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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

I thought he was going to say there was current in the water.

I remember showering in Costa Rica at a “hotel” and the shower head was one of those that heats the water (with an electric heater) and it was shocking me the whole time I used it. Probably shouldn’t have used it

Apparently those are common in central and South America.

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I remember this video [1] from bigclive about it. I had no idea it was so common to have live wires in contact with water. At least they are grounded sometimes?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNjA0aee07k

Sometimes. In my experience in living in 3rd world it’s more like extremely rarely. The tingle just lets you know it’s working.

Yup. When traveling abroad in a developing nation it turns out no one bothers to ground their power, so my macbooks (or my friend's laptop) always shocks me if I touch it while plugging in. You kinda taste iron if you keep touching it, but all the locals are used to it.

The only laptops I've seen doing that are Apple laptops, for some reason other laptop brands do not seem to have that problem.

It's the metal case. Most PCs are plastic

it's happened on my friend's laptop and other non-macs laptops too

In developed countries they do the same if you use the duck head on the adaptor instead of the cable with the grounded connector sadly.

And yes it's because of the metal case. It's not the actual mains you're connected to though, just some induction on the PSU shielding.

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