Comment by allenrabinovich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by allenrabinovich | Hacker News Reader

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allenrabinovich

Hi folks. Val and Roger were dear friends, and I am on the ground here, and I'd like to respectfully ask that you refrain from speculation. The press is rushing to print sensational items, and they don't know the actual facts.

I've been talking to the police directly, and nothing is conclusive yet. Nothing has actually been ruled out, nor determined to be the cause. They don't even have full toxicology reports yet, those take days and sometimes weeks.

On a personal note, I can tell you that there were two devices in the house, a small 3D printer, and a small laser cutter, that were used for building models and rigs for scientific research. Val was an immaculate engineer, and conformed to all safety rules in operating these machines. To the best of our knowledge, neither of the machines were operating the night they passed away.

Again, please refrain from fear-mongering and speculation. I know it's natural for engineers to attack unsolved problems, but you are not working with correct or full data. Once more data is available, we will write up a complete and truthful statement to try and provide closure on this issue.

Thank you all for your condolences. If you would like to honor Val and Roger's memory in the future, please stay tuned to announcements on http://fb.me/valandroger. We are hoping to establish an MIT scholarship in their names, and continue work on Roger's unfinished video game.

To answer some of the questions in this thread all at once:

1. The unit was about 900 square feet. Looks like someone calculated roughly that from the publicly available information.

2. The laser cutter itself was a very small device. I don't remember the exact size, but the cutting bed wasn't more than 2 by 2 feet, and likely smaller than that.

3. Most importantly, from what the investigators told us, the laser cutter bed was completely empty and it wasn't running when they found it. The same goes for the 3D printer.

Friends here on the ground have their ideas based on what we know about the apartment, and we have made suggestions to the investigators. We are hoping they do due diligence. While I'd like to tell you more, we are trying to avoid all speculation. We know it's stressful, but please hang in there.

Sorry to hear that you lost two friends. It's such a terrible thing for the hacker/maker community to lose two people that seemed like such talented, intelligent individuals.

Condolences for sure. Do you happen to know the size of their place by chance? CO becomes deadly at about 400 PPM or 0.04%. Doing the calculations I can't for the life of me figure out how a small laser cutter could produce enough CO under any condition to become deadly. Even with the smallest of places, lets say 24x20x7 studio, that's 3,360 cubic feet of air & at 0.0807 pounds per cubic feet of air, that means roughly 271 pounds of air. To become toxic, that would mean the laser cutter would need to output 0.1084 pounds of CO or roughly 1.7 ounces of CO in that area and then not get dissipated through air leaks, opening and closing the exterior door, etc. That seems exceedingly high given a laser is going to cut very little actual material and even getting to the point where it has cut 1.7 ounces of material, let alone produced 1.7 ounces of CO would seem to me to take weeks, months, or years.

Based on public records, appears the building is a fourplex and the total floor space for the building is 3328 square feet; as such, my guess is the their unit was 832 SQFT. Room height based on exterior photos roughly appears to be 8-10 ft.

Deep condolences to you and to their friends and families. x

I knew Roger through a meetup group and a mutual friend. I'm sad that our community has lost such a bright and talented person. He was a big inspiration and will continue to be. I'm glad to hear that people are mobilizing to keep Shard going.

I'm very sorry for your loss; what a terrible tragedy.

Do you think there's even a physical possibility with the material used with printers ?

Condolences

No, not possible. With the added clarification on the apartment size a laser cutter would have had to have output nearly 1/2 pound of CO. My initial 1.7oz calculation was absurd in thinking that amount of CO could be produced and at 1/2 pound, it's not even worth entertaining.

Could CO be produced by a clogged clothing dryer?

Small datapoint: Gas dryers are pretty rare in the US, but do exist.

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