What I want to know: if they had submitted the mask for testing, would it have passed?
I agree there should be a fine given that "N95" refers to masks that have actually passed NIOSH testing, but I think it interesting to know if the mask worked.
If the masks worked, there was never a risk to public health.
The article claimed that the fine is 100% of the revenue from the sales of the mislabeled masks:
> The vote approving the complaint and proposed order was passed 3-0, and the FTC will use the $1.1 million sum, equal to revenue generated by the Zephyr, to provide full refunds to customers.
Or were the filter elements already submitted for N95 rating and Razer thought that the rating was transitive rather than having to get the entire apparatus certified.
I do blame whoever interpreted the regulations like that, as the regulations about this stuff are crystal clear that it is the whole device that is tested, not a component.
As pointed out in the actual complaint [1], Razr was aware their masks did not perform at the N95 level and were told by the testing agencies "Cannot mentioned N95. Hazel mask is not a N95 respirator. " and "cannot mentioned NIOSH or NIOSH-certified respirators.".
How does this erode your confidence in the FTC? Maybe you missed the FTC report where they stated the maximum filtration they were able to reach was 86% and that was the maximum, with most tests hitting much lower.
Even calling the mask "N95 Grade", which is an obvious statement that it didn't pass actual testing, is a major problem. It's vague enough that most will believe that it is equivalent to one that has actually passed testing. When it's supposed to catch 95% and catches 10% less, that's _triple_ the amount of crap passing through.
If you read through the FTC documents, you can see that they (Razer) knew it would not pass and so went with the strategy of getting people to believe that it was the same, without any proof.
The FTC could not prevent them from releasing the product or immediately cause them to remove it from market as Razer did not claim that it was N95 certified. Razer knew exactly what they were doing in getting around this and now they're paying the price for doing so, while the FTC sets an example for others that "if you even imply that your product is equivalent to being certified, we'll pin you for it."
I encourage everyone to read the complaint, there is no grey area here and no accidents. This was explicit fraudulent behavior by executives (including the CEO) who knew their mask didn't work very well, knew what "N95" means and that their mask couldn't qualify, and made many conscious decisions to lie to the public anyway.
Jeez.
It's one thing to not do the testing, call it N95, and then say "oopsie, we didn't realize". It's another to actually do the testing, discover it doesn't pass, and sell it as N95 anyway.
That is a pretty good "willfully fraudulent" argument rather than "accidently overstating performance".
It is a little unclear from reading the article. Is the claim that their filters were not as effective as N95 masks, or that they were just as effective but did not go through the testing needed to prove it?
They never had them tested and so could not advertise them as N95-rated. Razer pulled them from the market and any information on whether they were ever retroactively tested has never been released AFAIK.
> In July, August, and September of 2021, Intertek performed tests
assessing the PFE of various assembled Zephyr prototypes. In each test, the assembled
device failed to perform to the N95 standard of 95% or greater PFE. Figure 13, infra,
depicts the best results ever reached for the device in testing: as documented in
Intertek’s August 13, 2021 report, the device reached a maximum PFE of 83.2% with
the fans off and 86.3% with the fans on, and frequently tested much lower. The mask
did not come close to consistently reaching a PFE of 95%, the level of protection
characteristic of an N95 mask.
> Thus, while Razer’s CEO was claiming that the Zephyr was a more
comfortable, reusable N95, see supra ¶¶ 46-47, internal communications reveal that
Defendants knew the mask could not provide the level of protection offered by an N95.
> In July, August, and September of 2021, Intertek performed tests assessing the PFE of various assembled Zephyr prototypes. In each test, the assembled device failed to perform to the N95 standard of 95% or greater PFE. Figure 13, infra, depicts the best results ever reached for the device in testing: as documented in Intertek’s August 13, 2021 report, the device reached a maximum PFE of 83.2% with the fans off and 86.3% with the fans on, and frequently tested much lower. The mask did not come close to consistently reaching a PFE of 95%, the level of protection characteristic of an N95 mask.
Its too bad this went off the rails so bad. I was very interested in the Razer-- despite the RGB it would have been cool to have a silicon sealing mask thats less industrial than a 3m Respirator mask, had a window so you could see someones mouth, and used a fan to help overcome the resistance of the filter element.
If the availability wasn't at "practically unobtainable" levels I probably would have gotten one.
I mean it was probably at least as effective against covid as the Etsy masks people were selling that were made from regular fabric and whatever other nonsense. Probably shouldn't have used "N95" though. Doubt they would've even needed to at the time.
Eh, the Zephyr was only released in October 2021, not in the middle of 2020 when fabric masks were in vogue. N95s were much easier to get in mid-2021, not that many people were buying them. In early 2022 they were given away for free in drugstores and even then not many people were taking them.
At the peak of the pandemic, there wasn't much supply so everyone was trying to reserve N95 for healthcare workers. The official advice (US) at the time was use fabric, it's better than nothing and it catches some droplets.
"Probably shouldn't have used N95 though"... gee, ya think? :P I would like to think that it's clear to everybody that they absolutely should not have claimed that it's even "N95 Grade", which clearly indicates that it's an approved as N95, but is roughly similar.
The actual stats are that it reached, at maximum, with the fan running, 86.3% filtration. That's almost 3x the amount of crap getting through than an actual N95 certified mask (without needing a fan).
While not a recommendation, I mentioned the Razer gaming laptop to a co-worker. He bought one, it started to de-laminate and bend itself into a potato chip. I had never seen anything like it. They would not take a return, he had to do a credit card charge back, and blamed me forever.
Their laptops had a 50% failure rate at Linus Media Group, according to Luke during a WAN Show. Linus kept pushing them on his viewers though.
This was years ago, and I will never understand how the company was not shamed into bankruptcy. Well, I guess I do understand. You can buy favorable media coverage and it scares the crap out of me.
My sister had issues with her Razer laptop that ended up leading to needing new case screws so she could reassemble it after replacing a faulty battery and repairing a bad trackpad.
They didn't have replacement screws, period. We had to buy them from a third party on Amazon. Kind of a clown company between that experience and every time I've bought one of their mice or keyboards (I learned my lesson after the third time...)
Yeah, now that you mention it, looking back, I assume it was likely a battery swelling, after one month of use. However, he and I were not close and he was already pissed at me. I didn't offer to take a look.
I had a Razer laptop. The metal on the back split open at one point and became really sharp. Due to this and its bulky-ness, I got an Asus Rog Zephyrus and never looked back.
I always used to like Asus as a company when I built computers back in the 90s. Still great quality.
I guess that's what rainbow LEDs, sweet logos, and edgy branding will get you.
And with streaming becoming popular, "functional" didn't really cut it anymore. Having a black MX Master/MX Keys combo doesn't really "pop" on screen. It's gotta have lights, match the aesthetic, etc. It working is almost immaterial.
Logitech makes hardware with Gamer Lights that doesn't fall apart in six months, at least :P I've been using one of their keyboards for four or five years now.
Razer, on the other hand... I was once gifted a secondhand Razer Blade laptop whose mainboard went dead after a year or two of use. They quoted me $500 for parts alone on a 3+ year old model.
They made a lot of money on their WOW mice back in the day.
They were like the Beats Audio of mice for MMO folks.
The sheer number of buttons helped. Logitech had the G60? Mmo mouse but it didn't have the 'edgy styling' of razer' products.
That said, I still have two of the logi's (never did MMO, but that thing was awesome for CAD) one is over a decade old, more than I can say about any of the razer trash my friends bought
I'm sorry, I do not, this all happened a while ago. I am pretty sure of my recollection of the sequence of events, but take it with a grain of salt, just one grain though.
It was awkward as heck. I gained a lot of respect for Luke that day for keeping it real.
./yt-dlp --skip-download --write-sub --write-auto-sub --sub-lang en --sub-format json3 "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8mG-RkN2uTw7PhlnAr4pZZz2QubIbujH"
That'll grab all the WAN shows (that's the playlist LTT provides for the WAN) of the autogenerated subs in a rather, uh, unique, JSON based format. From there I wrote some throw away quality Python to find razor or blade near percent:
import os, json
hits, files = 0, 0
for cur in [x for x in os.listdir(".") if x.endswith(".json3")]:
files += 1
with open(cur) as f:
data = json.load(f)
words = []
for event in data["events"]:
at = event["tStartMs"]
for seg in event.get("segs", []):
words.append((len(words), at, seg["utf8"].strip().lower()))
span = 10 * 1000
for i, at, word in words:
if word in {"razor", "blade", "razors", "blades"}:
span_min = min(x[0] for x in words if abs(x[1] - at) <= span)
span_max = max(x[0] for x in words if abs(x[1] - at) <= span)
for other_i, other_at, other_word in words[span_min:span_max+1]:
if other_word in {"percent"}:
print("-" * 100)
loc = min(at, other_at) // 1000
loc = f"{loc//3600}:{(loc%3600)//60:02d}:{loc%60:02d}"
print(loc + ": " + cur)
phrase = " ".join(x[2] for x in words[min(i,other_i): max(i,other_i)+1])
print(phrase)
hits += 1
print(f"{hits} hits in {files} files.")
It found some false positives (maybe one, don't remember), and the hit shared above.
Both me and my wife had issues with right mouse button switches failing and registering two clicks instead of one. This was 5 mice across 2 models (2 we bought, 3 we got as warranty replacements) in just a year.
It's been over a decade and it's still a razer-free household.
Ironically Logitech might be partly to blame for this. Logitech being the biggest Omron customer of D2F switches basically forced them to move manufacturing from Japan to China the way Walmart forces suppliers to cut costs until they bleed. Thus the era of "10 million click" switches dying precisely around 1 year of use began.
Nowadays Razer and other high end mouse vendors use immortal Optical switches.
I'll tell you this. This website, just like reddit since about 2006-07, shadowbans popular right-leaning posts and leaves ones that the community down rates up. You are on what is very likely a site infiltrated by China...
>The Register asked Razer to comment, and a spokesperson told us: "We disagree with the FTC's allegations and did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement. It was never our intention to mislead anyone, and we chose to settle this matter to avoid the distraction and disruption of litigation and continue our focus on creating great products for gamers.
The zero-accountability culture of capitalist corporatism needs to be cast into a scorching lava pit.
I had a pair of $100 Anker ANC headphones physically break on me but didn't have the box to return them in, and the Ankers were out of stock. For some reason Walmart's returns department's solution was for me to find a different headset with the exact same price to swap. The only matching set was a Razer Barracuda X, and oh boy were they terrible. I have never hated a consumer product so much in my entire life.
These ANC headphones didn't support Bluetooth at all, while other models with the same name did. In 2024, for $100, a wireless headset that only functions with the included dongle?! I made peace with it and got used to swapping the dongle to each device I use. Because of the poor dongle design it couldn't fit in my phone without removing the phone's case, so I listened to podcasts with my case off. Within the first two days the dongle just completely stopped working. Complete garbage. Not only that but the audio quality was horrible, the microphone sounded like a rotary phone, they were huge and bulky and hot to wear. When I contacted support asking for a new dongle they emailed me back the same template six times from three different representatives as if I hadn't answered all of their questions each time, and they wanted me to send the entire headset back to get a replacement.
I left the experience thinking "Wow, this garbage company must hate their customers." Even after all that, I didn't realize they hated their customers enough to install bitcoin miners on their mouse drivers or to sell them fake N95 masks. The punishment here doesn't even come close to justice, if anyone got sick the executives in charge of bringing those masks to market should be held criminally liable.
64 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadI agree there should be a fine given that "N95" refers to masks that have actually passed NIOSH testing, but I think it interesting to know if the mask worked.
If the masks worked, there was never a risk to public health.
> The vote approving the complaint and proposed order was passed 3-0, and the FTC will use the $1.1 million sum, equal to revenue generated by the Zephyr, to provide full refunds to customers.
However, they really should have gotten a lawyer or consultant specializing in health product regulations.
Of course, they did anywas.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40214045
Even calling the mask "N95 Grade", which is an obvious statement that it didn't pass actual testing, is a major problem. It's vague enough that most will believe that it is equivalent to one that has actually passed testing. When it's supposed to catch 95% and catches 10% less, that's _triple_ the amount of crap passing through.
If you read through the FTC documents, you can see that they (Razer) knew it would not pass and so went with the strategy of getting people to believe that it was the same, without any proof.
The FTC could not prevent them from releasing the product or immediately cause them to remove it from market as Razer did not claim that it was N95 certified. Razer knew exactly what they were doing in getting around this and now they're paying the price for doing so, while the FTC sets an example for others that "if you even imply that your product is equivalent to being certified, we'll pin you for it."
I encourage everyone to read the complaint, there is no grey area here and no accidents. This was explicit fraudulent behavior by executives (including the CEO) who knew their mask didn't work very well, knew what "N95" means and that their mask couldn't qualify, and made many conscious decisions to lie to the public anyway.
That is a pretty good "willfully fraudulent" argument rather than "accidently overstating performance".
> In July, August, and September of 2021, Intertek performed tests assessing the PFE of various assembled Zephyr prototypes. In each test, the assembled device failed to perform to the N95 standard of 95% or greater PFE. Figure 13, infra, depicts the best results ever reached for the device in testing: as documented in Intertek’s August 13, 2021 report, the device reached a maximum PFE of 83.2% with the fans off and 86.3% with the fans on, and frequently tested much lower. The mask did not come close to consistently reaching a PFE of 95%, the level of protection characteristic of an N95 mask.
> Thus, while Razer’s CEO was claiming that the Zephyr was a more comfortable, reusable N95, see supra ¶¶ 46-47, internal communications reveal that Defendants knew the mask could not provide the level of protection offered by an N95.
> In July, August, and September of 2021, Intertek performed tests assessing the PFE of various assembled Zephyr prototypes. In each test, the assembled device failed to perform to the N95 standard of 95% or greater PFE. Figure 13, infra, depicts the best results ever reached for the device in testing: as documented in Intertek’s August 13, 2021 report, the device reached a maximum PFE of 83.2% with the fans off and 86.3% with the fans on, and frequently tested much lower. The mask did not come close to consistently reaching a PFE of 95%, the level of protection characteristic of an N95 mask.
If the availability wasn't at "practically unobtainable" levels I probably would have gotten one.
That’s the entire point. Nobody would have cared otherwise.
The actual stats are that it reached, at maximum, with the fan running, 86.3% filtration. That's almost 3x the amount of crap getting through than an actual N95 certified mask (without needing a fan).
Their laptops had a 50% failure rate at Linus Media Group, according to Luke during a WAN Show. Linus kept pushing them on his viewers though.
This was years ago, and I will never understand how the company was not shamed into bankruptcy. Well, I guess I do understand. You can buy favorable media coverage and it scares the crap out of me.
They didn't have replacement screws, period. We had to buy them from a third party on Amazon. Kind of a clown company between that experience and every time I've bought one of their mice or keyboards (I learned my lesson after the third time...)
I always used to like Asus as a company when I built computers back in the 90s. Still great quality.
I am not sure why you are upset at this outcome, given the company name.
/s
And with streaming becoming popular, "functional" didn't really cut it anymore. Having a black MX Master/MX Keys combo doesn't really "pop" on screen. It's gotta have lights, match the aesthetic, etc. It working is almost immaterial.
Razer, on the other hand... I was once gifted a secondhand Razer Blade laptop whose mainboard went dead after a year or two of use. They quoted me $500 for parts alone on a 3+ year old model.
They were like the Beats Audio of mice for MMO folks.
The sheer number of buttons helped. Logitech had the G60? Mmo mouse but it didn't have the 'edgy styling' of razer' products.
That said, I still have two of the logi's (never did MMO, but that thing was awesome for CAD) one is over a decade old, more than I can say about any of the razer trash my friends bought
That said, I'm not advocating Razer, especially nowadays.
Do you have link to that particular show? It's surprising it was mentioned and that Linus was still 'supporting' it at the time.
It was awkward as heck. I gained a lot of respect for Luke that day for keeping it real.
https://youtu.be/_Sd608uzI0Q?t=710
I cobbled together the correct yt-dlp command to get all the subtitles and a little Python glue to search them.
Thanks for taking the time. Now I need to learn more about yt-dlp.
Would you mind sharing the yt-dlp command which helped you get all the subtitles?
Both me and my wife had issues with right mouse button switches failing and registering two clicks instead of one. This was 5 mice across 2 models (2 we bought, 3 we got as warranty replacements) in just a year.
It's been over a decade and it's still a razer-free household.
Nowadays Razer and other high end mouse vendors use immortal Optical switches.
https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/148044516835651993...
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37154414
The zero-accountability culture of capitalist corporatism needs to be cast into a scorching lava pit.
These ANC headphones didn't support Bluetooth at all, while other models with the same name did. In 2024, for $100, a wireless headset that only functions with the included dongle?! I made peace with it and got used to swapping the dongle to each device I use. Because of the poor dongle design it couldn't fit in my phone without removing the phone's case, so I listened to podcasts with my case off. Within the first two days the dongle just completely stopped working. Complete garbage. Not only that but the audio quality was horrible, the microphone sounded like a rotary phone, they were huge and bulky and hot to wear. When I contacted support asking for a new dongle they emailed me back the same template six times from three different representatives as if I hadn't answered all of their questions each time, and they wanted me to send the entire headset back to get a replacement.
I left the experience thinking "Wow, this garbage company must hate their customers." Even after all that, I didn't realize they hated their customers enough to install bitcoin miners on their mouse drivers or to sell them fake N95 masks. The punishment here doesn't even come close to justice, if anyone got sick the executives in charge of bringing those masks to market should be held criminally liable.