#231 - Supply Chain Woes And Wares - Nonplussed Neotechnic Nithing

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#231 - Supply Chain Woes And Wares - Nonplussed Neotechnic Nithing

January 07, 2015

Dave and Chris recall minimum wage not so fondly, except havingÂ cash in hand.
Dave has been having trouble getting his Maxim parts in hand, but it was actually DHL getting them stuck in customs.
When working with small quantities, ordering parts up front can be a necessity. @Roteno tweeted about doing a design and getting stuck without any stock in the world.Â
Bunnie Huang (former guest) writes about the ‘soylent supply chain’ (“It’s made of people!”). Much of business is still done based upon relationships and working with other humans.
Distributors have changed and consolidated, even since when Chris started working in the industry. Dave’s friend used to collect and compareÂ business cards so he could see as sales people jumped from one distributor to another.Â
FAEs aren’t likely to go away any time soon, nor will factory applications engineers. Marketing rep firms might though. Chris explained the difference between types of sales/marketing/technical support engineers on Engineer Blogs back in the day.
Dave now has an article on wikipedia! Quick, someone deface it!
Elon Musk recently did a fantastic AMA on reddit. This made Chris realize he doesn’t really care about space (electronics); more specifically rockets seem boring, but it’s likely ignorance about the required specs for doing something like that (similar for a Model S).Â
The Hardware Battlefield showcases new hwstartups at CES, a range of which don’t seem to be doing interesting tech. This competition feels similar to D ragon Den/Shark Tank.
Chris mentioned the a lot of hwstartups aren’t that interesting because of the fields they cover, but one that has been interesting (though it’s “older” now) is Boosted Boards. Here’s a good review of them:

Amazon has big changes coming to Lab126 (designers of the Kindle) after failures of the Fire Phone. This highlights how even in big companies, even theÂ “research”Â departments aren’t immune to the sales cycle (which may point to the fact that they aren’t truly research at all).
Dave used to doÂ research by doing long term testing of components. This still isn’t basic physics/academic research, but it’s closer than the development Chris mostly did.
Bell Labs was able to operate because of the margins MaBell had due to their monopoly. Much like modern distributors, these margins continue to shrink.
Graphene seems like a physics experiment that is on the cusp of being useful for the past 5 years. The New Yorker has an interesting piece comparing the graphene timeline to that of aluminum, which took nearly 50 years for its first commercial use and another 50 for its widespread use.
The student who was told “NoÂ Microcontrollers” had a clever workaround.
iRobot is offering the hackable Roomba for $200. Former guest Scott Miller used to run manufacturing for them.
Dave is moving onto the next round of hiring for his intern. Still no word on which CAD package they’ll use, though many Aussie students learn Altium because it’s given to the Universities there to get them hooked.
Chris is excited about the upcoming (but not research-new) feature on KiCad: Matched impedance calculation for traces as their being drawn.
While Chris was interviewing after leaving college, he took part in a group interview.
Will the changes to how courses are delivered to students affect how they learn and are hired for jobs? Do courses like this Georgia Tech online course help students stand out? Veritasium did a video about how online courses won’t revolutionize education, just like technologies before it.Â

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