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Comment by fishnchips | Hacker News Reader

Beautiful execution but I find the purpose misguided. I am a parent too so maybe that's a cultural difference (EU vs US?) but if my kid choked on a toy I would pay closer attention to toys going forward rather than look for toy vendors to do my parenting for me.

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You make a good point, but surely you'd admit that you're not versed on every possible danger that a toy could present. For example, what if we discover a year from now that a particular paint or varnish that we thought was completely safe is actually toxic?

I would imagine that both our governments pay experts to research such things, and making their conclusions more accessible seems like a useful enterprise.

Part of the expense of products is to ensure a good, safe design. I could use common sense and research toxicity of materials, off-gasing, tensile strength, resistance to hot/cold/UV, shapes that are vulnerable to choking, strangulation, puncture wounds, etc. If every parent had to go through this for each purchase it would be a massive, unnecessary duplication of effort. This would take considerable time just for childrens toys, not to mention food, cars, and office buildings. I'm glad that cars have recalls driven by real engineers that drivers are proactively contacted about rather than relying on the average person's "common sense" about vehicle safety.

How about both?

Sure, as a parent you should be able to decide what the appropriate response is. But at least to me this particular class of problems does not need an app but simple common sense.

Not a parent yet, but I'd probably use something like this less as something to find out if there's a choking hazard, but in case there's something I don't think of that might be a problem. Fire hazard because it shipped with a faulty power regulator the overheats? Exploding batteries? Those are things that I wouldn't be able to tell at first glance that they'd necessarily be a problem.

How far does this rabbit hole go, though? Your kid may just as well be the first victim of a yet unknown fault. You can't protect them from everything and trying to do so will only cause you anxiety. Wouldn't you rather spend your mental energy on something more positive?

Agree. But I think that's the idea behind the concept. Don't want to spend time worrying about it, but if there is a known defect discovered later about something I bought, I would like to know about it.

Assuming it's as easy as lifting my phone and scanning a barcode after the occasional toy purchase. Then I can forget about it.

Agree you can't give up common sense, and you shouldn't obsess about it, but it's silly to not remove a toy if there is a known defect that causes deaths.

It also could give you a false sense of security in case it's something that's not published on this particular service.

Also, in most reasonable countries products that are known to cause deaths are removed from the market instead of continuing to be sold with the "buyer beware" assumption.

We don't need to do that and can't because the technology is incredibly complex and even if you understand that stuff your curtains could be the real fire hazard in your room.

All of this is covered by consumer protection laws very successfully - recalls.gov has just a handful a day across everything, Amazon alone sell over 200 million different products.

You are very correct. The huge problem with this is that it focuses on toys. Now let me tell you, a two-year old does not give a crap if something is a toy or a water bottle or a folding ruler from daddys tool set. They will play with anything they find. You as a parent have to be vigilent and responsible. There's no app for that.

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