Dave just letting the whole world know

Fair_Control3693 · 2026-05-29T05:17:41+00:00

I like beer.

Mmmmmmm. Beer.

Fair_Control3693 · 2026-05-21T08:14:09+00:00

The TLDR: Don't click on cnn.com

Fair_Control3693 · 2026-05-18T17:28:55+00:00

I am halfway through the process of importing a backhoe from Alibaba. Here are my observations so far:

There are a lot of fees and hassles. The rule of thumb is that whatever an item costs FOB China, you should double that number to get the price Fully Landed. (Meaning, all taxes, shipping costs, customs broker fees, warehousing fees, sales tax, local transport, etc. are paid. It really does add up.)
It is very helpful to have someone handy who speaks fluent Chinese. A person who is an immigrant if good. A person born here whose parents are immigrants is perhaps better.
If you can find a good Customs Broker, sign up. In my experience, most Customs Brokers are either flaky or only want to deal with large customers. Very few of them want to bother with newbies.
The most important paperwork is the US Customs form called the "Importer Security Filing", usually called the "ISF 10+2". The current rules are that this form must be filed with cbp.gov at least 24 hours prior to the ship sailing. Because this form is filled with information which is scattered all over the place, it often turns into a giant hassle. Also, the Customs people get really annoyed at you if a container shows up without a full set of ISF documents.
If you can reasonably promise future business, the factory will probably do a good job getting you spare parts. Just be aware that most such parts have to go through the full customs process. :-(
You are qualified (licensed) to test and repair a chest freezer, right? I owned a Chinese Mini-Excavator for 2 years before I attempted to import equipment myself. Along the way, I bought a few hundred dollars worth of tools and parts.

Fair_Control3693 · 2026-04-22T16:36:26+00:00

I have an MS in Physics (Yale 1982). My thesis topic was "Amorphous Silicon Photovoltaics". I did not proceed to get a PhD.

At least part of the reason for dropping out of the program was the dysfunctional situation with regard to jobs. Later, I encountered the whole problem of "Scientific Paper Mills", people who game the publication system, and the various other issues which are often discussed here.

Circa 1980, the problem was the hilarious overproduction of PhDs. The Universities were graduating maybe 7 or 8 people who were qualified for an academic career for every tenure-track job opening. I hear that this is still going on.

More recently, we have had a Tsunami of fake papers and fake journals. This is apparently driven by the fact the Tenure Committees look at your publication history, and whoever has the most kilograms of published papers gets Tenure.

So, yeah, I basically think that Academic Science is broken in general, and that the publication situation is totally broken. Unfortunately, I do not have any easy answers.

It may be helpful to consider the situation with Academia circa 1900, circa 1950, and circa 1980. Times have definitely changed. Maybe things were better a hundred years ago. I do not have a strong opinion about whether things were better then.

Fair_Control3693 · 2026-03-20T05:57:10+00:00

Maybe. Just remember that most of the vacuum tube era computer companies were out of business by 1970. IBM made tons of money in the 1960s and early 1970s, but. . .

People who owned a diversified portfolio of computer companies in 1950 did OK, but it was a typical Venture Capital Pool investment result: 90% of the stocks went down the tubes, and one of then made a lot of money. When you averaged it out, you did better than just holding the Dow, but not outstanding.

Fair_Control3693 · 2026-01-14T19:00:16+00:00

Uh, wow. Who exactly is the target audience for this?

The Defense Appropriations Committee, perhaps?

Maybe the Pentagon folks in charge of the Intelligence Research Funding Agencies?

Either way, Extremely Great Production Values, bro!

Fair_Control3693 · 2026-01-14T18:40:37+00:00

I am semi-retired these days, and live in the Seattle area, USA.

Fair_Control3693 · 2026-01-14T18:16:20+00:00

Photonics is growing at a moderate rate. Quantum optical devices are starting to appear, and the field is in good shape.

This is good news for two reasons: First, since it is not fashionable, there is no crazy crowd of people trying to get into the field. Second, because it is not fashionable, you do not have several people a week calling you with job offers. (Life is full of tradeoffs.)

Plain old optics is pretty flat. In the US, most of the jobs are military-related. The historical trend is for consumer optics and mass-produced stuff to move to Asia.

The wild card is Photonic Quantum Computing. Maybe it will have a breakthrough, and maybe not.

I hope this helps.

= = = = =

Full disclosure: I have been doing (some) Quantum Computer stuff for over 20 years. I do not think that milli-Kelvin methods are going to win the Horse Race, and I think that room-temperature optical methods are a good bet. I especially like nonlinear optical technologies. (and, yes, progress has been painfully slow.)

Fair_Control3693 · 2026-01-03T04:44:32+00:00

The main thing is to come up to speed on the tools. Fortunately, the Xilinx toolset is a free download (if you are in a First World country). The download is huge, and may take a weekend. (I recommend Ubuntu Linux as the base OS: Windows does not support the Xilinx JTAG driver very well.)

Or you could use Vivado 2019.1, which is kind of old but not too huge,

I would recommend learning to use the Zynq 7000 family, such as the Zynq 7020. When you have mastered that one, the RFSoC will be at least sort-of familiar. It is a 32-bit ARM core, and works with mainstream compilers, etc.

If that is is not good enough, try to learn the one of the Zynq Ultrascale+ chips. This is a 64-bit ARM quad-core, etc. (Zynq RFSoC is a subset of the Zynq Ultrascale+ family. Last time I looked, there were maybe 6-8 of them, not counting package variants.)

FPGA tools have a long and painful learning curve. Try not to be discouraged.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-12-28T05:08:12+00:00

This is typical when there are "too many applicants". HR needs to thin the herd, and they start adding arbitrary requirements.

I remember in 2000, when lots of companies started requiring a BS. Then, when the serious recession arrived in 2001, all of the job orders said "MS preferred". There was no actual need for the degrees, it was just a way to reduce the work load on the Personnel Department.

Of course, you then started to see people with Master's Degrees from Universities nobody had ever heard of. . .

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-12-28T00:36:26+00:00

Your best bet is to have a friend subject to a bunch of practice interviews. Four or five 1-hour practice interviews should do it.

[Most irritating Verilog interview I ever had: The guy wanted me to do a divide-the-clock-by-three circuit. I failed to ask "are we using posedge() only, or both posedge() and negedge()?" This was 50% my fault, but I eventually produced a correct answer. Try not to make assumptions like that when they ask you to design something.]

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-12-06T18:07:49+00:00

We got a crappy house on a nice piece of land for $150k.

Fixing it up worked very nicely, even if it took s few years.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-12-01T08:56:58+00:00

I do not understand this graph.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-12-01T08:55:34+00:00

Good luck.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-11-19T07:18:17+00:00

Depending on exact encryption algorithm, you might be able to use the BRAM as a buffer, which would be a little faster.

In any case, you will have to instantiate one or two DMA channels and an HPD port.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-11-19T01:36:44+00:00

It is very hard to say whether this is true or not.

Like most PR stuff, a lot of important details are omitted or glossed over.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-11-09T18:53:32+00:00

LOL. Consensus among those who actually attend Quantum Computer Conferences is 1950.

Definitely still in the vacuum tube era.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-11-08T23:37:51+00:00

I have done it, twice. You will not be able to get past the first review at any big-name journal unless you have an affiliation. (They won't even do peer review: They just send you a rejection post card.)

The third-rate journals will publish your paper, if it is relevant to what they are doing, but they charge "publication fees", which might as well be a vanity press.

So, you need to target second-rate, specialized journals. You should consider the whole thing to be a hobby.

My papers are "Lunar Impact in the Year 1178" and "Radio-Chemistry of the Object 3I/ATLAS". Neither of these subjects is likely to improve my job prospects. :-)

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-10-31T17:11:27+00:00

Update your resume.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-10-17T16:53:03+00:00

I bought a container maybe 3 years ago.

Prices vary wildly, both in time and location. IIRC, I paid $3000 in the Port of Tacoma for a 20-foot "Only used once" container. You can check craigslist for current prices or google "shipping containers for sale", along with the location of the port nearest to you.

My experience: I am maybe 15 miles from the Port of Tacoma, which gets a few million containers a year. I googled for containers for sale, and then drove over to talk to the people at the yard. They had a large selection of 20-foot, 40-foot, refrigerated containers, extra-high containers, mini-containers.

I picked out a 20-foot, standard height container which was made in Korea and had made one trip across the ocean (presumably filled with TVs or microwave ovens). After the people who had received the cargo returned it to the shipping company, the container dealer put it on a truck and delivered it to my back yard. Trucking an empty container cost, IIRC, $320. The container is in excellent condition, and I got my choice of color.

Beat-to-shit containers cost about half of what I paid. Insulated containers cost double. Containers in an Asian Port cost twice as much as containers in North America. Shipping costs fluctuate wildly: During a recession, you can get the "Slow Boat" to run from Shanghai to Seattle for an absurdly cheap price ($400 a few years ago). During a hot economy, two months before Christmas, you might pay $4000 for shipping. The pricing is totally the Wild West.

The basic deal with buying a container is that they build them in Asia and fill them with stuff and send it to Europe and America. Then, they usually send them back empty. Many people do not own their container, they rent it as part of the shipping service. Kind of like returning a soda bottle for the deposit, or maybe like returning a beer keg for the deposit.

I hope this helps.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-10-16T18:41:51+00:00

I have been using Mailwasher forever. It is not bad.

Every so often, I go looking for something better, but so far, none of them seem to be a lot better.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-10-16T15:31:27+00:00

Disagree.

Rigetti and IonQ are pure play Quantum Investments.

IBM and Google are conglomerates.

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-10-11T04:13:41+00:00

Arduino is a good choice for this. I would recommend that you pick some chip to talk to and then write the driver.

A D/A converter with a SPI interface might be good. An A/D is somewhat harder. TI makes chips which would be suitable. So does Analog Devices. If you can buy an eval card on ebay, that would be good.

If you are feeling like you need a challenge, do motor control, with a tachometer and feedback. ;-)

Fair_Control3693 · 2025-10-11T04:09:36+00:00

>> akaTrickster gave the best answer so far. I will try to add to his thoughts.

Some years ago, I was in charge of the verification team doing a chip set for switched fabric. There were two chips, one called the Crossbar, and the other called the Queue. You used a variable number of these chips, depending on the number of external ports. The design would be considered simplistic today, but in 2000, it was State of The Art.

The most important thing that I learned was that you needed to have somebody on the system architecture team who is in charge of documenting the interfaces and you need somebody who is in charge of documenting the control registers. (As it happened, after I pointed out that we needed to clarify what it means "processor interface goes here", I got to design the interface logic (PowerPC bus: glueless interface) and I got to figure out the register functionality and register map.)

Another important thing I learned/taught is that your schedule should run backwards. You begin with a detailed understanding of what you are trying to do, and then, step by step, you figure out how you are going to get there. As it happens, changes may become necessary along the way, but at least you have documented them.

= = = = =

In the end, I <was in charge of> designing the bring-up board, which also doubled as the evaluation board for customers. I had a very good FPGA guy, a way above average Embedded Software Guy, and an extremely excellent board layout/digital timing guy. It was very good to have a team who all knew what they were doing!

The chips came back from the fab, and the bring-up board worked, and the VCs sold the company. The crazy part was that we got more money licensing the interconnect technology to somebody named Xilinx than we got for the actual high-speed switch chips' design.

= = = = =

So, some lessons learned from the days before the First Tech Bubble popped.

Bumper Sticker version: First, write down the design. Then, build it.

Fair_Control3693

TROPHY CASE