#video #toread about how insurance prohibits diving boards at most swimming pools in #USA now #collapse
on 02025-09-29#Marco-Reps #metrology #precision #toread #electronics video on an 0.1-ppb-resolution Guildline Model 9930 direct-current resistance comparator from the 01960s, specifically November 24, 01969, according to the light-beam galvanometer inspection card. At 2'21" there’s a very alarming CERN slide, “The availability of magnetic materials has been declining over the years.
As of 2024 the assembly can be produced, but there is no replacement yet for the obsolete radial shield material (Nanophylm).” #collapse
The key here is that numbers of transformer windings “don’t have temperature coefficients or long-term drifts”, so they’re accurately ratiometric in a way that’s stable until and unless you bend the wire.
Guildline gave him the service manual, SM9930-H-00.
Internally it has an ovenized Weston cell in a test tube, which is used with a second light-beam galvanometer for feedback control of a 50mA current through a critical precision resistor, which is wire wound around a several-kilogram cylinder of brass; the soldered connections to the manganin (?) wires are stuck into a hole deep inside the brass to reduce possible thermal EMFs.
The nanovolt amplifier is a pair of antiparallel photocells powered by a lightbulb whose light is deflected by a third mirror galvanometer, this one 3.6kΩ.
on 02025-09-28A note from 02022 on the #Monome: “Scarcity and Precarity in Small Manufacturing”: “To lead with an actual case: we have not been able to get the STM32 microcontroller used in the Crow (and Grid) for well over two years now, and all estimates are “unknown” (the words from various sales reps I’ve spoken to, ie those at Mouser). Since we’ve sold out and also exhausted our backup-repair-stock, if someone contacts us with a hardware-related break-- for example, somehow the STM32 is fried-- there’s basically nothing we can do (that was previously standard procedure). (...) previously the parts would just go to e-waste since new components were widely available and irrationally cheap.
We are no longer in that era. So I’d like to instill this message, as strongly as possible: your machines are not easily repairable. They may be incredibly difficult (interpret: expensive) or impossible to repair. Please let this inform your treatment and expectations of the machines in your life.” #small-is-beautiful #collapse #hardware #manufacturing #shortages #WWIII #uxn
on 02024-02-06FDIC's announcement of the #Silicon-Valley-Bank #banking #collapse
on 02023-03-10another note on #banking #collapse of #Silicon-Valley-Bank; the Chief Risk Officer left in April 02022 and wasn't replaced until January. Earlier this week they lost US$1.8 billion on a sale of US$21 billion of available-for-sale (AFS) securities (as opposed to HTM). “Out of its total $173 billion deposits at end 2022, $152 billion are uninsured.”
on 02023-03-10#Silicon-Valley-Bank's 10-Q giving numbers up to the end of September 02022 says on p. 92, “Because we are a Category IV firm with less than $250 billion in average total consolidated assets, less than $50 billion in average weighted short-term wholesale funding and less than $75 billion in cross-jurisdictional activity, we currently are not subject to the Federal Reserve’s LCR or NSFR requirements, either on a full or reduced basis. It is possible that, as a result of further growth, we may exceed one or more of those thresholds and therefore become subject to LCR and NSFR requirements or other heightened liquidity requirements in the future, which would require us to maintain high-quality liquid assets in accordance with specific quantitatie requirements and increase the use of long-term debt as a funding source.” #banking #collapse
on 02023-03-10#Silicon-Valley-Bank is a major outlier on this #banking note from almost a year ago, which contains a scatterplot of held-to-maturity percentage of securities (HTM%) and securities % of total assets; SVB has 60% of its assets in securities and 78% of those securities held to maturity. Perhaps related to its #collapse today.
on 02023-03-10#Silicon-Valley-Bank building managers in New York called the police at 9:20 AM ET on depositors attempting to close their accounts in this morning's run on the bank, which was shut down by the FDIC a few hours later. #collapse
on 02023-03-10#Silicon-Valley-Bank was not required to follow the Basel III Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) or Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) requirements because it had less than US$250 billion in average total consolidated assets, according to their latest 10-K (or maybe 10-Q), and #USA implemented Basel III only for the largest banks. #banking #collapse
on 02023-03-10the #collapse of #Silicon-Valley-Bank is the second biggest #banking failure in history #USA
on 02023-03-10CorningWare was a line of cookware made from an opaque white #spodumene based #glass-ceramic called "Pyroceram" that could be used directly on fire, which was both less expansive from heat and I think stronger than borosilicate glass. No longer available for sale in the US, making it a lost technology of the ancients, but only since 02022. #materials #collapse
on 02023-02-09“Post #Collapse Computing Part 2: What if we Fail?”
on 02022-10-12#collapse scenarios for #USA from 02010; amusing in retrospect
on 02022-02-09#book-review of Tainter on #collapse
on 02021-11-06#book-review of Mancur Olson’s book on #collapse
on 02017-05-11mathematical models of how #inequality and other factors could #collapse civilization. #predictions
on 02017-05-02Touching post from #Egypt’s #collapse by Mahmoud Salem
on 02016-10-10Expect #collapse to be faster than growth, based on data from Russia and the #Maya collapse.
on 02015-08-15Tom Murphy worrying about economic #collapse from an #energy crunch in 2011, using NREL #EROEI figures about #photovoltaic modules from 2000. From my point of view, a 4-year energy payback time is the same as a 25% limit on the annual economic growth rate: if energy is like super expensive and PV is the only way to get it, then making PV cells will consume nearly all of the energy produced with them, and we can expect the amount of PV power available to double every three years under those circumstances, even if no fossil fuel is available. In 2010 the world produced 31.4 TWh of #solar energy and marketed 148000 TWh of all energy, so about 12 doublings were needed for solar to reach world marketed energy consumption. At three years per doubling, that would be around 2046. The availability of some fossil fuels can only accelerate that trend, under capitalism, anyway. (He makes a good point that a central planner might very easily prefer to devote today’s energy to today's needs instead of investing it to produce returns tomorrow.)
on 02015-08-15Tom Murphy dooming about #collapse as of 2012 because #energy. Specifically he’s worried that an #oil crunch “within the decade” will make #transportation very expensive, which will cause the #economy to collapse, and then we won’t be able to make #photovoltaic solutions. This is causing him a motivational crisis because he worries that his scientific work will be lost in the collapse.
on 02015-08-15John Michael Greer, #predictions guy and Archdruid, is pessimistic about the survival of the #internet post-#collapse. Lots of comments by #survivalists.
on 02015-08-10Eric Holthaus says 2015 is a #climatechange watershed: record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India, rainforest fires in Washington, thousand-year drought in CA, James Hansen claiming sea-level rise will be 10× what was previously predicted, ocean acidification is causing mass plankton extinctions. #Collapse.
on 02015-08-05#collapse #singulitarian #predictions
on 02015-08-05#viznut explains his analogy between capitalism’s imperative to maximize consumption and memory leaks in software, along with some connections to #Marxist thought and civilizational #collapse.
on 02015-08-05