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Cake day: November 21st, 2025

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  • Devial@discuss.onlinetoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldBritish plugs
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    5 hours ago

    Stick your finger in a 20A outlet, and you’ll pull out a burned finger. Stick your finger in a 100A outlet, and you’ll lose your hand, or your life. More power will pass through you before the circuit can be interrupted

    Did you just deliberately ignore everything I wrote ? Both 20 and 100amps are several hundred times more current than it needs takes to kill you. And the resistance of your body is way to high to pass more than a few hundred milliamps anyway.

    For a given voltage, the outcome of recieving a shock on a 20A fused circuit is literally indistinguishable and fully identical to that of receiving a shock on a 100A fused circuit. Identical. Literally.

    Our appliance wiring is rated to carry 20A from the receptacle throughout the appliance, or to a secondary current limiter within the appliance. Since the wiring is rated to the 20A the circuit can provide, we don’t need the secondary fuse in the plug. This is part of our appliance wiring standards.

    No it isn’t. I literally just told you you can buy 15A rated extension cords in Japan in the comment you’re replying to. 15, is in fact less than 20, just fyi. Are you deliberately ignoring half of what I wrote ?

    Obviously. That has been part of my point the entire time: You use fewer, higher wattage circuits. UK circuits carries more power to pass through your body than a comparable circuit elsewhere in the world. The household wiring standards in the rest of the world are more restrictive than they are in the UK. You are repeating the exact points that I (and others) have been making from the start.

    Wrong. Again. The current limit imposed by the internal resistance of your body at voltages in the range of 100-200 is a few hundred milliamps. Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself, and anything higher than 100 going through your heart is lethal anyway. The power that will pass through your body depends exclusively and solely on the voltage. The capacity and fusing of the circuit is utterly irrelevant, unless it’s fused at like 40 MILLI amps.

    UK ring circuits are fused at 30 Amps.

    Man I fucking love how you literally just picked out the first line in a comment pointing out another one of the things you said that are objectively untrue (a dead short not blowing a UK ring fuse) and ignore everything else in the comment. You must have seen the comment to quote part of it, and yet you ignore it entirely. You’re clearly and demonstrably not arguing in good faith.

    Reread my comments from the start

    That’s fucking rich, when I’ve literally explicitly addressed every single point you made, whilst you seemingly deliberately ignore half the ones I make. Literally repeating falsehoods I disproved in the comment you’re replying to, whilst you’re replying.


  • Devial@discuss.onlinetoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldBritish plugs
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    5 hours ago

    Breakers on UK household circuits are designed to allow considerably more power than comparable breakers around the world.

    That is utterly irrelevant. Circuit breakers and fuses are designed for the exclusive and sole purpose of protecting the circuit from being overloaded. A 100 amp circuit with a 100 Amp fuse is exactly as safe as a 20 amp circuit with a 20 amp fuse or a 5 amp circuit with a 5 amp fuse. If the voltage is above ~100-200V, all 3 of these are hundreds of times the amount of current it would take to deliver a fatal electric shock, and none of those fuses would trip from you getting shocked.

    To protect humans from electric shock we use residual current devices, which trip at 10’s of Milli amps. And here’s actually an advantage of a ring circuit. It forces you to place RCD protection on every single outlet in the building, instead of skimping on costs by just putting it on the branches that legally require one, like bathrooms and kitchens.

    Those fuses are not needed in Japanese (or North American, or most other) plugs. We don’t need to protect the “external wiring” separately from the household wiring: the household circuit breaker is rated lower than the “external wiring”. Drawing a direct short on the “external wiring” in a UK circuit is not sufficient to trip the UK circuit breaker in the UK distribution panel; they need a secondary current limiter (a fuse) to provide that function.

    That’s just demonstrably untrue. An individual branch of a household circuits in both the US or Japan can easily be fused at 20A (fun fact: European branch circuis, because of the higher voltage that you were raging against in your first comment, can handle more electric load whilst having SMALLER 16A breakers). In both Japan and America you can buy extension cords rated for 10 or 15A. So no. You just told a straight up, unequivocal lie there. And a dead short on a 240V network will literally trip everything. UK ring circuits are fused at 30 Amps. A dead short at 240V with only the internal resistance of copper wiring would pull current in the neighborhood of 1000 amps. 1000, somewhat famously, being slightly larger than 30, making this another lie there.

    And even if it weren’t a lie, how on earth does the location of the fuse make a difference in safety here ? If it’s in the wall or in the plug, as long as it’s there and does it’s job both would be equally safe.

    The function provided by those shutters is achieved in the Japanese wiring by lower voltage, narrow holes in receptacles (allowable because they don’t need as large a contact to safely carry the lower rated current) and whole-house AFCI/GFCI.

    No it isn’t. 110V is still dangerous to a child, and if you think otherwise I hope to god you aren’t, or ever become a parent. Also, as I stated, your plugs literally allow for an electric shock to happen whilst unplugging them because they’re so terrible. As for whole house GFCI, that is by necessity included in a ring circuit that wants GFCI on any outlet at all.

    Also you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship of current and voltage. For a given electrical appliance, with a given wattage, a lower voltage means it needs to draw more current, not less. That’s why the US Japan need to have 20A household breakers, whereas in the EU 16A branches are more than enough, whilst still providing a higher load handling capability than a 20A Japanese fuse. A 1000 Watt microwave plugged into a Japanese socket will draw over twice as much current as a 1000 Watt microwave plugged into an EU or UK socket (which also means it produces 4 times the amount of electrical waste energy as heat, though that is generally negligible for short household cable runs either way. Can make a difference on the scale of a country though).

    And don’t think I didn’t notice you just quietly avoided responding to any of my arguments pointing out the obvious falsehoods in your voltage claim.

    Frankly, at this point, all you’ve done is utterly convince me that you are totally and utterly unqualified to speak on this topic. Almost every claim you make is wrong. And not even just “slightly oversimplified/technically incorrect” wrong, just straight up demonstrably untrue.


  • Devial@discuss.onlinetoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldBritish plugs
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    6 hours ago

    The higher voltage has nothing whatsoever to do with ring circuits. The UK runs on the same 220-240V AC as all of mainland Europe. And Africa. And most of mainland Asia. And South America. And Oceania. And most of the middle east. So not quite “higher than any other country”

    Also those two claims are diametrically opposed to each other. Unless UK people use over twice the amount of electricity than Americans, the higher voltage will lead to LOWER total current. That’s quite literally the specific and sole motivating factor behind choosing a higher grid voltage.

    And the current a conductor can pass has nothing whatsoever to do with it’s safety. You could have 50 amps blowing through a circuit, if it’s at 12V you can still touch it without getting a shock. Your car battery is capable of peak currents of several HUNDRED amps, and those are considered safe enough to just carry around by random people with bare hands.

    Again, the amount of current passed depends only on the voltage, which again, is the same in the UK as all of mainland Europe (and most of the rest of the world except America and Japan), and has been since the early 20th century, so I’ve no idea what you’re trying to go on about there.

    And lastly, no it isn’t. For one, the child safety shutters on all UK outlets are certainly not contained in a Japanese breaker panel. Neither are the fuses in the plug, which protect the external wiring. And nor is the insulation on the lower legs of the contacts contained in a breaker panel. The Japanese plugs are basically the same as American. You can literally get an electric shock if you hold them wrong whilst unplugging. There’s exposed live contacts from when you start unplugging until the prongs break their connection to the outlet.

    Basically everything you said is demonstrably false. I’ve rarely seen someone be this confident and this incorrect about something.


  • It’s possible to that of course, but I doubt it’s worth it. It also couldn’t be adapted as is, because fuses in each plug are always required t for UK plugs, they aren’t for EU plugs. And if you have to adapt a narrow EU plug to hold a replacable fuse would eat into size savings, require adapting the standard and require entirely new production lines for the modified plugs, so almost certainly simply not worth it.



  • Devial@discuss.onlinetoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldBritish plugs
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    8 hours ago

    No, because the rest of the world isn’t America.

    Those ring circuits WERE up to UK standard, and perfectly safe when they were constructed, and nowadays are either still covered by the standard, or grandfathered in, meaning at minimum in existing buildings, they still in fact are up to UK standard.

    The reason other counties don’t use ring circuits isn’t because they’re less safe or inherently worse in any way, which the term “substandard” clearly implies. It’s because they’re less convenient. It’s easier and more convenient to make and use, and easier in terms of individual steps, to make safe seperate fused circuits instead of a ring circuit.

    The reason the UK used ring circuits was because they use much less copper conduit, and given the massive copper everything shortage in the UK during and after WWII, the convenience of modern circuits simply wasn’t worth it.


  • Devial@discuss.onlinetoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldBritish plugs
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    9 hours ago

    No it isn’t. It’s debatable if the safety features are still necessary with modern wiring and electric code imporovments, but the features are objectively there, and they objectively make the plugs safer.

    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 breaker boards with breakers for each room, 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 protecting a 16A circuit will do nothing to stop you from pulling 15Amps through a 3 amp cable. A fuse inside the plug, appropriately sized for those 3 Amps, will in fact protect the cable itself. This is particularly useful for extension cords. Other countries without fused plugs need to either just flat out mandate ALL extension and multiplug cords be capable of safely handling the maximum current of a household circuit (e.g. Germany) OR just ignore that rather major safety hazard entirely and just kinda hope that nothing bad happens (e.g. USA) (if you’ve ever wondered, that’s specifically why chaining extension cords together in the US is considered dangerous)


  • Devial@discuss.onlinetoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldBritish plugs
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    13 hours ago

    Jup, that’s a really good feature. You can get aftermarket child shutters for EU style plugs as well, but they require you to twist the plug before inserting, making them kinda inconvenient, and they have to be specifically installed by parents. Though I don’t think that’s the worst thing in the world. After all, we don’t make any of our other products or home designs toddler safe by default. It’s generally regarded as the parents responsibility to ensure their home is child proof before they get a child.

    But the UK version of just having it in every outlet as a hidden feature that you wouldn’t even notice if you don’t know it’s there is definitely the best approach.

    (Though it does make low form factor UK plugs almost impossible, because every plug must have a ground prong, even if there’s no actual safety need to have one)



  • Devial@discuss.onlinetoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldBritish plugs
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    13 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.

    You can see the way to do it properly in this post: Notice how the two L+N prongs only have exposed metal at the very tip, this, if they’re inserted deep enough to create contact, it’s not possible for any exposed metal to still protrude from the outlet.


  • Devial@discuss.onlinetoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldBritish plugs
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    13 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 comparatively weak grip strength and protruding design that make it easy for a plug to become (partially) unplugged by accident.



  • That’s pretty much universally the view on freedom and rights that today’s neo conservatives have.

    They cry states rights and freedom when someone else wants to ban them from doing anything at all, but the instant someone else is doing something they don’t like, they suddenly make up moral panics to justify federally banning those things.

    That is to say, conservatives by and large don’t have any principles beyond being selfish and hateful towards minoritied. Everything else, including fundamental freedoms and human rights is negotiable so long as it doesn’t negatively affect them OR negatively affects the people they hate more than them. They just use terms like freedom or rights to virtue signal when it suits them, but are just as happy to drop the pretence the millisecond doing so becomes beneficial to their goals.

    A good example is the free speech screeching of conservatives in the heyday of fact checking, Vs. Their tortured justifications and dismissals of Trump’s blatant attacks on free speech and press today.

    Or alternatively, many TERFs and their open willingness to draw support, and work together with misogynistic conservative groups and even straight up open Neo Nazis, just because those groups also hate trans people, all whilst turning around and claiming with a straight face that they’re doing this for women.





  • Devial@discuss.onlinetoFunny@sh.itjust.worksWhy Hitler off’ed himself
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    17 hours ago

    the rest of the “civilized” world was essentially keeping Germany permanently poor, living under such misery breeds a certain…psychotic world view.

    Jup. There’s a very strong argument to be made that had the terms of the treaty of Versailles not been so unfair and hostile towards Germany, World War II would have never happened.

    Rehabilitation and reconstruction is ALWAYS the best option for the winning side of a large war to extend to the losing side, regardless of who/how/why the war started. Heavily penalising and fucking over the loser for years and years after the war is just going to foster resentment and discontent amongst the population, and make them feel (arguably, with a degree of validity) that conquering th countries fucking them over is the only way their country will see prosperity again.




  • Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

    And not allowing them kinda sucks for people who want to talk about smaller, less popular games (or niche topics/interests in general), because any posts on an overarching all-games-including community about a small niche indy game is almost certainly just going to get swallowed amongst the flood of posts about other games, and even if there’s people in that community who would’ve engaged with the post, most of them are likely to miss any given post, because they only make up such a tiny fraction of the total members.

    For example, I love discussing the Eragon book series, but there’s no Eragon dedicated community on Lemmy (at least I didn’t find one), and I don’t really want posts about every other fantasy work ever in my feed, so I don’t really want to subscribe to overarching fantasy book communities.

    And sure, if I explicitly feel the urge to talk about it, I can browse a big sub and filter for Eragon content (though the fact that niche topics posts on big communities are likely to get low engagement probably also discourages people from regularly posting about it in the first place, so there’d be fewer posts to even find), but this still robs me of the ability to see Eragon Posts Show up in my feed when I’m not explicitly looking for them.