Hacker News Reader

Comment by memracom | Hacker News Reader

There is a fix. Legislate the minimum thickness of lithium batteries. This will stop the idiocy of smaller/lighter right in its tracks. The thinner the battery, the closer the positive and negative terminals are, and the greater the risk of bending or pressure causing them to contact. In case you didn't notice there are lots and lots of people buying bigger devices these days. Bigger phones, bigger tablets. Samsung even sells a tablet with an 18.4 inch screen, the Galaxy View. There is a market for all kinds of devices and there is no need to compromise public safety for the sake of fashion. For that matter, you don't even need to legislate it. The airlines just have to start demanding that all tablets and phones are measured against a thickness scale. If your device does not fit through the slot, you can't take it on board. You either don't fly or you pay a mandatory fee for safekeeping until you return.

View on HN

Isn't this how bad laws happen. Eg. do you think that in 20 years thickness issues won't be completely solved, likely by some completely different technology. Yet some stupid law from 2016 requires that a brand new product segment has to have an arbitrary thickness applied.

Yes, we could just remove that law when that day occurs but that doesn't always happen so easily.

> The thinner the battery, the closer the positive and negative terminals are.

Absolutely false. All lithium ion batteries are made of 4 paper thin layers: two electrodes and two separators. These are cut in narrow strips and folded on themselves many times over, even in a thin battery. A thinner battery will simply have fewer folds. The distance between the two electrodes is given by the thickness of the separators and it has nothing to do with the thickness of the cell.

Here's a teardown: https://youtu.be/uI1eRy0uBI8?t=958 (possibly NSFW-ish language).

You're the kind of person responsible for those shitty CARB-regulated gas can valves.

You mean the ones that almost guarantee that I'll spill a bit of gas each time I use them, those ones? The ones that are so bad that the best alternative is a “utility container”[1]?

Seriously, I've never seen such a counter-productive regulation in my life.

[1] https://amzn.com/B00SJWPKAG

Fun story: I and some buddies were in Colorado skiing over spring break. My buddy accidentally left his truck idling overnight and ran out of gas. We had a gas can, so no problem, right? Well, thanks to CARB, the gas can valve was so complicated that it jammed up (probably due to the cold) and could not be operated. We tried smashing it open, and eventually some spring-loaded piece shot into the trees and the can was still stuck shut. Thanks, congress!

A neighbor ended up having an illegal jerry can that actually worked.

Because much thicker batteries, like the ones in laptops in the early 2000's manufactured by Sony, never have any issues at all. I certainly didn't have to give mine back to Apple so they give me one it wasn't likely to explode.