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Printable AR-15 Mag Gets More Reliable; YouTube Pulls Video of Demo 450

Wired reports that the 3-D printed AR-15 magazine from Defense Distributed we mentioned a few weeks back has been improved through design, and is now robust enough to last through firing (at least) several hundred rounds, rather than fewer than a hundred as in the previous iteration. CNET says the video demonstration on YouTube was first yanked, then restored, but as of now seems to have been yanked again.
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Printable AR-15 Mag Gets More Reliable; YouTube Pulls Video of Demo

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  • Yanked? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:36PM (#42843723)

    The message says it violates Youtubes police against "spams, scams and commercially deceptive" videos..

    How, exactly? Is google jumping into this dumbshit political dickwaving contest now?

    • Re:Yanked? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by scottbomb ( 1290580 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:39PM (#42843745) Journal

      They've been in the political dickwaving contest for a long time now. Guess who's side they're on?

      • The stupid side. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09, 2013 @05:25PM (#42845793)

        The fact is, most people don't know how easy it is to make guns. They imagine that it requires loads of highly-specialized and expensive equipment, plus a lot of training in some esoteric art, in order to produce guns.

        They further imagine that this makes production costs high, which serve as a natural limit to how many guns are in circulation.

        Of course, this is pure rubbish. None of this is even remotely true. Utter nonsense.

        But that doesn't stop most people from seeing this whole gun-printing fiasco as a means of upsetting that (completely mythical) economic balance. They think this makes it a lot easier to make guns, and therefore more people will make and have guns than ever before (in HUGE numbers). Further, since having guns makes people turn evil, everyone we love (including ourselves) will be put at MUCH GREATER RISK of being shot than EVER BEFORE!!!

        Again, this is pure and utter nonsense. But it is what the majority of the people seem to believe, and fear. Fear produces irrational responses, which are driving youtube to yank a video.

        It sucks that we must share the world with stupid and irrational people, but there isn't much we can do about it. They outnumber us, and they always will.

    • Re:Yanked? (Score:5, Informative)

      by derGoldstein ( 1494129 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:51PM (#42843853) Homepage
      Also, I don't see how taking this particular one down is effective, considering you can see all their other videos here [youtube.com].
      • As I understand YouTube's TOS, a first strike means two things: 1. loss of "good standing", which means loss of ability to post unlisted videos, and 2. two more slip-ups and all other videos associated with that account get yanked.
    • Flagging a video for spam is unfortunately the easiest way to give a strike, because it covers so many ambiguous things like keywords and it's also hard to appeal them.


      I've had one falsely marked as spam/scam/deceptive for being nothing more than a simple video about an obscure bad shareware platformer. My simple, polite appeal explaining that it's a gameplay video was rejected.
      • Deceptive provenance (Score:4, Informative)

        by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Saturday February 09, 2013 @01:23PM (#42844115) Homepage Journal
        Just a guess: Perhaps "deceptive" or "scam" is a way of saying "this video may infringe the copyright in the shareware platformer, but we can't say it was pulled for copyright infringement if the complainant is someone other than the copyright owner, so we'll say it's deceptive as to the ownership of copyright in the video".
        • Or maybe it's due to the single frame of shareware registration information that has to make its presence obvious. The whole "send $10 to some address in canada" thing. Either way, covering any shareware game that nags for registration for gameplay is vulnerable to the 'scam/fraud' flagging.
    • I contacted DD yesterday and reported they had pulled the video, the sent me a link to "part 2" here:

      http://youtu.be/xY16r6EkUNY [youtu.be]

  • Good one Youtube (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:43PM (#42843785) Journal

    Streisand effect for the win.

    • by Sipper ( 462582 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:54PM (#42843889)

      Streisand effect for the win.

      Basically that's where this is headed. "The more you tighten your grip, the more this is going to slip through your fingers." We're basically headed down the path of building our own weapons from scratch, just like what has happened in warzones elsewhere.

    • by J'raxis ( 248192 )

      Yup. Trying to censor content like this is the best thing gun-grabbers could possibly do to ensure its publicity. So, keep it up, guys! All you're doing is helping us.

    • Being able to print gun parts is a much bigger issue then YouTube yanking a video. The current push for gun control doesn't address this issue at all. It would be funny if it didn't have so many implications for society at large. Printable guns are going to happen. Printable guns will be disposable and untraceable. Why keep a gun when you can print another.

  • NOT ROCKET SCIENCE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ColdWetDog ( 752185 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:43PM (#42843793) Homepage

    Why is this at all important? You can make a magazine 'the old way" with a spring, some sheet metal, a spot welder and a metal brake (something that bends sheet metal). Yes, it takes some skill, but you're saying that a 3D printer is at the level of an iPhone?

    The canonical 'assault rife', the AK-47, is pounded out in factories that look more like garbage dumps than anything else. If you look at pictures of the magazines you see a bunch that look, well, rather primitive. But they work.

    This is not rocket science, folks. It's machine shop 101.

    • by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      but 3d printing makes it easier for the masses to make it!

      never mind bubba could probably bang one of these out using a car door and JB Weld in half the time, think of the children

      • by ColdWetDog ( 752185 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:51PM (#42843861) Homepage

        "The Children" do not want an AR-15. They want an EMP gun.

        As a matter of fact, so do I. Ammo is getting hard to get.

        • by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @03:40PM (#42845115) Homepage

          Ammo is not hard to get.

          Ammo is in short supply only for the highly uneducated idiots. The rest of us that actually know something about guns have plenty of ammo, a lifetime supply of ammo.

          I have at least 20,000 primers on hand (cheaper to buy a full case) and about 9000 bullets that are FMJ.
          Last time I went to the range, I came home with another 5000 spent brass that I tumble to clean up and start reloading. 5.56 reloaded rounds cost me $0.12 each. 7.62 cost me about $0.15 each and take almost no time to reload properly. In fact my reloads are way more accurate than anything you can buy in the store.

          A friend is a machinist and has made a casting block to make his own 5.56 bullets out of lead. we are going to try shooting his home made bullets in reloaded rounds this spring.

          IF they ban the bullets, those of us that chose to learn will not run out of ammo.
          The funny part is, most of the people making the run on guns and ammo are liberals that dont agree with who they elected.

          • by Z34107 ( 925136 )

            "Highly uneducated idiots?" "Lifetime supply of ammo?" Reloading supplies are also getting increasingly difficult to find, and you're going to need a lot more than a reloading turret if you want to be self-sufficient in primers, powder, and fresh cases.

            What you have will likely last you until the AWB panic peters out, but you haven't thought this through any more than the pre-Connecticut "idiots" who weren't reloading 9mm.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:59PM (#42843931)

      This is not rocket science, folks. It's machine shop 101.

      Notice they don't have machine shop in high schools any more. Hell, when I was a kid we has metal shop in the 7th grade, that has LONG since been done away with, along with chemistry clubs, rifle clubs, and pretty much anything geared towards giving people knowledge and skills to do things themselves. Chemistry isn't even a requirement in high school any more, and if you want to try buying something as simple as a beaker or test tube, or the equipment to blow your own glass, you'll end up on a DEA/ATF watchlist almost instantly and suddenly discover difficulty when traveling via airplane or crossing the border.

      At one point in time almost anybody with a little time could cobble something like this together, but these days we've managed to make people dumb enough and removed enough basic manufacturing skills from our society that it's really not a common skill set. But if these 3D printers get cheap enough, you won't need any skills, equipment, or know-how.... just a credit card and an electrical outlet.

    • I think the main reason this is important is the ultimate goal of this project: To be able to print an entire gun using a 3D printer.

      There are plenty of things that can be made manually instead of using a 3D printer, but you need *some* expertise to do so, even if it's minimal. With a 3D printer, you just need to know how to operate the printer -- and they're becoming easier to use and cheaper every day.
    • You are right, you could hack together a magazine like you describe, but production magazines are stamped in presses using dies. All of this can be made by someone skilled in the metal arts, with the resources. I've heard that a FN FAL magazine uses something like 10 different dies to get the body metal formed to shape. And another set for the follower and bottom plate.

      Magazines are simple devices, but actually producing quality, reliable magazines is out of reach for most people. With this, someone
      • An AK47 made from a shovel. ...

        That's priceless. But as far as I can tell, he only made the receiver (the controlled part that is actually the gun as far as U.S. law goes), and had to buy the other parts. It's still hilarious, though.

        I'd like to see a really simple design for a full-auto submachine gun that can be put together with a 3D printer and parts from a hardware store. For that, we need to fall back on simpler designs, like the Sten gun or maybe the MP 3008 [wikipedia.org]. I mean with a subgun, I figure rifling is optional. How accurately can

  • by tokencode ( 1952944 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:44PM (#42843801)
    Youtube (AKA Google) is being intellectually dishonest and going back on its ideal of providing unbiased free access to information. Google has become an active filterer of this information. The video is not graphic, it is not sexual, it is relevant and political and Google has decided that is not appropriate for viewers.... Thank you Big Brother Google for protecting me from information. Maybe we should start filtering books, or speech?
    • by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:51PM (#42843859) Homepage

      The video ... is not sexual

      Says you. Phwoar!

    • You could host the video somewhere else, you know. Google deciding not to host it on their services does not in any way prevent you from hosting it somehwere else - or hosting it yourself. If it is not your video, you don't have to work too hrad to find out who posted it and contact them directly for it so you can host it somewhere for them.
      • I agree with you that one should consider alternatives to Google. So what software do you recommend to make a private alternative to YouTube whose users can upload videos, have them automatically converted to both MP4 and WebM at several resolutions, and have them displayed through both HTML5 and Flash Player?
    • by fermion ( 181285 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @01:41PM (#42844235) Homepage Journal
      Youtube and google are in the business of selling advertising. There has never been ant deal to be 'fair' or 'honest' or 'open'. There is only a deal to make money. This is not broadcast TV where for profit corporations were given public airwaves in exchange for a level of public service. This is not cable TV where for profit firms are given monopolies in exchange for reliable programming.

      No google hosts content so that it can get users to log in and allow cookies so it can mine data that can be sold to advertisers. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything that costs it money, like defending content on the basis on first amendments rights, is likely counter to that profit mission. In particular most advertisers do not want to be associated with weapons of mass murder, and it is the advertisers, not the end users, that are the customers.

      Now, google at one time said it would do no evil, but doing no evil is far from doing good. I mean I can go into a school, threaten to kill everyone, and then not do it, and claim to have done no evil. Google never said it was in business to make the world a better place. It is in business to make a huge profit, while causes minmal damage to it's victims.

  • I am very relieved that youtube is protecting me from dangerous information. I might hurt myself or others.
  • by bruce_the_loon ( 856617 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:49PM (#42843849) Homepage

    Now the question, is that because someone has figured out it is the best way to get Google to react fast, or because a AR-15 magazine manufacturer is protecting his business?

    Without being able to see the video, how much of a commercial sales pitch could this be anyway?

    • See my earlier post. Magazines for 'assault rifles' are not high on the list of Difficult Things To Make. The order fulfillment / paperwork / advertising aspect of selling these things is likely harder. If you want one, you go to Shotgun news and order it. If they make it illegal, you go to Shotgun news and order the version that has a plastic tab glued in the bottom so it 'only' holds three or seven or whatever number of rounds is OK.

  • by dadelbunts ( 1727498 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @12:54PM (#42843893)
    I cant wait for the day that 3d printers will be able to print just about anything. How can you make an item illegal if anyone can print it out? How do you enforce that? Constant 24/7 surveillance of everything they print out? Even then black market printers will have someway to bypass this, as we pirate games with DRM today. I am very excited for this cyberpunkesque type of future.
  • the actual US military issue magazines are fucking terrible, and cause a weapons jam if you load more than 28 rounds in a 30 round mag.

    For all the service members still in, if defense distributed could start making reliable working functioning products not by the lowest bidder, and somehow get them to the troops, it'd be a life saver.

    just like miltec would give free militec-1 dry weapon lube to servicemembers
    http://www.militec1.com/
    • I've got 30 or so magazines from different makers. Not once in thousands of rounds of shooting have I had a jam and I load all magazines to capacity.

      All have magpul followers, and 12 or so are actual magpul pmags. The rest are the standard metal grey 30 round magazine.

  • Apropos the gun control debate, note that the media is starting to paint Christopher Dorner [google.com] with mental illness.

    In particular, this quote from The Daily News [dailynews.com]:

    "His chilling statements, found on his Facebook page, portray a deeply intelligent and opinionated man, one who promotes gay rights and gun control, but whose mind has unraveled, likely due to mental illness, paranoia and possibly unresolved trauma, experts said Thursday."

    He wasn't mentally ill before the incident, or when he was with the LAPD, but he is now that they want to catch him.

    We've seen a number of these "I've got nothing to lose, I'm going out with a bang!" cases recently. What's with that? Has there always been spree killings, but weren't reported widely until recently? Has something changed in society?

    (I've

    • by TemperedAlchemist ( 2045966 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @01:18PM (#42844071)

      Sometimes I wonder about Aaron Swartz. Given my propensity to being similar in thoughts, I often find it odd he would have simply given up without a plan. I've reached a conclusion that perhaps his suicide was part of the plan. Because he just didn't have the resources to fight the corrupt system, and he figured he would be better suited as a martyr than to go down and serve a thirty year prison sentence.

      Although who knows, perhaps mental illness got in the way. One thing is for certain: copyright law killed him.

      ---

      As for Dorner, I have many questions about that as well. I think his heavy moral conviction drove him to this, and there's more corruption in the police than just kicking some man while he's down. Why would he lie about that incident? It doesn't make any sense -- I get the feeling things are terribly, terribly wrong with the police he was working with.

      Especially when I read things like this: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/dorner-manhunt-shootings-newspaper-carriers.html [latimes.com]

      I don't know who's on the moral side, right now. Dorner has clearly become a vigilante, but he seems to do it out of vengeance, and his willingness to draw their families into it is excessive and completely morally obscene. On the other hand, the police are way out of line.

      Ultimately I think the FBI should dispatch a very thorough investigation into the the local police as well as finding and stopping Dorner.

    • by msauve ( 701917 ) on Saturday February 09, 2013 @01:19PM (#42844089)
      "We've seen a number of these "I've got nothing to lose, I'm going out with a bang!" cases recently. What's with that? Has there always been spree killings, but weren't reported widely until recently? Has something changed in society?"

      The media, especially CNN, which is now driving an anti-civil rights agenda. You may notice the lack of "used a weapon for self defense" reporting. It doesn't fit with the agenda. You're right about the copycat events. Pretty much everyone, including the media, seems to accept that current restrictions on 2nd Amendment civil rights are "reasonable, common sense" ones.

      Obviously, without the widespread media reporting on these violent episodes, copycat crimes would be reduced. Time for some matching "reasonable, common sense" restrictions on 1st Amendment rights. <sarcasm>No one needs a high speed printing press, or electronic media. These should be restricted to government and military use. Journalists should have to undergo background checks before being allowed to publish. Small, portable copy machines should be subject to registration. Reporting of violence should be pre-approved by the government.</sarcasm>

      These suggestions are analogous to restrictions to 2nd Amendment rights which are already in place and considered acceptable. Think of the children.
  • I'm betting that someone from a TLA put pressure on youtube

  • by Baldrson ( 78598 ) * on Saturday February 09, 2013 @03:08PM (#42844871) Homepage Journal
    Its not the guns that threaten you, dear tyrant.

    Its the fact that you have disenfranchised the people who support you.

    Ultimately, it will be trivial for them to cut the supply lines to cities and there will be f***all you can do about it.

    So, just keep it up...

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