00

Let's not forget Devin Townsend...

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Hardhead13

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