His body was found sitting in front of the "completely damaged" and burnt computer by his roommate, who had rushed out of the shower after he heard a blast. He fainted at the sight.

The investigating officers said, "It sounds quite unbelievable. We have not heard of such a case before. But the scene of the accident seems to suggest that the youth was killed in an accident as his body was in the sitting position in front of the burnt computer."

God, that's so horrible. [Times of India via Hard OCP]

P.S. PC pictured is not the computer that killed the man, just an illustration.

The police have told newspapers that the man was carrying some sort of homemade firing device and nine bullets stashed in a separate bag. They believe that the man accidentally dropped it, causing the gun to discharge or explode—severing his carotid artery and destroying the cellphone he had stashed in his shirt pocket.

That explanation creates more questions than it solves, but for now the authorities have not revealed any further details on the incident or the device he may have been carrying. Is this some sort of cover-up to prevent widespread panic over potentially dangerous cellphone knockoffs or was it simply an unfortunate incident involving a man trying to protect himself in an area where crime rates are skyrocketing? [Telegraph]

The cellphone of this victim—a man in a Lenovo shop in Guangzhou, China—exploded without warning in his shirt pocket, slicing an artery in his neck, causing him bleed to death. The battery was recently recharged and, according to a fellow employee, it was completely new. The origin of the battery is still unknown.

Just in case, I'm not putting my iPhone in my jacket's inner chest pocket ever again. Or in my pants, for that matter. [Tech Ticker]

This homemade PVC pneumatic cannon is loaded with seasonal sparklies like tinsel and fake snow (and what looks like a slightly forlorn little Christmas teddy bear) and pressurized with a bicycle pump. Then the Christmas spirit lets fly a shiny explosion, just like baby Jesus intended. Instructables warns that despite the festivity, this gun is sort of dangerous, and shooting a pneumatic cannon full of anything at somebody's face may not be the best idea. Still, what a great new addition to the holy tradition. [Instructables]

Wang Diange was attending a wake in his home when an explosion took off half of his roof and left him dead in the wreckage. Because it had been a stormy day, family members and the police assumed that lightning was what killed Wang and left half of his home in ruins.

However, as Wang was being placed into the cremation chamber at his own funeral, his body exploded, causing the chamber's oven doors to fly off their hinges. Only then, spectators discovered a small piece of twisted metal, which led them to what really killed Mr. Wang:

A small weather rocket filled with silver iodide—shot into the sky in order to break up hail into rain—failed to explode in the atmosphere, and instead had fallen through Wang's roof and acted like a bullet, instantly killing Wang as it was lodged into his body.

Three years later, the Weather Bureau has given the Wang family 80,000 yuan (roughly $12,000USD) as a compensation for their loss. (And before you ask, no: I hold no relation to this particular Wang.) [Telegraph]

Mike says that this is his second battery failure on his two year-old MacBook, and it's nothing we haven't seen many times before, but the timing is suspicious, to say the least. My money's on an October(ish) detonation switch secreted away in every last MacBook, MacBook Pro and, for good measure, MacBook Air. -Thanks, Mike!

[Editor's Note: Definitely a jet RC model!]

The flash in the sky is a remnant of a blast 7,000 light-years away in the Lupus constellation. Scientists say that it was the brightest observed supernova in recorded history, and that the light from the explosion could be seen in the daytime for weeks afterward.

The supernova sent a shockwave that traveled outwards at nearly 20 million mph. In the 1960s, radio astronomers first detected the ring of material pushed out by the shockwave. With the latest imagery, released by the Hubble Space Telescope's science team, you can see a gossamer stripe with starlight shining through it—the rocket's red glare indeed.

[Cosmiclog]

Guinness World Record representative Erica Attivor was on site and approved the record, which looked messy, to say the least.And then, for some reason, they broke out the flamethrowers. Coke, Mentos, and flamethrowers? Sounds like a Gizmodo-endorsed party if I ever heard of one.[TVNET, Krabjiem, Apollo]

"When I was going up the stony hill to set dynamite, I found a man lying down beside an electronic shovel," said his colleague. "He was already bleeding from the nose. He had a mobile phone with a melted battery in his left shirt pocket. His shirt had soot on it in the shape of the phone."

The bomb was tested this week, dropped from a Tupolev Tu-160—the same bombers that have been buzzing around the UK borders in recent months. Footage released afterwards showed multi-story buildings crumpling, so it looks like the test went pretty well. [Telegraph]

The user says:

"We were so happy, all the software part was done, so we started opening the iPhone. The antenna cover was a bit tricky but eventually it came off. Then we started to open the metal cover (after taking out the 3 screws) and PUFF, up it went in smoke, I think my collegue must have touched something. It literally went up in black smoke. It was so hot that when I tried to pick it up I burned my fingers. So, this is for sure the most difficult part of the whole process. I don't know what he did, as I had just stepped out of the room to fetch something when I heard a scream...they got such a fright."

Just wait until the software unlock becomes available, and THEN unlock it. Or use the SIM method like we detailed here before. Or ask a buddy that you know has experience with these things. Just for Jesus's (Diaz) sake, don't open it up if you don't know what you're doing.

[Hackintosh via iPhone Atlas]

The investigators think it was actually something like matches, a cigarette, or a lighter that set him off, not an exploding cellphone. Of course when you're smoking a cigarette, while wearing nylon & polyester clothes, and sitting in a plastic chair, you are basically a fire hazard waiting to happen. – Ben Longo

Cellphone Starts Fire in Man's Pants [Gizmodo]
Cell phone didn't ignite California man [News.com]

The notebook, a Dell Latitude C600, was left alone in the family home to load a game. When the Allens came in to see how it was doing, the machine blew up.

"There are six batteries inside a compartment, and they were shooting out like fireworks, like rockets," Shaun Allen, 39, told the paper. "They even bounced off the ceiling, they went up that high."

The family's sofa and carpet also caught on fire. Dell claims that because the family bought the laptop second-hand for 500, there was probably a third-party battery loaded in there, which in turn caused the explosion. But, Dell coughed up another laptop for the family anyway, as a "gesture of goodwill". – Jason Chen

Dell laptop detonates in UK home [Reg Hardware]

What is even worse is that it appears to have happened while the laptop was shut. So it may have been in standby mode, which is even more frightening. I'm sitting here writing this on my Dell Inspiron 700m, and I'll have to admit, I am a little scared. Hold me. Check the Tom's Hardware link here for more pics and info. – Travis Hudson

Dell laptop goes up in smoke [Register]

This ad is only running in Canada, but it's cool enough to show to everyone in the States as well. Read the behind-the-scenes on how they pulled this off after the jump. – Jason Chen

Movie Clip [Nokia.ca]

More Behind The Scenes (2nd Link on the right) [Heliozilla]

Thanks Richard!

We started out with the idea that we needed to make something that was visually stunning, and then build a concept around that. Secondly Nokia is a fairly refined brand, and the piece needed to have a a certain grace to it to reflect that. The idea of blowing things up came fairly quickly, and we visualized a slow-motion ballet of assorted electronics being destroyed, and then reassembling into the phone. Shooting on black and lighting the objects as if we were shooting a jewelry ad gave a nice polish to offset the violence of the explosions.

Then it was off to the internet to research the technical site of shooting at really high frame rates, looking at sample footage and finding the right camera. Shooting film was simply out of the question, as the look of the explosion we wanted required shooting at frame rates of about 5000 frames per second. After looking at numerous high-speed video options we settled on the Photron Ultima cameras, which could shoot as fast as 6000 frames/sec at 512 x 1024 resolution. The Ultimas connect directly to a laptop via firewire, which controls the camera and downloads footage from the camera buffer. With the camera in standby mode it continuously records footage to the buffer, and when you hit the trigger it will retain a specified amount of pre-trigger footage and then continue recording until the buffer is full.

Next challenge was lighting. Because of the incredible speed of the explosions we had to shoot with a 1/10,000 shutter so the fragments wouldn't blur. Combined with a 6000 fps we calculated we'd need close to 100,000 watts of light to adequately light a target area of about one square meter. On set we could only leave full lighting up for about 60 seconds before our props would start smoking.

Most of the props were modified shells of actual items. We had purchased several of each so we could do multiple takes, and had two cameras running for each take so we had lots of angles and footage to work with. We used shells of flat-screen TV's so the screens could be replaced with tempered glass or breakaway glass (each gives a different effect), and the props were filled with bits of circuit boards, assorted parts and bits of glitter. The phone model was built at 300% scale, as blowing up a little 10cm phone would look a little underwhelming.

The pyro we used was primarily detonation cord, we didn't want too much flame. Being able to review a take and reshoot allowed us to adjust the amount and placement of the charge for each shot.

The model of the offending Dell notebook wasn't mentioned, but since it was of the Windows persuasion, we can now boast that we are unbiased in our reports of fiery laptops, both Mac and PC. It's only a matter of time before something like this happens on an airplane. – Charlie White

Dell laptop explodes at Japanese conference [The Inquirer]