management Candidate-First Hiring Candidate-First Hiring is a philosophy that guides our hiring and interview processes based on our own experiences as candidates, interviewers, and hiring managers. It is a hiring process informed by an outlook that we believe is both stronger and kinder.
opensource Open Source Munitions Let's start with a short Q&A that might surprise you! Q1: You write a nifty program and share it with someone on the Internet. Is it possible for the government to
hiring "Blink" and Technical Hiring Malcom Gladwell's book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is a really interesting study in decision making and how the availability of information impacts the accuracy of those decisions. Over the last
gnuradio Speaking at the DARPA Bay Area Hackfest The DARPA Bay Area Hackfest is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I'm excited to spend the week at NASA Ames talking about great ideas and hacking on cool technology. This
reference Vortex Race 3 Quick Reference I tried to post a shorter version of this as a review for the Vortex Race 3 Mechanical Keyboard on Amazon, but they rejected it because I linked to external (non-Amazon) sites. Anyway,
opensource Dear Non-Coders: Rescue OSS from Itself This post is about how to find open-source projects that could benefit from your time and expertise, and then make meaningful contributions to them - even if you're starting from a blank slate.
workplace Engineering Mantras Like everyone else, I have a list of favorite quotes that have influenced me or that I have found especially compelling. In the technical world, these sometimes become mantras, guidance, or even best
crypto Storing Encrypted Data in the Cloud I recently decided to put some of my most critically secure data in the cloud. I spent time over several weeks researching how best to do this, and got advice from some of
hiring Update on Hiring: It's Still Hard In early 2015, we decided to revamp the Ettus Research R&D hiring process. We had a lot of candidates coming through the pipeline, all the way through an on-site interview, that
management A Keystone of Success I've recently found myself discussing what it means to be an experienced or senior engineer with a number of different groups. What's interesting about those two terms is that I don't think they
opensource Powerlevel9k When I started Powerlevel9k on the evening of December 4th in 2014, my goal wasn't to create a large project, but really just to create a highly customized ZSH prompt with some features
software On the Recent GPL Enforceability News Over the last week I've received daily links from colleagues excited about the recent GPL news, so I figured I would share my thoughts here. Of course, before we continue, I'm obliged to
workplace Workplace Sabotage I recently stumbled across a declassified field manual first published by the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA) in 1944. The manual describes simple methods that everyday citizens can use
travel Performance Shirts, Travel Shirts, and the Bluffworks Meridian Dress Shirt I like the folks over at Bluffworks - they make excellent performance & travel wear that looks good enough for professional environements; i.e., they wouldn't be caught dead making zip-off travel pants.
travel Review: Bluffworks Travel Blazer Last Fall, Bluffworks successfully led a Kickstarter campaign for a travel blazer that beat their fundraising goal by ~1711%. The Bluffworks Travel Pants that I reviewed a couple of years ago are still
software The Benefits of Upstream Compatibility and Upstreaming So you've read the loads of articles about why Open Source Software (OSS) is good for business. Perhaps you've also read Tom Preston-Werner's superb article about why your company should open source as
software Installing REDHAWK on Fedora 24 At GRCon16 last month, there were a number of discussions about deploying GNU Radio applications to REDHAWK networks. REDHAWK has a lot of very compelling features, especially in the management & provisioning of
gnuradio Installing GNU Radio on CentOS 6.8 It's not terribly uncommon for someone to e-mail the GNU Radio mailing list, discuss-gnuradio, asking for help getting GNU Radio running in CentOS. CentOS is known for its long maintenance periods, which makes
foss Winning the Open Source Battle Last month, the Chief Information Officer and Chief Acquisition Officer of the United States released Memo M-16-21, titled "Federal Source Code Policy: Achieving Efficiency, Transparency, and Innovation through Reusable and Open Source
management Halt and Goto Meeting As a company grows, protecting the time of its employees becomes a perplexing problem. Bizarrely, almost everyone I know that isn't at a start-up doesn't seem to have enough time at work to
Ubuntu on Windows 10 Like most of the rest of the world, I was pretty sure that Microsoft's announcement that they had partnered with Canonical to get Ubuntu on Windows 10 was an April Fool's joke. Especially
gnuradio Taking Over GNU Radio Today we announced a big change in leadership for GNU Radio. Tom Rondeau, who has led GNU Radio for the last 5+ years, is stepping down and will be taking a position at
writing New Home, New Job, New Year Welcome to 2016! It's been a few months since my last post - but with good reason! Time has been especially hard to come by since the new year - on top of
hiring Hiring is Hard The tech sector's hiring process has become something of a hot topic in the last few years. For the most part, everyone seems to agree that the current methods of technical hiring are
hiking Visiting Lassen Volcanic National Park & Forest For this year's fourth of July weekend, we took a trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park, which is surrounded by Lassen National Forest. This turned out to be one of my favorite places
