I don’t think this goes far enough. Kids see adverts for this stuff in so many other places, TV is just one small step. Take a kid into a supermarket and there’s junk food advertised everywhere.
What's with that? I'm constantly getting minor shocks from my Macbook, often when the inside of my forearm or wrist touches a corner of the case. I thought it was a problem with my old one, but my new one does it too.
There is also a constant light vibration when you run your fingers lightly along the body. It's quite Shocking that this is apparently "normal". None of this happens when it's running on battery.
I was honestly questioning whether there was something wrong with the wiring in my house that was causing this (after having multiple MacBooks with the same issue), because the alternative that a company of Apple’s size had such a basic issue seemed so unlikely.
Given that many (most, I'd bet, by far) people don't experience this while you've experienced it on several devices, I wouldn't give up on checking out the wiring in your house.
Unless you're running some serious industrial level machinery, home devices have nothing to do with power line noise. It's cause by the air around the lines and the condition of the lines themselves.
Are you using your Macbook with an ungrounded (two prong) plug or in an ungrounded outlet ? That's the typical cause of this behaviour (or a badly-grounded outlet, which is rare, fortunately).
The shocks you observe are caused by your body slightly grounding the conductive case. They are seen with any conductive case equipment used without grounding. Fortunately, they are not dangerous on doubly-insulated equipment like Macbooks.
My new Macbook is ungrounded, my old one was grounded. I experience these shocks anywhere I plug in, not just in one home/office, although some places are worse than others.
It's due to non-isolated converters where an EMI filter is a part of the line side using X/Y capacitors to cross over. The device isn't solidly grounded but it's also not totally floating either. There's some leakage across it.
> There is also a constant light vibration when you run your fingers lightly along the body. It's quite Shocking that this is apparently "normal". None of this happens when it's running on battery.
I always assumed that was just because the surface has a strange microscopic pattern. I don't have one now, but I believe it only happens in one direction.
Because the transformer doesn't have a metal case and once the voltage is lowered at the transformer the danger of electrical shock is reduced (as in the effects of it) so there's no reason to ground the laptop chassis.
That is probably why it is considered legal to sell the product, yes.
The high frequency buzzing you feel in your hands as you place them on the computer when the incoming power is not a proper clean sinus wave is unpleasant. Stoping that buzzing would be a good reason to ground the adapter even if it not legally required.
> The high frequency buzzing you feel in your hands as you place them on the computer when the incoming power is not a proper clean sinus wave is unpleasant.
I’ve used countless MacBooks over the years across several countries and even on square wave UPS systems. I’ve never experienced anything like this. This is literally the first time I’m hearing about this phenomenon.
The way people are talking about Apple products as having some sort of weird grounding defect in this thread is honestly kind of baffling, given that they obviously have built a product that complies with all international regulations around the world.
This is just how ungrounded devices sometimes act when you are able to come into contact with the neutral via some current path. I have LED light bulbs that are like this, you feel a vibration when touching the exposed metal heatsink of the bulb, and some bulb fixtures have started to be manufactured with a ground wire on the chassis just to eliminate that.
There is a reason to fix it as the comments are showing it, but yes it's not really for safety reason. It's annoying, a shitty user experience and makes it feel like a lower quality product. Even if it's a minor thing some users are still bothered by it but probably not enough to the companies to care.
omg I thought I was the only one. Had this problem persistently when I was at a guest house in the phillipines. I figured it couldn't be safe or good for my laptop but a guy's gotta get paid...
I agree that mechanize is an excellent scraping solution, but for something really basic like this where we're not clicking links or submitting forms it seemed like a bit of an overkill :)
Each to their own, but I find the Mechanize syntax much easier even for simple scraping work. You can use CSS selectors as per the example, or XPath should you want to get more complex.
One drawback is that it doesn't follow the standard $MANPATH directory structure (man/manX/Y.X where X is the section number and Y is the manual page) but instead uses a single flattened directory (man/Y.X).
