5 ms·

Standards are good for everyone, even when very old and seemingly outdated. Being "locked" on a a few not awful standard connectors is a good thing. The Ediso

Standards are good for everyone, even when very old and seemingly outdated. Being "locked" on a a few not awful standard connectors is a good thing. The Edison screw bulb is very simple, reliable, still used today even if I am sure that many companies would have invented more sophisticated standards over the years, I am glad they did not. I still use audio jack connectors as much as possible, and I think that the world would be a slightly better place if we had universal AC power plugs.

alwayslikethis 3y ago
I agree with the importance of standards, but.. The Edison screw works quite badly for LED bulbs commonly used today. The electronics are all buried in the base part, which has very limited cooling, so they get extra hot and kills the lightbulbs prematurely when the LEDs themselves last much longer. It is also not standardized w.r.t. voltages, power limits, etc, making it prone to user error. The European and British plugs both have noticeable advantages compared to the American one, in that it is much harder to get shocked by them or cause arcing. Also, a universal plug would be much more helpful in a world with the same electric power systems everywhere, which is not the case.
- taeric 3y ago
  Though, it isn't the screw connector that makes led bulbs a bad fit. It is the AC power delivery. And, yes, hvdc is likely better, but only in recent times with modern equipment. And even then, probably more debatable than makes sense.
rkagerer 3y ago
But weren't those standards defacto? I share your penchant for the shape of a bulb socket and purposely bought a phone that still provides an audio jack... but afaik regulators never dictated those shapes.
- belltaco 3y ago
  Maybe gas pump sizes at gas stations are a better example? I see pump dimensions in the law here but don't know if there was traditional regulation on fuel pumps being compatible. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/80.22 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/80.22
nonethewiser 3y ago
A standard on the 3.5 mm charger would have gated massive leaps like data transfers and lithium ion batteries.
revelio 3y ago
> Standards are good for everyone, even when very old and seemingly outdated. This is definitely not the case. As an example, the Official Standard way to encode data structures in the 90s was ASN.1 from the ITU. Problem is, ASN.1 kinda sucked and so nobody uses it anymore outside of cryptography. Then the Official Standard became XML. Eventually people decided that also wasn't that great and switched to JSON, which is a totally unofficial standard defined by one guy. Your approach / the EU approach would mean REST APIs would all need to be encoded with ASN.1 or XML.
- taeric 3y ago
  This is more evidence that engineering for every complicated case will give you a complicated standard. And note that most of the complaints are often retread with arguable advances later. JSON is still an odd one. 90% of that standard is "javascript, but only numbers and strings are allowed." With some extra shitty rules around comments and no real specification for what numbers do in the host language.
- yrro 3y ago
  ASN.1 is good though. What sucked was everyone implementing their own serde tooling. In another, better world we'd have consolidated around ASN.1 DER and not wasted all that time and energy with XML, JSON and so on.
  - revelio 3y ago
    If it was really that good there'd be plenty of great open source implementations and tools by now, but in reality nobody wants to use it. Note that protobuf didn't have this issue.
    - stephc_int13 3y ago
      Have you heard about the ASN.1 implementation by Fabrice Bellard? https://bellard.org/ffasn1/ https://bellard.org/ffasn1/

alwayslikethis 3y ago

I agree with the importance of standards, but.. The Edison screw works quite badly for LED bulbs commonly used today. The electronics are all buried in the base part, which has very limited cooling, so they get extra hot and kills the lightbulbs prematurely when the LEDs themselves last much longer. It is also not standardized w.r.t. voltages, power limits, etc, making it prone to user error. The European and British plugs both have noticeable advantages compared to the American one, in that it is much harder to get shocked by them or cause arcing. Also, a universal plug would be much more helpful in a world with the same electric power systems everywhere, which is not the case.

taeric 3y ago
Though, it isn't the screw connector that makes led bulbs a bad fit. It is the AC power delivery. And, yes, hvdc is likely better, but only in recent times with modern equipment. And even then, probably more debatable than makes sense.

rkagerer 3y ago

But weren't those standards defacto? I share your penchant for the shape of a bulb socket and purposely bought a phone that still provides an audio jack... but afaik regulators never dictated those shapes.

belltaco 3y ago
Maybe gas pump sizes at gas stations are a better example? I see pump dimensions in the law here but don't know if there was traditional regulation on fuel pumps being compatible. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/80.22 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/40/80.22

nonethewiser 3y ago

A standard on the 3.5 mm charger would have gated massive leaps like data transfers and lithium ion batteries.

revelio 3y ago

> Standards are good for everyone, even when very old and seemingly outdated. This is definitely not the case. As an example, the Official Standard way to encode data structures in the 90s was ASN.1 from the ITU. Problem is, ASN.1 kinda sucked and so nobody uses it anymore outside of cryptography. Then the Official Standard became XML. Eventually people decided that also wasn't that great and switched to JSON, which is a totally unofficial standard defined by one guy. Your approach / the EU approach would mean REST APIs would all need to be encoded with ASN.1 or XML.

taeric 3y ago
This is more evidence that engineering for every complicated case will give you a complicated standard. And note that most of the complaints are often retread with arguable advances later. JSON is still an odd one. 90% of that standard is "javascript, but only numbers and strings are allowed." With some extra shitty rules around comments and no real specification for what numbers do in the host language.
yrro 3y ago
ASN.1 is good though. What sucked was everyone implementing their own serde tooling. In another, better world we'd have consolidated around ASN.1 DER and not wasted all that time and energy with XML, JSON and so on.
- revelio 3y ago
  If it was really that good there'd be plenty of great open source implementations and tools by now, but in reality nobody wants to use it. Note that protobuf didn't have this issue.
  - stephc_int13 3y ago
    Have you heard about the ASN.1 implementation by Fabrice Bellard? https://bellard.org/ffasn1/ https://bellard.org/ffasn1/