I honestly don't know. I don't know if a taggant added to printer plastic would affect its use or durability. But since 3D printer plastic is sold in lots that can be used in multiple printers, all a taggant would do is tell the cops from which online store the plastic was purchased. That's a lot less specific than rifling marks, which can track down a certain make/model of gun, or the specific weapon used.

We had an ice storm in South Dakota that knocked out power for five days. I spent the first day huddling in sweaters and reading by candelight. After one cold night (17 F outside; about 45 F indoors) I hustled myself to a hotel. I might have stayed longer, but more ice was coming and I was worried about being stuck in a cold home.

I had plenty of food, including canned food that I could live on for weeks. I missed the internet (my UPS box provided 30 minutes of power; I conserved that), but I could live without connectivity. I had lots of batteries for flashlights and the weather radio. The limiting factor was the cold. If I had a generator to run my furnace, or a wood-burning stove, then I could have lasted until my fuel ran out. Without heat I lasted just over one day.

It's not worth it to me to be a survivalist; I live alone, with nobody who relies on me, and I like to pretend that civilization will endure. But I'm seriously thinking about getting a backup heat generator of some sort, just in case.

It takes some knowledge of metalworking and gunsmithing to make your own traditional gun. For a 3D printer all it takes is an internet connection. The authorities aren't worried about one or two crazy gunsmiths; they're worried about 1,000 disgruntled Joe Schmoes who just bought a 3D printer at Staples.

There are only a few different types of plastic available for 3D printers. Knowing that a bullet was fired out of a gun made with ABS won't help if /all/ the 3D printed guns use ABS plastic.

The reason a 3D printed gun is a big deal is because it cannot be tracked. Normal weapons made for consumers and the military have unique tracking characteristics such as the number of rifle ridges in the barrel, the position of the firing pin, etc. These signatures can be used by law enforcement to track down the type of weapon used in a crime -- if not the exact brand and model, then at least the approximate style and manufacture of the gun. The forensic marks on a bullet can be compared to rounds fired out of an individual weapon to prove whether that weapon was used to commit a crime in question.

Now we're entering a world where anybody can create a gun in secret with no identifying marks and then melt it down after use. Law enforcement authorities are justifiably freaking out over this. But nobody said that the police had a right to have easy jobs...

For a SFW (and non-Tumblr) example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nVjxIKgaGc .

Nopony breaks a Pinkie promise. Or else.

What a load of bullshit. The government isn't supposed to fear us, you twit, and to be brutally honest, it's that attitude that has gotten us into such the mess we're in today. After all, how far a leap is it from "government is supposed to fear us" to "if only someone would bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City or an Olympic venue in Atlanta, that would show 'em"?

The government is supposed to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the country. When some dictator stages a military coup d'état against his government, how well is that government able to provide for the common defense and general welfare? It's impossible for a government that fears its citizenry to fulfill that mandate. It's also utterly moronic to espouse rule by physical intimidation, which is exactly what you're supporting when you propagate this idiotic notion that people should have guns to keep government in check.

A little anecdote I like to relate to "government is supposed to fear us" twits:

On April 12, 2009, three Navy SEALs shot and killed three Somali pirates holding Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama hostage. They had parachuted in two days before, and were set up on the fantail of the U.S.S. Bainbridge, a destroyer dispatched to handle the situation. The pirates were on a lifeboat being towed over 75 feet behind the Bainbridge. The SEALs had been manning their sniper rifles for over 24 hours straight, and both boats were bobbing up and down. Three simultaneous shots were taken, and there were three direct hits in the heads of each of the pirates. Captain Phillips was successfully rescued without injury.

I bring this up for a couple of reasons. First, because Navy SEALs are badass, and you do not want to mess with them. But mostly because you need to understand that if the government wants you dead, you are going to be dead. You will be a red splatter on the wall before you even have the chance to get your military-grade weaponry.

Several times since the Revolutionary War, nutcases have tried to rise up in armed resistance to the U.S. government. The largest such rebellion took place between 1861 and 1865. You would have thought that that would have settled the matter once and for all, but no, even almost 150 years later, we still have people romanticizing revolutions trying to convince others that overthrowing the U.S. government via armed conflict is a good idea, or that the U.S. government is even remotely concerned about the possibility; thus we end up with incidents like Ruby Ridge and Waco. So let me break it down to you really simple-like: 1) Armed revolt against the U.S. government by U.S. citizens will never work, and 2) if you try, you will be quickly dispatched with no matter how many guns you own.

And personally, I'm glad. Unlike apparently you, I realize that we need government to maintain our society. If someone burns down my house or murders someone in my family, I don't want the government to be afraid to arrest and prosecute the guy who did it because he has a lot of guns, that's the height of idiocy. If you want a haven where there is little to no government interference, you should move to Somalia. There's practically no government there past the "might makes right" rules imposed by local warlords. If you have a lot of guns, you have a lot of power. If someone commits some perceived injustice against you, there's nothing stopping you from using your resources to carry out justice in whatever way you want. As an added bonus, you wouldn't have to pay taxes. Of course, you do have to worry about your warlord neighbors getting jealous of your stuff and, if they have more guns and mercenaries than you do, coming over and taking it. But hey, at least you can go down in a blaze of glory knowing that you and your family are dying without the benefit of government helping you with your personal protection or interfering with your ability to acquire lots of guns and that the only limit you have on what kind you can buy is how much money you have.

Plus, all of this "government is supposed to fear us" talk has me wondering, who exactly do you consider to be "us"? You sure as hell aren't speaking for me. You are presumably aware that over 90% of people support universal background checks? A good majority of them support stricter gun laws? Hell, even the headline of this submission is "Majority of Americans Would Ban 3D-Printing Guns at Home". So by "us", I can only assume that you don't mean a majority of the American people. Instead, you're referring to the minority; depending on exactly which issue you're referring to, a minority that varies from tiny to at best somewhat small. Funny how people like you think that government should only protect your interests, not the common defense or the general welfare of the country.

I hate to burst your little bubble, but it doesn't work that way. Mr. Random Anonymous Coward doesn't get to dictate to the rest of us through a campaign of fear and intimidation what the agenda of our government is. If you don't like it, then try to elect different people to set a different agenda. But the second you take action to instill fear in other people for their physical safety to advance your political agenda or to coerce the government into doing your bidding, that doesn't make you a patriot, it makes you a terrorist. Furthermore, you have exactly zero room to try to frame our government as a tyranny, because what you're espousing is a tyranny--just one that caters to your whims instead of someone else's.

People like you boggle my mind. I wish that for one year, you would live in a place where there is a real totalitarian government, somewhere like North Korea. Then for a year, live in a place where there is no government, like Somalia. Only then, I'm convinced, will you ever realize the tripe that you're spewing is completely impractical and immoral. Only then will you realize that the best government is a happy medium, one in which neither the government fears us nor we fear the government, but we work together as a team to ensure our common defense and promote our general welfare, one in which the citizens realize that they're not always going to get what they want, one in which people realize that no freedoms come completely without limit and that is not a slippery slope into communism/socialism/whatever evil buzzword you pretend it is.

But in the meantime, I highly suggest you grow the hell up and stop being such an insufferable tool, and to stop getting your political thoughts off of bumper stickers and from right-wing talk radio hosts.

I use lynx because my workplace blocks most websites that I like to peruse through the day. (They don't block Slashdot, though, which is why I'm here so often.) I need SSH for my job so they reluctantly opened a hole for it, and I then SSH out to my linux shell, start up lynx and browse the news.

I can't even list all the problems at work that I've magically fixed with perl.

Yes, I'm stubborn, yes, I'm regressive. But the old tools give me more power than the newfangled stuff, because the new stuff is often simplified to the point of uselessness or locked down by bureaucracy. There is magic in things that are old and wild.

The problem might not be wear and tear, it might be ice forming somewhere in the wheel system. Normal ice can be evaporated away by heating up the instrument, but when I say 'ice', I mean deposits of some material -- vaporized rubber, outgassing paint, or even neutron spalling. All of those could add friction to the system, can't be easily removed, and may have nothing to do with the bearings.

They might be, but it wouldn't matter. The friction is probably due to ice forming on the reaction wheel or its axle. Ice will eventually clog up even a mag-lev system. Space is just a difficult place to keep mechanisms working.

In TFA: [Tesla] has plans to build its first showroom in the state next year.

In North Carolina they've got nothing, just a web presence. No overhead. Whether that means they're competing unfairly or not is for the capitalists and their lawyers to work out.

They're selling their cars over the internet. There is no sales force, there are no vendors. The entire nationwide sales operation could be run by one guy with a php script. (But hopefully they have a bit more than that.) Welcome to the future.

FTFAccuracy

(\ Brohoof back at ya.

Yes, it's a silly fandom for a kid's show. But it's an amazing community unlike any I've seen on the internet -- and I've seen a lot. The creativity and generosity of this fandom is off the charts, and that's the kind of crowd with whom I'm proud to associate.