If you thought the global deficit of computer chips couldn’t get any worse, apparently you weren’t counting on 2021 looking back at 2020 and saying,” Hold my brew .” As if an impacted world waterway and fab fuels weren’t enough to squeeze supply chains , now we learn that water restraints could potentially impact chip production in Taiwan. The subtropical island usually counts on three or four squalls a year to replenish its pools, but 2020 watched no major typhoons in the region. This has submerge Taiwan into its bad drought since the mid-1 960 s, with water-use limiteds being enacted. These include a 15% reduction of supply to industrial users as well as shutting off the liquid perfectly to non-industrial users for up to two days a week. So far, the restrictions haven’t directly impacted chip and presentation producers, chiefly because their fabs are located outside the shortage zone. But for an industry where a single fab can use millions of gallons of water a day, it’s clearly time to start considering what happens if the drought worsens.
Speaking of the confluence of atmosphere and technological sciences, everyone difficulty recollects the disastrous Texas cold snap from last-place month, especially those who had to endure the resentment of the unusually merciless conditions in person. One such scapegoat of the rain is Grady, everyone’s favorite YouTube civil engineer, who recently released a very good post-mortem on the engineering justifications for the massive blackouts knowledge after the cold spell. In the immediate aftermath of the event, we found it difficult to get anything approaching in-depth coverage on its engineering appearances — our coverage excepted, naturally — as so much better of what we received was laden with political belonging. Grady does a laudable chore of adhering to the facts as he goes over the engineering beginnings of the disaster and unpacks all the complexity of the infrastructure failures we evidenced. We really enjoyed his insights, and we wish him and all our friends in Texas the best of luck as they recover.
If you’re into the demoscene, likelihoods are pretty good that you already know about the upcoming Revision 2021, the year’s big demoscene party. Like last year’s Revision, this will be a virtual assemble, but it seems like we’re all getting reasonably be applicable to that by now. The contest is next weekend, so if you’ve got a cool demo, principal over and cross-file. Virtual or not, the bar was placed fairly high-pitched last year, so there should be some interesting demos that come out of this year’s party.
Many of us suffer from the” good enough, move on” procedure of project management, leaving our workbenches littered with breadboarded circuits that got far enough along to suffer the blaze out of us make a minimally helpful contribution to the overall structure. That’s why we love it when we get the chance to follow up on a develop that has transgressed from that procedure and progressed past the phase where it initially caught our scrutiny. A great instance is Frank Olsen’s all-wood ribbon microphone. Of track, with magnets and an aluminum foil ribbon point needed, it wasn’t 100% grove, but it still was an interesting construct when we first saw it, if a bit imperfect seeming. Frank has fixed that in grand style by continuing the wood-construction theme that completes this all-wood replica of the iconic RCA Model 44 microphone. It looks fabulous and sounds awesome; we can’t help but wonder how many times Frank glued his paws together with all that CA adhesive, though.
Read more: hackaday.com
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