I agree to some extent, but even before then hardware was getting expensive thanks to stuff like the Bitcoin mining craze. Harddrives have been getting cheaper on a dollar per TB basis for a long time (as they should), but I remember the days when it was cheaper to build a gaming PC than to buy a new console, and those days are long gone. And after COVID hit, greedflation set in to declare what the new normal is.

Not to sound snarky or anything, but since when do prices go down? If people were willing to pay the inflated price, there’s no incentive for them not to make that the new standard.

It depends on the level of 3d printer you’re talking about. Your average $300 at-home printer is basically the hot end of a glue gun on stepper motors, though you might be surprised at some of the materials they’re capable of printing in. Everything from basic ABS plastics to Nylon and Carbon-Fiber reinforced filaments are easily available.

If you’re talking commercial grade, $10k+ printers, that’s an entirely different story. Commercial printers are capable of printing objects out of steel. There’s been a lot of work in that area to print all kinds of things from guns parts in military grade polymers to entire engine blocks, no assembly required.

On the 3d printed gun end, supposedly people have figured out the issues to the point where you can print 100% of the parts out of super basic plastic (the most commonly used plastic in 3d printing is PLA, which has a melting point around 200 degrees Celsius), though the stuff I’ve seen online is more about using internals from cheap guns and 3d printing the external “furniture” of the gun either for custom cosmetics or aftermarket parts like handles and grips, or to create an expensive gun out of cheaper components. As for the ammo, I’ve only heard that “people were working on it.” I don’t know any of the specifics.

If I had to guess, the two most likely reasons are: for the challenge of it, and to reduce the amount of required tools.

I feel like the people who work on 3d printed guns largely fall into 2 camps - the people who just like to build things, and the people who look at a 3d printer as a valuable tool in the whole “become ungovernable” concept.

I know the second group are responsible for designing a fully 3d printed gun that’s currently being used to fight against a genocidal military regime in Myanmar, for example. The people there are getting zero international aid, and can’t get their hands on guns. But, they can get ammo, and they can get 3d printers. So they’ve set up 3d printer assembly lines to make guns that are at least good enough to kill a soldier and take his gun. It was designed for exactly that kind of situation - basically the Liberator one-shot pistol the CIA designed to be air-dropped into occupied France during WW2, except as a modern semi-auto SMG chambered in 9mm.

I couldn’t tell you myself, I think it’s crazy too, but NATO trialed caseless ammo during the Cold War, and if that’s possible, I don’t see why plastic ammo (at least cases) couldn’t be.

Though you sure as hell won’t see me jumping in line to try it out.

If you wanna get really crazy, last I heard was that people were working on 3d printed 9mm ammo.

So not only are the guns FOSS, but the bullets are too.

I think it comes from the other direction. Like, the trans and femboy communities are small, but a high portion of them are in tech jobs and FOSS. So this is a stereotype about trans women and femboys all being into Arch, rather than all Arch users being trans women or femboys.

Still overused, but I can see why since the 3 most active communities I see on Lemmy are Linux users, trans people, and Trekkies.

The irony. I bet the guy who prompted that calls himself an artist.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of “shadow ban” style component to this. I think Tumblr does something like that where postsand tags that are marked as sexually explicit can’t be found by searching for them, but if you’re following the person, you can see them.