5 ms·

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 cas

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?

valvar 5y ago
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.
- jen729w 5y ago
  Okay cool and now the headphones weigh a kilo because of shielding and nobody buys them.
  - valvar 5y ago
    Maybe? Your alternative seems to be to let a few people die every now and then, so that some companies can get better margins.
    - tempestn 5y ago
      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.
      - romwell 5y ago
        > 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.
        Bud 5y ago
        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?
        romwell 5y ago
        >How many times are you going to say "exploding" I am going to say it every time I talk about Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones, which violently exploded and left their user with chemical burns while they were wearing them and using normally. This is an accurate description. Allow me to refer you to Merriam-Webster dictionary for the meaning of the word "explode", which you have an issue with: >Definition of explode >1: to burst forth with sudden violence or noise from internal energy: such as >a): to undergo a rapid chemical or nuclear reaction with the production of noise, heat, and violent expansion of gases Bose QC 35 II headphones most certainly did undergo a rapid chemical reaction with the production of heat and violent expansion of gases. The violent expansion is what left the OP with chemical burns. You are welcome. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/explode https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/explode
        sethammons 5y ago
        That same process happens to every log I burn in my fireplace. We call it burning. I'd never describe it as exploding even though it matches that definition.
    - fastball 5y ago
      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...
      - romwell 5y ago
        >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..."
        fastball 5y ago
        "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.
  - romwell 5y ago
    >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.
    - fastball 5y ago
      Literally nothing is perfectly safe. 1/1,000,000 chance of getting chemical burns is fine by me.
      - romwell 5y ago
        >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.
- mrmattyboy 5y ago
  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?
  - romwell 5y ago
    >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.
    - Linosaurus 5y ago
      > 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.
      - romwell 5y ago
        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.
robbedpeter 5y ago
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.
williamscales 5y ago
yes? products should be designed so that they do not kill anyone?
- nine_k 5y ago
  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.
  - romwell 5y ago
    >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.)
    - fastball 5y ago
      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.
      - nine_k 5y ago
        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.
  - ImprobableTruth 5y ago
romwell 5y ago
>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.
KarlKemp 5y ago
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.

valvar 5y ago

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.

jen729w 5y ago
Okay cool and now the headphones weigh a kilo because of shielding and nobody buys them.
- valvar 5y ago
  Maybe? Your alternative seems to be to let a few people die every now and then, so that some companies can get better margins.
  - tempestn 5y ago
    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.
    - romwell 5y ago
      > 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.
      - Bud 5y ago
        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?
        romwell 5y ago
        >How many times are you going to say "exploding" I am going to say it every time I talk about Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones, which violently exploded and left their user with chemical burns while they were wearing them and using normally. This is an accurate description. Allow me to refer you to Merriam-Webster dictionary for the meaning of the word "explode", which you have an issue with: >Definition of explode >1: to burst forth with sudden violence or noise from internal energy: such as >a): to undergo a rapid chemical or nuclear reaction with the production of noise, heat, and violent expansion of gases Bose QC 35 II headphones most certainly did undergo a rapid chemical reaction with the production of heat and violent expansion of gases. The violent expansion is what left the OP with chemical burns. You are welcome. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/explode https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/explode
        sethammons 5y ago
        That same process happens to every log I burn in my fireplace. We call it burning. I'd never describe it as exploding even though it matches that definition.
  - fastball 5y ago
    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...
    - romwell 5y ago
      >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..."
      - fastball 5y ago
        "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.
- romwell 5y ago
  >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.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Literally nothing is perfectly safe. 1/1,000,000 chance of getting chemical burns is fine by me.
    - romwell 5y ago
      >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.
mrmattyboy 5y ago
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?
- romwell 5y ago
  >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.
  - Linosaurus 5y ago
    > 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.
    - romwell 5y ago
      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.

robbedpeter 5y ago

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.

williamscales 5y ago

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

nine_k 5y ago
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.
- romwell 5y ago
  >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.)
  - fastball 5y ago
    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.
    - nine_k 5y ago
      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.
- ImprobableTruth 5y ago

romwell 5y ago

>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.

KarlKemp 5y ago

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.