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Comment by exmadscientist | Hacker News Reader

> The WHY2025 badge was designed to be powered by 2 Li-Ion 18650 battery cells connected in parallel. The cells provided to visitors are of the "unprotected" kind

...I am going to put on my "client-facing consultant" hat for a moment, which means skipping the expletives, and just say that not only is this a Very Bad Design, it is such a Very Bad Design that someone should really have noticed this and not let it happen.

Because this really is a Startlingly Bad Idea.

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An earlier design by Badge.Team [1] did not use these cells and Badge.Team (no longer associated with WHY2025) strongly advised against the use of these cells.

The earlier design has been matured into Konsool [2] and is available as Tanmatsu [3].

[1] https://badge.team/

[2] https://badge.team/docs/badges/konsool/

[3] https://nicolaielectronics.nl/tanmatsu/

Why was that advice ignored?

WHY2025 orga has been a shitshow on the social & interpersonal level. The badge team was one of the casualties. (And triggers, from what I've heard they weren't paragons either, but that's even more hearsay.)

(Source: I'm in c3noc/Internetmanufaktur, though not attending WHY. TBH I saw the shitshow coming and decided I don't need it in my life.)

"WHY2025 orga has been a shitshow on the social & interpersonal level."

Curious to learn more as an outsider if you don't mind elaborating?

Very little information is available, it's all "behind the scenes".

Oh, and the entire Team:Warehouse resigned on day 5 of the event.

Often it is the case that safety concerns are overruled by less technical savvy managers for some lesser critical reason.

But surely two 18650s are just overkill. I might understand switching from the recommended LiPo cell to a single 18650 for cost cutting reasons (even though that's still probably a bad idea safety-wise), but why two?!

I have a smartphone prototype board right next to me which can be powered entirely from a single (protected!) 18650 cell, and let me tell you that its SoC isn't exactly power efficient. It really seems baffling.

I have a bunch of camp badges there too and while some are really fun boards to play with I wouldn't trade safety for longer battery life with any of them.

Hah I also have a smartphone prototype here powered by a single 18650 and I've already seen one of them turn into a smoke machine because the holder has protruding pins and doesn't fit most protected cells...

Two 18650s also sounds like it would be heavy for a badge

A single (removable) 2000mAh lipo cell, on the low end of capacity for 18650s these days, was a very common power source for smartphones in the 2010s.

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