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'Plugspreading' is an Abomination (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the somebody-had-to-say-it dept.

Mark Serrels, writing for CNET: A man [on a train], a human man as he lives and breathes, has put his bag, his stupid goddamn bag on the seat. He thinks his bag is more important than your buttcheeks. Than your tired legs. He is undermining your right to rest those legs, to plank those weary buttcheeks on a seat. This train is busy. He is a bad person. He doesn't care. This is a metaphor. In this metaphor the terrible man-person is a tech company. The bag is their terrible plug. A plug that is not content with taking up one slot on your powerboard, but needs two. Not for power, oh no. It just wants the space to... christ, I don't know. Mess with your day? Piss you off? Make your life worse? Stop you from plugging an extra device into your powerboard for no goddamn reason. Jesus wept. I call this phenomenon "plugspreading" and it's an abomination. [...] This is bad behaviour. This is a problem. That second socket was innocent man, it was collateral damage. He did nothing to deserve this. You ruined its life, starved that socket of its purpose, its reason for existing. Plugspreading is everywhere. It's a disease.

13 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. What the fuck are you talking about? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are you on drugs?

    1. Re:What the fuck are you talking about? by Travelsonic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He is talking about, I think, plugs whose designs are such where if you needed to plug it in to a power strip, you needed to fit it in on one end, or else you're covering up one or more other outlets in the strip (and as a result unable to use said plugs).

      Seriously, why couldn't they design the plug to take up vertical space, and not horizontal space?

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    2. Re:What the fuck are you talking about? by war4peace · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously, why couldn't they design the plug to take up vertical space, and not horizontal space?

      They have. And it's equally bad. There's even an animation in TFA depincting that very situation.
      What needs to happen is to have a regular, small footprint plug continued with a wire which goes into the AC/DC converter itself. problem solved. Everyone's happy.

      --
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  2. I love 2018 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When you can't tell anymore whether articles like this are satire or not you know why "millenial" has become an insult.

  3. Extension Cord? by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually the real problem is most homes are not wired for DC power. The plugs in the wall are designed for high powered appliances like Vacuum cleaners, Air Conditioners, Fans, Mixers, and Incandescent light bulbs.
    Most of the devices we plug in today are DC power. So we need a rather large brick to convert the AC current to DC at the correct levels, and safety.

    If homes and offices were wired for DC plugs (Say the High Power USB Standard) then we wouldn't need such bricks, and wouldn't need to carry around these devices that are heaver then the devices we are actually wanting to use. I expect if homes has a Single AC to DC converter then we would probably on the average save a lot of energy as well.

    However in the mean time, either get an Extension cord to give some space for the brick and room for an other plug, or deal with it.

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    1. Re:Extension Cord? by Miamicanes · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You'll "never" see "whole-house" 12v (or less) DC converters, because the cost of the thick wire you'd need to supply potentially dozens of amperes to every outlet in the house would cost a small fortune. 48v might be do-able... but at that point, you almost might as well just leave it as 110-240v ac, because either way, you'd need voltage conversion at the device itself.

      Embedding the DC adapters into the outlet itself is somewhat viable (witness the popularity of power outlets with embedded USB power ports). The problem THERE is, every goddamn time we get what appears to be a viable standard, it ends up becoming obsolete within 2-3 years ANYWAY.

      So far, I've personally been through four rounds of outlet-replacement:

      Round 1: put outlets with a pair of built-in 500mA USB ports in 3 places.

      Round 2: replaced the 500mA outlets with new ones that could supply 1A to one port, and 3.1A to the other, and moved the 500mA outlets to 3 new locations.

      Round 3: replaced the3.1+1.0 outlets with new ones capable of Qualcomm Quickcharge, replaced the 500mA outlets with the 3.1+1.0 outlets, and threw away the 500mA outlets because they were only usable with single-gang configurations, and all of the remaining outlets in my house where I wanted to put them were double-gang.

      Round 4: replaced the 3 quickcharge outlets with new ones that had one quickcharge 2.0 outlet that could also supply 3.1A to an iPad, and one USB-C outlet.

      There isn't going to be a Round 5. When the day comes that I get my first device that genuinely needs 12v+ via USB power delivery, I'm screwing a 2-to-6 outlet adapter into the existing outlets, buying a half-dozen 99c power adapters from China, and just leaving an appropriate assortment of them permanently plugged into the lower 3 outlets. I've had it with endlessly replacing power outlets every 1-2 years.

  4. Blocking the outlet? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OMG! Too bad there's *no* way to solve this problem.

    [ Sigh... (a) Why is this a story and (b) Why is this a story on /. ? ]

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    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Blocking the outlet? by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's not a solution. That's a work-around to design that does not bother to take even the slightest consideration of actual usage. Of course you can fix it. I can take the damn power supplies apart and internally connect longer wires and re-encase the transformers if I wanted to. I don't want to. I want to buy a power connector that takes these things into proper consideration. I shouldn't have to work around it. Somewhere, there was somebody actually "PAID" to "DESIGN" this crap. Don't you think they should be held accountable for their incompetence?

  5. Re:WTH? by king+neckbeard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Newly invented term to describe a "wall-wart" to millennials.

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  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  7. Deranged rant is deranged by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously. And the thing about the bag? Are you unable to open your mouth and ask? Is it an imposition to you to be asked to communicate with another human being?

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  8. Is this supposed to be funny? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Whose Line Is It Anyway is funny; this article is not funny.

  9. Re:Plug-Spreading? by barc0001 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > How come if I have a power-strip with 8 sockets I can only ever plug-in 3 damn things?

    I have 11 things to plug in for all my living room multimedia... stuff. Most of them have the damn spreading wall-warts, and I have only a single standard pair outlet behind the entertainment unit for it all so it led to an octopus abomination of power bars, until I had salvation and tidiness visit me in the form factor of a 3 foot long shop power strip that I attached to the back of the entertainment unit. At last all is clean, tidy and off the floor. But NONE of that would have been necessary if I could have plugged 11 things into the standard 12 plug powerbar I had. Seriously, people shouldn't need to buy a shop power strip with 4 inches of separation between each outlet to be able to use them all.