Hardware Insights Forum

I have written and published a proper article explaining the awards.

This thread shall now serve as the article discussion, and has accordingly been moved to the Content Comments section.

I've made my own smile and wink icons, drawn in Inkscape in vector form (like the 2016-2017 badges) and rendered at 16×16 pixels as PNGs (currently 8-bit indexed, but possibly 32-bit for more elaborate designs at higher resolutions). The wink has been added in the article text.

You can use them if you want; I've uploaded them here (use the right-click menu to save them). If you want the native SVGs or higher resolutions, post a request.

A "slightly" late correction: Set the category to Articles (I left it on News initially ).

I should also come up with a proper featured image, sometime…

Here's one for you to judge; basic perhaps, but it is at least designed to fit in with the theme of the current badges.

If you think it's decent, I'll go ahead and use it; otherwise, tell me how it could be improved.

(I've also added some tags to the article.)

I somehow can not realize what could it be used for ATM?

OK, I had to add a white background, and pad it out to a square (to stop the sides from being cropped off), but you can see it in the Articles category now.

(Do you think I should try a 144-wide version? I've rendered one, and it does look sharper than the scaled-down 480-wide version. I've also made a square variant, but that doesn't fit in as neatly with the real badges.)

On that note, I worked out how to add right-click menu commands for OptiPNG, so that should streamline things a bit…

Oh, it's like a thumbnail image for the article. Got it

I have a mini-review underway for a product that really goes beyond the pale (or did before I smashed it to pieces), so what do you think of this?
(And to make matters worse, the type of product in question is totally legal, at least in Australia and quite a few other countries. )

Guess that I could award some of the future gutless wonders with that too lol If I get to reviewing anytime soon again, with those tons of things to repair or otherwise process in here

Behold. (And I've added it to the article, too.)

(I may need to obtain a few more power-boards, or PowerCubes, to replace the remaining monsters with; I'm thinking of trying thrift stores, as they might have some older and better-built units. And the UPSes at the office may well contain a few more of the devils; so I'll have to check those out too, even if it means sacrificing warranties…)

Update 2018-06-10: We're in luck, as I've tallied up my Mum's office and we'll only need to replace two remaining El-Cheapo power strips.
(I've already succeeded in getting rid of all but one of the computer-murdering units, and that last one feeds just one UPS so we really don't even need it.)

For that purpose, I can replace one of them with a somewhat-modified PowerCube (I've added a thermal fuse in series with its MOV, and taken out the rather-unreliable shutter mechanisms), and the other with the Arista SPB 1 (shown at the end of my PowerCube review, for size comparison; it contains no TVS).