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
- Linux Foundation an Enemy of the Planet, Proponent of Pollution and Global Heating
- "could the "polluters pay" model be extended to the computing environment and used to take on Microsoft and Microsofters?"
- Not Everything Can be Automated
- not a new thing
- IBM is Not Done Destroying Red Hat, Wait Till October 1st 2026 (More Layoffs and Bluewashing)
- It's not bluewashing 'til it's 100% done
- Only a Matter of Time Before IBM Drops to $199 or a Lot Lower Than That
- How long can IBM overload empty shells?
- Lots of Microsoft Just Loses Money, Not Earning Money
- Due to profitability challenges it's hard to believe Microsoft will ever find a buyer for XBox
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- Amid Claims of Microsoft Bing Layoffs It Seems Like Bing Cannot Even Hold on to Second Place
- Yandex is sometimes bigger than Bing
- Wikileaks Does Not Publish New Material Anymore, But Wikileaks Still Changes the World
- Wikileaks has a legacy that will soon turn 20
- Links 22/07/2026: Postal IRCs, PlayStation Kills Discs, Union Action Against Microsoft, "Judge Considers Tossing Databricks Patent Suit Under California anti-SLAPP Law"
- Links for the day
- Same 'Journalists' Who Published Fake News for IBM (Pump and Dump) Now Write Puff Pieces About the Stock Falling
- the media is so compromised
- They Called It "Social" and "Media", But It Turned Out to be Slop and Child Porn
- Why do any sane people still use social control media?
- Age of consent: DebConf26 registered sex offender in Argentina?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: In the Pole Position Despite a Dismal Track Record
- António Campinos is an old hand when it comes to such high-level institutional intrigue
- Site a Bit Slower Due to Visitors' Load
- We'll try to work out better speeds
- Gemini Links 22/07/2026: Emacs, Astrology Clock, Arduino, and Rogallo v1.0.0
- Links for the day
- After Involvement by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) LibreTech and Quibble Gain More Participants
- RMS expressed gratitude for people who worked on Quibble and improved LibreJS after many years of inactivity
- The Lessons From the Assange Saga
- This will not end well
- Apple Will Increase Surveillance of Customers, Record Verbal Communications Under the Guise of "Hey Hi"
- Apple now drinks that same Kool-Aid
- Dave Winer, Blogging Pioneer, Sells Out, Spews Out LLM Slop to Readers
- Another one bites the dust [...] Now it's a slopfarm of sorts
- GNU/Linux OS in ComorOS
- Now, as in recent years or the last year, the GNU/Linux "signal" is growing significantly
- Microsoft Redefines "Layoffs" to Give Smaller Tallies
- It's not just calling them "buyouts" or saying people are merely "leaving" or "retiring"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 21, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, July 21, 2026
- "LF Sex", Nothing to Do With Linux
- a lot of explaining to do this week
- Gemini Links 21/07/2026: Nostalgia, Shogi, and New Gemlog System
- Links for the day
- Guyana: GNU/Linux Rises to New High, 7%
- Guyana is part of the trend
- Oman: GNU/Linux Up to 7%
- It was 5% last year
- The Solution is Never 'Free Hosting' in Proprietary GitHub (Microsoft), the Solution is Self-Hosting
- Third parties never care about your projects as much as you (yourself) care about them
- From GAFAM's Perspective, Jeremy Bicha Did Nothing Wrong
- All is OK as long as he does not criticise monopolists and billionaires
- Bluesky Was Such an Utter Failure That After 18 Months Mozilla Goes Hug a Nazi Platform That Produces Child Porn
- What compels Mozilla to come back there? The child pornography scandal? The adorable leader?
- GNU/Linux at Grenada Measured at 14% This Month
- GNU/Linux was stuck at 0% for a long time
- In WordPress, Newer is Not Better (Maybe Better Off With No WordPress at All)
- To Hell with bloat and feature churn
- As Slop Bubble Implodes (Inevitable), the Dishonest, Corrupt, Compromised Media Tries to Blame "China" Again (Like it Did With "DeepSeek" in Past Years)
- Here we go again. We've been there before. Same spin, this time not "DeepSeek" though.
- Red Hat (IBM) Has Long 'Reassigned' (Bluewashed) Red Hat Staff to Ruin Fedora, Now It Does the Same to GNOME
- What next from IBM's Krishna?
- Links 21/07/2026: Google Stagnating, Slop 'Apps' Are "Flooding Apple’s App Store"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/07/2026: OPNSense Upgrade Problems, Zilog Z80 at 50, and Lessons From Terminator
- Links for the day
- IBM Lawsuits Over Alleged Fraud Are Piling Up
- We'll keep an eye on the lawsuits
- Arianna Taite on Odds of Australian (Daniel Pocock) Winning Clacton By-Election
- His detractors somehow try to twist or frame him (Pocock) as an impediment to women while the exact opposite is true
- This Coming Weekend Marks 4 Years Since We Dumped Content Management Systems (CMSs) in Favour of Static Site Generators (SSGs)
- the first page dated July 25
- Slop's Latest Casualty: The Credibility of Linus Torvalds
- If you care about millionaires and billionaires, follow Torvalds (he is already in that "club")
- Techrights Will Become More Productive (More Output) Over Time
- Big stories about to land
- Touch Grass
- Happiness involves what humans have evolved to appreciate, not what humans create to sedate the mind (like skinnerboxes)
- The Cyber Show on Technology Having Become a Tool of Mass Psychosis, Not Enablement or Emancipation
- Technology as mass psychosis
- The Rumour Said That a Second Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Would Come This Week (Ahead of Fake 'Results'), Maybe Tomorrow
- Let's wait and see how "MSM" unfold
- To Wikipedia, "Notability" is Just an Excuse to Hail People Who Serve Billionaires While Marginalising or Defaming the Rest
- Wikipedia is an advertising space
- Our Series About Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and SLAPPs Will Resume Soon
- Originally, in 2025, we gave ourselves 6 years (until 2031) to cover these issues, but we've seen since extended that to 10 years (until 2036) because of the amount of material we have
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: The EPO Transparency Gap
- Despite the "European" tag in the organisation's name, the European Union has no jurisdiction over the European Patent Organisation
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 20, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, July 20, 2026
- Links 20/07/2026: Lashes for Songs in Iran, Kurdish Language at Risk
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/07/2026: The Boss Baby (2017) and 2026 Old Computer Challenge Epilogue
- Links for the day
- Canonical Staff Acting Like They Aim to Receive Job Offers From Microsoft
- There are moreover allegations that Debian will do the same, in the same way Mono boosters infected both distros in tandem or in turn.
- Worsening Staff Affairs at Microsoft
- Microsoft is managing to piss off many of its own workers
- Czech Mate for GNU/Linux on the Way
- Czechoslovakia is having none of that "peace for our time" with Microsoft
- Nobody Will be Left Who Trusts IBM Anymore
- The common theme is, the management must be completely replaced as soon as possible and truth needs to come out
- Wall Street is a Bubble and No Company is Worth 5 Trillion Dollars
- It's not hard to see which stocks will crash the hardest (or fastest)
- The Corrupt Have Historically Tried to Paint Their Exposers as the Real Problem
- As usual, there are efforts to shoot or muzzle the messenger
- Search Engine Market Share in Italy: Microsoft Falls to Third in Many Countries Including Italy
- Expect more layoffs in Bing
- Links 20/07/2026: Spotify Drowning in Slop, Expiry of Software Patents in MPEG-4
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 20/07/2026: Another Step Towards Owning Personal Data and Gemtext2 Envisioned
- Links for the day
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Public Missions and Private Ambitions
- Despite the French government's strong formal pushback, the lobbying momentum generated by Campinos and Negrão proved unstoppable
- "DOOM" and "Bloodbath": the State of Microsoft and XBox
- Way to piss off fans
- Karen Melchior Fought the Good Fight
- stay tuned for Part 29
- Links 20/07/2026: Notes on E-mail Encryption, Torvalds and His Employer Paid a Lot to Promote Slop (Pyramid Scheme)
- Links for the day
- What a Difference Six Years Make...
- We are also beta-testing a new feature for the site; we plan to announce it some time soon
- When It Comes to Slop, Richard Stallman is Opposite of Linus Torvalds
- When it comes to computing, Dr. Stallman has long been a voice of reason
- Daniel Pocock is in Mainstream Media This Week
- Pocock's haters will absolutely hate this
- In His Departure Post, Poul-Henning Kamp (phk) Explains Why Linus Torvalds is Full of "Hot Air" and Slop Bubbles
- Having lived through previous bubbles as a UNIX geek, phk cannot be ignored
- Whistleblowers Keep Flowing
- Later today a police investigator should phone us regarding death threats we've received
- We Need Less Gadgets, More Humanity
- If people are being honest with themselves, many of the gadgets they claim they "cannot live without" are just excesses and distractions they could definitely leave behind
- Technology and Gadgets Got Obese, Just Like Their Users
- They now sell us so-called 'phones' for slop
- Daniel Pocock in The Guardian This Morning
- There is an opportunity here to spread a message, even if Pocock won't win a seat
- "Samsung Recently Projected a 19-fold Surge in Second-Quarter Operating Profit", Now There Are Mass Layoffs
- In a 9-month period Samsung's debt rose by about 80%
- Gemini Links 20/07/2026: Dungeon Meshi/Undertale Crossover, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Dark Web and Beyond"
- Links for the day
- IBM's Control of the Media "Just Showed What Taking Accountability Does Not Look Like"
- It is no secret that IBM pays the media
- Microsoft Loses XBox Lawsuit, But There Are More
- The collapse of studios continues
- GNU/Linux Approaching International Average in Djibouti
- One can envisage further gains for GNU/Linux, seeing Microsoft is in such a bad shape
- Daniel Pocock "[t]he Australian Taking on Nigel Farage — from Down Under"
- This can help raise awareness of some issues
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 19, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, July 19, 2026