Basically, Foone ends up disassembling a device that has no off switch, and leaves it disemboweled on his desk as a warning for other devices.
Foone's pronouns are they/them
my bad. I shouldn't have assumed gender.
Everything with a battery should have an off switch
551–560 of 613 posts
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rechargeable AAAs are crap though. Power density sucks. Voltage level sucks (and voltage regulators will suck the battery dry before your micro does). And the form factor sucks. I'd sooner have a 18650-family (e.g. 14240 or 14500) become standard than a bunch of AAAs.
Battery hipsterism. Oh HN, you keep giving.
Thank goodness I haven't heard a hipster sing the praises of carbon-zinc "heavy duty" batteries from Harbor Freight and dollar stores... yet.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Get Vernier calipers! The scale is easy to learn Yep. > and use Nope, not once you get old and tiny things are increasingly difficult to read with or without assistance.
Yep, getting old sucks.
I just bought a digital caliper with a big LCD display. It will work with Imperial or Metric units, which I really like.
My analog calipers are Imperial. I love them, but run into Metric units a lot. Got those in '88 and they are still calibrating in spec and working great. No battery. Did need light oil and cleaning a decade ago.
I have one Vernier caliper and... it is getting hard to read in some conditions. Bummer. I still prefer these in longer forms, say greater than 12"
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#554Examples 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…
Someone at my work has a really nice electronic calipers that is solar powered (think like a calculator… low enough power requirement that ambient light is more than enough) and thus will effectively never need battery change.
Nice! I never thought about a solar powered model.
I may have to try one next time I am shopping.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hum... Since I've brought a digital caliper that allowed reading sizes with actual 0.01mm precision instead of "guessing it's around X", I've noticed I have no object around that won't compress by something larger than that amount when I apply reasonable amounts of force into the caliper. I'm also sure it's not calibrated to this level, but that doesn't hurt relative measurements.
That’s why calipers ought to have those tiny “rolls” that you can turn to move them, instead of pushing, this way you can’t “overtension”.
My analog ones do have a push wheel that slips easily.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Calipers need to hold memory specifically. You don’t need power to retain a tiny bit of settings data. I believe the real reason is because most of them have the “helpful feature” of turning on when you move it. Without something monitoring the sensor, no way to know to turn on automatically.
No, most calipers can only do relative measurements. It’s constantly counting how many 0.01mm the head has moved so it doesn’t lose track of where 0mm is located. Turning on the LCD when the volatile counter changes value is a free feature since the mcu is always on. Of course better calipers do absolute measurements, but they’re too expensive to scribe lines with and therefore useless for hobbyists.
It is not just hobby people scribing lines. Just saying.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait... If I power off (not sleep) a typical phone, it still transmits? I know there's the baseband processor that does its own thing, but I would've thought the userland "off" state shuts that off, along with everything else except for whatever watches the power button and battery charging.
It's a ridiculously easy thing to test, and I've never heard of a phone transmitting while powered off or in airplane mode so far. The FCC for one would throw a fit if airplane mode or power off still actively transmitted.
I would be very curious to know how one could test this so easily. https://www.imobie.com/icloud-unlock/locate-a-lost-cell-phon... and many articles demonstrate that even when a Google or IOS phone is off it can still transmit its location. This means it is not truly off and could possibly transmit more information than you realize. My custom OS phone does not do this TMK, and I am just SOL if I lose it. This is the price I am willing to pay.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
What iPod has a power switch??? On mine at least (3rd gen Nano) the closest you can get to off is asleep with the hold switch on.
It’s been a while since I used my iPod Video/Classic, but I think I remember being able to turn them off by holding the Play button on the dial for three to five seconds. Maybe that was just the hard reset; I don’t remember.
Holding the play button puts it to sleep. Holding the center button and menu is the hard reset. There's no way to shut them down.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explicate more about emf sensitivity! Just asking because I have never heard such thing. And, yea caging entire house is probably arduous and costs fortune.
Its just anecdotal, I definitely sleep better the further I'm away from cell phones, cell towers and pulsed wifi routers. I've got a meter and I've used emf shielding clothes prior to addressing my bedroom. Its pretty hard to do decent studies on it since its so prevalent. Prone to quackery and people making quick bucks on it too.
You should check out better call Saul, main character is a lawyer who has a brother who lives with debilitating emf sensitivity, he is the only one who believes him though. They go really in depth about it for like 2 seasons
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#560Counter-example: quartz wristwatches don't have off switches. And that's completely fine with me.
They do. You pull the crown out.