#USA law empowers federal judges to deputize whoever they want to enforce the law and demand help from the posse comitatus. #politics
Bureaucracy isn’t measured in bureaucrats; less bureaucrats might slow down bureaucracy rather than speeding it up. #USA #politics
Lecture #video #toread about #switched-reluctance (?) reluctance synchronous rotor theory. #hardware #motors
Lecture #video #toread about #switched-reluctance (?) reluctance synchronous rotor design. #hardware #motors
Hour-long #video #toread about #switched-reluctance (?) reluctance synchronous #motors. #hardware
#video #toread about #switched-reluctance #motors #hardware, #SynRM demonstration
35-minute lecture (so-called “webinar”) #video #toread about #switched-reluctance #motors design. #hardware
#video #toread about magnetic field theory in #switched-reluctance #motors #hardware
another #video #toread about #switched-reluctance #motors #hardware
#video #toread about #DIY building #switched-reluctance #motors #hardware
#video lecture #toread about #switched-reluctance #motors #hardware
#switched-reluctance #motors with schematics. Clarifies that the polarization direction of the rotor doesn’t need to change, which seems like it could eliminate inductive losses in the rotor.
#Akio finally built a better #switched-reluctance motor, with laminated stator and rotor, which he got laser-cut from 60 layers of 1mm non-electrical steel for €200, 16 turns of ½mm² copper wire on each of his 12 stator poles. 2000 rpm, 400mA, with no load, 1–2A when stalled with his fingers on the shaft, no torque or power measurements given. #motors #hardware #bootstrapping #DIY
maybe overvoltages from #solar and #wind #energy were the cause of the #Iberian-blackout? More because it’s distributed than because it’s not spinning? Because generation operators don’t get paid for reactive power? This is confusing. Solar and wind supplied 33% of #Spain’s electrical generation in 02024 and 37% of #Portugal’s.
overview of electrical #energy generation in #Spain in 02024: 248478 GWh total generated, of which 59512 #wind (3% less than 02023), 52391 nuclear (4% less than 02023), 43609 #solar #photovoltaic (19% more than 02023), 34909 hydroelectric (36% more than 02023), 29107 combined-cycle [gas] (27% less than 02023), and 2972 coal. That’s 18% photovoltaic and 23% wind out of 28 gigawatts. There’s a handy CSV to download.
#Portugal got 71% of its electrical #energy from renewables in 02024, but only 10% of that (7% of the total) was #solar, though #photovoltaic generation grew 37% from the year before, and PV capacity by 100%. “The Portuguese National Transmission Network connected 776 MW of photovoltaic installations to the grid in 2024, doubling to 1,555 MW of installed capacity, when compared to the 779 MW operational at the end of 2023.”
#news on the #Iberian-blackout: “Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to massive blackout, report finds”
#news: today the official #Iberian-blackout report is to be presented #toread
induction hardened chrome plated steel shafting with 110ksi yield stress and 50 Rockwell C hardness. #materials
"XD Pascal": 10kloc #Pascal compiler, “[Golang]-style methods and interfaces”, 2-clause BSD license, but without OO or separate compilation. #small-is-beautiful #compilers
In April the president of #Spain was blaming nuclear #energy for the #Iberian-blackout. #news #politics
#Chronova hand #manufacturing an electric motor whose shaft is 90μm across, like William McLellan’s answer to Feynman’s “Lots of Room” challenge. It’s a permanent-magnet rotor nestled in between four straight electromagnets wound with 20μm wire. He kept losing parts. He spent several months on it. His soft iron rotors had coercivity that was too low, and #machining alnico on his lathe turned out to be impossible until he used grinding wheels. He finally gave up and just floated the alnico disc in watch oil on the other side of a cover slip. He got an electromicrograph. #small #motors #hardware
small electric drill made from a pager motor, about 2cm tall. #small
#video on #manufacturing #electronics without PCBs, using point-to-point wiring with thick copper wires in free air. Peter Vogel’s “#Free-form electronics”. An annoying amount of talking-head filler. Mentions Vbugs and other #BEAM-robots and shows Eirik Brandal’s audio and kinetic sculpture work and MohitBhoite’s work. He’s using 800μm brass rod mostly and 1500μm brass tubing. He likes to build his circuits on a piece of graph paper glued to a board rather than up in the air, sometimes holding things in place with modeling clay, or rather Blu-Tack. At one point he adds a structural small-value capacitor between some unrelated brass-rod nets to increase rigidity. Unfortunately he made the time for the talking-head filler at the beginning of the video by omitting most of the circuit build from the end. #circuit-sculpture
#video #toread on Eirik Brandal’s wall-hanging #electronics sculpture "várhafsóll". Not quite #free-form electronics, because it’s all built on a transparent acrylic base, but does have lots of point-to-point wiring with brass rods. At one point you can see he’s soldering diodes to some pins of a CD4051. #circuit-sculpture
#video #toread about #circuit-sculpture and #manufacturing wires from raw metal by pulling them through a tungsten carbide drawplate, and twisting square wires, etc., using parts recycled from #hoarding, to make a landscape with trees.
#translation of #SICP #ebook into #Spanish.
#video from May 19: #interview with #drones developer Sergey Tovkach from #Russia on how #weaponry from #Ukraine is far better than what the US and even China have, and now 70% of fatalities on the battlefield are from drones. “A special thanks to our Western partners, because where else could we have trained on so much of your equipment? You delivered it straight to the front, and we got to study it up close. We learned all the weak points. We learned exactly where to strike. (...) There isn’t a single Western drone that’s proven itself effective in this conflict.” He claims #China makes military gear that doesn’t survive being tossed out of a truck, “like toys”. Ukraine barely uses Chinese chips in their drones, but Russia’s have to be all Chinese. Talks about mine-laying drones (“in use for about a year and a half now”), “sleeper/ambush drones” (same time frame, Ukrainians first — drones playing possum, pretending to be “a real trophy”), and drones dropping caltrops welded from rebar. “Same [ambush tactics] with drones placed on rooftops or hilltops overlooking roads (...) when the vehicles come, the drone just takes off, flies a short distance, and hits its target. That whole tactic really took off with the rise of fiber optic drones,” because they don’t need to burn 5–10W to transmit the video feed. Russian operators now wind up used fiber-optic cables on a cordless drill to avoid giving away their position. “The Orbit [Russian remote piloting] system. (...) The Ukrainians have been using radio relays and internet bridges for a long time already. (...) #Starlink is the holy grail. (...) Take away Starlink and Ukraine’s entire fleet of naval drones disappears overnight. (...) Why doesn’t Russia have naval drones? Well, we do have the boats and, but we don’t have Starlink.” But he says Starlink’s #latency is too high for FPV drone piloting. Baba Yaga or “Vampire” drones dropping antitank mines with 6–8kg of TNT have been very effective; Russia is ramping up two factories to produce its own equivalent.
“#Drones, not the big, heavy artillery that the war was once known for, inflict about 70 percent of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties, said Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in #Ukraine’s Parliament. In some battles, they cause even more — up to 80 percent of deaths and injuries, commanders say. (...) drones rule the battlefield. They have far surpassed conventional arms as the war’s most lethal #weaponry. (...) The war has killed and wounded more than a million soldiers in all, according to Ukrainian and Western estimates. But drones now kill more soldiers and destroy more armored vehicles in Ukraine than all traditional weapons of war combined, including sniper rifles, tanks, howitzers and mortars, Ukrainian commanders and officials say. (...) Of the 31 highly sophisticated Abrams tanks that the United States provided Ukraine in 2023, 19 have been destroyed, disabled or captured, with many incapacitated by drones, senior Ukrainian officials said. Nearly all of the others have been taken off the front lines, they added. (...) Ukrainian officials said they had made more than one million first-person-view, or FPV, drones in 2024. Russia claims it can churn out 4,000 every day. Both countries say they are still scaling up production, with each aiming to make three to four million drones in 2025. (...) Ukraine has followed suit, firing more drones last year than the most common type of large-caliber artillery shells. The commander of Ukraine’s drone force, Colonel Vadym Sukharevsky, says Ukraine is now pursuing a “robots first” military strategy.
However effective they may be, the drones fall far short of meeting all of Ukraine’s war needs and cannot simply replace the demand for conventional weapons, commanders warn. Heavy artillery and other long-range weapons remain essential for many reasons, they say, including protecting troops and targeting command-and-control outposts or air-defense systems. ”
#Burkina-Faso bought several #Bayraktar #drones (TB2 and Akinci) from #Turkey last year, following earlier purchases. #weaponry
#Burkina-Faso bought #Bayraktar TB2 #drones from #Turkey in 02022, following sales to Togo, Djibouti, Libya, #Ethiopia, Morocco, #Tunisia, and Niger. #weaponry
#Burkina-Faso was also buying #weaponry from #Egypt and #China last year. “Shortly after delivery, Burkina Faso appeared to begin using its Akinci UAVs in combat, with video published on 29 April purportedly showing Akinci and TB2 strikes against terrorist targets. The country has used UAVs extensively to combat Islamist fighters, but unfortunately dozens of civilians have also been killed in these strikes. (...) Last year, Burkina Faso surpassed Afghanistan as the country most impacted by terrorism, with nearly 2 000 deaths.” Other #Bayraktar customers listed include #Ethiopia, Libya, Morocco, Niger, Djibouti, Togo, #Nigeria, Mali, Rwanda and #Tunisia.
#news from Le Monde on #weaponry #drones: “From the base’s runway take off armed drones from Turkish manufacturer Baykar (at least six Bayraktar TB2 and two #Bayraktar Akinci, the superior model) and surveillance drones from the country’s National Intelligence Agency (ANR). Their mission: to track down and strike the jihadist groups that control large swathes of Burkina Faso's territory. Initiated by former president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré (overthrown by the 2022 putsch), the use of armed drones has been intensified by Captain Traoré. (...) The ruling militaries of #Mali, #Burkina-Faso and Niger, which broke away from France and formed the Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) at the end of 2023, aren’t just banking on drones to bolster their air capabilities: attack and troop transport helicopters, fighter jets, aircraft equipped with ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities... To acquire these aircraft, they are relying primarily on their Turkish partners (for drones), with whom the civilian government they overthrew was already cooperating, and Russians (for planes and helicopters). (...) According to various sources consulted by Le Monde and cross-referenced with the Military Balance register, a directory of military forces worldwide published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Malian army currently has eight Bayraktar TB2s, around 15 helicopters (Mi-35s, Mi-24s, Mi-17s, Mi-8s...), and some 15 L-39 Albatros aircraft. The Burkinabe army has at least six TB2s, two Akinci, a dozen helicopters (Mi-35, Mi-17, Mi-8...) and five light fighters (Super Tucano and Marchetti SF-260). The Nigerien army has six TB2s, some 10 helicopters (Mi-35, Mi-17, Gazelle...) and two Sukhoi Su-25s. (...) Working alongside the Malian army, #Wagner’s mercenaries are playing an active role in this aerial war. Among them are pilots, at the controls of the L-39 Albatros supplied by Moscow to the Malian air force. At the end of September, in the region of Tin Zaouatine, where they attempted a retaliatory attack for the assault they suffered two months earlier before turning back, CSP rebels came across drones with Russian-designed Zala Kub prowler ammunition (kamikaze drones).” Archive of <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/article/2024/11/20/turkish-drones-and-russian-planes-aerial-warfare-comes-to-west-africa_6733455_124.html>.
The International Firestop Council: #video on intumescent firestop #materials. #safety
#Weaponry #news from April. Another repetition of the NYT’s claim that in #Ukraine, “#drones caused 70 percent of battlefield injuries or deaths in 2024, supplanting artillery,” inspiring #Burkina-Faso, etc. “[#Turkey] is Africa’s top supplier, with a total of 32 agreements, 28 of which have occurred since 2021. Türkiye has succeeded by appealing to the desire of countries across Africa to acquire affordable, modern weapons outside the supply chains of major technological powers. Israel, the #UAE, and #Iran have similarly expanded their reach on the continent via the supply of drones.
On the demand side, #Nigeria (18 acquisitions), Algeria (15), Ethiopia (12), and Morocco (11) are Africa’s top drone seekers. (...) Enterprises in nine African countries (Algeria, #Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, #Nigeria, #South-Africa, Sudan, and #Tunisia) now produce military drones, supplying approximately 12 percent of Africa’s overall drone market. South Africa, the continent’s longest-standing drone producer, has manufactured unmanned military systems since the 1970s. #ENOVA Robotics, a Tunisian company, is exporting 50 of its ground security robots to the United States.”
#StrangeParts Scotty got inside the Anker eufy Make factory in Shenzhen! Where the "eufy Make" UV printer E1 is made, which makes full-color, full-texture prints. Because of the dragon and stickers this is #formina. Actually it’s a whole series of factories, including the Luxshare final assembly factory. Holy shit, they actually let him work on the assembly line. He explains that they’re going to rape you on the “ink” by “authenticating” the ink cartridges. #video
pro-#China propaganda #video trying to persuade foreigner entrepreneurs to move there to start companies #toread
#video from a month ago saying lithium iron phosphate #lithium-ion #batteries had fallen in #pricing in December to US$115/kWh (US$32/MJ), quoting BloombergNEF. Says raw materials are 70% of batteries’ cost [citation needed], and that LFPs have #energy-density of 90–160Wh/kg (320–580kJ/kg), much worse than NCA (230–260Wh/kg) or NMC (250–320Wh/kg), citing a page on batterydesign.net. #energy
page giving #energy-density of different kinds of #lithium-ion #batteries #materials.
#Steve-Mould #video on Doebereiner’s catalytic lamp, governing the emission of hydrogen from sulfuric acid on zinc with negative feedback, then catalytically burning the hydrogen on hydrogen sponge.
#Integza #bootstrapping rocket propeller #video
#video by #Hyperspace-Pirate on #bootstrapping ozone #materials with corona discharge instead of brown nitrogen dioxide with thermal plasma arcs. A Leyden-jar sort of arrangement with water on the inside and a mesh on the outside seemed to work well, and then he switched to just using test tubes filled with water to keep arcs from burning through the glass. But what he really wanted were nitrates, and the Birkeland–Eyde process is 40 times more efficient. “So, anyway, that’s the fun world of ozone. It smells terrible and I hate it. Bye.”
#video on the lunar lander #Resilience, which died because the laser rangefinders it was relying on experienced unexpected #latency. #space
#video reporting on experiments heating widely-available Robax glass-ceramic #materials to 994° for 10' to reduce their CTE from -0.6ppm/° to -0.058ppm/°, or much lower in the range 20°–25°, better than Schott Class 2 Zerodur, but much worse than Class 0 Extreme Zerodur. Ceran, a different glass-ceramic, is nearly as good when similarly converted at 961°.
#video on Dinospiders in the Colombian rain forest. Calmly confronts getting potentially bitten by snakes, etc.