WaterWaiver

3 animations, choc with metaphors on the wastes of car infrastructure and the robbing of choice.

I do not know if the author intended for these to be dystopic or utopic, I have a hunch they are playing both games. They try to improve supermarket visit efficiency by expanding the use of cars at the cost of everything else.

Concept 1 (main link): Indoor drive-through shopping. . Less than a few percent of floor space is actual store, the rest is road. The store sprawls across multiple levels because there is no longer any safe space for humans to work or walk in the customer areas.

There is also no basket or trolley to store things in and change your mind. You grab an item and within seconds one of the approximately (by my count) 100 cashiers scans it and bags it. Made a mistake? Just buy your way out of it, you're holding valuable customers up, tut tut.

Concept 2: Drive-through shopping in private. How awfully lonely. A car keeps you apart from others even when you're not in it. Who wants do be vulnerable when not behind the armour of steel and glass? All aspects of life should be like being in a car.

Concept 3: Outdoor drive-through shopping.. After all of this driving we realised we're missing our connection with the outdoor world. Nature.

We could go camping. Shopping outside is a more practical compromise.

Also all the employees were getting hypoxiated from concept 1, so we decided to hide them underground. Now they are kept alert by road debris falling on the pre-sliced kiwifruit trays.

I was reading up on the life expectancy of different building materials when I came across this gem.

Screenshot is of page 122 https://www.portseattle.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/SEA-SIPP%20Technical%20Report%20Appendix%20C%20Life%20Expectancy%20of%20Building%20Materials.pdf

I guess the ethernet cables could last that long, but they rate house wiring to a lower lifetime. Ethernet cables are not "wireless", however.

The only other wireless systems I can think of are garage door openers, but they are definitely not expected to last 50 years.

You can do all sorts of nifty things when you're designing silicon. Including this abomination.

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

Source: datasheet for LM161, a high speed (20ns delay) moderately high voltage (30V) comparator. I'm going to try and make a discrete version of some bits of it and see how well it works. Maybe not this triple-emitter NPN though, I draw the line at components that require livestock sacrifices.

FR2 is the brownish material that many cheap circuit boards are made of. It's a mixture of phenolic resin and paper. Apparently it's quite useful to make gears out of:

Phenolic Gears exhibits superior shear force, help reduce machinery noise, absorbs destructive vibration unlike metal gears, phenolic is non-conductive, protects the mating metal gear train, and are known to outlast metal gears under severe continuous service. (source: https://www.knowbirs.com/phenolic-gears )

(Main pic stolen from here)

(Many more pics here)

Has anyone seen these used anywhere? I've read a hint regarding pool equipment, but I have never seen them there. I assume the fibres allow them to last longer than plastic/resin only gears.

Two different sizes shown. Each has two inductors (grey bits) stuck to a capacitor (middle) with some metal end caps acting as terminals. There is a third terminal underneath the capacitor. Grid in background is 1mm, pics stolen from LCSC.

I think this taped picture is also really cool (stolen from here):

Datasheet: https://www.murata.com/en-global/products/productdata/8796766699550/ENFE0002.pdf

The thickness of the board beneath it gives deceptive scale. It's about 50mm tall and the toroid is 85mm in diameter.

https://www.lcsc.com/datasheet/lcsc_datasheet_2408061709_Ruishen-RSCM11548-5mH-3P_C37634003.pdf

I was looking for much smaller CMCs. Also the datasheet for this part doesn't have impedance-versus-frequency graphs so I refuse to buy it anyway :P

Context: I am not a fridgy, I work with electronics. I would love to answer my question by tearing open a dozen different aircon units, but I'm sorely lacking in that department.

Question: Are there some optional components or fancier materials that are simply too expensive to use in the lower end aircons; but are used in the higher efficiency expensive units? The range of COP/EER I see advertised is wild, from 2 to 6 or so.

I already vaguely understand that these things help efficiency:

• Bigger indoor & outdoor coils with more metal in them (working fluids get returned hotter/colder gives better carnot efficiency)
• Operating compressor at its optimal power level (I believe they have an efficiency vs power curve with a single peak, so it's better to use a bigger compressor if you need more power output)
• Inverter control instead of on/off control (most situations, but technically some use cases will have them on par)
• Choice of refrigerant (but that seems to be controlled in my market, I have not seen many options)

Is there anything else they change? Or is that most of the difference?

Encountered this fellow during bushcare today. He was sitting right on top of the bridal veil roots we were pulling, looking suspiciously like a rock.

We probably shouldn't have handled him (I hope turtles don't get dizzy from being turned upside down). We put him back down and hid him under some other groundcover as a local Kookaburra was loitering.

I could not find any mentions of these problems online. The article itself has no technical detail.

Looking forward to seeing what the actual problems are. It seems this is the first product to market.

Guesses based off the general subject matter:

• Silica concentrations probably vary depending on the exact position of your head, especially since it's heavy material. If you mount this sensor even a few meters away from a worker then it's readings could possibly become invalid, eg because an angle grinder is firing dust a different direction to the sensor.
• Silica is a slang term for a very big category of materials. Some might look completely different to others under certain laser observations, leading to some getting missed (bad) and others materials triggering false positives (leading to the sensor's screams being ignored by workers).
• Self-cleaning routines might be needed to stop it clogging up, otherwise the sensor starts reporting a higher baseline. They could either choose to report this ("pls clean me" light comes on) or ignore it (bury head in sand mode).
• Alternatively it's performance might actually be fine, but perhaps it's still being spruked inappropriately. Government involvement in funding the project might (?) magnify this problem.

Key excerpt:

According to the late professor Patrick Troy, here's how things were viewed in the early 1970s:

"The cost and price of housing continued to be a source of social and political concern. Over the period 1969-1973 the number of years' average earnings required to buy a house site increased substantially. In Sydney, it increased from 1.7 to 2.7 years, while in Melbourne it grew from 1.2 to 1.8 years."

Compare that to what modern researchers have to say about Australia in 2023:

"Since 2001, the national ratio of median house price to median income has almost doubled to 8.5, and the time required for the accumulation of a deposit for a typical property has increased from six years median earnings in 1994 to 14 years currently."

I want to make my own iron-on labels and patches (small scale, for fun).

Does anyone know what the name of the adhesive is? All I can find when I search online are people wanting to sell me pre-made patches, not information about their composition.

I presume it's some low melting point (<100degC) polymer. For all I know a wide variety of things might work (maybe even PETG 3d printer filament, which softens around 70degC, or hot glue shavings), but I'd like to see if I can at least find out the name of what's commercially used.

EDIT: Solved, see https://aussie.zone/comment/4326482