Obligatory link: https://thedailywtf.com/. It's full of stories like this.

  This is because error messages have historically been bad, unintelligible, un-actionable, and hard to separate from soft errors that don't actually matter.

And they've only got worse: "Something went wrong". Well no shit Sherlock, I can tell something went wrong because the thing I tried to do didn't work. Possibly the single most useless error message every created, and it's everywhere. Most of the worst-case error messages in the quoted response are still better than this one.

If you ever run into a developer who thinks "something went wrong" is an appropriate error message, have them killed. Then kill their entire family and pets, burn their house down, and plough salt into the ground where it stood. Finally, put up a sign that says "The person who used to live here thought 'something went wrong' is an appropriate error message to display when something goes wrong. Take note of their current situation when you next add an error message to your software".

Does it matter, for anyone other than hardcore geeks? All the OS would care about is how much power can it deliver and what data speed it provides, not whether the exception handling on page 4,096, section 4(a)2.1, paragraph 4 of the spec, has been implemented.

There are a bunch of similar testers around that do more or less the same thing, e.g. a the ChargerLab Power-Z range or any number of dodgy third-party Amazon/Aliexpress clones. The one thing that definitely doesn't exist though outside of $1,000-and-up USB diagnostic devices is something to report on which of the 800 different ways the downstream device has screwed things up, including failing a basic cut-and-paste of pullup resistors from the spec coughRaspberryPicough.

After the publicity a few years ago of bad USB-C cables they've been mostly fixed, but what hasn't been fixed is the infinite number of broken downstream USB-C implementations. So your charging problems aren't due to the cable, which is most likely fine by now, but because the downstream device is telling the upstream one that it can't take more than 5V 1A. One sure way to tell the vendor has screwed up is when your USB-C device comes with an A-to-C cable to charge it.

Just to clarify the above, I'm talking about USB-C PD, not data throughput, on re-reading it the text is a bit unclear.

Silicon Chip Magazine ran a competition in 2021 to build a noughts-and-crosses machine based on one that Australian electronics legend Dick Smith built from parts from an electromechanical phone exchange. They ran a series of articles on it, including an electromechanical one of which unfortunately only the first page is available online although it gives you an idea: https://www.siliconchip.com.au/Issue/SC/2024/March/Electrome.... If you can find the articles there's a lot of detail in them on how to do it with minimum circuitry. Someone had also done it with relays a few years before Dick Smith, https://www.vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/Radio%20Electronics%.... There's an even earlier one very briefly mentioned in this 1949 newsreel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlNxBb_27CA

EU to US Ambassador: Leck mich am Arsch / Embrasse mon cul / Leccaculo.

US Ambassador: What?

Australia has that in an even more extreme form, although it's more an emu curve there. In fact the CA one isn't really a duck any more either is it?

  "Visit TrumpRx.gov"

Holy crap, the grift never ends! Is he even allowed to do that, use a .gov address to peddle dodgy meds?

"He can't do that" means nothing when the law is never enforced.

Hatch Act won't be enforced until the next administration and next DOJ.

> Hatch Act won't be enforced until the next administration and next DOJ.

How did that last administration's dwelling on persecuting the one before it turn out?

While I don't like the current one and certainly agree that some of its actions are totally unethical, once it's over can we just move on and look forward, not back?

This sounds like something criminals would say / want.

How do we move forward?

Another issue is that people use LLMs to get their biases confirmed: Yes, your race is superior to the other races, immigrants are plotting to wipe you out, the Jews are behind it all, and so on. No (rational) person would ever agree with them on that, but an LLM will.

In my case I've got a contactor on the house power board that disconnects the hot water at night, so it's only heating off solar power. You can also get specialised solar diverters that do the same thing, but they cost literally ten times as much and only squeeze a tiny bit of extra efficiency out of the system.

If you do go down this path, make sure you insulate the crap out of the cylinder and surrounding water pipes, mine only heats once a day and that's once the sun's providing the power for it.