Open Hardware and Shareable Design News
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-28 08:22:07 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-28 08:22:48 UTC
Summary: Recent news about hardware that can be modified and it permissive in that regard
SkyNet
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At the former Wired editor’s start-up, 3D Robotics, open-source robots take to the skies
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In the meantime, he’s hard at work on a new project called SkyNet Firmware, which will run on the open source Arduino circuit boards, devices you can use to build all sorts of computerized gadgets. “The idea is that you can load SkyNet Firmware on any Arduino compatible device or board,” he says. “The Arduino connects to SkyNet and just waits for commands.” This would let you attach almost anything to SkyNet.
3D Printers
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At the forefront of the 3D printing boom for consumers is MakerBot, whose Linux-based Replicator printers sell for between $1,300 and $3,000 and are small enough to sit on your desktop. Their MakerWare design software runs on any platform and the Thingiverse online community allows more than 13,000 users to download or upload designs in an open source, collaborative model for do-it-yourself manufacturing, according to a sponsored post in The Atlantic.
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So far, in short, I can describe 3D printing as: Building an object, by depositing layers, and creating every layer by drawing it with melted plastic. The key to understanding 3D printing, and thus learning how to do it better, is to think about the objects as a stack of layers. Then, consider how the layers will look like as they are being stacked.
Charles Babcock's Series of Articles
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References to Linux come up naturally because it is one of the most successful, sustained, and adopted open-source software projects. New releases of the Linux kernel now appear every 70 days. Each contains up to 10,000 updates and patches, a rate of change that equals 7.14 an hour. Linux's fame rests not on the fact that it's frequently modified. Rather, it's frequently modified and also respected as having a long-term future in the enterprise datacenter. The way things are shaping up, it also very likely has a permanent place in cloud architectures.
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Facebook, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, and other leading IT users think the open-source movement is ready to shake up the hardware industry the way Linux did in software.
Misc.
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Intel announced a Developer Program for IoT, which will offer 5,000 Arduino-compatible Galileo SBC-based IoT development kits, plus hackathons with prizes.
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AS you may know, just few weeks ago OSHWA published the results from 2013 Open Hardware Community survey. You can find original datasheets and everything here. Despite raw data is good, I thought it was good to spend some time looking at the data trying to gather more insights, when possible, still keeping in mind that the survey samples a very limited and polarized (OSHWA centric) chunk of the community. But we need to start from something in a way.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- 'Cancel Culture' Doesn't Work (in the Long Run)
- Despite all the attacks, I'm enjoying life, I'm keeping productive, and our audience continues to grow
- GNU/Linux Still up (statCounter Says to 6%) in Bosnia And Herzegovina
- Let's see where it is at year's end
- Making Layout Changes
- Feedback can be sent to us
- Behind an Economy of Fake 'Worths' and Fictional 'Valuations' or 'Market Caps'
- They normalise white-collar crime and say "everyone is doing it!"
- Links 18/01/2026: "South Africa is Running Out of Software Developers", Companies Spooked to Find Slop is a Major Liability
- Links for the day
- Place Your Bets: Who Will Die First? Microsoft or IBM?
- Not even joking; make a guess
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- Links 18/01/2026: Legal Trouble for xAI, Climate Concerns, Data Breaches and More
- Links for the day
- Claim That the Board of Directors at IBM Isn't Happy With How the Company is Run
- IBM tries to project an image of strength to the whole world, especially to its clients
- 'Vibe Coding', Chatbots, and Other Bots (e.g. "Agents" Disguised as "Superintelligence") Aren't Saving You Time
- False marketing, FOMO marketing tactics
- Gemini Links 19/01/2026: Analog Cameras and Plucker in 2026, US Losing Acceptability in Europe
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 18, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, January 18, 2026
- Links 18/01/2026: The "Deepfake Porn Site Formerly Known as Twitter" and Turkey to Block Kids' Access to Social Control Media
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/01/2026: Against English as Language of the Net, "Symposium of Destruction"
- Links for the day
- You Would Expect This Kind of Misleading Narrative Shortly Before Microsoft (or GAFAM) Mass Layoffs
- misleading PR
- FOSDEM 2026: democracy panel, GNOME & Sonny Piers modern slavery experiment
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Pump-and-Dump With IBM Shares, Courtesy of People Who Stand to Gain From the 'Pump'
- "3 Reasons to Buy IBM Stock Right Now"
- IBM: Spying on Staff Like Never Before and Implementing Silent Layoffs This Month, Say Insiders
- what we heard from whistleblowers seems to corroborate
- IBM is Not a Free Software Company (It Never Was)
- Red Hat's main product, RHEL, is full of secret sauce and has 'secret recipes' (it is basically proprietary)
- IBM Turning Up the 'RTO' (Stress) and 'PIP' (Fear) Heat on Workers, Rebellion May be Brewing
- Sometimes it feels like today's executives at IBM view IBM workers as a liability
- Links 18/01/2026: Indonesia Against Comedy, Media-Hostile (Censors Comedians) Convicted Felon in White House Defecting to Opponents of NATO
- Links for the day
- Eventually the Joke (and Financial Fraud) is on Microsoft, Stigmatised for Slop
- Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
- GNU/Linux Leaps to All-time Highs in Virgin Islands
- it seems to have started around the "end of 10"
- Making and Keeping the Sites Accessible
- Sometimes less does mean "more" (or "MOAR")
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part IV - How Europe's Largest Patent Office Recruited Drug Addicts, Antisemites, and People Who Absolutely Cannot Do the Job (But Know the 'Right' People)
- To better overlap industrial actions we might delay/postpone/pause this series for a bit
- Restoring Professional Pride in the Tech Sector
- Rejecting slop isn't being a Luddite
- Benefiting by Adding Presence in Geminispace
- As the Web gets worse, not limited to bloat as a factor, people seek alternatives
- Google News Recently Started Syndicating Another Slopfarm, Linuxiac
- Even if Google is aware that there is slop there, it's hard to believe that Google will mind
- Slop Bubble "Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble"
- Edward Zitron Says It like it is
- Software Patents and USMCA (or NAFTA)
- We recently pondered going back to issuing 2-3 articles per day about patents and common issues with them
- IBM Sued Over PIPs
- PIPs are "performance improvement plans"
- Sites With "Linux" in Their Name That Are in Effect Slopfarms and Issue Fake Articles
- We try to name some of the prolific culprits
- Gemini Links 18/01/2026: Raising Notifications From Terminal and Environmental Sanity
- Links for the day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 17, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, January 17, 2026
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Links 17/01/2026: Internet Blackout Normalised, Russian Attacks Civilians by Causing Massive Blackouts
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Lunduke Keeps Distracting From the Real Problems With Rust
- Microsoft Lunduke is stigmatising critics
- Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm, Calling Them Out Isn't Fixing That
- What a shame. A once-decent site about "Linux" bites the dust.
- Luzern Lion Monument, Albanian Female Whistleblowers: Swiss jurists were cowards
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- The Splinternet is Already Here, Owing to the Militarisation of Technology (Slop, Social Control Media, Back Doors, and More)
- you know what's gonna happen next...
- Stack Ranking Against IBM/Red Hat Staff and a Signal of Mass Layoffs (RAs) Justified by Red Hat and IBM as Poor Performance/Misconduct/Other
- Working in an atmosphere like this sounds like a nightmare
- Gemini Links 17/01/2026: Slow computing and Environment Leak
- Links for the day
- Links 17/01/2026: US Censorship and Violence Crisis, Growing Anger Levels Against Slop Sold as "Intelligence"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's "valuation depends on infrastructure that does not exist."
- Indeed
- The Typical Trajectory: Datamation Began Experimenting With LLM Slop for Fake Articles. Then Datamation Died. (Last Month)
- It's always ending up this way
- Accounts or Devices (e.g. Phones) That Get 'Burnt' Have Many Pitfalls
- Embassies and consulates habitually fail at this
- Avoiding the Spooks (Nobody Watches the Watchers, They're Practically Unaccountable)
- If more people adopt encryption, it'll be easier for us to deal with whistleblowers
- Protecting Whistleblowers Requires Technical Knowledge/Skills
- even the highest media judges aren't aware of how to protect sources
- At Least 5 Women Quit Brett Wilson LLP in Recent Months. It's the Firm That Attacked My Wife and I on Behalf of Americans (One of Them Strangled Women).
- It seems like good news that the women escape this workplace
- Slop About Slop and Slop About "Linux"
- In short, avoid slopfarms
- Report/Benchmark Says 'Vibe Coding' Results in Security Holes
- There are risks they don't like talking about
- EPO Abuses Covered in Spanish
- Knowing what we know (and heard/saw), the sinister silence of the media is perceived by some to be complicity of the lower order.
- Richard Stallman Encourages "ICE Out For Good" Protests, His Opponents Do Not (Passive and Uncaring About Human Rights)
- He has done a lot philosophically, politically, and so on
- Record Traffic in Geminispace or Over Gemini Protocol
- it's never too late to join
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part III - Europe's Second-Largest Organisation on Strike, Protests, Other Industrial Actions to Come Impacting Over 95% of the Workforce
- The EPO's management is highly evasive, weak, and vulnerable
- Claim That IBM Marked 15% of its Workforce for Potential Layoffs
- No wonder we keep hearing from Red Hat people who say they hate IBM
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 16, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, January 16, 2026