41–50 of 79 posts
This is actually great news. It has been impossible to find out whether you are on the US watch list. Now you have to do is get an Australian with your name to order something from Element 14 and now you know.
The whole list is freely available right here http://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnlist.txt
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. It's depressing how quick people can be to dismiss something as stupid without considering how those rules came about in the first place.
And so what? some guy stabs someone with a screwdriver and the US regulate the export of them between Commonwealth countries, still without regulating the AK-47 in its own country? There is more regulation on CNC machining center than on firearms. It's stupid. The US doesn't refrain from sending hellfires missiles on weddings, which kills more surely than the once in a lifetime freak who assemble some mildly radioact…
In an earlier hn post, I actually suggested that if you use a name that's common enough, like David Fricken Jones, the US would never have the guts to flag it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7240983
But here we are. David Jones... Not a lot of people affected by that, huh.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And so what? some guy stabs someone with a screwdriver and the US regulate the export of them between Commonwealth countries, still without regulating the AK-47 in its own country? There is more regulation on CNC machining center than on firearms. It's stupid. The US doesn't refrain from sending hellfires missiles on weddings, which kills more surely than the once in a lifetime freak who assemble some mildly radioact…
That's because an AK-47 is an AK-47: it's not a game-changer. But a CNC machining system that lets you build silent ship propellers can dramatically change the threats the world faces.
>>> (International customers have to fill out silly forms with US distributors and manufacturers saying we won’t use the parts in nuclear weapons – seriously) True. One of my first jobs was at a US electronics manufacturer / parts distributor. I remember we had to fill out paperwork for every export and all of our products (mainly smoke detectors) had to be classified as something to the effect of "parts that could b…
This is actually great news. It has been impossible to find out whether you are on the US watch list. Now you have to do is get an Australian with your name to order something from Element 14 and now you know.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
one guy, one time, managed to get his hands on enough smoke detectors to make himself glow in the dark.. yes, seems perfectly reasonable to freak out about.
I do not know what you are referencing, but in general radiation doesn't make you glow.
Also he was talking in hyperbole.
>>> (International customers have to fill out silly forms with US distributors and manufacturers saying we won’t use the parts in nuclear weapons – seriously) True. One of my first jobs was at a US electronics manufacturer / parts distributor. I remember we had to fill out paperwork for every export and all of our products (mainly smoke detectors) had to be classified as something to the effect of "parts that could b…
A lot of smoke detectors use the radioactive isotope americium-241 in an ionization process to detect smoke. Get enough smoke detectors, and you can have a good amount of radioactive material. Read up on David Hahn, who hit the news in '94 for trying to build a breeder reactor in his back yard using sources scavenged from among other things, smoke detectors.
According to David Hahn's Wikipedia page[1], his reactor used thorium, purified from thorium ash used in lantern mantles, and not americium.
What's more, smoke detectors go straight to landfills in many places. I think it's unresonable to consider them a realistic threat.
[0] http://media.cns-snc.ca/pdf_doc/ecc/smoke_am241.pdf
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn#Creation_of_the_reac...