> These commenters are speaking authoritatively on subjects about which they are completely ignorant, but they are strident in doing so because they are repeating what everybody knows. They are intellectually secure in the center of a vast mob; their wisdom was received, not crafted.
This is an important takeaway for me, maybe even more than “electirc devices are washable”.
World is filled with conventional wisdom that limits us in countless directions. Knowing how things work empower us to break these “rules”.
It's not the water that's the issue generally - it's the minerals in the water.
The article author got lucky this time - when electronics die from water contact, it's usually the minerals bridging connections and creating shorts. Letting the device dry does not remove those shorts. Some places have such hard water (lots of minerals) that evaporated water leaves calcium, limestone and other deposits on the surface of everything it's touched.
Does that mean doing it once will always cause an issue? Of course not... but repeatedly doing this, and/or becoming used to washing electronics in the dishwasher is a recipe to ruin them in the long term.
I would not personally want to play games with a toaster that can be replaced for $20 at your local Walmart...
Would mineral deposits be sufficiently large and conductive that they would cause an actual issue between components?
They would probably represent nothing more than minor stray resistance/capacitance.
Assuming it was conductive enough, a scales bridge between higher voltage parts would just represent a path of material a few microns thick that would vaporize as soon as the toaster would be plugged in.
For other electronic devices, any component with a hole, like a microphone, barometric, humidity sensor, or mechanical (HDD), is more likely to suffer a more permanent fate. If water gets inside a relay housing, chemicals from the washing liquid may damage or gunk the contacts and reduce their life. LCD screens, glued parts and thin plastics don't fare well in dishwashers either...
>Would mineral deposits be sufficiently large and conductive that they would cause an actual issue between components?
A good proportion of water-damaged cellphones can be revived just by washing the logic board thoroughly in isopropyl alcohol. It's possible that this is due to small amounts of water trapped in crevices, but I've seen it work on boards that looked bone-dry under the microscope.
A lot of household appliances use potted relays and conformal coatings. If you pull the control board out of your clothes washer you'll see what I mean. It's particularly important because the control board is often within spitting distance of a solenoid that's holding back 60-80 psi of water.
A toaster (at least a cheap toaster) is an electrical device, not an electronic one, as stated by the author in the article. Please look up the difference if you don't know what it is.
Even cheap toasters (I take toaster apart for fun) have true electronics these days because it's usually cheaper to implement things like timers electronically and if the toaster has a display it certainly has some electronics. But I suspect that the absolute simplest toasters are purely mechanical and electrical.
I was curious so I did some searching -- this is the cheapest toaster that I'm aware of in the US, and it surprisingly does have a custom IC that handles the timing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLFG068HtgM
To be fair, a toaster is always a fire risk. That's why the manual says never put them under flammable things. You should always assume your toaster will catch fire.
You only save money if you plug it in afterwards. At which point residue poses a fire risk.
Also, many dishwashers have a garbage disposal which isn’t inside the water and may fail if the cord gets into it. Not likely to happen, but enough people try it and someone may directly get an electrical fire while the dishwasher is running.
it's not that simple. it's because things are medium bad conductors, like the nichrome wire in the toaster, which is absolutely fantastic for setting things on fire
things that are really good conductors like the copper wires in the toaster don't heat up (much) because they don't drop much voltage, and things that are really bad conductors, like the panels that support the nichrome wires and like calcium carbonate, don't heat up at all, because they don't carry any current. it's the things that are in between that cause fires: they can carry enough current to be a problem, while also dropping enough voltage to be a problem
this has been introductory electrical engineering 101. i'll be here all week, don't forget to tip your server, and read chapters 1 of horowitz & hill by monday
that's partially true; however, I still think I was right.
yes, there are places that don't heat up because the current doesn't go through them, but only because they have easier paths. if the electricity wanted to go through them, they would heat up hotter than anything else.
the point is, things can corrode, electricity goes in places it wasn't intended or through resistances it wasn't intended, and becomes a fire hazard.
Of course I've seen the opposite all the time. People who find issues with the conventional reasoning, and then apply their own _extremely faulty reasoning_ to reach their own conclusion!
Someone having incorrect reasoning doesn't mean they are wrong, just that they do not know (in the sense of knowing something for the right reasons)
Case in point: OP decided to wash the toaster in the dishwasher. Their story about walking through water assuming that their hair dryer experiment validated them walking through water with a bunch of sockets.... they are applying super hand-wavy reasoning in the same way as the critics are!
The funny thing about the whole piece is that while "an unplugged toaster through the washing machine is probably fine" is not a huge leap, so much in the PS is indicative of how I would not really trust this person much for their decision making
Spot on. This “teacher” is doing a piss-poor job of challenging “conventional wisdom” that saves lives. What are students learning from him cavalierly running a hairdryer underwater and marching into electrified water?
Yes, electricians often have plenty of experience with getting shocked. But all it takes is one dumb mistake and you quickly die a horrible death, with muscles locked up unable to self-rescue in a location where immediate bystanders will risk their own lives to rescue.
What kind of dumbass proudly tells about wading into electrified flooding in front of colleagues when there wasn’t even any urgent reason to do so? What would it have cost to simply wait and cut the power first, calling the power company if necessary if a breaker box could not be safely reached for some reason (unlikely)?
And many/most circuits outside code-compliant kitchens and baths aren’t GFCI, and GFCI doesn’t protect against all electrocutions (you can be electrocuted in a short without a ground fault). Now consider electrical fires from getting sloppy with damaged wiring and electrical devices, which are a leading cause of deaths from fire.
Microprocessors (especially older ones) are _very_ hard to kill. They're a piece of silicon embedded in epoxy essentially, very inert. There are a lot of people who wash arcade PCBs in the dishwasher, not a practice I endorse, but it works.
Yes, and it is perfectly safe to wash a simple circuit board, as long as the rinse water is clean, and it gets dried reasonable quickly. Both conditions are met in a dishwasher.
I totally understand where this article is coming from but it still doesn't take away the appreciation of a good driver for me. I see lot of people coming to conclusions such as "drivers don't matter" after reading such articles. I don't agree with that.
No one is gonna put Albon or Giovinazzi in the Mercedes and think "he'll be fine, we'll still win". Hamilton and Schumacher kinda put themselves up there to be in the position to dominate with the right team of engineers. They put themselves up there with their driving and team building skills.
I'm on the opinion that both Albon and Giovinazzi have a lot of potential but they both face several problems. Albon is in the back seat at Red Bull and he is in the same position as Raikkonen when he was at Ferrari: as far as everyone at Ferrari was concerned, it was 90% Vettel, 10% Raikkonen. In that sense, Albon is pretty much alone. Giovinazzi on the other hand made a very big mistake initially - he had Raikkonen of all people to learn from. Even beyond the experience, Kimi is quite possibly the most knowledgeable driver out there, not only as far as setting up a car but also sportsmanship. And it seems Giovinazzi eventually figured that out. When he started off, he acted like a truck, not an F1 driver. These days he is a lot more composed and is getting really good results, considering he is in one of the slowest cars out there. I'm pretty sure he has Kimi to thank for that.
Hamilton is a very different story - let's face it, he is the silver spoon boy. I really don't think there's a single person in F1 history who had it as easy as he did. While Michael was always riding with one foot over the edge of the rules.
It's not to say that all of them aren't incredibly talented. But it does seem to me that for most of them circumstances played a much bigger role than their actual skills. Hence the reason why I wouldn't rule out either Albon or Giovinazzi as potential champions.
Hamilton, the working class boy from Stevenage whose Dad had to work multiple jobs to support him being able to go racing in karts, is the “silver spoon boy”?
As I said, all of them have immense talent, but apart from the Red Bull-Vettel dominance era, Hamilton has always been in the best car and he was initially pushed forward by Ron Dennis of all people. I honestly can't think of anyone in F1 history who can say they were at all times backed up by people like Dennis, Fry, Lacey, Hakkinen, Wolff, Lauda from their first day in F1... No one comes even close to that. He's had it incredibly easy in F1.
Maybe he was just good enough, young enough, to get people behind him? What is with this insistence on stripping him of his agency in his success? Are people threatened by it?
At the end of the day life isn't fair. That's said, if you look at last year's season when Ferrari had a more decent car (far worse thank Mercedes still), Leclerc with all his lack of experience and poor judgement at times, slaughtered Hamilton in qualifying. That genuinely makes me question if Hamilton's success isn't largely a consequence of Merc's well known superiority. On that topic, I think even Bottas has all the qualities and skills to beat Hamilton but he is mentally losing the battle. Imagine if Hamilton had to face someone like Leclerc, Vettel, Sainz, Russel, or even Raikkonen despite his age or even Riccardo or Hulkenberg. If you look at the biography of each one of those, they had it considerably more difficult than Hamilton.
> That's said, if you look at last year's season when Ferrari had a more decent car (far worse thank Mercedes still)
If you follow F1, you'll know that there are far more variables than this:
1. The cars perform differently at different tracks, due to their fundamental design
2. The setup is often a balance of qualifying pace and race pace, and teams may approach this differently
3. The cars are constantly developed during the season (with improvements are somewhat unpredictable) meaning the balance of power in a season can shift
.
> Leclerc with all his lack of experience and poor judgement at times, slaughtered Hamilton in qualifying.
Not sure that 7 vs. 5 pole positions is "slaughtered". Over the season, LH comfortably out-qualified everyone [1], and of course comfortably out-raced them as well [2].
> That genuinely makes me question if Hamilton's success isn't largely a consequence of Merc's well known superiority. On that topic, I think even Bottas has all the qualities and skills to beat Hamilton but he is mentally losing the battle. Imagine if Hamilton had to face someone like Leclerc, Vettel, Sainz, Russel, or even Raikkonen despite his age or even Riccardo or Hulkenberg. If you look at the biography of each one of those, they had it considerably more difficult than Hamilton.
We're so far apart on this, it's probably not worth continuing much further. But I strongly agree with the other person who replied to you: Hamilton hasn't "had it easy" - he's put himself in strong positions (McLaren, then Mercedes) and has been supported by strong people (Dennis, Lauda, Wolff, etc.) because he's seen as the best overall driver on the grid (qualifying, racing, speed, tyre management, racing temperament, developing and setting up a car, adaptability to different cars & driving styles, etc.). During Hamilton's time, probably only Alonso (IMO) comes as close as such a complete package.
Ultimately, F1 is a dog-eat-dog world. If Hamilton didn't make himself valuable to his team bosses through his performances --didn't make it totally in their interest to continue to employ him-- they'd drop him and move on to someone else. So ultimately, either you're saying that multiple smart successful team bosses are wrong... or maybe Hamilton really is that good.
I don't know why I watch the every single race. I got into it because I liked the engine noise. I happened to see young Kimi Raikkonen getting into the McLaren car. That was a nice story to follow. I started to pickup other stories. Newey moving to Red Bull, rule changes, Alonso moving to Ferrari, Vettel moving to Ferrari and here I am.
I know the author is probably scratching their own itch there, but articles like this make me appreciate my WordPress blog. I don't have to think twice about this stuff. Especially if my main goal with the blog is to grow an audience and not learn Gatsby.
Interesting. Do you include websites built using SSGs like Hugo, Gatsby in your statement? Also, any tips on how you handle security (with minimal maintainence) and page-load performance in Wordpress?
Security is always the trade off, and I don't have any good answers to that problem (aside regular maintenance).
The websites I'm thinking about, though, tended to be marketing websites ('microsites') for large consumer brands, that really didn't do a great deal functionally, and didn't need particularly robust security in the grand scheme of things.
I think some nuances are missing from the video. Some teams use a system to detect torque on the wheel gun[0]. When it reaches a certain level, it means the wheel is attached securely. If this happens with all the wheels, then the pit stop is complete and green light can be shown to the driver.
Needless to say, I have witnessed "sensor errors" botch up a perfectly fine pit stop.
I did live without a smartphone for 20 days during my military service. I had no other choice as only "dumb" phones were allowed.
I would suggest it as a one-month experiment to anyone reading this. I had so much time to think, reflect and... get bored. It was a sort of detox. It was great to not know where you are on the map. It was great to not have something to listen to. It was great to not catch-up.
Since I was off the hook of my smartphone, I tended not to bail out on conversations with others and go back to my digital reality. I talked to people (maybe other people not having smartphones also helped with this).
I kept my "dumb" phone for a couple of months after that but I don't think I can manage to live without a smartphone full time. However, it's a great exercise to reduce addiction. I definitely started use my smart phone less.
Turkey used to block Twitter and YouTube, just because of a tweet or a video. But because it causes such a problem for the government, they passed a bill allowing just to block some URLs. Not the whole website. So now, many of the news websites have specific pages that are blocked.
