Circuit Break - A MacroFab Podcast

This week Parker and Stephen welcome Joe Grand to the show to discuss insecure IoT devices. Inspired by a recent incident where Bosch wrenches were infected by ransomware called DRILLCRYPT, the guys asked Joe to join them to talk about how attackers could compromise the safety of the wrench and cause safety issues for users. Of course, this kind of breach could impact almost any company and its products, and so many topics were covered, including:

• “Actually, it’s Dr. Grand…”
• If you’re in attack mode, firmware updates are great
• Supply chain issues are hard enough to manage without these security breaches
• A lack of security can be a business decision
• Give me convenience or give me threats
• The hardware industry isn’t as well-versed as the software industry is
• How to update 10,000 devices in the field
• Hacking is problem-solving (someone tell the FBI)
• “If you’re not being sued, you’re not working hard enough’
• Sourcing parts and the risk of getting counterfeit parts
• Why a firmware update shouldn’t disable your car
• Resisting Big Toilet
• Subscription models for…everything…
• The importance of Design For Security measures
• Is getting hacked more of a marketing problem than an engineering issue?
• Engineering ethics and hacking and design

About our guest:

Joe Grand, also known as Kingpin, is a computer engineer, hardware hacker, teacher, advisor, daddy, honorary doctor, and occasional video maker. He has been creating, exploring, and manipulating electronic systems since the 1980s. This is his third appearance on our show and first since 2019!

Relevant links:

• Enhancing Operational Safety: Cyber-Resilient Approaches for Physically Secure PCB Designs
  WEBINAR - January 30
• Bright Minds, Brighter Future Day of Innovation and Networking Event - February 1
• Meet Joe Grand
• DRILLCRYPT vs. Bosch
• Vulnerabilities on Bosch Rexroth Nutrunners May Be Abused to Stop Production Lines, Tamper with Safety-Critical Tightenings
• Circuit Break Podcast #73: Joe Grand: The Origin Story
• Circuit Break Podcast #185: What You Are Designed To Do - A Joe Grand Manufacturing Adventure

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast!  We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at [email protected].

This week Parker and Stephen welcome Kent Johnson to the show to discuss ethics in engineering. It’s a topic that has been alluded to over the course of Circuit Break, but this is the first time Parker and Stephen have delved into it with a real expert on the matter. Yes, most companies have standards and regulations and a moral code that guide them but, as Kent suggests, there are more ethical gray areas in the realm of engineering than we might realize. Topics covered here include:

• Discovering something isn’t being done properly at your new job
• Agreeing to work on something with life-or-death consequences, and you don’t really know what you’re doing
• Bypassing important project safety tests to meet a deadline
• Crediting others in an age of ChatGPT and redefinitions of plagiarism
• How do you credit and use open source code?
• Why siloed departments at companies are causing such harm to work dynamics
• The tyranny of the spec
• The true dangers of “failure” or “gotcha” work cultures
• Accepting accountability and being willing to change
• Avoiding QC by zipping the lip
• +more

About our guest:

Kent Johnson is Senior Corporate Advisor for the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation and a management consultant on religious diversity at work. With over 37 years of experience as a Senior Counsel at Texas Instruments, Kent is a seasoned legal expert who specializes in corporate law, ethics, product liability, antitrust, medical/FDA law, and mergers and acquisitions. Since leaving Texas Instruments in 2018, Kent has been helping companies adopt best practices regarding religious diversity and inclusion in the workplace. He is also Stephen’s father-in-law, so this really a family show this week.

Relevant links:

• Kent Johnson (LinkedIn)
• Religious Freedom & Business Association
• Why Are Ethics Important In Engineering?
• Circuit Break Podcast #14: Discrepant Diodes
• Circuit Break Podcast #410: Eighth Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special Somehow this Podcast Returned
• Join the Circuit Break Discourse Community!

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast!  We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at [email protected].

A recent Circuit Break Community thread about K-map design inspired a tangential conversation about how well certain subjects are taught in college. Parker and Stephen love a good tangent, thank you, and so they dug in by recalling their own experiences at school with excellent professors who clearly wanted electrical engineers to succeed, while other instructors and their teaching methods were challenging or else just downright bizarre. Other topics covered here include:

• How a terrible electronics professor can impact someone’s career
• Is a “self-paced” classroom really just lazy teaching?
• Still not knowing how Bode plots work
• A strange digital circuits analogy where chickens and snakes are shocked
• Watching videos like you’re in A Clockwork Orange
• A grade curve so severe, a 17% was a B
• Classes and profs we loved
• Was a class hard, or was the professor just absolute garbage?
• Still having nightmares about forgetting to go to class for a whole semester
• Heat Shrink Voltage Ratings
• +more

Relevant links:

• Attend MacroFab Founder Chris Church’s Presentation at Orbweaver’s Current 2024
• Using K-maps in circuit design
• Heatshrink Voltage ratings?
• Circuit Break Podcast #297: Modern College Education with Derek Fronek
• Circuit Break Podcast #18: Classy Capacitors and Lab War Stories
• [WEBINAR] Enhancing Operational Safety: Cyber-Resilient Approaches for Physically Secure PCB Designs

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast!  We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at [email protected].

This week Parker and Stephen welcome James Lewis back to the show after a rather long absence! The occasion stems from James chiming in on a Circuit Break Community thread that Stephen started, asking all about component aging effects. Stephen posed questions like, “What happens to resistors over 5 years? How about 20 years? Are there rules of thumb or better yet, calculations for aging?” And helpful engineer that he is, James got in there and tried to provide some answers before agreeing to appear on the show to elaborate. Other topics covered here include:

• How no one is completely sure about how to approach component aging
• When component aging actually affects designers
• The difference between aging and reliability
• The impact of components lasting longer than they were meant to
• Variables, parameters, and other factors that can inhibit and exacerbate aging
• Levels of violence in polymer tantalum explosions
• The history of constants
• Device longevity laws
• How to define rated voltage for a capacitor
• +more!

About our guest:

James Lewis aka Bald Engineer, is a freelance electronics content creator. You might recognize James from the YouTube channels AddOhms and Workbench Wednesdays from Element 14. His interests include talking too much about capacitors, repairing vintage computers, and making unique PCBs that go into poorly designed 3D-print enclosures. James has been on the show a few times now, including episode #141 and #222 to discuss testing and validating PCB assembly design. The episode about ceramic capacitors is still one of Parker’s all-time favorite episodes! 

Relevant links:

• Bald Engineer
• Component Aging Effects
• Circuit Break Podcast #141: It Depends – An In Depth Look at MLCCs with James Lewis
• Circuit Break Podcast #222: Turning It On – New Design Checklists with James Lewis
• Circuit Break Podcast #306: Removing The Barriers
• Join the Circuit Break Discourse Community!

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast!  We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at [email protected].

Not unlike Han Solo emerging from cryosleep, the annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special is back! Parker and Stephen welcome Josh Rozier, Chris Kraft, and Hyr0n to Circuit Break for a wide-ranging discussion covering at least the following about the Star Wars universe:

• The Most Ingenious Pieces of Technology in Star Wars
• The Most Underrated Characters 
• Favorite (and Most Profound) Star Wars Quotes
• Personal picks for cool lightsaber functions
• Do Star Wars ships and vehicles ever need gas?
• Medical care in Star Wars vs. Star Trek
• Whether or not you’re sleeping while encased in carbonite or just dead the whole time
• A burning desire for vibroblades
• The toilet paper situation in Star Wars
• Does Star Wars really illuminate the vastness of space?
• Chewbacca knows everything
• Spider-Man’s goo
• So many Star Wars magic tricks
• Tow Cable/Power Harpoon as a reasonable tactic to use against the AT-ATs on Hoth?
• Science-Fiction vs. Science-Fantasy
• “Skippy” and The Mandalorian
• FM Radio Transmissions in Caves
• Star Wars: Thrawn and the curious case of loading cargo and other bureaucratic tasks
• Engineering ethics in the Empire / Darth Vader and anger management
• Stewie’s Vader
• Kylo Ren, blasters, and magical gas
• Not loving JJ Abrams’ elimination of limitations
• + much more!

About our guests:

• Josh Rozier
  • A business intelligence and data analytics professional for a large, east-coast insurance monolith. In his spare time, Roz spends his time building and tweaking guitar amplifiers and pedals. Co-owner of Empire Engineering with Stephen.
• Chris Kraft
  • A tinkerer currently working as a software engineer in the financial services industry. Extensive background in 3d printing and building anything that seems interesting.
• Hyr0n
  • A systems engineer. Hardware hacker of AND!XOR, a group that builds electronic badges for conferences, mucks in vending machines, and designs embedded system puzzles.

Relevant links:

• Circuit Break Podcast #357: Seventh Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special - We’re the Rebel Codebreakers!
• Circuit Break Podcast #307: Sixth Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special - The Bad Hunch
• Circuit Break Podcast #255: Fifth Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special – Neo Jedi
• Circuit Break Podcast #204: Fourth Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special – C3PO Steals the Show
• Circuit Break Podcast #152: Third Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special – Vader’s Fake Finger
• Circuit Break Podcast #98: Second Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special: Jar Jar on a Harley
• Circuit Break Podcast #46: First Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast!  We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at [email protected].

Parker and Stephen discuss a recent news story about how car manufacturers are increasing their focus on Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs) which are cars that use more software instead of physical components to control vehicle functions. This prompted a comparison between SDVs and Drive-by-Wire or DbW technology in the automotive industry, which is the use of electronic or electro-mechanical systems in place of mechanical linkages that control driving functions, how DbW relates to Fly-by-Wire tech and the fate of the F-117 Nighthawk, how Marvell Semiconductor is working on technology, particularly Ethernet, to support this change to SDWs, plus we get a brewery project update from Stephen, and much more!

Relevant links:

• Marvell Sees Software-Defined Vehicle Readiness Near at Hand
• Circuit Break Podcast #65: Self Driving Cars With Josh Hartung From Polysync
• Circuit Break Podcast #396: PoE - Phantom over Ethernet
• Circuit Break Podcast #107: Orthogonal for Mutual Conductance
• Circuit Break Podcast #229: Get Cute This Weekend

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast!  We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at [email protected].  

Parker and Stephen welcome Pete Staples, the CEO and Co-Founder of Blue Clover Devices, to the show! Staples founded Blue Clover in 2003 to explore ways to make the electronics industry more efficient. Prior to that, he worked as a systems engineer at Boeing Satellite Systems in El Segundo near LAX. Blue Clover continues to hone their processes to eliminate waste and provide the best value for their clients. In 2018, those efforts culminated in the release of Blue Clover’s Production Line Tool (PLT), a cloud-native hardware test automation device. Because of his expertise in device testing, Parker and Stephen wanted to catch up with Pete to ask him some questions about such things, and so we’re happy to welcome him to Circuit Break!

Relevant links:

• Blue Clover Devices
• Circuit Break Podcast #404: The Barcode is 50 With its Creator, Paul V. McEnroe
• Circuit Board Testing Methods: What You Need to Know
• Circuit Break Podcast #189: Not Even My Final Form – Jeff Garoon on Industrial Product Design

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast!  We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at [email protected].  

Parker and Stephen discuss a recent article exploring how electrostatic discharge damage isn’t the only kind of static hazard your digital designs can face and possible solutions to such problems, a recent report that CHIPS for America published, entitled “The Vision for the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program” (NAPMP), which elaborates on goals and investment areas to establish U.S. leadership in advanced packaging and provide the technology needed for packaging manufacturing in the U.S, a rumour about Raspberry Pi and how Tesla released service documentation for its original roadster, addressing some commentary by Discourse Community members, Todd_Zebert and Pdp-1, 1960s Batman stuff, and much more!

Relevant links:

• The Other Kind Of Static Hazard To Your Logic Circuits
• Circuit Break Podcast #326: The Infinite Finite Grid
• Chips For America Publishes “The Vision For The National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program,” Supporting Leadership And Technology Growth
• Circuit Break Podcast #388: CHIPS Can’t Dip
• Join the Circuit Break Discourse Community!

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast!  We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at [email protected].  

Parker and Stephen welcome JITX CEO and Co-founder, Dr. Duncan Haldane, to the show to discuss his company, which is a code-powered PCB design platform that aims to revolutionize circuit board design by integrating automation with human expertise. Prior to co-founding JITX, Dr. Haldane was responsible for a “hyper-aggressive pogo-stick” robot called Salto-1P. After discovering just how much work went into designing Salto-1P, Duncan was inspired to start JITX, because he wanted a better way to design robots. In an approach that some engineers find divisive, JITX is innovating in ways to design circuit boards by writing code, and so Parker and Stephen asked Dr. Haldane to explain his background, the problems JITX is trying to resolve, the company’s plans to build a new auto-router, just what exactly the deal was with that “hyper-aggressive pogo-stick,” and much more!

Relevant links:

• JITX
• Circuit Break Podcast #21: Let The RF Hit The Noise Floor
• Circuit Break Podcast #30: You won’t believe this ONE WEIRD Engineering trick
• Circuit Break Podcast #52: Anti Fitbits
• Circuit Break Podcast #393: Recyclable PCBs, EOL Design, Cold Cuts
• Join the Circuit Break Discourse Community!

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast!  We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at [email protected].  

Parker and Stephen discuss the fact that physical limitations of shrinking process nodes are leading to new advancements in silicon interposers and enabling 2.5D packaging architectures, which is making 3D packaging possible, plus an exploration of what ChatGPT is and isn’t capable of, in terms of it answering our questions and whether or not it matters that it can’t draw upon its own experiences to relate to us, like say, wanting to have a beer sometimes. Plus, much more!

Relevant links:

• Why 3D packaging could be the next breakthrough for processing
• Circuit Break Podcast #118: Battlestar Galactic Grounds
• Circuit Break Podcast #17: System-in-Package (SiP) Platforms with Greg Sheridan
• How is ChatGPT biased? Researchers identify a variety of concerns 
• MEP EP#365: Let’s Segway into the Next Topic
• Join the Circuit Break Discourse Community!

Thank you for listening to the MacroFab Engineering Podcast!  We’d love to hear what you think of the show so please tweet at us @MacroFab and join our Circuit Break Community for discussions or email us at [email protected].