• 
  
• Dave will be giving a talk on trends in hardware innovation at Maker Faire Sydney.
  
• One example given was board share programs like OSHpark (we had @Laen on show 149) There is also a new Aussie version called breadboardkiller. 
  
• Chris will be doing a talk on KiCad at an event at Supply Frame (sign up here!). He will also be at DEFCON this coming weekend.
  
• MultiSim from National Instruments is now available via Mouser with a bunch of the parts from their catalog.
  
• There are lots of online SPICE simulators, but as Mike Engelhardt discussed on show 196, they are based on the open source (but also out of date) Berkeley SPICE engine.
  
• Chris is attempting to re-work his Wurlitzer 200, discussed back when the show started.
  
• [CHRIS THE AMERICAN IS POSTING THIS LINK]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-30/wikileaks-publish-details-of-suppression/5634800[/AMERICAN]
  
• Dave has been having issues with part sourcing. He has a special Digikey part number for a resistor $6K.
  
• The job of engineers is to reduce risk in components and designs. Chris thinks it’s better to pay for better parts and offload that risk to the part manufacturer.
  
• IBM is trying to reduce risk by selling off their chip fab…for negative $1B.
  
• Radio Shack has planned the closure of a large chunk of its stores…but may not have the money to close them.
  
• Panasonic is partnering with Tesla to build the Giga factory for batteries.
  
• Chris was around when Samsung built a new fab in Texas…the logistics of building a huge facility are daunting.
  
• A new PCB printer called Squink is fundraising on Kickstarter. It is similar to the previous Cartesian Co, but also has Pick & Place capabilities and it dispenses conductive adhesive.
  
• The TI Fly Buck (the LM5017) is an interesting way to generate isolated power.
  
  
  
• Why aren’t there schematic standards (like coding standards)? Maybe there are for mil spec / ANSI?
  
• Dave looked at this in his recent vintage power supply teardown, which had some odd conventions on the schematic.
  
  
  
• Chris also had troubles reading the cap values on a his Wurlitzer schematic
  

Need some help with a legacy schematic…what are these cap denominations? MFD = uF? .001 is .001nF? Or also uF? Gah! pic.twitter.com/puM09k64Tw

— Chris Gammell (@Chris_Gammell) August 1, 2014

Thanks to Eric Horst for the pictures of the resistors.