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Kids are short circuiting their school issued Chromebooks for TikTok clout Ars Technica
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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I'm no electrical engineer but:
Why the fuck can you short a chromebook at the power port? Shouldn't that have some sort of safety? Can you short a toughbook through the power port? Definitely keeping the little cover closed on mine when it's not plugged in from now on (garage machine)
You can short-circuit basically anything with exposed contacts and a paper clip. This isn't specific to Chromebooks.
Pretty much any device with a USB port can be catastrophically short-circuited, because most USB ports are capable of supplying some amount of power. You can even buy "USB Killers", which look like a thumb drive but will fry the internals of whatever they get plugged into.
IIRC USB killers work because they're sustained high voltage. USB ports can often deal with a static discharge or over current, but a sustained 200 volts will let the magic smoke out.