Aluminium smelting uses a ridiculous amount of energy. So much that electricity costs can represent as much as half of the final value of a piece of aluminium metal.

It's also why smelters tend to be parked next to giant hydroelectric dams.

Note the process uses gigantic carbon electrodes and burns them up, releasing CO2; and cryolite as a flux, which makes fluoride waste products. So it's not entirely a closed deal. The aluminium part is, though. 100% reusable.

That's an awesome sample size you have there.

I have a bug with points too - and solid lifters, a carb, generator, no AC and basically no heat without the auxiliary, and various other bits of cave tech..

But you do realize why we quit using them, right? If a new car needed new points and valves adjusted every couple thousand miles, no one would buy the bloody thing. It's simple, but it's still a PITA, especially for people that can't wrench.

They made a lot of Porsches with K-Jetronic. (mechanical fuel injection), 1970s - early 80s, maybe into the 90s on some models.

Though surely the later ones had a computer for spark? Which isn't related to the fuel injection... and could be deleted if you were dedicated, I guess.

various jetronic types were common on all the euro marques before 1995 or so. K doesn't require a computer. L has an analog computer, etc.

Nice try, NSA. You're not gonna fool us that easily.

The fact that Stalin brought Russia from a mostly agrarian backwater to a massive industrial superpower during his 30 year rule doesn't hurt neither.

It was a S-125 SAM. Cave tech, nearly.

Must have been reasonably hot if it charred the organic matter it was mixed with, and burst the 55 gal drum...

Though I suppose the 'sludge' could have been something along the lines of sulfuric acid (with requisite trace amounts of radioactive bits in it).. that would cook anything organic in there. Of course you'd think they'd be smart enough to neutralize things like that before binning them... Maybe not.

Counter rotating props are pretty neat. Shame about the racket they make, though. Never seen one flying, but they're supposed to be loud as hell.

Agilent still makes cool, quality stuff as far as I know. Expensive as always, though. The modern stuff running linux or windows doesn't feel quite the same as old, hefty CRT stuff... which is all I can afford anyway, but still looks to be built well.

I think of them as HP, and "HP" as the shitty consumer products division that it fled from.

It's even better when they're completely wrong.

MOSFETs have no fixed voltage drop, just a resistance. Paralleling them indeed reduces the resistance, and hence losses and drop.

The d-bag GP is thinking of BJTs ("normal" transistors), which do have a more or less fixed voltage drop (it varies somewhat with current and temperature).

There's almost no cig tax in Russia, they're on the order of $2 a pack.
It can't be worth the hassle to save the... what, 25 cents of tax?

I guess if they were counterfeit or stolen it could be worthwhile, though.

Bringing them into Canada makes sense, with some of the highest sin taxes in the world, though. They're $14 a pack in this province.

You'll have to install custom firmware to prevent things from having to go to the dump on their third birthday?

Seems pretty ridiculous, not to mention that it can still have a hole exploited on the day they launch the device, and not be updated for years (in it's allotted lifespan).

I'm more for the option of make things easier to update, and, the important part... actually release bloody updates! I'm looking at you, almost every embedded device manufacturer out there.

They probably forgot their wallet because they were too busy texting while driving to the store.

Yeah, the American military industrial complex oughtta be able to duplicate it at a mere ten times the price.