[tumnus]

This really was peak marketing idiocy. I knew people who worked at Cartoon Network at the time. Jim Samples' disconnect and subsequent resignation reverberated down the ranks and tanked a lot of careers and projects. Who would think that strapping battery operated devices to bridges with duct tape in any post-9/11 city would be a good idea?

[bagels]

It's outrageous that anyone resigned or was fired over this other than city employees of Boston for lying about a stupid sign.

[miah_]

It was a LED moonite. It wasn't scary at all.

[almostgotcaught]

> battery operated devices

I love when people clutch pearls and say exaggerated things to justify it. What does "battery operated" even mean lolol. Is the phrase supposed to conjure images of IEDs or what? They were battery powered LED signs

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic

[joemi]

The very first sentence of the article you linked states that they were mistaken for IEDs.

[mrkeen]

They should have just used a key to gouge "THE MOON RULZ" on the mayor's car instead.

[selimthegrim]

I know somebody here in my city, who worked in audio editing for Cartoon Network, and apparently what he heard was that the FBI demanded somebody fall on their sword.

[mulmen]

Why would the FBI have that power?

[KennyBlanken]

I will never understand all the apologists.

They were crudely constructed.

There was no information attached to them (one of the things MIT hackers always did was place clear contact information, removal instructions, etc on anything they left somewhere public.)

The devices had large cylinders wrapped in plastic. Sure, they could be batteries. They could also be containers of explosives.

Some of them the character is angry, and giving the finger. Sure fits a "angry at the world" attitude of a bomb-maker.

It doesn't seem to occur to people that bombs can be designed to attract attention, and can be booby-trapped to try and kill bomb disposal teams.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to people that if you are a bomb squad or police commander, you don't have the luxury of saying "oh yeah, that thing strapped to the bridge support for an interstate, phsht, that probably isn't a bomb, that's probably just some weird vidyah game character" because if you're wrong, people die. No. You get people away from it and try to figure out what it is.

Oh, and it turned out there had been a hoax bomb left in a hospital earlier by someone who was acting deranged, and incidents in NY and DC right before all this.

Then a few years later, wouldn't you know...a few miles away, two assholes left a bunch of pressure cookers at the finish line of the marathon, killed a bunch of people and wounded dozens, murdered a campus cop, and then led police on a gunfire-filled chase through multiple towns.

[almostgotcaught]

> The devices had large cylinders wrapped in plastic. Sure, they could be batteries.

They were bog standard D batteries:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic#...

> Then a few years later, wouldn't you know.

This has literally nothing to do with anything.

> I will never understand all the apologists.

Well some people are rational and some people aren't so it's only natural that the latter don't understand the former (ie that's usually how it goes)

[immibis]

Did you click on the link and see pictures of the devices? The cylindrical parts are obviously D batteries.

> the Boston Police Department stated in its defense that the ad devices shared some similarities with improvised explosive devices, with them also discovering an identifiable power source, a circuit board with exposed wiring, and electrical tape.

Ah yes. That guy has a 99.99% DNA match to Osama bin Laden. Must be a terrorist!

The only way this makes sense is if you assume any unidentified object is a bomb, which may be logical if you live in Palestine, but seems pretty unlikely in Boston.

You're suggesting the government is should treat every unidentified object as a bomb. I hope you realize how dystopian that is - anyone who creates some one-off or prototype object outside the list of legitimately creatable things will be treated as a terrorist. The Apple 1? Bomb. PiPhone? Bomb. Homemade LED name tag? Bomb. Google Glass prototype? Bomb. Mesh network air quality sensor? Bomb. Hitchhiking robot? Bomb. How do new types of things become approved and not be treated as bombs? Do I have to fill out a government form to declare that my hitchhiking robot isn't a bomb? (What if a terrorist fills out that form and declares their bomb isn't a bomb?)