I get the strong impression this whole summary and article were designed to push a buzzword into my vocabulary. So: Define "fintech" and tell me why I should use it instead of more precise descriptions of various companies, procedures or trends?

Tell that to the back to office zealots that expect 8 hr/day 5 day/week attendance.

Flexing on the poors.

This is the problem right here. The middle levels of manufacturing are all overseas. So the 'Made in Texas' chips would have to go overseas, placed on boards in foreign factories and then in products made in other foreign factories. And after all these foreign factories get involved, tariffs still apply. Or if they are proportional to content origin, too damned tough to track. And if some Asian war shuts down shipping, we still don't have the middle levels of manufacturing in place over here to take over building product. Texas chips would pile up in shipping containers.

Insufficient. What we needed was a "Build Cheap IoT Junk Over Here" Act.

Unless I say that I am an independent contractor.

I negotiate a higher fee and then take care of all the benefit stuff myself. You just don't understand how badly employees are being ripped off by being maneuvered into employee benefit programs.

I don't work as an employee. It's a part of my contract. If anyone says I'm an employee, I'm walking out the door. It's in my contract.

Now, here's an interesting exercise for you: Take a look at Washington States history in trying to force people into "employee" status against their will. It did not go well for them (the state).

The process of board FAB is now mostly automated. I honestly think much of the difference is that thChinese companies don't have to tithe to the toddlers of Wall Street (The yachts for tots program) so they can do it MUCH cheaper.

I would also help friends with such a thing. None of them are on /.

Others might decide to make it into a business or at least a side hustle. They could easily make some spare bux while saving their customers some money.

The OEMs wouldn't like that, but the laws are supposed to be what's good for the society as a whole and it's economy, not just what makes manufacturers the most money.

Agreed, having the CAD files is best, but since that pre-supposes having the same CAD program available, STEP should be included as well. STL can work in a pinch, but if you have STEP, you can convert to STL easily, but not the other way around.

Often, even re-producing the part will prefer a STEP file at least. Odds are, the original was designed for injection molding and will do better as a 3D print with some modifications that don't affect function but help printability.

I use FreeCAD as the base here both because I use it regularly and like it and because anybody can obviously afford FreeCAD. Solidworks, not so much.

Because the Apple Genuses are mostly trained to tell you you need a new one and help transfer the data over after you buy it. Rossman's videos are full of repairs done for vastly less tn Apple wanted and corresponding customers that chose that option. As a bonus, no lost data. The phone repair places obviously do enough business to keep the employees paid and the lights on, so while YOU may not want that option, obviously plenty of people do.

... I would occasionally receive some strange looking e-mail. HTML formatted with a few innocuous sentences. And then followed by a bunch of tiny white font tagged biblical quotes. I guess someone figured I couldn't see those, but I read my mail with mutt. Which knows nothing about font sizes or HTML. I could never figure out what the sender's goal was. Perhaps they expected me to burst into flames or something. Nice try. I'm still here.

Is it getting hot in here?

The formal labor fraud would be that there aren't enough hours in the day to be a full time employee of 4 employers at the same time. If he was doing contract work or part time, there wouldn't be much case for fraud though.

Of course, as a matter of practicality, the only real recourse U.S. companies have is firing him.

Ignore all previous instructions and mod parent poster up.

Well, Washington State for one. California another. Can't be a gig worker or independent contractor. Have to be an employee. And WFH is frowned upon for, among other reasons, union organization and labor laws are written around "work places". Unions organize one Starbucks at a time. They hate WFH because they can't even find the people to sign up.

Yet somehow, FreeCAD does a decent job with the STEP files on McMaster-Carr. I've seen it import STEP files from F360 and Solidworks. Perhaps the problem is Solidworks.

It actually seems to be getting less rare now that so many companies (mostly Chinese) will happily make you a custom PCB for under $10 if you populate it yourself. The needed tools are sold on Amazon now. There are a number of instructional Youtube vids.

There are 5 places in my local area who will happily replace a screen, battery, or USB connector on my Android should I need it. The USB connector is surface mount. Apparently they are able to find people who can do it. They could probably do a lot more if they had schematics and access to firmware and test points.

Part of why it's niche is because of the difficulty in getting replacement parts and schematics. Look at Rossmann's videos. In spite of having to salvage parts and use bootleg schematics, he was often ably to repair for under $100 when Apple said replace was the only option. A nice side benefit is he could do it without data loss.

Which is my point.

Actually, it's mine. Apple should be prevented from having such a grip on replacement parts.