Old Books, New Tricks - Iterant Inscription Irrationality
Dave Jones and Chris Gammell discuss the high cost and poor practices of modern textbook publishing, contrasting it with the valuable oral history project Silicon Genesis which preserves the stories of semiconductor pioneers like Jim Williams and Bob Pease. They review new Kickstarter products including the Spark Electron cellular module and the Pebble Time smartwatch, while Jones details the rigorous safety protocols required for powering up $100,000 military-grade PCBs. The conversation concludes with a look at niche retro-computing hardware, specifically the RCA CDP-1802 processor, and the ongoing debate between using Altium versus KiCad for PCB design.