What does looking at a laser have to do with being safe from a class 4 laser? You could be two rooms over and be blinded by it if there are specular surfaces (which there usually are).
This is definitely not a most common transceiver, which is the point of all the commentary.
I'd refuse to buy this thing unless there was some national security reason for doing so, and then there would have to be interlocks on the room to de-energize it when anyone entered.
They are class-1 only because the system is designed to not have any light visible during normal operation. Interlocks can be the only difference between a class-1 and a class-4 laser.
General rule of thumb: if it's been banned, it's useless for the signatories. Ex: chemical weapons, but also biological weapons, land mines, and cluster munitions. Note that land mines and cluster munitions are still actively being used, especially in Ukraine, and the countries that signed onto the ban largely got rid of those systems well before the ban was signed.
It has. That's why countries don't have real chemical weapons anymore. They are easy to make (for an industrialized country), but they don't provide any real advantage when both sides in a war have access to them. They just increase misery for everyone involved.
The argument I've seen against their usefulness is that they only work against static militaries that don't have NBC training, and a modern military can already defeat threats like that without paying the political cost of using them.
They're not. They're effective against an unprepared adversary. Any real military will have anti-chemical-weapons tactics and protection.
So this happens: you douse a building with a gas, and then walk inside and get shot by defenders in gas masks. And by the way, you also will have to wear a gas mask yourself.
Still need a major supplier both the laser emitters and esp. the optics. The weapons will be a lot more expensive compared to conventional weapons, or any anti-riot weaponry.
Aside the sci-fi vibe, I could imagine James Bond esque - still quite hard to use, has to aim for the eyes, scatter can cause collateral damage, doesn't work in fog, rain, etc.
It's tongue-in-cheek, implying that many people working with the stuff already lost an eye to it.
It's part joke and part telling people "hey, this stuff is really dangerous, take it seriously or you'll lose an eye, or both". I don't think I've seen a single lab with high-powered lasers that didn't have a variant of this sign.
A similar popular sign for chemical labs is "Carol Never Wore Her Safety Goggles. Now She Doesn't Need Them", depicting a blind woman with sunglasses and a white cane. (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/carols-safety-goggles)
I guess depending on your political agenda they were either trying to be inclusive and promoting gender diversity in STEM, or they were being subtly misogynistic by implying that women aren't as careful as men.
Or maybe it was just arbitrary and maybe we don't have to read anything into it? But what do I know.
> I guess depending on your political agenda they were either trying to be inclusive and promoting gender diversity in STEM, or they were being subtly misogynistic by implying that women aren't as careful as men.
Nah, I actually believe it's the first one. That's why it's so hilarious. The irony is what it insinuates about what happens to women in STEM.
Alternate idea: they weren't thinking about gender at all. Maybe that was the first hit for "blind person clipart" and they just went with the perceived gender of the person in the image.
It's the irony that I find hilarious. I imagine them saying, "We should make it a woman to portray more women in STEM" while completely neglecting that she's a cautionary tale.
Yes, I agree. That's why making it a girl is so hilarious. As to why you're so offended that I find it hilarious, I honestly don't know what to tell you. It's funny for the same reason I'll refer to a hypothetical serial killer as "him" and follow by saying "or her, of course" to females as if I'm pandering. The joke is that they weren't offended to be excluded from being serial killers.
And I'm not offended. I just have zero idea what your issue is. I never gave it any second thought what gender the person is. I don't care and I wonder what you're reading into it.
On top of this, we can't see 800 nm light. That's well into the Infrared band so "invisible lightsaber for your eyes" is an exaggeration, but helps visualize what you could be dealing with.
I think that sometimes when humor is added, in this way, it is to make you pause first.
At least in my mind when I encounter something oddly said/written my mind starts suggesting contexts and I can clearly "see" myself going blind by doing me like things.
It emphasizes that you will only notice there's something dangerous around after you are already blind.
It's a very well worded warning, that spread because it's effective. The official warning saying that you must take precautions even if you don't see anything wrong just doesn't work well.
Anyway, common sense says you don't look with your unprotected eye through a fiber endpoint.