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California’s New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves
(blog.adafruit.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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If they were smarter, which they are not, they would look to place restrictions on the slicer software. I doubt the printers even have the capability to recognize what is being printed. Most of them are like move left 3 steps, extrude .1mm of filament, move right 1 step…. yada yada yada.
This is just insanely dumb. They are essentially trying to regulate technology they know very little about.
Slicers are open source so anyone can and will remove surveillance malware from it.
Require printers to check digital signatures on STL files and have only approved slicers add those
So we're back to placing restrictions on the printers...
That's not surprising, that's just what politicians do. Especially politicians who are 65+ years old and completely out of touch with technology.
I am reminded of a senator from Alaska trying to describe the internet as a series of tubes.
I mean.....replace the word "tubes" with "cables" and it's apparent it's not completely wrong. he's reasonably correct on an ELI5 level I would say.
That was way more accurate and intelligent than this. Like orders of magnitude.
Sen Ted Stevens, rest in piss.
"The internet would be a series of tubes if we rolled out fiber, but as the literal chairman of the Senate committee regulating the internet I'm somehow against that."
https://youtu.be/_cZC67wXUTs
This is a lost battle either way but a non-lost opportunity to acquire some power
Frankly it seems more like a mild inconvenience then actual prevention. I don't really care how smart a software gets, it can't predict and prevent all possible configurations of prints that could possibly be used to create functioning guns without being so overly restrictive that even perfectly innocent prints would get flagged constantly in which case they simple won't sell to normal users.
It would be a constant game of whack a mole with new creative designs, using multiple printers or with non-printed parts in the design. But no hardware or software that a smart enough engineer has their hands on is impervious to mods either, especially if they're motivated like someone seeking to produce firearms would be.
It's an overreaching law that will likely solve little to nothing, but might make 3d printers in general a bit more annoying to work with. "Sorry, you can't make your dice tower because they're a 16 percent change that it could be capable of firing an RPG out of the dragon's mouth. Please make your design at least 12 percent less gun-ish and try again."
Wow. I hadn’t even thought about some of these ways around this. Excellent points!!
This is why politicians should be automatically retired at 65. We shouldn't be allowing people who grew up without seatbelts to make any decisions involving technology.
FWIW, the person that proposed this legislation is 47: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Bauer-Kahan
Maybe have an exit poll, if they deserve retirement or must do community service to clean up the damage they have done...
So in other words, what else is new?
The danger if this passes isn't that someone will be able to successfully implement some manner of system for identifying gun parts which will, apparently, rely on pixie dust and magic. In reality this will effectively prohibit 3D printer sales in California entirely because compliance is literally impossible. And it'll and give overreaching cops and prosecutors yet another nonsense charge they can arbitrarily slap people with over "circumventing" this mystical technology which does not in fact exist if they, ye gods forbid, build their own printer.
It's the same horseshit rationale as the spent casing "microstamping" fantasy that legislators have been salivating about for decades. It doesn't work, it'll never work, but that's not going to stop them from wishing it does and therefore turning it into a defacto ban.
Keep in mind, California also has the precedent of their infamous approved handguns list, which notoriously does things like arbitrarily declaring that the black version of some model of gun is legal, but possession of the stainless version of the exact same gun is a felony. We're not dealing with people in possession of any type of rationality, here.
It seems they are rationally putting pressure upon those willing to own guns or 3d printers.
Like most of rifle shots fired in WWI didn't kill anyone and were meant for suppression.
Making you afraid of everything that can be a legal trap. Thus possibly dropping the thought of even owning this or that thing.
I haven't read the bill, but from the description I think you could actually get around this by building your own. They can't sell a printer that doesn't have this, and you can disable it, but it doesn't say here that you can't build your own that never had the software. In that case, I assume we'll see kits that are totally not meant to be assembled into printers with all their parts you need, and then unrelated documentation online somewhere on how to assemble it.
I was just talking with a friend about the microstamping idea. I’d never heard of it before.
You're surprised that law makers are trying to regulate things they know nothing about? Oh....oh I have like 2000 years worth of news for you....
Laws are much older than 2000 years. To be more specific, at least about double that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu
Not surprised. Just frustrated.