this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
22 points (73.9% liked)

You Should Know

42184 readers
813 users here now

YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.

All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.



Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:

**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Rule 11- Posts must actually be true: Disiniformation, trolling, and being misleading will not be tolerated. Repeated or egregious attempts will earn you a ban. This also applies to filing reports: If you continually file false reports YOU WILL BE BANNED! We can see who reports what, and shenanigans will not be tolerated. We are not here to ban people who said something you don't like.

If you file a report, include what specific rule is being violated and how.



Partnered Communities:

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

Credits

Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Don't. Even if you understand what you're doing, someone else won't and your family will die in a house fire.

Male-to-male end cables allow for the two leads of an open male end to make contact with anything conductive (including your flesh, causing some pretty gnarly burns) to complete the circuit and start a fire. No conscionable electrician will make these for you. It is the dumbest solution to any problem you're looking to solve. Don't.

Just a reminder coming up on Christmas.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] gointhefridge@lemmy.zip 11 points 3 days ago (6 children)

What even is the potential point for this? Is it just a suicide cable?

[–] jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've heard it called a "suicide plug". A common use for them is back feeding power from a generator into your homes electrical panel during extended power outages.

It can technically work but comes with major safety risks such as:

  • Giving yourself a nasty shock.
  • Electrical fire.
  • Electrocuting anyone who comes in contact with the power line, i.e. a lineman who might assume the line is de-energized.
  • Blowing up your generator when the power comes back on.

The proper way to do it would be to have a transfer switch and generator plug installed. The transfer switch guarantees that when you're running on gen power, you're not back feeding through the transformer out to the power line.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

Electrocuting anyone who comes in contact with the power line, i.e. a lineman who might assume the line is de-energized

This is one of the reasons why your solar panels don't function during a power outage.

[–] RicoBerto@piefed.blahaj.zone 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Christmas lights come in strings with a male plug on one end and female on the other allowing for chaining together multiple lights, sometimes in the course of hanging them up people create a situation where they think they want to connect the two female ends together, thus they think this is the solution.

[–] I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

The hardware store here has a big sign up about this every winter, explaining why, if you think need this you are wrong, if you ask for one we will not give you one, if you make one yourself you will probably die.

[–] Devial@discuss.online 3 points 3 days ago

Nominally you can use it to plug a generators output into a household circuit, which will provide power to that circuit in cases of a blackout, saving you from needing to unplug everything critical and daisy chain 10 multiplugs to the generator.

It could also be used to connect two seperate household circuits together, if only of them is actually live for whatever reason.

In reality you shouldn't his at all, ever. Just daisy chain the extension cords. If you forgot to isolate the circuit by flipping the main breaker (easy to do if there's no power anyway, because of a blackout), and then the grid comes back on, your generator is gonna have a real bad time. And then there's obviosuly the electric shock risk of using something like this.

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago

I hesitate to explain.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

We used one to run power to a garage a couple times per year. It's relatively safe if you use it right and never have power running through the cord until it's fully plugged in.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 7 points 3 days ago

Safe, until someone (accidentally) detaches the wrong end.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

If the electric power company has cut your power, e.g. because you didn't pay, you still can get power from your kind neighbour.