RE: https://nomenloony.com/@nomenloony/116019280517956996
Notes for Americans:
1. Until 1992 you had to wire your own plugs onto new electrical appliances (they were sold without pre-molded plugs).
2. Mains voltage is 230VAC, not 110VAC. It'll kill ya.
3. If you follow ChatGPT's advice *YOU WILL DIE*.
But sure, let's become "an AI nation", build "AI gigafactories" in order "not to be left behind" ... /s
@cstross I'm leaning toward "boom" with these. But I'm not an electrician.
@cstross
If you want a computer to produce wiring diagrams like this correctly, you need something called an expertise system, which is a very different beast from the various technologies we refer to as AI.
@cstross Wow, did not know number 1. I wonder when this practice stopped in New Zealand. I remember my dad wiring plugs but then that was his trade.
@cstross FWIW ChatGPT wants to be WebMD 2.0 so there's that 😑
@cstross Luckily, you can’t follow its instructions in this case because there is no black wire in the standard three-wire bundle.
"1. Until 1992 you had to wire your own plugs onto new electrical appliances (they were sold without pre-molded plugs)."
This is such a stupid thing.
The plug itself is very good, but having to wire it yourself is painfully dumb.
@cstross volts jolt, amps kill.
@cstross I will post what I had posted in the post you are quoting, because it needs repeating:
What the flippin’ hell 😳🙀
Just so ya know I am *NOT* an electrician and I am freaking out at this image 🙀💀!!!
“We’re doomed” 💀
(Please play in your head Bernie Sanders’ doppelgänger/distant cousin when he said that exact line 😹)
@cstross Regarding #3, ... and? 😁
@cstross as an American who was awake and aware prior to 1992 and growing up in a house with multiple appliances from the 60s, I can attest that the only household appliances I ever saw that did not include pre-molded plugs were washing machines, and the one I bought in 2024 was the same way. Agree with the other two. Most houses of the day had a 230 outlet specifically for the air conditioner. Washers tend to be 230 as well. We have standardized on dumb.
@cstross You...you had to wire your own plugs? Seriously?
How many people killed themselves each year because they didn't know how to do it properly and were too impatient to wait for someone who did?
@cstross It's OK, I've called the Darwin Award committee, they'll sort it out.
@cstross 1.a) The UK still had homes wired with the old round pin (2,5,15 amp) plugs until stupidly late.
A 2a round pin gave just enough energy to use a wee heating element to boil a cup of water.
For 13A plugs, the lowest available fuse was 3A so an old boilette could overheat for minutes before the fuse would blow....
oh yeah, well 60hz works better for clocks so..... 
@cstross I do these threads every so often. My most recent one was on my Bluesky where I got four LLMs to draw maps progressively getting more zoomed in (the World, Europe, UK, Yorkshire, York).
Things got worse each time you zoomed in, sometimes with "memories" from the previous image. My favourite was the attached version of Yorkshire.
I'll do another one in a month or two.
There are WORSE AI-generated images of how to wire a UK mains plug. Here's one I saved last year.
@cstross @drahardja I mean, they don’t even SHOW the purple wire.
Okay, you've convinced me! Now I'm ready to support a million satellite data centers.
/s
NO I'M NOT! I'm having another IRONY attack, folks! DO NOT seek AI advice on anything electrical! DO NOT buy into zany schemes for becoming a 'Kardashev Level II Civilization' by making Low Earth Orbit into The Junkyard In The Sky!
@cstross it does not look possible to physically plug this in. If so, that obviously calls for an "AI"-generated adapter to go with the plug!
@cstross the yellow wire is to report when you have put a coin in the appliance to pay for the electricicles
@cstross I figure at the rate of the Accelerando, we are no more than weeks away from "agentic AI" demanding access to people's financial accounts. Hopefully some of those people will be billionaires drinking their own Kool-Aid.
How the Holy Hell did they generate that? I mean, the UK has had more than enough competing designs over the years (some more dangerous than others), but that one's a physical impossibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets:_British_and_related_types
I've used most of those, over the years, plus the bizarre one with standard earth pin, one round pin and one rectangular (rotated 45 degrees) with fuses for both small pins (Bi-phase 240V centre-tapped to Earth!) That one was at Dunlop, and now gone. (Thank the Gods.)
@cstross Ok I think I know who did the wiring in my house now. They literally painted the end of the wire when they used the wrong one.
@cstross
that's what you get feeding Escher drawings to AI bots
@cstross I just asked Gemini to create one for us in Australia. Might try it later… just not sure…
@cstross yeah right….
@cstross
Looks plausible to me 🤣
@cstross M.C. Escher would have been proud.
@cstross At least this one is sufficiently Escher that nobody is likely to die, I guess?
https://wandering.shop/@cstross/116020538899400484
@cstross adding that diagram to the set of things I remember when someone tells me they're adding AI to some product/domain as a Good Thing
@cstross That one at least is so bad that you couldn't actually match it to anything in a real plug. The one up-thread is much worse, because it looks more or less like the innards of a plug.
@cstross Escher's Suicide Plug
@cstross OTOH that one is such obvious garbage that even if someone tried to follow it they'd fail.
The danger is with plausible but wrong. OTOH the one showing phase and neural linked is going to go bang quickly, where swapping phase and earth is a known killer. Maybe that's why the LLM wanted a fused earth?
Was gonna say I knew I had already seen an LLM tell someone to kill themselves with electricity before
@cstross Blive implies the existence of a Bdead
@cstross Genuine Darwin Award territory.
![Robert [KJ5ELX] :donor:](https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/accounts/avatars/115/833/042/784/456/710/original/6c4929fda05c7451.gif "Robert [KJ5ELX] :donor:")
