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Everything with a battery should have an off switch

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Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#461

Post by Animats »

Kalium wrote: post #243

> Oh, great, this debate again! I shall use this post as ammunition next time I am arguing with our stupid design team about why we need an off switch on the stupid product we are designing, because it is a giant pain to live with devices you cannot turn off. I increasingly subscribe to the thesis that many designers and design teams design primarily in an effort to impress other designers . They don't have to use th…

Learn to talk to designers. Have a copy of Tog on Interface around. Know about Fitts' Law. Know who Susan Kare is.[1] Know what Bang and Olufsen audio gear looks like. (They took the black-on-black look to the extreme. Designers really like that look. You can't find the controls.)

Go on to learn what Bauhaus architecture looks like, how that led to modernism, Frank Lloyd Wright, then Mies Van Der Rohe, then brutalism, and finally Frank Gehry in ridiculous mode.[2] Understand why this didn't result in liveable cities.

Then you can talk to designers.

[1] kare.com

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ray_and_Maria_Stata_Cente...

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#462

Post by pvillano »

lapsis_beeftech wrote: post #136
Nanite wrote: post #4

Examples lying around in my house: Bathroom scale: lovely it powers up when you tap it, but eats up 2 button cells a year for a few dozen uses a year Kitchen scales, bit more use, at least once a day but again 2 button cells a year electronic caliper: Same, eats up 1 button cell a year, just sitting in my toolbox Strangely enough none of our kids toys with batteries seem to suffer from this problem How much extra cos…

Get Vernier calipers! The scale is easy to learn and use and measurements will be at least as precise as electronic calipers. With no batteries required the tool has much less of an environmental impact and you never need to worry about whether the calipers will work or not.

there are also 3D printed mods that add a switch

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#463

Post by tempestn »

WalterBright wrote: post #450

I installed a battery cutoff switch on my car. One of the best investments in upgrading a car. My Kindles all die fairly quickly even when off. A lot of my electronics is plugged in via bus strips with off switches.

Don't you find it annoying losing all the settings in your car? Radio stations, etc.? If you're leaving your car for a long time without driving it, I would suggest adding a pigtail to make it easy to plug in a battery tender instead.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#464

Post by tempestn »

l30n4da5 wrote: post #230
npteljes wrote: post #226

My most ridiculous experience was when an MP3 player froze back in the day. We had no way to switch off, or pull the battery out, so we waited 2 weeks, until the battery was dead. Then it worked fine after a recharge.

my son's hoverboard had a similar malfunction. literally the handbook said there is no reset, and we just need to let it drain the battery. it took DAYS for the LED lights to drain the battery......

I love the dystopian futuristic vibe of this comment. I imagine your son stuck hovering 15 feet off the ground...

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#465

Post by arkaic »

_Microft wrote: post #329
arkaic wrote: post #310

How about when my desktop won't stay asleep, because, I don't know, some update is scheduled to run, or some unknown number of errant processes that have a schedule exists somewhere. And yes, I turn off my mouse each time so table vibrations or gusts of wind are ruled out.

Assuming that you use Windows, run the Event Viewer as admin. In the Event Viewer go to "Windows Logs"->"System" and look for events from source "Kernel Power". Find a wake-up event and read the report. It will tell you what caused this event. Happy debugging!

Thanks! I'll try this out

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#466

Post by robonerd »

Animats wrote: post #453
robonerd wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We decided to keep the uppercase menus because we want more energy in this part of the interface." It always seems to be new-age mumbo jumbo with these sort of design people. Design needs to be given back over to the engineers again. I know that suggesting is going to draw ridicule; it's easy and popular to point to the worst engineer-designed interfaces to ridicule the design abilities of all engineers. But form…

Design needs to be given back over to the engineers again. No, no, then you get the open source approach: In case the desktop shortcut for your application is not available with the /usr/share/applications/ directory you have and option to create the Desktop launcher manually. In this example we will create and Desktop application shortcut for Skype application. Obtain the following information for any given applicat…

Yeah yeah, typical. "it's easy and popular to point to the worst engineer-designed interfaces to ridicule the design abilities of all engineers."

The general dysfunction of open source design is much broader than UI design and has little to do with engineers in general being incapable of good UI design. You might as well linux bluetooth woes to claim that engineers shouldn't be allowed to write device drivers. Whether it's designing a GUI, an API, or any other system, there will be some engineers who are good at it an others who suck. To get good design of any sort out of engineers you need an organizational structure that promotes talent and weeds out the hacks. The open source scene broadly lacks such structure and struggles to do this.

What you're talking about is a deficiency with community driven model of development, not a general deficiency of all engineers. Put 20 random chefs into a kitchen with no organizational structure imposed on them and your restaurant will be a disaster. But using that to claim chefs can't run a restaurant is absurd.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#467

Post by IYasha »

lizardactivist wrote: post #391

I'm thinking a lot about security aspects of this. If I turn off my iPhone, MacBook, or Google Pixel phone, are they really off? What are the security implications of "modern standby" on laptops where the CPU and WiFi are always on even after I fold the lid down?

Me too, for more than a decade. I never trust anything that could not be physically unpowered. Long before IoT, IPMI and smart-stuff attacks became a thing. The more I learn about hw/sw implants the less I believe in device security. (

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#468

Post by rypskar »

jrockway wrote: post #309
rypskar wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your caliper really that accurate and calibrated? In my experience you need a calibrated micrometer for that level of accuracy, especially to get a consistent measurements between several persons

Yes, reputable digital calipers are fine for thousandths of an inch. A micrometer is good for further precision and when you what more consistent measurements of softer materials. For example, if I measure my set of - gage pins, the caliper agrees exactly with the spec (a .210 pin reads 0.2095), and it's pretty hard to torque down too tightly on hardened steel. But if they were nylon and not steel, you'd probably get…

ah, thousands of an inch, I'm not American and was thinking thousands of a mm

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#469

Post by dang »

Kalium wrote: post #243

> Oh, great, this debate again! I shall use this post as ammunition next time I am arguing with our stupid design team about why we need an off switch on the stupid product we are designing, because it is a giant pain to live with devices you cannot turn off. I increasingly subscribe to the thesis that many designers and design teams design primarily in an effort to impress other designers . They don't have to use th…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31311625.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#470

Post by dang »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #134

>> (Our design team will never listen. This is because they, one, don't listen to anyone ever; and two, never use the products they design. Oh, sure, there might be a user study or two. But they never actually have to live with or work with the damn things.) This is so obvious from everyday life that someone really ought to write a paper about it and have it published in Nature. Because it will certainly be published…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31311625.
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