Hacker News Reader

Comment by romwell | Hacker News Reader

>It’s gonna happen.

Yeah, and when it does, the manufacturer of that lithium bomb should pay for it.

And not just to compensate the victim, but to make the cost of negligent manufacture higher than the savings it brings to the company in engineering, QA, and production.

Numbers are not an excuse. There is over a billion cars in the world, most filled with highly flammable gasoline that actually burns inside them. Yet none are spontaneously exploding.

Self-immolating headphones - small speakers that you put on your head, mind you - are an egregious abuse of safety, public trust, and all reason. By an ostensibly "luxury" brand, no less.

There is no "but" about it. If they can't make safe headphones, they should not make headphones period.

OP, please report them to CPSC here: https://www.saferproducts.gov/IncidentReporting

View on HN

There is over a billion cars in the world, most filled with highly flammable gasoline that actually burns inside them. Yet none are spontaneously exploding.

They absolutely are. 170,000 a year in the US alone. Some are even due to known design faults. A few years ago Ford recalled almost a million pickups due to a fire risk, and then recalled half of them again because the first fix caused another fire risk.

The probability of injury or death from a vehicle fire is probably much higher than the risk of injury from wireless headphones.

https://www.consumernotice.org/personal-injury/vehicle-safet...

Yeah, and GM just recalled effectively all EVs they ever made.

What's your point? Mine was that Bose should do the same thing with their headphones, and they won't do it out of their own accord.

Also consider that there are billions of porcelain dishes made in the world, and somehow, they don't self-explode. If headphones are different in that regard, they should be, at the very least, clearly labeled as such - which is not the case.

I think their point was that you were pretty sloppy with your facts.

The point is that no matter how hard you try, electrical, mechanical or chemical failure will always be a risk. It's an inherent property of physical objects. It's impossibly to make them perfectly safe. Although, to be fair, given the number of objects compared to the number of failures, we're pretty close. Obviously manufacturers should attempt to minimize the risk but they'll never reduce it to zero.

If you're concerned about exploding lithium ion or lithium polymer devices in your home the only recourse available to you is not to buy any.

If you do that you should also be aware that corded devices also catch fire sometimes though. You should avoid those too.

Maybe just avoid electrical systems entirely.

> Maybe just avoid electrical systems entirely.

The risks from burning wood in your living room are higher. My wife got burned badly when she was a small kid. We have freezing temperatures 7-8 months a year in this country. So heating requires a lot of energy and with a lot of energy there is always higher risk, whether electric or not.

>Although, to be fair, given the number of objects compared to the number of failures, we're pretty close.

Did you ever pause to think why that's the case? That wasn't the case 100 years ago, when Radium was a fun new chemical to paint your teeth with.

We are pretty close because of government regulation, warnings, and yes, lawsuits that punish the companies for being negligent on safety.

>Obviously manufacturers should attempt to minimize the risk but they'll never reduce it to zero.

And obviously, the manufacturers need incentives to do so. Safety warnings aren't just for the consumer - they also make safer products more marketable. And penalties for not doing due diligence won't happen by themselves unless the consumers take an active position, report safety violations to CPSC, and sue to recover the damages.

Someone has to enforce the rules. In the US, the enforcement is shifted to the consumer and the legal system. We have CPSC, NHTSA, FAA - and their reach is still limited, the justification being that it should be up to the courts.

> GM just recalled effectively all EVs they ever made.

What has this got to do with exploding ICE cars?

> What's your point?

I think GPs point was pretty clear. You made a completely unfounded claim, ICE cars don’t spontaneously explode, despite the fact that evidence shows they clearly do, and do so at a rate higher than headphones or EVs.

I had a family member have a car light on fire on the road and burn to a charred shell within a matter of minutes, it happens.

Nothing is perfectly safe, that is how lithium batteries fail. You should know so you can properly deal with problems.

There is an annoying trend among people that expect everything to be perfectly safe. It seems to be a symptom of an overly sheltered existence.

>There is an annoying trend among people that expect everything to be perfectly safe. It seems to be a symptom of an overly sheltered existence.

Yeah, how overly sheltered to not expect your headphones to not catch on fire and kill you. It's a symptom of not believing when someone pisses in our eyes and tells us it's raining. Especially when it's happening on our own dime.

>Nothing is perfectly safe, that is how lithium batteries fail.

Then lithium batteries should be banned from headphones.

>You should know so you can properly deal with problems.

Good point! And where would the customer learn about this? From HackerNews?

Last time I checked, Bose devices didn't come with a self-combustion warning.

And until they do, my point applies.

A consumer would learn this by having interest in the world around them and how it works beyond being slapped in the face with every warning possible (I’m looking at you, literally everything in the world which is known in the state of California to cause cancer). We don’t need cushioned guard rails on literally everything.

When was the last time you actually read a product manual? Many of them actually are full of warnings about how things fail. I have no idea about Bose headphones, I definitely threw away everything but the headphones immediately.

No we should not ban everything that doesn’t have a zero percent fault rate. This weird angry response is a symptom of this sheltered fear which comes from not understanding that the world isn’t ever going to be perfect. You make really bad decisions when you’re in denial about the impossibility of safety perfection.

>A consumer would learn this by having interest in the world around them

And where would they go to fulfil that interest? HackerNews? Or maybe, just consider it, the instruction manual that comes with the device?

>We don’t need cushioned guard rails on literally everything.

Sure. Just labels on self-exploding products saying that they may self-explode.

>When was the last time you actually read a product manual?

Yesterday. I got an Ikea ENEBY speaker. Your ignorance and lack of having interest in the world around you, which includes product manuals, is on you.

From the Bose QC-35 manual

"Remove headphones immediately if you experience a warming sensation or loss of audio." [1]

Probably could use a few more words for good measure.

Also, they do not explode. Explode has a specific meaning. Lithium batteries experiencing thermal runaway get rather hot and then burn quite vigorously, but they do not explode.

1. https://assets.bose.com/content/dam/Bose_DAM/Web/consumer_el...

Interesting it also says it shouldn't be connected to a Airplane Seat Adapter yet I'm sure my QC 35'S came with a airplane adapter. Wonder what happened there.

"We know our product is unsafe and shouldn't be used in this way, but this is a huuuuge use case for our product, so we will make it appear as if it's designed for it, while warning the user to not use it in a manner that they bought the product for. Genius!"

>"Remove headphones immediately if you experience a warming sensation or loss of audio."

A "warming sensation" is not what the OP has experienced.

When Bose augments this to the following, you may have a point:

>Remove headphones immediately if they spontaneously ignite and start emanating smoke and hazardous chemicals that cause chemical burns to your skin. Failure to do so may result in death. Rinse all exposed skin with running cold water immediately, and see a medical professional ASAP in such case.

You seem to have no problem with this scenario actually happening to someone, so there should be absolutely no reason not to have it in the same manual in these exact words.

> A "warming sensation" is not what the OP has experienced.

A warming sensation is the first thing OP noticed: "I took them off of my charger, put them on my head, and noticed they were suddenly getting very warm".

Taking them off at that point does remove _some_ of the risks.

The guy went digging for the serial number after the event.

> Yeah, how overly sheltered to not expect your headphones to not catch on fire and kill you. It's a symptom of not believing when someone pisses in our eyes and tells us it's raining. Especially when it's happening on our own dime.

I agree with the feeling, but flammable batteries are one of the less risky and stupid thing humans are doing.

I mean, we are literally littering the sky with swarms of useless satellites for the rich hikers in the global north (one example among many of totally idiotic behavior) - I can live with batteries.

(btw. I don't even have a smartphone or a cellphone in general, i know i'm a bit of a radical - and i use only wired stuff, because i find it more practical, durable and ecological - point is, people accept very stupid stuff for their convenience, that's why we are slowly killing our planet and ourselves - your points are valid, but it won't deter people from using dangerous chemicals in their lives, and the throwing them away and poison nature and themsleves)

I'm genuinely curious. Which satellites are you referring to?

Starlink, Project Kuiper, etc. where they plan to send more than 12,000 satellites into space, for having wi-fi on earth (for those who can afford it, it's very expensive, 500 usd setup + 100 usd per month - not affordable for 90% of the world)

but they are ruining the sky for 100% of us, for the benefit of some rich techbro that want to check emails in some remote place.

I see. I don't live in a remote place at all (central USA), but Starlink is far better internet than anything else we can get. Currently our connection speed is 0.6 Mbps. It's supposed to be 10, but they have problems pretty often...

>Yeah, how overly sheltered to not expect your headphones to not catch on fire and kill you

Very. In the end you're carrying a high energy density power source on your head that would love to just catch fire. Don't they teach kids anything in chemistry these days?

>Very. In the end you're carrying a high energy density power source on your head that would love to just catch fire. Don't they teach kids anything in chemistry these days?

I just love how this comment appears in the same thread as this one:

>That sort of paranoia doesn't help. In fact it may cause psychosomatic symptoms (nocebo effect).

Anyway, if it's common knowledge, there's no harm to put a big label warning about it on the instruction manual, right?

Last time I checked, passing chemistry isn't a requirement for purchasing Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones, which spontaneously catch fire and cause chemical burns.

> I just love how this comment appears in the same thread as this one

Yes. One says “yes lipo batteries can have thermal runaway” and the other comment says “don’t twist yourself into knots by worrying over this one time bad exposure”.

They talk about two different things in two different way. Your comment makes it sound as if they are somehow contradicting each other? They don’t.

Nobody got killed, there did you get that from?

Being dramatic is not helping their case.

Some of the safety issues could be alleviated through different product design. For instance -- the charge system is a USB cable direct to the headphones. A fireproof cradle might be one option to handle to at least mitigate for unattended thermal runaway. In fact, a fireproof box in which to charge portable devices might not be a bad product idea.

Fireproof bags and boxes already exist and are widely used for LiPo batteries commonly used in RC products.

Big difference between LiPo in particular and Lithium Ion in general, most Lithium Ion batteries are not Lithium Polymer.

Most "LiPo" batteries are typically the same chemistry as your "Lithium-ion" but without the puncture and pressure resistant casing. The plastic pouch is the "polymer" part. LiPo batteries are lighter and can produce more current than basically the same thing in a safer standard container.

So yeah, big difference in safety, not really a difference in the chemistry.

The above was explained to me by someone I believe knows what they're talking about. But I may have misunderstood; if I have, please let me know!

LiPo is a subclass of Lithium-Ion (which is confusing), but is a different chemistry. LiPo batteries are typically labelled as such, have either a solid or gel electrolyte, and are packaged in pouches while the rest of the Lithium-Ion cells are labelled LiIon or Lithium Ion, can be packaged in pouches but can also be packaged in cylindrical beakers, these have a liquid electrolyte with the negative electrode being the beaker and the plus being the center typically brought out at a concentric tip.

Manufacturers sometimes use deceptive labeling and given that the form factors are somewhat interchangeable it really is a confusing mess. Unfortunately both chemistries have 4.20V as their 'charged' voltage and 3.0V as their discharged voltages because of the underlying chemical similarities so looking at the voltages won't give you a good idea either.

In the end, the electrode is what matters, but getting to that requires destruction of the cell. One non-destructive way of figuring out if a cell has a liquid electrolyte is to see if you can shift the center of gravity by tilting the cell slowly. If you can then it is most likely a Lithium Ion battery, if you can't then it is a most likely a Lithium Polymer one.

> By an ostensibly "luxury" brand, no less.

Bose aren't luxury: they're premium mediocre. They're expensive - overpriced in fact - but have a supremely competent marketing team who are probably responsible for mopping up a good portion of that premium.

That doesn't make this incident any better or more excusable but it does go some way to explaining why it happened: the product is poor quality and cheaply engineered.

You get what you pay for, and with Bose you are paying to be hoodwinked by flashy marketing and "brand equity".

I wouldn't consider Bose for anything else, but the noise cancelling on this particular headset is very good.

I'll probably swap to Sony next, but when I bought them there wasn't really a viable competitor.

From what little I know, Bose has patents on a number of noise-cancelling techniques, hence making it tricky for other manufacturers to match them in noise-cancelling. However, in the past five years, several other manufacturers have done pretty well (though I believe some cross-licence patents with Bose), and Sony and Apple do lead in some comparative reviews.

It is a shame that Bose's lead in noise-cancelling isn't matched in the quality of their sound.

The Sony WX-1000s, I guess?

I'm quite impressed with them. Both the noise-cancelling and sound quality are better than the QC35s I used to use.

Yes. I've tried them side-by-side (and a whole bunch of others) and the Sony came out as way better than the rest, which given my one-man boycott of Sony products after the rootkit debacle is a bit of a letdown. So I hope the boycott gods won't notice my lack of fortitude.

That's why I put "luxury" in scare quotes.

Thanks, "premium" (also in scare quotes) is the word I was looking for.

Don't manufacturers do that already?

Take into account the probability of a costly failure, and increase the price to account for it. And compensate victims to a certain extent, but quietly. I suppose they would fight any publicity of such incidents, since that would have a huge impact on sales, I have read a few such stories, and usually they disappear from the news pretty soon, likely because the victim agreed to be quietly compensated. I could be wrong.

>Don't manufacturers do that already?

Yes they do, and this is why we have CPSC and lawsuits: to increase the cost of failure to the point where it's not a wise business decision to allow one to happen.

Nothing is 100% fool-proof, but the difference between 99.9% safe and 99.99% safe is 10x decrease in incidents.

You cannot be certain that this was entirely "spontaneous".

Yes, the OP prefaced with a number of common reasons this might happen that do not apply in his case, but that does not mean the root cause is faulty manufacture.

Hell, it's possible that a high-energy particle from space hit the battery in his headphones in just the right spot and that's why it exploded. Would you hold Bose responsible in that case?

Because they didn't design it around that possibility. If the battery blows up, regardless of cause, it should do so in a controlled manner which minimizes the harm caused to the wearer.

Okay cool and now the headphones weigh a kilo because of shielding and nobody buys them.

Maybe? Your alternative seems to be to let a few people die every now and then, so that some companies can get better margins.

Nobody did die though, nor is it very likely they would. And this is one pair out of however many million they've sold. I'm not arguing there shouldn't be compensation in this instance, nor an investigation into why it happened. But hypothetically if it was some one in a million space particle (which is obviously unlikely), I think it's pretty ludicrous to expect Bose to design for that eventuality.

> I think it's pretty ludicrous to expect Bose to design for that eventuality.

That decision is, indeed, up to Bose.

But should they choose to continue making a headphones that have a 1-in-N-million chance of exploding, this should be clearly indicated on every pair they sell.

So that their competitors who choose to invest in safety would be able to reap the fruit if their labor in the free market.

How many times are you going to say "exploding" to describe something that didn't explode? You're clearly cognizant of the fact you are lying, so why keep doing it? Why not just describe what happened accurately? Is it a concern that you can't make your point if you relate to the facts in a more accurate fashion, without the repeated hyperbole?

It's less that I care about the their "margins" and more that I care about having headphones that aren't $600 and give me long-term neck problems from their weight.

Also nobody has died so...

>It's less that I care about the their "margins" and more that I care about having headphones that aren't $600 and give me long-term neck problems from their weight.

You are aware that wired headphones exist, right?

Also, quite a leap from "Bose shouldn't make headphones that explode while being used, like QC-35 II" to "if we ask for that, this will make all headphones heavy enough to cause neck problems and cost North of $600".

Self-exploding headphones were not a problem we had for most of the time headphones existed. There's no reason to introduce it, nor accept it.

>Also nobody has died so...

Oh, so someone has to die instead of merely being injured for you to care? That's hardly compassionate, but understandable.

How about we settle for the middle ground of the following being included with each pair:

"BOSE Quite Comfort QC 35 II. You might experience bodily injury during normal operation of this product. Also nobody has died, so..."

"Exploding" is a feature of the battery, not the headphone.

Lithium-ion are the best we have right now, and they "explode" (catch fire I think is more accurate) when damaged.

Do I want better battery chemistries that are more robust? Of course.

Am I going to hold this against Bose or any other battery-powered device manufacturer until we do? No.

>Okay cool and now the headphones weigh a kilo because of shielding and nobody buys them.

The problem here being.. that Bose loses money?

Or maybe, just maybe, they figure out a way to make headphones that are both safe and marketable?

The idea of free market includes the notion of failing in the free market. Which is exactly what Bose did here.

Literally nothing is perfectly safe.

1/1,000,000 chance of getting chemical burns is fine by me.

>1/1,000,000 chance of getting chemical burns is fine by me.

That's fine by me too, and Bose should market the headphones with the description "1/10^6 chance of getting chemical burns".

Then the people who don't find it fine by them can make a rational choice about buying or not buying that product.

See, the public has this unreasonable expectation about wireless headphones being as safe as wired ones. Silly public. Can't fathom why they would think that way, with all the warnings of potential chemical burns in the product manuals.

Oh wait.

Replying to this and jen729's comment, which I can't reply to for some reason.

I'm not entirely sure why this got downvoted (bit of a personal gripe with YC (anonymous down voting/spamming without a direct comment).. buuuut

This idea is only 'silly' if you think of it as a large amount of lead lining.

In this day-in-age, I'm sure the idea of a material/substance around it that stops combustion when something like this happens is surely not out of reach.. I'm as far away from a chemical engineer as you can get, but, if it requires oxygen to burn, maybe some incredibly strong substance around it to contain the chemicals if the battery expands. Or some to absorb oxygen around it.

I dunno, maybe I'm incredibly naive, but it feels like something that, if a portion of the companies that manufacturer/use the batteries put effort into something, it's something that could be made _more_ safe in some way?

>I'm not entirely sure why this got downvoted

Because we are on HackerNews, where the consequences of their own actions only exist for individuals and not the corporations they hope to be CEOs of one day.

I didn't realize that I'd need to argue, in 2021, that selling people dangerous products as safe is, in principle, wrong, but here we are.

To people asking "What did the OP expect", the answer is: whatever the instruction manual said on Page 1. And it surely didn't say: "WARNING: MAY KILL YOU DURING NORMAL OPERATION".

Once it does, we can have a discussion about everything else.

> whatever the instruction manual said on Page 1. And it surely didn't say: "WARNING: MAY KILL YOU DURING NORMAL OPERATION".

Tbh it probably wouldn't take much to get that added to the boilerplate warnings of every battery product sold, just in case.

The point is, the manufacturers of safe products will have a selling point by being able to differentiated themselves.

Heck, wired headphone makers will get a boost from that.

Big Asbestos enters the chat

and I got down voted :( Honestly like little daggers and makes me really never want to comment on HN.

Surely the idea of the world putting some effort into producing a material that can help stop this happening isn't completely stupid...?

>Surely the idea of the world putting some effort into producing a material that can help stop this happening isn't completely stupid...?

HN, the forum of innovators who are vehemently against innovation if it's for the sake of consumer safety.

I mean, come one people, it's a business opportunity. Figure out how to make non-self-exploding headphones, with a guarantee, and crush Bose in the free market on that selling point.

Sigh.

You're kinda arguing for wired headphones in a different part of this thread.

Bit of a stretch to say you're "pro-innovation" in this context.

I mean probably. In 1,000,000 such cases of devices causing injury in general, how many are caused by space particles and how many are caused by human fallibility? Whether it's a design issue, qa failure, supply chain issue with unexpected material in the device, or deliberate malice, the company is responsible for the product it sells, and the customer has a reasonable expectation that it won't explode.

The cosmic particle idea isn't completely outlandish, but it's impossible to prove, and it's statistically far more likely that it was a human failure. Given the rarity of spontaneously exploding batteries, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the particles are responsible for less than 1 in a million incidents, so yeah, the company should be liable. That's the cost of business, and on a humanistic note, making things better for the guy would just be the good thing to do.

yes? products should be designed so that they do not kill anyone?

You will not be able to produce a hammer (can by mistake crush a skull), or a ball pen (can pierce the chest and reach the heart in a fall), or a bottle of water (one can choke on the water).

Nothing is perfectly safe. People should deal with it, and remember that they don't live in a fairy tale.

>Nothing is perfectly safe. People should deal with it, and remember that they don't live in a fairy tale.

Including the business of selling self-exploding headphones.

Corporations should deal with it, and remember that they don't live in a fairy tale where they can pull off shit like that off without consequence.

Can't make safe headphones? Leave it to someone who can. Free market or something.

(In case you're not getting it, it's not about living in fairy tales, it's about increasing the cost of failure to corporations to a high enough point that they will put some money into safety instead of pocketing it.)

How exactly would you develop headphones that are hardened against high energy particles from space?

NASA has a hard time doing this for their vehicles that are intended to be in deep space.

A better design could be such that remains safe (even if functionally degraded) when hit with a burst of cosmic rays.

Whether it can be done within the constraints of mass, volume, and expense that keep the headphones competitive is another (hard) question.

This is absurd. There's a world of difference between an object that you can kill yourself with or an object that just randomly kills you.

This particular Bose model is pretty popular, and has been produced for many years.

I hope statistics exist on how many of them burst into flames. I'd like to compare it to the number of people who choked on a cereal breakfast, or fell from a stairway at home, or other such random accidents with normally benign things. I suspect that the headphones will be no worse than many other common household items, including the low-tech ones.

>You cannot be certain that this was entirely "spontaneous".

Yes, and it's not my business to find out. It's the job of CPSC and investigators to find the reasons. Which is why I insisted the OP should file a report.

And as for establishing certainty, I'm not a judge or a jury, whose job it is to do so. Which is why I suggested the OP should take it to court.

>Hell, it's possible that a high-energy particle from space hit the battery in his headphones in just the right spot and that's why it exploded. Would you hold Bose responsible in that case?

I can't hold Bose responsible, the courts and CPSC can. Since it's also possible that OP was, you know, correct in his assessment, this case should get their attention.

Responsibility should always rest with the responsible party, I. e. the one in the best position to have avoided this. It’s isn’t about guilt, but simply the redistribution of a harm that has already happened.

Unless the device was mishandled in some unusual way, the manufacturer should bear this burden because they are/were in the best position to implement mechanisms to avoid the harm, from improved QA to a better design and, ultimately, to rhe informed decision not to sell the device.

> the manufacturer of that lithium bomb

Thing is, small lithium bombs do less damage than large ones. Now Bose makes a point of advertising the long battery-life of these devices; 20 hours, they say.

Doesn't that mean that Bose is profiting from the long battery life, while failing to mention that their competitors sell cans with smaller ear-bombs in them?

> Yet none are spontaneously exploding.

Not anymore.

>Yet none are spontaneously exploding.

Well, at lease EVs are spontaneously catching fire.

> make the cost of negligent manufacture

What negligence?

It's almost by definition negligent to create a product that burns the user under normal use. These sorts of incidents in the past have led to recalls, to bans on taking devices on airplanes and similar. It's no small thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com