[capekwasright]

Tangentially related: Boston Dynamics' BigDog, which utilizes hydraulic actuators, would constantly leak hydraulic fluid while operating, be it through normal weepage or catastrophic leaks (e.g. burst hoses). Initially, they used petroleum-based hydraulic fluid, but as they began to operate out in the woods etc, this proved to be untenable, so they eventually switched to using a vegetable-based hydraulic fluid that would biodegrade within a month.

Bonus: when catastrophic hydraulic leaks inevitably occurred and sprayed hot hydraulic fluid over the hot exhaust, you would be rewarded with the lovely smell of a deep fryer!

[electric_mayhem]

Tangentially related, in the early 00’s in a datacenter belonging to a large multinational corporation, there was an IBM as/400 that frequently leaked puddles of yellow liquid.

A puddle was found under it; the puddle was cleaned up. The puddle came back. Repeatedly.

The data center management was perplexed. The internal as/400 professionals were stumped. IBM techs were called in. They assured the datacenter’s management that this couldn’t be coming from the hardware. The machines simply didn’t contain yellow fluid.

No leaks in the ceiling, no overhead pipes, it wasn’t coming from the chassis, no other hardware exhibited this weirdness. Food and drink had never been permitted inside. But it was coming from somewhere, because no matter how many times they cleaned it up, another puddle appeared.

When finally a camera was surreptitiously deployed to surveil the afflicted machine, it didn’t take long before the camera revealed one of the datacenter staff members was just walking up to it and urinating on it. No particular reason, just something he felt like doing.

[whalesalad]

Dunno how anyone could be perplexed ... piss smells like piss.

[BoorishBears]

Piss smells like urea, and urea has industrial uses.

If you have 0 ideas about what it is, and piss seems improbable, I could see the confusion

[eutectic]

Urea doesn't smell like anything much. Leave it long enough and it breaks down to make ammonia, which does.

[vixen99]

Most people can't taste it at all. And let's celebrate its 'invention' by the mammals so many million years ago as a brilliant solution to the problem of how to temporarily store and then excrete nitrogen in a harmless way as against the uric acid route used by birds and reptiles. People who have a test for the nasty H. pylori bug swallow a solution of urea and find it tasteless as far as I'm aware.

[BoorishBears]

You mean like leave it under a hot mainframe?

Or expose it to warm temps in a lot of industrial processes?

It's a distinction without meaning, urea based products like DEF end up smelling like pee/ammonia. Laypeople usually specifically compare it to a cow urine smell

[fnord77]

nobody sniffed it?

[londons_explore]

I bet the IBM workers sniffed it, but then decided they couldn't write in the report "stop pissing on our servers and blaming us!". So instead they wrote "the servers don't contain any matching yellow liquids. We recommend using a camera to identify the source of the leak".

[an_ko]

In industrial settings, sniffing unidentified mystery fluids may lead to a very bad time.

[throwaway41597]

If it was in a datacenter, maybe the ventilation was too hard...

[buildsjets]

The hydraulic autopilot steering system in my boat uses a biodegradable soy-based hydraulic fluid, and it’s at least 20 years old. Similar non-marine products are readily available on amazon.

https://www.pocomarine.com/shop/garmin-tr-1-biosoy-hydraulic...

[FredPret]

The more traditional kind of dog leaks all the time as well

[dtgriscom]

... but they and their excretions are fully biodegradable.