r3012

You can buy one here:

https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/P2-Pentalobe-Screwdriver-...

I think the main thing is it’s really rare to just have one project in the works anymore. So you buy the 5day turn and work on something else in the interim. If somehow you really blew it in the project planning stage, and you simply must have it now, then I guess it’s kinda a toss up. In those emergencies rarely does cost matter but definitely your geographic location will limit options.

Do fuses count as an electronic component or does it have to be an active device? If so then I can name a couple. :)

I wonder why Apple would even want to protect a battery charger IC? All of the interesting stuff would be in software anyway. Maybe the reason repair shops can’t buy it is more mundane. Basically it’s an expensive part, particularly to Apple’s logic board, and distributors don’t believe there are enough Rossmanns out there to sell through a 100k part factory order. When I made PCBs for a large company I had parts I could buy direct from Maxim, at 250k parts minimum, that weren’t on Digi-Key for just that reason.

You can actually see this for yourself in the new open source PDKs.

https://skywater-pdk.readthedocs.io/en/main/contents/librari...

See how there are six foundry provided cell libraries that make different performance, power and area trade-offs. Even though it’s all 130nm.

There are even more libraries than that too. Like the OSU one that makes even different trade offs.

I think that word replacement, in a court of law, might be harder to do than you think because caste is not officially recognized by American law. I'm not sure how you could prove equivalence without a definition to work from.

It seems this is all being activity worked through now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_discrimination_in_the_Un...

I was using us to mean all customers in Apple Store.

The stories from winter when there was unionization talk were horrific.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-employees-plan-walkout...

I don’t know, but if it were me being subjected to that, all customers would likely start looking the same and I’d probably not be sympathetic to giving them the benefit of the doubt. I definitely could be wrong but I suspect there are a lot of tired retail workers out there.

The bullshit thing in my mind is that Apple took away the ability for store staff to make discretionary calls to bypass stuff like this and do what’s right for the customer.

It could be that, or retail workers are sick of us and aren't making calls in our direction anymore.

https://www.businessinsider.com/retail-workers-leaving-quit-...

There are trade-off there to consider.

One get's ruggedness but carbon fiber is generally not a good thermal conductor which could be a problem for a laptop with no fans. And titanium is very expensive compared to aluminum.

Like all engineering. It's about priorities.

https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/16/class-action-lawsuit-screen-c...

Filed in Sept 2021.

"A class-action lawsuit is being planned on behalf of M1 MacBook owners who say that screen cracks were occurring during normal use, with both the M1 MacBook Air and M1 MacBook Pro affected.

Apple has mostly claimed that the cracks are the result of accidental damage, including in the case of the 9to5Mac reader who first contacted us"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

“It will be the world's largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment and the largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor.”

Does the $3.9B spent on ITER not count?

https://www.science.org/content/article/cost-skyrockets-unit...

Maybe, but it worked out really well last time we did this. I say the government ended up with a tremendous ROI.

https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/history-lesson-the-198...

What about the safeguards, which are in place, makes you uneasy?

I’m super happy to see these things, and some money is better than no money, but judging by how much my lab spends per year, $50M/yr isn’t going to get them very far. And we do consumer electronics.

How should they know where they want to go if they're entry-level?

I think it’s totally reasonable to expect people to have a plan. It’s also totally reasonable, and expected really, for that plan to change over time. But working without a plan, which implies working without goals, is rarely a recipe for success.

There are variants of STM32 that are 90nm. A 90nm foundry was just announced. Not sure if they’re planning on making STM32s, probably not, but there are non-leading edge foundries being run and more are being made.

Here is an announcement from this month

https://www.eetimes.com/skywater-to-build-1-8-billion-fab-in...

I think the usual technique for soldering a BGA is a lot easier. https://hackaday.com/2021/02/28/bga-soldering-and-inspection...

At the bottom of the page you'll see a link to someone who followed your suggestion. Now that looks hard. :)

A small GreenPAK is perfect for this.

There’s also mixed signal versions just in case you also want an opamp, or two.

https://www.renesas.com/tw/en/products/programmable-mixed-si...

If only the world was so simple. I think the connection is more direct than you might suspect.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/magazine/neil-degrasse-ty...

And

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44157732-accessory-to-wa...

Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military Neil deGrasse Tyson, Avis Lang

I suppose one can argue about the output but there have already been spin-offs from the JWST inventions that do have practical applications.

https://webb.nasa.gov/resources/JWST_spinoffs_v122011.pdf