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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Mathematically yes. Practically, right now? No.

    So you need a resistor of this value for your widget.

    For that many places of precision you’re looking at a potentiometer with a 10 nano-ohm precision.

    I am not aware of any commercially available resistor that can do that but you could create one using microelectronic structures used for ICs and derive a 10 nano-ohm resistor by design and then chain enough of these elements into a resistor network or potentiometer to create the super precise resistance value you want.

    Cool, congratulations.

    Now how are you going to use this 10 nano-ohm resistor? What voltage will you be applying across it? What current do you expect it to handle? And therefore what are your power requirements? What are your tolerances, how much can the true value deviate from the designed ideal?

    Because power generates heat through losses, and that will affect the resistance value so how tightly do you need to manage the power dissipation?

    How will you connect to this resistor to other circuit components? Because a super precise resistor on it’s own is nothing but an over-engineered heating element.

    If you tried connecting other surface mount devices (SMDs) from the E24 or even E96 series to this super precise resistor then the several orders of magnitude wider tolerances of these other components alone will swallow any of the precision from your super accurate resistor.

    So now your entire circuit has to be made to the same precision else all of your design work has been wasted.

    Speaking of which, now your heat management solution now needs to be super precise as well and before you know it you’ve built the world’s most accurate widget that probably took billions of dollars/euros/schmeckles and collaboration from the worlds leading engineers and scientists that probably cost more time and money than the Large Hadron Collider.








  • It’s not the quickest though. ROI timeline is 18 years minimum for tax from non-degree level jobs, 22/23 years for degree level, and 26 to 30 years for post doctoral.

    It’s sad. The quarterly pressure to generate value is one of the worst economic forces of capitalism which drives enshitification, job-instability from the “fire bottom performing 10%” so that you can post more “profits” from cost cutting, and the general short-term thinking that pervades all aspects of the culture.

    It’s the reason “nobody” builds things to last or metaphorically plants something now for the future: it’s not profitable quick enough.



  • I can only speak for the UK and from a amateur perspective but here’s the rough breakdown:

    90% of the time it’s likely a private pilot that’s wandered into a restricted airspace without realising it. Or a faulty radio or navigation equipment or a medical emergency. They’re politely escorted out.

    9.9999% of the time is an adversarial nation testing the response time of the quick-reaction force defenses. They’re politely but forcefully escorted out. Maybe some insults traded over the radio but that’d be about as heated as it gets.

    0.0001% they pose a threat and refuse to be escorted out. At that point it’s basically the same thing of asking “what would happen if someone climbed the fence to the White House and towards it and when the secret service pointed guns at them didn’t stop, would they get shot?”

    It’s the pilot’s call at that point, but if they posed a threat to life then yes they probably would shoot them down.

    Edit: there’s probably a ridiculous amount of zeros I’d need to add to the last point to indicate how unlikely it is but I can’t be arsed to add that many. Basically you might as well round down to 0%


  • May I present to you, how to measure like a Brit

    Flow chart showing the uses for metric and imperial in the UK

    It’s great fun especially when you’re trying to work out how fuel efficient your car has been when your tank and fuel pump is in litres and the fuel efficiency is in miles per gallon.

    Oh and you’ll have a jolly time following a recipe from more than 20 years ago trying to remember what the hell “Gas Mark 4” is in centigrade for fan or convection ovens.

    Oh and my personal favourite for the industry I’m in: when designing a PCB your component sizes will use imperial codes, your wire diameters will be in AWG, your track widths and PCB dimensions will be in millimetres, but your copper thicknesses will be in ounces despite the final weight for the assembly will be in grams.