We’ve all heard about the perils of counterfeit chips, and more than a few of us have probably been bitten by those scruple-free types who run random chips through a laser marker and foist them off as something they’re not. Honestly, we’ve never understood the business model here — it seems like the counterfeiters spend almost as much time and effort faking chips as they would just getting the real ones. But we digress.

Unfortunately, integrated circuits aren’t the only parts that can be profitably faked, as [Amateur Hardware Repair] shows us with this look at questionable tantalum capacitors. In the market for some tantalums for a repair project, the offerings at AliExpress proved too tempting to resist, despite being advertised alongside 1,000 gram gold bars for $121 each. Wisely, he also ordered samples from more reputable dealers like LCSC, DigiKey, and Mouser, although not at the same improbably low unit price.

It was pretty much clear where this would be going just from the shipping. While the parts houses all shipped their tantalums in Mylar bags with humidity indicators, with all but LCSC including a desiccant pack, the AliExpress package came carefully enrobed in — plastic cling wrap? The Ali tantalums were also physically different from the other parts: they were considerably smaller, the leads seemed a little chowdered up, and the package markings were quite messy and somewhat illegible. But the proof is in the testing, and while all the more expensive parts tested fine in terms of capacitance and equivalent series resistance, the caps of unknown provenance had ESRs in the 30 milliohm range, three to five times what the reputable caps measured.

None of this is to say that there aren’t some screaming deals on marketplaces like AliExpress, Amazon, and eBay, of course. It’s not even necessarily proof that these parts were in fact counterfeit, it could be that they were just surplus parts that hadn’t been stored under controlled conditions. But you get what you pay for, and as noted in the comments below the video, a lot of what you’re paying for at the parts houses is lot tracebility.

Although most energy storage solutions on a grid-level focus on batteries, a group of researchers at MIT and Harvard University have proposed using supercapacitors instead, with their 2023 research article by [Nicolas Chanut] and colleagues published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The twist here is that rather than any existing supercapacitors, their proposal involves conductive concrete (courtesy of carbon black) on both sides of the electrolyte-infused insulating membrane. They foresee this technology being used alongside green concrete to become part of a renewable energy transition, as per a presentation given at the American Concrete Institute (ACI).

Putting aside the hairy issue of a massive expansion of grid-level storage, could a carbon-cement supercapacitor perhaps provide a way to turn the concrete foundation of a house into a whole-house energy storage cell for use with roof-based PV solar? While their current prototype isn’t quite building-sized yet, in the research article they provide some educated guesstimates to arrive at a very rough 20 – 220 Wh/m³, which would make this solution either not very great or somewhat interesting.

The primary benefit of this technology would be that it could be very cheap, with cement and concrete being already extremely prevalent in construction due to its affordability. As the researchers note, however, adding carbon black does compromise the concrete somewhat, and there are many questions regarding longevity. For example, a short within the carbon-cement capacitor due to moisture intrusion and rust jacking around rebar would surely make short work of these capacitors.

Swapping out the concrete foundation of a building to fix a short is no small feat, but maybe some lessons could be learned from self-healing Roman concrete.

A couple of weeks back we featured a story (third item) about a chunk of space jetsam that tried to peacefully return to Earth, only to find a Florida family’s roof rudely in the way. The 700-gram cylinder of Inconel was all that was left of a 2,360-kg battery pack that was tossed overboard from the ISS back in 2021, the rest presumably turning into air pollution just as NASA had planned. But the surviving bit was a “Golden BB” that managed to slam through the roof and do a fair amount of damage. At the time it happened, the Otero family was just looking for NASA to cover the cost of repairs, but now they’re looking for a little more consideration. A lawsuit filed by their attorney seeks $80,000 to cover the cost of repairs as well as compensation for the “stress and impact” of the event. This also seems to be about setting a precedent, since the Space Liability Convention, an agreement to which the USA is party, would require the space agency to cover damages if the debris had done damage in another country. The Oteros think the SLC should apply to US properties as well, and while we can see their point, we’d advise them not to hold their breath. We suppose something like this had to happen eventually, and somehow we’re not surprised to see “Florida Man” in the headlines.

There was a little hubbub this week around the release of a study regarding the safety of autonomous vehicles relative to their meat-piloted counterparts. The headlines for the articles covering this varied widely and hilariously, ranging from autonomous vehicles only being able to drive in straight lines to AVs being safer than human-driven cars, full-stop. As always, one has to read past the headlines to get an idea of what’s really going on, or perhaps even brave reading the primary literature. From our reading of the abstract, it seems like the story is more nuanced. According to an analysis of crashes involving 35,000 human-driven vehicles and 2,100 vehicles with some level of automation, AVs with SAE Level 4 automation suffered fewer accidents across the board than those without any automation. Importantly, the accidents that Level 4 vehicles do suffer are more likely to occur when the vehicle is turning just before the accident, or during low-visibility conditions such as dawn or dusk. The study also compares Level 4 automation to Level 2, which has driver assistance features like lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control, and found that Level 2 actually beats Level 4 in clear driving conditions, but loses in rainy conditions and pretty much every other driving situation.

There’s a strange story coming out of New York regarding a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enforcement action that seems a little shady. It regards a General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) repeater system used by the New York State GMRS Alliance. GMRS is sort of a “ham radio lite” system — there’s no testing required for a license, you just pay a fee — that uses the UHF band. Repeaters are allowed, but only under specific rules, and that appears to be where things have gone wrong for the club. The repeater system they used was a linked system, which connected geographically remote repeaters stretching from the far western part of the state near Buffalo all the way to Utica. It’s the linking that seems to have raised the FCC’s hackles, and understandably so because it seems to run counter to the GMRS rules in section 95. But it’s the method of notification that seems hinky here, as the repeater custodian was contacted by email. That’s not typical behavior for the FCC, who generally send enforcement notices by certified snail mail, or just dispense with the paper altogether and knock on your door. People seem to think this is all fake news, and it may well be, but then again, the email could just have been an informal heads-up preceding a formal notice. Either way, it’s bad news for the GMRS fans in upstate New York who used this system to keep in touch along Interstate 90, a long and lonely stretch of road that we know all too well.

Third time’s a charm? We’ll see when sunspot region AR3723 (née AR3697 née AR3664) makes a historic third pass around the Sun and potentially puts Earth in its crosshairs yet again. The region kicked up quite a ruckus on its first pass across the solar disk back in May with a series of X-class flares that produced stunning aurorae across almost all of North America. Pass number two saw the renamed region pass more or less quietly by, although it did launch an M-class flare on June 23 that caused radio blackouts in most of the North Atlantic basin. When AR3723 does peek out from behind the eastern limb of the Sun it’ll be a much-diminished version of its former Carrington-level glory, and will likely be given multiple designations thanks to fragmentation while it was hanging out on the backside. But it could still pack a punch, and even if this particular region doesn’t have much juice left, it sure seems like the Sun has plenty of surprises in store for the balance of Solar Cycle 25.

Somebody made a version of Conway’s Game of Life using nothing but checkboxes, which is very cool and you should check it out.

And finally, we’ve been doing an unexpected amount of automotive DIY repairs these days, meaning we spend a lot of time trolling around for parts. Here’s something we didn’t expect to see offered by a national retailer, but that we’d love to find a use for. If it ever comes back in stock we just might pick one up.