Spacing Out On Space - Dave's Dongle Designing

From The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)

Dave has decided to keep his current office and update his internet.
A Swedish broadband company showed the effect of crappy internet (because of the lag)
The 3 second lag is similar to a trip for a signal from the earth to the moon.
Speaking of space, Hackaday (and Supply Frame) is sending a design contest winner to space! It's called The Hackaday Prize.
Dave is a judge, Chris is helping to organize it.
There are some parallels to the 555 contest; Dave wants to see an elegant solution, similar to Le Domineux.
On the Virgin Galactic wiki page (a possible carrier for winners of The Hackaday Prize), it mentions that Richard Branson was scheduled to be on Spaceship Two, but apparently Chris was mistaken thinking this had already launched (only testing still).
On the portable lab idea, talked about 2 episodes ago, Chris found a new class of carrying cases: Rolling Makeup Carrying Cases.
If a tablet based scope was going to be included in the portolab, a possible option is the OSCiprime, an open source Android based oscilloscope.
A more rugged and advanced option would be a handheld scope, like the Hantek DSO-1200.
Chris will be at Maker Faire and SolidCon giving talks this year, prompting more discussion about a portable lab. If you'll be in town, let him know!
Altium is moving again, this time to San Diego. Their last move to Shanghai was when Dave was let go.
Dave wrote a forum post translating press release.
EAGLE is also making some changes; their version 7 of their software will be node-locked. This means more hassle for software owners when changing machines (though they will allow two machines to start with)
Dave was once contacted to be a dongle designer. Heh.
The chip world is seeing changes, especially at the top. Intel was not the choice by Google for their new server motherboard. Instead it will be the Power8 chip from IBM.
Amazon is also hiring a chip architect to develop next generation server silicon technology.
Cirrus Logic is buying Woflson, a competing audio firm. Who is left to compete with them for audio amplifiers and CODECs?
One of the hardest things about doing a project (especially alone/with a small team) is handling the purchasing side of things.
Lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System (that many vendors follow), means that there isn't often excess inventory in the marketplace for non-commodity components.
Chris never got his green belt he began training for, but he did develop a distaste for terms like KanBan.