Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[IDEngineer]

Well, yeah, medical is its own specialized world. Hospitals have completely separate wiring codes, for example. I don't know much about them but I can easily believe they have specialized fault interrupters for that market. They probably make the normal ones seem downright inexpensive!

Heck, even rabbit-in-the-python power supplies have a separate medical rating system. DC-DC converters also have entirely separate capacitive isolation requirements for medical applications.

Medical is its own world. Comparing to residential or even commercial, "near water" or not, is like comparing those to aircraft or space applications.

[AlfBaz]

Medical is its own world. Comparing to residential or even commercial, "near water" or not, is like comparing those to aircraft or space applications.

I'm simply recollecting having to install low mA RCD's many years ago for a specific situation. Unfortunately I don't remember the specifics other than water was involved and it definitely wasn't medical. It was certainly industrial though

[james_s]

I believe there are lower trip current requirements for outlets near water

I haven't seen any separate "water proximity" specs in the USA. They might exist, but I've never heard of them. We don't seem to sell any "water specific" breakers that I've seen nor heard about. Just one type of hideously expensive, false-positive-tripping breakers for all applications.... 

GFCI breakers are for use near water, they are not required anywhere else. These days they're required anywhere that could end up wet, like unfinished basements but they never used to be. The typical setup used for years in ordinary houses was a single GFCI duplex receptacle in either one of the bathrooms or out in the garage, and then the receptacles in the other bathrooms and usually at least one outside are all daisy chained off that first one. Now they're required in kitchens too but my house has never had one there, wasn't required when it was built in 1979.

[Cubdriver]

I believe there are lower trip current requirements for outlets near water

I haven't seen any separate "water proximity" specs in the USA. They might exist, but I've never heard of them. We don't seem to sell any "water specific" breakers that I've seen nor heard about. Just one type of hideously expensive, false-positive-tripping breakers for all applications.... 

GFCI breakers are for use near water, they are not required anywhere else. These days they're required anywhere that could end up wet, like unfinished basements but they never used to be. The typical setup used for years in ordinary houses was a single GFCI duplex receptacle in either one of the bathrooms or out in the garage, and then the receptacles in the other bathrooms and usually at least one outside are all daisy chained off that first one. Now they're required in kitchens too but my house has never had one there, wasn't required when it was built in 1979.

The application requirements for AFCIs in the US NEC has been expanding over the past ten tears or so, too.  THOSE are very aggravating if you try to use power tools - the ones I had to install nuisance trip nearly every time.

-Pat

[james_s]

I believe there are lower trip current requirements for outlets near water

I haven't seen any separate "water proximity" specs in the USA. They might exist, but I've never heard of them. We don't seem to sell any "water specific" breakers that I've seen nor heard about. Just one type of hideously expensive, false-positive-tripping breakers for all applications.... 

GFCI breakers are for use near water, they are not required anywhere else. These days they're required anywhere that could end up wet, like unfinished basements but they never used to be. The typical setup used for years in ordinary houses was a single GFCI duplex receptacle in either one of the bathrooms or out in the garage, and then the receptacles in the other bathrooms and usually at least one outside are all daisy chained off that first one. Now they're required in kitchens too but my house has never had one there, wasn't required when it was built in 1979.

The application requirements for AFCIs in the US NEC has been expanding over the past ten tears or so, too.  THOSE are very aggravating if you try to use power tools - the ones I had to install nuisance trip nearly every time.

-Pat

AFCIs yes, I hate those things with a passion and have ranted about them before. AFCI and GFCI are two entirely different things, although combination units do exist.

[aargee]

Throw away land fill. So my old petrol/gas lawn mower is packing it in and I saw a 'returned' electric one at our large hardware conglomerate on 'special'.
It came with no charger or batteries but I'm in the power tool eco-system and had the right stuff to make it a decent purchase.
It was a good price, so I took along a set of batteries to test it. Looks like something has happened between the motor and the blades, the motor spins up but blades don't.

They have no option to sell the mower at 'lower than cost price' - which I though was too high to take a risk on, apparently it will end up in the locked skip to go as landfill.
I could not persuade them to let me dispose of it for them. *sigh*

[IDEngineer]

In that same vein, a pet peeve of mine is all the various separate recycle bins when 70-90% of everything just gets lumped together and dumped into the landfill. That's the worst of both worlds: Waste a bunch of labor on the front end sorting things, then throw away all that effort on the back end.

I realize this used to have merit back when China accepted the world's waste, but since they stopped doing that years ago the statistics are consistent from year to year that the vast, VAST majority gets dumped no matter how much front-end sorting takes place.

It seems counterproductive to be running all those separate recycle trucks, molding all those separate recycle bins, spending all that time sorting, etc. when it makes zero difference anyway. Suboptimal at every step in the process. Pick one approach, and optimize the entire sequence for it. Don't waste time, fuel, manhours, and so on just for show when it doesn't make any actual difference at the landfill.

[james_s]

I think we should focus on recycling the really high grade stuff that makes sense and do it locally. Glass is highly recyclable, it's cheap and easy to do and the recycled product is high quality and easily used to make new bottles and jars and such. Aluminum is a valuable metal that is also easily recycled, requiring significantly less energy than making new material from raw ore. Paper and cardboard is probably better used as fuel to generate electricity or other processes, or compost it. Maybe sort the very best stuff for recycling into other paper products. Stop contaminating the recycling stream with bits and scraps of low grade material that will end up in a landfill, that's counterproductive.

[mc172]

Don't waste time, fuel, manhours, and so on just for show when it doesn't make any actual difference at the landfill.

Seems to be standard procedure for governments. What's new?

[Ed.Kloonk]

In that same vein, a pet peeve of mine is all the various separate recycle bins when 70-90% of everything just gets lumped together and dumped into the landfill. That's the worst of both worlds: Waste a bunch of labor on the front end sorting things, then throw away all that effort on the back end.

I realize this used to have merit back when China accepted the world's waste, but since they stopped doing that years ago the statistics are consistent from year to year that the vast, VAST majority gets dumped no matter how much front-end sorting takes place.

It seems counterproductive to be running all those separate recycle trucks, molding all those separate recycle bins, spending all that time sorting, etc. when it makes zero difference anyway. Suboptimal at every step in the process. Pick one approach, and optimize the entire sequence for it. Don't waste time, fuel, manhours, and so on just for show when it doesn't make any actual difference at the landfill.

We get notices in with the land rates ordering us to 'get it right on bin night'.

Here is a online example.
https://www.hepburn.vic.gov.au/get-it-right-on-bin-night-2/

On that page is a link to another page:
https://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/recycling

On that page, the following:

404 page not found
Oops, looks like this page has been recycled.

Har. Har.

 

[Labrat101]

We have only about 5 bins .
Glass, plastic bottles, cardboard,
Gen trash.. the best one is a larger board space . Marked as everything else.
This is were all the electronic equipment, and house furniture is put .... just picked up a 40inches flat screen.
I have picked up before fully working computers . I call it my spares shop . What's not wanted..
Ebay..

[PlainName]

Don't waste time, fuel, manhours, and so on just for show when it doesn't make any actual difference at the landfill.

I would initially agree with you, but...

It can be really hard to go from zero to fully-functioning in one gigantic step. Usually you'd do it in smaller steps, and the possibility is that the whole doesn't work until the final link is in place. With recycling, it wouldn't be cost effective to spend millions on recycling plants and resupply chains without the raw product to actually recycle, so getting everyone to go through the motions in preparation makes sense. Or would if it didn't take so long to get the other bits of the chain in place (assuming there is a plan to).

The downside of this approach, when applied to humans, is that we see the initial efforts being apparently pointless, so we give up and ignore them and make it all pointless. Or at least much harder going that it should have been.

Around here where we've had the different bins for years, just recently they've replaced one bin with woven bags and now we don't just sort but have to wash and dry the stuff before bagging too.

[james_s]

Reuse is by far the most efficient form of recycling and in that sense we've gone backwards. It used to be for example milk was delivered in glass bottles which you then returned when they were empty and they got cleaned out and refilled. With stuff that comes in glass bottles it wouldn't be too hard to have a deposit on them as is done in some states which would encourage people to rinse out and return their empty bottles which could then be washed out and sterilized at high temperature and reused. It would be more efficient to reuse beer bottles for example than to sort, crush and melt down the glass and mold new bottles. Wouldn't work for everything but there are a lot of things that it would work well for. Beer, wine, champaign, pickles, jelly, lots of stuff still comes in glass bottles and jars.

[IDEngineer]

Pet peeve d'jour:

My 76YO mother in law has a Samsung tablet. It got cluttered enough that she wanted us to factory reset it, which we did. Now, it recognizes that it has been factory reset and wants the GMail account and password that was originally used to initialize it when new.

No problem, she's 76YO, she's only ever had one GMail account and 76YO's don't like changing passwords so it's the original password. Provably correct, we can log into GMail, create messages, etc. Yet the tablet refuses it with an "Unknown error, please try again in 24 hours" message.

No problem, we'll use the telephone backup scheme. Enter in the phone number originally used to initialize the tablet. Text message arrives. We enter the code, tablet seems happy... and then it demands the GMail authentication data again. And refuses it again.

We wait 24 hours.

We wait 48 hours.

We wait a week.

We wait a MONTH.

No improvement. Nothing changes. We reach out to Google and they say their database is fine, and how can we argue? The login credentials work perfectly.

We reach out to Samsung and after 90+ minutes of waiting, I have another appointment and have to disconnect.

I'm now in a chat with Samsung that's lasted an hour so far. I'm being elevated to the third level from whomever originally answered. Nobody even attempts a solution, they just keep elevating the session.

It is a fundamental design error to brick a device due to a loss of sync with a remote database. This tablet is 100% functionally perfect, yet it is 100% functionally useless because Samsung and Google cannot validate an email account. I understand the desire to discourage theft, but the telephone backup should be sufficient to obviate all other authentication steps and give you a true factory reset. Except it's not. And so here's my 76YO mother-in-law's tablet, in perfect condition, and completely worthless.

This "feature" is filling landfills with tablets.

[james_s]

That's weird, are you sure there isn't a more complete factory reset procedure? I haven't yet encountered a device that needed the original password once it had been truly reset.

[DrG]

Pet peeve d'jour:

My 76YO mother in law has a Samsung tablet. It got cluttered enough that she wanted us to factory reset it, which we did. Now, it recognizes that it has been factory reset and wants the GMail account and password that was originally used to initialize it when new.

No problem, she's 76YO, she's only ever had one GMail account and 76YO's don't like changing passwords so it's the original password. Provably correct, we can log into GMail, create messages, etc. Yet the tablet refuses it with an "Unknown error, please try again in 24 hours" message.

No problem, we'll use the telephone backup scheme. Enter in the phone number originally used to initialize the tablet. Text message arrives. We enter the code, tablet seems happy... and then it demands the GMail authentication data again. And refuses it again.

We wait 24 hours.

We wait 48 hours.

We wait a week.

We wait a MONTH.

No improvement. Nothing changes. We reach out to Google and they say their database is fine, and how can we argue? The login credentials work perfectly.

We reach out to Samsung and after 90+ minutes of waiting, I have another appointment and have to disconnect.

I'm now in a chat with Samsung that's lasted an hour so far. I'm being elevated to the third level from whomever originally answered. Nobody even attempts a solution, they just keep elevating the session.

It is a fundamental design error to brick a device due to a loss of sync with a remote database. This tablet is 100% functionally perfect, yet it is 100% functionally useless because Samsung and Google cannot validate an email account. I understand the desire to discourage theft, but the telephone backup should be sufficient to obviate all other authentication steps and give you a true factory reset. Except it's not. And so here's my 76YO mother-in-law's tablet, in perfect condition, and completely worthless.

This "feature" is filling landfills with tablets.

It's not a theft prevention measure, it is lazy dumfuckery. They could warn you that if you do a factory reset, you need the goocrap OR you can remove the goocrap BEFORE you do a reset https://www.samsung.com/my/support/mobile-devices/why-do-i-need-re-enter-my-google-account-after-a-factory-reset/ see how can I disable this goocrap nonsense (I am paraphrasing).

There are published methods to overcome the jam you are in but I can not vouch for them. e.g.,

https://www.unlockunit.com/blog/bypass-google-account-verification-factory-reset-protection/

Serch on "How do I bypass Google on Samsung after factory reset?"

Hope it helps...

[IDEngineer]

Even if they don't warn you, their system is broken. We HAVE the original credentials. They are provably accurate. We also have the original telephone number used as the "backup" for this device and account. It too is provably accurate, because when we used it with this tablet we received a text message with its magic numeric code, which we entered into the tablet.

Despite this, the tablet continues to demand the GMail account data AND refuses to accept it even though we know, for certain, that it is accurate.

Utter stupidity, by two very large multinational corporations who certainly have the resources to do this very simple job correctly.

I'll check into those links you provided, thank you!

EDIT: I was excited by the instructions to "hold the @ symbol" which would bring up a Settings dialog, from which you could navigate. Sadly, it doesn't work on this tablet. I tried both the primary @ and the one on the secondary "punctuation" keyboard to no avail. Chasing the concept myself, I looked for any way to reach any sort of Settings menu, keyboard configuration, etc. There's literally nothing available.

Very maddening. They've done a great job at locking out legitimate owners from a perfectly functional tablet. Their latest suggestion in the chat (yes, I'm STILL on that) is to call this "phone support team" telephone number. I did, and it's for "Samsung apps"... "press 1 for our heart monitor app", etc. No options offered for tablets for any reason, let alone authentication questions.

GRRRRR.

[DrG]

Even if they don't warn you, their system is broken. We HAVE the original credentials. They are provably accurate. We also have the original telephone number used as the "backup" for this device and account. It too is provably accurate, because when we used it with this tablet we received a text message with its magic numeric code, which we entered into the tablet.

Despite this, the tablet continues to demand the GMail account data AND refuses to accept it even though we know, for certain, that it is accurate.

Utter stupidity, by two very large multinational corporations who certainly have the resources to do this very simple job correctly.

I'll check into those links you provided, thank you!

Good point....a factory reset that, apparently, can't accurately access the information for verification but demands it nonetheless? Hopefully you can get passed it - let us know how it turns out.

[IDEngineer]

Latest update....

I spent quite a while on the phone with a polite Samsung guy. He doesn't know me, so of course he had me go through all the usual mind-numbing steps of freshly factory resetting, freshly clearing the cache, etc. Once we got past that, he started getting frustrated (with the situation, not with me).

I finally asked the following: "When this device came out of the box, it was not associated with any GMail account. It knew to ask for a new-to-it account because it had no knowledge of any accounts. The fact that it now asks for a PREVIOUS account means something is not truly factory reset... something is persistent, it even knows the previous email account and offers it as a fill-in, so it is not truly a 'factory reset' but some sort of intermediate 'soft reset'. How do we TRULY factory reset this tablet, so that it remembers NOTHING, acts like new, and requests a new account instead of requesting a previous one?"

His suggestion: Find a third party service shop who can reflash the system firmware onto the tablet. I am not making that up.

Oh, he did have one other suggestion: Buy a new tablet. Again, I am not making that up.

I suspect we'll be doing the latter. And you can bet it won't be a Samsung tablet. In fact, I'd like to find a tablet vendor that doesn't demand a relationship with Google OR Apple. I like Android as an OS but this compulsory apron-strings relationship is going to add to a landfill, cost us money for a new tablet when the one my MIL has is not broken, and cause her headaches because of the learning curve for a new device.

You can bet I'll be going out of my way to loudly advertise this experience for many months, on lots of forums. Bad business practices deserve to be crushed like cockroaches.

[Labrat101]

Quote from above .
Bad business practices deserve to be crushed like cockroaches.

Don't blame the cockroaches.. they have been around before the dinosaurs..and will be here long after us...
Yes agree the big business once you bought something.. Thanks..
Read the very small print. In the guarentee section the 3 dots are micro prints.  ... Thanks our service and after sales are here 24/7 and fully trained in NOT to be helpful  ..

[RJSV]

  Reading this, I wonder if Google might be independently 'tracking' customer use details. That way, sure, that laptop in customer's private possession could be totally reset / wiped, but the Corp. office still has records of phone number associated with that particular machine (and with a serial number to be read). That way, you surely COULD wipe things clean, but the Google system likely has their own private files or logs, showing previous (account) activity, as a sort of 'archieve'.
   Makes sense to me, as I feel my own (Android on Alcatel phone) cell phone has a separate 'agenda' likely not always aligned with my wishes. Besides, any business has, likely, rights to store data regarding activity related to old accounts and name / phone number, without protected medical data or other privacy related info. But customer data, wiped out directly on the phone, maybe be sure that (Google) is only using 'that', not their own copies.
  Hope that's clear, I have limited expertise here!

[Siwastaja]

People who find that their duty is to search for forum discussions which have diverted from the original subject, due to the original matter being discussed to a resolution or a lack of further comments, into an interesting and fruitful off-topic theme for that thread but totally on-topic for the forum, then post a bitter complaint about the thread which they never commented about and won't never comment about - because such people never contribute to anything - being offtopic. They invariantly receive a bunch of "thanks" from similar minded people who similarly never contribute to anything.

Those bad excuses for human beings are surprisingly effective achieving their target of shutting down good discussion, possibly turning it into pointless bickering or leading into locking of the thread. I have no evidence but I think their strategy is to troll out some bad responses from the participants of discussion using bitter language and malicious rhetorical "questions", then when they receive an angry reply, they instantly click the "report to the moderator" button, then Simon looks up the last two or three messages and clicks "close thread".

Long posts seem to trigger these people who usually themselves are only capable of generating up to 2 lines of text.

I have seen the moderators on some other forums split threads under new subject line, working much better than closing threads.

[RJSV]

Uh, say bud: What was THAT POST ABOUT ?
Can you be a bit, respectfully, uh, maybe more direct with your 'POOR EXCUSE FOR HUMAN' ?
So the 'target' can maybe take the critical feedback and change posting style, or whatever is called for.
Clarity, man, clarity: that's gonna be a good start.
Wasting our time.

[SilverSolder]

  Reading this, I wonder if Google might be independently 'tracking' customer use details. That way, sure, that laptop in customer's private possession could be totally reset / wiped, but the Corp. office still has records of phone number associated with that particular machine (and with a serial number to be read). That way, you surely COULD wipe things clean, but the Google system likely has their own private files or logs, showing previous (account) activity, as a sort of 'archieve'.
   Makes sense to me, as I feel my own (Android on Alcatel phone) cell phone has a separate 'agenda' likely not always aligned with my wishes. Besides, any business has, likely, rights to store data regarding activity related to old accounts and name / phone number, without protected medical data or other privacy related info. But customer data, wiped out directly on the phone, maybe be sure that (Google) is only using 'that', not their own copies.
  Hope that's clear, I have limited expertise here!

There is no question in my mind that the "surveillance capitalist" business model (Google being the prime example) leads to a lot of information being stored about you on a "just in case we need it" basis, for example, they like to know your age (hence why Google is constantly asking for my birthday) for marketing / demographic reasons -  this information is valuable for ALL advertising campaigns, so they would prefer to have that in your "shadow profile" that they maintain based on your activity. 

"Your activity" likely includes where you go (GPS / location tracking), the apps you use, how you use them, what you browse on your PC, etc. -  and from Facebook, they can get your name, and so on and so on -  basically, they can build up a pretty complete picture of most people unless they go to great lengths to stay private...

[Cubdriver]

Uh, say bud: What was THAT POST ABOUT ?
Can you be a bit, respectfully, uh, maybe more direct with your 'POOR EXCUSE FOR HUMAN' ?
So the 'target' can maybe take the critical feedback and change posting style, or whatever is called for.
Clarity, man, clarity: that's gonna be a good start.
Wasting our time.

People who find that their duty is to search for forum discussions which have diverted from the original subject, due to the original matter being discussed to a resolution or a lack of further comments, into an interesting and fruitful off-topic theme for that thread but totally on-topic for the forum, then post a bitter complaint about the thread which they never commented about and won't never comment about - because such people never contribute to anything - being offtopic.

I interpret his post as being about a pet peeve, technical or otherwise (in this case about people who don't contribute to a thread other than to go in and bitch that it has gone off topic - AKA thread police), that's posted in a thread about pet peeves.  How is it wasting our time? 

-Pat