Thanks Jacques. So creepage is when current flows/arcs across the surface of an insulator, vs through the air. And it's worse with DC due to its unidirectional nature. Worsens when pollution builds up, or the surface degrades.
Indeed. And it's a really nasty thing to properly protect against because that pollution, especially with stuff that is unattended for a long time has a habit of ending up much worse than your worst fantasies. I've taken more than one electrocuted mouse out of the HV section of older color TVs for instance. Up to 250V or so it is manageable, above that you can get the weirdest problems including completely invisible arcing where the only giveaway is the ozone smell and the occasional click. Looking at HV circuitry in the dark or by putting a flame near a suspect spot is a great way to spot these kind of issues.
Yes, it seems like UI designers only solve the basic use case: beginner user with 3 apps open on a 14" laptop, each full screen, or tiled side-by-side.
I imagine them presenting their design on a static PowerPoint slide, and upper-management says "beautiful", and they move on to CoPilot features, never looking back.
The Teams... team... took several years to let us pop out chats to their own windows. The minimum size of the window was almost half my screen for a long time, which was annoying since it had a mobile app and my phone is way smaller.
Someone would send you a document and it took over the entire Teams window. You had to exit it in order to chat with the person about the document. The concept of having more than one 'thing' on screen at the time was completely missing. My only explanation was that the developers had never used a computer before.
Try not to blame the people working at the coal face. Developers lack influence in most companies, they are told what to do by product managers and the rot often gets worse further up the hierarchy chain. Developers mostly know what is wrong and don't like the shit they are doing. Imagine the anger of working on Server 2012 (Windows Server 8) with the default Metro UI - that idiocy had to go right to the top.
How independent are developers at Microsoft - are they in charge of product design decisions?
Most -- frankly, almost all -- developers I talk to at big companies like the things they are working on. I totally am happy to not blame a developer who disavows the stuff they are doing and shrug at me saying "a job is a job: this isn't the greatest market to find a new one", but that just isn't the reality of most of the people who are working at these big companies.
Surprised me too. In the end, I guess it's a time-saving tool for a tedious task. But reduces the old-school grittiness of the adventure. Still an enjoyable read.
I found the old drive that worked with my Canon camera. It's a Hitachi 2GB Microdrive from 2003. It says CF+ Type-II. So larger, with a CompactFlash interface, boring in comparison.
I wonder what material they used for the platter. I once took apart a 1.8" drive, and got a big surprise when the platter suddenly shattered. I was expecting aluminum, not glass/ceramic substrate.
One of my most delightful discoveries of the early 2000s was that iPod Minis used Microdrives that were pin-compatible with CompactFlash cards. I had a little cottage industry in the back of my office upgrading my coworkers’ old iPods to use bigger, solid state disks. I still have my 256GB iPod Mini. Aside from battery life, it still runs fine, and it is by far my favorite music player form factor.
> ... "and it is by far my favorite music player form factor."
I really liked the old original iPod Nano myself. Had one for years that I was triple-booting RockBox (for extended media formats support and fancier interface), iPodLinux (for playing Doom and other toys), and the original iPod OS (just in case). Still haven't yet owned another device in that size / form factor that can do as much as that little thing did. Apple really did make some sweet devices back in the day... :)
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