Ask Lemmy

Human rights

Education

Levels of medical care

Income / maximum wealth (wealth caps)

Headlights that don't blind oncoming vehicles

Nuts, bolts, and screw heads.

I know we need various sizes for various tasks, but I shouldn't have to dig through 50 different screwdrivers or ratchet heads and still not have one that'll work.

I just want existing standards to be public and accessible, not locked behind ~~400~~ 600 € ISO. That defeats the whole point of standards.

Feet, yards, inches should be replaced by the metric system.

An open phone standard, and no, I do not mean the 'Open Handset Alliance' that doesn't even live up to its name, I mean like an ATX-equivalent standard for mobile devices.

An open-source ISA already exists in RISC-V, maybe that hypothetical ATX-for-mobile-devices standard could standardize around that for starters, as for an OS, it could standardize around non-Android Linux and maybe even some BSD mobile OSes instead of Google pulling some MS-in-the-'90s crap for Android like they're doing right now.

Europe:

Power plugs
Train gauge and electricity
Online payment without credit cards

World wide:

Driving on the right

I really want everyone to use the metric system. Imperial is just awful to use for most design and machine purposes.

Women's clothing sizes

All online forms.

I fill out a lot of forms and it's ridiculous. Sometimes I'll be at the bottom of the page, and I'll get a message saying that I can't continue until I fill out a 'must answer' question. Sometimes the programmer was clever enough to make it so I'm directed to the question, but more often than not I have to scroll through the entire form to find where I made my mistake.

And, when I have gotten to the end, it would be nice if there was a chance to review everything.

I'm not even going to start with the forms that make you use the calendar tool that takes longer than just entering the date.

Civil rights

powertools' batteries.

The “reject all cookies” button

Printer cartridges and razor blades

Job ads.
To hell with all the bullshitting.

Windshield wiper arms. Everything should be J-hook.

Nothing, we have enough standards already!

https://m.xkcd.com/927/

We’re really all over with Spinosaurus.

Packaging. With everyone buying online the profusion of different types of packaging is wasteful. Packages are processed by machines and in many cases the packaging gets caught on things, gets stuck in conveyor belts or just slides right off. A huge number of items have to be manually processed because of the packaging. Standardised packaging would make automation much easier and lead to faster, cheaper processing. Unfortunately marketers want to use the super shiny slippery packaging with their brand all over it.

If your wine boxes are slippery they deserve to get dropped.

Grocery store layouts.

Women's clothing sizes. My size varies wildly depending on the store and every woman I know says the same thing. It can be really upsetting and at best it's a massive PITA

Battery interfaces. We have a huge variety of batteries for a huge variety of devices. However, when you open the proprietary shell of these batteries what you often find inside is standardized 18650 cells. They have been playing us for absolute fools.

• weight measurements in baking recipes (instead of or in addition to volumetric measurements)

• password requirements. Not using the same password for different sites, just using a formula, but it's hard when some sites require the use of characters that others forbid, or some sites cap password length at a character limit lower than other sites require as minimum.

Police education requirements. In North America, there are like hundreds of different police forces with vastly different requirements. Some will hire highschool dropouts while others require a university education.