Author Topic: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep  (Read 28746 times)

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Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #100 on: November 20, 2017, 07:18:07 pm »
I don't know whether even more regulation is the solution.
 

Offline hermit

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #101 on: November 20, 2017, 07:32:04 pm »
Years ago I talked to a man that had a fire in his mobile home.  He told me weeks before the fire he had called the power company to complain about wires sagging onto his roof.  They did nothing.  Then the fire.  The power company was there before the firefighters left and moved the lines.  The fire inspector listed the cause as a faulty television.

The guy said to me, "Look at the roof.  See that black spot?  That's where the lines touched.  It's obvious that's where the fire started.  The television they say started it still works and isn't damaged at all."

For all we know this girl could have OD'd and the local officials are hiding that and at the same time giving her parents an avenue to sue someone.  I remain skeptical. 
 

Offline Cyberdragon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #102 on: November 20, 2017, 08:01:41 pm »
Years ago I talked to a man that had a fire in his mobile home.  He told me weeks before the fire he had called the power company to complain about wires sagging onto his roof.  They did nothing.  Then the fire.  The power company was there before the firefighters left and moved the lines.  The fire inspector listed the cause as a faulty television.

The guy said to me, "Look at the roof.  See that black spot?  That's where the lines touched.  It's obvious that's where the fire started.  The television they say started it still works and isn't damaged at all."

For all we know this girl could have OD'd and the local officials are hiding that and at the same time giving her parents an avenue to sue someone.  I remain skeptical.

I think they had a woo-woo "earthing" plate in her bed "for her health" and that was the return. That would also explain the burns on the sheets if the arc jumped through them to get to the conductive sheet. Chinese shit + voodoo beliefs = DEAD
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Offline Simon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #103 on: November 21, 2017, 07:37:02 am »
that is why buying on ebay from china should be shut down
So you propose to buy this stuff from gas station at 10x markup? Before shutting down eBay, a very robust import quality control system must be put in place. Otherwise you end up buying the same garbage, but way more expensive.

You seem to completely miss the point. What is wrong with buying from a "gas station" if it has been through proper checks? The problem is that when an individual buys something from ebay and china they have no idea of what they care buying. So buying should only happen within your own country of goods that have been imported and inspected or otherwise declared fit by a local importer that will be held legally accountable if that product does not meet standards. So yes if your local gas station has over priced products that have been formally imported and checked and your silly enough to pay over the odds for what is still a good product them so be it.....

Obviously if your buying say within the EU where standards are upheld and there is legal recourse in the event of problem across boarders then yes you could buy from a neighbouring country that has the same standards that are trusted. The elephant in the room here is that checks on goods do not happen until it is too late and companies concentrate on churning out more and more "new models".
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #104 on: November 21, 2017, 07:38:12 am »
I don't know whether even more regulation is the solution.

We have regulations, they need enforcing. It's become quite a topic in the UK with cut backs particularly to trading standards, sure make new laws, but there is no one to police them so it's pointless.
 

Online ataradov

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #105 on: November 21, 2017, 07:40:57 am »
goods that have been imported and inspected or otherwise declared fit by a local importer that will be held legally accountable if that product does not meet standards.
That's the problem. There is no real reliable system for this. All sketchy stuff. where there is any risk of getting caught and prosecuted, goes through fake companies registered on mysterious islands.

The reality is, in the US gas stations sell the same Chinese junk. I have not heard of any precedent of them being held accountable for anything.
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Offline Simon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #106 on: November 21, 2017, 07:47:12 am »
In the UK I am told we used to inspect stuff on import, obviously we didn't buy as much crap from china. No I'm not talking dodgy companies. An importer needs to be locally owned and the company needs to come back to locally resident directors, no camen islands bollocks.
 

Offline Muttley Snickers

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #107 on: November 21, 2017, 08:01:13 am »
Unfortunately and more often than not it is the regulators themselves who regularly drop the ball and put the public at risk due to their negligence, incompetence and oversight, dangerous stuff simply gets through the net until somebody gets hurt and then the finger pointing begins. I don't trust anything or anybody as being gospel and never did.

Recalls Australia.
https://www.productsafety.gov.au/recalls
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #108 on: November 21, 2017, 08:04:16 am »
Unfortunately and more often than not it is the regulators themselves who regularly drop the ball and put the public at risk due to their negligence, incompetence and oversight, dangerous stuff simply gets through the net until somebody gets hurt and then the finger pointing begins. I don't trust anything or anybody as being gospel and never did.

Recalls Australia.
https://www.productsafety.gov.au/recalls

I haven't forgotten a health and safety visit to our company, they made a fuss over nothing and missed very obvious things...... Jobsworths.
 
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Offline Mjolinor

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #109 on: November 21, 2017, 08:05:06 am »
They could achieve a lot by stopping the Chinese government form subsidising the postage. The only reason that these things can get here for the low low prices is that the seller pays nothing to ship.

That would involve our government doing something useful which is extremely unlikely.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #110 on: November 21, 2017, 08:15:21 am »
They could achieve a lot by stopping the Chinese government form subsidising the postage. The only reason that these things can get here for the low low prices is that the seller pays nothing to ship.

That would involve our government doing something useful which is extremely unlikely.


Very easy, very large import tariffs, or a ban on imports to private individuals. genuine importers can get given a suitable import rate, you could even have a system where the import duty goes up if the goods are not locally certified but I'd just ban non certified goods.
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #111 on: November 21, 2017, 08:18:21 am »
I haven't forgotten a health and safety visit to our company, they made a fuss over nothing and missed very obvious things...... Jobsworths.
It is a responsibility of the company, ergo the people that work there to check on their own setup AND of his colleagues. We do have two checks a year from four designated colleagues, but that does not stop me from telling another colleague if I see something potentially dangerous going on.
To take it a step further, as an EE it is my  and your duty to warn anyone in this world when I /you see a potentially electronic related safety issue.
As you know electricity is the most dangerous of threads since we have no senses to detect it. Gas, fire we can smell. Bad food we can taste. Electricity .......
 

Offline Mjolinor

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #112 on: November 21, 2017, 10:25:14 am »

I have a relationship with some ebay and Amazon sellers whereby I take their returns and mend them or bin them then pay them some money if and when I get some so I probably see the absolute worst of it and a lot of it truly is absolute pish.

The thing is though that a lot of the stuff is shipped from the UK. There are three (that I know of) huge warehouses, Plymouth, Birmingham and Leicester. Certainly one of these is owned by a Chinese guy and his company have been prosecuted on more than one occasion, last time it was for power bricks that were not certified.

These warehouses are stocked by ebay sellers in China, I am not too sure what that relationship is but the warehouse owner does not seem to own the product, he just rents space out and provides packing and local (Europe) shipping. He does not have a returns policy hence me being onto a good thing by getting stuff very cheap from the Chinese that I have a relationship with.

 

Offline Simon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #113 on: November 21, 2017, 10:29:12 am »



The thing is though that a lot of the stuff is shipped from the UK. There are three (that I know of) huge warehouses, Plymouth, Birmingham and Leicester. Certainly one of these is owned by a Chinese guy and his company have been prosecuted on more than one occasion, last time it was for power bricks that were not certified.





Yes that is the thing and why I said that any importer must be locally based with UK based directors legally responsible for the legality of what the company does. The problem with a foreign owned company or one where the owners/directors are not UK citizens is that it can become a bit fluid when it comes to trying to prosecute them.
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #114 on: November 21, 2017, 02:17:45 pm »
Let me put it in another context:
what do you think happens when some company in the EU imports and sells cars made somewhere in a 3rd world country that do not comply to the safety and environmental norms in the EU,
lets say no airbags, inappropriate braking power, no crumplezone on the cars front, no height and material used in the bumper to lower damage to pedestrians and oh yeah it emits 20 times more C0x, NOx and whatever toxic stuff than the european norm. It will never ever get an official registration, right? Selling it or driving it without registration would be severely punishable in a court of law esp. when there are lethal accidents with that car.
 
But now we are talking about mains connected electrical equipment, that can kill people that do not know better like children and it is suddenly ok ?
« Last Edit: November 21, 2017, 02:19:23 pm by Kjelt »
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #115 on: November 21, 2017, 02:25:34 pm »
Quite, if you want to make an automotive device you are hauled over the coals before you have even made it, but so long as you print a worthless CE mark on anything else you are good to go until you get caught
 

Offline iainwhite

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #116 on: November 21, 2017, 03:11:14 pm »
They could achieve a lot by stopping the Chinese government form subsidising the postage.

Not only the Chinese govt provides subsidy...  the Universal Postal Union rules mean that destination countries pay much of the internal cost of delivering a packet from foreign countries e.g. China.  Some of that money is reclaimed from the foreign countries, but not all.  So effectively, we too provide a subsidy.
 

Offline Bashstreet

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #117 on: November 21, 2017, 03:34:18 pm »
They could achieve a lot by stopping the Chinese government form subsidising the postage.

Not only the Chinese govt provides subsidy...  the Universal Postal Union rules mean that destination countries pay much of the internal cost of delivering a packet from foreign countries e.g. China.  Some of that money is reclaimed from the foreign countries, but not all.  So effectively, we too provide a subsidy.

Yeah why not stop farming subsidies too tax subsidies to companies etc etc big can of worms.
 

Offline Mjolinor

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #118 on: November 21, 2017, 03:41:12 pm »
They could achieve a lot by stopping the Chinese government form subsidising the postage.

Not only the Chinese govt provides subsidy...  the Universal Postal Union rules mean that destination countries pay much of the internal cost of delivering a packet from foreign countries e.g. China.  Some of that money is reclaimed from the foreign countries, but not all.  So effectively, we too provide a subsidy.

Yeah why not stop farming subsidies too tax subsidies to companies etc etc big can of worms.

Well why not. :)
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #119 on: November 21, 2017, 07:59:46 pm »
I think pressure should be put on companies like Apple to both lower the price for replacements for the original charger and make them using substantially more robust (thicker) components like cables AND add really good strain relief, both so they last longer and so that imitators will be forced to use thicker cables too.
Apple’s prices for replacement chargers (US$19) doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. The cables are another matter...

Your point about the counterfeiters is a really good one, though. Apple may be able and capable of engineering a top-quality charger in a 1” cube, but the counterfeiters aren’t.

But putting the blame on Apple, because people buy dangerous fakes, of their (presumably) perfectly safe devices, seems to be a bit unfair and harsh.

Maybe create a law, which forces companies to allow third parties, to produce "official" releases of compatible chargers (and stuff), which are then checked to be safe by Apple or other entities.
A bit like the Original IBM PC and the "official" compatibles/clones we had, of it.
I don’t think he was blaming Apple as such, but rather just saying that Apple is in a unique position to be an influencer in this situation.

Apple itself already has a similar program: the MFi (made for iPhone/iPod/iPad and Mac) program. And indeed, buying an MFi-certified accessory ensures it will work properly, since it has been tested by Apple, IIRC. Of course, you will pay more for that than for an uncertified accessory, but the price needn’t be exorbitant. For example, the AmazonBasics Lightning cables I love are still a fraction of the price of Apple’s, and they’re better quality.

Even the official Apple cords are as thin as they can make them. They aren't that robust. I have lots of them and Ive had lots of them fail on me. Ive stopped buying Apple products pretty much now. Thats one of the reasons.
As an Apple fan (though not necessarily fanboi), I agree with you about the cords. Part of the reason is the switch to environmentally friendly PVC-free cables (at least, the switch to PVC-free coincided with the insulation becoming much more brittle; that said, a cable lasting only 1/4 as long is hardly environmentally friendly in the end). For Lightning cables, my current favorite are the aforementioned AmazonBasics ones, which are great. I hear the ones from Anker are excellent, too.


EDIT:
Maybe the solution, is to make a law, so that only items that meet the regulations (certification etc), are allowed to be imported. I.e. they don't electrocute people, catch on fire, contain hazardous substances, pay all taxes (including VAT, import dties etc) and meet other sensible regulations.
Isn’t that what CE certification is already supposed to do?

Did you seroiously ask Apple to lower their prices? :-DD That will never happen. Second, Apple's cables are good, but counterfeit products will always be garbage since that's their whole point, to scam you.
Apple has reduced prices on products many times. Heck, they’ve even been known to retroactively refund customers after a price drop (this happened early on with Aperture and then with the original iPhone).

Don’t forget that on this very specific issue of phone chargers, Apple has already had a program where you could turn in a third-party charger and exchange it for a genuine Apple one at a deep discount. I wouldn’t be surprised if this incident triggers another exchange program.

Those squared design connectors aren't great too. We've figured out how to do proper strain relieves years ago, yet for the sake of looks functionality suffers.

Both Apple and Microsoft do this, by the way. Apple leads are renowned for failing and Microsoft had to do a recall on their Surface charger leads.
I couldn’t agree more. I’d rather a functional, durable cable over a crazy-styled one. Third-party accessory makers (including MFi ones) have made many cables that are both stylish and durable. It’s not rocket surgery.


If in Vietnam, a real Apple charger is $89, and the (might be fake) one, but which looks similar, and seems to work ok, is $8.99 . Also, if the country, tends to have limited amounts of money floating about.
I can understand why many people, will buy the $8.99 ones, rather than the official Apple $89.99 ones.
N.B. Prices are made up, as I don't know the prices in Vietnam. But I bet the fake chargers are a fraction of the price of the real ones (or there is some horrible product scamming going on there).
I’m guessing you see a few things happening at once:
1. The Apple charger probably costs the same or a bit more than in USA, where it’s $19. So let’s say it’s $30. This is typical for countries where Apple relies on a local distributor, as opposed to having a local subsidiary. (I’m well familiar with this because Switzerland used to rely on a distributor, and the markup was huge. Later, Apple bought that distributor’s Apple operations and turned it into a local subsidiary, and the prices went down to near parity with USA.)
2. Some resellers will then sell genuine chargers for those $30, and various cheaper ones for $20-25. Because the wholesale price of the cheap ones is far lower than that of the Apple charger, they will heavily push the cheap ones, since their profit on them is way higher. (You see this in Switzerland, too!!)
3. Discounters like corner shops will only sell the cheap chargers, at whatever price they want, because they’re not authorized resellers for original Apple, and have no desire to become one.

I don’t blame the corner shop folks; they don’t have the knowledge about chargers anyway. But the resellers like #2 there, I really hate that, because they know they’re selling inferior crap. (Here in Switzerland, I see some resellers selling cheap-looking cheapies for CHF19, the same as the Apple! But unless a customer asks for the Apple specifically, they’ll hand a customer the cheapie since it’s more profitable.)

My brother lives in Argentina and he mentioned how impossible it is to find original/official chargers for his iPad and S5 phones. [...]
As someone else pointed out, some countries do not have the good or even average stuff sold in the aftermarket.
Yep, exactly.

The ones he was able to purchase were utter garbage to the point his iPad stayed unusable for a few months until I got some chargers from the US.
Touchscreens are sensitive to power quality, so cheap, noisy chargers often cause trouble. Most people have forgotten that early Apple USB chargers (the ones labeled ‘iPod USB Power Adapter’) were too noisy for the iPhone and caused touchscreen issues. The ones introduced with or after the iPhone are labeled “[wattage] USB Power Adapter” and output cleaner power.

On the iPads, the additional issue is that many cheap chargers are wildly overspecced, so an iPad needing 10W will bog down a charger that claims to be 12W but is actually 5W on a good day.


Expensive and overengineered, not uncommon for Apple. I'll go so far as to say if they used a simpler design with fewer components they might have gotten even better creepage distances and not require such a high density to fit in the same space. Two optocouplers, seriously... :palm:
They would have performed this analysis, obviously. If the complexity is there, then it’s needed for some reason.
 

Offline IanMacdonald

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #120 on: November 22, 2017, 09:41:15 am »
A fake charger is obviously less safe, but doing a sellotape bodge on any charger, genuine or otherwise,  could render it dangerous. If the bodge caused a short it may have overheated the charger to the point where the insulation failed. A better quality product might have failed in a non-hazardous manner, but by my reckoning the accident was not primarily the charger's fault.

We had a case years ago where a customer had a small fire with an audio system due to bodged speaker extensions. The guy was screaming foul play at us, but shut up when we asked to see the speakers and their leads.  :-[

"As you know electricity is the most dangerous of threads since we have no senses to detect it. Gas, fire we can smell. Bad food we can taste. Electricity ....... " Not so, electrocutions are extremely rare. When they do happen it's more often due to someone doing something extremely silly like dropping an extension lead into a bath. Fire is actually a more serious electrical risk.

The irony here is that in spite of the morass of regulations surrounding electrical work, the main cause of fires is screw terminals which have not been properly tightened, and this can arise regardless of whether regulations have been complied with or not. The mass of paperwork the typical UK electrician has to do may actually contribute to such incidents because you can't be working and writing at the same time, and if perforce you must spend a lot of your time writing then you spend less working. Rush, rush, rush.. terminal left loose. Fire six months later.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2017, 09:50:53 am by IanMacdonald »
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #121 on: November 22, 2017, 12:25:45 pm »
Any decent SMPS will have short circuit detection.
 

Offline Cyberdragon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #122 on: November 22, 2017, 06:22:59 pm »
Any decent SMPS will have short circuit detection.

So should decent audio systems for that matter.
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Offline Simon

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #123 on: November 22, 2017, 06:25:16 pm »
I seem to remember seeing fuses on speaker outputs on kit from the 80's
 

Offline MK14

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Re: Teen dead after rolling on to iPhone cable in her sleep
« Reply #124 on: November 24, 2017, 01:37:15 pm »
EDIT:
Maybe the solution, is to make a law, so that only items that meet the regulations (certification etc), are allowed to be imported. I.e. they don't electrocute people, catch on fire, contain hazardous substances, pay all taxes (including VAT, import dties etc) and meet other sensible regulations.
Isn’t that what CE certification is already supposed to do?

Sorry for the very late response, but your post does seem to be rather long, complicated and refers to a number of different posters. So it is not easy to reply to, properly.

There are existing laws and certifications. But the thing is, that the existing laws/certifications are not necessarily enforced, when items are received (imported), as a small single parcel from China.

Anyway, I guess it is the laws/certifications in Vietnam, which really count as regards this thread.
 


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