This question came into my mind yesterday, when I caught the smell of burning wires in my room. Turns out, my power supply’s fan was jammed by my pen’s ink cartridge (Don’t ask why)
Fire
- If you ignored the smell, maybe your house would burn down.
Electrocution
- If you for example tried to disassemble your power supply.
Blunt trauma
- If you have a big computer on a shelf it might fall and land on you.
This is especially dangerous if you’re a data hoarder. It’s a slippery slope that can result in you scalping stuff like old DVRs for drives. Your computer might get very heavy.
I actually did #2 because I was fixing one. If you REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING and have ALL THE TOOLS AND PROCESSES NECESSARY and the power supply is worth a few hundred dollars, it MIGHT be worth it.
Guess what? I still blew one up.
Stay safe friends. Recycle it and buy a new one.
It could deny your health insurance
It could give you bad information on making DIY cleaning chemicals.
I expect depression / self harm from doom-scrolling and social media consumption is up there.
Now that so many things we use every day have computers in them, many causes of death are related to computers.
Many modern cars (especially electric cars) are basically computers that drive; cars kill many people. The same applies to planes. Software bugs in medical software might cause you to receive improper care, which could kill you. Computers might control a lock which might lock you in a room until you die of dehydration or starvation.
I think that what happened with the Boeing 737-MAX crashing was that they had a sensor that if it got stuck, the software was programed to make the plane pitch down, even overriding the pilot’s own input. That resulted in the deaths of 346 people.
If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going.
