gun nutcases

[Karl]

Our thread's gotten a little long, and it's hard for me to understand
what to trim at this point.  Feel free to trim out quoted sections,
even all of them, if you want.

On Mon, Dec 7, 2020 at 8:30 PM Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0 <punks at tfwno.gf> wrote:
>
>
>
> > >         You probably could get a working device and reverse engineer it while running, but that's a lot of work.
> >
> > I feel like this point you make is a good example of a way we tend to
> > move towards disagreement.
> >
> > I was a software developer and inventor as a child.  I suspect many
> > others on this list were too.  So, when I think of something
> > complicated, I don't think of it as a lot of work.  I think of how it
> > could be automated with code and robots (simply because that used to
> > be my skill), to make it easy for everyone.  When you make new things,
> > you do the work once, and then people can benefit from that work for a
> > long time.
>
>
>         Yes that is true, but there's a practical side to it. I bet the 'supply' of microcontrollers coming from dumpsters is pretty variable. You might be able to get a sizable amount of some particular model if you manage to get it from some particular mass produced item and so make the reverse engineering  effort worthwhile,  but that's different from randomly picking something out of the trash and being able to use it.

There's some truth to that but it seems mostly an organisation issue
to me.  We could run the whole world off of the discarded
microcontrollers from a decade ago.  The factories and coding
communities are in a feedback loop driven by profit and marketing,
where they are remaking the same devices with higher specs, throwing
out the old ones, and then writing more bloated code to run on the
newer fast ones, so that they will have the same degree of human
satisfaction as before.

So, like, once you have enough microcontrollers, which a single
landfill could likely provide, you can often just keep reusing them
for what you need.

> > So, if somebody was struggling with an issue, when I was a teenager, I
> > would make a new tool, to solve the issue.  That became really normal
> > for me.
> >
> > Because of my personal history, which I suspect to be common on this
> > list, I wouldn't consider it being a lot of work to reverse engineer a
> > chip, if I knew a way to do it, to be a problem.  I know there are
> > many people who would desire to do it for fun, and once the problem is
> > solved, everybody benefits.
>
>
>         Fact remains, it is a lot of work, so it's less likely to be done. It requires specialized knowledge and equipment so the number of people who could do it is  small.

Enter the makerspaces and hackerspaces, where people share these
skills with the masses.  Some of these places are entirely free.  Some
charge a membership fee, but may waive it if you offer trainings to
the public.

> > That philosophy is really core.  For free communities, it's pretty
> > reasonable to plan on doing a bunch of wild new, really hard things.
>
>
>         That is true, but it's different from "yeah 3d printers! yeah 'printed' guns! yeah...now what?"

As a targeted left-wing ex-activist, I'm surrounded by anti-gun
marketing and have persistent fear of escalating myself on the
terrorist watchlist (which I expect I am already at a permanent,
well-defined spot on).  Printed guns scare me for both of those
reasons.

3D printers and other consumer prototyping devices, on the other hand,
seem to be for moving industry out of the factories, similar to how CD
burners made USB drives.

When 2D copy machines and printers happened, so did community
literature.  Previously, powerful people controlled everything that
was printed.

> > I looked briefly for the article where hackers imaged the layers of
> > chips and mapped all the semiconductors inside them, but I didn't find
> > it.  It provided for extraction of private keys.
>
>
>         Oh I've seen old articles about code being extracted from read protected pic microcontrollers. I bet it's a lot harder or impossible to do with 'modern' chips. (unless of course you are intel)

It was harder then too.  It was still done.  I guess we're arguing a
little here.  I think you hilight the argument better below.

> > >         https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/06/hackers-farmers-and-doctors-unite-support-for-right-to-repair-laws-slowly-grows/
> > >
> > >         notice that the de facto and legal situation is that technofascists have almost completely control. And the proposed way to 'fix' the problem is to try to patch the technofascist legal system.
> >
> > The idea of making repairing stuff illegal is as ludicrous as the
> > ownership of land.
>
>
>         Ownership of land is (a lot) less ludicrous than so called 'intelectual property' (HEY JIM BELL).
>
>         At any rate, 'intellectual property' makes it hard for stuff to be repaired and it makes it outright 'illegal' in some cases.

Ludicrous.  The only way you can tell you reverse engineered the chip
is by the fact that you repaired it.

In my country all the land we "own" had people killed to make way for
the "owners".  We make progress on healing that.  Previously the
people who lived on it, were indeed responsible for it.

Similarly, these chip manufacturers don't seem to be in the slightest
taking responsibility for the impact of everyone using their chips.
We need the ability to sway that.

>         My point here is that the problem is a political problem and that technical workarounds don't really solve the underlying political problem.

It's a human problem.

> > There are going to be people who just aren't going
> > to respect it, because it's a basic survival thing for them.
>
>
>
> > > > >         I've found a few microcontrollers but they are useless without manuals, even if the fuses were not blown.
> > > >
> > > > I found manuals on the website of the chip manufacturer.  I was able
> > > > to order more chips from them, to experiment with, too, for
> > > > cents-per-chip.
> > >
> > >
> > >         All the mictrocontrollers I use were bought first hand. At least here there's no 'natural', dumpster-located source for them.
> >
> > I think we were discussing the idea of pulling them from or using them
> > in discarded devices, which I think is hard now because the tooling
> > isn't common.
>
>
>         The problem for me isn't tooling but actually getting a few pieces of any particular micro. I guess in the 'developed' world there's a lot more electronic garbage so it may be easier to find a 'supply' of a particular product that has a particular, documented micro. But still, if you want sizeable amounts of a particular component, it may not be easy to 'source' it from random trash.

The solving of this problem was halted.  It's not easy at the moment.
But you can pull these out of any electronic device.  You're clearly
posting with one.  Does it have an FCC number?  Are you able to share
a photograph of its mainboard?  NOTE: I am not "authorised" to help
repurpose, devices because a computer has me associated with
terrorism.  But somebody else could chime in and help, too.  People
like these tend to be pretty excited by hacking projects.

On the other hand, what you say is totally true.  There are so many
chips out there that every one you recover is pretty different.  You'd
need to have hacking as your life pleasure, to make significant
progress on that problem.

> > > > > > but I understand that there is much better
> > > > > > material available on how, nowadays 7 years later.
> >
> > This quote you left was about glitching blown fuses to repurpose
> > microcontrollers from other devices.
> >
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >         Actually as times goes by stuff gets more and more miniaturized and integrated...and becomes un-recyclable.
> >
> > I didn't realise your reply wasn't really related to the quote.
>
>
>         ....not sure if you misread something ?

Maybe I did.  Maybe this is why we get into arguments more.  It sounds
like we have different beliefs and experiences about something.

As far as I knew, absolutely everything is recyclable.  We have a lot
of recycling facilities here.  I heard a story once of our how the
aboriginals of my land would take the shards from broken bottles of
the settlers (very dangerous things to leave on a landscape), knap
them into arrowheads, and fire them back at them.  Their approaches
are peaceful nowadays.

> > > > Very precise tools needed eventually.
> > >
> > >
> > >         the kind of tools that you won't find on a dumpster - the kind on tools that only govcorp has.
> >
> > This goes back to being a hobby inventor as a child.  We can build
> > these tools, if we want to.  Govcorp makes them incredibly
> > inefficiently, wasting resources in order to try to make
> > set-and-forget-profit-factories.  All these tools started as
> > prototypes made by researchers and hobbyists, in small spaces,
> > designed for the task at hand.
>
>
>         True to some degree but you're not going to easily build (if at all) something like a  high frequency oscillocope in your garage.

Why not?  I have an rtl2832u tv tuner chip that samples at ungodly high rates.

> > I don't know what kind of makerspace experience you have.  Here in the
> > USA, you can find a metal mill that can cut metal precisely down to
> > thousandths of an inch, for free, because they are left over from old
> > wars.
>
>
>         Well that pretty much proves my point? High precision equipment comes from govcorp, in this case, the worst of govcorp, the US MIC. You get the 'cheap' mill ONLY because 'they' feel like throwing it away. And wait, the most likely reason they throw it away is so that the govt can buy new mills that are 10x more expensive than they should be. In a word, corruption.

Sure, but the old mill they threw out half a century ago still works
fine to make tools to replace govcorp with, and there are still so
many of these mills that nobody knows how to discard them.

The issue with the mills was that they were incredibly heavy.  So you
might even have been able to get paid to take one away.  (they are
still around, I am speaking in the past tense because of the channel
via which I am sharing the information.)

> > > > Of course, the scientific community/ies are thinking about all this
> > > > stuff with a lot of potential wise deliberation.  Their power is just
> > > > filtered by the journals, funders, institutions, and communities they
> > > > work with.
> > >
> > >
> > >         I don't think that's the case. The vast majority of members of the 'scientific community' are evil to the core assholes who know pretty well what they are doing.
> >
> > Having spoken and worked with these people, what you say seems
> > _mostly_ false to me, here, and it's surprising to me if you believe
> > it.  Very few people seem to believe what you say here, to me.  I'm
> > curious why you believe it.
>
>
>         I believe they are evil to the core because what they do is evil to the core. The 'scientific community' are the technocrats in our lovely technocracy.

The luddite in me hugs you closely, but then my scientist takes over ...

Do you even consider evil, the people who have spent their lives
studying things like appropriate humanitarian aid and ecological
stewardship?

I prefer pursuing knowledge via human story than science.  How do you
like learning new things in a society, rather than with science?

> > > > >         Yeah, I don't disagree with the concept, but it's easier said than done.
> > > >
> > > > The concept of the puppet or of the printer?
> > >
> > >
> > >         The concept/idea of recycling electronic devices.
> >
> > Puppet says: learning to recycle electronics is better than throwing
> > them out and playing video games.
>
>
>         yeah. And don't throw away your video games. Recycle them too.

Here you hilight our disagreement well.  I'll have to think on this.

I can't stand how video games waste time without any appropriate
relation.  I hate them, I want them thrown out.  Mostly because they
are being so harmful.  I was addicted to them, and didn't know how to
not be.

That harmfulness-reason is true of many other things.  Things we are discussing.

> > > > Maybe I see where you're coming from better.  3d printers are used by
> > > > people who don't need them, for fun.  So it's hard to use them where
> > > > the concept would be needed; the concept isn't reasonably designed for
> > > > a real-world community.  They're more like a daydream that is
> > > > discovering the value of helpfulness but hasn't found it yet.
> > >
> > >
> > >         What I was objecting to is the original claim
> > >
> > >         "this link helps technophiles make unlimited unregulated  firearms"
> > >
> > >         because while that's more or less technically true, it doesn't imply any kind of increased political freedom (which is ultimately what I care about).
> >
> > I'm not sure what you mean by "political freedom" here.  For
> > technophiles or others?
>
>
>         Political freedom for everyone. People being able to print stuff at home (wheter they are 'technophiles' or not) doesn't equate with people being more free.

Within an unfree system, where everybody is addicted to manufactured
stuff, 3d printers can print the words freedom, and give us the
"freedom" of guiding our own addiction.

How does that land?

What kind of steps towards freedom would you like to see?

> > >         Yes, there's a political side to it. But there's also a technical side. So called 3d printig is better suited for slow and small scale production. Mass production is likely to be more 'efficient'. Of course, decentralized and less 'efficient' producion is a trade off that allows people to gain more political freedom, but cnsumerist fucktards don't care about freedom.
> >
> > You'd probably have to be a childhood inventor (geek) to see that
> > using a 3d printer, you could make an automatic 3d printer that makes
> > more 3d printers on its own, and then disassembles them when it's
> > done.  It could make millions of something in a week.
>
>
>         What I stated above is a technical fact. If anything, being a 'geek' means you have a  utopian and ultimately wrong view of how production works.

It simply isn't a technical fact.  Technical facts are backed by
exhaustive reasons.  I've shared a reason showing there is an avenue
ignored by your point.

But the things we learn, we learn within walled gardens, influenced by
the same people influencing the factories.  Obviously, everything is
true sometimes, and false other times, but we are raised to believe
there are absolutes.


>
>         3d printers are inefficient, just like blockchains are inefficient but have other desirable properties.
>

Here, we agree.  We're talking about the same thing, but we're in
different parts of it.  Now, I can briefly see how you and I are
struggling to work together on this.