Hard disk fraud: long runtimes on new Seagate hard disks

Excellent example. Let's suppose you pass a law requiring the red wire to be source and the black wire to be ground. Now you go to manufacture your new solar battery system. The system has wired connections for the AC power grid, DC power from the solar system, DC power from the batteries and AC power to supply the building. The system contains an inverter so if you want it to it can take 220V 50Hz input and produce 110V 60Hz output or vice versa. The system also has a USB port being supplied with DC power. If the law requires the source to be red, you now have five different sources at different voltages, some are AC and others DC, different frequencies, but they're all the same color. The law is then requiring something confusing and dangerous. Is a red wire the 5V DC for the USB port or the 220V AC from the power grid?

Okay, so then we'd need a much more complicated law that specifies a bunch of different wire colors. Now the law is creating something complicated and dangerous, because there are lots of different combinations you could have. What if there is three-phase power and a neutral? What if there is a third AC connection for a backup generator? If the law says that systems using both AC and DC power should use different colors for AC and DC, you now can't produce a modular component that contains any wires because what color they need to be would depend on what other components are in the system. If you try to assign a separate permanent color to each possible combination so they could be modular, you'd need so many colors in the standard that many would be confusingly similar to each other.

The better solution is, have best practices that nobody is required by law to follow if they don't make sense in context, but everybody is required to document whatever it is they actually do.

> How many companies can sell the automation to place the chocolate dots on mass-produced cookies?

> In the US, they sell 13 amp extension cords for 20 amp outlets.

The US has two standard 110V power outlets, 15 amp and 20 amp, and 15 amp plugs are compatible with 20 amp outlets under the theory that the 20 amp outlet is more than sufficient to supply a 15 amp load. That decision was made in the 20th century and is impractical to change. Prohibiting <20 amp cords from being plugged into a 20 amp outlet would then effectively be a prohibition on <20 amp cords, but 20 amp cords are more expensive and almost never necessary, especially in homes that typically have 15 amp breakers.

Should they have designed the plugs better before, so that you can plug a 15 amp load into a 20 amp outlet but not a 15 amp extension cord? Sure, but it's too late for that.

You're essentially asking for a law that wastes many metric tons of copper and raises prices on everyone in exchange for a marginal safety improvement in an edge case for people who aren't paying attention. It's exactly the sort of poor cost/benefit rule that shouldn't exist.

> This free market and competitive market that people always talk about does not exist and never can truly exist. How many companies can sell the automation to place the chocolate dots on mass-produced cookies?

It's not just a question of how many companies currently sell them, it's a question of who else would sell them if that company started abusing its customers and the customers started soliciting alternate suppliers. In other words, what would it take for someone else to start making those machines?

And putting more rules on how you can do it makes it harder to compete, and reduces that competitive pressure.

> Should the EU abandon the USB-C charger and allow Apple to keep producing the lightening charger, increase unnecessary e-waste? Selling the lightening exclusive helped increase Apple's bottom monetary line. So should EU allow Apple to move back to the lightening charger?

The premise here is competitive markets. Apple is a vertically integrated conglomerate, which impairs competition. The EU shouldn't be demanding they use a particular standard (which is now enshrined in law and prohibits any future innovations), they should be breaking the company into operating systems and Apple Silicon and phones, so that the phone maker has the same incentive to use the current standard as any other.

> Should we completely abandon all food manufacturing standards and allow Johnson and Johnson to sell asbestos in their baby powder or Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis to sell baby formula with cronobacter?

Selling baby powder with asbestos in it without listing asbestos as an ingredient is fraud. Listing asbestos as an ingredient is not likely to garner a lot of sales.

> USA McDownlad's has show they are willing to lower their standards when they can make more money from having to service their franchise's ice cream machines instead having quality and making money on the profit of their ice products.

But why is this a problem when you can buy ice cream from Wendy's or become a franchisee of some other restaurant chain?

> Which machine would you prefer using daily, along with your loved ones? Model A or Model B? One that can take off a limb and even decapitate you or the one that cannot?

But that's the point, isn't it? If there is competition, i.e. both are available, which one do you buy?

Yes, some products have been found with incorrect dimensions on their CE markings. Yes, some products have been found with non-compliant specifications. But AFAIK no products, having been accused of non-compliant specifications in spite of CE markings, have ever defended themselves with the excuse that the mark is not a true CE mark but instead some mythical “China Export” mark. It has never happened. It’s an urban myth.

Then even the small part of the population that would consider going through the process of adding yet another subscription to their life either leaves or consents to tracking, because who's going to pay 5 EUR (and Heise is pretty "cheap" compared to some) for access to one article?

I would not be so angry with the concept if the costs, and the effort necessary to pay, was more in line with the income from personalised ads. Pay two cents per view with the push of a button? Sure. Pay 2 EUR for a week of access? Maybe. But so many publications want me to pay almost a print subscription price for any access, clearly showing they don't intend this as a real alternative.