Embedded

Medicins Sans Frontieres is also known as MSF, or Doctors Without Borders. They are the first ones to arrive when there's a war, an earthquake, an outbreak, or a famine. And increasingly, they are coming under attack. We spend a week inside one MSF hospital in South Sudan to find out what life is like for the people who do this work. Follow Kelly McEvers on Twitter @KellyMcEvers and Jason Beaubien @jasonbnpr. Email us at [email protected].

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Patrick Yeon of Planet Labs spoke with us about making satellites. We discussed a method of using orientation to control drag to control speed. While Patrick wasn't sure what he could say about GPS receivers on satellites, another site describes them as part of the flock. Sign up to get access to the huge Open California data set. Planet has many applications and their blog shows off some interesting finds, such as identifying illegal gold mines encroaching on rainforests, quantifying ports with computer vision, counting trees and classifying agriculture crops, fire mapping, and cloud detection. They are still hiring, apply using the email embeddedfm at planet.com will earn us (err, not you) more free tshirts.

When you play basketball in the NBA's minor league – it's called the D-League — the stands aren't full, the schedule is grueling, and the pay can be as low as $13,000 a year. Compare that to the NBA, where the profile is high and the salary is way higher. Playing in the D-League is a moonshot for every player, just waiting to get that call-up to the NBA. We follow two players through the highs and lows of an entire D-League season. You can follow Kelly McEvers on Twitter @KellyMcEvers, Uri Berliner @uberliner and Tom Goldman @TomGoldmanNPR. You can email us at [email protected].

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Chris and Elecia chat about hobbies and respond to listener feedback and questions. Chris was on an episode of Let's Drone Out, you can listen to it here or search in your favorite podcast platform. It is recorded and broadcast live every Thursday at 8 P.M. (UTC+1) on Powering On. Chris' new quadcopter is a Vortex 285. It runs Clean Flight, an open source flight controller software package. While we had various opinions about RTOSs, we were both interested in the one Alvaro suggested to us: Zephyr Project. As for other embedded podcasts, of course you know about The Amp Hour. And we had Saron of CodeNewbie podcast on, that show is mostly software and people. How about Macrofab Engineering? Or O'Reilly's HW podcast?

A dispatch from Embedded HQ. Follow Kelly on Twitter @KellyMcEvers. Email us at [email protected].

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Paul Sidenblad spoke to us about his engineering career, starting off with GE's work on the Gambit spy satellite. Google Protobufs Elecia read Eye in the Sky: The Story of the CORONA Spy Satellites a few years ago and remembers liking it, though this was the first time the information was useful.

We go back to Austin, Indiana to see how Joy, the nurse from our first episode, is dealing with her addiction to a painkiller called Opana. Follow Kelly McEvers on Twitter @KellyMcEvers. Email us at [email protected].

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Torie Charvez spoke with us about what it takes to start and run your own business in the US. We talked about starting your own consulting company, selling your latest gadget, and all of the bookkeeping, tax issues, and details involved. Torie's company is Tax Goddess. The write-off publication she mentioned is on the IRS site is Chapter 8 of Publication 535. Elecia mentioned her Snow White's Guide to Your First Stock Options.

On its face, the immigration system can look a lot like the criminal justice system: prisons, courts, judges, prosecutors. But the rules are different and the details are often hard to access. Today we go inside an immigration courtroom to follow the story of one man and his family. Follow Kelly McEvers @KellyMcEvers. Follow Caitlin Dickerson @itscaitlinhd. Email us at [email protected].

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Craig Smith (@OpenGarages) spoke with us about hacking the software in cars. His book is the Car Hackers Handbook. There is a 40% off coupon toward the end of the show. OpenGarages is Craig's site to improve and encourage hacking. Some tools he recommends for getting started are USB2CAN and CANTact. An older (shorter) version of the handbook is on OpenGarages. I Am The Cavalry (iamthecavalry.org) is an excellent site for learning more about security. CERT.org is also good. Theia Labs is Craig's company.