Editing 2503: Memo Spike Connector

{{comic
| number    =  2503
| date      = August 16, 2021
| title     = Memo Spike Connector
| image     = memo spike connector.png
| titletext = Backward-compatible with many existing cables, and can connect directly to phones or tablets if you press them down hard enough.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by an IMPALED TABLET. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This is the 3rd entry in the [[:Category:Cursed Connectors|Cursed Connectors]] series.

The comic depicts a large metal spike with a wire coming from the base. The spike stabs through two other wires, thus creating an electrical connection between the three. As the name suggests, the spike resembles a {{w|Spindle_(stationery)|stationary spike}}, colloquially known as a spike.

Spindles are used to temporarily hold paper by "spindling" or impaling the paper onto the spike (as depicted in the comic). They're most known for their use in restaurants as a way to hold bills that have been paid, or traditionally in offices that work with many bits of paper, e.g. with invoices in a finance department or hardcopy in newspaper editing, to prevent accidental disturbance/shuffling, at the expense of a small puncture mark in each sheet so impaled. In the latter context, the editor might put all the rejected stories onto a spike (rather than into a wastebasket) to prevent them going astray, and this might be the source of the term '{{w|Spike (journalism)|spiked}}'.

The joke of the comic is while any number of non-destructive connection standards exist, a large spike can provide much of the same results: a conductive object that retains a connection of multiple wires in a way that allows electricity to pass through. Indeed, in the early days of Ethernet, {{w|Vampire tap|vampire taps}} were used, essentially spikes that bit into a cable to establish a new branch in the network.  Another type of connection which involves piercing the wire is a {{w|Punch-down block|punch-down block}} where one or more wires are pushed into a cutting channel instead of onto a spike.

Depending on the type of cable it is also likely to create a short circuit, e.g. by connecting both strands of a twisted pair of strands in a typical ethernet cable, or the central wire and the sheath of a coaxial cable. In an enterprise environment, this could even happen on a {{w|Power_over_Ethernet|PoE-Connection}}, which actually carry more noticeable amounts of power (up to 25.5W). Even if this avoided, the single spike may be large enough to mechanically sever a random subset of the finer strands that exist within a multicore cable such as is commonly in use today.

The title text takes this a bit further, saying that phones and other devices can also be connected using this method if you press hard enough to penetrate the device's coverings to reach the electrical parts. The implication is that any cable can be connected to any other cable as a form of universal adapter/splitter/combiner across arbitrary hardware and signal/power standards. In reality, this could be even more dangerous and destroy one or more of the end devices.{{Citation needed}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
''[A memo spike—a long spike that is often used to hold pieces of paper in place—is shown. There is a wire coming out of the base of the memo spike, and two wires are impaled upon it. Above is a title and below is a label.]''

Cursed Connectors #102

The Memo Spike

==Trivia==
The {{W|Vampire tap}} is an actual connector that pierces into a coaxial cable to create an 10BASE5 Ethernet connection.

{{comic discussion}}
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[[Category:Cursed Connectors]]