No it isn’t. It’s debatable if the safety features are still necessary with modern wiring and electric code imporovments, but the features are objectively there, and they objectively make the plugs safer.

And the design of these features wasn’t because of “substandard” wiring. It is because the UK used to use ring circuits in old houses, which are unsuitable to be protected by central breaker boards with breakers for each room, necessitating fuses in the plugs. That doesn’t make the system any less safe. As long as a fuse is present, and the circuits are adequately sized, where precisely on the circuit a fuse is located is irrelevant.

Also, the fuse inside the plug provides an utterly unique advantage that no other country has: The fuse can be used to protect the external wire from over current. Centralised fuses are exclusively designed to prevent over current on the main, internal circuit, they don’t give a crap what happens on the other side of an outlet. A central fuse protecting a 16A circuit will do nothing to stop you from pulling 15Amps through a 3 amp cable. A fuse inside the plug, appropriately sized for those 3 Amps, will in fact protect the cable itself. This is particularly useful for extension cords. Other countries without fused plugs need to either just flat out mandata ALL extension and multiplug cords be capable of safely handling the maximum current of a household circuit (e.g. Germany) OR just ignore that rather major safety hazard entirely and just kinda hope that nothing bad happens (e.g. USA) (if you’ve ever wondered, that’s specifically why chaining extension cords together in the US is considered dangerous)

Jup, that’s a really good feature. You can get aftermarket child shutters for EU style plugs as well, but they require you to twist the plug before inserting, making them kinda inconvenient, and they have to be specifically installed by parents. Though I don’t think that’s the worst thing in the world. After all, we don’t make any of our other products or home designs toddler safe by default. It’s generally regarded as the parents responsibility to ensure their home is child proof before they get a child.

But the UK version of just having it in every outlet as a hidden feature that you wouldn’t even notice if you don’t know it’s there is definitely the best approach.

(Though it does make low form factor UK plugs almost impossible, because every plug must have a ground prong, even if there’s no actual safety need to have one)

A GFCI is the same thing as an RCD, they’re just different terms. They both have the same function: detecting leakage current, and isolating the electrical connection as soon as it does.

They are referencing the lack of isolation on the prongs for US plugs. If a US plug isn’t fully inserted, it’s possible for both of the two prongs to form electrical connections with the outlet, whilst not yet being fully inserted.

This means a small part of the prongs which are now at 110V potential to each other is exposed, and could potentially be touched by a child, or cause a short circuit if an object gets into the gap.

So yeah, the electrical code in the US for household plugs is just straight unsafe.

You can see the way to do it properly in this post: Notice how the two L+N prongs only have exposed metal at the very tip, this, if they’re inserted deep enough to create contact, it’s not possible for any exposed metal to still protrude from the outlet.

Having switched outlets wouldn’t make US plugs any safer, at least not in any meaningful way.

The individual switches on UK outlets don’t really add significantly to safety, they’re mostly just a convenience feature, because for an electrical plug/outlet to even be considered safe in the first place, it has to be always safe, whether it’s powered or not. You can’t rely on people switching off unused outlets instead of doing actual safety design.

The main factors that make US plugs less safe than UK ones is the potential for exposed metal contacts with a closed connection to the outlet, the lack of internal fuse and the lack of polarisation, and, particularly in combination with the first point, the comparatively weak grip strength and protruding design that make it easy for a plug to become (partially) unplugged by accident.

Best plug+receptor design in the world for electrical safety.

Worst plug design in the world for bottom of foot safety.

the rest of the “civilized” world was essentially keeping Germany permanently poor, living under such misery breeds a certain…psychotic world view.

Jup. There’s a very strong argument to be made that had the terms of the treaty of Versailles not been so unfair and hostile towards Germany, World War II would have never happened.

Rehabilitation and reconstruction is ALWAYS the best option for the winning side of a large war to extend to the losing side, regardless of who/how/why the war started. Heavily penalising and fucking over the loser for years and years after the war is just going to foster resentment and discontent amongst the population, and make them feel (arguably, with a degree of validity) that conquering th countries fucking them over is the only way their country will see prosperity again.

I mean the layout in terms of functions is generally standardised between PS and XBox style controllers (i.e. “back” is the right hand button, “confirm” is the lower one…) it’s just that the buttons have different symbols for those functions across PS and XBox style controllers.

Fun fact, Spam, as in spiced ham, is actually the origin of the name email spam. There’s a monty python sketch where the name Spam keeps getting incessantly repeated, and based on that sketch the term spam for unsolicited digital messages was coined.

“They’re extradonarily narrow” whilst literally talking about an apple patent that covers ANY type of digital display device whatsoever that has rounded corners.

That’s not even close to “extremely narrow” in scope.

Extremely narrow in scope would be defining a certain radius of curvature (within a small +/- range), in combination with an aspect ratio (again, with a small +/- margin) and for a specific class of screen.

That would be an adequately and acceptably narrow design patent.

And on top, there needs to be a limitation on design patents (any patents, frankly) that makes them unenforceable if the holder of the patent hasn’t had a product matching the patent on the marker for several years, and isn’t currently and actively working on R&D to develop such a product. (With some common sense clauses to prevent abuse, such as ordering one employee to spend 5 minutes a month working on a concept so that you’re technically perpetually engaged in R&D, or listing a depreciated product for an absurdly high price that no one will ever pay, so you can say technically it’s still on the market without needing to actually still manufacturer/support it).

Though I’d be happy to hear counter arguments for why this would be a bad idea.