The recent introduction, in the UK at least, of splash-back reducing urinal … mats (?) has basically solved the problem in my opinion. They’re a disposable (but not single use…) plastic freshening insert with loads of short rubber strands, closely packed.
You can pee on one of these mats and the stream almost aerates itself on impact and you get basically no splashback, I guess with a similar mechanism to how an aerating tap produces a stream of water that doesn’t splash off whatever it hits.
I was on a work trip to Indianapolis last week and encountered two separate urinals with plastic screens branded by the same supplier. One screen was branded so that the plastic fingers point towards the user, one was branded so that the plastic fingers pointed towards the drain (i.e. the wrong way).
Makes me wonder why. Was that a misprint? Did someone get confused about the correct direction for the fingers?
My hunch.
The plastic fingers pointing up will reduce splash when our urine hits them first time, but if the bottom of the urinal is flat, the plastic will stick to it causing the urine flow to be slow, and due to capillary action, the urine rises above the fingers and causes splash again a few seconds into our urine passing.
If the fingers are pointed downward, the urine seeping through the downward fingers can flow freely to the outlet, and causes less splash with the urine rising through capillary action. The holes on the plastic layer will anyway avoid the urine splashing when we point our pipe against it.
In my cleaning and maintenance work I'd replaced a lot of these. The orange ones I'm familiar with have a decently nice scent.
But last week I went to use my new shampoo and it had the same scent. On its own it would be nice enough but all I could smell was piss. Then I forgot and tried the same shampoo again a few days later to the same effect!
And those, when they have a target on them (like football theme often seen in pubs in Europe) kinda combine the igNobel prize with the "Nobel" [0] prize on nudge !
[0] not a nobel prize but the prize of the swedish bank in memory of ...
Yes this is the best solution I've seen. And every male pretty quickly figures out that the angle of the stream greatly affects splashback. Seems rather wasteful to spend money on this study for a solved/non-problem.
The worst urinal which I used was in Brussels about 15 years ago, and with that "splash-back reducing" mat. And it covered every part of the inner wall of the urinal. The mat caused the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do. It made it worse, and I had to wash my shorts, because it started to smell disgusting the next day.
My favourite thing about the command key is the position - it’s way further to the right than ctrl on most keyboards, which means you don’t have to contort your thumb back and apply lateral pressure to your thumb joint when copy-pasting.
I’m either doing it wrong on Windows or the entire world is putting up with unnecessary finger pain because whoever chose Ctrl-C was a masochist.
Originally, the Ctrl key was to the left of A, where Caps Lock is now. This makes most Ctrl key shortcuts a lot more comfortable. They moved Ctrl to the bottom left with the Model M keyboard, which became the standard modern PC keyboard layout. As far as I can tell, the justification for this was that it made the layout more familiar to typewriter users, since Caps Lock is in the same position it's in on a typewriter (see https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/IBM_Personal_Computer_Semin... page 24). Personally, I always remap my key layout on every PC I use so left Ctrl is swapped with Caps Lock.
I'm not sure what hand position you're using, but on the keyboard I'm at right now, I put my left little finger on control, and use my left index finger for the c/v. Do you mean that you're using your thumb for control and index for c/v?
The only thing that’s egregious is the batteries.
They tape the batteries to the case, and to remove them you have to do this complex twirling motion with tweezers to pull the tape out from under the battery. If the tape snaps during this then the documentation basically says get a new case.
Apple saves itself a lot of the trouble with superior build quality. With Samsung devices (so no cheap crap), USB ports last me about three years of heavy use.
With my old iPhone 12, 2019 16-inch MBP or my 2022 MBA? Not a single issue. The housing is simply constructed so tight and, being made of solid metal, rigid that the housing bears the torsion load and not the tiny PCB solder pads.
The only problem I have with my new USB-C iPhone 15 is that it is hard to clean pocket lint out of the socket, compared to the old Lightning connector.
> With Samsung devices (so no cheap crap), USB ports last me about three years of heavy use.
What are you doing to these machines?! I work in the safety and security biz, including in the field, and my trusty HP EliteBook 2730p is still rocking along on its first USB ports. That machine is over 15 bloody years old!
That is a convertible laptop that meets MIL-STD-810F standards on vibration resistance, it’s not really a fair comparison. Also, the change from dedicated charge ports to USB-C charging increased USB port usage considerably.
> Also, the change from dedicated charge ports to USB-C charging increased USB port usage considerably.
I never needed one, but a good USB-C adapter (or maybe even small dock) with power passthrough should solve this. Burning through whole machines because a single USB-C port cakes out after just three years is an awful lot of waste.
Mostly, keeping them in my pocket with a USB cable attached to a power bank. Places an awful lot of torsion force on the connector. I tend to go through 2-3 charges a day.
Another issue is that I have cats that like to play with everything being too close to a table corner.
I try to buy good hardware for practical reasons. I insist on repairability for emotional reasons around ownership and independence. You do not have to value the same things as me, of course.
This is really cool as a way to determine which directions and how far you can go from a given point.
I think a good improvement to this tool would be an optional “number of connections” plus desired maximum walking distance. That’d be really useful for your average OAP trying to find a rough plan for a long distance journey by bus.
How is this easier than using lmstudio or omlx or whatever your favourite runtime is ?
It’s maybe a bit interesting that Jetbrains are making moves to integrate with local models more closely, but I think claiming this is “easier” is incorrect for most users.
At least here in the UK, recent revisions to the default planning rules around heat pumps (“Permitted Development” legislation) removed the restriction that an install be “used solely for heating purposes” and revised this to “not be used solely for the purpose of cooling”.
The Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant also permits cooling - it’s based on the heating credentials of a unit only.
So in Britain at least, installing cooling systems in private residences seems to be getting easier.
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