> USB-powered handwarmers

This combination is just weird. So weird, that the only place I can think this then applies, is... Thailand.

A quick Amazon order, snip the wire off the old, splice it to the new and a little soldering/heatshrink later and we're back in business. Plug it in and... nothing. Turns out, the original power supply had it's polarity reversed. So then I opened the fridge and swapped the connections on the backside of the socket because it was less fuck-about than re-splicing the wire. Fortunately a few confused minutes of reversed polarity didn't damage anything (not that there's really anything to damage, it's a peltier plate and a fan)

Genuinely, why? The standards make things easier. Why go out of your way to not use them?

Oh, man, that reminds me of how I found out that MicroLogix PLCs[0] come in AC flavors and DC flavors. So the MicroLogix 1400 I had lying around here used an AC adapter, and you screwed the stripped wires into the holes that used screw retainers. Easy-peasy, just make sure the adapter's not plugged in in you wire it up. The boss orders me another MicroLogix 1400 for long-forgotten reasons, and to get it bootstrapped, I decided to use the adapter from the other 1400.

I already gave away the plot in the first sentence, and you can guess what happened next.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller

Unless it's something you bought for yourself rather than the cat, in which case the cat goes for the most expensive thing first.

The first word I can think of is ngõ

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ng%C3%B5_h%E1%BA%BBm

It's a pretty rare character indeed.

But yeah, usually those are illegal to be sold.

Anker is well known, and Baseus is getting there. They are especially nice because they make GaN chargers, putting a lot of power in a tiny package.

It honestly kind of baffles me how crappy Apple's cables and chargers are when they simultaneously make one of the best USB-C to 3.5mm DACs on the market, and then sell it for $10.

In Australia we have only one voltage that will ever come out of a single phase socket, but the standards took the opposite approach with current ratings - the sockets are cleverly designed in terms of their current capacity so (assuming it’s been installed correctly) you can’t make mistakes without illegal and dangerous modifications. In the standard socket, you can have 10 amp, 15 amp or 20 amp, and they all have different sized pins. For the 15 amp plug and socket, the ground pin is larger, so a 15 amp plug cannot fit into a 10 amp socket. A 20 amp plug has all three pins larger, so it doesn’t fit in a 10 amp or 15 amp socket. But a 10 amp plug can still fit and sit snugly in a 15 or 20 amp socket, and a 15 amp can still fit into a 20 amp socket with no problems. It’s pretty clever.

For bigger stuff, or anything three-phase, you then have big industrial circular ones, which I think have a similar system to not let you plug a higher current device into a socket that can’t supply enough current. I believe there are also three phase plugs and sockets both with neutral and without neutral, and if the plug has a neutral pin it doesn’t fit into a socket that doesn’t supply neutral.

But I've actually have never seen a red one.

Every solar inverter / microinverter manufactured in the past two decades (if not older) must monitor the grid voltage+frequency and disconnect if it falls outside of a certain tolerance. If things go out of tolerance there is a defined period of time where it must recover or the inverter is required to trip out. There are also hard safety limits that cannot be exceeded whatsoever. I am not aware of any conditions that would result in overvoltage.

In CA as of (IIRC) 2021 these systems must be hooked up to some kind of online monitoring so the utility can temporarily command them to exceed tolerances. If the grid is going unstable due to load the last thing you want is everyone's PV system tripping off making the supply situation worse. So the utility can inform the system to exceed the normally tight tolerances by a larger deviation. They can also command PVs systems to shut off but there are strict limits on how often and how long they can do that and it must be driven by grid stability needs.

A voltage drop of 25% could also mean you have semi-broken wiring somewhere, which can cause fires or shock hazards on faulty appliances.

260V is in +/- 10% threshold and is possibly falls within "engineered in tolerance" range, but will probably shorten the life of many appliances if supplied constantly.

Paradoxically, it may be the lower voltages that are more dangerous, because it will result in a higher current draw from all the devices.

Mains voltage has a nontrivial allowed range (in fact in Europe they increased it slightly so that devices would work across countries with slightly different original standards) but this is well out of spec.

An RMS voltage of 230V corresponds with a peak voltage of ~325V so reading of 260V could theoretically happen.

But 170V... yikes!

UL is technically a global standard, but mostly used in USA/Canada. That's only two countries which already have laws governing what can and cannot be put in a consumer device.

I'm not as familiar with the history of CE, so I don't know why CE decided to cover environmental standards. But my speculation is that it's because CE covers ~30 countries with a larger range of laws.

It's just some fraudulent manufactures that are using a paper-thin excuse to illegally apply a fake CE mark.

It is a self-certification mark though so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.ul.com/news/put-safety-menu-thanksgiving

I think that is still the case.

It's all fraud. And at 40 amps, potentially quite dangerous.

Always seemed dumb to me, since you'd want the "ground" side to make contact first when inserting.

I stand corrected.

The dock however, still rejects non-Nintendo chargers. I have an MBP, a Thinkpad, an iPad, and a Switch - every device works with each other's (and third-party) chargers, except the Switch, when docked.

Long before RMS and other ideology-oriented types, people were adapting commercial tech to local purposes which the vendor didn’t intend and wouldn’t endorse.

I mean, sure you won't get better performance or power out of an old device but it's at least safe which is good enough for me, and for bonus points it's likely to work at some reduced level.

Even without that, one would hope that part of the compliance tests includes actual compliance with whatever port specification is being used - I don't think any part of the USB spec allows for 7.5V, but I might be wrong. You just wouldn't expect, say, a portable battery to have a standard Schuko plug but output 330V while bearing the CE mark.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Maybe in conjunction with a self-reset polyfuse - buys just enough time to trip the fuse.

> From the top of my flu-y head, connecting and disconnecting an inductive load (like a motor) can cause spikes. However in USB land, that's pretty rare.

Exactly - and it's not all that rare. A USB fan, a spinning disk drive, etc. In the right condition even a capacitor can be a problem (difficult to simulate, but it can become a short-term battery cell).

The charger emits 5V unless the device supports higher voltage and negotiates it.

Reason 1 supporting this: the article's title is "My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter". What sticks out most here is the word spicy, and when used in conjunction with electricity, it usually means more electricity than needed. Very good title.

Reason 2 supporting this: The heading is "It turns out that you can’t trust any USB type A power adapter to be within spec". Nothing about cat fountains.

Reason 3 supporting this: the article is tagged with the "ramblings" tag, setting us up that the article will be opinionated, and not strictly just about the central point of it.

>Stop trying to 'improve' life by more & more tech-based BS.

Hard disagree. There's no clear healthy cutoff with regards to technology, and the frame of reference also changes over time (and the course of history). Our life is supported by a ton of technology, many pieces of it being thought about as both "too much" and "not good enough".

Usually I'd agree with you here, people use tech in places where it shouldn't be used quite often, but in this case I do not mind it at all. If this helps avoid future visits to the vet (and so far it has worked), then it's OK in my book.

And yes, you do have to clean it regularly and change the filters, we're already doing that.