[eurekin]

Some lidar units simply use the wavelength that the human eye is opaque to.

The grandparent comment is about camera lenses with little to no near infrared cutoff filter. Some older iPhones were like that and that was the original breaking story.

[IsTom]

> human eye is opaque to

Absorbing the laser isn't necessarily any good. Very hypothetically it could lead to cataracts.

[eurekin]

Sun emits much stronger IR, near-IR, UV

[jandrese]

I remember those old cellphones with weak IR filters. It was a scandal because light clothing turns out to be more transparent to IR than to visible light so they were acting as a sort of clothing "X-Ray" in bright light. Creepers on the Internet tried to start a whole new genre of porn but were shut down in a hurry by cellphone manufacturers adding robust IR filters on the next generation of smartphones.

Shame that perverts had to ruin that for us, it was kinda neat to point a TV remote as the camera and see the bulb light up.