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.
londons_explore 6 minutes ago [-]
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?
1970-01-01 1 hours ago [-]
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.
cogman10 22 minutes ago [-]
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.
HPsquared 51 minutes ago [-]
Don't underestimate the appeal of saving one cent per unit. So long as the costs are externalised, anyway...
wat10000 43 minutes ago [-]
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 41 minutes ago [-]
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.
kotaKat 10 minutes ago [-]
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.
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?
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.
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.