I don't agree with "the west forgot how to make things", it moved supply chains for cheap consumer goods to asia, but in the B2B space a lot of things are manufactured in Europe: companies like Bosch, Volkswagen, ASML, Alstom and Airbus are cranking out extremely complicated machines that last many years in demanding environments. It's just a different level of value-add vs. low cost electronics (for instance).
I remember Covid and the supply chain crisis that unfolded in Europe and the west. Most of the companies you’ve mentioned weren’t cranking out anything during that time as all of them realised that "low cost electronics" are not always readily available and that we forgot how to make them or don’t have the capacity to produce them in significant numbers anymore ourselves. A lot of basic electronic components were not available during that time and we still haven’t fully grasped the complexities of our supply chains and where they begin.
I also remember, that EE for a while stopped using the term "jellybean parts". Turns out that most jellybeans are produced in Asia.
Well, these numbers are averages between people living until old age (65+ years) and high infant mortality. I don't think most people keeled over when they reach 25 years...
Yes so the other Chinese... the point being that none of that is "European". I used "Chinese" on purpose to highlight the glaring issue with calling this "European alternative"...
This explains a lot, American microwaves have these settings for different types of food etc, it seems most people throw something in and just 'nuke it'. European microwave ovens on the other hand, have a setting for different wattages (90W up to 720W 'Max' in my case), which, combined with instructions in the recipe or on the box, provide the right setting for this particular food.
Are you sure that European microwaves actually use continuous power at those wattages and not also "simulate" the wattage by using short bursts of a fixed power?
Some have inverters for continuous power adjusting, others turn on and off the magnetron.
In any case, all that I have ever used have 2 dials, one for power and one for time (and a button to allow to chain multiple time intervals, each with a different power level). I have always used only these 2 dials and I have never used any other buttons that may exist for preset programs.
For many years I have used microwave ovens only for reheating food. Now I consider that I was stupid and I cook all the food that I eat in a microwave oven, from raw ingredients.
This is much better than by traditional means, because it is much faster and perfectly reproducible. Moreover, cooking in a microwave oven removes the need for continuous or periodic stirring that is required in many traditional cooking methods, because the microwave-cooked food is homogeneous (without lumps etc.) even with no stirring, if the time and power level are chosen correctly.
They switch the magnetron on and off, unless they have inverters I guess. I have seen the two knob ones (and I prefer these) and the fancy ones, which all have cryptic user interfaces and usually no manual next to them.
Yes, you won't be able to do this on normal wifi traffic typically either, you need to send specific packets at a high enough rate (in between normal internet traffic) in order to sense with any accuracy, as I also remarked earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46976849
Yea, that makes sense as you would need quite a bit of information across a reasonable temporal range if the identifying qualities are movement related. Very interesting.
There'll be an update where a first responder can send a special packet to an SSID that will enable these high rate packets without needing to join the wifi. It'll be secure where only the good guys will know about it so that it won't be able to be used nefariously. /s
I was shocked to find that even electronics that are collected in Europe seem to be shipped to Africa, set on fire, and at most, metals are collected from the ashes, including traces of gold and copper. That's about it. Batteries have a bit better recycling path but not by much.
On the upside, at some point the ground in those infamous electronics "recycling" towns will become so contaminated they'll be able to strip-mine for rare earths!
A lot of recycling seems to amount to shipping waste overseas so it can be disposed of in jurisdictions with few/no environmental protections. Pretty sad state of affairs.
