Hackaday Links: May 1, 2022

We start out this week with information from Mars, for the reason that, let us experience it, the news from this planet is not all that considerably entertaining recently. But a couple of milestones were being achieved on the Red Earth, the 1st remaining the arrival of Perseverance at the historical river delta it was sent there to examine. The rover absolutely took the scenic route to get there, having coated 10.6 km above the past 424 sols to move to a place only about 3.5 km straight-line distance from in which it landed. Granted, a great deal of that added driving was in guidance of the unexpectedly successful Ingenuity demonstration, furthermore getting time for a ton of pit stops alongside the way at intriguing features. But the rover is now in spot to analyze sedimentary rocks most possible to harbor the fossil continues to be of ancient aquatic everyday living — as opposed to the generally igneous rocks it has studied along the crater flooring so significantly. We’re wanting forward to seeing what happens.

Speaking of Ingenuity, the plucky helicopter just keeps on performing. It just lately finished its 27th flight — of five prepared flights, mind you — and spotted the crashed stays of the aeroshell and parachute from its breathtaking arrival last February. They search really the worse for the don, but that is to be envisioned. The stunningly large-resolution pictures Ingenuity sent again will no question be pored about by engineers for regardless of what clues it holds about how the structure stood up to descent and landing problems. We’re not confident, but this may well be the initially time a landing or crash internet site has been revisited given that Allan Bean unquestionably nailed the Apollo 12 landing to within just going for walks distance of Surveyor 3 in 1969.

“And the Emmy goes to… Comedian Sans?” No, not truly, and apologies to everyone triggered by the point out of The Font That Shall Not Be Employed. But this week the 2021 Technology & Engineering Emmy award went to the Entire world Extensive Internet Consortium (W3C) Website fonts Functioning Group and MPEG collectively for “standardizing font technology for custom downloadable fonts and typography for world wide web and Television products.” To be very clear, the award is not for any particular font, but instead the complex accomplishment of downloadable fonts. Still, it’s straightforward to poke entertaining at typography, specially when font snobs go on about the merits of this serif or that descender. But people delicate distinctions that most of us consider are meaningless basically enjoy a large role in the “feel” of internet sites. Net fonts have a great deal to do with how polished and qualified most web pages appear these days, as opposed to some of the atrocities of the World-wide-web 1. times.

A couple of weeks back, we had a PCB Thermal Layout Hack Chat in excess of on Hackaday.io with Mike Jouppi. It was a wonderful discussion and spawned an appealing sidebar with attendee Sven about thermal vias. It seems to be like Sven’s application experienced a great deal for Mike to sink his teeth into, since he produced an in-depth movie on the thermal style and design of this PCB, along with a dialogue of what went into building IPC-2152, the typical for PCB trace recent-carrying capacity layout. Thanks to Mark Hughes of State-of-the-art Assembly for the heads up on this, and for suggesting Mike occur on the Hack Chat in the to start with area.

https://www.youtube.com/observe?v=Yt61F8wuGcU

And last but not least, it seems to be like Lichtenberg designs are getting common adequate that it’s required to alert people today that actively playing with electrical power can be hazardous. Lichtenberg designs, which are fractal channels burned into wooden or other materials by the (hopefully) even handed software of superior voltage, are unquestionably one thing we have seen and featured prior to. Nonetheless, the American Affiliation of Woodturners — simply because of class there’s these kinds of a team — now condemns the practice, which apparently has caught on in the woodturning neighborhood. The AAW truly doesn’t want any individual doing Lichtenbergs — they banned the exercise at all their activities and in their publications, enlisted the aid of a doctor to explain to everyone that electricity can quit your coronary heart, and urged anyone who has fractal woodburning equipment to throw it out now just before it assaults. We understand and wholeheartedly concur that working with higher voltage can be dangerous, and we’re not saying that woodturners need to not acquire the most likely deadly consequences of Lichtenbergs severely. But this warning appears to be a bit rich coming from an business that encourages its users to stand in entrance of a machine that can throw razor-sharp resources at you, fling significant chunks of wooden at your head, or promptly ease you of your garments — or even worse. Be harmless out there, everyone.