Tech Mistakes You Hate

[Ashleyyyy]

5 hours ago, NineEyeRon said:

Mine is plugged in all the time because I only use it at my desk. It’s a lot of hassle to unplug it as it’s in a dock behind my monitors.

i mean as long as you put a cycle on the battery once a month (ideally once every 2 weeks) you should be fine. the problem starts happening when it's never unplugged. i bought a cheap 2017 MBP a good while ago now, and i almost immediately discovered why it was cheap. the battery was completely gone. if it was below 50% it would have random shutdowns and it didn't last more than an hour usually until getting a random shutdown no matter how careful i was. 

 

and this damage was due to it having never been unplugged for years, therefore the battery didn't get really any cycles on it. 

[The Blackhat]

5 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

That's not how batterys work.

Once it's full the power is pulled straight from the brick. 

That is exactly how batteries work…

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 hour ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

uh no that is how batteries work. if you leave them for weeks without putting a cycle on them they will deteriorate very very fast. 

oh, i thought your one of the people who think that it runs off battery once full, and that its a tiny bit thats constantly getting discharged and charged.

in thqat case, yeah, youtr right.

[Spindel]

2 hours ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

uh no that is how batteries work. if you leave them for weeks without putting a cycle on them they will deteriorate very very fast. 

It's not even that it needs to be put through cycles (if we talk about Lithium ion batteries). The live the longest being kept at 40-80 % charged state go outside of those charge states and the battery life time degrades quicker. Fully discharge and/or fully charge it and the life time degrades even quicker. 

 

Thus having it always plugged in kills the battery quicker because that chemistry does not like to sit at near 100% all the time. In the same time if you decide to discharge it from time to time don't run the battery to the bottom just drop it to below 50%. 

[Ashleyyyy]

4 minutes ago, Spindel said:

It's not even that it needs to be put through cycles (if we talk about Lithium ion batteries). The live the longest being kept at 40-80 % charged state go outside of those charge states and the battery life time degrades quicker. Fully discharge and/or fully charge it and the life time degrades even quicker. 

 

Thus having it always plugged in kills the battery quicker because that chemistry does not like to sit at near 100% all the time. In the same time if you decide to discharge it from time to time don't run the battery to the bottom just drop it to below 50%. 

eh i drop my laptop's battery to like 5% periodically, it's a 2012 MBP with it's original battery and it's at like 79% which isn't bad for a battery that old. so running it down isn't that bad either. 

[Spindel]

4 minutes ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

eh i drop my laptop's battery to like 5% periodically, it's a 2012 MBP with it's original battery and it's at like 79% which isn't bad for a battery that old. so running it down isn't that bad either. 

And you probably would have had more capacity left if you "barley used" it keeping it always in the 40-80% range

 

Bonus fact about lithium batteries in phones, computers, cars etc is that putting load on them while their internal temperature is below freezing has a big risk of damaging them permanently. I live in a country with cold winters and this is the death of many phones, often owned by females that keep them in a purse so they don't get body heat. But it is worth noting if you in example are lugging your laptop with you outside going somewhere and the temperature drops. This is also the reason a lot of battery cars will discharge the battery completely in the winter in a couple of days if not plugged in because they run either heat elements or put a load through the motor windings (without turning the wheels) to keep up the battery temperature. Killing a lithium battery with cold can happen on a completely new device.   

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, Spindel said:

And you probably would have had more capacity left if you "barley used" it keeping it always in the 40-80% range

 

Bonus fact about lithium batteries in phones, computers, cars etc is that putting load on them while their internal temperature is below freezing has a big risk of damaging them permanently. I live in a country with cold winters and this is the death of many phones, often owned by females that keep them in a purse so they don't get body heat. But it is worth noting if you in example are lugging your laptop with you outside going somewhere and the temperature drops. This is also the reason a lot of battery cars will discharge the battery completely in the winter in a couple of days if not plugged in because they run either heat elements or put a load through the motor windings (without turning the wheels) to keep up the battery temperature. Killing a lithium battery with cold can happen on a completely new device.   

interesting. my laptop sees heavy use though so keeping it perfectly between 40 to 80 is impossible. 

 

and the heat thing is also interesting. the winters where i live aren't cold, cars not starting etc is barely a thing here. at most it's -5c in winter and even that is unusually cold. 

[Spindel]

52 minutes ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

and the heat thing is also interesting. the winters where i live aren't cold, cars not starting etc is barely a thing here. at most it's -5c in winter and even that is unusually cold. 

For my self I've only managed to kill an iPod Mini by cold. 

 

Was about -10°C I was out for a walk for about 1 h with the iPod in the inner pocket of my coat but since I became warm I unzipped the coat meaning I got cold air into the coat and very little body heat went into it the pocket and it became freezing. Went from 4 h battery to 40 minutes on that day, was also the day I learned about this thing regarding lithium batteries and cold.

 

But I know a lot of people that mainly have killed the battery on their phones and electric screwdrivers by cooling the battery and the occasional laptop that people have kept in a backpack and then started up before heating it up a bit.

 

I always keep stuff like phone and wireless earbud case in a pants pocket or a pocket close to the body in a hoodie when it's cold nowadays. Stuff still become cold but not freezing.   

[Ashleyyyy]

27 minutes ago, Spindel said:

I always keep stuff like phone and wireless earbud case in a pants pocket

I have to deal with women's pocket size. which basically means most of my pants don't even fit an iPhone SE properly, half of it hangs out lol

[NineEyeRon]

3 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

oh, i thought your one of the people who think that it runs off battery once full, and that its a tiny bit thats constantly getting discharged and charged.

in thqat case, yeah, youtr right.

Mine probably doesn’t get cycled at all.

 

Maybe occasional I might use it off wall power but it’s very rare and not for long.

[Rex Hite]

Power bricks for devices that could easily accommodate them within with just a bit of imagination and some actual effort at engineering.

I see the mac minis going back to day one with no external power brick. I also see  so called mini PCs that are a joke.They say tech companies copy Apple but maybe not when it comes to real engineering.

I even have commercial grade devices from Epson in my shop with external power supplies when there is clearly enough room inside.

 

Excuses come down to, "unsafe",or "the external power supply is easily replaced when it fails", or "it's cheaper" are really just admissions of incompetence.

Obviously there are devices where an internal power supply would be impossible. That's fine.

 

 

 

[Stahlmann]

20 minutes ago, Rex Hite said:

Power bricks for devices that could easily accommodate them within with just a bit of imagination and some actual effort at engineering.

I see the mac minis going back to day one with no external power brick. I also see  so called mini PCs that are a joke.They say tech companies copy Apple but maybe not when it comes to real engineering.

I even have commercial grade devices from Epson in my shop with external power supplies when there is clearly enough room inside.

 

Excuses come down to, "unsafe",or "the external power supply is easily replaced when it fails", or "it's cheaper" are really just admissions of incompetence.

Obviously there are devices where an internal power supply would be impossible. That's fine.

I've had a few monitors in the past few years where they could have easily integraded the power brick into the monitor itself. I have no idea why so many devices nowadays need external power bricks.

 

The most annoying thing in the tech space imo is that Microsoft often implements stuff into Windows 10 in a basic way, but fail to properly integrate it for a flawless experience. For example HDR is still at a point where you have to keep it disabled for SDR content if you don't want to cripple your picture quality. How hard is it to make an app give a signal to Windows that it wants to use HDR and then make the OS enable it for the app? Why does it have to be a global toggle for all apps? The Dolby Atmos implementation also sucks. Of you use a surround setup, it has audio cutouts every now and then. And if you want to use Atmos for Headphones, it seemingly randomly just disables it without notifying the user. Sometimes minutes after you enable it, sometimes after restarts, sometimes days after you enable it.

 

HDR and Dolby Atmos are standards that have been established for years, but still suck on Windows.

 

Get your shit together Microsoft!

 

Thanks for listening to my rant...

[Flannelist]

On 6/9/2021 at 4:30 AM, Spindel said:

People playing loose with power and energy in speech. 

 

The "h" in kWh (or Wh or mWh or MWh) matters and in some circumstances even the context can't help you to know what is being talked about. 

When I used to work for Radioshack, people used to come in asking about capacitors in uF all the time. I know it's so so petty, but it made me clench my jaw every time. Just no. its a 𝛍. It's math/science shorthand for micro.

[Flannelist]

I'm not sure this is really a "mistake". But my biggest pet peeve is people who enable drive encryption (BitLocker, FileVault specifially because it can be enabled during device setup on a lot of machines) without understanding what that means or how it keeps their information safe. Yes it's safer. But it might literally lock you out of your own data if you don't take proper precautions. And I don't want to have that conversation.

[whm1974]

2 minutes ago, Flannelist said:

I'm not sure this is really a "mistake". But my biggest pet peeve is people who enable drive encryption (BitLocker, FileVault specifially because it can be enabled during device setup on a lot of machines) without understanding what that means or how it keeps their information safe. Yes it's safer. But it might literally lock you out of your own data if you don't take proper precautions. And I don't want to have that conversation.

Which is why I don't use Drive Encryption.

[whm1974]

The Monochrome Display Adapter of the The IBM PC and The IBM PCjr itself. MDA didn't have enough Video Memory to display Graphics at all. IBM later added more, but left an opening for Hercules... 

 

The IBM PCjr? The Keyboard was made fun off, wasn't fully compatible with most DOS software... The Tandy 1000 was what the PCjr should have been and cheaper. 

[Flannelist]

2 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Which is why I don't use Drive Encryption.

Yep. it makes perfect sense in some cases, for some people. But in my experience, the average user doesn't read why they're doing what they're doing. They just do it because the computer says to and indicates it's to protect them.

[whm1974]

Just now, Flannelist said:

Yep. it makes perfect sense in some cases, for some people. But in my experience, the average user doesn't read why they're doing what they're doing. They just do it because the computer says to and indicates it's to protect them.

When I was looking to move from Mandrake/Mandriva due to New Releases being either hit or Miss, I found the Drive Encryption Checkmark being Checked by default very annoying to deal with.

 

[SolarNova]

What ruffles my feathers tends to be youtube 'reviewers' that are spreading incorrect information that is seemingly part of an individuals understanding of a subject (thus not something that is present in just a single video), resulting in large numbers of ill informed people.

 

For example: (no links, or names, dont want to start a dog pile)

 

Spoiler

 

I came across a youtuber recently, he was comparing 2 new displays (TVs), his vid had ~50k views and his channel has around 7k subs.

 

The problems were:

1)

He was criticizing 1 of these display for its inability to produce a better image when "displaying SDR content".

He didnt mean 'SDR' as most people understand the term, he even made up his own meaning of the word. He didnt mean 'Standard Dynamic Range', he meant 720p content, sub 4k content, anything below native resolution. He was referring to the ability to upscale content.

 

2)The 2nd big issues was that he considered the added processing of the 'better display' to improve sub 4k content image quality as 'good'  and the other display that had no added processing and thus a 'worse' image as bad (which is fine when watching SD Tv channels for example) ..but he thought it was good when playing sub 4k games on console and PC.

 

Now anyone with basic understanding of displays knows that these 2 things are indicative of someone who has no clue what he's talking about.

This also isnt a result of a language barrier.

 

For starters, mixing up SDR with scaling, even if he does say he means 'up scaling' is a basic level mistake.

And then not understanding what upscaling is, the processing it involves, and its impact on gaming, is also a basic mistake.

As we know upscaling is processing, and processing adds input latency, it can also induce artifacts, both of which are most certainly not good for gaming and are avoided to the point most TV manufacturers have a game mode that specifically disables things like upscaling.

 

His conclusion was the Sony was better for gaming vs the LG thank to the upscaling.

 

Now again, small channel, fine sure, but what was really aggravating to see was the response, no one called it out, and it has like 1.2k up votes and only 95 down votes. Thats a significant ratio of people who have listened and agreed with him.

 

 

So yea, as tech and display enthusiasts, it does tend to get me a little peeved to see such things. I dont mind people who are ill informed (everyone is ill informed till they learn a subject), but seeing people act as if they know what they are talking about and passing it off as informed advice ..that i do mind.

[VFXGuy]

On 6/10/2021 at 4:41 PM, Flannelist said:

I'm not sure this is really a "mistake". But my biggest pet peeve is people who enable drive encryption (BitLocker, FileVault specifially because it can be enabled during device setup on a lot of machines) without understanding what that means or how it keeps their information safe. Yes it's safer. But it might literally lock you out of your own data if you don't take proper precautions. And I don't want to have that conversation.

Agree. Also some people believe encrypting files protects them from ransomware and other destructive malware which is absolutely doesn't.

[VFXGuy]

18 hours ago, SolarNova said:

What ruffles my feathers tends to be youtube 'reviewers' that are spreading incorrect information that is seemingly part of an individuals understanding of a subject (thus not something that is present in just a single video), resulting in large numbers of ill informed people.

 

For example: (no links, or names, dont want to start a dog pile)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I came across a youtuber recently, he was comparing 2 new displays (TVs), his vid had ~50k views and his channel has around 7k subs.

 

The problems were:

1)

He was criticizing 1 of these display for its inability to produce a better image when "displaying SDR content".

He didnt mean 'SDR' as most people understand the term, he even made up his own meaning of the word. He didnt mean 'Standard Dynamic Range', he meant 720p content, sub 4k content, anything below native resolution. He was referring to the ability to upscale content.

 

2)The 2nd big issues was that he considered the added processing of the 'better display' to improve sub 4k content image quality as 'good'  and the other display that had no added processing and thus a 'worse' image as bad (which is fine when watching SD Tv channels for example) ..but he thought it was good when playing sub 4k games on console and PC.

 

Now anyone with basic understanding of displays knows that these 2 things are indicative of someone who has no clue what he's talking about.

This also isnt a result of a language barrier.

 

For starters, mixing up SDR with scaling, even if he does say he means 'up scaling' is a basic level mistake.

And then not understanding what upscaling is, the processing it involves, and its impact on gaming, is also a basic mistake.

As we know upscaling is processing, and processing adds input latency, it can also induce artifacts, both of which are most certainly not good for gaming and are avoided to the point most TV manufacturers have a game mode that specifically disables things like upscaling.

 

His conclusion was the Sony was better for gaming vs the LG thank to the upscaling.

 

Now again, small channel, fine sure, but what was really aggravating to see was the response, no one called it out, and it has like 1.2k up votes and only 95 down votes. Thats a significant ratio of people who have listened and agreed with him.

 

 

So yea, as tech and display enthusiasts, it does tend to get me a little peeved to see such things. I dont mind people who are ill informed (everyone is ill informed till they learn a subject), but seeing people act as if they know what they are talking about and passing it off as informed advice ..that i do mind.

Very much agree.

[WkdPaul]

Rebooting the wrong VM and getting angry phone calls from users that got kicked out of some system/software they were using.

[Lurick]

6 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

Rebooting the wrong VM and getting angry phone calls from users that got kicked out of some system/software they were using.

When you accident the whole network because you reloaded the core switches instead of the access switch

[WkdPaul]

On 6/9/2021 at 7:09 PM, Mel0nMan said:

On some you can just yoink the BIOS battery for a few minutes, but I've encountered some machines that that doesn't work on.

That shouldn't work (it doesn't work with workstations, at least, none that I've worked with in the last decade), but they often ... if not always ... have an unidentified jumper that bypasses the password (most Dell, HP and Lenovo workstations and laptop I've seen in the last decade have that, not sure about laptops since we never had one that had that issue).

 

For anyone wondering ; sorry, can't help! I only know of this because of business support on workstations that I worked on and that my company owned since day 1, so don't ask how to find that jumper

[Tan3l6]

 I disliked the BTC transfer to a wrong wallet in 2018. Even more in 2021 when 0.2 BTC was worth 10000€ for a while.