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Bill and Dave would be spinning if they knew what has been done to their formerly great company.

Well, with a 28.8 years half life it should glow a while. BUT, the largest license exempt quantity one can get iirc is 0.1 uCi. Plus it’s a fission product so good luck making it yourself. :) I don’t recommend the radioactive Boy Scout approach.

Along with a book (lots of good recommendations to choose from here), I recommend getting yourself some basic tools for practical experimentation: breadboard, multimeter (even a cheap Chinesium model will be fine for low voltage DC work), an oscilloscope (entry level DSO models from Chinese OEMs such as Siglent and Rigol can be had very affordably), a bench power supply (Siglent and Rigol also offer these), and some components (Joe Knows kits that are sold on Amazon are a great way to stock up on decent quality resistors, capacitors, and semiconductors to help you get to building circuits).

If you get to wanting to experiment with faster circuits, you can ditch breadboards and their parasitics for Manhattan style construction[1] and be able to build _much_ faster circuits with better success. Or you can fall down another rabbit hole, learning how to design your own PCBs. With PCB services becoming mainstream nowadays, you can learn a tool such as KiCad (free software) and send out your gerbers to be manufactured for cheap.

[1]: http://www.sdmakersguild.org/the-art-of-manhattan-style-circ...

While AoE (and the newly released X-Chapters!) is an excellent handbook to keep around, I would agree with the other commenters that it is not a particularly friendly textbook for a beginner.

Just to be certain, you realize that Duffel Blog is a satire site, right?

Scale matters too. As I clearly stated, I am not making electronics at industrial scales, nor am I generating large quantities of e-waste.

As for hacker spaces, why on earth would anyone in their right mind assume that it would be ok to not wash hands, eat, drink, etc in that environment _and_ let their kids work there without the same precautions, leaded solder or no?

This is from the perspective of a hobbyist who does _not_ do industrial quantities of soldering, but rather the occasional build or the occasional repair of a piece of old test equipment.

I use eutectic 63/37 Kester solder in several sizes for everything. With my temp controlled Weller station, it's the bee's knees for making quality joints quickly.

As far as worrying about safety, it's really down to common sense. In long time scales, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. If you apply common sense, you can have fun while you're around and not have problems from lead solder.

Here's my "hot takes":

1) There's a reason why food and drink isn't allowed in professional labs of various kinds. Follow their example. Don't use your kitchen table as a workbench. Don't eat and drink in your work area. Don't lick solder. etc. etc.

If your living arrangement is so small that you can't separate them adequately, seek out a local hacker space or a friend who does have space.

2) Wash your hands thoroughly after soldering (and if you are doing projects with your kids, instill in them the instinct to wash their hands, too!) If I'm finding myself doing a lot of soldering/desoldering for a repair, I take frequent breaks and wash then, too. It also helps reduce mistakes.

3) At a minimum, use a desk fan to blow fumes away from your face. Better yet, invest in a fume extractor unit. I'd say the latter it's a necessity if you do a lot of soldering.

The bottom line is, choose what you prefer and what you are willing to risk using, and take appropriate precautions. Chances are, even if you eliminate lead solder from your hobby work, there's likely something equally as hazardous in your local environment that you are more systemically exposed to. Radon gas, naturally occurring drinking water contaminants (or sometimes unnaturally...), etc.

Thanks for your reply. I’m certainly going to keep a lookout for both.

What would you say is the final model that "has it"? Besides my vintage HPs (HP15C, 2xHP16C, HP45) I also have the 50g and the modern 35S. For me, the 50g's lack of a proper ENTER key ruins it. I'm sort of on the lookout for a nice 48 series to replace it for that reason. The 35S at least has a proper ENTER.

I have both the HP15C and two HP16Cs, though I am not old enough to have bought one new. :o) Truly awesome calculators, even if they are a bit slow sometimes. The form factor of the Voyagers is amazingly perfect; in fact the ratio of the length to width is approximately the Golden Ratio if I recall.

I use mine regularly as I prefer a tactile instrument. Plus the mental challenge of implementing programs in a constrained environment is invigorating.

If you're interested in following these things, the Deep Space Network Now page [1] is a fun one to keep bookmarked. It displays the real time status of each DSN station and what spacecraft they are communicating with. [edit] you'll want to click on "more detail" on the lower right to see the technical information about the signals for each antenna.

Right now, Canberra has both an uplink and a downlink going to New Horizons.

Even more fun is when they get a downlink from one of the Voyager probes. The signal strength is so incredibly small, it's testament to very skilled engineers developing the signal processing they use.

[1] https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

Typing this from my 2017 12" MacBook...have not had a single issue with the keyboard. In fact, I have grown to quite like it. Sure it's not my beloved WASD Code with the Cherry Clears, but it's one of the better portable keyboards in terms of typing experience of late, in my opinion.

Accessing the recent photos is now accessed directly as one of those "iMessage App" icons that appears in the ribbon above the keyboard. However, the UI change is annoying and I constantly open the camera (though you can also get to recent photos by tapping the icon at the upper left of the camera, when inside messages).

I think the YubiKey nano is intended to be left in a port. I don't leave mine in though (keep it on my keyring!)

Both my undergrad and grad OS courses used xv6 and I can tell you that the easiest way to get hacking on it is to spin up a VM (I used vagrant for this since I just wanted headless) and run it in QEMU. MIT has a patched version available that has some handy debug features. Feel free to contact me through keybase and I can provide you all the scripts I used.

Yep! I just purchased the 1Password 7 license from the beta app, i.e. voting with my wallet. :)

Honestly, I will be happy if you continue to support licenses vs. subscriptions as an option + syncing with the cloud service of choice (I use iCloud). My use case is pretty simple. I don't need fancy integrations. I just want an easy to use solution that protects my passwords and enables me to use it across my Apple devices...which is what my (licensed) 1Password 6 does wonderfully for me now, across two Macs, my iPhone, and my iPad. For that feature set, I am willing to fork over for a new license at major versions. I just don't feel comfortable making my password management dependent on a subscription. Also, I would be more amenable to a subscription for a small amount for the iOS app (as that is more of a convenience than critical to my workflow; I use 1Password on the desktop much more frequently) so long as I can still purchase a license for my computers [edit] and have all the devices work together.

Thanks for linking it. I looked all over and didn't see it.

Where is it on their website? I haven't been able to find it at all.

Although it's been said that they will continue supporting licenses through their website, they have made this feature _extremely_ difficult to find ever since introducing subscriptions. I've been a loyal user of 1Password for a long time, and I think it's great software. I use it on both my Macs, as well as on my iOS devices.

However, hiding the non-subscription feature is silly. I do not wish to add yet another subscription (especially something so crucial as my what manages my passwords; I need [edit] it to work, no questions asked), and I would be more than happy to purchase a new license for 1Password 7.

I've seen base64 used to implement "security through obscurity" in web applications. Many times in situations where they could have just used a cryptographic hash and been done with it.

I actually have two Lamy Al star pens, though I haven't really used them as much as I'd like. Thanks for the reminder!

On a personal note, I really despise handwriting documents. Writing for an extended period inevitably results in uncomfortable cramps in my hands. Thus, I typeset whenever possible (markdown -> pandoc -> LaTeX -> pdf). However, for taking notes in ad hoc situations, handwriting is so much easier. I recently got the 10.5" iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil and I _love_ it for writing notes for classes especially. I also keep a stack of engineering paper around for doodling out problems I'm working on. At least for me, handwriting is still an integral part of my workflow even if it's not my favorite.

Yes it is, and has been done. Subject to [edit: a] security policy (NOT defined by implementation) and a meaningful statement of threat (what are you protecting against?)

This paper might prove to be an enlightening read: http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/7/2/23

My own anecdotal experience here: I have been using iOS 11 on my iPhone 6 Plus, and subsequently my iPhone X and now an iPad Pro (from which I type this) and the only severe issue I’ve encountered was my iPhone X entering some kind of weird state (possibly related to accidentally triggering the screen magnifier feature) and the display became mostly unresponsive, except for the emergency sos which triggered and dialed 911 while trying to reboot the device. Fortunately the phone part worked and I was able to explain what happened to the operator. After a successful force shutdown I turned off the automatic dial option.

As always, you have to do what is right for your threat model. I personally run my own VPN mainly for peace of mind when I'm on untrusted LANs. It's actually not that hard to do, and I can easily serve both my phone and my computers.

And as always, if you have an APT after you...you have bigger problems than what VPN provider you should use.

This gist is at best a straw man.

But going after Netflix, for instance, will result in a price increase for the consumer, no? When Netflix's costs for bandwidth go up, they are going to pass that cost on to you.

I do like his stance of reading and understanding the code you run, before you run it.

Word of warning: one of the sites linked by the article has a very NSFW header image.