Doug Bopp

HardTech Laws: 1) Master inkscape and blender 2) Employ python (numpy, matplotlib, pytorch, opencv) 3) Learn the skills of everyone you meet; ask and offer collabs later 4) Read the arxiv every morning 5) Focus on value creation for society

@SMB_Dan As in: 'we make PCB holders for rapid testing of custom PCBs' 'we make custom parts that hold mission-critical elements together' 'we machine in titanium and tungsten as well as steel and aluminum depending on what the job calls for'

@SMB_Dan You seem to highlight your speed and something along creativity. A small shop has be fast, creative, and low-cost to win new business as those are the only vectors that matter. Again, friendly advice, I would lean into the WHAT.

The message in aerospace/defense seems to be “we can’t find enough suppliers” But I can’t find an aerospace/defense buyer who will return my calls, emails, or DMs. Seriously, what’s the secret

These are extremely good textbooks. Pedagogically unique--very different from most mathematics texts. If you come from a humanist background or otherwise worry that you don't "get" math, I strongly recommend these.

Just to let you know how sensitive is the signal at 19GHz from PLL when vibration is applied to the reference crystal

@andrewmccalip Pretty much an urgency rater. Decision fatigue is super real so being able to shut down your email for a longer sprint but have an alert for actually urgent messages would be ideal. Squeezing even one extra hour out of a day in a flow state would add a ton of value.

What does the modern Corporate Athlete want to see in an AI tool? Who's making Cursor for those hard working Outlook jockeys and Jira PMs?

@jwt0625 sort of orthogonal and you likely have seen this but Berkeley Lights (acq. by Bruker) made single-cell manipulators by applying optical fields to induce strong field gradients in something like a photoreceiver structure generating dielectrophoresis: youtube.com/watch?v=TeEJug…

Wu2025: [Field-programmable photonic nonlinearity](doi.org/10.1038/s41566…) ([also](rdcu.be/elAdE))

another programmable nonlinear photonic chip, but this time not for generating light at second harmonic freq etc., but for nonlinear input-output response with saturable absorption/gain from InGaAsP + spatial distribution of pump light. It's an interesting network, the connections are directly nonlinear and distributed. (of course when they compare the energy consumption, only the pump power is taken into account, and processing speed is how fast light propagates thru it, no consideration for energy and time needed for encoding/decoding the light)

Gen-Z is making absolutely nuts American propaganda on TikTok right now

@eevblog faster for inspection on just one side?

When you REALLY don't want to pay for a Double Sided PCB

Me: Your cell phone is a computer Them: Oh yeah, common metaphor. They used to think everything was like pumps and water, then when clockwork was the big technology they thought everything was clockwork, and now the technology is computers they think everything is a computers

@universal_bagel @Chrismholt You can drive a resonator with feedback to make an oscillator and observe the frequency which is a function of the proxy variable (e.g. the damping is proportional to the pressure). You can also drive with a fixed freq and measure signal reflected phase.

@Chrismholt Driving a transducer to get a measurement is new to me. Is this for dynamic measurements or is this just how this tech works? (Where can I go learn about this? I don't want to eat up a bunch of your time)

Building the world’s highest resolution pressure sensors….

@jwt0625 Very cool active diode; capillary action enables logical chemical mixing in paper/pdms microfluidics too, David Juncker's thesis is one of my favorites to look through: scholar.google.com/citations?view…

Water is the most messed up chemical, and water wave is the most messed up wave. Change my mind. All the optics and acoustics folks scratching their head trying to make a good, compact & integrated isolator, while you get a water wave isolator (or as they call it: water wave diodes) by making a gradient refractive index waveguide... (Seems like it should be narrow band though, but there's room to improve.)

@jwt0625 Hao Yan is a good name in dna origami phys.org/news/2011-04-d… There have been subsequent studies incorporating single-molecule to molecule semiconductor, insulating, and conducting structures. The building blocks are available for 3d computation. Stuart Lindsay also

The real open source hardware

Found a new rabbit hole called DNA origami, and these are some of the fanciest stuff I've seen in a while: A mouse trap but for virus? A sub 100 nm turbine that could dock into a nanopore? A DNA rotary ratchet motor driven by an AC voltage up to 250 rpm?? Not sure how practical they are, but at least now I feel less humiliated by the E. Coli flagella motor.

@jwt0625 you may enjoy the Bragg peak effect for proton therapy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bragg_peak

TIL there is an "element" that is even simpler than a hydrogen atom: positronium, made of an electron and a positron (antiparticle of electron), and you can do all the usual AMO tricks on it such as laser cooling. First reaction: oh neat, fancy toy for high energy physicists. But it actually has biomedical applications such as imaging cancer cells.

@jwt0625 You post the coolest pics!

gm bros

You get an accelerator and you get an accelerator! You all get accelerators! #physics

My tentative conclusions from @natfriedman's PlasticList effort: 1. Plasticizers accumulate up the food chain. Water occasionally has plasticizers. Vegetables always have a low level of plasticizers. Meat, including chicken, steak, and fish, always has a high level of plasticizers. This suggests accumulation. 2. Heating often destroys plasticizers. Microwaving seems to destroy plasticizers. Letting takeout food cool down or leaving water bottles in the sun doesn’t seem to reliably increase plasticizers. 3. Plasticizers leach from polypropylene and LDPE. The worst offenders for plastic bottles seem to all be polypropylene bottles, such as the Starbucks cups. Paper cups lined with low density polyethylene also seem bad. Polyethylene terephthalate, which is what disposable water bottles are made of, do not seem to leach plasticizers as much. 4. BPA is still a problem, although less so than in the past. People have been talking about the dangers of BPA for decades. Somehow, Boba Guys still has significant amounts of it. 5. Citizen science is great and there should be more of it. Thanks Nat and team! Additional analysis and insight in my post.

The Silicon Valley dream: burning VC money to launch a chatGPT wrapper so you can get invited at podcasts to discuss your AGI timeline and become a Grimes reply guy