The technology of those who still use body parts as units of measurement. It always amuses me how tourists who come to Europe buy an adapter instead of a 60 to 50 Hz transformer and converter for their laptops and wonder why smoke and sparks come out of their laptop when they plug it in.
Huh. Are laptops made for the US market not able to take multiple voltages? Idk, all my electronics are rated for both 120 and 240 volt and when I went to europe, they didn’t seem to care about the frequency at all.
Which always just made sense to me – Computery electronics like cell phones and… Well, computers. Actually use DC current and so they have those power bricks that act as converters.
Then again it wouldn’t surprise me if manufacturers went “eeeeh this one is for the US market, they just get the same voltage everywhere, make the power brick only take this specific configuration so we can make it cheaper”, since my country has different voltages depending on which state you are in.
In Europe the 240 V and 50 Hz are unversal. Yes, you can change the voltage in most electric gadgets for the international market, but only if you remember to do it. Those which I saw only use a adapter from US plug to European Schuko plugs, and only this, well, a 120 V gadget at 240 V = unheard new vocabulary of the insured user.
In Canada, every one of my switched mode adapters (phone and laptop chargers, power bricks, etc) say something along the lines of 100-240v, 50-60Hz.
I’ve also taken them to China, which uses 220v 50 Hz, and they’ve never had a problem. In fact they charge a little faster thanks to the conversion from 220v being more efficient than Canadian 110v.
Can confirm for US laptops. They all have ‘wide range’ adaptors.
🤔 I won’t argue because it does sound like something that can happen. It just sounds – Weird – To me. Lmao.
It depends on the power supply. Some really cheap electronics will have a power supply built to a single spec, but most are built to be universal.
Just check to make sure before plugging anything in. The specs should be on the label. 🙂
Yeah I’m kinda used to it. As said before, in my country (Brazil) the power grid is… It depends on which state you are in. It’s 120 in my state, but directly south of us is one that uses 240, and to the north two that use 120. I’m used to reading labels and flicking voltage switches.
20 minute video on some trivia?
IMO, I really like these deep dives into these little things most people don’t think twice about.
Alec (the person who runs this channel) has a habit of rambling on about all sorts of semi-related historical facts and other such nonsense.
I understand if that is not to your taste. I quite like it.
It’s not even that i don’t like it, but i would like the TL;DW
TL;DW: Specification says that the holes are optional, but they are often used to facilitate the manufacture of the plug blades. It defines a position and size for the holes so that they will be out of the way of the actual part of the plug that makes contact
Thanks a lot for the TL;DW text. After scrolling in the comment section I was even looking for a TL;DR post. And I really don’t get why there this a “we stretch everything until we have a 20 minute video, which can be put together into one sentence” mentality?
Short version?
Capitalism.
Long version, youtube rewards watch time most of all. Youtubers are underpaid and have to try and squeeze as much from their channel as they can if that’s their dayjob. And in the “optimise everything until it is no longer fun” spirit of capitalistic entertainment, youtubers have realised that around 20 minutes is the ideal length for most content (unless you’re in a specific niche for very longform stuff).
And while I do enjoy Alec’s general rambling and playing around with the gadgets he educates us about – Yeah. I can see it as the byproduct of youtube culture that it is.
I will start a youtube / peertube channel soon, but most of the videos are only a few minutes long, even if the research and the stuff I do and build took weeks or even months.
My concept is, not doing everything for money and don’t optimize everything for money, but do it for sustainability and fun. Maybe I have the wrong concept?
/shrug If you’re just doing youtube for the sake of doing youtube, you can do whatever you want. Any audience that comes to you will be your audience and you’ll probably not make much money but maybe you’ll make a bit of it.
But if you want youtube to replace your dayjob, then yeah kinda?
And like, most content creators talk about being horribly burnt out and overworked. They quit their nine-to-fives to have YouTube as their main gig, and it starts out as a labour of love, until the bills start coming and the channel starts being more and more of a business, and then they start working insane hours and become slaves to the analytics graphs and (…)
Entertainment. Just like movies tell you a story and you can put in a sentence the plot of the movie.
By that logic, Why even make a video if you can write it in a sentence.
Movies, which are written on paper, are called books. And they exist…
Thanks