Thank you for sharing, it is inspiring to see other's ideas. I sometimes use it to create projects that would be a nice to have, my latest project was a go project called hookguard, a go binary that enforces deterministic safety rules for AI coding agents.
While verifying some of the claims of the EFF's scoreboard, I discovered a website which scores programs by their policy decisions and security [1].
I also find it interesting that mumble wasn't mentioned in this secure messaging scorecard, but since this is the first step of a multi-phase project, I imagine the EFF will be updating it.
Great article. It has been a few years since I last laid out a board in KiCad, the biggest thing I remember is that importing parts and footprints took a lot of work and it wasn't a very straight forward process.
Does anyone have a good workflow for managing and exporting parts so that people can go and download your cad files and libraries to reproduce your board?
Have you checked out the KiCad library on github[1]? That library is installed with the install script that is included with KiCad I believe when you downloaded the bzr repo. The library maintainers seem to work pretty closely with the KiCad developers. I have started using KiCad for personal projects and have been following the KiCad development for about 6 months now and from what I have gathered there has been a lot of changes in the last year. I would definitely suggest giving it another try in the near future. It also seems that the way footprints and 3d models are handled has changed in the last year.
As for specific help for KiCad, they have a very helpful irc channel on freenode, there is a KiCad yahoo users group, and I just found this website with videos: KiCad.info
There hasn't been a stable release in a while but the developers seem to be serious about making a new stable release in the near future.
Chris Gammell of The Amp Hour is also getting http://kicad.info off the ground and there are some really great people providing advice in there.
I've gotten burned too many times using the built-in libraries (hidden pins in EESchema not being connected to PWR/GND / incorrect pin spacing in CvPCB) so I throw those together by hand now. In EESchema I would have done it anyway, just to get the pins arranged in a way that makes my drawing look purrrrty, but the drawing/verifying of footprints does get tedious.
My understanding is that some features were removed (or significantly modified) in subsequent releases of KiCad post the version I'm using (BZR 4022), specifically the BOM export, so I haven't bothered installing another version yet. I have a series of designs about to go into production so I'm leery to change up before those boards get committed for assembly.
This is the first time I have seen the KiCad library on github, that would presumably make sharing generated footprints and parts easier. For the board I produced of in 2011, I shared my library on sourceforge as a zip with no clear installation directions. I mostly learned KiCad from David Jones nice tutorial[1].
I'll check out KiCad in a few days to see how easy it is to share a design with someone else, to see with the latest version if library parts can be easily shared. Thanks for the links and helpful suggestions of consulting the IRC channel for support, I wouldn't have considered the IRC channel.
not exactly yet for import/export parts, but I feel the need for better online interactions with parts too. So, I started working on a small project to make this easier last weekend. First prototype: http://pinboardjs.divshot.io/ - what do you think? does this first sketch speak to you?
A better title would be: Open Source webmail client with Gmail-like conversations
It seems like an interesting project and I wish this developer the best of luck in their fund-raising campaign. Their motivation for developing namail is so that they won't be subjected to the advertising in the standard Gmail interface, while keeping the webmail interface.
I would be pretty interested in a Linux client that has an old gmail like interface, but works on downloaded mail. I currently use mutt since it seems to be to be the best offline mail program for my particular workflow.
Tor is the lazy man's attempt at anonymity. I wouldn't trust it since it receives the majority of its funding from the US Government, and that government is the reason many are looking for anonymity.
For better anonymity, ditch your cell (tracking device) and use open wifi networks, with a fresh MAC address each time (you can't necessarily trust routers at $Coffee_Shop to not identify who you are).
If you think the government is one coherent entity with all of them wanting to become Big Brother, you are wrong. The fact that Tor gets its funding from the US government is irrelevant. The source code is out there for you to see and inspect and has been done so by many researchers from universities around the world.
The more people TOR use, the more secure it becomes. All attacks base on analyzing incoming and outgoing traffic or monitoring nodes which use outdated tor version. And why should be using "open wifi networks" more secure or anonymous? You don't know whos running them and who you can trust. With TOR you could still go over open wifi while having not (or much less) to worry about who may be sniffing on that wifi access point.
I was first interested in this post since I do most of my HN browsing via newsbeuter/w3m which are terminal applications. To post, the easiest way seems to be to just pull up the story in my web browser.
An easy way to determine if the US supports a group is to look at the language used to describe that group. Are they "freedom fighters" or "terrorists"?
France is fighting "terrorists" in Mali, not "freedom fighters". The US supports the Syrian "rebels", not the Syrian "terrorists".
As an American Electrical Engineering Master's graduate from one of the mentioned schools, the program I was in was flooded with international students (mostly from India, some from China, a few from Turkey).
What I found interesting is most of the Indian graduate students came for a masters, most of the Chinese graduate students came for a Ph. D. There were too few Turkish graduate students to make a generalization about.
I think this is good because most of the time, American's can earn nicely with their Bachelors in Electrical Engineering, so there's little incentive to pursue higher education. Having got a Master's in Electrical Engineering, I wouldn't recommend it as a way to further your career. The classes were interesting, but so far I haven't found a job that needed those specialized classes.
Well there's a good chance that those job postings are created after they have the H1-B visa candidate already selected. List exactly the candidates "qualifications" so that no one is eligible. That way they can claim that there are no local engineers that can do this very specialized work.
Why are people so eager to make it harder for poor people to get jobs by forcing price controls onto employers?
footoverhand: I want as many people to be able to work as possible. If you think it is too hard for people to live on the salaries that are available at their skill level, then by all means we can talk about improving the social safety net... but forcing companies to lay off people to maintain their salary budgets through salary controls is NOT a good way to help poor people.
Depends. Should minimum wage be what it takes a single parent with two kids to live on or should it be what a college student looking for beer money needs to live on?
According to this living wage calculator http://livingwage.mit.edu/, the living wage for a family of 4 where I live (suburbs of DC) is about $50K. That sounds like a lot, but actually living here there is no way we could survive on that. They only calculate $464 a month for medical for a family of 4. I'm lucky in that my wife has ridiculous health insurance through her job. When we didn't have that our share of the premium was more than that, let alone copays, OTC drugs, etc. Also, the living wage calculation does not account for clothes, school, or about 50 other things that would come up in a family with kids.
I think we should have a maximum wage for software engineers... say, $50,000 a year... and have startups in the Valley pay the difference into a fund to augment the wages of Walmart employees.
EDIT: Oh, no one here likes this idea? Imagine that!
