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damoncalion “Just remove the duck” (2013)

I think that the point is more that everyone has bouts of incompetence now and then. Sure, some more than others, but it happens to the best of us. Doing something intentionally stupid and manipulative in the name of competence seems counter productive if not paradoxical. It also smells of narcissism and an inability to look at what might be a larger picture.

That's my experience with the type of person who tends to pull this sort of thing.

damoncalion “Just remove the duck” (2013)

AKA the Gunny Hartman doctrine: "If it wasn't for dickheads like you, there wouldn't be any thievery in this world, would there?"

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

Well, I guess they'd have to ask. But the point is that they are very much aware that they currently ship large quantities of guns, gun parts, and ammunition to unlicensed people (legally) every single day.

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

It's overkill. Completing a lower is doable with normal shop tools. DD is making a point, not a product.

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

Sort of irrelevant if it is inevitable and can't be controlled, no? It's an interesting topic, and again, goes well beyond arms. I'm not saying what I think of it one way or the other, just describing the philosophy of the guys behind this.

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

But that just says that it is legal according to the BATFE - you can't use a tool to manufacture firearms unlicensed (or in this grey area, to complete someone's 80% receiver for them). That's a legitimate interpretation of an existing law - they're just saying you can't set up a service to finish up lowers for people - they define that as manufacturing. They'd change their tune if the smith was licensed to manufacture and added serial numbers.

I'm unaware of anything that regulates machinery used to make guns, which until about a year ago, was general purpose machine tools (and still is for practical purposes - these Ghostgunner things are political art, not machine tools). I think people WANT to be able to say "that's illegal, or it might be". But it's just not. Not yet. (as far as I know, I can be convinced if someone shows me a law).

I won't argue that the BATFE hasn't done illegal things in the past, and probably will in the future, but as far as I can tell, this is pretty black and white.

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

But I can point to a law that allows them to regulate M855, or at least gives them the wiggle room. I'm aware of no such law that even hints at their ability to regulate machine technology.

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

Think bigger and longer-term. He's not talking about guns, but removing the ability of governments to regulate anything physical. Could you print or cast propellants and make caseless ammo? I bet with some effort you could. Could you distribute that ability in a way that would be utterly impractical to control by any government? Sure.

He's demonstrated the concept with simple things like gun magazines. Theoretically, they're now out of reach of the government to control. Add in more time and better technology, and this concept is potentially a big deal for all manner of things. Interesting to think about at least.

Guns are just a current flash point that it's easy for people to get their heads around. But who knows what tomorrow will bring that governments will try to control only to find themselves unable to do so due to unskilled, cheaply available, distributed manufacturing capability?

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

It is within the power of the ATF to rule that a CNC mill that is pre-loaded with the ability to convert an partially finished receiver into a finished receiver, is a controlled item.

Are you sure about that? Under what law?

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

Wilson is in it for the PR, not the guns. He's an interesting fellow. It would defeat his stated purpose if he didn't tell anyone.

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

If you read up on the guy, that's not what he wants. He doesn't care about guns. He just wants to put manufacturing technology beyond the reach of the law. He's got a bit of an anarchist bent. Guns are just the means to his end - a convenient PR vehicle. In other words, he sort of wants people to talk about banning this stuff.

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

They absolutely know. You have to pay a hazmat fee on the gunpoweder/ammo, for example, and when you're shipping boxes out of a gun parts retailer, guess what? Those boxes contain gun parts. The PR flunky is either lying or totally misinformed - I'm guessing the latter.

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

True, but lets not pretend this is a legal question. Given that UPS will ship 8 pound jugs of gunpowder to unlicensed individuals every day of the week and twice on Sunday, I have a hard time believing they have some sort of philosophical objection to guns. (I have personally shipped a gun legally via UPS).

So I'm going to conclude the real issue is fear. Fear of governmental overreach and all the hassles it can bring.

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

Except firearm construction is totally legal.

damoncalion FedEx and UPS Refuse to Ship a Digital Mill That Can Make Untraceable Guns

The UPS guy has no idea what he's talking about. Literally millions of gun parts are shipped to non-FFL holders (aka consumers) by UPS. As are live ammunition, powder and primers. They'll also ship actual guns both to and from non-licensed individuals as long as there is an FFL on one end. (A gunsmith is allowed to mail your gun back to you - although not to sell via mail order).

damoncalion Marijuana may be even safer than previously thought, researchers say

Anyone who thinks Americans drive poorly/without care ought to take a trip to somewhere like Vietnam. Holy crap, that's a free for all.

damoncalion Ask HN: Do Google ads work for user acquisition?

It works with competitors, but it's really easy to find products with keywords dominated by expensive enterprise versions who overspend on AdWords, rendering it ineffective for smaller competitors. Just the way it is.

damoncalion How a Handgun Works: 1911 .45

unless you put huge amounts of effort into maintaining precise tolerances

damoncalion How a Handgun Works: 1911 .45

1911's are by modern standards sloppy, inaccurate and unreliable unless you put huge amounts of effort into maintaining precise tolerances. Modern designs (Glock, et al.) have far fewer components, and much less trouble with the tolerance stack ups that plague the 1911.

That said, it's a hell of a design to still be in use 100+ years later.

damoncalion How a Handgun Works: 1911 .45

I never understood that either (and I love guns). However, they are different things, and you do run into situations where imprecise language is confusing. If you want to load you clip with your clip, for example. Loading you magazine with your clip, on the other hand, is immediately clear. "Grab a few clips of ammo" has a distinctly different meaning than "Grab a few magazines of ammo" in some contexts.

But honestly, I think it has more to do with ham-fisted and ignorant attempts by lawmakers to ban guns. The amount of technical illiteracy that litters gun laws is frustrating in the extreme to people who have to actually comply with those laws. Clip/magazine snobbery is just a way of venting that frustration.

damoncalion Hubble's star refuses to fade

Yeah - I take it back - I spoke too quickly. You can certainly launch large satellites with rockets. I was too focused on Hubble specifically.

That said, I remain deeply skeptical of the idea of being able to do so cost effectively or in a way that allowed for iteration and development of the systems. That's a lot of eggs in one basket to make 4 duplicates - they'd all fail in the same ways (which Hubble did early and often) and they'd be space junk in a heartbeat. You'd also want different cameras, which would have different requirements, etc. Once the contractors got a hold of that, they'd wind up 4 separate projects costing a fortune, and you'd be right back where you started, except without the budget. Keep in mind how long it took to build the HST. A servicing mission turned around in about 3 years.

damoncalion Ask HN: How do your enterprise customers pay you?

Whatever the contract says. But if you have a long term deal, I would recommend quarterly, or preferably annual billing. Dealing with checks is a pain. In my experience, big co's are no more or less likely to pay on time than anyone else. But they don't tend to pay early.

If it's small recurring billing, just have them use a credit card. Even then, annual billing is preferred - it cuts down on the requests for invoices from their accounting departments in addition to the obvious cash flow advantages of collecting a year up front.

damoncalion Hubble's star refuses to fade

You bring up an interesting point regarding astronaut safety. It's interesting to me because I have the polar opposite opinion. This will sound cold, but astronauts are basically expendable. We can expect a small percentage of them to die. Much like in the military, the mission takes priority over safety, which comes second.

Given that we have no shortage of astronauts willing to accept that, and that we do put a ton of effort into their safety, I have no qualms whatsoever pushing the limits of what is possible. I've met a lot of astronauts - I don't recall meeting a single one who didn't fully understand how dangerous the work is. It's not for everyone. Personally, I think they're nuts to take that risk for what amounts to floating around in a stinky can for a few days, punctuated by brief stints of mechanic duty.

This always struck me as a major disconnect between the brass at NASA and the engineers. The higher up the chain you went, the more concerned with safety, politics, and perception they were, and the less concerned with what I would say the true goals of the space program are - the actual exploration of space.

damoncalion Hubble's star refuses to fade

What you're saying isn't crazy. I guess I don't have a lot of faith in their estimates. NICMOS was supposed to last something like 4 years if I remember correctly. It died in about two. A whole slew of gyros failed, degrading performance, and jacking up schedules so we could replace them. COSTAR is a pretty obvious failure that wasn't fully recovered from (COSTAR took up one of four slots that were meant for instruments). Lots of stuff goes wrong. But maybe they could have designed a Hubble-class telescope that would last ten years back then. I don't know for sure. My gut says the first one would have been a piece of crap with a bad mirror and shitty gyros. That's a lot of work to throw away.

Either way, would launching three (or six or whatever) of those on rockets really have been cheaper than the Hubble in terms of science/dollar? I have some serious doubts. Throw in the politics and overhead of three major missions, and you're talking big numbers.

And that ignores the intrinsic value of manned missions for their own sake - you must do them to get good at them. There are people who say that we should never do a manned mission, and that all the data we want to collect can be had by unmanned satellites and whatnot. While it may be very close to true, that's a very short-sighted point of view in my opinion.

damoncalion Hubble's star refuses to fade

Fair point on launching big stuff - I suppose that a Hubble derivative could have been designed to work with one of the bigger rockets. But a hoped for lifespan of 10 years is not even close to what you get out of Hubble servicing missions. The ability to improve and repair a working telescope is not without value. Things go wrong all the time with these instruments. No serviceability = higher risk.

You can indeed adapt your designs for unmanned launches and get a good life span out of them, but there are significant tradeoffs to doing so that impact the mission.

Further, there is value in manned missions just because. How are we to gain experience operating in space without sending people there?

damoncalion Hubble's star refuses to fade

Every decision at NASA is political - it's a government entity (look up Triana - that's another one I worked on. It's laughably ridiculous). But you're grossly oversimplifying. There isn't a prayer in heaven that would keep Hubble alive for 10 years on its own. Hubble made sense as a shuttle payload for a lot of reasons. I'm sure someone could have cooked up alternatives, but the one we got obviously did some good.

damoncalion Hubble's star refuses to fade

How would you have gotten even one HST sized telescope into orbit without a manned mission? Do you know what life span of a Hubble would have been if it were not serviceable? Your approach would have cost more, not less. More manned fights, more time consuming, expensive design and construction. Believe it or not, they thought about this stuff.

damoncalion Hubble's star refuses to fade

This is just not true. I worked on three of those servicing missions as an engineer. They were required to keep HST running and to enhance it's capability. Adding COSTAR to fix the mirror fuckup was one tiny piece of the servicing missions.

damoncalion An alloy of iron and aluminium is as good as titanium, at a tenth of the cost

Just the opposite. 1.2cm vs 1cm might be a world of difference. And if weight is a concern, you might be stuck with a 1cm tube, which might be less stiff than the 1.2 cm tube even if it's made out of a stiffer material.

The idea is that design is material dependent. You can't assume you can just swap out parts for lighter/stronger/stiffer parts and still have everything work.

damoncalion An alloy of iron and aluminium is as good as titanium, at a tenth of the cost

It's been years since I worked in the industry so I don't know anyone, but I did spend a couple years designing composite structures and testing the materials. The basics of composites are learned in undergrad mechanical engineering, and you can generally apply them in real life. It's not that complicated. Where composites get tricky is in the details - de-lamination, manufacturing nits, that sort of thing. I would look at engineering schools - someone in a masters program with an interest in composites would get you quite a bit of useful knowledge. Structural composites get tricky, though. Things that are easy with metal (for example, bolting parts together) get hard with composites, and you really have to think hard or you give up all the benefits of composites when you have to engineer around their limitations.