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Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

blog.adafruit.com

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Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#141

Post by CamperBob2 »

rm445 wrote: post #105
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

This is great news for Supplyframe. But there is a darker undercurrent here that really needs some introspection. The "makers market" of today doesn't work. Let's compare the market between say 1975 and 1985 with the market between 2010 and 2020. Money spent on the early market supported no less than 6 monthly printed magazines, several chains of electronics component stores (Radio Shack/Tandy/Dick Smiths/Marples(sp?…

Just to shout out that Raspberry Pi Press produce some excellent print magazines, albeit very beginner-focused. Whether they'd be a profitable standalone business I don't know, but as a whole the Raspberry Pi operation seems to be very successful.

Also: what's Circuit Cellar, chopped liver?

Circuit Cellar is an excellent print magazine, easily on par with the best of those available in the 1980s and earlier.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#142

Post by CamperBob2 »

capableweb wrote: post #7
WanderPanda wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which can be claimed for their content but not for their UI

What's wrong with their UI? Using https://hackaday.com/2021/05/22/irc-will-never-die/ as an example Seems the contrast is excellent and no obvious disturbing layout choices. Fairly traditional layout although I'm not a fan of the white on black as I sit in the sun a lot, but generally it seems quite good if you compare it with most random blogs out there.

There's a reason why nothing, but nothing, of any importance or popularity uses white text on a black background.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#144

Post by jsjohnst »

mjevans wrote: post #132
michaelt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect hobby electronics has faced stiff competition from hobby computing, among people inclined towards tinkering. The people who, in the 1980s might have been using a 555 timer to blink an LED? These days they've got a computer, and they're making a web page or writing 'hello world' in javascript. Oh sure, a few of them might get an Arduino and blink an LED from time to time - but nowhere near enough to support…

I haven't tried making a PCB for over a decade. $5 PCBs sound great, but what might appeal to me even more is an associated robotic CNC and surface mount service to install all the fiddly stuff and source the 10-50 whatevers of each thing I need from an assembly house's yearly consumption of 5 million Xs. Are there any services like that? Where small runs are possible without the massive cost effect if picking parts…

> Are there any services like that?

Yes, lots of them. JLPCB even has a promo right now where they do SMT assembly for free.

https://support.jlcpcb.com/article/146-2-for-1-4-layer-pcbs

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#145

Post by teclordphrack2 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #102
spoonjim wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your take on the "makers" market. The maker world is far more interesting today than in 1985. Yes, there are no "brick and mortar" stores because in 1985, brick and mortar was the only type of store that existed. Nowadays, Internet shopping is so developed that Adafruit, Sparkfun, Digi-Key, etc. don't need brick and mortar stores. The experience of shopping for parts online is much better than at a Ra…

I think you have a valid point but did you experience the "friction free" experience of walking into an electronics store idly and then walking out with all of the parts to build a project that afternoon? Most mixed HW/SW hackers accumulate a "stash" of components, and from that stash one can sometimes build new projects, but for me, there is a huge impediment when I have 90% of the parts and then have to wait for th…

My magazine is not going to disappear like so much content has. Even when microchip bought atmel there are still google links to atmel stuff that is no longer there... or is there but at a different address.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#146

Post by b112 »

mjevans wrote: post #130
kragen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're saying that new hackers don't have a good place to go for reliable information, and in the 01980s they did, because magazines and books were reliable, and now they're gone? And that it's harder to get electronic parts now than it was in the 01980s? I think I disagree with both of these. But I'll only tackle the first one. With respect to reliability of information, I agree there's an enormous am…

I respect your idea of trying to make dates valid for 10x the duration of 4 digit dates; however prefix with a leading zero also often implies octal parsing. Current date formats ignore that for fields of fixed with, and make various assumptions in cases of dynamic width. There doesn't appear to be a notation similar to the C style prefixes 0x and 0 (hex and octal), nor like the mentioned assembly language post-fixes…

Plus, it is only short term thinking, to not write it as 000001987, for example.

And what sort of long term thinking, wants all that extra electricity used to denote pre-zeros endlessly, thus increasing data transmission, disk space usage, and even calories to type it. I bet current excess power usage, is equal to at least a bucket full of coal yearly, and that adds up when thinking over 10k years or more.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#147

Post by dlsa »

ptorrone wrote: post #63
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

This is great news for Supplyframe. But there is a darker undercurrent here that really needs some introspection. The "makers market" of today doesn't work. Let's compare the market between say 1975 and 1985 with the market between 2010 and 2020. Money spent on the early market supported no less than 6 monthly printed magazines, several chains of electronics component stores (Radio Shack/Tandy/Dick Smiths/Marples(sp?…

i will be interviewing them, so if there are any questions you want me to ask, feel free to post them here. (i work at adafruit, founded hackaday)

I'm actually more interested in how you started hackaday and the story behind it. Early years up to now. Cheers!

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#148

Post by kragen »

rasz wrote: post #126
kragen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shenzhen (and Taipei, Wuxi, etc.) supplies the electronics for the entire world economy, which it turns out is mostly boring incompetent greyface stuff like General Motors and Cemex. They supply hackers too, but hackers are a minority of their customer base. Shenzhen's customer base isn't comparable to that of Radio Shack or Byte.

I dont understand your argument. People named Ralph are the minority of Walmart customers, therefore .. ?? The difference between eighties and now is in the eighties corporations wouldnt even talk to you, so you had to go to RadioShacks, hamventions, or live near Akihabara Electric Town. Nowadays random hacker has access to whole planets supply chain with overnight shipping and websites taking orders 24/7.

> People named Ralph are the minority of Walmart customers, therefore .. ??

Therefore Walmart doesn't have a whole workforce supplying people named Ralph.

> Nowadays random hacker has access to whole planet's supply chain with overnight shipping and websites taking orders 24/7.

Concur.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#149

Post by jennasys »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #133
genmud wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am actually not sure I 100% agree with that take on it. I would argue that much of the sales of 1975-1985 places like Radio Shack/Tandy/etc. were around early adopters of home computing. And I would also assume that the vast majority of the sales/items they had were finished projects, not "maker market" type of stuff. Many of the magazines of that era are "how to build $x for your home" or "program $y". I would say…

Back in the day (i.e., the period you're talking about!) Radio Shack -- back when their name was two words, rather than "RadioShack" -- sold bare components, breadboards, and IIRC even blank circuit boards, as well as all sorts of textbooks about electronics and various projects. They certainly weren't focused on the "makers' market" but they very explicitly catered to it. And, really, I don't know if there's anythin…

For a lucky few, there are a some Micro Center brick & mortar stores around that have a surprisingly up-to-date and diverse selection of electronic components and tools stocked. They are doing what Frys should have done when the market shifted.

Re: Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie

#150

Post by [deleted] »

drone wrote: post #42
satya71 wrote: post #21

Didn't realize Hackaday and Tindie were making $70m in revenue. Siemens seems to have good track record in other acquisitions in EE space. I guess they're trying to go up against Arrow, Avnet, etc

They're not. SupplyFrame has traditionally been a software vendor for companies in the electronics manufacturing space. The blogs and Tindie are a very, very small part of their portfolio. For example, there's QuoteFX, DirectSource, DesignSense, FindChips, and a host of other solutions they sell.

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