241–250 of 311 posts
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Wow. I guess the anti-entrapment pull cord isn't enough? I wonder if you can you put in a wheelchair accessible egress door instead.
I believe it was done as a result of incidents during wildfires. People lost power, couldn't open their garage door, and died in their home. It does make sense for accessibility reasons.
The correct solution here is for the courts to treat Amazon like a retailer. If your local hardware store sells you one of these, then they (assuming the manufacturer cannot be found) assume liability for whatever damage it does.
As politicians would say, Amazon is too big and if we had to close it down, there would be too many job losses, that would be a political suicide.
In my opinion that is one of the problems of late stage capitalism - corporations are allowed to grow out of control like cancer.
I've been shocked by one of these – I was setting up some computers, asked for an extension cord, got handed a male-to-male cord. Didn't notice until I plugged one end in, and grabbed the other while fishing around for it while looking. It never occurred to me that it might be male on both ends. The shock was very painful but the RCD tripped and saved my life. I'm quite grateful to the regulators here in Australia th…
This is one nice thing about electric in the US - household voltage is mostly 110v, with special outlets for the occasional exception that requires 220v. And even in those cases, it's not 220v on one wire, it's just two wires of 110v. I've been shocked by 110v countless times (well, maybe a dozen or so), and it's just an momentary shock (in both senses) and nothing more. Not recommended! Be careful! Circumstances (wa…
> Are there any downsides for using 110v instead of 220v?
Not really, except that most appliances will only use 110v instead of 220v, because most power outlets are 110v with a few special 220v outlets set up specifically for heavier appliances. Usually 110v is perfectly adequate anyway, but electric kettles in America are slower.
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Christmas lights usually aren't grounded like the cable shown. I'm sure there are two prong suicide cables too, though.
You can still plug a 2 prong cord into a grounded cord.
All these cable stories always make me wonder: Is it possible to design a safe gender-less power plug? By that I mean one that has no male and female end but two symmetrical ones. That would not only be safer but also more convenient as there would only be one type of such cable, instead of three: (female-male, female-female, male-male).
I kind of hate that the notice points to a safety code (NFPA 70 in this case) but in order to see it, you have create an account in order to read it. If you want a copy of the code, you have to pay.
UpCodes cofounder here, couldn't agree more. We're fighting the Law Publishers for free, ungated access to the law. They think they own the laws, it's insane. Previous Hacker News thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19617073 We host a lot of laws based on the NFPA 70 BTW (see https://up.codes/codes/general ). We take a ton of heat for hosting the law, it's messed up.
It takes a lot of work to write and maintain these codes. NFPA, a private organization, gets money to do this by charging for the code.
Maybe legislatures should be paying NFPA to develop these things, rather than paying nothing for them and leaving NFPA to figure out a way to fund them. Then legislatures could buy a license for them, or demand that they be put into the public domain.
But it's not fair to blame NFPA for charging for these things after they fronted the significant effort to develop them.
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Really interesting... What are people doing with their lights where this would ever come up though? Edit: From reddit, a use case is found [1]: > They’re actually used my law enforcement whenever they do a raid and seize a computer. If they turn the computer off, they’ll have to try and get past a password. And if the hard drive is encrypted, they’re basically SOL. > This can be a real issue for things like drug deal…
> plug it into the computer’s power strip, then unplug the power strip from the wall For additional opsec, plug your computer directly into wall socket? That is new to me but interesting nonetheless.
Then you just supply A/C power of your own before unplugging fully from the wall outlet.
It's not mentioned, but this is DEADLY for innocent linemen too. They check the line before working and it's dead. They start work and some idiot without a proper transfer switch backfeeds through the transformer hitting them with 14k volts.
How would they get 14kV, assuming the output from the generator is just 110v? Honest question, I was wondering this before and I assume you know more about it than I do.
The US NEC (national electric code) requires any backup generator to use a transfer switch. The switch has on-off-on positions with one "on" being for main power and the other being for the generator. That "off" position in the middle ensures that you can't physically connect the generator and main power at the same time (preventing this issue entirely).
Unfortunately, most people don't know what a transfer switch is or what it does. For people that do know, installation cost is probably an issue as they'll cost a couple thousand dollars to have installed. In my opinion, they should be a requirement on new construction, but I guess people don't want to pay the cost.
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You'd be surprised... They usually can only trip at the end of the cycle - ie. in a 60 Hz power grid, that might take 17 milliseconds. Many take 40+ milliseconds. Luckily, electricity is about 20x safer as long as it is supplied for less time than one heartbeat[1] - ie. 500 milliseconds. Thats how RCD's can be so lifesaving even though they are relatively slow. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_injury#/me…
Note that if you could design a faster breaker, more lives might actually be lost... Imagine you had an ideal switch that could disconnect a circuit instantly. Any devices powered on that circuit with transformers, inductors or motors in (think vacuum cleaners, power tools, microwaves, blenders, etc) will have a current flowing through them, and as that current is interrupted there will be a huge voltage spike - easi…