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Male to male USB type-c cable, DuPont connector, widdowmaker cord (I don't care that some fools think male to male extention cords are dangerous, it's just a little electricity)

People want them around the holidays because they hang their lights in the wrong direction and end up with 2 female plugs where they needed one to be male.... So the want the danger adapter because they are not wanting to take anything down

You can run something like a house off a generator with one if the main breaker is off; in an emergency and the operation reasonably well planned out (don’t overload wall lines you plugged into, etc.) it might be a net benefit. On the reg is asking for death cause there’s safe ways to do it that sane people would plan for on the reg

At work, I have a freezer with a couple thousand dollars of product in it. If I lost power and only had male plugs to jerryrig the generator into the circuit, I would. BUT only after turning the mains off and padlocking the panel shut. I didn't have to do that as I just wired the generator directly to the freezer after disconnecting it from the mains.

Christmas lights they accidentally wrapped backwards with the male end of the string all the way at the top of the tree

If you have a cabin or an RV that's wired for electricity, but you don't have any power coming in on the mains, or you don't have mains, you can backfeed the system by plugging your generator into one of the outlets.

The proper thing to do is to use a special outlet that's made for a generator, and perhaps an isolator switch as well, but if you don't have those then you might think to yourself, why don't I just make a male to male plug? It definitely works, but it's also dangerous if you or anyone unplugs it while the system is hot.

They want them because they're being lazy/cheap. No, seriously. They're called widowmaker cords for a reason, but inevitably some muppet with two plugs and some wire will come up with the brilliant idea that one of these will work for.

One really sneaky and dangerous place these get made are generator backfeed cheater cables for houses. You see them in RVs, Xmas lights etc too, but generator backfeeds are super dangerous because they're also juggling two potential power sources. A backfeed is where a house/building is disconnected from the grid just by flipping off the main panel breaker, then it's "backfed" by a generator going into another breaker in the panel. Usually, without any type of safety interlock to keep the mains voltage off when the generator is on, or vice versa.

Afaik, this is illegal per housing code almost everywhere that I've seen, but still every now and then some yahoo thinks "wait, if I make a two-ended cable and put a receptacle on the house, I can remove the generator easily without any of the expensive safety crap!" And then grabs a live male plug when they fuck up and didn't shut off the generator or mains voltage...

Honestly, I've passed the last 2 or 3 minutes trying to make some use form them up. I've come empty-handed.

I've used them in a pinch to run a circuit on a generator, but it can be really dangerous in several ways.

You flip the breaker off and plug the generator into one of the outlets on the circuit using one of these and it'll power the rest of the circuit.

But pretty often the generator will put out a lot more amps than the wire in the wall is designed for, and you've bypassed the breaker. If you hook up too many devices you can draw too much current for the wires and start a fire.

It's pure fire!

I mean he'll, in high school residential electricity class we had one of these for testing our walls, one time it burnt out a wire and the teacher only let me fix it as I was the top of the class, mind you we were only a class of 6 so...

if you have a generator and your house has no electricity, you can power your house by plugging a generator into an outlet.

I am not an electrician and dont know how this would safely be done, i assume your house would need to be disconnected from the grid or something.