This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos met up to discuss the best hacks of the previous week. We have no nerdy news this week, but is that necessarily a bad thing?
Speaking of nothingness, we have no winner for What’s That Sound because all six people who responded were wrong. Was the sound of Clippy too obscure?
But then it’s on to the hacks, beginning with an awesome autonomous excavator that, among other things, lays boulders algorithmically to build load-bearing walls without any mortar or cement. From there, it’s old school meets new school in the form of a laser-cut fox-wedged mortise and tenon joint. We take a look at a couple of simple cameras, making dry ice from seashells, and a really tiny POV display where everything spins. Finally, we talk about how small that proposed Italian lunar outpost is, and discuss whether rating airlines would help stop the spread of diseases.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Download and savor at your leisure.
Episode 247 Show Notes:
News:
- No news is good news, right? But Elliot learned the secret to fixing German toilets!
What’s that Sound?
- Who is our big winner this week? Absolutely no one recognized it as Clippy’s popup sound,s probably because they all immediately disabled Clippy back in the day.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
- Update On The BLUFFS Bluetooth Vulnerability
- Autonomous Excavator Builds Stone Wall Algorithmically
- This Laser-Cut One-Piece Wedge Tenon Locks Wood Joints Tight
- Generating Motion Via Nitinol Wires
- Falsified Photos: Fooling Adobe’s Cryptographically-Signed Metadata
- The Minimum Required For A Film Camera
Quick Hacks:
- Elliot’s Picks:
- Kristina’s Picks:
Not showing up on Apple Podcasts this week?
Not showing up on Google Podcasts this week?
th’ ain’t nary a sign on no youtube neither
These delays are really strange. I even uploaded significantly early this week.
Something between Libsyn and the various end services. How many hours in advance do they need to simply host an mp3 file?
Toilet?
PFloater?
Aircraft ventilation: My understanding is that all the air is bled off the engines, pressurised air before any fuel is injected. This exits through an adjustable orifice at the rear of the plane, so it’s 100% fresh air apart from what is blowing past passengers in front of you on its way to the rear. So First class and business are already sorted in order of most expensive and the least germy.
That said, almost everyone I know that’s got off a plane returning to Australia recently has had either COVID or the flu.
There’s a good chance of being infected in the densely populated queues and cattle runs to get thru ticketing, customs and immigration on departure
Yes, the engine pressure has a bleed air port where the engine air is pushed toward the cabin. This air can be up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. A heat exchanger is used to get the temperature towards 70F. There is an outflow valve in the back of the aircraft that takes the excess air and dumps it overboard.
The cabin is pressurized to 6000-8000ft equal pressure. Newer aircraft (I.E. 787) will have a higher pressure (lower altitude). There is plenty of excess pressure from the engine that the cabin pressure can be maintained with 1 failed engine.
Here is some technical documents about the 737 pressurization system.
http://www.b737.org.uk/pressurisation.htm
Thanks for the rabbit hole!
B^)
See? And there I was thinking that they’d have to heat the air…
Very cool and thanks for the super detail!
And: https://youtu.be/AAy_ch6sfOQ?t=2141 — 1400 cubic feet per minute of fresh air into a 737. Full air turnover in a couple minutes. (By regulation.) Holy cow. I’m going to open my office window now.
Some air is recirculated, but all passes through HEPA filters.