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We all know that in the world of general software Open Source has all but won. Linux is everywhere. Nearly all programming languages are Open Source (meaning their compilers/interpreters). IDE's, build tools, revision control, syntax highlighters, refactoring tools, you name it, if it's a development tool it's Open Source. Major infrastructure is Open Source too. I mentioned the Linux operating system, but all the major applications are Open Source too: web servers, databases, queueing systems, messaging systems, load balancing, caching systems, GUI frameworks, encryption, authentication, email servers, instant messaging servers, blog engines, you name it. In the world of Electronic Design Automation (EDA), Open Source has not won. We do now develop on Linux and we use a lot of ancillary tools from the software world that are Open Source such as scripting languages, text editors, databases, web frameworks, build systems, and so forth, but our core tools are still very mu...

Stripe announced bitcoin support .  There has been much discussion on hacker news about it .  Lots of people are not seeing the benefits of bitcoin over credit cards for individual shoppers. They talk about the fraud protection that credit cards provide them as customers and the 1% or whatever cash back they get on each purchase from the credit card companies that they would be giving up.  I don't think they fully understand the trade-offs here. First of all, the cash back.  Credit card companies are charging merchants a percentage of each transaction larger than the 1% whatever they are giving you back (how else do they stay in business?).  What people may be forgetting is that retailers are not just eating that percentage cost that the credit cards are charging them.  They are most definitely passing that cost on to all of us consumers in the form of higher prices.  If enough transactions happened with bitcoin that would lower prices for all of us....