Because its using piezoelectric elements to move the air. There are no motors or bearings in here.
In other words, not at all solid-state. Some process they used to make a component reminds them of solid state manufacture techniques.
I think that description would be technically correct while also being very misleading to the average person, and I think that's why we've seen the colloquial definition of "solid-state" expand to effectively mean "non-mechanical" in some domains.
If you wanted a solid state clock source, that is a MEMS.
And further, no one calls, Crystal resonators “solid state” for marketing purposes, which is all that’s going on here.
If we operate by that definition these devices are very much solid so perhaps from context we can choose infer that they mean "non-mechanical" and not "made of semiconductors" rather than getting wrapped up in pedantry.
> And further, no one calls, Crystal resonators “solid state” for marketing purposes, which is all that’s going on here.
Yeah, a company is trying to communicate the benefits of their product using words that convey them i.e. HDD->SSD, fan->AirJet. We can shake our fists at the sky in righteous anger or we can acknowledge that there isn't really any harm to using the terms that evoke the right meaning for most people in a new context.
It's not even an HN-specific thing.
Arguing semantics is a time-honored method for derailing discussions. A sort of quasi-bikeshedding, except more often done in bad faith for creating a winnable meta-argument by someone who otherwise has nothing useful to say about (or was losing a debate of) the actual underlying subject.
A crystal and this cooler - have moving parts. And don’t fit even a laissez-faire definition.