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this story never made sense to me. he disassembled a digital clock then put the pieces in a pencil case? he didn't fabricate it or design any of the electronic
by nyolfen 2y ago
this story never made sense to me. he disassembled a digital clock then put the pieces in a pencil case? he didn't fabricate it or design any of the electronic components; what was he supposed to be demonstrating, that you can put a digital clock in new case? also his dad was a sudanese opposition politician??
- mongol 2y agoTo me it seems like a prank. He made something that looked like a bomb from movies, basically.
- crummy 2y agoWhat's your explanation?
- erklik 2y agoIt's a 14 year old kid. He wasn't demonstrating anything. He took apart a clock, stuck in back in a different case, wanted to show his teacher that in a, I am guessing : "Hey look, I took all this apart, and managed not to destroy it".. Honestly, this entire event shows me two things: 1. The jumps people make to crazy assumptions when faced with someone they don't like because of ideological reasons. 2. The low level of technological acumen/knowledge to assume that this is even similar to a dangerous device.
- jaxelr 2y agoThis, a hundred times this, I used to do this quite often since I was 5-6 years old with all the hardware that I was tired of using (games, toys, etc...)
- dudeinjapan 2y agoAs a 14 year old kid, I did this sort of thing all the time. Also I was trying to build bombs.
- tdeck 2y agoI used to take apart electronics and sometimes show the internals to people. Most folks haven't really looked inside any electronic device and don't know what the components look like or do, so it can be an interesting thing to share. In this case it says he wanted to show it to an "engineering teacher" (wish my high school had that). I once printed out an entire program I wrote and tried to show it to the teacher who ran our computer lab.
- jjmarr 2y agoA lot of younger people today would be surprised you can remove a digital clock from its case and it'll still work. Like, a phone or any piece of technology is just a black box. If it breaks nowadays, you're expected to throw it away or fully replace it.
- hmcq6 2y agoIt sounds weird when you put it that way because that's not what happened. > he disassembled a digital clock then put the pieces in a pencil case? The Wikipedia article does say he "reassembled" the clock but if you check out the linked source The Dallas Morning News is very clear that it is a homemade. He did not disassemble a digital clock and reassemble it in another case. He took existing parts and built them into a clock. From the pictures my guess would be that he took an existing clock and connected it to that older 8 segment display (he may have also changed the power source photos are inconclusive but I don't see a 9 volt in the 9 volt reciever/mount point).
- rdtsc 2y agoI remember the incident in the news. Yeah, I could see if he was 8, taking an electronic component, stripping all the insides and moving it into new box and plugging it in sounds very plausible. But doing it 14, and then using what looks like a suitcase, where more than one adult thought it was a bomb, makes his story that it's just a "clock" a bit hard to believe. Moreover, the first teacher he showed it to, urged him to keep the devices in his backpack and not take it out [1]. But he didn't, so that indicates he wanted really hard to get a reaction, and he set the alarm off in another class. Another strike against their story is the speed with which they demanded $15m from the school district. [1] His engineering teacher, upon seeing the clock said, "That's really nice", but advised him to keep the device in his backpack for the rest of the school day.
- KingMob 2y agoEhh. I'm sure any number of equally awkward HN commenters at 14 might have done the same, and if they weren't muslim, gotten the benefit of the doubt instead of being hauled off to the police dept.
- OkayBuddy44 2y ago[flagged]
- mjamesaustin 2y agoGetting to whine about it from the comfort of your keyboard is a privilege, yes. Any of us who have the wealth to buy a computer, put food on our tables, pay all of our bills, and have spare time to wax poetic on an internet forum are certainly privileged. Privilege is not an accusation, it's a lens to understand how people experience the world from different perspectives.
- OkayBuddy44 2y agoRight, and I'm using it here as a lens to try to understand how a little brown boy can be invited to the White House to meet the president as a misunderstood engineering prodigy, while my experience is that this would see a little White boy ignored (because this is nothing special tbh), shunned (for being a nerd), or even expelled (for trolling the school with a fake bomb).
- dyauspitr 2y agoIt’s cool in a way. I know I was opening all of my toys at that age and making modifications to them.
- carabiner 2y agoYeah all of the beginner kid's electronics projects I've heard of are interactive. Stuff like building a radio, or a toy that moves, or a flashlight. I think it's very likely that this was a stunt that was successful, and got him and his family an all-expenses move to Qatar.