Even MIT News gets it wrong
In a recent article, MIT News reported on a recently-developed tamper-proof ID tag. The gist of the story is that some researcher at MIT has developed a system that irradiates a small tag with THz waves and uses the reflections from the tag to identify an object.
In the second paragraph, the author writes, “This tiny tag, which offers improved security over RFIDs, utilizes terahertz waves, which are smaller and travel much faster than radio waves.”
This is, of course, incorrect. Terahertz waves are radio waves, and as such, travel no faster than radio waves at lower frequencies, namely the speed of light. If these waves did travel much faster than radio waves, that would be the real story, not the ID tags!
DIY Layout Creator
On a recent episode of the ICQ Podcast, Martin, M1MRB, discussed the DIY Layout Creator. The website says that this application “provides a simple interface and enough power to let the user draw schematics, board/chassis layouts and guitar wiring diagrams quickly and without a steep learning curve.”
It doesn’t actually do PCB trace routing, but it will let you arrange the components on a board. It seems like it would be the perfect tool for building small circuits on perf board. Here’s an example from their website:
Astron power supplies with PowerPoles!
This probably isn’t news to anyone but me, but I found out recently that the Astron RS-20M and the RS-35M power supplies now come with Anderson PowerPoles on the front panel.
I think that I’d prefer them to be on the rear panel, near the binding posts, but PowerPoles on an Astron supply is still pretty cool. It looks like the PowerPoles are only available on the M models and not the A models. The M models have voltage and current meters, while the A models do not.