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by loloquwowndueo 1728 days ago
Back in the day “bricked” meant it was actually and permanently about as useful as a brick - no chance of recovery. These days it just seems to mean “can’t boot and can’t be fixed/reflashed easily”.

Having to plug a resistor into the device to put it in any sort of recovery mode does walk a very fine line between “not really bricked” and “dude you squeezed water out of a stone, you are a demigod”.

2 comments

One might call it "soft-bricked".
"soft-bricked" is a common term in some of the Android forums I have frequented in the past.

The Remarkable 2 is very nice, I would like to try one out, though I don't have any immediate use for something like that, except maybe as an e-reader.

I still use paper notebooks, but I rarely need to actually do something with the contents afterwards, other than refer to them occasionally. Maybe if I was more organized...

HN has seen many discussions over the proper meaning of bricked. [0][1][2][3]

I think it's because it's an ambiguous metaphor. Does it mean currently only as useful to you as a brick, or does it mean as objectively valuable as a brick. Personally I prefer the original stronger definition, where recoverable issues do not count as bricked, but so it goes.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20379772

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20381892

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731376

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845778