Spyke

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XXX

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After a year of unemployment one may have their eyes opened to how truly awful the modern working conditions and hours are. They may even pick up a hobby, make non work friends and God forbid enjoy life outside of prepackaged holiday trips. In short, unemployment can be a mirror to unfair and insane employment conditions.

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ESD CONTAINMENT HAS BEEN BREACHED

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Breakout boards are common tools. They are PCBs that let you connect for example a programmable microchip on a socket to then expose its contacts to larger testpads or a USB connection. This board however has literally broken out of its ESD bag, a common plastic bag used to package electronics while protecting them from static electricity. One might say it has breached ESD confinement.

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What step of the cycle are we on now?

Just for the record tho, The overworked and insanely talented engineers actually working at space x deserve credit for their impressive technologies. iirc, there was literally a team of menagers at space x "babysitting" Musk so everyone else can work. I'm happy for the developments and broad interest space x has brought to spaceflight recently, just a shame they have to be funded by Elon.

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What do you guys think of vertical farming?

Honestly, this seems like a solution looking for a problem. We already have a lot of agricultural space available and in use. We just use that space very inefficiently to actually produce food. There are huge benefits to be gained from switching to sustainable farming, and probably a largely vegan diet too (just based on Ressource use alone). Once farming is focused on producing food and preserving nature, instead of creating profit we can look to further improvements. Even hydroponics or mixed use gardens are likely a better next step here. There simply isn't a need to cram our food production onto a wall yet, especially if that requires costly infrastructure made of difficult to recycle materials.

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clay PCB and feminist hardware at 38c3

Idk, this one is weird to me. I agree that micro electronics production is not conflict free and appreciate a search for alternatives, but clay? From an engineering perspective this isn't just a bad material for PCBs, it's neigh impossible to use. How would that affect device longevity, or recyclability? Their production process is quite failure prone as they mention. Not to mention how their design is easily magnitudes larger than a comparable laminated fiber PCB. Also urban-mined is a needlessly opaque buzzword imo. They mean recycled, right? Just say so, no need for flourishes. Emphasizing that the clay is sourced from a wild forest and burned over a bonfire is meant to feel sustainable via association. There is nothing environmentally conscious about these inefficient methods and it makes this project appear amateurish. Nothing wrong with amateur attempts to help the problem, but somehow I get the feeling no one bothered to ask a PCB fab worker or repair technician along the way. More sustainable PCBs start with open source documentation and freely available replacement parts, not forest clay. Full disclosure, I read the description text on the site and (only) skimmed through the video. Feel free to correct me if I misrepresented anything.

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Nothing has helped me learn to trust my instincts more than trying to plug in hundreds of USB devices over the years

So.. we do all know that USB ports tend to have a default orientation, right? Like we're all aware that plugging in a USB cable correctly is aided by the fact that electronics companies generally use the same orientation on most orientable devices and the whole "USB rotation disorientation" bit is just a big inside joke, correct? Are there actually people out there not paying attention to the orientation of their cables before they plug them in so it's just an eternal try and error for them? Maybe other countries have different standards or something because this age old bit is not making sense to me.