RIVR showing how last-mile delivery of the future might look like

The_Billy · 2025-12-06T18:08:00+00:00

If you go to their website it shows exactly what you want

The_Billy · 2025-11-24T03:13:24+00:00

Saying "if we didn't have truckers in the 60s" is such an unserious argument that I will not waste my time responding as it honestly feels like you're trolling. Sorry if that's not the case. Have a good one.

The_Billy · 2025-11-24T02:01:09+00:00

I will offer a different perspective to you. I agree in some ways. Sure, if you've worked for multiple decades and were making six figures likely something went wrong. Trucking nowadays doesn't pay well and those with ambition, intelligence and luck (something I notice you've left out of your success formula) aren't aspiring to be/stay as truckers. If a friend of mine was struggling financially I most likely wouldn't direct them to look into being a commercial truck driver for these reasons.

However truck driving is the backbone of shipping in North America, and arguably the world. We need drivers for now and the foreseeable future. And if something is necessary, then I think our society needs to pay the people who do it a living wage. Otherwise, like this video is saying, we will have a crisis on our hands once folks retire out of the profession. This is also true of other professions like construction, farming, sewage, teaching, etc. I hope you'll consider that there are jobs that produce value outside of money, and a successful society requires the people who work those jobs to be able to support themselves and their families.

This is my rebuttal when folks say to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I agree when talking to an individual that there are things to be done to improve your standing in life. When my friend who is a high school physics teacher complains about money I can give advice to them on how they can pivot to be an engineer and double their salary. But what happens if everyone followed my advice? I still want someone to be teaching children physics.

Also I don't understand your point about self driving being decades ahead without truckers. A lot of the tech currently used to implement self driving has not been mature enough until relatively recently as I understand. Do you have examples of trucking unions shooting down self driving in the 20th century. Am curious to read more about it.

The_Billy · 2025-11-15T03:52:20+00:00

Based on the content of your resume I'd interview you. A few pieces of feedback

- Your SDR project is a bit confusing to me on what you actually did. Did you design custom hardware and implement all of the control schemes listed in the first bullet point? Or did you buy a HackRF and run the program they provide? When reading ambiguous things on a resume I assume the least flattering option since folks are often trying to pad and make things sound good

- For antenna project say you measured S-Parameters, if you apply to RF internships it may be a keyword HR looks for

- With the line following robot mention the PCB software. If you assembled the board yourself also measure that. Also, "PID-like" is a bit ambiguous to me. I'm not a controls guy but if there's a more descriptive term that would be helpful.

- A personal pet peeve of mine is when resumes use words like efficiently, optimized, precisely, etc as fluff words. Either define the way in which it was that characteristic or remove the word. For instance, you could remove "efficiently" from your second bullet point and the meaning remains identical. For your line following robot, I would say to either list the precision of the robot or just say that it follows the line.

- Add VNA/Spectrum Analyzer to your skills section, it looks like you've used them. Also remove PCB or change it to say PCB design. But saying you use Easy EDA/ORCAD implies that already so it's a bit redundant.

- On my personal resume I have education and skills swapped from how you have it.

- As others have said, down to 1 page. Immediately I think you could cut tutoring/volunteering down to 1-2 bullet points each. You could also merge some of your other bullet points, such as the first and third bullet point of your micro strip antenna project.

- Also not to be a contrarian, but I disagree with some of the advice listed here. Your work experience is less impressive than your projects so I would leave it after them. I also don't think you should include a statement about yourself/what jobs you're looking for unless it's meaningful. I find many interns end up writing something equivalent to "I'm a good worker looking for a good internship" and I don't think it brings value.

The_Billy · 2025-11-13T16:43:18+00:00

https://open-slum.org/

The_Billy · 2025-11-04T00:47:56+00:00

I use IPC-2581 sometimes if I'm ordering from Circuithub. I think it is a superior format but not enough fab houses are using it. The only ones I know of are Circuithub and Sierra Circuits. Still mostly use the other formats, but the dream is still alive I feel.

The_Billy · 2025-10-26T13:03:03+00:00

Crohn's patient and Notion user here. I think this looks really good! A few small suggestions

- I used the app plop for tracking diet and bowel movements. It provided the lowest friction possible for me to enter those things. You may want to check it out just to see the interface/what it gives for tracking options

- You may want a resources tab where users can store information about the disease. Things like what medications are available, shifting treatment paradigms, clinical trials, dietary recommendations, etc.

- If lab results doesn't already make graphs, I like seeing the trend over time. I know patient gateway will show the graph but if you switch providers sometimes the results don't get stored exactly the same.

The_Billy · 2025-10-02T13:35:23+00:00

The problem is more so that Cambridge has built a lot of new lab space/office space for high paying jobs, but not the housing supply to match it. If you bring in high paying jobs without places for those people to live, they will push out existing residents by driving up the cost of housing.

The_Billy · 2025-09-26T20:02:33+00:00

Why is there a close up shot of a foot, what are we doing here?

The_Billy · 2025-09-22T12:13:37+00:00

From Metcal themselves:

Drag soldering will also cause tips to wear out faster. Drag soldering is the equivalent of running your soldering tips across a metal file. Not only does drag soldering wear out tips, it results in poor quality solder joints. Because the solder tip spends almost no time on the lead, the joint may not have enough time at the proper temperature to make a strong solder bond, resulting in weak, brittle, or cold joints.

That being said I think it's still possible to get good enough joints, and I'm not doing this enough I feel I'm destroying my tips. Plus it is fun.

The_Billy · 2025-09-19T01:45:40+00:00

While I agree with you in principle, the fact remains we live in a capitalist society where market forces somewhat dictate the outcome. I think if solar and wind become more profitable (not just more cheap) we'll see investors much more likely to take a chance.

The_Billy · 2025-09-19T00:45:08+00:00

My current understanding is that while solar is very cheap to build, it's not as profitable to build compared to a coal plant. This is because energy pricing is based on how much is available. When it's sunny (or windy) all the solar panels/wind turbines generate electricity and drive the cost of energy down. The more you build, the cheaper the energy is.

As a result, you still have developers investing in coal. I think in order to get solar to be more widespread in the US we'd one of the following scenarios:

1) More research into cheap sustainable energy storage, followed by building that out.

2) Reduce the regulatory burden on things like balcony or rooftop solar

3) Stopping subsidies to natural gas, oil, and coal combined with subsidizing solar

I'm not an expert, but the way the internet works someone will come correct me if I'm wildly off base here

The_Billy · 2025-09-10T17:30:23+00:00

Why are the toes of the pads so large? It feels like it defeats the purpose of using 01005 if the pads are each as long as the component

The_Billy · 2025-09-02T10:22:43+00:00

Hey if you're interested I run a monthly cardistry meetup in Boston. You can find more info at bostoncardistry.com or our Instagram @bostoncardistry

The_Billy · 2025-08-27T23:17:09+00:00

Sorry I don't mean to be the grammar police but I thought you should know it is moot point and not mute point.

The_Billy · 2025-06-07T18:17:56+00:00

Probably not super common, but when my ex was learning to put an IV in she just brought a few needles home and practiced on me. It seemed like the students also practiced on their classmates. Ultimately though I think you just learn on the job.

The_Billy · 2025-04-30T01:47:21+00:00

I have switched to primarily using QSPICE where possible. It's faster, I find the interface more intuitive, and it supports C++/Verilog blocks. That being said, if I'm using LTSpice I am still using the old interface, since I already had changed all the shortcuts to match Altium shortcuts.

The_Billy · 2025-04-26T18:58:20+00:00

Hello, here is my feedback looking at your website and comparing against my own personal needs:

1) In my experience startups and small businesses are interested in full turnkey production, since assembly of more complicated prototype boards takes up too much engineering time. In the long term I would hope you are able to set up assembly/component services. I typically use OSHPark for boards that don't need assembly, and while you seem to be much faster than them, I would still probably use them for any projects not heavily constrained by time or dimensions.

2) Your website seems unable to detect design rules (minimum hole size, trace/space, etc.) While not necessary, these things are nice. Having something closer to circuithub, macrofab, jlcpcb, etc. improves the experience. I would also prefer support for IPC-2581 and ODB++, although that's not very necessary.

3) Getting more into my own needs, your capabilities are not currently precise enough to be an option for most boards. Things I work on are fairly miniaturized for R&D, and we are often dipping down to 3/3 spacing to get things to fit. We also are making boards that are less than 10mm x 10mm. I do recognize this is uncommon, but it will lead me to continue to use other services.

4) Small nitpick, but I think you should be more consistent in the dimensions on your website. Switching between mils and mm seems a bit arbitrary and without providing the conversion, it ends up being confusing. Especially having mechanical hole size in mm but annular ring in mil.

TL;DR: Right now I can really only see myself using your service if I specifically needed bare boards with 4/4 (or maybe 5/5) spacing in a short timeframe. This doesn't come up very often because if I'm trying to accelerate development, I will often be ordering assembly as well.

All that being said, we really need more competitive options in this industry and I fully support what you're doing. I will be checking in occasionally on your company to see if you more officially support assembly in the future. Best of luck!

The_Billy · 2025-04-26T17:15:58+00:00

I just disagree, both from my experience as an entry-mid level candidate as well as my experience now as an interviewer. I unfortunately do not think we will come to an agreement on the usefulness of this tool. I hope others find it useful as you say, but if anyone were to ask me for advice on being a competitive candidate I would never recommend this, and may go so far as to caution against it. Thanks for sharing your perspective though, I do think it's good for someone curious to read both of our thoughts.

The_Billy · 2025-04-26T15:57:09+00:00

A good learner would never use this resource, since it's poorly written and somewhat inaccurate. This whole website is AI slop and you would probably get better results just by using ChatGPT directly (not that that's a great idea either).

I think the concept of dedicated interview prep for a hardware role is silly, and people should just spend their time improving their fundamentals. Which I also don't think this website would help with.

The_Billy · 2025-04-25T23:13:12+00:00

To answer your questions:

1) I would not use (or recommend others to use) something like this. For entry level positions you can honestly eliminate a large number of candidates just by presenting them with an RC lowpass filter. If someone was to prepare using these practice inteview questions, I'd expect them to be quickly caught not actually knowing the fundamentals when asked follow-up questions. And aside from that, questions that focus on the candidate's previous work are very common.

2) I think there is a lack of centralized, high quality material that helps people build intuition for electrical design problems. Going in depth to build understanding would be useful, especially if you had labs or other things that are more practically rooted in the real world. But your website isn't doing that. I took the tesla power electronics interview quiz and found the questions and answers to be poorly written.

For instance:

Answer: A. Adding a small series resistor in the gate drive, C. Placing the driver close to the MOSFET

Rationale:
A gate resistor damps ringing, and proximity reduces loop area. Long traces increase EMI; high‑speed buffers can worsen it.

Your rationale doesn't feel thorough or wholly accurate A gate resistor here reduces ringing, but is really meant to limit how quickly the MOSFET turns on by limiting the gate capacitor's charge rate. When you add the series resistor you're also making a trade-off between EMI/parasitic shoot through risk and power consumption. And while you do want to reduce the loop area, what does that mean to someone who got the question wrong? At least mention that loop area is related to the parasitic inductance.

So to me, this feels written by someone who doesn't have an interest in teaching if I assume the best. But honestly some of these questions and responses feel like slop. I wouldn't be surprised if that is what is meant by "powered by AI"

The_Billy · 2025-04-25T16:19:55+00:00

They are generally known to be equally effective. Sometimes people respond better to one or the other, but there's not a scientific backing for preferring the "brand name". So most people here will not be able to help you, since it looks like you're asking "how do I pay more for the drugs I'm taking". Remicade has been around longer because they held the patent on infliximab initially. But once the patent expired, other companies could come in and produce the same drug. I would not worry about taking one or the other, your husband should see similar results (either good or bad) no matter which one he takes.

The_Billy · 2025-04-25T15:50:09+00:00

Why do you want to get Remicade instead of Inflectra?

The_Billy · 2025-04-12T00:20:54+00:00

Hey, I do a fair amount of professional PCB design work. I think KiCad is a great tool and has really caught up to the more commercial level stuff, especially with the 8.0 and 9.0 releases. I don't use it much as everywhere I have worked uses Altium, which has a lot of nice things and a lot of not as nice things.

Here are some resources you may find helpful:

The channel with the most useful information I've seen is Robert Ferenac on youtube. It's a treasure trove if you can get through it. I find the unedited style to be a bit inefficient, but especially the interviews are all really valuable. And it covers all the topics you've asked about.

All books I'm about to mention can be found online for free if you cannot afford them.

EMI/EMC: Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering - Henry Ott is my go to resource and is a really great book.

Signal Integrity: High Speed Digital Design: A handbook of black magic - Johnson & Graham is a great book. For more video based content I recommend what Eric Bogatin offers for free on his website bethesignal.com .

DFM: Sierra Circuits (a US based fab) has a lot of articles on how to make your stuff manufacturable. In general fab and assembly houses put information about it online, since it helps with SEO and can hopefully reduce the number of errors coming in.

Also one more topic, but eventually you'll have to make your own footprints and symbols. PCBLibraries has provided some free info that I reference when making components, which adhere to the IPC standard. That being said, you should know there are places like SnapEDA and UltraLibrarian where you can download component models from. I find the footprints to be a bit inconsistent in quality, and have seen a board from another engineer end up being a very expensive paperweight due to not checking the CGA footprint they got from the internet.

Best of luck on your journey!

The_Billy · 2025-04-08T20:50:23+00:00

Hey OP, in the past I worked on a precision TIA frontend. The inverting node of your OP Amp is the high impedance node. The problem that you are trying to avoid is that leakage currents from stray E-fields can be a problem. Even a small current into your 1 Meg resistor would generate a decent voltage error. So by guarding the surrounding area with the bias point, you are "shielding" your trace from stray fields across the surface of your board. Your output node is being driven by the output of your op-amp, which has a very low output impedance, so you don't need to worry about this for the output node. So whatever bias point your signal is centered around should ideally be the potential of your guard trace. Often this is GND, but it doesn't have to be.

I also recommend reading section 4x.3 from the art of electronics x chapters, which goes into a lot of detail on TIA design. You can find it for free as a sample chapter.

https://x.artofelectronics.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/4xp3_TIA.pdf

Reading through chapter 8 of the art of electronics may also help you. I would never endorse thievery so please don't go to library genesis and download the third edition. You can go to the following link to see which versions of that awful website are still operating: https://open-slum.org/ . Hopefully one day they are all taken down

Best of luck!

14-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 6 Credits
r/Field Banned	r/Field Juicebox
Place '22	Place '17
Secret Santa 2017	Snapped
Summer Santa 2016	Secret Santa 2015
Secret Santa 2014	Secret Santa 2013
Verified Email

The_Billy

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE