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How To Get Into Cars: Drifting Mods

January 4, 2021 by 31 Comments

Drifting is a hugely popular motorsport unlike any other, focusing on style and getting sideways rather than the pursuit of the fastest time between two points. It’s a challenge that places great demands on car and driver, and proper attention to setup to truly succeed. Here’s a guide to get your first drift build coming together.

Getting Sideways (And Back Again)

Drift cars are specialised beasts, and like any motorsport discipline, the demands of the sport shape the vehicle to suit. If you’re looking to drift, you’ll want to choose a project car with a front-engined, rear-wheel drive layout. While it’s somewhat possible to drift with other layouts, the act of kicking out the tail and holding a slide at speed is best achieved with the handling characteristics of such a vehicle. It all comes down to weight transfer and breaking traction at will. Of course, over the years, certain cars have become expensive on the second-hand market due to their drift prowess, so you may have to get creative if your first choice isn’t available at your budget. It pays to talk to the drifters down at your local track to get an idea of which cars in your area are the best bet for a drift build. Once you’ve got yourself a car, you can get down to installing mods!

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Still Working After All These Years: The Voyager Plasma Wave Subsystem

December 31, 2020 by 49 Comments

NASA is always keen to highlight the space agency’s many successes, and rightly so — those who pay for these expensive projects have a right to know what they’re getting for their money. And so the news was recently sprinkled with stories of the discovery of electron bursts beyond the edge of our solar system, caused by shock waves from coronal mass ejection (CME) from our Sun reflecting and accelerating electrons in interstellar plasmas. It’s a novel mechanism and an exciting discovery that changes a lot of assumptions about what happens out in the lonely space outside of the Sun’s influence.

The recent discovery is impressive in its own right, but it’s even more stunning when you dig into the details of how it was made: by the 43-year-old Voyager spacecraft, each now about 17 light-hours away from Earth, and each carrying an instrument so simple and efficient that they’re still working all after this time — and which very nearly were left out of the mission’s science payload.

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Solar Flares And Radio Communications — How Precarious Are Our Electronics?

December 30, 2020 by 38 Comments

On November 8th, 2020 the Sun exploded. Well, that’s a bit dramatic (it explodes a lot) — but a particularly large sunspot named AR2781 produced a C5-class solar flare which is a medium-sized explosion even for the Sun. Flares range from A, B, C, M, and X with a zero to nine scale in each category (or even higher for giant X flares). So a C5 is just about dead center of the scale. You might not have noticed, but if you lived in Australia or around the Indian Ocean and you were using radio frequencies below 10 MHz, you would have noticed since the flare caused a 20-minute-long radio blackout at those frequencies.

According to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, the sunspot has the energy to produce M-class flares which are an order of magnitude more powerful. NOAA also has a scale for radio disruptions ranging from R1 (an M1 flare) to R5 (an X20 flare). The sunspot in question is facing Earth for the moment, so any new flares will cause more problems. That led us to ask ourselves: What if there were a major radio disruption?

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2020: As The Hardware World Turns

December 29, 2020 by 13 Comments

By pretty much any metric you care to use, 2020 has been an unforgettable year. Usually that would be a positive thing, but this time around it’s a bit more complicated. The global pandemic, unprecedented in modern times, impacted the way we work, learn, and gather. Some will look back on their time in lockdown as productive, if a bit lonely. Other’s have had their entire way of life uprooted, with no indication as to when or if things will ever return to normal. Whatever “normal” is at this point.

But even in the face of such adversity, there have been bright spots for our community. With traditional gatherings out of the question, many long-running tech conferences moved over to a virtual format that allowed a larger and more diverse array of presenters and attendees than would have been possible in the past. We also saw hackers and makers all over the planet devote their skills and tools to the production of personal protective equipment (PPE). In a turn of events few could have predicted, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic helped demonstrate the validity of hyperlocal manufacturing in a way that’s never happened before.

For better or for worse, most of us will associate 2020 with COVID-19 for the rest of our lives. Really, how could we not? But over these last twelve months we’ve borne witness to plenty of stories that are just as deserving of a spot in our collective memories. As we approach the twilight hours of this most ponderous year, let’s take a look back at some of the most interesting themes that touched our little corner of the tech world this year.

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The High-Tech Valor Glass Vials Used To Deliver The Coronavirus Vaccine

December 28, 2020 by 70 Comments

As the world waits for COVID-19 vaccines, some pharmaceutical companies stand armed and ready with an exciting improvement: better vials to hold the doses. Vials haven’t changed much in the last 100 years, but in 2011, Corning decided to do something about that. They started developing an alternative glass that is able to resist damage and prevent cracks. It’s called Valor glass, and it’s amazingly strong stuff. Think Gorilla glass for the medical industry.

Traditionally, pharmaceutical vials have been made from borosilicate glass, which is the same laboratory-safe material as Corning’s Pyrex. Borosilicate glass gets its strength from the addition of boron. Although borosilicate glass is pretty tough, it comes with some issues. Any type of glass is only as strong as its flaws, and borosilicate glasses are prone to some particularly strength-limiting flaws. Pharmaceutical glass must stand up to extreme temperatures, from the high heat of the vial-making process to the bitterly cold freeze-drying process and storing temperature required by the fragile viral RNA of some COVID-19 vaccines. Let’s take a look at how Valor glass vials tackle these challenges.

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How The Gates (Almost) Stole Christmas

December 24, 2020 by 150 Comments
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Blue screens were everywhere; no response from the mouse
Windows, it seems, had decided to die
Because it had updated; we didn’t know why
But Santa had a plan while we were all in bed
He reformatted our server and installed Linux instead
In the morning we rushed in and what did we see?
Programs were running, and most of them free!
There was Chrome and Open Office and emacs for me
Not a penny was going to Mr. Gates’ fee
Now we have no more blue screens, ever, of course
Because Santa turned us on to that sweet open source

The Mouth-Watering World Of NIST Standard Foods

December 23, 2020 by 48 Comments

The National Institute Of Standards and Technology was founded on March 3, 1901 as the National Bureau of Standards, taking on its current moniker in 1988. The organisation is charged by the government with ensuring the uniformity of weights and measures across the United States, and generally helping out industry, academia and other users wherever some kind of overarching standard is required.

One of the primary jobs of NIST is the production and sale of Standard Reference Materials, or SRMs. These cover a huge variety of applications, from steel samples to concrete and geological materials like clay. However, there are also edible SRMS, too. Yes, you can purchase yourself a jar of NIST Standard Peanut Butter, though you might find the price uncompetitive with the varieties at your local supermarket. Let’s dive into why these “standard” foods exist, and see what’s available from the shelves of our favourite national standards institute. Continue reading “The Mouth-Watering World Of NIST Standard Foods” →