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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 20th, 2023

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  • No, never. Current charging rates already get close to thermal constraints. Hitting those charging rates either requires accepting much lower power density or using way more metal per cell. This research might inform design changes to improve charging rates, but we’ll never see high capacity batteries charging in a minute.

    The researchers know this and only mention wearables and iot devices applications. The article author erroneously makes the leap to high energy density devices.

    If you don’t care about energy density at all, ceramic capacitors can already charge and discharge in microseconds.





  • You can’t avoid Amazon entirely but your order is still a drop in the bucket that tips the scales in the right direction.

    For small brands trying to establish a presence, the first thing retail buyers and distributers ask is how their Amazon sales numbers look. Having an Amazon presence is not optional for small brands that are trying to grow.

    If 90% of orders come from amazon and only 10% come from their own website, it frequently doesn’t make sense to both pay for Amazon distribution and keep their own warehousing and distribution capabilities. But if more people like you and I convince people to order directly and 40% came from direct orders, that math starts to bias more heavily in favor of setting up their own fulfillment.

    So find some comfort in that you are playing a small part in paving the way to a better future for these companies even if they are beholden to the Amazon monopoly currently.


  • http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/

    Medical devices is an obvious potential application for beta decay power. In the past, nuclear power sources were at a major size disadvantage and chemically powered cells can also provide very long service life at such small power draw.

    So this definitely isn’t nearly as much of a new concept as the media is suggesting. The question is whether they have achieved a compact enough design to be preferential over competing chemically powered cells.

    Another application would be cmos batteries for holding memory states. Using ssds in external enclosures is compelling to reduce the amount of time it takes to actually read and write a full drive. But ssds need to be powered every once in a while. If their internal power storage depletes they lose data. Backup ssd drives with an indefinite power source would definitely be a compelling option. I do however doubt if this technology could ever be cheap enough for such an application. The materials used seem rather expensive.




  • It’s probably important to establish when the crew noticed anomolous pressure readings. Did they continue the flight after sensors indicated a problem? Did the crew follow procedure after the failure, and was that procedure sufficient to protect passengers and crew?

    These investigations are usually centered on whether there needs to be a change in procedure, training, maintenance schedules, and design. It’s not like they’re trying to pin the blame on a pilot pressing a mysterious “eject door plug” button.



  • https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM

    Interviewer: This airplane that was involved in the incident off Western Oregon this week…

    Senator Collins: The one the door plug fell off?

    Interviewer: Yeah.

    Senator Collins: Yeah, that’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.

    Interviewer: Well, how was it un-typical?

    Senator Collins: Well there are a lot of these airplanes going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that 737 max 9’s aren’t safe.

    Senator Collins: Well, some of them are built so that the door plug doesn’t fall off at all.

    Interviewer: Wasn’t this built so that the door plug wouldn’t fall off?

    Senator Collins: Well, obviously not.

    Interviewer: How do you know?

    Senator Collins: Well, because the door plug fell off at 20,000 feet and all the air spilled out. It’s a bit of a giveaway. I’d just like to make the point that that is not normal.

    Interviewer: Well what sort of engineering standards are these 737 MAX 9’s built to?

    Senator Collins: Oh, very rigorous aerospace engineering standards.

    Interviewer: What sort of thing?

    Senator Collins: Well, the door plug’s not supposed to fall off for a start.

    Interviewer: So the allegations that they’re just designed to carry as many passengers as possible no matter the consequences, I mean that’s ludicrous isn’t it?

    Senator Collins: Absolutely ludicrous, these are very very strong vessels.

    Interviewer: So what happened in this case?

    Senator Collins: Well, the door fell off in this case by all means, but it’s very unusual.

    Interviewer: But Senator Collins, why did the door plug fall off?

    Senator Collins: Well air hit it.

    Interviewer: Air hit it?

    Senator Collins: Air hit the plane.

    Interviewer: Is that unusual?

    Senator Collins: Oh yeah. At altitude? Chance in a million!




  • Oh for sure. I do my best to avoid Amazon because most listings are full of made up lies. I know marketing is full of half truths and exaggerations, but I despise shopping at places that try so hard to deceive me.

    I just brought up Amazon since Amazon and monoprice are the most common options I see mentioned when people ask for alternatives to the overpriced options at best buy or whatever.

    Industrial suppliers can be more expensive, but the time and aggravation saved by shopping by specifications you can trust is frequently worth a modest price premium. I’ve switched to Digikey and McMaster for a number of personal purchases after realizing how much of a mental toll deceptive marketplaces carry.



  • This was pretty close to being true for 1080p and lower resolutions. If you get a 4k 120hz HDR display then bandwidth and signal integrity start becoming very important. The article you linked is rather old and really only considers media up to 4k 30fps. Cable quality especially matters at lengths above 4 ft for uhd and higher.

    There’s a lot of snake oil so you can’t just trust marketing claims. I’ve had terrible luck with cables that claim to support high resolutions from amazon and even monoprice. I’ve resorted to buying cables from actual electronics suppliers like digikey since their speed ratings should be accurate.


  • Other countries should also be looking at adding forest area and wetlands in a strategic fashion to improve freshwater retention. Deforesting clearly changes local climates. So we should be able to do the reverse as well.

    Historical accounts make it sound like the vast majority of land east of the Mississippi in the US used to be old growth forest. Between the chestnut blight and over 200 years of logging, most of the old growth forest is gone.

    India has had some notable successes with a grassroots movement to get rural communities to do small earthworks projects to colllect water during the rainy season and let it seep into the ground. They have demonstrated a notable reduction in crop failures during the dry season resulting from the community action.


  • Multiple experiments to detect dark matter directly here on earth have been constructed. They expected a handful of detections a year given the estimates of local dark matter densities. Those experiments have not yielded any detections. This sets very restrictive limits on candidates for particle like dark matter.

    I’m fully aware of astronomical observations that suggest the need for dark matter. That’s not what I was referring to.

    So far, astronomical observations are all we have, the lack of terrestrial observations have only been able to elliminate candidate particles, not measure them.