cypherpunks

I wish we’d stop calling them “exploding batteries”. The battery isn’t the explosive, it’s the explosives that were hidden in the device.

Do you want to stop calling them exploding pagers too? How about other exploding things? And what should https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_pager_explosions be renamed to? Maybe 2024 Lebanon explosions of explosives inside of pagers? 🙄

Right, so why are you editorializing the title to say something that the article in fact does not say?

The title is a copy+paste of the first sentence of the third paragraph, and it is not misleading unless you infer "exploding batteries" to mean "exploding unmodified batteries". But, the way the English language works, when you put explosives inside an XYZ, or do something else which causes an XYZ to explode, it becomes an "exploding XYZ". For example:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_animal
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_cigar
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_pagers
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_trousers
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_watermelon
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whale

The fact that bombs are explosive is not revolutionary or all that interesting.

That fact also is not what the article is about.

sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

(@Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee:) Just to be clear, the pager thing wasn’t exploding batteries, they had apparently been modified at the production level to have explosives in them, which could be triggered by the pager system itself.

(me:) Did you read the article? It sounds like you didn’t.

(you:) The article literally talks about inserting an explosive layer inside the battery at production. Just like the comment said.

I am really curious: can you tell me, do you actually think the first commenter in fact read the article and was agreeing with its suggestion that the batteries could have been manufactured with explosives inside of them?

(you): It isn’t “any batteries can explode”.

Nobody claimed that, but in retrospect I guess I can see how, read alone, the pull quote I selected from the article to be the title of this post could be interpreted that way.

Since apparently many people aren't reading the article: It is about how cheap it actually is (eg $15,000) to buy a complete production line to be able to manufacture batteries with a layer of nearly-undetectable explosives inside of them, which can be triggered by off-the-shelf devices with only their firmware modified.

To save others the copy+paste:

Nothing beats an Eluviated Eutric Brunisol developed on moderately coarse glaciofluvial