Hacker News Reader

They are not opaque to X-Rays, much less the ludicrous penetrating power used in baggage inspection. Baggage X-rays can happily penetrate inches of metal, nothing short of lead brick will obscure contents and that's going to raise other questions. Where did you get that nonsense from?

View on HN

X-ray machines have to be calibrated. While you could turn up the power to see through metal, you would then be unable to see the less dense items. This makes it difficult to do a full inspection in the few seconds that the screener has.

So .. there's no HDR setting on them?

There's beyond HDR, you can switch between multiple penetration levels and do automatic detection of materials even with ones made 2 decades ago. None of this is really new, insightful, or particularly revolutionary.

>Where did you get that nonsense from

From the article: "since lithium batteries are completely opaque to x-rays"

I probably should have been more clear that they are completely opaque to the x-ray systems commonly in use in airports for carry-on screenings at their standard intensity setting(s). But that's a mouthful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com