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Comment by pasta | Hacker News Reader

Static shocks can do damage.

Some weeks ago I was sitting at an office where everything was static (I think they did not ground the power outlets in the desks properly).

Every time I sat down I got a big hit. But one time my laptop crashed and shut down.

So back to the story: it might as well has to do with the shoes employee 2 is wearing and the way he/she walks.

Edit: from the poster on Reddit: "She wears a wool cover to stay warm."

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I have a power cord that has everything but the ground wire cut and the single ground part of the plug plugged into the wall. Near my keyboard, I have the other end of the ground wire exposed. Before I touch my keyboard, I touch it. In the winter, 9/10 times I discharge a little shock. I've ruined keyboards and computers with my shocks, and since I installed this setup, zero problems.

I set up a coworker with this, after he killed his laptop by shocking it.

In my old office, one of the girls got a humidifier to combat the dry air during wintertime. It also seemed to help with the amount of static buildup maybe by making it easier to dissipate. Not a fix by any measure, but it did seem to help a bit. Anyone else tried this?

Yes, a cold water with vibration humidifier. Everything is now covered by a thin layer of white dust from the water. We have medium soft water. A little less chocks I guess but we can't have this white dust everywhere so can't say for sure.

Like an oil diffuser? I think I've read to use distilled water to avoid that problem

We're in a soft water area, so that wasn't a problem! And the type we used heated the water, so most residue would stay within the humidifier.

you could attach a resistor to the ground wire, and touch the other electrode of the resistor, with 2 resistors appropriately chosen (so that you don't fry the MM), you can put a multimeter across one of them and observe the discharge, or alternatively build a simple circuit that lights a LED as long as the voltage across the resistor is higher than some value... Discharging doesn't need to hurt..

That said, depending on the setup (type of ground system and electronics) it is not necessarily safe to touch the ground from an outlet!

30 years ago I was working at a place that just had started with computers. One of the older employees always had computer problems and had been told to spray the floor with softener by th IT staff tired of repairing the fried motherboard.

A few years later another company kept a stack of keyboards next to a lady that kept killing hers. They start working again after a while thanks to keyboards having a nice fuse. Just rotate them until the keyboard port fried one day. She was also wearing a wool sweater, big old stone building in northern Sweden...

>...old stone building

Yeah, I think we often forget that ground from the outlet is not necessarily local ground in the building materials (concrete and whatever)

I always thought that man made fibres were most prone to generating static. Wool, cotton and other natural fibres being least likely. Borne out by putting on or removing so many of those clever outdoors base layers accompanied by crackle that wool never has. Artificial commercial carpets positively encourage static too.

Something something long chain molecules something something better insulators, or something. :)

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