sam

Author here. No doubt that low interest rates are driving investment dollars. In my talking with the physicists who are starting these companies low interest rates and funding availability is only part of the equation. What's motivating them to start new companies is strongly influenced by new technologies.

Fusion indeed has a realistic chance of being economically viable. Your comment assumes that current technologies remain entirely static which is the unrealistic position. Enabling technologies like high temperature superconductors, advanced computation/simulation capabilities, new high current/high voltage electronics, as well as recent advances in alternate (non tokamak) concepts bode well for the field.

I just have to second this. Macouns are sublime. They peak in late fall in the northeast. Their fragrance in the cold New England fall air is the definition of November to me.

The acquisition was announced last November but it appears that the deal actually closed today.

If you're in NYC I highly recommend the tour of the Steinway factory in Queens. You need to make reservations months in advance. It was an absolutely amazing to see the entire process from start to finish. The tooling involved in piano making is unlike anything I'd ever seen.

Thanks David!

New York, NY - Octopart (YC W07) - Sales Account Executive

Octopart the leading search engine for electronic components. We're a team of 14 based in NYC and we're looking for entry level sales account executives to join our team. Knowledge of the electronics industry is not required, but an eagerness to learn is. If you're interested, please send your resume and a note about yourself to jobs@octopart.com. Must be in NYC or willing to relocate.

More information is available at http://octopart.com/jobs

Sam from Octopart here. Our Common Parts Library is an effort to distill commonly used components for connected device applications, https://octopart.com/common-parts-library .

But the list doesn't have common prototyping components like radially leaded resistors (it's almost all SMT parts). I could imagine a "Common Parts Library for Prototyping". I'd love to hear feedback on something like this.

Also, check out our lightweight Bill of Materials Manager, https://octopart.com/bom-lookup/manage It has built in collaboration features - it can be collaboratively edited much like Google Docs.

New York, NY - Octopart (YC W07)- http://octopart.com/jobs

* Infrastructure Engineer (AWS, Python, Solr/Lucene, Puppet/Ansible, MySQL/PostgreSQL)

* Full time Frontend Engineer (React/Angular, JavaScript, HTML, CSS)

At Octopart, we're opening up access to electronic component part data through our search engine, http://octopart.com and our API, http://octopart.com/api .

We're connecting hardware hackers to the information they need to design the next generation of hardware devices. We're building the most intuitive, fast and beautiful interface for searching for electronic parts.

We're compiling the most extensive database on electronic components by combining data from tons of different sources.

We're behind the Common Parts Library, http://octopart.com/common-parts-library speeding component selection for connected devices.

We're all in NYC (no remote), we're a team of 13, our backgrounds are in Physics, CS, EE. We've been profitable since 2010.

We're from the YC W07 batch. We write a lot of Python and JavaScript.

If you're a software hacker who wants to build amazing tools for hardware hackers, tell us about yourself and include your resume in an email to jobs@octopart.com.

Octopart - New York, NY - http://octopart.com/jobs

- Full time Infrastructure Engineer (AWS, Python, Solr/Lucene, Puppet/Ansible, MySQL/PostgreSQL)

- Full time Frontend Engineer (React/Angular, JavaScript, HTML, CSS)

At Octopart, we're opening up access to electronic component part data through our search engine, http://octopart.com and our API, http://octopart.com/api .

We're connecting hardware hackers to the information they need to design the next generation of hardware devices.

We're building the most intuitive, fast and beautiful interface for searching for electronic parts.

We're compiling the most extensive database on electronic components by combining data from tons of different sources.

We're all in NYC (no remote), we're a team of 13, our backgrounds are in Physics, CS, EE. We've been profitable since 2010.

We're from the YC W07 batch. We write a lot of Python and JavaScript.

If you're a software hacker who wants to build amazing tools for hardware hackers, tell us about yourself and include your resume in an email to jobs@octopart.com.

Octopart - New York, NY - http://octopart.com/jobs

   - Full time Infrastructure Engineer (AWS, Python, Solr/Lucene, Puppet/Ansible, MySQL/PostgreSQL)
   - Full time Frontend Engineer (React/Angular, HTML, CSS)
   - Or some combination of the two

At Octopart, we're opening up access to electronic component part data through our search engine, http://octopart.com and our API, http://octopart.com/api . We're connecting hardware hackers to the information they need to design the next generation of hardware devices.

We're building the most intuitive, fast and beautiful interface for searching for electronic parts.

We're compiling the most extensive database on electronic components by combining data from tons of different sources.

We're all in NYC (no remote), we're a team of 13, our backgrounds are in Physics, CS, EE. We've been profitable since 2010.

We're from the YC W07 batch. We write a lot of Python and JavaScript.

If you're a software hacker who wants to build amazing tools for hardware hackers, tell us about yourself and include your resume in an email to jobs@octopart.com.

Thanks Matt!

Don't forget about the krytron, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krytron If you need to switch thousands of amps in under a nanosecond you'll probably need one.

Absolutely - we'd love to start collecting and highlighting CPL based projects.

We hear stories like that all the time. That's exactly the trap we trying to help designers avoid.

Thanks! Great suggestions. Stay tuned for updates to the list.

Thanks. Yes, footprints and symbols are on the roadmap. Since it's a limited number of parts, we'll be able to have well defined, reliable data there.

More info about the Common Parts Library is available here, http://octopart.com/common-parts-library/about

Indeed. We hear this a lot and we have some ideas. Stay tuned.

What's the plasma configuration of the machine? I think there's a research group at U of Washington working on merging spheromaks which create a field reversed configuration. Is this a spinoff of that group?

edit: looks like it is - this is the group: https://www.aa.washington.edu/research/plasmaDynamics/phdx.h...

Octopart - UI/UX Designer - New York, NY [no remote] - http://octopart.com

We're looking for a talented designer to make our electronic component search engine beautiful so engineers and part buyers fall in love with it. You'll be working closely with our frontend engineering team to develop a consistent design language which spans all of Octopart products.

Octopart sits at the intersection of electronic hardware and the web. The design challenges we face are unique:

- How do we display dense, highly technical information in ways that let the user process it without thinking too hard?

- How do we redesign our search interface so that searching is more natural and intuitive?

- What's the right design language to use to communicate with a userbase that is partially engineers, and partially component purchasers?

The problems are hard, but the results will be rewarding, as our 700,000 monthly users spend less finding parts and more time designing new hardware. Your design skills will grow as you tackle these problems with us.

We're looking for someone full time, but we're willing to start of working together on a contract basis.

We're based in NYC near the flatiron, we're backed by Y Combinator, we're a team of 14, and we've been profitable since 2010.

Please send a link to your portfolio along with anything else to jobs@octopart.com. More info at http://octopart.com/jobs

Octopart - New York, NY - http://octopart.com/jobs

---

* Full time Backend Engineer focusing on electronic component data

* Full time Frontend Engineer

* Full time UI/UX Designer

* Full time Entry Level Sales Account Executive

---

At Octopart, we're opening up the world of electronic component data through our search engine, http://octopart.com and our API, http://octopart.com/api

We're connecting hardware hackers to the information they need to design the next generation of hardware devices.

We're building the most intuitive, fast and beautiful interface for searching for electronic parts.

We're compiling the most extensive database on electronic components by combining data from tons of different sources.

We're in NYC, we're a team of 11, we're ex-physicists and electrical engineers, and we've been profitable since 2010.

We're from the W07 YC batch. We write a lot of Python and JavaScript.

If you're a software hacker who wants to build amazing tools for hardware hackers, get in touch with us at jobs@octopart.com.

It's not open source. Not out of principle, just that it would take some time to clean up.

Octopart - NYC - http://octopart.com/jobs

---

* Full time DevOps Engineer

* Full time Full Stack Engineer

---

At Octopart, we're opening up the world of electronic component data through our search engine, http://octopart.com and our API, http://octopart.com/api

We're connecting hardware hackers to the information they need to design the next generation of hardware devices.

We're building the most intuitive, fast and beautiful interface for searching for electronic parts.

We're compiling the most extensive database on electronic components by combining data from tons of different sources.

We're in NYC, we're a team of 9, we're ex-physicists and electrical engineers, and we've been profitable since 2010. We're from the W07 YC batch. We write a lot of Python and JavaScript.

If you're a software hacker who wants to build amazing tools for hardware hackers, get in touch with us at jobs@octopart.com.

This one is the true classic: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2oyhlad64-s

Octopart - http://octopart.com - NYC

We're the electronic parts search engine that is opening up all technical product data on our website and via API to enable the next generation of hardware design tools.

We're a team of 9, we're based in Manhattan, and we've been profitable since 2010.

We're looking for a JavaScript and/or Python expert with at least an interest in electronic components. Tell us about yourself: jobs@octopart.com.

You might consider checking out these companies. They help folks at your stage with all the nitty gritty details of manufacturing a physical product:

http://www.dragoninnovation.com/

http://highway1.io/

http://makesimp.ly/

>What do you guys think of having the component manufacturer source the parts?

I'm assuming you're asking about having the contract manufacturer source the parts, right? This is typically called "turnkey" contract manufacturing as opposed to "consignment" where you source the parts yourself. It really depends on the kind of product you're building and your ability to negotiate with component distributors an manufacturers. If it's your first time around and you're optimizing for speed, turnkey is probably the way to go. If you need specialty parts and you know how to source them more effectively than your CM, then consignment may make more sense.

Good to see a commenter with an ICF background (most of what I know of ICF was only from water cooler chit-chat).

I didn't manage to get a thesis out. I left the PhD program before the funding was cut, but the writing was on the wall.

Yes, it is short sighted to cut funding of small scale plasma confinement concepts. They are high risk / high reward projects which are not expensive ~$1M. And even if they don't pan out as viable confinement schemes, they make for great training platforms for graduate students.

It is an important milestone. But to have a commercially viable fusion reactor, you'll need a factor of 50-100 more energy out than in to make up for inefficiencies in electricity generation using this kind of scheme.

The real story here is that this facility allows the US to do nuclear weapons research without violating the nuclear test ban treaty. If the goal was to develop a commercially viable fusion reactor, the $3,500,000,000 spent so far could have been put into projects geared towards small scale fusion experiments investigating novel confinement schemes.

Like the one I was working on, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP07/Event/71002 whose funding has since been cut and has been mothballed.