pdelbarba

8 ms·

31.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
As someone who does this kind of work, the timeline is absolutely insane. The aircraft started out as a PZL-104MA Wilga 2000 but he redid part of the wing, built an entire carbon fiber cowling and redid the wiring, all on top of the engine
32.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
I see it as a concerning second phase to citizens united. Give corporations virtually unlimited influence and watch as they also find ways of capping everyone else's influence. Google sticks you into your (their) filter bubble and Fa
33.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
This is interesting because normally I'd assume this would just follow population density (Europe, the NA, Japan, see xkcd.com/1138) but India and China barely have any airports relative to their populations. That's a lot of
34.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
Thanks for the link. I've never used an iphone so I was extremely confused by that argument.
35.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
That's possibly the dumbest chart I've ever seen. Since when are nuclear plants disaster locations? Might as well label the entire US at risk of "falling airplanes" or every city as "ICBM target". In going to
36.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
Keep in mind that "pay" is a very nebulous concept in software. Embedded work clusters around the same cities that high level work does but I've found there to be more variety in some aspects. Defence work in particular wil
37.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
ECE/CS minor is pretty much perfect for a super low level role. I was straight CS and I kinda wish I had more formal training in some of the electrical stuff. If you like it, try to get comfortable in VHDL or Verilog FPGA stuff. Tha
38.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
Pro tip: find someone willing to mentor you. Look for companies with people who are willing to help you with that, some will, some won't. In the low power realm there's a lot of domain knowledge to learn. What sleep modes allow
39.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
I actually find the opposite to be true. I can spin up containers, write ruby backends and do frontend design like anyone else. Moving up the stack is easy, especially when you know a little something about the performance impact of doing
40.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
IMO the reason to do embedded is it's super cool. You can actually hold something up and say "I made this". I don't really care for web because it's so ephemeral. I want to be like the previous generation that co
41.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
Some satellites do run higher level code on the payload side. My company also uses it for our open source telemetry package. That code is typically very isolated though. If it crashes entirely, you can't exactly send someone over to
42.
by pdelbarba 8y ago
Late 20-something embedded dev here. This is horseshit. The bulk of the embedded developers right now are aging boomers who are soon to be exiting the workforce. I barely know anyone else my age who does this stuff. Yes the ecosystem is ch
43.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
What does this have to do with making hackable products?
44.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
I wish more companies would allow this. Look no further than games, where the ones that are memorable are the ones that can be modded to death. Look at skyrim, kerbal space program, and lets not forget Falcon BMS (originally released in 1
45.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
Having been in a situation where my work, housing, friends and entire life were all wrapped up in one, each subject to the failure of one of the others, this freaks me out a bit. The anxiety it can cause is unreal since there's no com
46.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
I find this one especially egregious because Jepsen looks a lot like Jeppesen the aerospace products company. They mostly do charts and stuff though so I was pretty confused that they were mentioned alongside the term 'aerospike'
47.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
Similarly with embedded development. We use them for just about everything from communications to scheduling. I think the subtext here is that state machines are just rarely used for web/mobile...
48.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
Couldn't agree more. The industry is so stuck in various dogmas that all of this is totally acceptable in the pursuit of securing source code from presumably China and anyone with a screwdriver.
49.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
I think the difference here is that when it comes to embedded software, very expensive capital can be tied up, as is the case in the above video. Not many commercially available software packages cost >$10k and very few people are expos
50.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
I like the idea. I'm worried that this ship has sailed though as it's becoming harder to even get phones without cryptographically verified bootloaders, and god forbid you want to mess with the baseband/modem source. This i
51.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
I work in the embedded field and this drives me nuts. I personally feel that companies should be required to go one step further and be compelled to release their embedded keys and source code for any product that they no longer provide co
52.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
I would absolutely love a big writeup on how they're set up and what the components are, as well as all the real-estate stuff that certainly surrounds them. I'm also noticing a lot of new towers that look like big cylinders on a
53.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
For those that go this route, I found that getting to about 40% mastery for any given test bank is good enough to pass with a safe margin. That is, being able to answer 40% of the questions right every time the same one is presented. Basic
54.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
Also literally anything that Travis Goodspeed has done. He's basically the lord and savior of amateur radio.
55.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
There are plenty of really good apps on the android app store at least. They'll just feed you the questions and correct your answers. Took about 1 wk of semi serious use to pass technician and another week to get general and extra to
56.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
Very few people here have any of those qualifications. Most of them just pretend to know what they're talking about (not that you need those qualifications for that). If you have any expertise in some small topic that comes up freque
57.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
Never had issues with rowing. Just don't compete as a lightweight and you'll be fine. Cycling could be fine but just about everyone gets into traumatic road accidents from time to time.
58.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
I've never heard of these before today, but I spent some time in Philadelphia and I swear every third person there has a Fraternal Order of Police licence plate and/or sticker on their car. I actually have a couple pictures somew
59.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
I'm split on this. If it's <=1hr of work I wouldn't be super upset. I also don't mind whiteboarding as long as it's not just a bunch of banal garbage that google could divulge in a microsecond but unfortunately
60.
by pdelbarba 9y ago
The outdoors are extremely accessible here in Denver. The culture here is very strongly in favor work/life balance since everyone hauls ass out into the mountains every Friday afternoon.

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