opwieurposiu

Anyone know what chemicals do they use to clean the screws on injection molding machines? Something that oxidizes plastic? The handles look like they were made in a 2-shot mold, hard plastic frame with soft plastic touch surfaces. If some cleaning chemicals got stuck between the shots they could eventually leak out and somehow start the exothermic reaction upon contact with air.

I have been to an injection molding shop a few times and it always seemed like a lot of labor was going in to cleaning the molds and the injection screws. Maybe a worker found a shortcut.

Mandarin with the Simplified Characters (4 Tone Mainland Style)

My kids are in elementary school that Chinese language in the morning and English in the afternoon.

Only problem is now I have no idea what they are talking about half the time.

LIGO can accurately measure small (1/2 wavelength) changes in distance, but it does not measure absolute distance.

Absolute is a lot harder to do with interferometers vs. relative measurements.

The JBC has adjustable temperature, which lets you solder faster if you crank it up. The risk is that you will cook either the board or the component you are attaching to the board. This decreases the reliability of the finished assembly, and it is not always visually obvious when you have cooked something. So it is like the gas pedal on a Ferrari, dangerous if you overdo it.

The Metcal does not have adjustable temperature, the temperature is set by the tips you choose. So it only has one "speed" and this reduces the risk of cooking the board.

Both Metcal and JBC are good, ultimately it turns into a sort of Vim vs. Emacs sort of thing, aka personal preference.

Metcal inductive irons are so much better then resistive, use one once and you will understand.

I pugged my Metcal into a power meter the other day. The instant you the tip touches copper, the power jumps from ~4W to ~40W. The power goes back down as soon as the solder melts.

If you can not find good deal on a Metcal, JBC irons are ok. Probably 80% as good soldering experience and often have a better (shorter) handpiece.

When I was designing boards, we had 1-2 standard types of connector we were allowed use, that had an even number of pins. So we would use a different number of pins for each connector on the board, even if some of the pins were not used. It looked kind of silly to see 4 wires in a 12 pin connector but it was better then getting them mixed up.

I got a cable tie gun (aka zip tie gun) and it it does it's job perfectly. Pulls the cable tie to the correct tension and then cuts of the excess perfectly flush. Very satisfying to use. The one I got is made by panduit, but there are many brands that work more or less the same way.

A fair number of cities have done this, Galveston, Sacramento, Seattle.

China creates a superbug via GOF research. Accidently releases it from the lab. Shuts down its own economy. Puts the majority of it's citizens on house arrest, and that is "largely successful"? Please send me the AliExpress link to whatever it is you are smoking, it must be some good shit.

I think the real lesson here is that if you enough government power, there is no need to be competent. The feedback loop is destroyed so you can just do whatever random stupid thing you want until your country collapses like the USSR.

I am lucky to have a family owned drug store near my house. The pharmacists are brother and sister and grandma runs the cash register. Grandma can't walk good or see good, but she sure can sell you some cookies or pens or sunscreen or German sausages. She makes sure you don't leave empty handed.

So much faster then going to CVS, you just give them the scrip, they put the pills in the bottle, done in 5 min. Pay cash, no insurance BS. No ID since they know all their customers. Somehow they always have what you need, even when there is a shortage of a particular medicine.

Sometimes grandma tries to give me free stuff when she rings me up and I am like, no dammit, I need you to say in business or else I am doomed deal with the megacorps again. Take my money please!

If you are trying to spy on something at night, why put lights on your drone?

Every law that the MPs create is itself a threat against the people. A prescriptive law can only be described as "Do what I say, or I will hurt you." Agents of the state create laws, and then take your money and pay that money to men with guns to come after you if you fail to comply.

Law === Threat

"The purpose of the system is what it does." 99% of people are not drug dealers, yet we still experience the deadweight loss of KYC and AML. Therefore AML exists because agents of the state like to screw with us, waste our time, and steal our cash.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

What we need is a legislative budget. Currently there is no limit to the number of laws a person may be subjected to. The amount of law increases every year and will continue to increase until the whole system collapses. We have seen this happen with the fall of the soviet union for example.

Personally, I think the limit should be 200k words. Perhaps half fed half state/local. Moby Dick is 206,052 words long. Even if the limit were a million words, that would be about the length of the harry potter series.

The thing they removed was sulfur. It comes up naturally with the oil, so it is not really an additive. It is cheaper to leave the Sulphur in the bunker fuel that the ships burn so that is what they did for many years. Nowadays they extract the extract the Sulphur and it ends up in big piles. Some of the Sulphur is sold to make various products, but often there is too much to sell and so it just piles up. Sometimes you may spot one of these giant yellow piles when traveling.

https://live.staticflickr.com/2786/4448449049_f5da3bbcea_z.j...

Elemental Sulphur is not very toxic, but I would not recommend eating a bowel of it.

At 85°C, you can store around 10kWh of solar in your water heater. At PG&E power prices, that's worth about $5/day. This is a lot cheaper then batteries, though admittedly less flexible.

https://www.pvh2o.com/

My 8yo boy has gotten much nicer after 8 months of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) training. Before he was in trouble for fighting at school, he was rude to his grandma, and just generally unpleasant.

Now he makes his grandma happy, and is fun to be around. Well worth the $250 a month I pay.

I think martial arts is worth a shot if you are trying to improve your kids kindness. Why does learning how to fight make you kinder? Could be because if you are mean to a more experienced training partner you quickly get your ass handed to you. Could be because boys just need to wrestle. Could be the student creed they recite at the beginning of each lesson. Anyway, I can't argue with results.

This is exactly backwards. Voting software ideally would not be used at all, but if it is used it should at least be open source.

Arguing that voting software should be a secret that only the anointed may possess is anti-democratic in the extreme.

Note that rosin is very flammable, but I guess so is cooking oil.

I agree, I have cut myself a few times as well. The awkward way you have to hold the scythe while you sharpen it does not help.

One thing you might try is an oval-shaped diamond coated sharpening rod. The handle keeps your fingers safer.

A good scythe is faster then a weed-wacker but slower then a lawnmower. I have been using a scythe to cut my lawn for a few years now. It works, and is fun, but you must keep it VERY sharp. If the scythe is not razor sharp it will simply push the grass over instead of cutting it. A sickle will still work when somewhat dull, because it gathers the grass into the concave bit and/or you can hold on the grass with one hand and cut it with the other.

A scythe you have to sharpen every 5-10 min or so, normally you keep a scythe stone in your pocket to do this. The sickle you can just sharpen at the beginning of the day and that will be good enough.

The sharpening process takes some practice to get good at, particularly if you start peening it as well.

https://scytheworks.ca/knowledge-base/chapter-4-preparing-th...

Singapore is the only place I heave heard of where rich and poor live in the same public housing buildings.

Could have something to do with the extreme land scarcity. The super rich still live in private houses though.

Tom Persky at https://www.floppydisk.com/ is selling them for a few more years yet.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/20/floppy_disk_business/...

You can get a 10 pack for 15 bucks.

If you can't boot it, they can't hack it.

A theme in the Toy Story movies was collectors vs. kids, and the toys always seemed to prefer being with the kids.

I think you made the right decision.

The most I ever got shocked with was 560Vdc @ 10mA I know it was 10mA because it popped the safety breaker on the lab power supply. I was testing a clamp circuit for a high power solid state RF matching network. I had been so careful the whole time using only one hand, but I got complacent for one second and BOOM, hand-torso-hand circuit.

It felt like I got kicked in the chest. Was sore for a few days after.

So lucky I was using the lab supply with a good breaker.

The traps that burn a little propane to make warm, moist Co2 work. When I was a kid, I DIY made one using a heater pilot light and some PC fans.

They cost a fair bit to run but it is quite satisfying to empty out the net bag and see the thousands of dead mosquitos.

At 85°C, you can store around 10kWh of solar energy in an average sized water heater. This cut the power bill for my small house about in half.

Fun project, I ended up making a simulator app with fancy graphs and stuff.

https://www.pvh2o.com/

I tried a 3M Cubitron flap disc for the first time last week and it worked great. It really does cut 3x-4x faster than my cheap-o wheels. Soft edges made it easier to blend then my hard grinding wheels.