Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[Chris56000]

Sites that post useless great bloody long directory lists of service manuals, schematics and books, etc., in plain text when they have no intention of making them available, whether for free or purchase!

Chris Williams

[MathWizard]

Not having the right transformers, or trying to make the wrong thing with my salvaged transformers

[jonovid]

Not having the right transformers, or trying to make the wrong thing with my salvaged transformers

transformer winding and modding is sometimes unavoidable in the DIY hobby space.
more than one way to skin a cat, my apologies to all cats.
 as my father would say about my grandfather's 1940s quotes. when everything was rationed or unavailable at any reasonable price.

[vk6zgo]

Sites that post useless great bloody long directory lists of service manuals, schematics and books, etc., in plain text when they have no intention of making them available, whether for free or purchase!

Chris Williams

Or those that post all the text from magazines, --- no photos or schematics, & headings are in the same lower-case font as everything else.

[eti]

Incorrect, confusing wording from Amazon Echo “Alexa”:

Me: “Alexa, at 11pm remind me to watch TV”

Alexa: “Okay, I’ll create a reminder at 11pm”

Erm, no, you’re CREATING the reminder now. You’re REMINDING me at 11pm. It used to say this correctly, then they screwed it up about a year ago. 🤣

[paulca]

My mum asked me to go to the shop and get some milk.  She said if they had any eggs to get 6.  When I seen they had eggs I had to go back and get another 5 milk!

It's an old programmer joke and the moral of the story is... use parenthesis everywhere.

[Kim Christensen]

Incorrect, confusing wording from Amazon Echo “Alexa”:

Perhaps you should rename her Dyslexia...

[HobGoblyn]

Incorrect, confusing wording from Amazon Echo “Alexa”:

Me: “Alexa, at 11pm remind me to watch TV”

Alexa: “Okay, I’ll create a reminder at 11pm”

Erm, no, you’re CREATING the reminder now. You’re REMINDING me at 11pm. It used to say this correctly, then they screwed it up about a year ago. 🤣

Just as annoying (and somewhat amusing)

Me “Alexa, television on”

Alexa, words along the lines of “I’m sorry I don’t know that”

Me “Alexa, television on”

Alexa “I’m sorry I don’t know that”

Me, "Alexa, TV on”

Alexa “Did you mean television”

Me, “yes”

and finally tv is switched on

[eti]

Incorrect, confusing wording from Amazon Echo “Alexa”:

Me: “Alexa, at 11pm remind me to watch TV”

Alexa: “Okay, I’ll create a reminder at 11pm”

Erm, no, you’re CREATING the reminder now. You’re REMINDING me at 11pm. It used to say this correctly, then they screwed it up about a year ago. 🤣

Just as annoying (and somewhat amusing)

Me “Alexa, television on”

Alexa, words along the lines of “I’m sorry I don’t know that”

Me “Alexa, television on”

Alexa “I’m sorry I don’t know that”

Me, "Alexa, TV on”

Alexa “Did you mean television”

Me, “yes”

and finally tv is switched on

I’ll give Alexa “her” dues; having tried all the “Artificial Assistants”, she’s one the I least want to attack with a hammer until its smashed to smithereens. It may be the US voice I have it set to; it’s pretty relaxing and soothing, and I can forgive most of the inevitable foibles, having used Alexa for about six years.

“Google Home” otoh is DEAF AS A DOORNAIL, has the most cocky, know-it-all voice (like an autistic female librarian), needs “permission” to SET A REMINDER, but not to set an alarm. It tells me EVERY SINGLE TIME I ask it to play a podcast, that “You can change the default podcast provider in assistant settings; I’ve sent a link to your phone.” - erm - why not REMEMBER that you’ve told me, and make the experience better, schmohawk!

Oh and get this:

#1 I’m cooking and tell it to set a timer
#2 I ask it to play a podcast
#3 <at arbitrary time during podcast> “Hey Google, pause” - it dutifully replies “OKAY! TIMER PAUSED!”

Erm… no, I didn’t say “pause TIMER”, did I, numbnuts! One would obviously assume that based on the context of a timer running and some audio playing, that “pause” is for the AUDIO - clearly a running timer has a higher importance than some music or a podcast- a timer is a critical task.

Such a dumb company, Google.


Much respect to this young lad for taking action against his 😂

[eti]

1, People who tell other just to search the forum.
2, Forum search engines, you can never find what you are looking for. Just 1001 replies to an unanswered question.
3, Lists.

That’s the cold and detached types. Doesn’t take a few seconds to help someone.

[EEEnthusiast]

Mathematical or scientific proofs which contain the following "Without loss of generality, it can be assumed that .....".
Most of the time, such proofs are very vague .

[paulca]

Mosfet datasheets.

Why does it always seem they are delibrately hiding the biggest devils in the smallest details?  Everyone is like reading the dream and then studying towards the disappointment.

An example of obfuscation.   The BS170.  It says it has a Vgs of 0.8-3V and then it goes and gives you the RDS(on) for 10V.  Why?  If you are buying a mosfet with a Vgs of 3V why in hell would you care about it's RDS(on) at 10V?  Do you think someone buying a mosfet like that even has 10V?  F****

All that does is spook a mosfet newbie like me into thinking... maybe it really does need 10V if they only give me the RDS for 10V.
#
Why can't they just put the figures you need in the heading section and stop hiding the good stuff in the details.  All I want to know is "Will it work at this system voltage/current", yet they make that one of the hardest things to find.

Is it some sort of mosfet datasheet writing cult?  I bet they have Christmas dinner with the OpAmp datasheet cult.

[IDEngineer]

An example of obfuscation.   The BS170.  It says it has a Vgs of 0.8-3V and then it goes and gives you the RDS(on) for 10V.  Why?  If you are buying a mosfet with a Vgs of 3V why in hell would you care about it's RDS(on) at 10V?  Do you think someone buying a mosfet like that even has 10V?

I'm looking at the BS170 datasheet and it's rated for 60V and a very typical Vgs of +/-20V. Nothing unusual there.

As for Vgs at 10V, that does seem to be something of a "standard" value for gate voltage specs. There's always a chart giving a curve, but 10V seems to be a popular value in the textual portion of MOSFET datasheets. Kinda like the "threshold" gate voltage, which is often the value at which the Ids hits 1 microamp. Seriously, how many applications really count on a 1uA condition? Yet that's the "standard".

[TomKatt]

An example of obfuscation.   The BS170.  It says it has a Vgs of 0.8-3V and then it goes and gives you the RDS(on) for 10V.  Why?  If you are buying a mosfet with a Vgs of 3V why in hell would you care about it's RDS(on) at 10V?  Do you think someone buying a mosfet like that even has 10V?  F****

All that does is spook a mosfet newbie like me into thinking... maybe it really does need 10V if they only give me the RDS for 10V.

I feel your pain.  I'm not an EE by any stretch and Vgs got me more than once myself.  I believe this is because the Vgs is usually specified as the threshhold voltage the device requires in order to begin conducting.  At this low level, you're in the nonlinear region and the Rds is likely to be high, making any switching inefficient.  The 10V ratings for Rds seem to be fairly standard and I think that's because at the atomic level mosfets generally require around 10V to be guaranteed into the linear 'on' region with low resistance.

This probably means a lot more for amplifying circuits than it does switching.

All I know is I started using 'logic level' mosfets that work at 5V or below and specify their Rds at more meaningful (to me) 4-5V.  Like the IRL540 (https://www.vishay.com/docs/91300/sihl540.pdf)

[Kim Christensen]

An example of obfuscation.   The BS170.  It says it has a Vgs of 0.8-3V and then it goes and gives you the RDS(on) for 10V.  Why?  If you are buying a mosfet with a Vgs of 3V why in hell would you care about it's RDS(on) at 10V?  Do you think someone buying a mosfet like that even has 10V?  F****

Are you perhaps confusing VGS(th) with simply VGS? Read the next column called "Test Condition" to see the difference between the VGS(th) spec and the RDS(on) spec.
Knowing VGS(th) is still useful because you want to know that your mosfet will turn "off" even if a small voltage remains on the gate.

https://www.vishay.com/docs/68214/turnonprocess.pdf

[james_s]

Automated birthday announcements. There are websites I haven't signed into in years that send out happy birthday emails. I get a pile of them every year when my birthday rolls around and I find it annoying. It's not like it's a friend wishing me a happy birthday, it's just some cold impersonal automated spam.

[Wallace Gasiewicz]

My current pet peeve:

Using the word "theory" incorrectly. Especially when referring to anything scientific or medical.
Most of the time people use "theory" when the term "observation" or "hypothesis" is the correct term. (maybe even wild ass guess)

Lots of things touted as "theory" are not proven at all, let alone proven in the accepted scientific procedure.

[TimFox]

My current pet peeve:

Using the word "theory" incorrectly. Especially when referring to anything scientific or medical.
Most of the time people use "theory" when the term "observation" or "hypothesis" is the correct term. (maybe even wild ass guess)

Lots of things touted as "theory" are not proven at all, let alone proven in the accepted scientific procedure.

And, especially in political contexts, referring to an actual scientific "theory" as "oh, that's just a theory".

[IDEngineer]

And, especially in political contexts, referring to an actual scientific "theory" as "oh, that's just a theory".

My theory is that most people, especially politicians, have no clue what they're talking about.

The one thing politicians are supposed to understand is the law, right? We should ask these same geniuses what happened before the Law of Gravity was passed.

[Black Phoenix]

My current pet peeve:

Using the word "theory" incorrectly. Especially when referring to anything scientific or medical.
Most of the time people use "theory" when the term "observation" or "hypothesis" is the correct term. (maybe even wild ass guess)

Lots of things touted as "theory" are not proven at all, let alone proven in the accepted scientific procedure.

As an non native speaker I'm probably at fault for doing that. The alternatives are more logic and better suited. I will try to change my speech by using "observation" and "hypothesis" when there is no such defined validation.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Automated birthday announcements. There are websites I haven't signed into in years that send out happy birthday emails. I get a pile of them every year when my birthday rolls around and I find it annoying. It's not like it's a friend wishing me a happy birthday, it's just some cold impersonal automated spam.

Happy birthday.

[vk6zgo]

1, People who tell other just to search the forum.
2, Forum search engines, you can never find what you are looking for. Just 1001 replies to an unanswered question.
3, Lists.

That’s the cold and detached types. Doesn’t take a few seconds to help someone.

After being "Mr Nice Guy" many times, people get pissed off with the OP coming back with increasingly inane supplementary questions, or in some cases angrily disputing the answer.

In other cases, third & fourth parties join in, arguing for & against your answer, or often bringing up increasingly esoteric interpretations, so the thread blows out to hundreds of pages, with the OP going off to another forum to start the same bun fight all over again.

A suggestion might be for the OP in those cases to ask ChatGPT, which won't get stressed by continued questioning of its answers.

[paulca]

My current pet peeve:

Using the word "theory" incorrectly. Especially when referring to anything scientific or medical.
Most of the time people use "theory" when the term "observation" or "hypothesis" is the correct term. (maybe even wild ass guess)

Lots of things touted as "theory" are not proven at all, let alone proven in the accepted scientific procedure.

I have a theory it depends on context.  I also, could be mistaken, but un-akin to science itself the term "Theory" is not defined and is fairly theoretical.    I honestly don't think the way science use it was intended to be so significant, it's just the Internet and people having too much free time they can get bored enough to get annoyed by things like this.

I've watched a room of Flat Earthers and Anti-Flat Earthers debate the definition of theory for over an hour.  It was pointless there and it's pretty pointless anywhere.

[wn1fju]

Pet peeve:  Packaging of all sorts, especially those Sytrofoam peanuts.  Or those small items that are totally encased in clear plastic shells requiring you to slice them open, usually cutting through the enclosed instruction sheet.  Or food packages that either require the skill of a surgeon to open or are nearly impossible to open with arthritic hands.

[shapirus]

Or food packages that either require the skill of a surgeon to open or are nearly impossible to open with arthritic hands.

or that will never open where the "open here" label is.