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'Plugspreading' is an Abomination (cnet.com)
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.
I'd really be afraid to Google that without "Safe-Search" turned on. That being said, I agree with your premise. How come if I have a power-strip with 8 sockets I can only ever plug-in 3 damn things? Crap Design! As usual. I don't know where all the "Designers" came from, but, be toasters, coffee-pots, vacuum cleaners, plugs, or software interfaces, they are ALL universally worthlessly incompetent and should be beaten with the "You have failed at your job Stick" until they leave the profession.
Are you on drugs?
When you can't tell anymore whether articles like this are satire or not you know why "millenial" has become an insult.
https://www.amazon.com/Etekcit... Like these ones, as a simple example.
These things (or other similar ones by other companies) are a godsend, even if they are somewhat overpriced. I must have 30 or 40 of them in my house.
You can also get long power bars with as many as ten outlets that are well spaced - enough to permit use of most wall wart-type plugs without needing these cords.
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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 /. ? ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Newly invented term to describe a "wall-wart" to millennials.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Look up "octopus power strip", these should be everywhere. As for the man, politely ask him to move his bag.
Twinstiq, game news
just giving your devices a rest during your trip home. Once there you can charge them any way you wish. I always laugh when I am out and about, 7 of 10 individuals everywhere have their device in their hand. They look away every so often in an attempt not to trip over the curb, run in to a door or wall or pretend to be working in case their boss walks by.
;)
But then I am different, I create tech but don't have much use for it.
Just my 2 cents
I pay extra whenever I can to get my devices with a built-in PSU.
> The purpose is to avoid you cramming in too many things without a chance of airflow for cooling.
We're still talking about electrical outlets and plugs aren't we?
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?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I call it "videospreading". Useless auto-playing videos that nobody cares about, wasting bandwidth that could have been used by something worthwhile.
#DeleteFacebook
I think the technical term is "huge ass wall-wart".
#DeleteFacebook
Is this what Slashdot has come to? I wonder if the writer got a little treat from some woman he was trying to impress?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Whose Line Is It Anyway is funny; this article is not funny.
The other problem with DC power has to do with fire safety and arcing. With AC, the current goes to zero and arc are self-quenching. Not true with DC, so you have a greater likelihood of fire. It also has to do with safety if you get shocked by DC versus AC your chances of injury are much greater.
The ease of transforming voltages with transformers gives AC an advantage. And if you look around your home, you'll see a fair number of high current devices -- heat producing, or motors (ovens, ranges, toaster, coffee pot, A/C, blowers, washing machine, dryer) that would need very heavy cables to power at 12 or even 48v.
The problem comes down to economics. You're buying a device that requires DC power, and the manufacturer is not going to decide the converter; it is going to choose an existing DC converter and supply it with the device. They might put a sticker on it. The socket-friendly option would cost a dollar or two more, which, when included in the Amazon price, just might give the competing device the edge. You and the other buyers didn't research the socket friendliness of the device, and there would be little opportunity for the manufacturer to convey this advantage in the first place.
What incentive does the manufacturer have to improving products this way? Not enough to add $1 to the price. So there you have it.
BTW, the article was incoherent. Let me coin the term "blogspreading" to refer to an article that takes up space and makes you spend more time than necessary to figure out what it's talking about.
I may have missed the memo, but I'm not sure why I have to read this hipster `first-world problem` shit.
<rant>
Nobody cares, really. Nobody cares!
When you go to a meeting (or have your kale-infused frappo-latte at a coffee shop with your laptop and piss-off all the staff because you're taking up valuable marketable space and not ordering enough, but still using the 'free' wifi): BRING YOUR OWN POWER BOARD!
</rant>
Now you only need one vertical plug. Hey, if you're feeling charitable, you take the double-plug-occupying adapter and put it into your powerboard.
I never travel without one.
Same goes for network switches and USB hubs BTW.
Stop whinging about 'other people' and just make sure that you show up prepared.
And then there is the off-change that this was all humor, in which case I apologize to you personally, but the rant remains.
Those plugs are designed to contain the transformer, and give it space to cool.
also to keep your derpness from plugging 12 things into a single outlet and burning your house down.
Seriously, who writes this garbage and how does it get on /. ? Next week we'll have some executive's coming-out-as-a-brony as front page news.
FFS.
Giving the transformer space to cool was literally a larger problem with the magnetic coupled copper based old school design that went out of fashion around 2010 and now is rarely seen. With the advent of cheap efficient switching circuits, modern designs can be shrunk due to greater efficiency, due in large part to high frequency low loss designs where you can pump a small amount of energy (small cheap parts) a very large number of times a second instead of huge parts at 50/60.
tl;dr There really is no good reason for these bulky designs.
This actually needs its own article. Every news site now includes an autoplay video in the article which 99% of the time isn't even a video, it's just a static picture that pans across with text over it. What is the fucking point of this?!?
Seriously, fuck video. If I want video I go to Youtube or Netflix. Save web pages for text and images only.
I suppose it is entirely too ... "masculine" ... to ask "May I sit here?" People don't put their bags, or briefcases, or backpacks on the seat just to piss you off; they put it there because that seat was empty when they sat down.
You need or want that seat. An ADULT would say "Excuse me, my I sit here?" Nine times out of ten, the person will say something like "Oh, excuse me. Sure." and move the bag between his feet. The 10th time is probably some sort of hostile/drunk/drugged out boor, and you probably don't want to sit next to him anyway.
Of course, if it's a woman - as it sometimes is - she'll often say "NO", because she doesn't want to share the seat with me, a man. I sort of understand that, because she can't see that I'm a former Boy Scout, absolutely honorable retired military officer who would sacrifice his own life to save hers. She just sees "Creepy old man!"
No woman would ever refuse to allow another woman to share the seat, of course.