96
submitted 2 months ago by paf0@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] tal@lemmy.today 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

One other interesting tidbit:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41569955

Funny enough the Apollo pagers website appears to be down.

What if the company itself was a front?

I'm not familiar with the company, but it looks like it goes way back on archive.org, so I don't think that it was a front. Might just be all the interested people hitting the website simultaneously taking it down.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hezbollah-pagers-blast-israel-lebanon-1.7325913

What type of pager exploded?

Images of the destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back consistent with those made by Gold Apollo, a Taiwan-based pager manufacturer.

The firm did not immediately reply to questions from Reuters. Hezbollah did not reply to questions from Reuters on the make of the pagers.

TRTWorld -- not my ideal source, but I don't think that they have a reason to make anything up here -- says AAA rather than AA, but in either case, IIRC alkalines are normally intrinsically safe, can't discharge quickly enough to explode. So if it's alkaline rather than lithium, then it'd need to be be a supply chain attack:

https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/ap-900-this-what-we-know-about-one-of-the-pagers-that-exploded-in-lebanon-18209359

The Alphanumeric Pager (AP-900) produced by Gold Apollo Co., Ltd. has been identified as one of the devices that exploded, killing and injuring scores in Lebanon.

At least nine people have been killed and over 2,750 others, including Hezbollah militants and medics, were injured when their paging devices exploded across Lebanon.

Speculation has emerged surrounding how the devices could have exploded and caused such high casualties, especially a pager like the AP-900 that operates on AAA alkaline batteries.

Initial investigations suggest that the pager's standard battery configuration is unlikely to be the cause of the explosions.

Instead, authorities are leaning towards the possibility that the devices were intentionally rigged with explosive materials.

If explosives were rigged inside the device before it reached Hezbollah members, it could cause such significant damage when detonated by signal.

That probably isn't good news for Hezbollah, but it's good news for me, because I'm not in a fight with some nation-state and probably am not going to wind up with explosive-rigged devices.

[-] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

~~Gold Apollo lists AA, FWIW~~

~~https://web.archive.org/web/20240415091632/https://www.apollopagers.com/shop/gold-al-a25-alpha-numeric-pager/~~

~~Power from a single AA alkaline battery (plus lithium backup battery).~~

EDIT: The AP-900 uses AAA.

And yeah they absolutely are legit and are used all over the industries that still use pagers (hospitals are big big one in part because of their reliability and lack of EMI).

Another interesting point about them is that they are:

UL-certified for use in hazardous locations

this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
96 points (93.6% liked)

News

23404 readers
2165 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS