High pitched noises from computer.

[Arcy]

Normally I'd be annoyed by a threadmine but this is interesting stuff.

I'd be inclined to agree but anymore we only have a few active megathreads per section.  If we bitch about newbies threadmining we drive them away.

[ErectileRage]

I once accidentally touched the prong on a 240volt stove plug before. Electricity doesn't scare me!

[Afroman]

Mains voltages aren't "safe" but they are a lot safer than people realize, because the resistance of your skin is on the order of 10s of kOhms.

220VAC is painful, but definitely not deadly unless you are an old man with a weak heart. I've repeatedly touched the chassis of appliances in homes with faulty wiring and gotten the full running from 220V from my hand down through my body to earth, and all that happened was I reflexively moved my hands away from it. Then because I am a curious cat, I would repeatedly touch it and shock myself to try figure out where the fault was, and how much pain I could tolerate. I'd compare the pain level to that of a tattoo gun. Painful, but totally bearable.

110VAC is almost a joke. At one point I cut up a power cable, so there were just the two bare wires - live and neutral. I experimented holding the neutral wire in one hand, and the live wire in the other hand. Basically, it was the worst case scenario of 110VAC across your heart. If I held the wires lightly, it was a mildly annoying painful tingle. Even if I gripped the wires tightly, and TRIED to electrocute myself, it hurt but it was like... haha... wtf is this shit... puny girly man electricity! Kudos to the Americans, I really do think the 110V standard is the better one.

That being said, if mains voltages somehow manage to puncture deeply through your skin, and actually conduct current straight into your bloodstream, it would cook you alive. And discharging capacitors with more than 50VDC through your skin... holy fuck that's not fun.

[korhojoa]

Kudos to the Americans, I really do think the 110V standard is the better one.

B-B-but you need thicker wiring...
Also, we don't have to look up which voltage our devices use, it's just to plug them in and it works. (also, three-phase power in most homes too)

Imagine this: It's a cold winters night and you are happily seated at your computer, resting your bare feet against the warm radiator. You are enjoying watching your porn in Full HD, happy that there's no electrical whine in the backround. For whatever reason you touch the PC's case and WHAMMO! Then your relatives find you several days later with your dick still in your hand. Now wouldn't that be awkward?

I love having my feet on the (electric) radiator on a cold winter's night, but we've never had this problem.
It does apply to laptops, because I could feel it while using the laptop, but not when using the desktop. (I've since stopped using the non-grounded cable since the new computer doesn't whine)
Touching the laptop and the radiator, it would give you a slight tingle, depending on which part of your body had the least amount of contact with the other surface.
The desktop didn't do that for some reason. Dunno why, it did have a metal case.

[Afroman]

B-B-but you need thicker wiring...
Also, we don't have to look up which voltage our devices use, it's just to plug them in and it works. (also, three-phase power in most homes too)

You don't need thicker wiring, because the breakers in homes in both the North America and Europe for the circuits in your home are almost always 20A breakers, so presumably all the homes are wired with wire suitable for 20ishA.
No one looks up the voltage in the US either, because everything sold in the country uses 110VAC. Looking up voltages is something ghetto countries in the middle east do because they have to import all their stuff from every corner of the world.
Three phase power in most homes sounds awesome but that's only because I used to own heavy industrial machinery that required it. I've never met a "normal" person who used 3 phase power for anything.
The only limit of the 110V system is that you have to put your clothesdryer and oven next to a 220V outlet, which are also in American homes, just not on most of the outlets because 220V is simply not needed for anything under 2000 Watts i.e. everything except your oven and clothesdryer.
Here is a delicious picture of Betty.

[Sedi]

Touching the laptop and the radiator, it would give you a slight tingle, depending on which part of your body had the least amount of contact with the other surface.
The desktop didn't do that for some reason. Dunno why, it did have a metal case.

I could be wrong but I think sometimes the CCFL inverter in a laptop or the leads going into the LCD will leak HV into the silvery EMI coating on the inside of the plastic shell and somehow not ruin everything but still let you know it's there. That's what I figured it was when I felt it a few times... I replaced a screen that had been closed onto a solid object sitting above the keys, so the metal frame of the LCD was bent just enough to pinch the wires just enough to make tiny arcs that would cause the inverter to overheat and shut down within a minute.