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Comment by Bluecobra | Hacker News Reader

This ban makes no sense when at the same time Amazon sells USB magnetic stripe card readers:

https://www.amazon.com/MSR90-Magnetic-Credit-Reader-Deftun/d...

Owning one of these or a Flipper Zero doesn’t make you a criminal.

I actually owned a couple of these to reprogram cards at university. One of them came with a piece of paper that had a link to an app that made it possible to bulk collect cards when read! It was just a random piece of paper in the box, with absolutely no instructions and it was just some random URL to an exe.

How is that not a card skimmer?

If stuff like this or Alibaba existed when I was a kid I would've gotten myself in so much trouble messing around.

Amazon isn't saying that either, it just doesn't want to be associated with it, just like how you can't buy guns at Amazon... I... assume... wait, can you buy guns via Amazon in the US?

Legally they could, but that be too American for a chinese BLM company to do.

Interstate firearm sales have billions of laws that Amazon doesn't want to get involved in. You can't buy guns from Amazon.

You can buy gun-related items like magazines and such, and there are some things like knives that say "cannot be shipped to New York" and similar.

There are some air rifles that could incapacitate small animals: https://www.amazon.com/Benjamin-Bulldog-Sportsmans-Pack-Rifl... (3000 psi!)

> You can buy gun-related items like magazines and such

Magazines are banned. Some other accessories are permitted, like holsters, night vision scopes, devices to reload magazines except for those designed to reload magazines for these specific rifle cartriges: .223/5.56, 7.62x51, 308, 7.62x39, 5.45x39. Ejection port covers are banned, but butt plates are not.

You can read these arcane rules here: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

Incidentally this is the rule set under which flipper was apparently banned: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

Bans: Lockpicking devices, Devices designed to duplicate a key, Shoplifting devices, Card skimming devices, Code grabbing devices, Master keys or skeleton keys.

Magazines keep showing up in search in the marketplace, apparently because bb-gun and airsoft magazines are allowed and it's hard to tell which are which.

Those air rifles can do more than that. In the .457 build, the marketing says the muzzle energy can reach 450 ft-lbs. Non +P 9mm has ~350 ft-lbs of muzzle energy. Even the overpressured 9mm rounds are only slightly higher than the .457.

I'm pretty sure one of those could kill a human.

This has me curious what muzzle energy is actually measuring. ft-lbs is usually a unit of torque, but I don't think there's any rotation in a relevant direction here?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-pound_(energy) - it's both a possible torque measurement and a energy measurement.

Just like miles per hour can be a speed or a battery recharging measurement.

Ah, linear displacement, of course.

Customary units, bleh :)

I'm incredibly glad there was no metric/customary split in electricity.

Every vacuum/most electric motors being rated in horsepower rears its head ;)

Agree. Will Amazon stop carrying Raspberry Pi's and Arduino's too?

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