517 karma · joined February 13, 2012
Just to see an scant datasheet for their old BLE chip one needed to the following.
1. Contact a Broadcom Sales rep. Ask if they are willing to sell to you. 2. Sales Rep then comes to your office with a PPT and makes a presentation clearly aimed at Management. Sales rep tries to understand your business and volume. If you pass a magic test, then you are now qualified to buy their product. 3. Sales Rep then asks who in your team will work on BLE. Takes their email addresses, phone numbers. 4. Sales Rep enables doc access. The team member gets an email and then can access datasheet for exactly that one single part. Plus that datasheet is watermarked that it's to be read by only that specific team member.
And no, this isn't 1995. Plus, if you want to change parts or explore a different part, you can't. Before Cypress bought BRCM's IoT business, if you had a problem with anything, the standard answer was - use WICED. BRCM's docs sucked so bad that they even hid information about UART and I2C. Think about it for a moment. Imagine buying a chip and you don't get programming information about UART and I2C. Instead you have to believe that WICED magically solves every problem.
Cypress buying and opening up BRCM's documentation is the best thing that's happened to documenting those parts and supporting customers who are small, medium volume.
> The best that I can say about Twitter, at the moment, is that at $18/share, it is fairly valued, but if the company continues to be run the way it has for the last few years, both price and value could move in tandem to zero.
I would even argue that ISRO's primary mission is focused on solving "today's Humanity" problems rather than "Star Trek" style explorations. Just because they sent up a couple of spacecraft like Chandrayaan or Mangalayaan doesn't take away from that primary mission but doesn't stop the MSM from finding reason to complain. Weird.
Or when it's too big to fail.
The point really should be that he's taking a risk and it's probably a calculated one. Everyone takes some risk or the other in their lives. Therefore, it follows that if the idea fails, or the execution fails, then the company must fail regardless of the emotion behind it. I don't see why taxpayers have to fund failed ideas if it comes down to it.
Having said that, I hope that Tesla succeeds and continues to change the automotive market.
I guess the author chose slack in the title because it will result in eyeballs rather than saying how he used Python, craigslist because they aren't "sexy".
I was the CTO of my startup and was a senior architect looking across multiple domains in my previous job. Now, I'm more a specialist, looking at one single thing while it's expected that someone has the responsibility to solve a different problem.
To me, that's the biggest career impact. In our startup, everyone did everything. Need to hotfix something in production in the morning and then head off to a investor pitch in the afternoon? Come back and rework on our marketing message? Yes. Yes and Yes.
Now, I'm just a dev. Not the marketing guy. Not the finance guy. That's someone else's responsibility. Am I being paid less? Not really.. But am I having lesser responsibilities? Definitely. Is that a career downturn or not? I don't know, but I do see others who joined the same company from a more successful startup being "higher up" when it comes to responsibilities and job titles.
You may have been misled there because Indian culture isn't homogenous. Even from a Hindu thought perspective, as per Chapter 17, Sloka 20 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says
दातव्यमिति यद्दानं दीयतेऽनुपकारिणे। देशे काले च पात्रे च तद्दानं सात्त्विकं स्मृतम्।।17.20।।
While I'm not an expert, loosing translated, it means that one must do charity without expecting anything in return. Doing so, in the right manner and in the right place is the epitome of goodness.
I interpret that to be a pretty clear moral imperative to help someone in genuine need.
Huh? The problem with that statement is the sample size. Even if you talked to every Indian person you know (presumably anywhere between 100 and 10000), it will be less than 0.001% of the total population of India.
Edit: Grammer.
Therefore, Intel's competitive advantage of running their own fabs could keep them ahead in the server space as well.
That's the SigFox definition of IOT but not necessarily typical for all cases. There are several usecases out there which require slightly higher bandwidth and data rate, but not quite broadband.
One quick example is over the air firmware updates. Take MSP430. If we were to build a smart meter using a MSP430, our firmware probably be couple of kilobytes.
Likewise, the size of the data can vary upstream as well.
AFAIK, Paul Otellini also made the same argument about servers however, the point is really about processors that run inside consumer products and not server infrastructure. Intel Inside just isn't the case.
The real advantage of SiP is with BLE or similar. That's because not only do they take away the complexity of RF design, and regulatory certification i.e FCC, IC, CE etc.. The market for BLE SiP modules that integrate the crystal, Balun, Antenna and are are certified is exploding.
Just a year ago, the cost difference between a BLE module and BLE chip was large enough to justify doing a custom design for anything more than 5K Units/Year. However, the Math is slowing moving towards higher and higher volumes. Already anything that ships less than 20K-30K per year doesn't justify the cost of doing a custom RF design.
Maybe in a couple of years, there will be a mass market for Beaglebone SiPs. Just not yet.
That's probably because IAR sells compilers (and IDEs) for embedded software. IAR and Keil are the popular compilers in the "bare bones microcontroller C/Assembly" world.
Yes. India has enormous challenges. But the fact remains that hundreds of millions of people have come out of poverty in just 25 years.
It's time the narrative changes.
Webapps/SAAS applications are clearly different because customers don't install anything and therefore version numbering from a customer perspective does not have any meaning. Therefore, any meaning we attach, is for internal internal consumption only.
In even in that case, I would argue that version numbering is important. E.g the point on easier communication is exactly where internal consumption requires version numbering.
The cheapest ARM Cortex M3/M0 or even a ARM7 is $1+. When you are shipping products (and not doing a hobby project), BOM cost is a major factor. If you sell a Million Units each with a micro in them, the cost difference is about $700,000. Even keeping cost aside, size matters. The smallest 8 Bit micros from Atmel or Microchip or any 8051 is around 3x3mm. Most ARM micros are much larger.
Rule of thumb that I use is to pick the micro by function, price and size. Sometimes a 8-Bit micro is more than enough for the job. Buying something that costs more, bigger in size and for which the MHz is not an advantage is an overkill.
Having said that, a companion product that also working on requires the MHz and so, a Cortex-M3 fits perfects there.
So - lesson learned.
I did try odesk/elance for a while but you can't make any money from it. My work is more embedded, and systems programming and the jobs on places like odesk are suited for very low end webdev. (The good webdev work isn't on odesk). As a result, they are very low paying.
I called that quits pretty quickly and started looking for a job. It took me a couple of interviews (including bombing the first one) before I found work. I'm pretty happy now. It pays the bills, but I am saving up for my next startup sometime in the future.
In short, don't be disheartened. Very few actually make it, but the journey is one that's really worth it. Sometime later you will find the right idea and your motivation will be up again.
The Gates Foundation is pushing for a lot less NIH syndrome and a lot more reuse I hope.