British plugs

Comments

• davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  UK sockets usually have switches on them. There’s no need to unplug things when you’re not using them.

  Also, Lego is a collective noun. Saying legos is exactly like saying sheeps.

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  • Seka_Boi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    this is something I’ve heard a lot from people in the UK, do UK electronics not have switches on them or something? all electronics I’ve ever seen living in the US have a power switch on them, do you think we unplug our stuff to turn them off?

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    • ulterno@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      I didn’t know you people had only one of them.

      I have:

      1. A switch on my appliance
      2. A switch on each socket of my extension board
      3. A switch on the wall
      4. An MCB connected to groups of sockets
      5. An MCB for the whole house
      6. A circuit breaker on the nearby distribution station
      7. A circuit breaker in the power plant
      8. A generator start/stop system in the power plant

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  • devedeset@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think the switches are nice but in the modern world you really don’t need to unplug a vast majority of things. Even my $30 120V USA space heater shuts itself off if it tips over or gets too hot. My cell phone charger pulls functionally 0W while idling.

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  • yermaw@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    But what about when you need to plug your hair dryer in and need to remove a lamps plug and it ends up on the floor and then you get a knock at the door and its your friend and you go out and forget all about it until you get home and completely fuck your own feet

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    • davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Why not drop the plug at the wall, not in the middle of the floor, or get a multisocket? £3.99 at Argos for a little one.

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• Devial@discuss.online ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Best plug+receptor design in the world for electrical safety.

  Worst plug design in the world for bottom of foot safety.

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  • thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Also best for staying in sockets but not getting stuck

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  • Horsecook@sh.itjust.works ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Best plug+receptor design in the world for electrical safety.

    That’s debatable. The plug safety features only exist because of the UK’s uniquely substandard wiring.

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    • Devial@discuss.online ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      No it isn’t. It’s debatable if the safety features are still necessary with modern wiring, but it is objectively safer than any other plug design there is.

      And the design of these features wasn’t because of “substandard” wiring. It is because the UK used to use ring circuits in old houses, which are unsuitable to be protected by central fuses/breakers, necessitating fuses in the plugs. That doesn’t make the system any less safe. As long as a fuse is present, and the circuits are adequately sized, where precisely on the circuit a fuse is located is irrelevant.

      Also, the fuse inside the plug provides an utterly unique advantage that no other country has: The fuse can be used to protect the external wire from over current. Centralised fuses are exclusively designed to prevent over current on the main, internal circuit, they don’t give a crap what happens on the other side of an outlet. A central fuse will do nothing to stop you from pulling 15Amps thought a 3 amp cable. A fuse inside the plug, appropriately sized for those 3 Amps, will in fact protect the cable itself.

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    • psx_crab@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      UK’s uniquely substandard wiring.

      Care to elaborate on this? Imo it does sounds like a win if that’s the case.

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  • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Sounds like the problem is people leaving plugs lying on the ground? Otherwise known as user error.

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    • psx_crab@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Or what they called it: Skill Issue.

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  • toynbee@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You sound like ElectroBOOM.

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• possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You clearly haven’t stepped on a IC chip

  100 pins right in the foot

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  • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    Yeah, but now you can calculate pi to 2000 decimal places.

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    • ulterno@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      No proprietary stuff inside my foot, please.
      Give me an Open Source RISC V chip and I’ll step on it.

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• Ulvain@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  What a weird sex toy, what shapes are British anuses?!

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  • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Image

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    • Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Boris Johnson is practically leftist compared to Trump.

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• nocturne@slrpnk.net ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I see you have never encountered a goat head.

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  • some_designer_dude@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yo, what’s wrong with your goats?

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    • nocturne@slrpnk.net ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Tribulus terrestris is an annual plant in the caltrop family (Zygophyllaceae) widely distributed around the world. It is adapted to thrive in dry climate locations in which few other plants can survive.

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  • insomniac199@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Oh look that’s something ninjas spread on the road when they run.

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  • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You just brought back memories of my siblings and I walking around outside barefoot to the point these things penetrated our shoes more easily than our feet.

    In rural southern Utah these things are literally everywhere. If you go out with cheap foam flip-flops, the entire bottom of the shoe will embedded with dozens of these seconds after you start walking around lol

    Kind of oddly satisfying to pull them out of the soles of shoes tbf

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  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    i have lost two tires to goatsheads in the last month and i hate it

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  • SolSerkonos@piefed.social ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’ve always heard them called sand spurs, and they’re the devil. Nothing in nature needs to be that sharp, ffs.

    At least chestnuts have the decency to be really localized and large, despite being spikey balls of evil. These little fuckers are miniature, everywhere, and can hide in carpet for a solid six months before you notice them the one time you decide to go barefoot.

    I’m so glad we don’t have these where I live.

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    • GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I think you’re thinking of sand burrs. Which I’m pretty sure are different, but also fucking nasty plants. They end up in our poor dogs’ paws late summer/early fall. If I could eliminate any plant. That one.

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  • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m glad they’ve never managed to puncture my sneakers while hiking, because god knows I’ve had enough embedded in my soles when I check.

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    • nocturne@slrpnk.net ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I have lost many bike tires to these guys over the years.

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  • falseWhite@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Do you just casually have those lying around your house? What about sharp glass? Or acid pools? Or tigers?

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    • nocturne@slrpnk.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      They come into the house on your clothes, your shoes, my dog’s fur. Yes they end up lying around the house. The number of times I have stepped on one barefoot in the middle of the night is far too high.

      But why do you leave power cords lying around?

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• tazeycrazy@feddit.uk ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I would be mildly annoyed at 110v in easy reach with metal with out an isolation switch.

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  • Devial@discuss.online ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Having switched outlets wouldn’t make US plugs any safer, at least not in any meaningful way.

    The individual switches on UK outlets don’t really add significantly to safety, they’re mostly just a convenience feature, because for an electrical plug/outlet to even be considered safe in the first place, it has to be always safe, whether it’s powered or not. You can’t rely on people switching off unused outlets instead of doing actual safety design.

    The main factors that make US plugs less safe than UK ones is the potential for exposed metal contacts with a closed connection to the outlet, the lack of internal fuse and the lack of polarisation, and, particularly in combination with the first point, the tendency of comparatively weak grip strength and portruding design that make it easy for a plug to become (partially) unplugged by accident.

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    • Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      One feature of UK plugs I really like is the built in warding of the live/neutral slots. The ground prong is longer to allow for the mechanism to unlock the hot slot when inserted. It’s essentially a built in childproofing.

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  • gigachad@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    So how does it work in the US then? Is there a law that everything needs to be isolated very well, no metal shells allowed or people just getting electrocuted from time to time

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    • Devial@discuss.online ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      They are referencing the lack of isolation on the prongs for US plugs. If a US plug isn’t fully inserted, it’s possible for both of the two prongs to form electrical connections with the outlet, whilst not yet being fully inserted.

      This means a small part of the prongs which are now at 110V potential to each other is exposed, and could potentially be touched by a child, or cause a short circuit if an object gets into the gap.

      So yeah, the electrical code in the US for household plugs is just straight unsafe.

      For comparison, on non grounded EU plugs this could also occur. Which is why non grounded EU plugs are required to either have insulation on the upper half of the prongs, or the plug needs to have “shield” that fits into the recessed recepticles we use, thereby blocking access to the prongs.

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    • Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      :) only the strong survive.

      An actual answer: you very quickly learn to pull in a way that prevents your fingers from slipping onto the prongs, or you just pull the cord to remove things from outlets. That creates its own long term problems, but most people don’t really give a shit because the US is built off cheap plastic shit that you simply replace when it breaks.

      That being said, I’ve received like 5 or 6 good hits of the 110v wake up due to the eccentricities of the US plug. It hurts like a bitch, but probably won’t kill you if you don’t have a pace maker and aren’t grabbing something grounded with the other hand.

      We also only use GFCI in the bathroom and kitchen and don’t use RCD breakers. It’s honestly astonishing that the US electrical system doesn’t kill more people.

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    • Rhaedas@fedia.io ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Never considered that Europeans don't know the wonderful sensation of 110v. It can vary from a slight tingle (it's not even tingle, but I can't describe it) to a "holy shit" moment that throws you back, depending on how and where you touched it and how much current flows. The great thing about A/C is the cycle, unlike a DC current which can lock your muscles and keep you from letting go.

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  • markz@suppo.fi ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah, I think brits and other europeans can generally agree on american plugs

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• sausager@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Is it normal for there to be no cord attached to these? That would stop them from facing this way on the floor

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  • towerful@programming.dev ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    No, the cable comes out perpendicular (ie parallel to the wall).
    Which pretty much guarantees foot-pain orientation

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    • ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Is this another safety factor, i.e. you can’t easily rip appliances out by accident?

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    • cynar@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The type G was designed when things were designed to do their jobs. Any pain inflicted by user error was considered a learning opportunity.

      The cord coming out the bottom means the plug can’t pull out. Combined with the big, chunky plug and pins, means the cable will likely fail first if pulled. It will also fail at the live core first, leaving a safe plug in the wall.

      But yes, the foot pain is… impressive. It’s just blunt enough to not generally penetrate the skin, but it can happen.

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  • markz@suppo.fi ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That’s from a power brick that came with attachments for different regions.

    I’ve handled normal plugs as well and they tend to orient themselves prongs up too.

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• IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  in the UK we don’t need conceal carry, those plugs are easily available everywhere and can be used as a Morningstar

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• AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It needs an unearthed version without the shutter-opening pin, for things like low-power electronic devices with figure-8 mains sockets, phone chargers and such.

  Of course, some BS1363-stan will inevitably show up to argue that as this is a crucial safety feature, unearthed connections should be illegal, much like the Australians who argue that bike helmets should be mandatory in Amsterdam.

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  • MrRazamataz@lemmy.razbot.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    we like our plug sockets to be able to take more weight than a sheet of paper

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    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      brit in the US- it is astounding to me that sometimes a plug can just fall out of the wall on its own

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