• UnfairUtan@lemmy.world
        0·
        25 days ago

        ELI5 : why does it feel like it lubricates my garage door and other metalic-y things that rub together?

        • Damage@feddit.it
          0·
          25 days ago

          So unfortunately WD-40 as a product has become actually several different products with different properties, so it’s possible that yours is actually a lubricant. But if you have to reapply it often then no, it’s normal WD-40. What it does is it unblocks and cleans the gaps between moving parts, and it does have a slight lubricant effect but that doesn’t last long, so after a while you have moving parts, where WD-40 has removed any remnant of lubricant, rubbing against each other directly.

          • UnfairUtan@lemmy.world
            0·
            25 days ago

            I see. The one I usually use doesn’t explicitly say it lubricates but that it can “loosen” metals and clean them.

            • notabot@piefed.socialEnglish
              0·
              25 days ago

              If it’s cleaning the metal parts, then it’s actually removing the oil or grease that would lubricate the mechanism. WD-40 displaces and repels water, which can make it a good choice for coating metal you need to store, and it strips oils, which makes it useful for removing old, dirty, lubricants, but it doesn’t really take their place. It can be good for loosening surfaces than have bound together, but that’s its cleaning function, rather than lubrication.

              You’d be better off getting some proper lubricating grease for your garage door, but don’t use too much, or it’ll tend to trap dirt, and you’ll need that WD-40 to clean it off before reapplying it!

  • Alvaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    26 days ago

    WD-40 is a cleaner and not a lubricant, this is the equivalent of using soap.

    Female USB A cables are explicitly forbidden in the USB A spec, so this is some very specific, possibly illegal, fetish.

    • Efflixi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      25 days ago

      I have at least a dozen USB A extension cables at work that supposedly don’t exist then.

    • kungen@feddit.nu
      0·
      25 days ago

      Female USB-A cables were still common enough that we’ve learned to accept it.

      It could be a lot worse. Imagine seeing your robot looking at male-to-male power cables. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s where I draw the line, no robot of mine would have such extreme tastes.

          • TootSweet@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            25 days ago

            USB A extension cables exist and work very well, so I’m not saying this is justified, but…

            My guess for the rationale behind the explicit ban on female USB A cables in the spec is that signals degrade over distance and they didn’t want to try to go to the extra work to make USB host and guest devices hardy enough against noise in the signal to work reliably even in the presence of extension cables.

            Apparently USB host/guest devices are hardy enough against noise to handle extension cables just fine. But I’m thinking that wasn’t planned to be the case by the authors of the spec. Perhaps most USB host/guest devices exceed the spec in at least that particular regard.

            Clearly not all female USB A ports are banned by the spec. Female ports on USB host devices, of course, would have to be allowed or USB would be useless. Given that, I’m guessing an active (powered) extension could be strictly compliant with the spec. (Think of it as a one-port USB hub.)

            • Alvaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              0·
              25 days ago

              As far as I know, it was mostly about not creating confusion about who is the host and who is the peripheral device.

              By limiting female connections only to hosts and male connections only to peripherals, there can never be a situation where you get host/host or peripheral/peripheral.

              This still begs the question: why not allow extension cables? And it seems that they don’t explain anything past the roles issue.