I do not think it is so bad actually. When you need a lot of flexibility, fast turnarounds and have small production volumes, you will find that big ERP systems are often not really suited for the job. I actually work in the space industry. We manage those kind of part lists in heavyweight PLM and ERP software, but it is mainly because they bring a lot of security, traceability and reliability during production. But during the engineering and development phases, we use that kind of giant excel tools coupled to internal databases to manage the fast evolving part list. It tracks the costs and lead times quite well. The main advantage of Excel (or any other spreadsheet software) is that any user with a need can be a developer and improve the tool. The drawback is that any user can break the tool if he is not cautious. In practice this has not caused significant issues if version control is implemented. When the development winds down and the production phase begins, everything is automatically exported to the heavyweight PLM and ERP tools, with limited amount of data massage required. So in the frame of an F1 team in which everything is moving fast, I can see them using such tools, even if it seems the one used at Williams was inadequate. More sophisticated tools are not necessarily better : Renault Alpine F1 might be big ERP cloud users, however I cannot help but notice that their current F1 performance is terrible. Of course correlation is not causationâ¦

While it is true that leaded solder joints are technically superior, I think that you overestimate the issue of whiskers in lead-free solders (even in the space industry). Pure tin can give you issues, but there are solder alloys which are much safer such as SAC305 or SAC306. They are actually used in spacecraft with a 5 to 10 year service lifetime. If you are interested, there is a JESD standard (JESD201A) which covers tin whisker growth issues and mitigations currently used in the industry. Of course, as usual for many industrial standards, you have to buy them to be able to read them...

This solar oven routinely goes above 2000K. It is used for material research though, not energy production.

Especially when there is no correlation with social renters, which are arguably poorer.

This story about the military jet taking pictures is sometimes gets thrown around, but I do not find it very believable. The Tu-144 actually took off from le Bourget, so there were many more effective ways and occasions to take pictures of its canards than sending in a Mirage.

Yes, for instance this kind of tax exists in France. But the devil is in the details. It is not aimed at offsetting the losses of piracy, but of what is known as private copy. In this country you are actually allowed to copy media you legally own and share it with your family and friends.

As always Europe is a large place, so there are bound to be variations. I used to see string based setters a few decades ago, now they have become quite rare. In my country, I guess that only the smaller places still use them.

Sorry, but I did not exactly get the point of your post. Signal is driven by a non-profit organization and is free for its users. Unless I have missed something, Ferrari or gold plated cables are not.

What are you saying ? I will not praise PSN reliability, but Xbox live also has had several global outages in the past.

Botched link : the radar.

As far as I know, Europa Clipper will carry a https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...>HF and VHF radar that will allow assessing the composition and thickness of the ice crust.

Actually, no. This is not an EMC non-compliance here, but a Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) non-compliance. SAR is specifically designed to be relevant to the human body, and is measured in a human phantom. Of course, that does not mean that exceeding the legal SAR is necessarily very dangerous. There is at least a factor 10 between the allowed SAR in the EU and what is considered potentially harmful.

It will exist once Kobo makes a color e-ink reader. They do support their products for a little more than 10 years.

Actually I have just had the Lightning port of my iPhone 7 fail (it seems one of the pins is damaged and has trouble to make effective contact). After 7 years of daily use this is not a bad outcome.

Since forever in a lot of European countries.