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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.
I guess I just assumed there was some way to protect against it but I don't know anything about electronics.
They do make special shielding for USB and other ports, but most manufacturers don't use them because generally people aren't going to stick foreign objects into their computer for internet points.
Often times, those "public chargers" you sometimes see in airports and such have that shielding installed on the ports (though you should never use public USB ports to charge your devices, for a dozen other reasons).
USB condom works for public chargers. It's called a "usb data blocker" and goes for under $10
Don’t you need to manually approve data transmission through USB?
In an ideal situation, yes. Not all devices even do this and when they do, there is the whole concept of hacking.
That's my thoughts as well
I once abused a USB port on my laptop to use as a 5v power supply but I later shorted it by connecting the wrong wires. It didn't explode but it did blow the fuse for that port.
Especially something marketed to schools to issue to every student. Seems like a basic safety feature. Sure, they shouldn't be doing that but c'mon... kids do dumb shit sometimes.
Kids do dumb shit all times
It's only a safety feature if it stops someone from getting injured. If it just kills the device, that means they have to buy a replacement!
but... fire