This has such potential to be an interesting thread of conversation but all I get is a reference to a book that I haven't read and am unlikely to. What example

This has such potential to be an interesting thread of conversation but all I get is a reference to a book that I haven't read and am unlikely to. What examples of non-leaky abstractions do you have? I could imagine something like "newtonian physics" but that leaks into my daily life every time I fire up google maps and get a GPS fix. The OP's example of TCP seems close to the mark, but to be totally honest I'm not convinced. Every time I have to run ping to check whether my hung connection is due to connectivity, I'm breaking the abstraction. And I've had to debug network issues with Ethereal (yes, I'm dating myself). TCP does leak, it's just that most people don't know what to do with it when it does.