If you also do this for the container you drain old oil into, you will be able to see if your car is starting to shown signs of oil consumption issues.

E.g. if you know you fill with 3.7qt, and you drain less than 3.7qt, you know you need to start checking the oil level every few fillups.

This kind of neglect of proper maintenance is why it started burning oil at 100k.

If you want your engine to last, you change the oil every 5000 to 7500 miles.

Sadly my parents’ new IP phone service uses the dialtone as some kind of branding trick - you go off-hook and get this “designed” audio prompt that slides into a normal dialtone, presumably to make you remember you’re not just using “the phone”. It was very disconcerting when I first heard it.

Can you link or provide reference to the official US narrative?

Data access is just one issue. Executing CCP propaganda policy (shadowbanning topics critical of the CCP and amplifying topics that divide/destabilize western democracies) is at least as worrisome.

TikTok is actively censoring any criticism of the CCP - a much larger global actor who is currently erasing the Uighur and Tibetan cultures.

Probably did it to stop Republican senators from trolling for anonymous sex a la https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal

I got permanently banned for reporting spam (“abusing the report button”) after I reported 8 Vice articles posted in /r/politics by the Vice self-promotion account in one day.

Meanwhile, the spam guidelines page says - if you create an account primarily to promote your own content, you may be a spammer. And as a redditor, you should report spam.

They lost a 12 year long user who primarily engaged in niche technical subjects who went out of their way to answer newcomers’ questions.

It was a PowerPC OS way before it was ever an (Intel x86) PC OS. First on dedicated hardware, later adding support for PowerPC Macs.

Yes, the center (neutral) is connected to ground somewhere, but is not a suitable ground reference - because current on the neutral creates a voltage drop along the neutral conductor. A North American outlet box has Hot (L1), maybe another Hot (L2), Neutral, and also an earth/ground conductor.

Neutral is not ever treated as ground; it’s impermissible to connect it to any bare metallic surface. Other than not being switched, and being the side that ends up on the threads of a light socket, it’s handled the same way as a hot/line conductor. Just like a 240V system.

It would dissipate static fine, if you were allowed to touch it.

I think that’s incorrect. The ground pin is a dedicated equipotential reference bonded to the earth via an acyclic wiring path which carries no current. It does go pretty directly to the ground rod via the breaker panel ground bus. Neutral happens to be connected to it at the entrance panel for fault clearing, but not really for any other reason.

Since all metallic chassis, pipes, ducts, etc are connected to it and it is available pretty much throughout a building, it is a logical place to connect ESD-prevention gear, even if the earth has little to do with that. (But, a grounding electrode system installed to code should have less than 25 ohm impedance to ideal earth - not exactly a “poor” conductor)

The thing is, it may not “break” them but may introduce difficult to localize unreliable operation - which you may even explain away as buggy software.

IC’s, especially small feature size CMOS, absolutely are subject to ESD damage.

along these lines, you should also know about the condensate drain from your air conditioner – since water drips out of it all summer, it has a tendency to grow some algae or mold, and if it plugs up your air conditioner may flood and ruin your ceiling/walls/floor.

it’s worth paying that AC guy to come by every couple of years even if you’re not on their service plan.

for what it’s worth, coolant is not consumed by an air conditioner – the same initial charge can last 20+ years. Low coolant either means a leak, which the technician should have investigated and fixed or ruled out, or improper initial installation.