Solar Cells, SparkFun, TSMC - The Detroit Debunking

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• Shoutouts
  • Sparkfun has a new "grab bag" program for all their pick and place cast off parts. Could be some good pickins!
• Rants
  • Why does the IEEE still charge membership fees to unemployed engineers? And why does the cutoff for waiving the fee occur at 13k(and below)? Is that a realistic point at which people start being able to pay dues?
• Discussion Points
  • • California gives 100W incandescent bulbs the boot!
      • The mentioned EETimes article explaining the switcher circuit innards of a CFL
    • Why do LCR meters (like the kind Dave reviewed) output 6 digits of "resolution" through USB when only 3 are displayed on the device screen?
    • Electronic junk is back in the public eye. There is some research starting on the topic, but in the mean time 3rd world countries are still burning circuit boards to get the precious metals from them.
    • New site about electronic waste and recycling by the people that brought you "The Story of Stuff"
  http://www.youtube.com/v/sW_7i6T_H78
  • • And what contributes to electronics junk more than putting electronics in everything? While this can be a boon to new products, is it oversupply of cheap chips or actual consumer demand of the new functionality?
    • TSMC is planning a solar cell manufacturing plant in Mississippi. Good for the local economy (1k jobs, $500M invested). Are we nearing an inflection point where lower income areas in American labor (plus deals from local gov'ts) can compete?
    • New list out about trends in 2011 from JWT. Topping the Amp Hour's pick's from that list are: 3D printing (#1), Microbusinesses (#51), NFC (#56), Self-powered devices (#76) and Tap to pay (#88).
    • Also on the list was Detroit and the transformation it's going through currently, as documented in Requiem for Detroit.
  http://www.youtube.com/v/yIgC5whSP8E
  • Not all predictions go well...Ray Kurzweil responds to the scorching review in the latest issue of the IEEE Spectrum.
  • And since we like IEEE Spectrum so much, we wanted to go over their list from a few months back about the top 25 chips of all time. Really great reading.
• WOTW
  • Ack! Sorry! We didn't get to it this week! Thanks to the submissions, we'll promise to do those first thing next week.