Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 8, 2024 17:35 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt by Wol
Parent article: Quotes of the week

The European plugs are an utter mess. This mess has led to the abomination of the "euro plug" - the minimal, lowest-common denominator plug that fits in all European 2-pin sockets.

As someone who has spent time both on the continent and in the Celtic Isles, $DEITY bless the British Standard plug and socket. Every time, here in the Celtic Isles, I walk past a home router, or any other device that needs a wall-wart transformer, and my footsteps on the floorboard do *not* cause the wall-wart to wobble slightly and break the connection and shut off the device, I give thanks to the designers of the BS plug. Every time, here in the Celtic Isles, I plug a wall-wart in, and I do *not* have to spend minutes very gently poking it to find /just/ the right balance point for the weight of the wall-wart and the internal connection so it /keeps/ a connection once I let go, I give thanks to the designers of the BS plug. Nor did I ever to worry when my kids were little about them curiously sticking metal stuff into live sockets.

Plugs and sockets in the USA and China are also ridiculously flimsy and wobbly. And unsafe for small children.

$DEITY bless the sturdy, robust, reliable, safe, BS plug and socket.

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 9:32 UTC (Thu) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (10 responses)

German plugs are the best in the world. I can't understand why anybody would use anything else ;-)

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 10:40 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (9 responses)

I have experience of the type F - it's used in the Netherlands and (I think??) Belgium too. A type-F socket *and* plug is almost as good as the BS.

But read my first paragraph carefully: "The European plugs are an utter mess. This mess has led to the abomination of the "euro plug" - the minimal, lowest-common denominator plug that fits in all European 2-pin sockets.".

The problem is many devices will have the "Euro plug" (Type-C) I think. For wall-warts, this is moulded in and you can't just change the lead. The Type-F /theoretically/ might be as good, but when 90%+ of equipment comes with shitty Euro plugs (and 100% of retail electronics) that is kind of irrelevant. So when I give thanks for the BS plug and socket, that comment is made with *direct experience* of having lived in a country with Type-F "German" sockets!

I feel sorry for those who live outside of the Celtic Isles, wrt plug standards.

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 13:18 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (8 responses)

Why can't Europe standardise on the type F, then? Or is that the problem where you can't plug a 2-core plug into an earthed socket?

Cheers,
Wol

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 13:51 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (7 responses)

The problem is that the Type C plug fits Type E, Type F, Type H, Type J, Type K, Type L, Type N and Type O sockets to varying degrees of safety. There is thus no incentive to switch to Type F plugs for all devices for as long as the other socket types are in use somewhere in the world, since the Type C plug fits a Type F socket.

And this is basically the conclusion the EU has come to twice, when studying whether it should switch; if it was going to change, it'd standardise on Type N, but the cost of doing so is huge, and it will take a very long time to get to a point where you can insist on Type N plugs rather than Type C plugs on devices that want to be EU-wide.

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 15:09 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (5 responses)

Hmmm ....

But you don't mandate a switch to type N plugs. Not yet at least. If they'd mandated a switch to type N *sockets* all those years ago, for all new installations, then we would be in a position to switch to type N plugs now. And how much would it cost, if the sale of all the old-style *sockets* were banned right now? Not much?

Pretty much all electrical stuff for the UK now seems to come with a BS and a C lead, give it 5 years or so before you mandate that all electrical stuff must include an N lead, and the shift would happen.

I've started (even without any government pressure - even with market anti-pressure) to switch my light fittings to ES - I just think it's so much more sensible, and physically (dunno about electrically) safer!

Put the *pressures* in place, and wait for the market to do its thing.

Cheers,
Wol

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 15:27 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (4 responses)

If you don't mandate a switch to Type N plugs, then everyone will continue to use Type C plugs; the whole raison d'être of Type C (which is a plug without a matching socket) is to be usable with as many socket types as possible, and Type N is deliberately compatible with Type C as a design goal.

So, absent a mandated switch to Type N, we will have Type C plugs forever. There is no market pressure to switch away from Type C, because Type C plugs are safe by design with Type E, Type F, Type J, Type K and Type O sockets, and compatible at reduced safety with Type H, and Type L sockets. And Type N is the current best compromise standard; the only thing any other standard beats it on is safe support for undersized cables, where Type G does better.

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 17:32 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

So you mandate a change to type N *sockets*, and once they become widespread you require that goods come with type N plugs. The supply of all the other sockets is choked off immediately, and then when N plugs become mandatory simple economics says the other plugs will disappear.

Everything (pretty much) remains compatible, N comes to dominate, then all the others vanish.

Cheers,
Wol

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 17:57 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

But if you mandate a change to Type N sockets, then you require that anyone who has electrical work done replaces some of their appliances with new ones that have Type N plugs. So there's a strong reason to keep allowing people to use other types of sockets; but if you allow people to use other types of sockets, you can't mandate Type N without causing trouble for people who've not followed the mandate to move to Type N sockets (but have stuck with older socket types to keep using their existing appliances).

This means that you can't ban installation of other socket types in the home without upsetting people who can't keep their existing washing machine, vacuum cleaner, fan heater, or other appliance, since they don't have the skills to safely replace the plug or captive lead, and can't afford to pay both for new sockets and for new plugs installed by a professional. In practice, in the models the EU looked at 15 years ago, and the ones CENELEC looked at in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s, you get a big "burp" of e-waste as people throw away perfectly good appliances because they've had a socket replaced, and so their 5 year old washing machine gets replaced early.

This is all well-studied - proposing things that the EU and CENELEC have both analysed in great detail is unproductive.

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 18:10 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

> This means that you can't ban installation of other socket types in the home without upsetting people who can't keep their existing washing machine, vacuum cleaner, fan heater, or other appliance

Adapters exist... It's not like the voltage is changing.

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 18:21 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Firstly, adapters are not legal as a semi-permanent solution, for safety reasons; you could use one for your vacuum cleaner or fan heater, but your washing machine (which stays plugged in) needs a new plug.

In practice everyone ignores this, but a professional would not be allowed to recommend an adapter for you, since you are supposed to unplug the adapter from the socket when the matching appliance is not in use; this then has risks like people going out and buying adapters that are unsuitable for the appliance (e.g. I have a "universal" adapter that's unfused, limited by design to a maximum of 8A safely, but that has Type G - 13A - and Type E/F - 16A - socket and plug support).

Using a low current adapter with a high current device is a recipe for a fire, and indeed one of the reasons we now mandate that appliances are supplied with matching plugs (rather than bare wires and install your own plugs) is that people put unsuitable plugs onto appliances, resulting in fires; put a Type C (2.5A) on a washing machine that draws 10A, and while it'll plug into your Type E (16A) socket, it'll get dangerously hot, whereas a "proper" Type E or a Type E/F hybrid plug would have been fine.

Secondly, there's an appreciable amount of e-waste generated already by people who discard appliances as trash because they are cosmetically bad, even when they're fully working; the CENELEC and EU analyses both suggest that there's enough people who would consider "my vacuum cleaner needs an adapter" as reason to replace a perfectly working device.

Quotes of the week: Theo de Raadt

Posted Feb 15, 2024 16:25 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Right. I.e., the 2-pin world in Europe is an unfixable mess.

It would be madness for the Celtic Isle nations to deprecate the BS plug, and descend into the Euro plug mess.

We have a great standard. Safe, sturdy, reliable. Keep it.