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edit: after 20 comments, i'm adding a post description here, since most of the commenters so far appear not to be reading the article:
This is about how surprisingly cheap it 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.
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.
Did you read the article? It sounds like you didn't.
Did you read it?
The article literally talks about inserting an explosive layer inside the battery at production. Just like the comment said.
It isn’t “any batteries can explode”.
What? 🤦 The comment I replied to said:
It seems clear that "they had apparently been modified at the production level" is referring to the pagers, rather than their batteries. But the article is explaining how it could have been that the batteries were the part of the pager that had the explosives (in which case it was the battery that was exploding).
You are inferring what someone meant, and then applying some super pedantic reasoning.
When manufacturing pagers, that includes the pager electronics, the case, and the battery.
The batteries themselves unmodified, standard batteries were not somehow hacked to explode. At some point in the manufacturing of the pagers which includes the battery, explosives were included.
I think I am inferring correctly, especially since the person you're talking about replied "of course not" to my question about if they read the article.
alrighty then. Dig your heels in.
i encourage you to re-read the original comment in this thread after reading the article 😂
You should do the same.
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?
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.
Delete this entire post or shut up, bro. You’re being nuked with downvotes.
Most other people wont be reading it either so I don't see an issue with pointing out the obvious misconception people could make based on the headline that talks about exploding batteries.
Of course not, what did you expect?
I encourage you to, it's pretty interesting.
The post content should've been in the actual post. No offence.