We Will Fight Until The End | Hacker News Reader

We Will Fight Until The End

zenmagnets.com

190 pointsnathannecro102 comments

A few years ago someone (I think it was actually the Zen Magnet folks) sent a bunch of Zen Magnet sets to the reddit office. We kept them on a shared desk and you could often find a programmer playing with them while thinking about their code.

They were also far superior to the bucky ball set we had.

Even though I have a couple of sets already, I'm going to order another to support their cause.

I've only ever owned Buckyballs (4 sets at that, not including sets I bought for friends and family years ago). Had never stumbled across Zen Magnets until tonight.

Having read this, despite any apparent redundancies with the 864 balls I already own, I ordered a set from Zen. Happy to support them.

Good!

The way that Bucky Balls was abused was insane. They voluntarily went above and beyond to ensure that their vendors knew how dangerous they were for small children. They required a signature on a super non-standard document agreeing to indicate that they are not a toy for small children.

(I had to sign one to order them wholesale for my last company.)

It's legal to sell guns, muscle cars, whiskey, swords, hydrochloric acid, and fireworks. But magnets? Someone might get hurt!

Most if the world knows a special "Chocolate egg with toy inside" product and kids tend to love it. But there is a country that thinks kids are going to swallow them wholesale...

Well that's what I've been saying!

Countries that, self-admittedly, cannot be trusted to safely handle Kinder surprise eggs, probably should stay away from magnets too.

It's not a big 'surprise'.

I guess the distinction is that those are clearly not for kids.

The complaints comes because of problems that have arisen with kids in the past.

A kid can take a knife and stick it into his eye. Or bite into an electric cord. Or drink a bottle of bleach. Or fall into a pool and drown. Or set themselves on fire. All this is readily available and can be done by kids, and unfortunately sometimes is. But nobody bans knives, electricity or bleach or pools or fire. All it took to ban this nice and harmless toy however is one junior senator (Kirsten Gillibrand) looking for a little moral panic. BTW, if somebody is interested, Wikipedia says before going into politics Gillibrand worked as defense attorney for Philip Morris. I guess no problem with harmful substances there.

Kids have killed themselves with literally all of those. At a significantly higher rate than with buckyballs for most, if not all, of them.

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment here, but:

This thread brings up many different hazards from our everyday lives and compares them with neodymium magnet toys. Is this a fair comparison?

We interact with most of these hazards every day. Any given kid would be educated about electric wires, hot stoves, fire, sharp objects. If not the kid then at least the parent would be educated about the dangers of ingesting bleach or laundry detergent, and so on. Yes, sadly above hazards still cause many deaths, but they also are much more widespread than neodymium magnet toys.

Now take our magnets.

- They're new and sufficiently rare. Average kid wouldn't know its dangers—average parent doesn't! (Compare to guns, fireworks.)

- They're shiny, attractive, and with funny physical properties to boot. Inviting to play. (Compare to hydrochloric acid.)

- We're already nearly blind to all the swallowing hazard labels around us.

Magnets are awesome and I definitely would buy myself a set, but the controversy doesn't seem to me totally insubstantial.

Either there is something I don't understand about this whole story, or something is seriously wrong with people coming up with such bans.

As far as I could understand the only risk is for children to swallow these magnets? Or is there some other hazard due to them being magnets?

If it's only about swallowing, then how is it different from any other object of similar size?

If we ban them because they are "new and sufficiently rare", then how is it we don't ban all new products below certain size threshold? Everything is new in the beginning. Same with shiny and attractive, there are many such objects which can be swallowed (e.g. jewlery) and somehow these are not banned.

Neither understood I, until I read carefully the copy on zenmagnets.com and found:

> Zen Magnets may cause fatal intestinal pinching if swallowed.

> Don't leave them around animals, or children who don't understand this.

> US Government Age recommendation is 14 years.

Then it dawned on me, and I thought that it's actually too mild a warning. What exactly children are expected to understand? that they shouldn't swallow those toys—of course they understand that, it's accidents that everyone's worried about. If I were the business owner, I'd prefer to err on the safe side: “Keep away from children”, “This is not your average swallowing hazard!”, and so on.

The difference is[0] when you swallow not one, but two of these magnets. They might clonk together from different parts of the intestines and ultimately puncture them.

And I'm not entirely convinced about safety rules "below a certain size threshold". For instance, refrigerators are invariably lethal when swallowed whole.

[0] just to be clear: I'm not advocating to ban these toys in any country that can safely be trusted to handle Kinder surprise eggs.

Actually at a much, much lower rate. Think of how many of those things there are in a single house or neighbourhood and then think of how many child fatalities a typical house or neighbourhood experiences.

I'm not usually one to argue for broader safety regulations, but the fear behind the restrictions / banning sales aren't entirely off the wall.

I mean look at The Mandala Set that Zen Magnets sells? http://zenmagnets.com/the-mandala-set/

How small are those spheres exactly? They look like toys, or candy. Small children love to swallow things, especially small round non-pointy things, and someone's kid dying or merely getting serious lifelong intestinal damage from swallowing small powerful magnets (like neodymium magnets are), due to intestinal pinching, is no joke. It doesn't matter to a kid if the original product came with a warning label or consent form or not.

Muscle cars, whiskey, full-size swords, chemicals don't look like toys, and aren't as likely to be played with by especially small children. Small separated magnets, especially any that happened to fall and roll across the floor out of sight, seem like a greater risk to me.

They should not be played with where any of the things you mention may come into play. Period. People need to be responsible, and it really isn't on the magnet companies to ensure that. Their job is to develop a product and then responsibly label and market it in such a way that people are reasonably informed that these are not for kids. Sorry, I don't buy the "well they look like candy, so gotta protect the kids" argument.

The witch hunt for these things is ridiculous, and does not stand up to scrutiny - Dogs are statistically over 120 times more dangerous than Buckyball magnet sets. Should we ban dogs? This is simply a case of someone championing their cause because they can, not because it's the right thing to do.

I have no idea whether or not this is a sound legal / business decision. And yes this could just be "taking off the steering wheel" in a game of chicken. But damn, you have to respect an entrepreneur for taking a stand.

I've got 3 little ones, youngest is a toddler. Initial thought was, "doesn't matter, could hurt a kid, ban it." The article is well-written and strong without being shrill. Changed my mind. Hope this goes well for Zen Magnets.

Glad to hear it. I hope you learned from the experience.

As the ban of ZenMagnets's primary opponent was in 2012 [1], and the government seemed to want to ban ZenMagnets [2], I find it amazing it is still out here in the business two years later and with a record sale $700k last year (a jump from $50k in year 2012).

So nothing happened during these two years?

----

[1] Banning Buckyball Magnets Is Statistically Ridiculous: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eliyahu-federman/banning-bucky...

[2] US Government Wants to Ban Zen Magnets: http://gizmodo.com/5932638/us-government-wants-to-ban-zen-ma...

The way they phrase it, "magnet sphere," makes what they sell seem so arbitrary. It really helps them make the case of pro-democracy, as if it could be any object banned from sale simply because we cannot trust consumers with them.

In case you want to buy them before their possible bankruptcy: http://zenmagnets.com/the-zen-gift-set/

"We will combat the CPSC’s magnet prohibition until triumph, or until a glorious death of insolvency on the legal battlefield."

I like this guy. Where do I donate? Or should I just buy magnets?

As someone who didn't realize about the risk of those things. And cursory google doesn't seem to have that much info, what exactly is the risk of swallowing them?

Swallowing one is no problem. But if you swallow two of them separately then they can attract each other while traveling through your intestines. The magnetic force is strong enough to perforate your intestines, requiring surgery. Without treatment they can lead to sepsis and death. I'm all for keeping them legal (I have several sets of Buckyballs) but they can be seriously dangerous. That combined with the fact that they look perfectly innocent is the real problem.

As well as this being a hypothetical...err, what do you mean they look perfectly innocent? I'm not even sure what this phrase means.

You don't just randomly put s*it in your mouth because it "looks innocent".

If I saw a colourless liquid on a table, and I didn't know where it was from, I wouldn't just randomly drink it.

Likewise with just randomly picking up plastic bits and eating them.

However, if you're talking about young kids who are liable to put anything in their mouth, then "looking innocent" doesn't even enter into the equation.

As a parent, you should be looking after your kids, and childproofing your house - you wouldn't put scissors on a table, or a kitchen knife within reach, or bleach or other household cleaning liquids, or a hammer, or nails.

And you wouldn't let them unattended near a swimming pool, or let them near the stove in the kitchen, or let them walk in a park without supervision.

All of these are basic parental responsibilities - I don't see how these magnets are any better or worse than letting your kid eat a staple, or a nail etc.

I mean, as a kid, I shoved a lego up my nose (yeah, I was a smart cookie), and had to be rushed to the doctors.

Another time, I nearly ate dog poo.

Did both of those things (lego and go poo) look "innocent"?

These things happen. An ex-girlfriend's 8 year old (at the time) swallowed two small kitchen magnets (they were the small type embedded in what looks like a push-pin top). At the time it was suggested by the doctor that he might have had pica (http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/pica.html) and that's why he ate the darned things.

> You don't just randomly put s*it in your mouth because it "looks innocent".

Kids do.

AFAIK this is still hypothetical: there is no confirmed case of this ever happening. Not to say that there's no risk, just that it's evidently a small one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium_magnet_toys

>The Centers for Disease Control reported 33 cases requiring surgery and one death.

That's 11 injuries and 0.3 deaths per year. Bathtubs claim about 80 fatal and 100 non-fatal drownings per year.

Judging from this data, assuming the risk stays the same over time, you have to play with magnets for roughly about 1000 years for your risk to be one micromort[1]. Same one micromort risk is assumed by drinking two glasses of wine or walking for 17 miles. Playing with a magnet for a year is as dangerous as eating a banana (bananas are radioactive).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort

> That's 11 injuries and 0.3 deaths per year. Bathtubs claim about 80 fatal and 100 non-fatal drownings per year.

I'm not a stats guy, but it seems like this comparison would be more useful if we somehow account for the difference between the number of bathtubs installed and the number of neodymium magnet toys purchased among the population.

You can go both ways on this. If something were purchased by almost nobody, why ban it? OTOH, if something is purchased by almost everybody, and hurts hundreds of people just in the US every year, shouldn't something be done? If you talk about risk to the average person, it all sums up.

Thanks for the correction!

If you swallow two (or one and it breaks in half), there's a risk that they'll clamp together inside you, with your intestines in between. Having played with neodymium magnets, having this happen to your finger or ear isn't pleasant, but the real risk is that they'll clamp together and tear a hole through your guts.

If multiple small magnets are ingested, they will likely pinch and rot tissue while working through the intestines. Without reading, I don't know if any children (the main culprits of swallowing small items) have died, but I know some have gone to the ER.

From my understanding, they're only dangerous if you swallow more than one of them; then they can attract each other through organ walls and cause serious damage.

Two magnets can steady each other with a fold of your intestine inbetween. It will cause an ulcer and require surgury. It's actually really bad.

I don't know which is the greater danger to freedom, "Terrorism!" or "Think of the Children." But in either case, it seems that we are somehow supposed to give up certain aspects of our lives because there is a almost an infinitesimal chance that we may be a victim of "something."

It's great marketing though.

They're both great wedge issues to get draconian legislation rammed through a reactionary Congress. The excuse-du-jour is either terrorism or child porn.

The article mentions two possible paths forward, but I can think of a third. Make the spheres large enough that swallowing is impractical. 1.75 inches seems to be a standard for this. Would giant magnetic spheres not be fun to play with?

http://unitedweball.org

I have some of those and they are definitely fun to play with.

The fun part of these things is building intricate shapes with them, mashing them in your fingers, etc. You couldn't do any of this with larger balls.

Sounds like an easy way to crush your fingers. I'll take the small spheres.

What I love about this post as a marketer is how Zen Magnets positions themselves as being the only 1 of 3 companies in this space to take a stand.

When a quick search shows many, many alternatives - a cursory list:

http://www.magnicube.com/ http://neoballs.com/ http://www.klikyballs.com/ http://www.supramagnets.com/

And that's how you build a brand, and command a premium price !

Magnicube is the one that just settled, Neoballs is a subsidiary of Zenmagnets

Klikyballs' website and product packaging seem to be very reminiscent of Buckyballs, but I'n not sure if they're related or just trying to cash in on the similarity.

So their marketing is a tad bit closer to truth than it might appear on the surface ;)

Most of the discussion in the comments here have been about whether it is better to protect children or allow adults freedom. Yawn! The best comments here are those from jzwinck, termain, and rfatnabayeff, which provide possible technical fixes to the problem. I would have much more respect for Zen Magnets if they took a good product with a problem, and made it better by hacking around the problem, rather than just fighting "the good fight".

Here are the three comments about ways to solve the issues:

jzwinck - "The article mentions two possible paths forward, but I can think of a third. Make the spheres large enough that swallowing is impractical. 1.75 inches seems to be a standard for this. Would giant magnetic spheres not be fun to play with?"

termain - "Why not coat them in an emetic?"

rfatnabayeff - "There's a much more safe alternative with almost same possibilities - a kinda "balls-and-magnetick-sticks". In that case, spheres are just metallic, not magnetic. Only joints, sticks, have magnetic ends capped inside the plastic. These spheres are much safer and the visualizing abilities of that toy is almost the same."

They are doing it the samurai way. How appropriate.

kind of an open question: what can we do to help their / your cause other than buying magnets and sharing on our social profiles?

The actual complaint (http://zenmagnets.com/images/Complaint%20Counsel%27s%20Secon...) indicates that this company includes with some of its products a printed warning reading, in part,

> Strong magnets can cause fatal intestinal pinching. Place swallowing magnets on your don't do list along with breathing water, drinking poison, and running into traffic.

If the safety level of your product can be reasonably compared to drowning, being poisoned, or getting hit by a truck, you probably shouldn't be surprised when the product-safety people show an interest in it.

Moreover, of the three things the warning compares their product to, only one -- poison -- is an example of an actual product you can buy (nobody's selling home drowning kits), and that one only gets by with a warning in cases where it has a substantial beneficial use. Bleach, for instance, is sold with a warning label, but that's because bleach has substantial benefits as a cleaner of clothes and surfaces. Those benefits provide an argument that they outweigh the risk it poses if swallowed.

What are the practical, non-entertainment benefits of magnet balls? If there aren't any -- if they're a toy, a novelty -- it seems completely fair to hold them to a higher standard. A toy is the definition of a non-essential product. So if your toy carries a risk of killing somebody, well, there's plenty of other toys out there that don't.

> What are the practical, non-entertainment benefits of magnet balls? If there aren't any -- if they're a toy, a novelty -- it seems completely fair to hold them to a higher standard.

By the same token, we could argue that movies should be banned because the images can trigger PTSD and epileptic seizures, and movies have no practical, non-entertainment benefits.

It's one thing to say that a product should be re-designed to provide the same utility in a safer manner if that's an option. But it is not the government's place to make wholesale subjective decisions about utility to begin with. That is, it's one thing to require that Ford fix the design flaw in the Pinto that made it conducive to explosions because no one really wants an exploding car. It's another to ban cars altogether because public transit provides a safer alternative to personal automobiles.

What is the practical benefit of a back yard pool (drowning apparatus), beer stein (poisoning apparatus), or a sports car (trauma apparatus)?

[I assume this must be a troll, since if this were taken to its logical conclusion, it advocates a Soviet style command and control society. No laughing, smiling, or running with scissors allowed.]

Your slippery-slope approach is fatuous. It is a completely nihilistic approach to any sort of legal system that involves regulations and penalties for breaking them.

It is a completely fair point to ask where on the realm of regulated toys buckyball-style magnets fall. Someone doesn't have to be a troll just because they disagree with you.

Also, what is with your last sentence? Are you suggesting that not allowing running with scissors is indicative of creeping authoritarianism? You would have been disappointed with every teacher I had, then.

edit: thanks for the downvotes. A useful reminder to me to never discuss anything with libertarians.

> Also, what is with your last sentence?

Do you have issues with hyperbole? You seem to have taken it literally.

>>> What are the practical, non-entertainment benefits of magnet balls?

Who cares? In a free country, any benefit that I see for myself would be enough to allow me to purchase the item, without explaining it to you or anybody else. How is it that you decided you have the right to define what is and is not beneficial for me? What gave you that right? How is it fair for you to tell me "I think you're not smart enough to handle a couple of metal balls without killing yourself" and feel all smug and righteous as if you've saved my life, instead as a petty busybody who just made my life (and a life of thousands other people) a little worse for no reason at all, while shuttering perfectly good company, and causing a lot of loss and waste of money and effort? What exactly allows you to feel you're being anything even in the general direction of "fair" when you take on yourself to decide my needs for me? Do you enjoy other people telling you what is and is not of benefit for you?

You can buy water and cars too. A set of zenmagnets is no more a suicide via intestinal pinching kit than a gallon of water is a drowning kit.

There are millions of things on the market that you can kill yourself with; when would you say that personal responsibility should come into play?

Also, magnet sets are educational as well as entertaining.

If you leave a gallon of water on a table unattended it is very unlikely any passing child will use that gallon of water to drown themselves.

All this pretending that the practical differences between this product and all these other things is trivial drives me a little crazy.

What kind of a shitty parent leaves small objects unattended around small children? Only a complete moron would do that.

What about scissors? Pencils? Knives? Everyone has these things in their homes, and you could just as easily leave them on the table as you could a set of magnets.

What drives me crazy are people who want the federal government to micromanage every aspect of their lives, even as it repeatedly proves to us that it is too corrupt/incompetent to do pretty much anything right.

Scissors, pencils, knives: All things safer than these magnets. Empirically true.

The bad parent argument is garbage. If I visit someone's house or bring one of my little ones with me to my accountants or lawyer's office I don't expect to need to be ultra-vigilant, it should be a generally safe environment. I want to live in a society where that is true.

So I did a quick search for actual statistics here at CPSC website where they collect data on this sort of thing[1]. Here are the results:

http://imgur.com/a/E35py

Essentially, for 2013, there were 559 injuries sampled from pens and pencils among people aged 1 month to 15 years old. There were 297 from scissors - although I might have missed a few classification product codes for scissors, there were quite a few. There were 219 sampled injuries from building sets, of which magnetic balls are included.

However, these are the sample counts. The Historical Estimate I believe is the total injuries over the time period selected. Building sets is by far the least, 2500 less than scissors and almost 10000 less than pens and pencils.

I then read through those cases. In the 219 cases, magnet is mentioned 13 times. Swallow is mentioned 58 times, but I assume this includes other building sets such as Legos, Knex etc.

13/219*6800 = 403 magnetic swallowing injuries over 2013.

This [2] report from the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition mentions 480 magnet ingestions over the past 10 years, roughly 204 occurring over 2013.

There is an argument to be made over severity of injury I believe, but via the numbers, these balls are not as dangerous as scissors or pencils and pens. I frankly find this attempt at a ban ridiculous. What if a child swallows staples? Thumbtacks? These all are things that can be left on a desk that would cause significant injury.

Please correct me if I’m wrong with my interpretation of the data.

[1] http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Research--Statistics/NEISS-Injury-Dat...

[2] http://www.consumerreports.org/content/dam/cro/news_articles...

I believe your interpretation of this data is incorrect. Given the relatively infrequent contact children would have with magnets strong enough to be dangerous as compared to all of these items that are found in every home in America and most certainly in every home with children in America the rates indicate the opposite.

Think of all the confounding factors here such as ages 1 month to 15 years - older children are far more likely to be injuring themselves with knives, the population at risk from these magnets is generally under 10 years old. Think of just how rarely a child in America makes contact with one of these magnets as opposed to the other objects. All children in the school age range are practically forced to be in contact with a pencil for hours a day every weekday for ten months.

PS: I do really appreciate that you looked these numbers up though.

> Empirically true.

Can you cite stats for that claim?

Add up all the rare earth magnet toy sets in America.

Add up all the scissors, pencils, and knives in America.

Look up the injuries/fatalities to children caused by each.

Viola!

Yes, those are the stats I asked you to cite to back your claim.

If you're going to claim your opinion as fact, it's just rude to be a dick when you're called on it. At least admit that it's not 'empirically true' - or, perhaps more to the point, that you don't actually know.

I am not being a dick. That what I said is true is so obvious I am not going to bother digging up a bunch of stats to justify it. It is a waste of time.

This comment ended up doing the work for me, and demonstrates my point. But then based on the numbers somehow concludes that it demonstrates the opposite.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8138774

How many houses in the world have pencils in them? Pretty close to every single one, how someone concludes from the injury rate cited that they are more dangerous than these magnetic toys is beyond my understanding.

That comment goes so far as to note that over 40% of the incidents reported in the last 10 years occurred in 2013, how that does not make one think that maybe the recent prevalence of these powerful magnets could be related is also puzzling to me.

There's plenty of shitty parents around, but the type of parent who is interested in magnetic spheres is not likely to be a shitty parent.

If I leave a handful of magnets sitting on a table unattended in my apartment, the odds that a child will eat them are absolutely zero, since neither I nor anyone I know has kids. If they did, I probably wouldn't let the kids in my apartment if they're still at the putting-random-things-in-their-mouth stage and their parents can't keep them from eating other people's things.

A gallon of water? You can—and lots of people do—buy a pool. And that poses a far greater risk to children than some magnets!

Pools are basically children-magnets, anyway.

If they swallow two of them, it risks puncturing their intestines.

Upvoted even though I disagree because I think you make the best argument for regulation.

The problem is, it isn't safe to have non-elected bureaucrats making law, either. But that is not something I can get around by being cautions or well-informed.

Of course, it also isn't safe to have elected representatives pass massive bills that they haven't read. So I'm not saying that being elected magically makes everything OK.

> only one -- poison -- is an example of an actual product you can buy (nobody's selling home drowning kits)

They're also not selling magnet ingestion kits

>What are the practical, non-entertainment benefits of magnet balls?

Keep your laws off my balls, nanny-stater.

I guess humor should be banned too.

There's a much more safe alternative with almost same possibilities - a kinda "balls-and-magnetick-sticks". In that case, spheres are just metallic, not magnetic. Only joints, sticks, have magnetic ends capped inside the plastic. These spheres are much safer and the visualizing abilities of that toy is almost the same.

Children don't read the instructions, is the problem. But they do run companies sometimes... also a problem.

Wait in the country where they have a right to own a fire arm, they are not allowed magnets. :|

Woohoo! Love this attitude. I just purchased the Zen gift set to keep on my desk at work.

Why not coat them in an emetic?

Violent abdominal heaving + swallowed magnets = greater chance of injury

I thought the danger was if 2 or more were swallowed and they attach in the intestine. If kids have an unpleasant experience after downing one maybe they wouldn't try another? They might even puke them up before they cause more serious damage, plus mom/dad are alerted that something is wrong. A vile tasting coating could also help.

Every time I go to a theater and I cannot drink alcohol in the auditorium because children happen to be allowed in the movie or something like this happens I start dreaming of child-free zones, where I can walk around with a bottle of beer while playing with Bucky Balls and look at nipples.

At least the prohibition of magnetic balls at least actually protects children from something that can do actual harm to them unlike seeing adults drink in moderation or seeing exposed body parts.

Any idea what is the actual harm of seeing a human body part? Especially in non-sexual context? How does it wreck a child if they see that "this man has a penis like my father does". At least in Finland we go to sauna and naked swimming in lake with grandparents and friends of parents starting from age around 1 year old. There would be at least a few million pedophiles, alcoholics and mental cases due to that in our population, if nakedness would be such a scary thing. As a child I probably saw more breasts in women's saunas than in my adult life :-)

Just asking this in a curious manner. If people find exposed body parts, the ones they also have, somehow disgusting, then it is quite understandable to me.

I think you are dreaming of Las Vegas.

Or San Francisco - only about 15% under 18, lowest in the country.

Unless you can afford a private school, I don't think San Francisco is a good place for kids. I take my daughter to the Exploratorium, the Palace of Fine Arts, and the San Francisco Zoo, and there's also a nice playground near the skating ring close to the new Target, but other than that I've always avoided the city. It's just not a kids kind a place.

Sounds like a self fulfilling prophecy.

JUST TELL ME HOW THEY WORK!!!

I would, but as a scientist, I don't feel you would accept the veracity of my response.

only if your answer is "miracles"

The solution is pretty simple: people who have kids that eat rare-earth magnets should just have smarter kids.

this just shed some light on the same question I had for me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium_magnet_toys

Was I the only one happy about Buckyballs being shut down? https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S7Tk...

That guy was an uber-douche.

I think the difference between the magnets and skateboards, bicycles, trampolines, etc. is that you can LOOK at those three and know that they are dangerous. The magnets are sneakier.

It's about time Zen Magnets is getting shut down. We'll always be able to buy direct from China.

>It's about time Zen Magnets is getting shut down. We'll always be able to buy direct from China.

Are you saying you'll buy from China because it's cheaper or that Zen Magnets somehow doesn't deserve to exist?

I am saying, if you need round magnets for some technical use, you can always buy direct from China.

http://www.dx.com/s/magnet+spheres

It is better if it is more difficult to buy them. Kinda like hi-powered lasers. Would you want 500mW lasers being sold at the corner store?

>It is better if it is more difficult to buy them. Kinda like hi-powered lasers. Would you want 500mW lasers being sold at the corner store?

I get you now. I'm still not sure where I stand on the idea of "protecting people from themselves" (but in the case of lasers it seems to be "protecting people from idiots").

I think it would be a shame to see magnets become more regulated. It's only a few small steps from "Zen Magnets shut down" to "Customs seizing all tiny magnets in the mail" (I think Australia may be doing that now, though someone should correct me if I'm wrong)

Edit: http://www.productsafety.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/9... (sigh)

Australia gets it right!

There are plenty of uses for small high-powered magnets. So you can legally buy them. You just can't sell them as playthings.

Australia only bans them if they:

"are marketed by the supplier as, or supplied for use as any of the following: a toy, game or puzzle (including but not limited to an adult desk toy, an educational toy or game, a toy, game or puzzle for mental stimulation or stress relief)"

That's a weird way of doing it right. So you can buy it if it says "very serious magnet spheres, definitely not a toy, thinking and relieving stress while touching them is absolutely prohibited!" then it's ok, but if it says "adult desk toy for mental stimulation" then it's banned, even though these are exactly the same things and in both cases the seller has zero control over how exactly they are used?

Of course, makes sense.

So you know anybody can buy it very easily on different site, and you still applaud shutting down responsible US companies taking all safety precautions including customer education, even though it would not affect availability of the thing you consider harmful in any meaningful way.

I think now I see where War on Drugs comes from. They do the same useless thing all day long, at great cost and great harm to everybody involved, and still somehow believe they're doing good work, despite the evidence screaming in their faces for decades now.

> The magnets are sneakier.

> It's about time Zen Magnets is getting shut down.

> We'll always be able to buy direct from China.

What about Chinese kids?

Do you believe they are smarter and more careful, or do you just not care about their safety as much?

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