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I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

jdstillwater.blogspot.com

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Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#211

Post by Dylan16807 »

nomel wrote: post #164
krisoft wrote: post #143

It is because people use heuristics to navigate their lives. Instead of doing complicated engineering reasoning all the time to ensure their safety they learn simple “rules of thumb”. These rules are incorrect in as much as they have both false positives (something which the rule prohibits, but is safe) and false negatives (something which the rule lets you do, but is not safe). I’m a hobby jeweler and I use an ordin…

I think the social friction from getting all of this right/wrong really damages inquisitive minds. The visceral negative response you get from, "Wait, I don't think that's right, it's more complicated than that", helps prevent speaking up the next time, unless you have an inherently disagreeable personality (which I cherish working with). I see it all the time with kids. They'll see some fundamental truth that takes…

> That said, I wouldn't melt metal in an expensive microwave. The metal has poor absorption relative to the magnetron antenna itself, so both will heat. I wouldn't be surprised if the antenna is also glowing a bit (at least early on)!

You don't make the metal absorb the microwaves. Either your crucible or the inner lining of your insulator will be designed to do the absorbing.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#212

Post by refulgentis »

hinkley wrote: post #191
Aeolun wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, that doesn’t surprise me at all. This seems perfectly in line with “I don’t care what it is, or how well I perform it, as long as I have a job.”

Few things in my career have granted me more power faster than taking ownership of decisions. Some people are so terrified of having to say "I was wrong" that they either will do nothing, or just happily follow decisions that someone else makes. It's one thing when that's a line employee behaving that way, but there are managers so terrified of making a mistake that all they really are is scribes, tracking who said w…

Taking ownership of decisions in this way breeds another problem: people love to police when they perceive other people taking authority that's not rightfully theirs.

I had your view until 7 years at Google. Showing this to 80% of people there would garner tsktsking and quips about delusions of grandeur and seeming unbalanced. In performance reviews, you could count on this person saying you collaborate poorly and don't take others concerns into account, because they felt humiliated and retconned a reason why it's your fault. (To be fair, given your vivid understanding of their face at the time, it sounds like you understand they wouldn't feel well after you did this)

In the higher rooms, I saw at least a couple times everyone living this worldview and it ending up in bickering and extreme insistence the other person was missing fundamentals while nothing got done for months: which in the more Machiavellian parlance, is still good if you're good, because most people won't do the work, just argue over the 20% of the problem they understand, and someone has to win eventually

I keep editing this comment because I get the vibe it disagrees with you, but it doesn't, at all. If anything, your framing helps sharpen why it felt like an odd place, in a bad way, to me from day 30.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#213

Post by Dylan16807 »

krisoft wrote: post #143

It is because people use heuristics to navigate their lives. Instead of doing complicated engineering reasoning all the time to ensure their safety they learn simple “rules of thumb”. These rules are incorrect in as much as they have both false positives (something which the rule prohibits, but is safe) and false negatives (something which the rule lets you do, but is not safe). I’m a hobby jeweler and I use an ordin…

"Don't put aluminum foil in the microwave" works pretty well as a safety rule, and it's plenty simple. It's not exhaustive but neither is a rule against metal.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#214

Post by lmm »

foobarian wrote: post #190
mauvehaus wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That complicates things a bit in the panel because the breakers need a connection to neutral, but yeah, otherwise a slick setup. Newer panels and breakers are plug-on-neutral, older breakers have a pigtail to the neutral bar.

My house came with an EV charger wired through a GFCI breaker. That damn thing tripped constantly because I guess it was malfunctioning? And they are quite expensive for a 50A version.

Or maybe the charger was badly wired and the breaker was preventing it burning down your house?

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#215

Post by exmadscientist »

kragen wrote: post #84
exmadscientist wrote: post #21

R&D electrical engineer here! I have to do this sort of thing all the time and can confidently tell you it's pretty normal. The real risk isn't really to the toaster (who cares, it's just a toaster, and even if it starts on fire when you plug it in, you're probably watching it pretty closely). No, it's that you leach lead or other such nasties (sealing rubbers, PCB epoxies, what-have-you) into your dishwasher and sta…

dishwashers normally dry the dishes by heating them with an electric heating element; this is more likely to damage electronics than the water there are also some electronic components that won't deal well with water, especially strong streams of water. microphones and speakers come to mind, because they commonly include exposed paper, thin membranes, and sponges. i'm thinking an ocxo would also be a problem both bec…

Right about the heat, definitely something to be careful with for the mechanical parts. (The electronics, not really so much... anything that can survive the lead-free reflow profile has some pretty solid heat tolerance.)

And also right about not washing speakers and microphones, I'd never put those through a water or solvent wash once their protective taping was removed. Surprisingly XOs are not really known for wash issues, at least these days (I think they're all hermetically sealed now), but they are notoriously sensitive to ultrasonic cleaners. So be careful there.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#216

Post by exmadscientist »

extraduder_ire wrote: post #129
exmadscientist wrote: post #21

R&D electrical engineer here! I have to do this sort of thing all the time and can confidently tell you it's pretty normal. The real risk isn't really to the toaster (who cares, it's just a toaster, and even if it starts on fire when you plug it in, you're probably watching it pretty closely). No, it's that you leach lead or other such nasties (sealing rubbers, PCB epoxies, what-have-you) into your dishwasher and sta…

I may be too used to RoHS2. I had completely forgotten that electronics could have more than a trace amount of lead in them.

Yeah, RoHS and REACH and friends have really made things better on this front. But older electronics, both pre-RoHS and simply aged (aging definitely changes many things' composition), are different.

So, do you reeeeeeally want to run this risk with your food? The one thing you should not do with most of the actual nasty chemicals is eat them. Bottom line: please do rinse your dishwasher if you try this.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#217

Post by exmadscientist »

refulgentis wrote: post #212
hinkley wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few things in my career have granted me more power faster than taking ownership of decisions. Some people are so terrified of having to say "I was wrong" that they either will do nothing, or just happily follow decisions that someone else makes. It's one thing when that's a line employee behaving that way, but there are managers so terrified of making a mistake that all they really are is scribes, tracking who said w…

Taking ownership of decisions in this way breeds another problem: people love to police when they perceive other people taking authority that's not rightfully theirs. I had your view until 7 years at Google. Showing this to 80% of people there would garner tsktsking and quips about delusions of grandeur and seeming unbalanced. In performance reviews, you could count on this person saying you collaborate poorly and do…

I've known enough people at Google that I've gotten a decent view into the broken-ass culture there, from the outside looking in, and I'd say that's a pretty decent summary of some of their worst problems.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#218

Post by hahajk »

Whenever I think I've cracked the code on something and know better than everyone else, it's often the case I haven't accounted for everything.

From his PPS:

> until I planted my bare foot on that bare concrete floor a few inches from the submerged power strip, at which point I felt a mild but discernable tingle in that one foot.

I'll give up a clean toaster in exchange for not getting myself into those kind of situations.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#219

Post by deepspace »

dekhn wrote: post #196
autoexec wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have toasters that run linux, connect to the internet, and play doom. Explain to me how they aren't electronic devices.

Even cheap toasters (I take toaster apart for fun) have true electronics these days because it's usually cheaper to implement things like timers electronically and if the toaster has a display it certainly has some electronics. But I suspect that the absolute simplest toasters are purely mechanical and electrical.

Most toasters these days actually use a PT8A2514A (https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/PT8A2514A.pdf) microcontroller. But it is still safe to wash, for the same reason as it is usually safe to wash a keyboard.

Re: I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

#220

Post by kube-system »

dekhn wrote: post #196
autoexec wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have toasters that run linux, connect to the internet, and play doom. Explain to me how they aren't electronic devices.

Even cheap toasters (I take toaster apart for fun) have true electronics these days because it's usually cheaper to implement things like timers electronically and if the toaster has a display it certainly has some electronics. But I suspect that the absolute simplest toasters are purely mechanical and electrical.

I was curious so I did some searching -- this is the cheapest toaster that I'm aware of in the US, and it surprisingly does have a custom IC that handles the timing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLFG068HtgM
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