[HN Gopher] Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by i...
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       Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display
       (2024)
        
       Author : arm
       Score  : 43 points
       Date   : 2026-02-11 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.stuffedcow.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.stuffedcow.net)
        
       | bell-cot wrote:
       | 168 points and 116 comments at the time:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41480038
        
       | rbanffy wrote:
       | Very impressive engineering on the door switches. On the display,
       | not so much.
        
       | 1970-01-01 wrote:
       | This is literally evidence of stuff being designed to fail. An
       | extra diode costs less than a cent at production scale. This was
       | a manufacturing choice, not an error.
        
         | HPsquared wrote:
         | Don't underestimate the appeal of saving one cent per unit. So
         | long as the costs are externalised, anyway...
        
         | wat10000 wrote:
         | It's not exactly designed to fail, they just don't care. If
         | they could add a one-cent part that made it fail sooner, they
         | wouldn't do that either.
        
         | Atlas667 wrote:
         | Capitalist profit motive strikes again. The invisible hand
         | expands tech and the visible hand keeps making tech worse.
         | 
         | People usually respond to this by saying that it would be
         | absurd to suggest the company did this for its own benefit,
         | when anyone who engineers knows these are often caused by
         | revising design to minimize costs... and increase profits.
        
         | cogman10 wrote:
         | Eh, I don't agree.
         | 
         | LEDs are diodes (Light emitting diode). Certainly this was a
         | cost saving measure, but it's not a bad assumption that the LED
         | wouldn't allow reverse current flow.
        
       | kotaKat wrote:
       | More proof blue LEDs are the devil and should have never been put
       | into all of our electronics to be the shining beacon of "OW MY
       | EYES" at 2 AM.
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | You can do an awful lot to make a device like a microwave safe
       | with loads of failsafes...
       | 
       | But rarely do those failsafes protect reliably against 'the
       | mainboard was splashed with salt water'.
       | 
       | Even with triple redundant relays, how do you know the salt water
       | didn't just wet them all?
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | My guess is the LED's suffer reverse bias thermal runaway when
       | they're hot from being in a steamy enclosure and then they get a
       | reverse 5v across them and any leakage current turns into heat
       | accelerating the process.
        
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       (page generated 2026-02-11 23:00 UTC)