After 1 tube replacement in 2020 & an unknown electrical failure in 2023, the mighty 580 EX II had served for 15 years.  Given the number of articulations done over 15 years, the most likely failure was 1 of the many tiny wires connecting the moving parts.

Noted the mane discharging pad was 5V instead of 330V  while a pink wire bypassing the mane capacitor was 330V.  A wire connecting those 2 might have perished. 

Lions had a huge investment in that, with the external power supply, $36 of replacement tubes, the wireless conversion, on top of its original $500 tag.  Like most high end gear, it was really problematic compared to simpler, cheaper gear.  There were the hot shoe glitches, the balky user interface, the replacement tubes.

This was the 1st time lions couldn't justify the time required to fix it.  There might be a time in the future, but it would entail the EOS RP being a brick for many months.

 

Given the state of DSLR gear, it's not worth buying a $500 OEM flash anymore.  A $120 Godox 685 would do the job.  All the clones are gigantic studio ones.  The only portable option is the $150 EL-100.  There are still dreams of reconstituting a vintage flash into a portable.  That would now use parts from the 580 EX II

Zooming flashes adjust zoom by moving closer & farther from a fresnel lens, but they don't concentrate all the light in a smaller area. They recover some of it with a white reflector.

 

A DSLR really needs 2 flashes: the big studio one for macros, portraits & a portable one for traveling.  Neither one can do it all.  Helas, the cheapest modern phone is just about as good at anything a DSLR with a portable flash can do.

The Godox has a built-in 2.4Ghz receiver but requires a $70 transmitter.  Lions could ignore the built-in receiver & continue using their own system.  Burning the $70 would eliminate the space for a receiver.  There are absolutely no reverse engineerings of the Godox protocol.  There could be someday & it could be cheaper.

It's hard to believe the original 580 EX II came from so long ago that RF control was unheard of.  

Taking off a bag of O rings & unscrewing a few more farsteners gained access to the mane cap.

 

The capacitor shorting pad was connected to a bunch of fine wires which went back to the mane board.

Capacitor board itself was working perfectly.  It has a .5V silicone diode which is shorted by the coil.  The cap still showed 1400uF.

The money being spent on a Godox, the 580 EX II was buried next to the 244T & the $24 of spare bulbs.  The parts definitely exist to build a portable flash or 2 from scratch.  There just aren't any resources which describe practical circuits for variable power.

Previous efforts found the best solution to be hacking a cheap, working TTL flash for Sony & Fujifilm rather than reconstituting a broken flash.  Canon & Nikon send the price to infinity.

The 2 dead flashes may get desoldered into parts.

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For all the hype of the tallest buildings being in Dubai & Taiwan, the highest residential space in the world is in good old NY.  It actually took a generation to gain the air rights, land rights to build Steinway tower & Central park tower.  These rights can't be bought.  The owners have to die off.

Suspect the penthouses will never be private residences but short term rentals. 

Ryan Serhant is another example of how most gootubers aren't faking it while making ends meet.  They really are wealthy & gootube is a kind of outlet for the wealthy to influence the masses without appearing wealthy.  Viewers still see gootubers as poor people trying to hit a home run in showbiz when it's more like rich people trying to appear poor.

10 years younger than a lion, he's a product of the quantitative easing boom, flipping apartments just like the chateau tubers but on a larger scale.  That's what unattainable women under 40 ended up picking.  If you weren't in that league, you wasted your time.

It's pretty obvious who's the real deal & who's faking it on the billionaire tubes.

Serhant got started through acting, but even acting skills couldn't hide that he wasn't buying Iman Gadzhi's schtick.  A gootuber renting a shoddily built $20 million house is a bit tacky nowadays while 10 years ago it would have been mega viral clickbait.

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It seems rust & golang are the current hero languages.  Compiling down to native is still king for backend software.  Suspect the latest iteration of swift & kotlin are the current hero languages for phones.  It's unfortunate that phones never got a native API & it's all because subsidizing the cost of the phone depends on locking down what the programmer can do.