from Hacker News

Do you worry about your gadgets catching fire? (Mine did.)

by rrosen326 on 5/29/19, 4:33 PM with 2 comments

Last night we had a scare. Our house filled with smoke and we couldn't find the source. Eventually we tracked it down to a pair of headphones: https://ibb.co/N1L9zB2

Question: Do HNers protect against this? How? Buy only expensive gadgets? Buy only expensive cables? I don't know what caused this or how to reasonably prevent it. But if we hadn't been home, or awake, our house might have gone up in flames.

(My fire alarms also failed, which is a whole other troubling issue.)

  • by chmielewski on 5/29/19, 4:38 PM

    I was once at TJ Maxx looking for a lightning charging cable. Rather than no-name, I went with a braided nylon Duracell cable. After a week of light use, the part of the cable near the lightning head that is usually known for structural fraying developed a small red ember when plugged in and you could see smoke rising from the cable jacket (melting fabric). I emailed Duracell twice about this through two separate support channels and never heard back from them.

  • by howard941 on 5/29/19, 4:42 PM

    Glad you're ok. Search for fire resistant charging bags and try to use it. They're inconvenient but your photo will encourage me to get back into the habit for a while. The drone guys go through this all the time.

    Also: Purchase UL listed products. Install photoelectric and ionization fire alarms and a CO alarm.