Practical engineering has a video about all the mains power sockets in the US. And I'm watching it and wondering "what the utter fuck?!?!?!". Y'all got half a dozen different plug sockets for different stuff ?!?

We have a schuko socket that does 240v upto 16a. And for industrial and commercial stuff you might see blue or red iec60309 stuff, but rarely in a home.

US electricity is weird...

For the last couple of weeks, my inbox and YouTube feed has been full of small makers letting me know they will no longer be shipping to the EU. The new PPWR regs have completely nuked the ability of small makers to sell into the EU. I wonder how many fully funded Kickstarters are going to be massively screwed over by this.

There's no way the politicians who passed this legislation didn't know full well the effect it would have.

1/n

For the best part of 15 years. I've had a capcha on my phone alarm. This is because I seem very good at turning alarms off in my sleep. Because I can still hit snooze. I will often just keep hitting snooze long after I got up. This often results in the alarm going off when I'm with others. Many a time it handed my phone to a friend or colleague and said "can you turn off my alarm please?" Then usually solve the first puzzle then swear and hand me the phone. Back for the 2nd and 3rd.

But...
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Station name looks like an SQL injection? Yep I'm in the Netherlands again...

Years ago when I lived in Canterbury, they brought in a phone to pay thing for parking. I wrote a letter to Canterbury city council saying this was a bad idea as someone could put a sticker over the phone number, and scam people for their credit card details. CCC said this wasn't a realistic attack, and they proceeded with the roll out.

The phone number is now a QR code.

And I was fucking right.

Today's random historical rabbit hole.

Did the Romans know about coppicing?

Yesterday I posted a picture of a hole in the side of a train and asked what it was for. Here's the answer.

It's to put flags in. Such as this red flag.

Red flags are important signals, they mean that a live firing exercise is in progress and it's not safe to cross to range... Or it means you shouldn't swim here. (There was one on each end).

Or more accurately in this case, that station staff are aboard the train, and it should not leave the station.

One for the train nerds, are there any nice railway stations that have been built since the end of the cold war? Places where you stand and admire the architecture, that don't give you a headache just walking to your platform. I'm looking for a modern built station that is the antidote to Barcelona Sants.