Episode 110: Armstrong, Camenzind & Museums - Outstanding Oneirophoros Obituaries - The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

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We lost two greats in the past week, Neil Armstrong and Hans Camenzind.
Oneirophoros -- n. Bringer of Dreams
Chris has been continuing his Chip Report TV project, check out the video below for the "buck fiddy" reference (Starting at about 6 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2kycKTbz_U&t=5m47s
XKCD has a comic about the number of people that have set foot on another planet diminishing.
Jeff Hammerbacher was a former facebook employee quoted on BusinessWeek.com as saying, "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he says. "That sucks."
Our links for the show now live at reddit.com/r/theamphour. Much like the discuss server, you can add, vote and comment on each story for the coming shows.
The spinnaker chip and associated boards were made to help model the human brain. That's a lotta chips.
DARPA is looking into analog computers as a next generation computing platform.
Dave enjoyed the "NASA and we know it video", lampooning the lander crew and their quirks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFvNhsWMU0c
With ever increasing costs and needs for high volume chips, will large companies "insource" their chip manufacturing? Unlikely.
The Apple and Samsung court case is over and was annoying.
The 21st annual obfuscated C contest has started and runs until Sept 14th. Dave thinks this is a waste of time.
This is done in hardware as well sometimes. People put in fake circuits either on the board or in an ASIC.
Sometimes code doesn't need to be obfuscated, like for people that don't know how to properly write code. The Engineering Commons discussed scientists and non-programmers writing code.
Chris has been working with the BeagleBone, trying to make a hardware development platform.
Dave thinks the Bus Pirate might work for simple SPI communication.
Other times, the best digital platform is the one you used last time.
And the best development board is your final production board, with the assumption it might just be wrong.
OSRAM has developed a footprint to make it more compatible with competitors devices.
Old school Motorola modules for TVs made footprint matching with common tubes impossible (starting about 12:50 or so) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X89j8XZGgqA#t=771s
Speaking of tough to find parts, EMSL showcases a 23kV, 15A fuse. Wowsa!
If you're a Tesla fan, The Oatmeal is helping raise money for a Tesla museum. Donate and get cool stuff!
Or check out The Oatmeal's (raunchy) comparison of Edison and Tesla.