To have a bomb you need explosives. Did this "looks like a bomb" have anything that looked like explosives? No. Therefore it did not actually look like a bomb.

I assume that you meant to google image search IED. Doing so, I see one image with an exposed PCB. I see several images with cell phones. One shows a Coke can. Are we to believe that an exposed Coke can also "looks like a bomb"? Or should we maybe believe that showing up in a Google Image search for a particular term is not sufficient to "look like" something?

The claim is that the device looked like a bomb. That he's being charged with "creating a hoax bomb" makes no difference to this. Either a hoax bomb still looks like a bomb, or we're giving control over to idiots to declare that a hoax bomb is anything that looks like their crazy and inaccurate ideas of what a bomb looks like.

Certainly IEDs can have exposed PCBs. So do hard drives. It's irrelevant.

What do explosives look like? I don't know. But I know that they look like something, and they probably don't look like electronics. So when you have a device that is a bunch of electronics and nothing else, I can pretty safely say that it does not look like a bomb, because there are no explosives.

You may want to check comment history of the account you're replying to.

Why? I don't see anything particularly remarkable there.

multiple flagged dead comments for the same kind of race trolling that you're feeding?

This comment (about a muslim conference where the speakers were saying it's never acceptable to beat your wife) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228134

Or this comment abut how SJWs love victim culture: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228134

Or this comment saying African Americans have an average IQ of 80: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223344

Or this flagged comment, that got a reply from dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9991230

That's quite a lot in a 45 day old account.

(Do you have "ShowDead" turned on?)

No, I don't have ShowDead turned on. I guess that enables showing flagged comments as well? That certainly would explain it.

Ah, yes, sorry. ShowDead allows you to see flagged comments.

That's OK, I learned something new. I thought it was just for shadowbanned accounts.