Yep, ^this, it happens. You 100% deserve compensation. But this is what their insurance is for. The remaining 99000 thousand pairs they sold will surely pay the deductable.
You're all over this thread with one huge assumption: you have zero knowledge about how that particular set of headphones was treated so far. The charger setup is described but not in a way that I can make sense of it, apparently charging while connected to a computer but using the stock charger, if it was opened up, repaired, had a battery replaced, dropped, otherwise damaged and continued to use. Before you jump to the 'sue', 'recall' and 'Bose sucks' conclusion I would wait for a little bit more data, especially because the other not 99000 but millions of pairs that they have sold have so far not exhibited this tendency.
The flip-side, that Lithium batteries should probably not be present in body worn gear is something that I would
subscribe to but at the same time I'm aware of people wearing stuff like that by the 10's of millions in their ears and so far it seems to work well enough that the number of incidents is low and in most cases can be traced back to gross abuse of the devices.
Finally: charging Lithium Ion batteries of any kind is where the risk is, it's always a good idea to charge them in a spot where you can keep an eye on them, and to watch them closely just after you have charged them (especially to full capacity, which I would recommend against) for a little while after because that is when if things go wrong they will go wrong.
Yes, Sony has this set up the right way, the headphones simply stop working when charging. They also have some pretty good undervoltage protection in there that keeps the batteries at a safe voltage until they are charged again.
That said: it is still body worn lithium ion tech and you should definitely be careful with them, especially if you ever suspect they may have become damaged (from dropping or impact). Be nice to your headphones. And never ever leave them hooked up to the charger once they are charged and if you can only charge to 90% or so.
>You're all over this thread with one huge assumption: you have zero knowledge about how that particular set of headphones was treated so far.
What's the assumption? Based on information given, the headphones exploded during normal operation, and have been previously treated well[2].
The OP is commenting in this thread. If you think they are misleading us, go ask them[2].
Further, nothing in the official documentation for the product[1] indicates the possibility of fire and chemical burns during normal operation, regardless of how they have been treated so far.
> Before you jump to the 'sue', 'recall' and 'Bose sucks' conclusion
It seems to me that you are jumping to these conclusions.
My conclusions are:
1) Bose QC-35 II headphones are a hazardous product that can spontaneously burst into flames and cause chemical burns while being operated according to the manual
2) This product does not come with any warnings that this is a possibility, while, according to comments here, hazards of the battery used are common knowledge among engineers
3) The product's manual instructs the user to take the headphones off if they experience a "warming sensation", indicating that the engineers were aware of the risks, but neither the risks nor mitigation were not described in the instruction manual (compare this with the labels on something as common as epoxy resin)
4) The OP should report this incident to CPSC, since this is the body responsible for keeping track of such incidents and that will be able to act upon them if there's a pattern of them happening
5) The medical injuries sustained by the OP are unacceptable; and at the very least, Bose should pay for the medical treatment and resulting productivity loss.
As you said, this shouldn't be a big deal for Bose if this is a one-off freak accident. And if it's a systemic issue, it better become a big deal.
Finally: I have a Bose speaker. I have no idea what kind of battery is inside it, but all I know is that the manual didn't instruct me to take the precautions that you just listed:
> charging Lithium Ion batteries of any kind is where the risk is, it's always a good idea to charge them in a spot where you can keep an eye on them, and to watch them closely just after you have charged them (especially to full capacity, which I would recommend against) for a little while after because that is when if things go wrong they will go wrong.
Bose Soundlink speakers are designed to sit at a dock, where they are continuously charged. The later models don't even have an off switch.
So I'm all over the thread with one huge assumption: that any reasonable person would agree with my points 1-5 above.
Sadly, this assumption has been repeatedly proven wrong.
> this shouldn't be a big deal for Bose if this is a one-off freak accident. And if it's a systemic issue, it better become a big deal.
You're spamming the thread with dramatic comments that are premised on this not being a one-off freak accident. Nice of you to finally acknowledge the possibility.
> You're spamming the thread with dramatic comments that are premised on this not being a one-off freak accident
My bad. I've been led to believe that the batteries in these headphones are inherently dangerous and that the OP should have known better by the commenters that defend Bose elsewhere in the thread:
>In the end you're carrying a high energy density power source on your head that would love to just catch fire. Don't they teach kids anything in chemistry these days?
>I mean I’m glad it didn’t happen to me, but a billion people are carrying around billions of Lithium-ion batteries. Those batteries sometimes catch fire because Lithium is highly flammable. It’s gonna happen.
>Nothing is perfectly safe, that is how lithium batteries fail. You should know so you can properly deal with problems.
>Well, at lease EVs are spontaneously catching fire.
>Everyone is aware of the risks, there were a bunch of stories about airplane cell phone fires a few years ago.
>lithium battery fires are really nasty, and that's why he got a chemical burn. LiPF6 is a contact irritant, PF5 it decomposes to is a gas, and also a respiratory irritant, and HF PH5 decomposes in the air is a dangerous poisonous acid. This is what everybody visiting a lithium battery factory is told on safety orientation. In case there is fire in the factory, run, preferably until you are few blocks away.
Combining this, we have on our hands an inevitable freak accident that every consumer should be prepared for, but no manufacturer can expect to happen or do anything to mitigate the damage.
My rhetorical strategy resulted in the OP filing the report with the CPSC.
As far as strategy goes, mission accomplished. The purpose of further discussion is that I enjoy it; these are not the views I thought needed to be advanced on the account of being self-evident.
You've continued well after you prompted a CPSC report. I'd hope that one purpose of further discussion is benefit to the rest of the community, rather than being solely for your enjoyment. I'm sorry that's disappointing to you.
dang, in the future I'll do my best to not respond to personal attacks like [x1], and downvote, flag, and move on instead. And thank you for the (hopefully not absolutely) thankless job of maintaining the level of discourse here.
I'm sad, though, that none of the incredibly uncivil comments towards the OP in this thread merited a "not cool" remark from you.
The OP is both a commenter on HN in this thread[o1], and the author of the linked blog post. The hostility towards him is destructive to HN.
This was a part of reason why I was so active in this thread in particular. If the admins aren't going to call out hostile behavior, someone has to. What was said to OP merits at least a response, and there's none from the mods so far.
By calling out my comments, but not those, you are sending a signal as to which kind is welcome on HN.
Examples (personal attacks towards to the OP):
<read in the context of OP describing pain from chemical burns, as diagnosed by his doctor, after his headphones spontaneously caught fire>
[a1] "Sounds like a hypochondriac person"; when called out, doubles down with "Since when is hypochondriac an insult?"
[a2] "OP does sound like a hypochondriac, like, skin touching some warm object and worries about nerve damage. OP should go out more."
[a3] "That sort of paranoia doesn't help. In fact it may cause psychosomatic symptoms (nocebo effect)."
[a4] "Everyone is aware of the risks, there were a bunch of stories about airplane cell phone fires a few years ago. What are <you> suggesting people do? Headphones only function while on your head."
[a5] "Well, someone paying $400 for a pair of headphones is probably not very knowledgeable outside their narrow field of expertise."
[a6] "There is an annoying trend among people that expect everything to be perfectly safe. It seems to be a symptom of an overly sheltered existence."
[a7] "If the author is thinking about suing, they'd be wiser to not eviscerate their own credibility as an engineer
Select comments to me:
<The thread you are commenting in was in response to this one>
[x1] "You're spamming the thread with dramatic comments that are premised on this not being a one-off freak accident. Nice of you to finally acknowledge the possibility.
<polite language, hostile intent>
[x2] "You're not the OP, you are monopolizing this thread with more bits than you'd normally have a right to, I suggest - mildly - that you reconsider whether or not you think this is a proportional response to something that does not concern you directly or that it is possible that you are over-reacting. " -- TL;DR: I am over-reacting and I have exhausted my "right" to talk here.
Other off-topic flamewar starters:
[f1] "The American response, to a non-American, is fascinating. You believe that you “deserve” compensation, but at the same time you guys are all crazy on independence and don’t-tell-me-how-to-behave and whatever else. But as soon as a thing goes wrong you want money for it. It’s like you don’t believe in the concept of an accident."
[f2] "Have a look at insurance premiums that doctors have to pay, especially the high-risk specializations (like neurosurgery). I guess I don't have to explain why they're so high."
___________________
I have been a long-time contributor to the discussions here, and would be sad to see more of the below becoming the norm. Your response that you have seen this comment will be greatly appreciated. HN is only as good as the community here is.
I responded to you because you posted a massive number of comments to this thread, including a bunch of low-quality provocations that kept the flamewar going.
As for the other comments, a bunch of those were correctly flagkilled by users. At least one is by a banned account whose comment was never anything but [dead] in the first place—obviously that doesn't need moderating. Some others you linked to don't particularly stand out to me. But really, this is all a bit of a red herring. Moderation can't be completely consistent in the first place because we can't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. In a massive flamewar like this, there's no way we're going to see everything. You can always point out to us at hn@ycombinator.com when people are breaking the guidelines. But responding by pointing the finger (or ten fingers) at others when we ask you to stop breaking them, isn't really the best way to communicate about that.
Thank you for the response! Point taken re: communication.
Re: pointing fingers - I hope you won't take it as such. To rephrase - I hear you, and I'm toning my style down. If you have resources, I hope you could pay more attention to the comments of the kind I linked, as they do slip through. I wish flagging had a reason field, to separate those from ones that merely don't contribute to discussion. And a single comment from you like "this language doesn't belong here" could do so much more than mere greying out.
This is an ask, not an excuse or justification. As for me, I'll try to make your job easier by reducing the input to your task queue from my end :)
Ok, good luck with that. After 55 or so comments out of a total of 330 in this thread I think your endless repetitions of the same bits don't contribute but just detract, there is some good that can come of this but not by this ridiculous stream of unsupported assertions.
Once more: you do not know what that set of headphones have gone through and you do not know the finer details of the charging setup. Both of these matter enormously and until that data is available anything you add to it in terms of conclusions is speculative.
For some reason you seem to be either in a panic or overreacting but this whole thread isn't even about you. So why the over the top responses, including suggesting that something exploded, that this is a systemic issue, that somebody died and so on, it makes no sense to me. Count to ten and relax, the world will continue to turn even if one Bose set of headphones came to a bad end (which is all the evidence we seem to have) and let's learn what we can from this instance to ensure that if (which we do not know for sure) there is a quality control or a design issue that it gets found.
And that's not just because of Bose but also because of the 10's of millions of other devices using similar setups.
As for the warning: that warning applies to any device that contains rechargeable lithium ion batteries. Shape change or warming up when they shouldn't be is a very strong indicator you have a problem that is about to get a lot worse. Not having that warning in their manual would have been irresponsible, of course Bose - and every other LiIon powered device manufacturer) is aware of that and instructs their customers accordingly.
Not that anybody ever reads the instructions. And if they did I'll bet that people would not be so happy with Lithium Ion any more. But after having used a couple of hundred cells in various shapes and sizes and advising on the way a certain piece of consumer electronics was put together (wearable, LiIon powered) I think I have a reasonably good idea of what it takes to get one of these cells to misbehave and my list of suspects would be, in order:
- charging circuitry
- impact or drop damage
- cell piercing
- repair gone bad (either of the headphones or of the charging circuitry)
- temperature damage / operating / charging outside of allowed temperature envelope (charging circuitry should protect against this)
and finally
- manufacturing defect (either at Bose, or their supplier) implying at least a quality control issue at Bose
- design error
You seem to jump to 'structural manufacturing defect' as your conclusion without having the required data to establish that that is indeed what happened here.
>Ok, good luck with that. After 30 or so comments I think your endless repetitions of the same bits don't contribute but just detract
Repetition, my friend, is the mother of learning.
My comments resulted in the OP reporting the incident to the CPSC[1]. That's my contribution.
The rest is pure fun.
>Not having that warning in their manual would have been irresponsible, of course Bose - and every other LiIon powered device manufacturer) is aware of that and instructs their customers accordingly.
OK, let's just focus on that one word: irresponsible.
Count to ten, and quote me the warning from the manual that would indicate that OP's experience is a possibility.
(It's not there. Bose was, as you said, irresponsible, and there is only one way to force companies to be responsible in the US).
You're not the OP, you are monopolizing this thread with more bits than you'd normally have a right to, I suggest - mildly - that you reconsider whether or not you think this is a proportional response to something that does not concern you directly or that it is possible that you are over-reacting. And finally, whether the point that you are ineffectively trying to make is served by this behavior.
Inflammation in all parts of the body seem to be problematic and the source of all kinds of disease and other sorts of deficiencies. What sorts of studies and preventative treatments are leading this field?
From all my readings, some natural preventative strategies seem to be: not eating sugar or long chain complex carbohydrates and sleeping consistently a full night of sleep (removing alcohol or caffeine cited multiple times seems to help).
Sleep (and related, circadian health) are some super interesting topics of emerging research. For those that like books, there are two recent ones written by researchers in the field. Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep, and Satchin Panda's Circadian Code that are pretty breezy reads. (there are YouTube interviews and TED talks as well):
For those that prefer more succinct reviews and want to spelunk citations, these are a couple good starting points:
Potter, Gregory D. M., Debra J. Skene, Josephine Arendt, Janet E. Cade, Peter J. Grant, and Laura J. Hardie. “Circadian Rhythm and Sleep Disruption: Causes, Metabolic Consequences, and Countermeasures.” Endocrine Reviews 37, no. 6 (December 2016): 584–608. https://doi.org/10.1210/er.2016-1083.
Manoogian, Emily NC, and Satchidananda Panda. “Circadian Rhythms, Time-Restricted Feeding, and Healthy Aging.” Ageing Research Reviews 39 (October 2017): 59–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arr.2016.12.006.
I agree with you 100%. The problem truly lies not where what someone "is willing" (which of course is almost anything) but where what some "actually can" pay to receive treatment. It's a terrible distinction between the two.
I read this like, "Obviously, that's how it's designed." The title does not shock me as a revelation like it's meant to but rather a fact. A rather obvious one to everyone but those who perpetuate the fallacy.
While respecting the attempt to be fair and nonpartisan by way of moderating this site I cant help but feel this soft-touch approach by mods is somewhat naive.
The message was clear to me yet open to different interpretations.
1) The difference in cholesterol bandwidth is paid for by who is sponsoring this chicken sandwich.
2) Same, but colder. And waaaay late. Too bad their preferential sandwich is not sponsored to be in the "fast-lane" regardless of the subscribers plan.
3) Non-preferential content (ie. those who didn't pay off the ISP to fast-track their content) is at a competitive disadvantage.
Seems very UnGerman to patch over a flaw instead of rooting out the problem from the ground level and engineering a solution. I'm just saying deceitfully patching over the problem seems uncharacteristic of the cultural norm/stereotype that I know.
