EEVblog #733 - Mailbag

[EEVblog]

Mailbag time again.
What have people sent in this week?

SPOILERS:
AUD$5500 10k resistor in a box! http://wekomm.com/metrologie.php
Xeon ECC server memory galore!
AC/DC Back To The Future T-Shirt: http://www.enteetee.com/product/back-in-time/
HeartSine Samaritan Pad Heat Defibrillator
K band radar system
Forrest Mims Radio Shack books
Forrest Mims Amp Hour Interview: http://www.theamphour.com/171-an-interview-with-forrest-mims-snell-solisequious-scientist/
Silicon Labs $30 EFM8 8bit 8051 development boards:
Sleepy Bee: https://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/8-bit/Pages/efm8-sleepy-bee-starter-kits.aspx
Busy Bee: https://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/8-bit/Pages/efm8-busy-bee-starter-kits.aspx
Universal Bee: https://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/8-bit/Pages/efm8-universal-bee-starter-kits.aspx
https://www.silabs.com/Support%20Documents/TechnicalDocs/Si7021-A20.pdf
Maxim 11300 ADC/DAC evaluation board: http://www.maximintegrated.com/en/products/analog/data-converters/analog-to-digital-converters/MAX11300PMB1.html

[hli]

The 'AEM' setting on the Silabs boards is the 'Advanced energy monitoring'. Its already on the EFM32 boards, and allows not only real time current consumption measuring, but also correlation with the source code that causes the current consumption (using the EnergyAware profiler). Thats why there is no seperate current measurement jumper on the boards.

[EEVblog]

The 'AEM' setting on the Silabs boards is the 'Advanced energy monitoring'. Its already on the EFM32 boards, and allows not only real time current consumption measuring, but also correlation with the source code that causes the current consumption (using the EnergyAware profiler). Thats why there is no seperate current measurement jumper on the boards.

Ah, awesome!

[Armxnian]

More religious and political discussion in the comments... 

Athiesm is the disbelief in god yet no one can actually 100% prove there is no god. On the other hand no one can prove there IS a god. Stupidest discussion ever.

Politics is a joke, especially in the U.S.

EEVblog should be a place to get away from all this crap, why even mention it.

[RobertHolcombe]

Dave, can we see the photos of the 10k transfer standard, or are you saving them for the video you mentioned?

[GoneTomorrow]

Will be interesting to see what happens with the new memory in the Xeon rig. The main issue with what you had was potentially inadequate memory bandwidth, rather than amount. The CPUs support four memory channels for highest throughput, and you need at least four matched DIMMs per CPU (1 DIMM per channel, might be different for Xeons though).

Fully populate that sucker with matched DIMMs and give it a burl 

[Royce]

With all that memory, perhaps you can render raw to a RAM drive and then HandBrake down to a real disk?

[DanielS]

With all that memory, perhaps you can render raw to a RAM drive and then HandBrake down to a real disk?

It does not really matter, first because the write/read rate is so slow compared to HDD/SSD speed and secondly, with this much memory, all recently read or written files will still be in the OS' disk cache so there won't be much of a performance penalty at all. If Dave wants to keep his intermediate files, having to copy the file back from RAM-drive to HDD will waste more time than what little performance loss he might get from writing intermediate output directly to HDD.

[EEVblog]

Athiesm is the disbelief in god yet no one can actually 100% prove there is no god. On the other hand no one can prove there IS a god. Stupidest discussion ever.

They aren't equally likely options. There is only one side making outrageous and silly claims.

EEVblog should be a place to get away from all this crap, why even mention it.

It's my channel, I get to say whatever I want
No one has any right to NOT be offended/upset/annoyed at what I say. Nor do they have a right to expect me not to say or talk about something.
It's not the first time I've mentioned religion and it probably won't be the last.

[EEVblog]

Dave, can we see the photos of the 10k transfer standard, or are you saving them for the video you mentioned?

Didn't I overlay them in the video?

[EEVblog]

With all that memory, perhaps you can render raw to a RAM drive and then HandBrake down to a real disk?

Only for short videos. A 1 hour video I think would need about 700GB or something.
Can try different "raw-ish" codecs though.

[FrankBuss]

The 10k resistor looks nice. Compared to the price of it, the case they sell is a bargain for EUR 490 and looks like it has even room for two resistors:

http://www.datatec.de/wekomm-RS9010A-CASE-Widerstandsnormale.htm

And they are selling a 1 Ohm resistor, calibrated with 0.1 ppm accuracy. But how does it work? I would expect a nice datasheet for this price, but can't find it on the webpage. Why does it have 5 sockets? I guess for Kelvin sensing? Otherwise it would make no sense for 1 ohm because the contact resistance of the sockets would be significant for 0.1 ppm (could be already a problem for the 10k resistor at this accuracy). But even then it could be a problem for some applications, if you really need 1 ohm in the circuit and can't use the other two terminals. And the green socket for shielding?

[Fungus]

no one can actually 100% prove there is no god.

Yet the religious always use that as their "argument" (in quotes).

On the other hand no one can prove there IS a god. Stupidest discussion ever.

OTOH you *can* pretty much prove that the Bible is a load of rubbish, eg. Great Roman census that made Mary+Joseph travel to Bethlehem? Didn't happen. Also read Exodus 20 and contrast with Exodus 34, what the hell happened there...?

Yeah, sorry for bringing it up.

OTOH this is good news because we can finally shut up the people in the other thread who insist the problem with Dave's video rendering machine is the RAM. Is RAM a religion? You'd think so if you read that thread.

[free_electron]

oh god, not the god discussions again ...

i will become a believer in whatever god stops these god discussions.

[Fungus]

oh god, not the god discussions again ...

I don't expect there'll be much 'discussion' here.

[RupertGo]

Since in these days of excellent computation there's no need to have an 'exact' 10k reference resistor, why bother to try? Is there a physical configuration of a particular compound that will give an intrinsically exact resistance, whose absolute value doesn't matter? My imperfect understanding of carbon nanotubes is that they have modes whereby there are step functions in resistance rather than linear changes, and that there are conduction modes that are independent of temperature, so perhaps there are systems that give resistance as a function of atomic structure or similar.

(Could call it the General Ohmic Denominator, or GOD for short...)

[Fungus]

Since in these days of excellent computation there's no need to have an 'exact' 10k reference resistor, why bother to try?

I once bought a second-hand 10k resistor off eBay for $6.

[Armxnian]

They aren't equally likely options. There is only one side making outrageous and silly claims.

Fighting it makes them more angry. It will die off as people learn to think for themselves.

It's my channel, I get to say whatever I want
No one has any right to NOT be offended/upset/annoyed at what I say. Nor do they have a right to expect me not to say or talk about something.
It's not the first time I've mentioned religion and it probably won't be the last.

Yeah well its distracting.

Athiesm is the disbelief in god yet no one can actually 100% prove there is no god. On the other hand no one can prove there IS a god. Stupidest discussion ever.

By the way, there is a teapot orbiting Jupiter right now. I can't prove it, and you can't disprove it, so don't bother debating this proposition.

Which means debating if there is a teapot orbiting Jupiter would be a stupid discussion. You just proved my point.

Athiesm is the disbelief in god yet no one can actually 100% prove there is no god. On the other hand no one can prove there IS a god.

EEVblog should be a place to get away from all this crap, why even mention it.

Since you mention it. Thiesm is the belief in a God, or Gods. Athiesm is simply not that. Is that actually the same as a disbelief? There's an argument for another place. Trying to settle that question takes you towards agnosticism.

Here is one such place. http://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/e9gqd/god_is_unwilling_or_unable_to_convince_me_of_his/

It is the same as disbelief. If there was no religion, Athiesm would not exist. If the initial basis was that there is no higher power, calling yourself Athiest would not make any sense. Athiesm solely exists because there is religion, meaning it is the idea of proving the other side wrong, which is impossible.

no one can actually 100% prove there is no god.

Yet the religious always use that as their "argument" (in quotes).

On the other hand no one can prove there IS a god. Stupidest discussion ever.

OTOH you *can* pretty much prove that the Bible is a load of rubbish, eg. Great Roman census that made Mary+Joseph travel to Bethlehem? Didn't happen. Also read Exodus 20 and contrast with Exodus 34, what the hell happened there...?

Christianity isn't the only religion. Being religious in theory can mean that there is a possibility of a god that no one has yet mentioned. The idea of god is impossible to disprove. You can't disprove that which isn't there or is there but hidden. Therefore, it is more logical to not follow any religious beliefs and to live your life as you see it.

[FrankBuss]

Since in these days of excellent computation there's no need to have an 'exact' 10k reference resistor, why bother to try?

I once bought a second-hand 10k resistor off eBay for $6.

I once bought a 10k resistor from Digikey for 2 cents

But you are right, absolute value doesn't matter, the temperature coefficient is important. You can get 0.2ppm/°C for 10 EUR:

http://www.digikey.de/product-detail/de/Y162910K0000F9R/Y1629-10.0KECT-ND/4333513

So I wonder why does it cost EUR 3750. Calibration might cost EUR 100, if done for different temperatures, a good quality box, shielding, wiring and mounting another EUR 100. Does it have special aging characteristics or some other features that makes it so expensive? Or is it just because of the low production volume and people who needs them don't care about the price?

[SeanB]

There is a good chance that that Australian $1 coin was minted in South Africa, as our mint does coinage for many countries, using that same bimetal copper coated blank.

The US $1 coin has some history on it, the US mint was offering them to collectors at a discount ( selling them for 90c each IIRC) with free postage, and were accepting credit cards as payment, with shipping to anywhere in the USA at the US Treasury's cost. They found out that people were buying $1000 of coins, getting them delivered and then simply handing them in at banks for paying the credit card ( or using stolen cards and a drop shipper as well) thus getting a 10% loan, and even collecting reward points from the card providers.

Info here...

http://riskology.co/the-day-i-bought-15000/

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/13/137795995/how-frequent-fliers-exploit-a-government-program-to-get-free-trips

[Fungus]

Christianity isn't the only religion.

True, but it's the one that's currently deeply ingrained in the biggest superpower in the world. Making polices. Deciding educational curriculums, removing all signs from the Grand Canyon that say it's "millions of years old", etc.

As Dave noted, you can expect to see a gay president long before an atheist president in the USA.

As far as religions go, it should be top of the hit list.

[Fungus]

So I wonder why does it cost EUR 3750. Calibration might cost EUR 100, if done for different temperatures, a good quality box, shielding, wiring and mounting another EUR 100. Does it have special aging characteristics or some other features that makes it so expensive? Or is it just because of the low production volume and people who needs them don't care about the price?

Seems expensive to me as well. It only has one more digit than my $6 second-hand resistor. I bet if you bought a bunch of those you could find one with the extra digit then re-sell the others.

Most likely it's priced to fit the target market.

....and I can't believe Dave isn't going to take it apart! WTF!

[eV1Te]

Athiesm is the disbelief in god yet no one can actually 100% prove there is no god. On the other hand no one can prove there IS a god.

EEVblog should be a place to get away from all this crap, why even mention it.

Since you mention it. Thiesm is the belief in a God, or Gods. Athiesm is simply not that. Is that actually the same as a disbelief? There's an argument for another place. Trying to settle that question takes you towards agnosticism.

It is the same as disbelief. If there was no religion, Athiesm would not exist. If the initial basis was that there is no higher power, calling yourself Athiest would not make any sense. Athiesm solely exists because there is religion, meaning it is the idea of proving the other side wrong, which is impossible.

I agree with wilfred; Atheism is NOT an "active" disbelief in God, and does NOT mean that the person wants to prove the other side wrong. Trying to prove something is related to gnosticism, meaning that "you" know that god does not exist or "you" know that god exists, depending if you are a Theist or Atheist (gnosticism comes from the word meaning "knowledge").

An atheist is simply a person that is not actively believing any God, it might for example be because no one has ever introduced the concept of religion to that person, which means that the person has nothing to prove/disprove or disbelieve in the first place.

There is however a small minority of atheists who make quite significant noise in debates about religion, which probably confuses people to belive that all atheists are militant opposers of all religions.

But most of all I strongly believe in the statement Armxnian mentioned 
"EEVblog should be a place to get away from all this crap, why even mention it. "

[Armxnian]

Athiesm is the disbelief in god yet no one can actually 100% prove there is no god. On the other hand no one can prove there IS a god.

EEVblog should be a place to get away from all this crap, why even mention it.

Since you mention it. Thiesm is the belief in a God, or Gods. Athiesm is simply not that. Is that actually the same as a disbelief? There's an argument for another place. Trying to settle that question takes you towards agnosticism.

It is the same as disbelief. If there was no religion, Athiesm would not exist. If the initial basis was that there is no higher power, calling yourself Athiest would not make any sense. Athiesm solely exists because there is religion, meaning it is the idea of proving the other side wrong, which is impossible.

I agree with wilfred; Atheism is NOT an "active" disbelief in God, and does NOT mean that the person wants to prove the other side wrong. Trying to prove something is related to gnosticism, meaning that "you" know that god does not exist or "you" know that god exists, depending if you are a Theist or Atheist (gnosticism comes from the word meaning "knowledge").

An atheist is simply a person that is not actively believing any God, it might for example be because no one has ever introduced the concept of religion to that person, which means that the person has nothing to prove/disprove or disbelieve in the first place.

There is however a small minority of atheists who make quite significant noise in debates about religion, which probably confuses people to belive that all atheists are militant opposers of all religions.

But most of all I strongly believe in the statement Armxnian mentioned 
"EEVblog should be a place to get away from all this crap, why even mention it. "

I have some things to say in regards to others, but I'll follow my own advice and not continue the discussion.

Talking about electronics is much more fun anyway 

[N2IXK]

http://www.godoffmoney.com/