Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[pcprogrammer]

While we're on the topic of plugs and outlets... If you're in the USA, who shares my hatred of those relatively new (and NEC required) "childproof" wall sockets with the internal doors over the prongs? Theoretically the doors are supposed to retract when the ground prong goes in first, but my experience is that you push and shove and try various angles until the doors just crack out of the way. Unfortunately, they don't seem to actually break off so you get to enjoy this little song and dance every time.

Yes I hate those, but here, at least in the Netherlands and France, you can't buy them without this.    On extension cords I usually go at them with a dremel to get rid of them.

[pcprogrammer]

“LIFE FOUND ON MARS”

but we are supposed to believe that a human fetus with a heartbeat, is not life.

IMHO until it can survive independently of another organism it is not a life form, it is a parasite. Sperms are alive, we don't worry about those.

By that reasoning then, a hospital patient on life support would be considered a parasite. So why do we go to such great lengths to keep them alive? Besides there being lots of money to be made, in contrast to preventing a child coming into the world

Emotion and hope. Often rational thinking goes out of the window in these case.

[AndyBeez]

Pet peeve #2203 :

Heavy light fittings held up on a ceiling by a single tiny grub screw.

Just fitted a lamp made from brass and glass, weighing around two kilos without lamps. Despite the mounting bracket being 'engineered' to the ceiling so not even an earthquake can move it, the lamp attaches to the bracket with a 5mm long M3 grub screw. Please, "no swinging from the light fittings".

[TimFox]

While we're on the topic of plugs and outlets... If you're in the USA, who shares my hatred of those relatively new (and NEC required) "childproof" wall sockets with the internal doors over the prongs? Theoretically the doors are supposed to retract when the ground prong goes in first, but my experience is that you push and shove and try various angles until the doors just crack out of the way. Unfortunately, they don't seem to actually break off so you get to enjoy this little song and dance every time.

Yes I hate those, but here, at least in the Netherlands and France, you can't buy them without this.    On extension cords I usually go at them with a dremel to get rid of them.

Yes, when we had some work done two years ago the electrician installed them in a new room, to meet code requirements.
They work fine with a three-prong plug, but our vacuum cleaner is double-insulated and has a (polarized) two prong plug.
Luckily, the outlets are never in the right place anyway, so we use (legal) outlet strips (with breaker) that have non-childproof three-prong sockets.

[themadhippy]

If you're in the USA, who shares my hatred of those relatively new (and NEC required) "childproof" wall sockets with the internal doors over the prongs?

wait until  you get the moronic "safety experts" calling for covers to be fitted that actually make things more dangerous.

Just fitted a lamp made from brass and glass, weighing around two kilos without lamps.

with the standard cord grips as found in batten holders and ceiling roses a bit of 0.5mm is allowed to support upto 2Kg,move up to 1mm and its 5Kg

[TimFox]

Another pet peeve:  Use of the word "midnight" in news articles.
Right now in the US, there is a possibility of a railroad strike in a few days.
The media insist on calling the time of the strike "midnight Friday".
One site tried to get this right and said "midnight Friday, so the strike starts 12:01 AM on Saturday".
With 24 hour clocks, 24:00 on Friday would be 00:00 on Saturday, and the ambiguity disappears.
(US railroads usually avoid this problem in their timetables by avoiding midnight and scheduling at either 11:59 PM or 12:01 AM when using 12-hour clocks.)

[IDEngineer]

Related: If one must use 12 hour time representation, why always use the trailing "M"? It's 100% redundant and conveys zero additional information.

1:23P is completely unambiguous. We do not need to write 1:23PM. Likewise 1:23A and 1:23P cannot be misinterpreted, despite the absence of the trailing M's.

Yeah, I know, but I'm a bandwidth and storage nazi so every character matters!

[TimFox]

Related: If one must use 12 hour time representation, why always use the trailing "M"? It's 100% redundant and conveys zero additional information.

1:23P is completely unambiguous. We do not need to write 1:23PM. Likewise 1:23A and 1:23P cannot be misinterpreted, despite the absence of the trailing M's.

Yeah, I know, but I'm a bandwidth and storage nazi so every character matters!

Note that the trailing "M" refers to noon, not midnight.
Ante meridiem and post meridiem.
This leads to further confusion at 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM, since 12:00 PM is (usually) noon, unless it is 12 hours after noon (literally).

[Nominal Animal]

If you think about it, even the phase of our local clocks is all wrong.  I mean, a normal day starts at around 6-9, midday is at 12 and immediately wraps down to 1, with evening starting at around 5 or so –– but with some variation depending on whether you have siesta or similar or not.

Why isn't 12 at the bottom, instead?  Then the day would change around when people start waking up for the new day, and the first turn of the clock is the typical wakefullness time ("day"), and the second turn the typical sleep time ("night"), say corresponding to when the sun is visible on the equator at that latitude or time zone.

My pet peeve isn't the clock, though.  It's my own frigging mind, which finds these kinds of things to wonder about, all the time.  And it annoys me to no end.  I know there is an interesting long history behind it, some of it lost, some of it very obscure, and anyway it is one of those 'culture' things you grow into and cannot really change.  I'd rather wonder about some useful stuff instead.

[TimFox]

Before the Meiji Restoration, during the Tokugawa Shogunate, the Japanese time system separated "day" and "night", and divided each into six parts.
Therefore, the length of an hour varied with the season.
This interesting link discusses the mechanical clocks used in the traditional system:  https://museum.seiko.co.jp/en/knowledge/relation_15/
There were several locations in Edo (now Tokyo) with bells to synchronize timekeeping in the metropolitan area.

[pcprogrammer]

but with some variation depending on whether you have siesta or similar or not.

I thought siesta was a southern thing, you know in warm countries where it is to hot to work between 14:00 and 16:00 or so.

I guess in your neck of the wood it is more like hibernation

[james_s]

Related: If one must use 12 hour time representation, why always use the trailing "M"? It's 100% redundant and conveys zero additional information.

1:23P is completely unambiguous. We do not need to write 1:23PM. Likewise 1:23A and 1:23P cannot be misinterpreted, despite the absence of the trailing M's.

Yeah, I know, but I'm a bandwidth and storage nazi so every character matters!

I guess I never really thought of that. I suppose though by that logic we could truncate all sorts of words and the message would still carry, but grammar dictates otherwise.

[james_s]

the body naturally jettisons an egg every month, nobody gets upset about that.

Oh yeah? Try co-cohabitating with a host of said egg.

 

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Valid point. That thought did cross my mind at the time. It is a different sort of upset though.

[IDEngineer]

I guess I never really thought of that. I suppose though by that logic we could truncate all sorts of words and the message would still carry, but grammar dictates otherwise.

Take it to a ridiculous extreme, and you have modern texting! LOL BFG etc.

[TomWinTejas]

My pet peeve is using the suffix gate for any scandal.  Watergate wasn't a scandal about water, it was the name of the office building where the scandal occurred.   

[Vincent]

My pet peeve is using the suffix gate for any scandal.  Watergate wasn't a scandal about water, it was the name of the office building where the scandal occurred.

Did someone say sensationalism? 

My personal favourite was probably the Sharpiegate. Watching the coverage of it I was like "...is this real life?    " I forgot the details of it but I do remember it was 100% genuine silliness.

[IDEngineer]

I swear some people use "-gate" in a vain attempt to generate more outrage than is justified.

News used to be news. Now it's just politics.

[rsjsouza]

Many years ago I used to be able to buy these round open terminals by the buckets. I liked them as they have a very round and large contact area with the head of the screw.


However, it seems that nowadays the only ones that I can buy are the "spade" types with square corners... 


Well, that or my google-fu skills are lacking severely... But I searched everywhere where these things are sold, including the typical trade sites eBay, Aliexpress, Banggood, etc.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Yeah. What happened to them?

[Ed.Kloonk]

Have a look at "ring terminal high temp"

Might have to cut the slot. 

[vk6zgo]

Many years ago I used to be able to buy these round open terminals by the buckets. I liked them as they have a very round and large contact area with the head of the screw.


However, it seems that nowadays the only ones that I can buy are the "spade" types with square corners... 


Well, that or my google-fu skills are lacking severely... But I searched everywhere where these things are sold, including the typical trade sites eBay, Aliexpress, Banggood, etc.

Back in my first job, we sold the first type as "spade connectors", so that is what I think of when I hear the term.

[PlainName]

Many years ago I used to be able to buy these round open terminals by the buckets. I liked them as they have a very round and large contact area with the head of the screw.


However, it seems that nowadays the only ones that I can buy are the "spade" types with square corners... 

If you look at it afresh, the bottom one is simply the top one with extra material at the ends to prevent a point occurring. It looks like it has less material overall because the hole is larger compared to the full width, but the top one with the same size hole would have less material.

[Siwastaja]

My pet peeve is that while LEDs have exceeded 200lm/W years ago and 80-90% efficient driver circuits are easy to design, we mere mortals (unless we live in Saudi Arabia or whatever, I forgot which country it was exactly where efficient LED lights are available) have to buy lowest tier factory floor crap LEDs.

For a bulb, the available range is 80 - 105 lm/W. From crap to just barely acceptable. But it gets worse with fixtures, much worse. I am looking for either self-adhesive LED strip, or slim aluminum cased fixture to install under the kitchen cabinets to light up the work areas. I looked in every local store, including Bauhaus for example which usually does not just sell cheap crap but have decent offerings. And what I found out, almost all products are 50 lm/W and the best ones, good brands, are approaching 80 lm/W. There is no excuse for this crap, these products do not have fancy diffusers or shades which would explain the poor efficiency (but at least give some visual improvement).

I have set my mental limit so that I absolutely refuse to buy a LED fixture below 90 lm/W so no kitchen work lights for us, then. I need to import these from more developed countries, or design and build my own LED lights.

And I'm even willing to pay, but high-efficiency stuff is simply not an option, at any price, even when we are in the middle of energy crisis. Go figure.

[Nominal Animal]

I know nothing, but parroting BigClive, I do believe that the luminosity per watt for a LED is much below the maximum current.  As shown by BigClive, the Doobys just run the pretty much same LED chips at lower currents.

This means that if you want more efficient lighting, just grab some good quality lamps, about twice the luminosity you need, and replace their LED drivers with ones that produce about half the current.

If I had a reliable calibrated luminosity measuring device, this is exactly what I'd be testing with a few different LEDs, including some el-cheapo eBay ones, as well as proper quality ones: the luminosity per watt curve at different constant currents.  Yes yes, I know, many believe it is "basically constant", but it isn't, or the Dooby LEDs would not exist in the form they do.

[AaronD]

If you think about it, even the phase of our local clocks is all wrong.  I mean, a normal day starts at around 6-9, midday is at 12 and immediately wraps down to 1, with evening starting at around 5 or so –– but with some variation depending on whether you have siesta or similar or not.

Why isn't 12 at the bottom, instead?  Then the day would change around when people start waking up for the new day, and the first turn of the clock is the typical wakefullness time ("day"), and the second turn the typical sleep time ("night"), say corresponding to when the sun is visible on the equator at that latitude or time zone.

My pet peeve isn't the clock, though.  It's my own frigging mind, which finds these kinds of things to wonder about, all the time.  And it annoys me to no end.  I know there is an interesting long history behind it, some of it lost, some of it very obscure, and anyway it is one of those 'culture' things you grow into and cannot really change.  I'd rather wonder about some useful stuff instead.

Jewish tradition starts the next day at sunset.  Possibly for the same reason.
(this also gives a clearly visible and fair "progress bar" of sorts, until no one is allowed to work on the Sabbath)