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Giant Confused Robot Politely Asks for Directions
Double-Ended Male Adapters Are Illegal, Dangerous and "Possible Immoral"
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MrBlahBlah
05/16/09

In reply to Giant Confused Robot Politely Asks for Directions
Cool, but I'm not sure how it knows to stick to the sidewalks instead of getting run over in the street.
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OMG! Ponies!
05/16/09

In reply to Giant Confused Robot Politely Asks for Directions
Why yes, Mr Robot, I can give you directions. Go down this street 2 blocks, turn left, go another block to Commerce St., turn right and GO TO HELL YOU LOUSY ROBOT!!!
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bosskev
05/16/09

In reply to Giant Confused Robot Politely Asks for Directions
I'm assuming based on tonal quality and performance that the video's narration was also provided by the robot?
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citizen024
01/05/09

In reply to Double-Ended Male Adapters Are Illegal, Dangerous and "Possible Immoral"
whats smoking, sparkling, and purple?

a baby chewing on a power chord.
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Curves
01/05/09

@citizen024: Too soon.
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jmwindle
01/05/09

In reply to Double-Ended Male Adapters Are Illegal, Dangerous and "Possible Immoral"
wow. I've seen this done once in a theatre lighting system. if you're hot-wiring your furnace like this, i don't even know what to say. Darwinism will have the final word, i just know it.
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bobman1235
01/05/09

@jmwindle: Darwinism? Assuming no kids or idiots are around to play with the outlet, how dangerous do you really think it is? Do you find electricity frightening and magical too?
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jmwindle
01/05/09

Just magical enough to know that you're asking for trouble. Yes, you could power your entire house by plugging your 60 amp generator into a 20 outlet and back feeding the current, but a 15 amp branch circuit was never intended to carry a 60 load, and the breakers aren't designed for upstream current. Kids aside, the idiot is the one thinking that they can take the shortcut into powering their house this way. If you're going to tinker with your wiring, at least lug the generator onto the mains panel and shutoff the main breaker. Then your breakers will do what they're intended to do while you're on generator power. Don't forget to unplug when you're done.
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bobman1235
01/05/09

@jmwindle: It's a 2000W generator, and puts out less than 13 amps to each of its outlets, so no, it's not 60 amps, and the 20 amp outlet I plugged it into was certainly capable of the juice.

This was hardly a shortcut so I could get my jollies off or cheat the power company; the temperature was in the 20's and teens here in mid-December and I didn't have power for 13 days. THIRTEEN DAYS. So yes, it seemed like a reasonable risk when the alternative was my 300,000 dollar investment in a house gets destroyed by busted pipes. It's real easy to sit on your high horse and say what you'd do when it wasn't the meter box on your house lying under a tree limb and a foot of snow and the thermostat in your home reading 38 degrees.
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IN THE FACE!
01/06/09

@bobman1235: Don't pay jmwindle no mind, hes just a pussy.
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Steve Burnell
01/05/09

In reply to Double-Ended Male Adapters Are Illegal, Dangerous and "Possible Immoral"
I think the issue is this:

If you had a generator and a male-to-male connector, you could back feed your generated electricity back up through the rest of your house.

IF YOU DON'T DISCONNECT THE CIRCUIT BREAKER FROM THE OUTSIDE LINE, then you're also backfeeding to your neighbors or the worker trying to fix your power outage.

That's the dangerous part and why the general public shouldn't even *try* using something of that nature cuz we all know that the general public, as a whole, is an idiot.
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csullivan
01/05/09

@Steve Burnell: Such as UberJumper's coworker, who wasn't the least bit curious about a male ended plug that was sticking out from under their couch?
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UberJumper
01/05/09

@csullivan:

Co-worker's daughter's daughter :-)

It was a wired that looked like it needed to be plugged in (and thus would be electrically dead) that disapeared into a nook/niche where a former owner had put his entertainment console.

I think it was probably some kind of hack to avoid putting in a legit socket where the console was.
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admoseremic
01/05/09

@Steve Burnell: I think the main problem is that if anyone barely touches this thing while it's live they'll be toast. . .
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Con Seannery
01/05/09

@admoseremic: Not so, good sir. As the average human has 100,000 ohms of resistance, and 500 if the hands are wet, this current would be unlikely to be fatal. Additionally, with the tight spacing of the contacts, you would be very hard pressed to have it connect through anything major.
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IN THE FACE!
01/06/09

@Con Seannery: Shit, after my experience in SA (with the 220, read above), 120 is like licking a 9V...
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UberJumper
01/05/09

In reply to Double-Ended Male Adapters Are Illegal, Dangerous and "Possible Immoral"
These are insanely dangerous and should be pulled from the market.

The young granddaughter of a co-worker was playing by a couch, and she found a male ended power cord sticking out from under the couch. She, being a toddler, stuck it in her mouth. It was a live 120 volt line that the previous owner of the home had hacked together for an unknown reason. The current owners of the house had no idea that it was live.

She ended up frying her lips, blowing out the teeth in her bottom jaw, and badly damaging her tounge.
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BoinK
01/05/09

@UberJumper: So it never occurred to these brilliant people to CHECK it? They were ok with exposed contacts just hanging out from the wall? I'm surprised they survived their teens.
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UberJumper
01/05/09

@BoinK:

I suspect that they moved in and disregarded it. "Look, a power cord that looks like it needs to be plugged into power something, better leave it alone".

It was apparently coming out from the nook/niche where the previous owner had his entertainment console, and disapeared into the wall. They simply never thought it was powered because it looked like a power cord for something that needed to be plugged in, not a wire providing power. Why would they plug it in if they didn't know what it was for?

I'd probably have asked what it was for myself.
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GitEmSteveDave_DefinesTurgid
01/05/09

@UberJumper: So wait, it was sticking out from under a couch, and no one had noticed it when cleaning? Given that the electrical resistance of air is 10,000 volts per centimeter, and a plugs prongs are 1 cm apart, anyone stepping on or touching this thing would have arced it, I.E. the vacuum. Are we expected to believe that they child-safed the whole house and just ignored "Ol Sparky, the wire under the couch"? I'm calling shenanigans!
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UberJumper
01/05/09

@IH8M_SteveDave:

SteveDave:

I was pretty astounded as well. I never saw the layout, the wire, or the couch, but I did see the results. The grandmother brought her granddaughter through our office one day and introduced her too me. Really bad burn scars around her mouth. Her lower lip was basically destroyed. If I remember correctly, the current exited out her wrist.

It's true, it happened, and yes the parents obviously didn't properly child-safe the house. I actually can't remember the details about the house, I *think* my co-worker's granddaughter might not have been at her own parent's house. They were either renting it, or might have been at another person's house when this occured. I do remember that they said it was from a niche/nook where they think the previous occupant had their entertainment console. It's certainly possible that whatever circuit the wire was hooked up to WAS tied to a switch, and if they did check it, it wasn't live at the time.
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IN THE FACE!
01/06/09

@UberJumper: I got an arm full of 220 once. Fortunately I was standing on tile, and the floor was only damp. Never trust electric showerhead-water-heaters when you are in South America (seems like almost all of the hostels there use them).

And NEVER EVER step on the metal drain cover in the middle of the shower basin!
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AKAuser
01/05/09

In reply to Double-Ended Male Adapters Are Illegal, Dangerous and "Possible Immoral"
Gender changers fun.

Knife switches are even more fun.

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FiveLiters
01/05/09

@AKAuser: (Frankenstein Not Included).
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IN THE FACE!
01/06/09

@FiveLiters: That pic is almost as scary as the circa ~1944 fuse boxes that were in the basement of my girlfriend's old apartment building, it friggin shot sparks out of the box and the ceiling when I put a new fuse plug in (there was a switch and it indicated that the circut was manually disconnected via a similar but better insulated knife switch). FTW?!? I almost shit my pants!
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ZLevee
01/05/09

In reply to Double-Ended Male Adapters Are Illegal, Dangerous and "Possible Immoral"
Ass to Ass! Jennifer Connoly will never be the sweet girl from Labyrinth again.
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John Hendow
01/05/09

In reply to Double-Ended Male Adapters Are Illegal, Dangerous and "Possible Immoral"
It appears that middle adaptor was designed by M.C. Escher...
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Purple Dave
01/06/09

@John Hendow:
What you don't see in that image is that there's a tiny little section of cord between those two plugs. When they flexed the two ends such that the plate-side faces are both visible to from the artist's POV, they conceal the stubby cord. Sorry to ruin your fun and all that...
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Curves
01/05/09

In reply to Double-Ended Male Adapters Are Illegal, Dangerous and "Possible Immoral"
Do they have double female ones?
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ripfire
01/05/09

@Curves: Nope. But I know a Chinese finger trap would have a similar effect.
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1350ft.in.a.Concorde.blow*ng.up.balloons
01/05/09

@Curves: Uh ya. They come on power strips and many also have surge protectors on them also. I use a double female to blow dry/flat iron my hair all the time. ;)
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ripfire
01/05/09

@1350ft.in.a.Concorde.blow*ng.up.balloons: "I use a double female to blow ..."

The sentence could've ended there and it would be just fine.
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