It's a huge pain trying to transfer health information, between patients, doctors, different clinics, hospitals, etc. If you try and move far enough, your records might get transferred as a bunch of PDFs or scanned images on a CD.
There is no good standard that ticks all the boxes, so it's not just a matter of getting everyone to agree. A solid standard that addresses all the needs would be amazing, and it would help improve healthcare so much.
People would get control over their own health information (as much as appropriate without causing unnecessary harm), and we could properly use health tracking data from biometrics devices for personalized care. We could do large scale studies using properly anonymized data, and we wouldn't have proprietary systems to try and work around.
Best of all, you could go to a new clinic/hospital/ER and you wouldn't need to enter the same information all over again (likely missing clinically relevant data along the way).
Have you tried the OpenEHR standard? What's wrong with it?
I should have worded it differently, it's possible there is a best standard that I don't know enough about. I don't know enough about OpenEHR, but that's something I'll read more about :)
I completely agree. All the different EMR systems make doing any research just that more tedious. And like you said it’d be so nice to just walk into a health care facility and not worry about paperwork
Some EHRs are pretty good about this nowadays. Epic, for example, allows you to share info across health systems. The user has to enable it though, which is a problem due to low adoption among older patients.
Also, this will be less of a problem in coming years due to increasing consolidation of health systems.
I can't speak to much of this, but I have a friend who works on the technical side of health insurance. Specifically he is helping with FHIR. I did some HL7 work a long time ago which lets health systems talk to each other. FHIR is supposed to be a more comprehensive offshoot (I asked if it was HL7 on steroids and wasn't corrected).
Unfortunately, I may have misunderstood. My career took me a different path than his so I'm way out of date on it.
FHIR is an excellent standard.
Date formats. Can never tell if dd/mm/yyyy, mm/dd/yyyy, yyyy-mm-dd...
The yyyy-mm-dd format (ISO 8601) is the only one that is unambiguous, because no one so far in history has ever used the yyyy-dd-mm format (at least until some xkcd-reading jokester probably will start using it just out of spite). I use ISO 8601 everywhere. It has the additional benefit that filenames get sorted correctly in lexographical order.
As someone that works with huge amounts of data with dates in varied formats... PLEASE let this be standardised. :')
I was gonna reply the "S" in "ISO" stands for "standardization" but apparently ISO doesn't stand for anything.
I was expecting a KFC situation, but no:
Because 'International Organization for Standardization' would have different acronyms in different languages (IOS in English, OIN in French), our founders decided to give it the short form ISO. ISO is derived from the Greek word isos (ίσος, meaning "equal"). Whatever the country, whatever the language, the short form of our name is always ISO.
Many years ago, I came across a forum that formatted dates yyyy-dd-mm. That was such a traumatic memory that I still remember it.
Only way I'd do it is by pissing everyone off. DD/YYYY/MM
how about YYMDMDYY
YMDYYDMY
YMCA
IFTSAT
YTMND
Yeenage Tutant Minja Nurtles D
Let there be carnage: DD/YY/MMMM
ISO-8601 has the answer for computers, and maybe humans too. It's the last way you mentioned for everyday use.
This is why I always use letters for the month when I can. There's no confusing 3 Oct 2023.
March 8th, 2023?
Yes, very good, you used the letters just like they said.
The key you need to press to get to bios.
Fuck yeah. I can't believe this isn't already standard
It's just five options, no?
F2, F8, F11, F5, Hammer?
Esc
Del
Also some laptops will have you push a paperclip into a hole or press some special vendor button (like the "vantage" button or what have you on Lenovo laptops).
Don't forget Del
CEO compensation vs employee compensation.
CEO pay has skyrocketed in comparison to the pay of the employees, this needs to change.
Why is that an issue? If they are the founder of the company I think they deserve it, and if not, there must be some logical reason why they pay that person so much...
I think they're saying it's an issue specifically in reference to how employee wages have grown in comparison. If we look at previous decades, you'll see that CEO and other executive level pay has increased substantially, and has absolutely left employee pay in the dust. That isn't to say people shouldn't be paid more for a good or important job, but we should probably be keeping a watch to ensure those with plenty don't take even more from those with little. And if those at the top are taking more, historically, than their fair share, then that needs brought in line.
This is a very good response. Thanks for writing.
I’d bet most people can get behind the idea that those in leadership positions or saddled with greater responsibility should be compensated more. The issue for me is the magnitude of that compensation.
If they are the founder, they are likely not a public company yet and can grant themselves stock at great rates. Most do-ers aren't CEOs, they are busy doing.
In the USA, it would be to metric. Pretty much everywhere else in the US, NASA, military, science, it's all metric.
It's not even a case of 'everywhere else', it's actually 'everywhere'.
It's just that some sections of that 'everywhere' take the metric system and add an abstraction on top of it.
The imperial system literally defines itself by the metric system.
Pants sizes. For women, drop the even/odd numbering for women and juniors and move to waist and inseam like men. For everyone, implement some sort of standard policy where the actual measured size can't be more than an inch off the stated size (to account for variability in manufacturing and such).
Yes, great answer! Not just pants though, we need a standard size for all women's clothing.
standard policy where the actual measured size can’t be more than an inch off the stated size
Yes please, I'm so tired trying to guess if this 33 is a 34, 35, or 36.
sometimes the clothes measurements are body measurements, and sometimes it's the exact measurement of the cloth itself, and sometimes it's the circumference of the relaxed waistband.
Power tool batteries.
It's not quite what you're talking about because they're still brand-specific, but the batteries are a big part of why I went with Ryobi. They've done a really good job of sticking with their battery ecosystem IMO, and it's now kind of a big part of their marketing so I think they're going to stick with it for a while, at least for their regular 18v hand tools. If I ever come across some old blue Ryobi tools at a yard sale they should work just fine with the lithium batteries even though they were designed for NiCad batteries, and I'm pretty sure you can still get a dual chemistry charger that works for both kinds of battery.
I'm pretty sure that in the same time Ryobi has been around using using essentially the same batteries most of the big names are on their 2nd or 3rd battery standard.
Admittedly they haven't been perfect, they've done pretty well sticking with their 18v and 40v lines, but I think they've had a couple different standards for smaller, lower-powered tools that have come and gone, although I like what they've been doing with their newer USB lithium line so I hope that sticks around. I think they also had a riding mower battery that was only around for a couple years before they replaced it with a new incomparable one.
And I'm very much a DIY homeowner weekend warrior type, if I used my tools professionally I don't know that I'd want to depend on Ryobi, but they're more than adequate for what I need them for.
This factor was why I decided to use Bosch blue cordless. They haven't changed the battery interface so all the 18v tools are compatible and continue to be. Good to know about Ryobi.
The thing is, when you open up any of these batteries, they all have either standard lithium ion 18650 or 21700 cells and they are all nominally 3.7v/cell. In other words, they are standardised in every way except the interface, which just happens to fit one brand of tool.
I have an old Makita NiMH drill that I've converted to use the Bosch batteries. This 25 year old tool can continue to serve me because there's no such thing as a Bosch electron and that's what's so beautiful about the universal laws of physics.
After moving into a house, I decided to buy a small collection of power tools for household work. Batteries were a major consideration. I previously had a 12v DeWalt drill that served me well (still works too), and leaning on that, picked up a kit with a skilsaw, hammer drill, drill/driver, work light, oscillating tool, and a sawsall... all from the 20v line from DeWalt. Since then we added a hedge trimmer, string trimmer and electric mower, all using the same 20v system. We have a small fleet of batteries, which work with all of our tools.
The risk is if DeWalt decides that they're just going to abruptly stop selling the batteries between now and when we need replacements. If so, I'm sure we'll have several expensive options to pick from in order to continue to have tools. I don't think that will happen anytime soon, since all of the batteries we have are compatible with their flex volt thing, which they seem to be happily supporting across their entire ecosystem.
The next tool I'm looking at buying is an impact wrench for some light automotive work; the only power tool type thing I wish that they had, which they currently do not, is a snow blower. If they ever release one that takes the flex volt or 20v "Max" batteries, I'm going to jump at that.
Shoveling snow sucks.
Feels like a snowblower would need a pretty meaty power source, 20V might struggle to cut the mustard. I ended up going with a corded one because I couldn't face another noisy 2 stroke engine.
I'd be okay with them putting out a wired one, they're not foreign to making wired appliances. We have a wired shopvac type thing from DeWalt. It works great.
Camera lens mounts, increased competition within systems would be great.
I thought everyone bought Canon adapters and called it a day lol
Micro Four Thirds was an attempt to do that. It didn't work out so well.
I don't know about just one thing, but I'd love to see electric tools all use the same battery interface set of specs. It's like the bad old days of cell phone chargers
Sometimes I think about standardized retail packaging. What if there was a set of boxes/containers, and they all stacked together nearly and transported nearly. Could save a lot of time and cost on shipping and shelving and potentially make automation easier
Well, it's not cardboard, but I am absolutely fascinated by euroboxes.
A europallet is 1200x800mm.
Then there are euroboxes of 800x600mm, 600x400mm, 300x400mm etc.
They are stackable, reusable and recyclable and come in different types. Fully enclosed, with lid, with grid walls etc.
Machinists use them as toolboxes, bakers to transport bread and veggie vendors stack have their products on the market in euroboxes.
Interesting! Here's a Wikipedia link for anyone wanting to know a little more
Fucking file formats in the scientific community. Way too many ways to do something in science and every place has their own way.
Can we agree on .hdf/.h5?
Didn't have any knowledge about this but I will definitely note this for future projects!
check out the linux community, whole chat about file formats rn
A set of standards of course!
Social networks should be standardised on activity pub.
Networks are a winner takes it all situation. Standardise and allow competition within a network. Then innovation will happen much faster. We are like Romans not using the steam engine. Future historiens will wonder why we were stuck so long.
We're getting there, with Threads implementing AP soon and any network that doesn't do so will be locked into their own world (usually, for the worse).
The problem is that we might get a Google situation, where at first the company adheres and complies to the standard, but then they innovate so fast and confusingly, that they essentially define the standard, and all other networks have to keep up to remain part of the main flock.
In a winner takes all -- that would be Google, and we will see much of the same dark patterns with AP protocols as we do with Browsers now.
I think this abides by the idea of this post, but I would standardize language across the world. Whether it is an existing language or a new language doesn't really matter or maybe a mix of the biggest existing languages.
I remember reading a book where in the future everyone spoke a combination of English and Chinese. They seem pretty incompatible though.
It’s such an interesting idea, isn’t it? Theres a lot to gain but also, a language can mean a lot to people: identity, community, history. If we’re at A, I can look ahead and see the benefits of getting to Z, but I have no idea what all happens in between.
What a dystopian nightmare!
Is it? When migrant workers are able to speak the same language as the natives, they would be able to integrate faster and look out for one another better.
Right now, large corporations make use of migrant workers who are unaware of their rights in host countries to undermine the working rights of the host workers. A diverse workforce is much less likely to unionize, and large corporations know that.
Gonna have to disagree there.
Each language is a culture and each is special, different from every other, and removing or transforming them changes that.
Lens mounts
Good luck with that haha.
Interoperability between social networks, including messengers and the like, so you can choose what software you want to use, including your own.
fediverse!
Are you aware that's literally what the fediverse is?
Yes but it isn't exactly standardized in the sense that it has interop with popular software such as WhatsApp.
Ah, so get more stuff on the fediverse. Good choice.
Our system of measurement. There can be only one!
There already is a standardized measurement system that is used allover the world.
Except for the USA, of course. But that sounds like an USA problem to me.
because murica everything is now meassured in bald eagles.
how tall are you? 2.5 BE
how much is your weight? 27 BE
How old are you? about 1 BE
If it is based on some kind of arbitrary definition and conversions between units of the same measuring system is hard we should do away with it.
Recently had a Stress strain chart which had lbs/inch² as a unit. Also measuring anything small in imperial is just cursed. 5/16 * 10^-2 inches. Wtf. Also mil and thou. Just adopt metric already.
I don't understand the purpose of a nautical mile. It's just a certain number of metres, right? Originally worked out as some percentage of the distance around the equator.
Why not use the standard measurement for distance?
Because maps for naval navigation are based on degrees latitude and longitude. So if you travel at sixty nautical miles per hour in latitudinal direction on this globe you will end up one degree further away from where you started. Angles are important in naval applications as well as aeronautical because ships and airplanes can and mostly do travel in straight lines.
One nautical mile is equal to 1.852 km good luck using that kind of number and converting it to meaningful information on the fly.
With digital systems it is of course not as important anymore (also they are using the metric definition and converting it to nautical miles internally) but courses are still plotted by hand on maps (eg. as a backup solution if your digital system goes belly up). Having a measuring system where one unit corresponds to something meaningful with little need to pronounce decimals all of the time seems like a good idea to me.
So for example you can travel 111.12km in latitudinal direction or 60 nautical miles which is equal to one degree latitudinal distance.
60 is properly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 12 and so on so it makes quick mental calculations easier.
The unit just makes sense for the application it is designed for.
I'm trying to understand what I'm missing.
I might be getting my latitude and longitude confused- but I think that one degree of latitudal (east-west, right?) travel would result in a different distance depending on how far north or south I am? I'm thinking of it like walking around the equator, as opposed to walking in a circle around Santa's house, which is obviously directly on top of the north pole.
But if I travel one degree of longitude, no matter where I am the distance would be the same, right?
May seem like an obvious one considering where we are but standards for communication apps
If everything uses a standard like activitypub/matrix and becomes cross compatible I don't need to have 6 different messaging apps
Provided the standard is completely backwards compatible of course I think it would be awesome to just let people have their messaging app of choice and be able to talk to everyone else (I think there might actually be an EU regulation coming that enforces this for larger messaging apps)
Front panel connectors on motherboards.
Screw drives.
SQL. There are so many SQL dialects. Only if there could be a way to standardize it...
I mean, there IS a universal SQL standard that all of the major dialects are supersets of. It's only when you get into the funky stuff that you start finding dialect-specific syntax and features.
United States specific: The naming system of hospital units or some other standardized indicator of what skill level is actually practiced on that unit.
An ICU should be an ICU, not "Intensive Care Unit" at this hospital, but "Critical Care Unit" at that other hospital and the"Stepdown Unit" here is called "Progressive Care Unit" there, but "Transitional Care Unit" at that other place.
It leads to so much confusion when trying to transfer patients between facilities and/or understand what kind of care they were receiving at a previous admission at a different facility.
I'd replace all the CSS, HTML and JavaScript APIs mess and replace it with something like low-level API/interface that frontend frameworks could compile to.
And why not expand it to OS level? Then we could have very low-effort cross-platform native and web apps.
That's really nice, with WASM garbage collector .NET Blazor could be a lot faster
And why not expand it to OS level?
That sounds like an even more security nightmare than it is now.
I'll cheat the question a bit.
I'd like all critics to have standards and to hew to them. I don't mind if each critic operates by different standards, so long as all critics can articulate their standards and are consistent in their application.
Most movie critics, for example, are offering their reactions to movies. They may review a movie. But nearly all of them are utterly inconsistent (hypocritical?) in their work. They explain their bad review of a film because of X and then praise another film despite it being just as much X as the film they loathed. If they address this conflict at all, it is with a great deal of handwavium - "This film makes it work."
If critics had standards, it would be possible to really compare the things they critique. Without those standards, each thing gets its own bespoke write up. Very entertaining, but useless when we want to know which is better or worse.
Screws. There should only be one blade type maybe torx? Obviously different sizes but one style.
Everyone has the same blood type.
Printer ink cartridges. Printer manufacturers are using a loss leader pricing scheme, and I don't like it. Let them compete!
Switch to laser.
Or if B&W is fine, go for inkless
A lot of the printers these days uses ink tanks. But yeah. Use laser
Wheel PCD and hub size.
If every car and (light) truck had a 5x114.3 bolt pattern and a 66mm hub size we could swap so many wheels around. It would be amazing.
cries in Volvo 5x108 finding non-oem wheels is impossible
Faucet water pressure. Not so strong so that it doesn't make me wet but strong enough to feel confident that I actually washed my hand.
Electric car chargers.
This is the direction the industry is going to go. F#kn standardize it already, with a reasonable future-proofing schema that handles various voltages, and puts out what the car specifies.
That there SHOULD be as many standards as possible!
... why?
Que speed, the one you're in is always the slowest.
Que sorpresa!
Music teaching, we should use the Kodály method everywhere (where it's applicable)
But if only one thing, the hand signs (solmization) should be standardised by how Kodaly imagined it; a relative solmization system with all the 12 notes.
I just can't understand why everyone is focused on the absolute naming in music, absolute distances etc. when all of this can be easilly done with relative solmization. (and, when you need the absolute names or distances/values, you can just put the whole thing in context by just defining "where's the dó" and then you are set.)
Math notation.
Morality.
My moral system makes me think you're evil for this.
Settle down Anakin
My moral system is objectively correct therefore if you disagree with me on anything you must be cringe and ontologically evil
Anyone who uses the word ontologically must be evil and possible self important.
I think you're self impotent for having used the o word too
The inner machinations of your impotency have left you with an evil disposition
Advertising
Yep. Above a family business, or on an advertizing board along with other adverts. I should be able to not see an advert if I don't want to.
Spoons.
This is one I’d disagree with. Everyone’s hands are different. We need different spoons
That can be part of the standard
lol why?
For measuring:
teaspoon 5 ml
dessert spoon 10ml
table spoon 15ml
There is a difference between teaspoons and dessertspoons? 🤔
I have only ever heard of tablespoons and teaspoons. We exclusively used teaspoons as dessertspoons.
What do you eat cereal with?
That was a big point of controversy with my childhood school friends, actually.
I was firmly part of team table spoon. Some of my friends would use teaspoons. I always regarded that kind of strange behaviour as first sings of psychopathy.
No one I know uses dessertspoons for every day use. Maybe some own some but it is most likely the fancy table silver kind of thing that will only get used once or twice a year.
Personally I have never heard about them before today.
Table spoons are for serving up food.
This is why spoons need to be standardised lol
So this is a clusterfuck.
Servingspoons are used to serve up food.
Tablespoons are the largest spoons used for eating but according to the term is now used by many english speaking regions the same way as serving spoon. 15 ml in volume typically
Dessertspoons are used primarily for desserts but also for soup and other stuff. 10ml in volume typically
Teaspoons are used to stir tea and coffee. 5 ml in volume typically.
I only know serving spoons, tablespoons and teaspoons. Desert spoons are in the middle and I have probably a similar sized spoon but never known there is a difference. To me it is a smallish tablespoon. But that is where the confusion is coming from. For some the scale just shifted up or down depending on the way you are looking at it.
Yeah this should be standardized. 🥲
😂
A cereal spoon, obviously.
That's a dessert spoon
So this actually came up recently for me. I wanted to get spoons the same size as the ones I used as a kid to eat cereal, so I ordered some dessert spoons. Turns out, what I actually used as a kid was a teaspoon. My wife was confused when I said the dessert spoons weren't the right size though, since that is the size of spoon she always used to eat cereal growing up.
The spoon paradox continues! 😂
Computer devices. Installing Arch Linux and syncing most Important directories with Syncthing so you can work on every device and be sync around the world.
Here's a more technical one: health information
It's a huge pain trying to transfer health information, between patients, doctors, different clinics, hospitals, etc. If you try and move far enough, your records might get transferred as a bunch of PDFs or scanned images on a CD.
There is no good standard that ticks all the boxes, so it's not just a matter of getting everyone to agree. A solid standard that addresses all the needs would be amazing, and it would help improve healthcare so much.
People would get control over their own health information (as much as appropriate without causing unnecessary harm), and we could properly use health tracking data from biometrics devices for personalized care. We could do large scale studies using properly anonymized data, and we wouldn't have proprietary systems to try and work around.
Best of all, you could go to a new clinic/hospital/ER and you wouldn't need to enter the same information all over again (likely missing clinically relevant data along the way).
Have you tried the OpenEHR standard? What's wrong with it?
I should have worded it differently, it's possible there is a best standard that I don't know enough about. I don't know enough about OpenEHR, but that's something I'll read more about :)
I completely agree. All the different EMR systems make doing any research just that more tedious. And like you said it’d be so nice to just walk into a health care facility and not worry about paperwork
Some EHRs are pretty good about this nowadays. Epic, for example, allows you to share info across health systems. The user has to enable it though, which is a problem due to low adoption among older patients.
Also, this will be less of a problem in coming years due to increasing consolidation of health systems.
I can't speak to much of this, but I have a friend who works on the technical side of health insurance. Specifically he is helping with FHIR. I did some HL7 work a long time ago which lets health systems talk to each other. FHIR is supposed to be a more comprehensive offshoot (I asked if it was HL7 on steroids and wasn't corrected).
Unfortunately, I may have misunderstood. My career took me a different path than his so I'm way out of date on it.
FHIR is an excellent standard.
Date formats. Can never tell if dd/mm/yyyy, mm/dd/yyyy, yyyy-mm-dd...
The yyyy-mm-dd format (ISO 8601) is the only one that is unambiguous, because no one so far in history has ever used the yyyy-dd-mm format (at least until some xkcd-reading jokester probably will start using it just out of spite). I use ISO 8601 everywhere. It has the additional benefit that filenames get sorted correctly in lexographical order.
As someone that works with huge amounts of data with dates in varied formats... PLEASE let this be standardised. :')
I was gonna reply the "S" in "ISO" stands for "standardization" but apparently ISO doesn't stand for anything.
I was expecting a KFC situation, but no:
Many years ago, I came across a forum that formatted dates yyyy-dd-mm. That was such a traumatic memory that I still remember it.
Only way I'd do it is by pissing everyone off. DD/YYYY/MM
how about YYMDMDYY
YMDYYDMY
YMCA
IFTSAT
YTMND
Yeenage Tutant Minja Nurtles D
Let there be carnage: DD/YY/MMMM
ISO-8601 has the answer for computers, and maybe humans too. It's the last way you mentioned for everyday use.
This is why I always use letters for the month when I can. There's no confusing 3 Oct 2023.
March 8th, 2023?
Yes, very good, you used the letters just like they said.
The key you need to press to get to bios.
Fuck yeah. I can't believe this isn't already standard
It's just five options, no?
F2, F8, F11, F5, Hammer?
Esc
Del
Also some laptops will have you push a paperclip into a hole or press some special vendor button (like the "vantage" button or what have you on Lenovo laptops).
Don't forget Del
CEO compensation vs employee compensation.
CEO pay has skyrocketed in comparison to the pay of the employees, this needs to change.
Why is that an issue? If they are the founder of the company I think they deserve it, and if not, there must be some logical reason why they pay that person so much...
I think they're saying it's an issue specifically in reference to how employee wages have grown in comparison. If we look at previous decades, you'll see that CEO and other executive level pay has increased substantially, and has absolutely left employee pay in the dust. That isn't to say people shouldn't be paid more for a good or important job, but we should probably be keeping a watch to ensure those with plenty don't take even more from those with little. And if those at the top are taking more, historically, than their fair share, then that needs brought in line.
This is a very good response. Thanks for writing.
I’d bet most people can get behind the idea that those in leadership positions or saddled with greater responsibility should be compensated more. The issue for me is the magnitude of that compensation.
If they are the founder, they are likely not a public company yet and can grant themselves stock at great rates. Most do-ers aren't CEOs, they are busy doing.
In the USA, it would be to metric. Pretty much everywhere else in the US, NASA, military, science, it's all metric.
It's not even a case of 'everywhere else', it's actually 'everywhere'.
It's just that some sections of that 'everywhere' take the metric system and add an abstraction on top of it.
The imperial system literally defines itself by the metric system.
Pants sizes. For women, drop the even/odd numbering for women and juniors and move to waist and inseam like men. For everyone, implement some sort of standard policy where the actual measured size can't be more than an inch off the stated size (to account for variability in manufacturing and such).
Yes, great answer! Not just pants though, we need a standard size for all women's clothing.
Yes please, I'm so tired trying to guess if this 33 is a 34, 35, or 36.
sometimes the clothes measurements are body measurements, and sometimes it's the exact measurement of the cloth itself, and sometimes it's the circumference of the relaxed waistband.
Power tool batteries.
It's not quite what you're talking about because they're still brand-specific, but the batteries are a big part of why I went with Ryobi. They've done a really good job of sticking with their battery ecosystem IMO, and it's now kind of a big part of their marketing so I think they're going to stick with it for a while, at least for their regular 18v hand tools. If I ever come across some old blue Ryobi tools at a yard sale they should work just fine with the lithium batteries even though they were designed for NiCad batteries, and I'm pretty sure you can still get a dual chemistry charger that works for both kinds of battery.
I'm pretty sure that in the same time Ryobi has been around using using essentially the same batteries most of the big names are on their 2nd or 3rd battery standard.
Admittedly they haven't been perfect, they've done pretty well sticking with their 18v and 40v lines, but I think they've had a couple different standards for smaller, lower-powered tools that have come and gone, although I like what they've been doing with their newer USB lithium line so I hope that sticks around. I think they also had a riding mower battery that was only around for a couple years before they replaced it with a new incomparable one.
And I'm very much a DIY homeowner weekend warrior type, if I used my tools professionally I don't know that I'd want to depend on Ryobi, but they're more than adequate for what I need them for.
This factor was why I decided to use Bosch blue cordless. They haven't changed the battery interface so all the 18v tools are compatible and continue to be. Good to know about Ryobi.
The thing is, when you open up any of these batteries, they all have either standard lithium ion 18650 or 21700 cells and they are all nominally 3.7v/cell. In other words, they are standardised in every way except the interface, which just happens to fit one brand of tool.
I have an old Makita NiMH drill that I've converted to use the Bosch batteries. This 25 year old tool can continue to serve me because there's no such thing as a Bosch electron and that's what's so beautiful about the universal laws of physics.
After moving into a house, I decided to buy a small collection of power tools for household work. Batteries were a major consideration. I previously had a 12v DeWalt drill that served me well (still works too), and leaning on that, picked up a kit with a skilsaw, hammer drill, drill/driver, work light, oscillating tool, and a sawsall... all from the 20v line from DeWalt. Since then we added a hedge trimmer, string trimmer and electric mower, all using the same 20v system. We have a small fleet of batteries, which work with all of our tools.
The risk is if DeWalt decides that they're just going to abruptly stop selling the batteries between now and when we need replacements. If so, I'm sure we'll have several expensive options to pick from in order to continue to have tools. I don't think that will happen anytime soon, since all of the batteries we have are compatible with their flex volt thing, which they seem to be happily supporting across their entire ecosystem.
The next tool I'm looking at buying is an impact wrench for some light automotive work; the only power tool type thing I wish that they had, which they currently do not, is a snow blower. If they ever release one that takes the flex volt or 20v "Max" batteries, I'm going to jump at that.
Shoveling snow sucks.
Feels like a snowblower would need a pretty meaty power source, 20V might struggle to cut the mustard. I ended up going with a corded one because I couldn't face another noisy 2 stroke engine.
I'd be okay with them putting out a wired one, they're not foreign to making wired appliances. We have a wired shopvac type thing from DeWalt. It works great.
Camera lens mounts, increased competition within systems would be great.
I thought everyone bought Canon adapters and called it a day lol
Micro Four Thirds was an attempt to do that. It didn't work out so well.
I don't know about just one thing, but I'd love to see electric tools all use the same battery interface set of specs. It's like the bad old days of cell phone chargers
Sometimes I think about standardized retail packaging. What if there was a set of boxes/containers, and they all stacked together nearly and transported nearly. Could save a lot of time and cost on shipping and shelving and potentially make automation easier
Well, it's not cardboard, but I am absolutely fascinated by euroboxes.
A europallet is 1200x800mm.
Then there are euroboxes of 800x600mm, 600x400mm, 300x400mm etc.
They are stackable, reusable and recyclable and come in different types. Fully enclosed, with lid, with grid walls etc.
Machinists use them as toolboxes, bakers to transport bread and veggie vendors stack have their products on the market in euroboxes.
Interesting! Here's a Wikipedia link for anyone wanting to know a little more
Singular front panel connector plug.
Fucking file formats in the scientific community. Way too many ways to do something in science and every place has their own way.
Can we agree on .hdf/.h5?
Didn't have any knowledge about this but I will definitely note this for future projects!
check out the linux community, whole chat about file formats rn
A set of standards of course!
Social networks should be standardised on activity pub.
Networks are a winner takes it all situation. Standardise and allow competition within a network. Then innovation will happen much faster. We are like Romans not using the steam engine. Future historiens will wonder why we were stuck so long.
We're getting there, with Threads implementing AP soon and any network that doesn't do so will be locked into their own world (usually, for the worse).
The problem is that we might get a Google situation, where at first the company adheres and complies to the standard, but then they innovate so fast and confusingly, that they essentially define the standard, and all other networks have to keep up to remain part of the main flock.
In a winner takes all -- that would be Google, and we will see much of the same dark patterns with AP protocols as we do with Browsers now.
I think this abides by the idea of this post, but I would standardize language across the world. Whether it is an existing language or a new language doesn't really matter or maybe a mix of the biggest existing languages.
I remember reading a book where in the future everyone spoke a combination of English and Chinese. They seem pretty incompatible though.
It’s such an interesting idea, isn’t it? Theres a lot to gain but also, a language can mean a lot to people: identity, community, history. If we’re at A, I can look ahead and see the benefits of getting to Z, but I have no idea what all happens in between.
What a dystopian nightmare!
Is it? When migrant workers are able to speak the same language as the natives, they would be able to integrate faster and look out for one another better.
Right now, large corporations make use of migrant workers who are unaware of their rights in host countries to undermine the working rights of the host workers. A diverse workforce is much less likely to unionize, and large corporations know that.
Gonna have to disagree there.
Each language is a culture and each is special, different from every other, and removing or transforming them changes that.
Lens mounts
Good luck with that haha.
Interoperability between social networks, including messengers and the like, so you can choose what software you want to use, including your own.
fediverse!
Are you aware that's literally what the fediverse is?
Yes but it isn't exactly standardized in the sense that it has interop with popular software such as WhatsApp.
Ah, so get more stuff on the fediverse. Good choice.
Our system of measurement. There can be only one!
There already is a standardized measurement system that is used allover the world.
Except for the USA, of course. But that sounds like an USA problem to me.
because murica everything is now meassured in bald eagles.
how tall are you? 2.5 BE how much is your weight? 27 BE How old are you? about 1 BE
converted from facts here https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/bald-eagle
To rule them all!
While I agree in general, stuff like the nautical mile serve a purpose. I think units that are based on practicality should still be allowed. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-measure-roads-in-regular-miles-and-not-nautical-miles
If it is based on some kind of arbitrary definition and conversions between units of the same measuring system is hard we should do away with it.
Recently had a Stress strain chart which had lbs/inch² as a unit. Also measuring anything small in imperial is just cursed. 5/16 * 10^-2 inches. Wtf. Also mil and thou. Just adopt metric already.
I don't understand the purpose of a nautical mile. It's just a certain number of metres, right? Originally worked out as some percentage of the distance around the equator.
Why not use the standard measurement for distance?
Because maps for naval navigation are based on degrees latitude and longitude. So if you travel at sixty nautical miles per hour in latitudinal direction on this globe you will end up one degree further away from where you started. Angles are important in naval applications as well as aeronautical because ships and airplanes can and mostly do travel in straight lines.
One nautical mile is equal to 1.852 km good luck using that kind of number and converting it to meaningful information on the fly.
With digital systems it is of course not as important anymore (also they are using the metric definition and converting it to nautical miles internally) but courses are still plotted by hand on maps (eg. as a backup solution if your digital system goes belly up). Having a measuring system where one unit corresponds to something meaningful with little need to pronounce decimals all of the time seems like a good idea to me.
So for example you can travel 111.12km in latitudinal direction or 60 nautical miles which is equal to one degree latitudinal distance.
60 is properly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 12 and so on so it makes quick mental calculations easier.
The unit just makes sense for the application it is designed for.
I'm trying to understand what I'm missing.
I might be getting my latitude and longitude confused- but I think that one degree of latitudal (east-west, right?) travel would result in a different distance depending on how far north or south I am? I'm thinking of it like walking around the equator, as opposed to walking in a circle around Santa's house, which is obviously directly on top of the north pole.
But if I travel one degree of longitude, no matter where I am the distance would be the same, right?
May seem like an obvious one considering where we are but standards for communication apps
If everything uses a standard like activitypub/matrix and becomes cross compatible I don't need to have 6 different messaging apps
Provided the standard is completely backwards compatible of course I think it would be awesome to just let people have their messaging app of choice and be able to talk to everyone else (I think there might actually be an EU regulation coming that enforces this for larger messaging apps)
Front panel connectors on motherboards.
Screw drives.
SQL. There are so many SQL dialects. Only if there could be a way to standardize it...
I mean, there IS a universal SQL standard that all of the major dialects are supersets of. It's only when you get into the funky stuff that you start finding dialect-specific syntax and features.
United States specific: The naming system of hospital units or some other standardized indicator of what skill level is actually practiced on that unit.
An ICU should be an ICU, not "Intensive Care Unit" at this hospital, but "Critical Care Unit" at that other hospital and the"Stepdown Unit" here is called "Progressive Care Unit" there, but "Transitional Care Unit" at that other place.
It leads to so much confusion when trying to transfer patients between facilities and/or understand what kind of care they were receiving at a previous admission at a different facility.
I'd replace all the CSS, HTML and JavaScript APIs mess and replace it with something like low-level API/interface that frontend frameworks could compile to.
And why not expand it to OS level? Then we could have very low-effort cross-platform native and web apps.
Well, there is wasm and this proposal: https://github.com/WebAssembly/proposals/issues/16
That's really nice, with WASM garbage collector .NET Blazor could be a lot faster
That sounds like an even more security nightmare than it is now.
I'll cheat the question a bit.
I'd like all critics to have standards and to hew to them. I don't mind if each critic operates by different standards, so long as all critics can articulate their standards and are consistent in their application.
Most movie critics, for example, are offering their reactions to movies. They may review a movie. But nearly all of them are utterly inconsistent (hypocritical?) in their work. They explain their bad review of a film because of X and then praise another film despite it being just as much X as the film they loathed. If they address this conflict at all, it is with a great deal of handwavium - "This film makes it work."
If critics had standards, it would be possible to really compare the things they critique. Without those standards, each thing gets its own bespoke write up. Very entertaining, but useless when we want to know which is better or worse.
Screws. There should only be one blade type maybe torx? Obviously different sizes but one style.
Everyone has the same blood type.
Printer ink cartridges. Printer manufacturers are using a loss leader pricing scheme, and I don't like it. Let them compete!
Switch to laser.
Or if B&W is fine, go for inkless
A lot of the printers these days uses ink tanks. But yeah. Use laser
Wheel PCD and hub size.
If every car and (light) truck had a 5x114.3 bolt pattern and a 66mm hub size we could swap so many wheels around. It would be amazing.
cries in Volvo 5x108 finding non-oem wheels is impossible
Faucet water pressure. Not so strong so that it doesn't make me wet but strong enough to feel confident that I actually washed my hand.
Electric car chargers.
This is the direction the industry is going to go. F#kn standardize it already, with a reasonable future-proofing schema that handles various voltages, and puts out what the car specifies.
Uhhh
https://youtu.be/ZJOfyMCEzjQ?si=nEff3VlOaLXuUEPS
Well damn, that was fast. I only asked for it like, an hour ago. Good job, world.
I thought so too!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/ZJOfyMCEzjQ?si=nEff3VlOaLXuUEPS
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
That there SHOULD be as many standards as possible!
... why?
Que speed, the one you're in is always the slowest.
Que sorpresa!
Music teaching, we should use the Kodály method everywhere (where it's applicable)
But if only one thing, the hand signs (solmization) should be standardised by how Kodaly imagined it; a relative solmization system with all the 12 notes.
I just can't understand why everyone is focused on the absolute naming in music, absolute distances etc. when all of this can be easilly done with relative solmization. (and, when you need the absolute names or distances/values, you can just put the whole thing in context by just defining "where's the dó" and then you are set.)
Math notation.
Morality.
My moral system makes me think you're evil for this.
Settle down Anakin
My moral system is objectively correct therefore if you disagree with me on anything you must be cringe and ontologically evil
Anyone who uses the word ontologically must be evil and possible self important.
I think you're self impotent for having used the o word too
The inner machinations of your impotency have left you with an evil disposition
Advertising
Yep. Above a family business, or on an advertizing board along with other adverts. I should be able to not see an advert if I don't want to.
Spoons.
This is one I’d disagree with. Everyone’s hands are different. We need different spoons
That can be part of the standard
lol why?
For measuring:
teaspoon 5 ml
dessert spoon 10ml
table spoon 15ml
There is a difference between teaspoons and dessertspoons? 🤔
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dessert_spoon
I have only ever heard of tablespoons and teaspoons. We exclusively used teaspoons as dessertspoons.
What do you eat cereal with?
That was a big point of controversy with my childhood school friends, actually.
I was firmly part of team table spoon. Some of my friends would use teaspoons. I always regarded that kind of strange behaviour as first sings of psychopathy.
No one I know uses dessertspoons for every day use. Maybe some own some but it is most likely the fancy table silver kind of thing that will only get used once or twice a year.
Personally I have never heard about them before today.
Table spoons are for serving up food.
This is why spoons need to be standardised lol
So this is a clusterfuck.
Servingspoons are used to serve up food.
Tablespoons are the largest spoons used for eating but according to
the term is now used by many english speaking regions the same way as serving spoon. 15 ml in volume typically
Dessertspoons are used primarily for desserts but also for soup and other stuff. 10ml in volume typically
Teaspoons are used to stir tea and coffee. 5 ml in volume typically.
I only know serving spoons, tablespoons and teaspoons. Desert spoons are in the middle and I have probably a similar sized spoon but never known there is a difference. To me it is a smallish tablespoon. But that is where the confusion is coming from. For some the scale just shifted up or down depending on the way you are looking at it.
Yeah this should be standardized. 🥲
😂
A cereal spoon, obviously.
That's a dessert spoon
So this actually came up recently for me. I wanted to get spoons the same size as the ones I used as a kid to eat cereal, so I ordered some dessert spoons. Turns out, what I actually used as a kid was a teaspoon. My wife was confused when I said the dessert spoons weren't the right size though, since that is the size of spoon she always used to eat cereal growing up.
The spoon paradox continues! 😂
Computer devices. Installing Arch Linux and syncing most Important directories with Syncthing so you can work on every device and be sync around the world.
The law throughout all countries in the world