Was looking at that the other week when the usual “what should I buy” topic came up and… I am a firm believer that nobody should buy a printer without an enclosure in 2025 and core xy is basically standard but the centauri carbon being about half the price of everyone else is more than a bit alarming.

The reality is that the markings left on bullets aren’t as unique as NCIS would have you believe. A lot of them DO change over time (or even just field stripping a gun).

But the key is that in those first N hours/days, it can be some very substantial evidence. 9 mm round was left embedded in the politician and the chief suspect has ten 9 mm PCCs? Let’s test all ten of those and see if we get a match. And so forth.

In that case: Assuming this holds true (I read the article a few days ago and it is currently very hazy), the same could be done with 3d printers. Ghost gun used in a case and the suspect has a 3d printer? Well… checking the print logs is probably still easier. But one could imagine a world where there is a court order to print a special benchy to compare tooling marks.

And… much like with guns, someone who is educated can take precautions.

If you are capable of setting up your own personal VPN, you don’t need Tailscale. You still may want to use it though, depending on how much of a novelty Network Fun is for you in your spare time.

For me, the main advantage to Tailscale et al is that it is on a per device basis. So I can access my SMB shares or Frigate setup remotely while still keeping the rest of my internal network isolated( to the degree I trust the software and network setup). You CAN accomplish that with some fancy firewall rules and vlanning but… yeah.

Heads up: Maybe just link to Emily’s video rather than an article about it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt1kS52V3MM

And yeah. Emily The Engineer is increasingly the (number two) youtuber I wish would have a second channel to do deep dives into the actual engineering behind these projects (nothing beats Shane at Stuff Made Here). There are just so many factors as to how this even works and I would love a deep dive on what was done to actually compensate for the… curvature of flesh? I feel real dirty now…

But yeah. Her videos have kind of hit that sweet spot of “completely unhinged” and “really really cool from a design and engineering standpoint”.