Alex Davies
Episodes
Notes
The Jordan Harbinger Show · 1404: Alex Davies | The Grizzly Truth About How Safety Gets Tested
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How Did People Use Apple AirTags to Stalk?
Alex Davies says people used Apple AirTags to stalk by slipping the tiny trackers into the seat of a car or into a child's backpack. Apple made AirTags so someone could find keys easily, and other people used them to find an ex-girlfriend, an ex-partner, or a wife. Apple knew from the beginning that stalking was possible.
The tags are inconspicuous. Without custody, a person can hide one in a kid's backpack and the child will not notice. Apple built a warning from the start: if an AirTag kept matching a person's location and was not on the account, the phone would say an AirTag was moving along. In his view, the countermeasures were not enough. Foolproofing covers accidental misuse, like to
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What Has Jordan Harbinger Taken to Heart?
Jordan Harbinger says he has mostly taken one piece of consumer advice to heart. Food safety lawyer Dennis Stearns buys whole heads of lettuce instead of bags of pre-cut lettuce. A bag of spinach can mix leaves from lots of different plants, lots of different spinach plants, and maybe even different farms. Eating more plants raises the odds that one of them had something bad in it.
One solid head of lettuce is not perfectly safe, because it could have cyclospora in it. A salad from a hundred different heads of lettuce makes the odds a hundred percent greater. A whole head has to be cut, washed, and dried, which means getting out the salad spinner, and the spinner takes up the whole dish rac
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How Do Product Inspections Treat Defects?
Alex Davies says the inspection process for most regular products that are not life and death, like a shirt or a piece of Ikea furniture, is set up to let a certain number of defective products through. The allowance might be something like 5 percent bad, and for clothes maybe 10 percent. A 50 percent defect rate is a financial problem. A 2 percent defect rate is one a company can probably get away with.
Statistical tables say how many items to test to hit a chosen defect rate, and defects come in levels. Spider-Man pajamas with Superman on them are a fundamental defect, and even one is probably enough to reject the entire lot. One leg slightly longer than the other on two out of 100 is a m
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What Happens If You Touch a SawStop Blade?
Alex Davies says a SawStop table saw stops its blade in a fraction of a second when a person touches it, and a touch might leave only a little nick, nothing a band-aid could not handle. An electrical circuit runs through the blade. People conduct electricity, so contact completes the circuit, a microprocessor fires, and a steel brake stops the blade the way a stick in bicycle spokes stops a wheel. The blade is totally wrecked. The finger, hand, face, or arm stays totally fine.
Americans lose two hands worth of fingers to table saws every day. The saws are common and affordable, many home woodworkers use them, and injury rates are high. Warnings say not to stick a finger in, to hold the wood
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Why Do Child-resistant Bottles Let Some Kids in?
Alex Davies says child-resistant medicine bottles are tested by actual kids, and the official rule still lets some of them succeed. A panel of kids gets five or 10 minutes to try to open a bottle. Sugar pills or candy go inside so the kids have a reason to keep trying. Official regulations say that 85% of kids have to fail to get into it. The other 15% of kids able to open a medicine bottle is a lot of kids eating grandma's Percocet.
The test has to strike a balance because grandma needs her Percocet and grandma has arthritis and needs to be able to open it. A lot of standard setting is finding the balance between the right level of strength, the right level of difficulty, or endurance.
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How Does Bear Resistant Certification Work?
Alex Davies says a bear canister is certified bear resistant only after a bear spends one hour of bear contact time on it and still cannot open it.
A manufacturer with a new garbage can, cooler, or bear canister brings the design to the bear sanctuary where Kobuk lived, fills it with honey, fish, and treats, and gives it to a bear. One hour of bear contact time without an opening is the official pass. About 20 years ago, before the live-bear program, a mechanical test dropped a metal weight on the container and used machines to mimic a bear's physical force. A spiked block can copy strength. It cannot copy a bear that pumps up and down, claws at the lid, and tries new angles because the foo