[eugene3306]

Is this material safe to handle?

It feels like this thing soon will start appearing all over ebay and aliexpress

[foobarian]

I hope it is. It will be a perfect toy for little kids, right along the little ball magnets.

[0xfaded]

Those magnets can be deadly to children of swallowed:

https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/little-magnets-are...

[makeworld]

It has lead in it.

[HDThoreaun]

Lead is safe to handle, you just can’t eat it.

[crote]

Handling lead tends to result on lead being on your hands, which has a nasty tendency to result in lead being on your lunch if you are not careful.

[Ancapistani]

Basic safety precautions are fine.

To put it in perspective: millions of people in the US regularly handle ammunition and shoot firearms at indoor ranges. Those contain lead in many forms: the projectile itself, lead fulminate in the primer compounds, lead suspended in the air after firing, etc.

You make sure to have adequate ventilation, don’t touch your face, and wash your hands when you’re done. It’s important, yes, but not really that big a deal.

[zarzavat]

Given that the effects of lead tend to be a subtle change in mental state, and show up months or years later, we really don’t know that it’s fine.

[naillo]

Would that be legal, considering they have a patent (pending) for it? Not denying it won't appear anyway just curious

[mensetmanusman]

It is illegal in places that have rule of law.

This is to create a risk reduction mechanism for investing in capital to make this at scale, which will cost on the order of $100-500M to scale for world use through trial and error.

If IP is ignored, no business will invest in the initial experiments due to first mover disadvantage in game theory.

[Iulioh]

>If IP is ignored, no business will invest in the initial experiments due to first mover disadvantage in game theory.

Not if you belive that

[mensetmanusman]

This has been shown to be historically true, because startup costs can be tens to hundreds of million in R&D.

The business that spends will have their workers immediately poached if they don’t have IP protecting their initial startup costs.

[TheAceOfHearts]

I'm not sure how it works, but this was the first result:

> Patents are territorial and must be filed in each country where protection is sought.

[0] https://www.stopfakes.gov/article?id=Is-My-US-Patent-Good-in...

[jtwaleson]

Not a patent attorney, but as far as I know: The patent is currently pending (as in, being evaluated to see if it will be granted). Once it is granted in one country it can be expanded to multiple countries within a couple of months, given that the first country is part of the Patent Cooperation Treaty. So if an invention is marked “patent pending”, you know you will have the risk of being sued by said company at some time in the future if you copy the invention.

[piltzintec]

Dude with something this important to humanity give everyone involved a couple million then let it run wild