5mo ago

rule

70 comments

- Male to male USB type-c cable, DuPont connector, widdowmaker cord (I don't care that some fools think male to male extention cords are dangerous, it's just a little electricity)
  
  USB-A to USB-A cables are just one "I need to transfer data between two computers" and one tech illiterate away from blown PSUs.

I can’t think of a not insane reason anyone would need one.
- People want them around the holidays because they hang their lights in the wrong direction and end up with 2 female plugs where they needed one to be male.... So the want the danger adapter because they are not wanting to take anything down
  
  I absolutely do not consider that to be a sane reason.
  
  That happens tooooooooo
  
  Then doesn't that just make a closed loop with no power?
- You can run something like a house off a generator with one if the main breaker is off; in an emergency and the operation reasonably well planned out (don’t overload wall lines you plugged into, etc.) it might be a net benefit. On the reg is asking for death cause there’s safe ways to do it that sane people would plan for on the reg
  
  That would surely only power a single circuit (due to isolation) and if you have to be selective, a critical circuit like your fridge isn't really likely to have a wall port on the same circuit near where you'd happily have your fume emitting generator..
  I'm no electrician but I've generally installed automatic transfer switches (ATS) for mine site server cabinets that then power UPS racks and the transfer switch automatically or manually can switch from mains to generator if mains power goes out (which at a mine is all the time). I feel like a similar and safe system must exist for homes. Or something no different to switching solar to grid and back.
  But again, not an electrician.
- At work, I have a freezer with a couple thousand dollars of product in it. If I lost power and only had male plugs to jerryrig the generator into the circuit, I would. BUT only after turning the mains off and padlocking the panel shut. I didn't have to do that as I just wired the generator directly to the freezer after disconnecting it from the mains.
  
  Wait, an electrical outlet can be an inlet too?

Why do people want them so bad tho
- Christmas lights they accidentally wrapped backwards with the male end of the string all the way at the top of the tree
- If you have a cabin or an RV that's wired for electricity, but you don't have any power coming in on the mains, or you don't have mains, you can backfeed the system by plugging your generator into one of the outlets.
  The proper thing to do is to use a special outlet that's made for a generator, and perhaps an isolator switch as well, but if you don't have those then you might think to yourself, why don't I just make a male to male plug? It definitely works, but it's also dangerous if you or anyone unplugs it while the system is hot.
  
  While true, the this time of the year part of the poster makes me think it’s for people putting up Christmas lights who ran the string backwards and don’t want to switch it around. This is also more dangerous because it ensures that a live male plug is lying around far from the suicide cable itself.
- They want them because they're being lazy/cheap. No, seriously. They're called widowmaker cords for a reason, but inevitably some muppet with two plugs and some wire will come up with the brilliant idea that one of these will work for.
  One really sneaky and dangerous place these get made are generator backfeed cheater cables for houses. You see them in RVs, Xmas lights etc too, but generator backfeeds are super dangerous because they're also juggling two potential power sources. A backfeed is where a house/building is disconnected from the grid just by flipping off the main panel breaker, then it's "backfed" by a generator going into another breaker in the panel. Usually, without any type of safety interlock to keep the mains voltage off when the generator is on, or vice versa.
  Afaik, this is illegal per housing code almost everywhere that I've seen, but still every now and then some yahoo thinks "wait, if I make a two-ended cable and put a receptacle on the house, I can remove the generator easily without any of the expensive safety crap!" And then grabs a live male plug when they fuck up and didn't shut off the generator or mains voltage...
  
  In the US, do you have male sockets at all? We have those on caravans/RVs for shore power in Australia, so you can just plug a regular extension lead in.
- Honestly, I've passed the last 2 or 3 minutes trying to make some use form them up. I've come empty-handed.
  
  They can technically be used to power your home from a generator... but please don't
- I've used them in a pinch to run a circuit on a generator, but it can be really dangerous in several ways.
  You flip the breaker off and plug the generator into one of the outlets on the circuit using one of these and it'll power the rest of the circuit.
  But pretty often the generator will put out a lot more amps than the wire in the wall is designed for, and you've bypassed the breaker. If you hook up too many devices you can draw too much current for the wires and start a fire.

So this is the power of the gay agenda.
- Seems to be unpowered really.

More like dickbutt phobia. This is hate against double sided dildo sex
- Electrified double-sided dildo sex, no less!

Laughs in XLR cables.
- Anderson repeeseeent

Just because a cable like that blows y'alls fuses?!
- It's pure fire!

I made one of these when I was young, poor, homeless, and imminently dying due to being swiftly being frozen to death (with bone tumors coming in second place in the death race). I was able to get an abandoned metal shead with a small heater working quickly in a sudden ice storm using on hand parts and a pirated "outside" power line.
Outside of a significant situation like that... it's not a good idea
- I mean he'll, in high school residential electricity class we had one of these for testing our walls, one time it burnt out a wire and the teacher only let me fix it as I was the top of the class, mind you we were only a class of 6 so...
  
  In those situations, that is the best class sizes for electricity tomfoolery, sprinkled heavily with bravely, and a side of youth assumed immortality.
  It is also a good class size to swiftly move bodies, of things get too bad.
  I had a similar sized class when I apprenticed as an electrical worker via "future farmers if America" funding.
  I learned so many good ways to fix things correctly, and three times that number in "bad" ways to fix things.
  Guerrilla learning method with pratical daily needed subjects is SORELY missed now-a-days.
- That’s badass, glad you made it and wrangled the naughty plug

Funnily enough we had such a cable at home for reasons unknown to me. Then of course the inevitable happened: I was electrocuted by it. I'm fine, but I can definitely agree that such a cable should not ever be made, whatever the reasoning, just don't do it.
- if you have a generator and your house has no electricity, you can power your house by plugging a generator into an outlet.
  I am not an electrician and dont know how this would safely be done, i assume your house would need to be disconnected from the grid or something.
  
  There are cases when electricians working on the street to restore power get shocked by some house generator feeding power back to the grid.
- Naughty plug survivor 🫡

No frotting the electricity
- Sound it instead.

Cliff's Hardware, near 18th and Castro, San Francisco.
Smack dab in the SF Castro District.

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