#170 – What defines an engineer? - Job Judging Jeremiad

SPEAKER_01: This is The Amp Hour Podcast, recorded November 4th, 2013. Episode 170. Job Judging, Jeremy Ed.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. Who has been fooled by daylight savings yet again.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we should combine them. As you said before the show, we should just... It's like getting fooled by April fools over and over again. You just keep getting fooled by the stupid, stupid, stupid clocks.

Dave Jones: Something fundamental like time, you know?

SPEAKER_01: Time's an illusion, Dave.

Dave Jones: Right, okay. Lunchtime, doubly so. Good to know. Yeah. Oh, boy.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah, so I was late. Oh, well. We always... It's good for us to not schedule a guest this day. Because that's when we really get in trouble.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's pretty embarrassing. If we don't turn up and the guest is sitting there. Hello, hello, anyone there? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: I love you. I just scheduled our guest out into February of 2014. That's how far ahead we've already got guests scheduled.

Dave Jones: That's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01: It is kind of ridiculous.

Dave Jones: What if we get like a really awesome guest but they can only do next week?

SPEAKER_01: Well, then you and I stop... Oh, next week only?

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, we just record.

SPEAKER_01: If it's two weeks from now, we just don't have people who yap. And we do have an awesome guest next week, which we'll announce at the end of the show. Cliffhanger. Cliffhanger. Well done. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I mean, eventually I'd like to be able to go to like, be like, special edition. Tune in today of the F hour. But yeah. We're not there yet. Right. But maybe we'll get there eventually. You know, if you... Yeah. I think the big thing would be if you had time. I don't know if you'll have time.

Dave Jones: I always have time. I don't work for a living, do I?

SPEAKER_01: Well, no, but you're busy on the forum, so...

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Nerding out. Yeah. Can't help myself.

SPEAKER_01: Speaking of, Vincent was very well received last week. I don't think I've ever seen such activity on the forum, maybe because it was one of, you know, one of your own. The phone, yeah. Right. Yeah. But obviously, you know, he was... Maybe. He was a long and prolific show. It was great content. I mean, like, everything we talked about was a lot of fun. And yeah, people... Yeah, it was cool. I've never seen response like that, even off of... Even off the EV blog forum.

Dave Jones: There were a lot of people who said that they couldn't listen to it because it was too long. Well, you couldn't listen to it in one sitting kind of thing, you know? And yeah. Well, that's always the same with long content. You know, people go, oh, yeah, it's good to have, but... Yeah, right, right. You know?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you got to break it up a little bit.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: Well, and it's better to let people do that versus us doing it. You know, we don't do, like, part one, part two, part ten. Right. Yeah, it's... He was great, though. It was good to have him on the show. Yeah, so we'll have more good guests coming up. Like I said, I'm very excited about next week's guest as well. And I think everyone listening will be as well.

Dave Jones: But you won't find out until the end because we're...

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you got to keep listening.

Dave Jones: Trying to keep that audience retention rate up to... Or just skip again. Do we have a stat to follow that? No, we don't. Because people just download it, right? We have no idea if they're just listening for five minutes going, oh, they're just talking shit again. Yeah. And press stop.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, every five minutes. Oh, same thing. Well, we've been going four minutes talking shit, so we better start talking. Yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of podcasting in general, it feels like last week was like a rash of finding out about new podcasts after not having found one in quite a long time. Right. And there was a couple, actually, which I was kind of surprised by. One is embedded.fm. I don't know if you've ever heard of that one.

Dave Jones: I haven't. They're using the .fm instead of the wanky .fm. Yeah. Well, we were looking at doing that too. We didn't want to pay for it. No, but then we just realized, oh, it's a wank anyway. We wouldn't use it as our primary demo.

SPEAKER_01: Ah, it is what you make it. Anyways, yeah, so that's Alicia White and her consulting partner. I don't remember the partner's name because Alicia is the one who's the consistent one on there. But, yeah, it's about embedded, and this is what I've been looking for for a long time because I've always wondered why there wasn't an embedded podcast. You know, like I think people would want to talk about, yeah, it's pretty close to what we do. Obviously, I don't really touch code that often.

Dave Jones: Right, so it's embedded software more than embedded hardware.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like firmware type of stuff. But I think more on a project level as well. I mean, just kind of talking about issues with, you know, but this is, I think Zombie Tech's another good one, but, you know, and I guess if you kind of video stuff as well, then like Ask an Engineer's another one. But, like, really just like just electronics kind of stuff. It's like there's, you know, we're in a pretty small group here, and this is another one, which is great. I mean, so. Welcome. We love competition. Yeah. It's good. We were trying to get Vincent to do his own podcast. Well, they're not competition. They're colleagues. Exactly, exactly. I just want stuff to listen to, man. Yeah, so it's pretty good, though. I enjoy it. And there are already 25 episodes in.

Dave Jones: Oh, nice. Yeah. Is it a weekly thing?

SPEAKER_01: I think it's relatively weekly, yeah. It's only started a couple months ago, so. Sweet. Yeah. I mean, we know how it goes. You know, you take a week off, and it can start to slip. But it looks like, yeah, weekly so far. So that's great. The other one was the Steam Power Podcast, which was a little bit more general. Steam being for, you know, like STEM, educational type stuff, adding A for art. Oh, right. Yep. And so it's a little bit more general, but, you know, good topics as well, talking about things that are probably of interest to our audience as well, and they're up to 25 podcasts as well. So, yeah, check it out. Another good science-y tech podcast. More focused on science.

Dave Jones: Sounds like we're on the right bandwagon.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. We are the bandwagon, man. Right. I keep trying to tell Vincent he should start a podcast. That guy could just go for hours, but whatever.

Dave Jones: It takes a certain type of, you know.

SPEAKER_01: Blabbermouth. Yeah. Like us. Exactly. Yeah. So what have you been working on lately?

Dave Jones: I've been mucking around with measuring the resistance of vias. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. I saw you post about it. I actually didn't get a chance to watch it yet, but so give us a little taste here. Give me a little hint. What is the outcome? Yeah. What's the spoiler?

Dave Jones: The spoiler is filling a via with solder, at least a 1.2 millimeter one, halves the resistance of the via. Oh, interesting. There you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: How did you measure that? Did you just use like a six and a half digit?

Dave Jones: Yeah. A six and a half digit multimeter with a four terminal measurement. So I pumped current through the via and then I just tapped off two signal wires from the pad of the via.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it was actually got like, because I rummaged through my old box of boards. You know, everyone keeps like an old box of, you know, PCBs you've worked on or, you know, or whatever. I was looking through them, trying to find one that had the exact architecture pad that I wanted. I.e. A pad with current flowing just through that and nowhere else on the board. Like, you know, there wasn't a different alternate path going somewhere. And then it happened to have two wires tapping off one on the top and one on the bottom. And like, there weren't that many boards in my...

SPEAKER_01: It was like, where's Waldo, huh? For a PCB layout feature.

Dave Jones: And also, I thought, oh yeah, it'd be easy to find something like that. No.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And in the end, I maybe found three different boards I could have used, but that was three out of like 30.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, it wasn't 50 or something. It wasn't a large number.

SPEAKER_01: So, you know, what is your opinion on sharing vias like that? So, I know that obviously you're measuring current through a via to test the resistance and everything like that because for high current stuff. But for like non-high current kind of situations, do you often try and run as many traces to a via if, you know, if it's a shared net for doing that kind of thing? Or how do you... Do you drop multiple vias?

Dave Jones: Uh, well, that... For signals, it just depends on the layout. It purely, you know, because there is no... Ignoring signal integrity stuff for a minute, you know, there is no, you know, reason to... You know, you can have as many vias going anywhere, any which way you like. Yeah. As far as signal vias go. Yeah, right, right, right. Although I'm not quite sure what you're actually getting at there. Are you talking about like a star point via or something?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess it would be a star point in that case because you would... If you had that many signals coming off of it. But, uh... Yeah, I don't know. I just... I always wonder about that because I always... Whenever I'm connecting up, you know, common nets and stuff that's not already going to like a, you know, a ground plane or something like that, but just kind of common nets. Yep. You know, you have the choice of trying to centralize, you know, maybe like under a part or something like that or... Or you could drop multiple vias, but, you know, it's just a...

Dave Jones: Oh, that's... Yeah, that's a tough question to answer because it's a layout. Layout dependent. Totally layout dependent. Standard, yeah. Yeah, you can really standardize it. Whereas something like power is different, right? Because this is essentially only for power vias, right? No one cares about the resistance of a via for a signal, you know, trace, right? It's only for power stuff. And, you know, and there's some basic rules there, i.e., you know, if you're using just one via to pass power through, you're doing it wrong, right? You've got to use more than one via for reliability because when you're passing current through, you don't necessarily know what the resistance of that via is going to be and how it could crack with stress and, you know, long-term reliability and all that sort of stuff, which is part of the reason why you also solder fill these vias as well because it's for reliability for power nets as well as decreasing the resistance and, you know, doing that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_01: Making it friendlier for current, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes, yes. So, yeah, you know, so if you're, you know, going to, you know, if you get your calculator out and you're calculating the current and you're looking up your charts for your current capacity and all that sort of stuff and knowing your via plating's one thou and all that sort of stuff and you calculate, oh, yeah, I can carry one amp through this via with, you know, a two degrees C temperature rise, that's fine, and you're just plonking your one via, you know, it's just dumb, you know?

SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, it's not like you're getting charged by the via, right? I mean, that's the...

Dave Jones: Well, you could be, right? Excess, well, you know...

SPEAKER_01: Usually it's per square inch or per area, that's what they usually do, right?

Dave Jones: Per square inch, yeah. So there is, in theory, you know, you will get charged more for more vias. Right. You know, really ultra-high volume production. It's not a... Yeah, it's more like a threshold.

SPEAKER_01: It's not a la carte.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. You know, if you punch your ground plane with 10,000 vias, all right, your bareboard manufacturer is going to go, well, I'm going to go through X number of drill bits to do that. Yeah. You know? Right. And it's going to take X amount of time, so I'm going to charge you that machine time.

SPEAKER_01: I think the time is the real big one there.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the time is the big one.

SPEAKER_01: You get charged. I was shocked. I think it was Zach Hoken, Smith, who posted a video about... It was just a video, like, kind of panning across a facility that had... It was just drilling vias and, you know, through holes and stuff like that. And I guess I never really, like, thought about it even, you know, just thinking about, oh, yeah, each hole is... You need to drill that hole. It's not like there's a chemical process that's eating down through a hole. It's like, no, no, that's a drill. Like, it's really just drilling that out, so...

Dave Jones: And the machine has to move to that point and then... Yeah, exactly. And then pull it back out, then move back, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Right, and like you said, there's wearer on the drill bit and everything.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Each one takes, you know, 0.2 of a second or something, you know. Right. And that probably doesn't include flight time, you know, to get there.

SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. Yeah, it adds up. Anyway, so, yeah, you can't just add 10,000 vias to your ball willy-nilly. Well, you could. Well, you can. Exactly, but they'll charge you for it. But anyway, so, yeah, the whole point is that you don't use, you know, if you're relying on one via to support any sort of significant current, yeah, you're doing it wrong. Yeah. So, that's rule number one. Rule number two is always leave...

SPEAKER_01: I was looking at your video there.

Dave Jones: What?

SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen your video yet.

Dave Jones: Oh, I haven't seen it. Right, okay. Well, I didn't go through these rules in the video because it was just a video on does it make a difference? You know, it was sort of like a myth-busting type thing. You know, how much difference does it make by solder coding the via? Yeah. And anyway, second rule is you always leave your vias, your power vias untented so that if you do have a wave solder process, you can actually get the benefit of having the wave bubble up and fill your vias for you for extra, for lower resistance and extra reliability. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Bonus. Yeah.

Dave Jones: For free.

SPEAKER_01: Bonus.

Dave Jones: That one doesn't cost you anything.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Which is great. Don't cost nothing. No. Exactly. So, thinking about the via stuff and I guess like the number of holes and everything like that, I didn't actually put the link here, but it was on the hardware startup subreddit that I saw it and it was someone talking about how commodity hardware is getting so commodity that the cost is becoming zero, right? Like it's all diving towards zero and obviously it's never going to be exactly zero, of course, but it's going to be low enough that like, you know, companies will, they'll give you a tablet just in order for you to get onto their, you know, their web store or something like that. That kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Got it.

SPEAKER_01: But I started thinking about that today. Obviously, this kind of just triggered me now with the vias because there's obviously there's cost from, you know, if you think about designing for cost in that case, right? And if you're designing for the super low cost product, then you're going to also be designing for, you know, minimal vias and super high integration of components. Minimal number of layers.

Dave Jones: You got to be going single layer.

SPEAKER_01: Single layer if you can. Yeah. I actually meant integration of component like on silicon. Of course. Silicon on chip or silicon on module, that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: And then the next thing is to go single layer.

SPEAKER_01: Single layer, right.

Dave Jones: And then the next thing is to not piss money away on that FR4 material. Oh no, phenolic base all the way, folks.

SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine opening up a tablet and seeing phenolic on the bottom?

Speaker ?: Exactly.

Dave Jones: But hey, you know, it's cheaper, right? That's what you get. That's what you open up any consumer bit, you know, open up your VCR. Sorry, VCR.

SPEAKER_01: Any power supply, definitely, right?

Dave Jones: Any power supply, yeah. Yeah, exactly. You kind of find a single side of board in there.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And those are good examples of being designed for cost.

Dave Jones: Yep.

SPEAKER_01: I started thinking about it, though. So, like, what happens to the design side of it then, right? I mean, like, so, obviously, a lot of that stuff is designed overseas as well as being built overseas. But, you know, it's not a new trend. I mean, I guess it's more focused on consumer, right? Like, high volume manufacturing and everything like that. But, like, that means that eventually, like, all of the engineering dollars get squeezed out as well, right? I mean, either you take a design that you've been making for 10 years and you make it for another 10 years or you just don't pay anyone anything and, you know, you just kind of hope it works. I mean, I just, I don't understand how that works.

Dave Jones: Generally, when you don't pay people anything, generally things don't get done.

SPEAKER_01: Right. Okay. Okay. That's one option. Okay. Well, I don't know.

Dave Jones: I just want to point out that little inconvenient fact there.

SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I know. But, I mean, I just, so, like, we could say that, right? But then there's always the reality of it. It's like, okay, well, this is going to happen somehow. And what I really want to know is what is really happening, right? I mean, like, so, all these hardware costs keep diving down, right? If you can buy a tablet for 30 bucks or, you know, like, you can buy, you know, a little tiny blinky gadget for 10 cents, right? I mean, like, there is, at some point, some modicum of design into it, right? I mean, maybe it's, is the answer that it just gets copied? I don't understand. Neither do I.

Dave Jones: Because we don't live and work in China, I guess.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Perhaps. I guess we should figure that out. Maybe we should give the boys a call over there.

Dave Jones: I don't know. How much are engineers working? How much are electronics engineers earning in China? Do we have any Chinese listeners?

SPEAKER_01: That is, that is a good question, actually. I, I think I remember someone saying, like, the good ones are paid, like, about four times less right now. Like, that's like.

Dave Jones: Oh, then, then a typical Western engineer.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Which would be what, 80K? Would be, say.

SPEAKER_01: I'd say, average US over the entire course of the country is about 100,000, actually. I think one of them. Oh, right. Okay. I mean, California jacks it up, right? I mean, because there's a high concentration there and there's a higher cost of living. But I'd say, yeah. So, like, 100,000 and I assume that would mean 25,000. That's pretty good.

Dave Jones: That's higher than here.

SPEAKER_01: Is it?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't think the average would be 100,000 here.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay. Well, that's just why. Last time I looked at a salary survey, that's what it said. And I'm always surprised by it. Interesting. I'm not making six figures. I don't know.

Dave Jones: That reminds me. I saw a documentary on TV the other day.

SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: Like, it was on, you know, our government channel. You know, it was one of those. Yeah, ABC. You know, ABC, yep. And, yeah, it was a good documentary on how much people earn in, I think it was New Jersey. Don't quote me on this, but one of the, like, lowest paid states in the U.S.

SPEAKER_01: So, you guys watch documentaries on New Jersey? Is that what I'm hearing here?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. I mean, we were sitting there. There was nothing. And it looked interesting, right? Okay. So, we thought, oh, yeah. And it was. It was a really good doco about how they've got all these, you know, some of them were like, you know, PhD, you know, level people. They had really good jobs before, but they can't get another job. So, now they're waiting tables, right? And, of course, waiting tables for, like, $3 an hour or something, or $2 an hour. It was. And if they don't get tips, they don't eat, you know? And it's absolutely ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01: That's how it is everywhere around here. Every.

Dave Jones: Even in California and New York and.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Somehow, all of the food staff people and bartenders, they don't. Right. They don't get paid minimum wage. They get paid, like, some sub-minimum wage, and then everything else is tips.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's sub-minimum wage. Yeah. For some reason, they get away with it.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, they can make a lot of money in tips, but, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. Apparently, you can if you're good at it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. That'd be interesting if electronics designers got paid in tips, huh? Right. This design is really nice. Have a fiver. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's real. This one's really shit. It's peel box. It didn't include any termination resistors. Screw that. You're not getting your tip, fella.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. This thing's spewing noise like crazy. It's 18% minimum, folks, for parties of six or more. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Double on Sundays.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But anyway, I found that fascinating because they had all these really, you know, highly qualified people. I think some of them were in engineering. There was one guy who was in engineering or something, and, yeah, he couldn't get a job, so he's waiting tables for... It's incredible.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but they don't tell you. Some of those people do make like 300 bucks a night. I mean, like, it's not trivial.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, it can be.

Dave Jones: Well, they seem to be... Yeah. Yeah, they can. But they seem to be doing it really tough.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, it's tough. I mean, it's...

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. That's weird that Jersey's like that. I don't know. It's... You know, we've talked about regionalism a lot as well. I mean, like, I see Ohio's doing okay-ish. I guess I don't have... You know, I have a job right now, which is hard to really feel the pain of someone. Well, yeah, but I mean, like, you know, like, when you have a job, it's like, unless you're looking for a job, right, at the time. I'm sure some of our listeners right now are looking for jobs, and it's... Oh, almost certainly. It's tough to get that kind of feeling, unless you're actually in the thick of it, like, you know, trying to... Oh, of course. No. ...contact stupid HR departments and... No.

Dave Jones: If you've got a job, you don't think there's anything wrong with the country. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's how it works, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that, I guess, you know, because most people don't, you know, look, you know, they just don't pay attention and find out what's happening in the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_01: I was talking to my sister about that today, actually, about, you know, people looking for jobs and stuff like that, and this applies in electronics as much as anything else, but like, when you're talking to someone and you say, yeah, you know, I'm looking for a job right now, and then you find out that... So, maybe you talk to Dave, right, and Dave says, oh, yeah, I work at Altium, even though he used to work at Altium, right? And then you say, oh, can you get me a job at Altium, right? Yeah. That's a really tough thing to do, actually. When you walk up to someone and say, hey, can I get some help with a job at Altium? Because if they don't know about a job immediately, what they'll often do is they'll just give you the default response of, oh, well, here's our HR group, which is the worst thing in the world, and you don't want that at all. Oh, of course. No, no. Yeah. And so, like, there's a subtle art to being, like, annoying about it to the point of, like, you know, okay, so you don't know about any jobs, but who can you introduce me to that does know about jobs or that can hire me or make a job for me?

Dave Jones: It depends a lot on the company and the culture. I mean, someone like Altium and other companies, they're always continually hiring, almost, you know? Like, because it's so hard to find good people that match the, you know, match the company culture and all that sort of stuff, you know? So, they don't really advertise jobs as such often, you know? It's more like, oh, you're really good? Okay, we'll hire you, you know? And we'll put you in a group somewhere, you know? It's not always that formal, you know?

SPEAKER_01: Well, that's good. And if people are looking, that's the kind of thing to look for because then it's like, you know, you get in there, right? Even if you go in as like, you know, a technician, if you're, you know, maybe you're trained as an engineer, but you get in as a technician, you know, that's, that kind of foot in the door thing is stellar, you know? Because then you do hear about the job before anyone else does and that's, and you know, you make a little dough in the meantime.

Dave Jones: I can remember a job I got way back in, oh, 94 maybe? Uh-huh. At a EFTPOS company, Key Corp. And it was through a recruitment consultant, you know? And the recruitment consultant had no idea if they had any jobs going, but they said, oh, look, they're, they're always looking for people, you know? So look, I'll just, you know, arrange an interview with this. So I went in there, talked to the engineering director and he went, you know, had an interview. Oh, there's no jobs going, but yeah, we'll hire you, you know? Oh. Because you're good, right? You know, so like, you know, I, I like you and you answered all my questions and yeah, okay, I'll hire you. And he hired me and I, you know, turned up for the first day. Right, what do I do? Oh, I don't know. Just, you know, go around, just hang around, talk to people. Yeah, seriously.

SPEAKER_01: Man.

Dave Jones: I didn't have a job description, nothing. Like, it was almost like, um, I was almost sort of hired as his sort of personal design assistant kind of thing, like the engineering director. It was like, oh, anything he wanted, you know, because he's a busy guy. Yeah, pet projects, that kind of thing, right? Yeah, yeah, pet projects. So anything he sort of wanted to, you know, wanted to do and didn't have time for, you know, he just handed off to me. And eventually I sort of, you know, fell my way into a particular group. Yeah, right. Eventually, but I, you know, I still kind of had that thing where, you know, if he had something for me to do, he'd come straight to me and, oh, can you work on this? And, you know.

SPEAKER_01: I have never heard of anything like that before. And that's, I mean, that, honestly, that sounds like a great idea. But the thing, okay, so I was thinking about this the other day too. Like, so, you know, I was working in the fab for a while, but then like, you know, getting back into the electronics side of things, like I started in 2008. And so if my experience has been 2008 to now, there hasn't been much good of anything in that time. Right. And so, and I think I've said on the show before, but like, you know, a year where I'm not getting a pay cut seems like a raise. And a year when I get a raise, even if it's like 0.1%, it's like, oh, hey, who's going to the casino, boys? Like, you know, like, it's just like this mentality. And then I hear stories like that where, you know, it wasn't as lean of times, right? You know, you weren't designing $30 tablets, not like I'm designing $30 tablets, but, you know, there wasn't as much price pressure and you could do that kind of thing. And there could be a culture like that. But I would be very interested to know if that kind of stuff still happens today, either Australia, States, anywhere else.

Dave Jones: Oh, it still happens. Because it still happens when a company gets a big influx of money. And in my case, right, this was a company that had recently floated. I think they had, you know, they were on the stock market and they had recently floated. So they had, you know, they were flooded with all this, you know, cash and they were hiring just people, you know, willy nilly. And I must say, it only lasted nine months before the bubble burst, right? They lost the contract and boom, they sacked half the company, including me, right? So, yeah, right. But it was a fair, you know, but nine months. Details, David. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And that's not uncommon at all.

SPEAKER_01: See, now, this kind of brings it back to that other point too, right? So, like, you know, I'm not designing $30 tablets. I never have, nor will I ever design $30 tablets or tablets in general. And there are these industries where, you know, like I'm in the industrial space, right? Industrial space is pretty well priced. Totally different. Yeah. I mean, like, I designed something with, you know, 10 components on it that costs 10 times as much as a tablet would cost, right? And you spend a year to do it. 10,000. Right, exactly. Yeah. Thinking about the difference. I mean, there's different design requirements, but at the same time, like, if you look at just pure complexity, I mean, there's a stark difference there. And so, like, I guess it's just volume. I guess it's just a volume times a, you know, unit price kind of thing where if you sell, you know, a million widgets at, you know, $30 versus, you know, a thousand widgets at $300, you know, that's still, you're still not making as much money and you're not getting this good pricing and everything else. But, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, it's also what you, what your company sets out to achieve, right? People producing these tablets, right? They don't have a reputation to protect, right? And then number one, when they go into it and to actually design it, we need it next month. That's it. We're going to, you know, we'll throw out whatever you happen to have at the end of the month. Yeah, right, right. Whatever point your design states in, we're not going to perfect it. We have no reputation to protect. We have nothing, right? Right, and the testing cycles and, yeah, reliability and warranty. Yeah, it doesn't test it. Oh, who cares, right? You know? Exactly. Yeah, and I guess that stuff is old-priced in. All that stuff is insignificant. Yeah. Well, yeah. Whereas in the industrial space, it's totally different, right? That's why it takes five times longer to produce something from an industrial company or, you know, or in our space, for example, you know, like a test and measurement industry at Agilent or a Fluke, right? They're not just going to slap something out the door, throw something out the door, right? It takes a long time. It takes a lot of effort. It takes 18 months and then you throw it out the door.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly. Maybe. Right, yeah. It takes 18 months. You delay it another six months. You promise it and then, you know, eventually it slips out the back. Right. Oh, boy. Well, I saw the same kind of thing. So, there was another post I saw on Reddit. I don't remember what subreddit it was on. But it was talking about, you know, $10 prosthetic hand, which was, you know, this is a very heartwarming story about this hand that this father and son were printing together for, you know, for disability the kid had. And it said $10 versus $20,000 for the prosthetic. But it's like, in that $20,000, there's a lot of other stuff, you know, priced in. And it's not just $10 of plastic and then $19,990 of greed, you know. It's like, there might be a little bit in there, but it's not all just greed, you know. It's like. All right. Yeah. So, it's tough. It's tough when you're trying to make those comparisons, too, right? I mean, like, when Adam Wolf was on the show, he was talking about that, how people, you know, come in expecting an iPhone, right? It's like, well, yeah. Well. Yeah, you get $500 for an iPhone, but, well, you know, come on. Come on, folks.

Dave Jones: The $50 one's not going to be quite the same.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Can't be. It's physically impossible.

SPEAKER_01: Did you, speaking of dumb ideas and medical electronics, did you see that post I put up about the guy that shoved electronics under his skin?

Dave Jones: Oh, I have.

SPEAKER_01: So, squeamish warning for everyone. I'm pretty squeamish myself, and this is a pretty gross picture.

Dave Jones: What is it? What did he put under there? I see the photo.

SPEAKER_01: He put, like, a development board under there. Like.

Dave Jones: I don't even want to press play on the video, I don't think.

SPEAKER_01: I didn't. I'm just looking at the picture, and it's all, like, oh, God, it's all red and infected.

SPEAKER_01: It's a square. Yeah, and it's, like, it says Arduino, but I don't know if it's actually an Arduino.

Dave Jones: No, it's based on. I think it's built on top of or something.

SPEAKER_01: What? You could have made it so much smaller. At least, if anyone's considering shoving stuff under their skin, please give a listener of the Amp Hour a call, and we'll help you design it smaller. We won't take any liability on it, but, my God, it just looks so painful. It's so hard to look at.

Dave Jones: I'm morbidly fascinated. I've got to press the play button.

SPEAKER_01: I know, I know, I know. So, and someone pointed this out in the Reddit comments, you know, when I posted this story, too. Well, didn't John, uh, uh. John Oxer, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Also, Oxer, sorry, yeah. Didn't he also do that?

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it was an RFID chip.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, very tiny.

Dave Jones: And it's designed to be implanted, right? They're designed to go into dogs and stuff. In dogs. It's the same way.

SPEAKER_01: But, yeah, bioseph is a very important thing as well, and, uh.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. No, this was, like, properly, yeah, this was properly sterilized, encapsulated, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Well, and, like, uh, what's that, uh, what's that type of, there's, like, a certain type of food, not food-grade plastic, but, like, medical-grade plastic and all that other stuff. So it doesn't, you know, leak different chemicals and all that crap. Oh, it's just, oh, I've got to turn this off. Anywho, if you're squeamish like me, don't stare at it too long or don't stare at it at all. But, uh, yeah, don't, uh, stuff, I, I don't know, there's this weird group, you know, like, all these biohackers and body modders and.

Dave Jones: Oh, that is, oh, that is gross, man. Like, putting, sorry, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, I know. I mean, like, Google Glass makes you look nerdy, but this.

Dave Jones: Well, it's no different to the masochists into, right? The masochists into, you know, pain and whatnot. I mean, you know, some people enjoy this shit. Well, you know, so be it. Yes, yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I mean, I don't want to take any one hobby away from them. I'm just saying.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: From a practical standpoint.

SPEAKER_01: Think twice, you know. Think small. That's what I'm trying to say here, Dave. Right. Imagine trying to get through. Technology's are shrinking. You should not be putting any dips in your body.

Dave Jones: Imagine trying to get through a TSA screening point. Oh, God. With this.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right? It starts blinking and everything. Oh, that? No, that's nothing.

Dave Jones: No, no, it's nothing. It's not going to explode, honestly. And as soon as you say the word explode, then, well, you know, you get guns pointed at you.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right. Oh, man. Yeah, it's just. Okay.

Dave Jones: Is he going to take it out? Has he taken it out? Or is he planning to leave it in there? What's the story?

SPEAKER_01: I can't look at it anymore, to be honest. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: I know. Nice goatee.

Dave Jones: Sorry, I'm just admiring his goatee.

SPEAKER_01: His what?

Dave Jones: Goatee.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, goatee. Oh.

Dave Jones: Is that how you pronounce it in Yankee speak? Goatee?

SPEAKER_01: Goatee, yeah. That's how.

Dave Jones: You know? A little bit of flavor saver on the chin. You know?

SPEAKER_01: So now for something completely different, because I got to get my mind off this. So Jack Yancel's news. Obviously, we've had Jack on the show before. We have. I think it was in. It was a very early episode, actually.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. God. Where they going for years, dude? Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01: But he had a great article in his newsletter this week about debugging, actually. Right? So obviously, he does a lot of embedded systems and stuff like that. And he made a great point about how, or it was based on some other article, where as your system size goes up, Phil Armour's column about, as your system size goes up, you're more likely to kind of just twiddle and kind of tinker with variables inside a program and just kind of see if it works, see if it works, see if it works, try it. And what he was saying, though, is that if you slow down and actually capture this stuff, it makes for better debugging, because then not only do you actually think about it before you start doing these things, you also have a log. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But then you have a log of the things you've tried. And I was going to ask you, do you keep track?

Dave Jones: Other than non-video. No, I am freaking hopeless. So many times I've, like, you know, I'm doing exactly that, right? I'm debugging an embedded project, right? And I'm right, you know, I'm hacking some code in there to, you know, display a variable on the LCD or something like that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because that's how I like to debug projects. You know, I like to actually get feedback from the product itself. You know, if it has an LCD, I'll use the LCD for debugging.

SPEAKER_01: Right. Or blinky if that's how you got it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Blinky if that's how you, yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, two blinks for this variable got updated or, yeah, something like that. Right. And, no, and so many times I'll get that syncing feeling that, oh, I've done this before. I've checked this bit before and I don't have any record of actually doing that, especially if it was like a week ago. Yeah. Or, you know, it's a project you work on last month and you come back to it and you just end up doing the same debugging shit over and over again.

SPEAKER_01: Right. You have the same bag of tricks. You pull the same ones out. You check the power supply enough times and it's like, oh, that's supposed to change this. Nope. Nope. It hasn't changed yet.

Dave Jones: No, it's exactly the same as when I last tested it. I just forgot that I tested it. Yeah. Yeah. That happened with me. I don't have the discipline to do that sort of thing. Yeah. Unless I'm forced to by company procedure, which is different. Oh, I've never had that. Oh, you've got to document, you know, the development. You know, I've worked on projects where, you know, everything has to be documented. Really? So that, yeah, oh, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Every part of the development process. So I feel like that'd be a good training thing as you're like learning how to debug. That's a good idea, like to have that structure. Yep. But then, I don't know, that gets, wow, that's pretty tedious.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you spend half your time documenting.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. I'm sure that, you know, like, and much to Jack's point as well, I mean, like, you can probably save a lot of time by, you know, having that record there and being able to say, okay, well, I have tried this now. You can. I'm not going to repeat it four times over the course of the entire debug cycle. Yeah. But, yeah, I don't know. Like, I guess that is just good documentation, right? You know, writing stuff down, having either a lab notebook or, I always like wiki pages for documenting progress and stuff like that. But I guess blogging.

Dave Jones: I'm old school. It goes on a post-it note, you know, and, you know, when the post-it notes get lost and well, you know, it's, yeah, doesn't quite work. I, you know, I used to be an engineering, you know, notebook kind of guy, but, you know, it's, eh, I don't know. I just can end up losing it, misplay, you know, or it's not, you know, I'm not going to go rummage around for my notebook, which is, you know, in the bookshelf somewhere, you know, if I'm sitting at the bench, oh, I don't need to record that. I'll remember that. Right. You know, it's not important enough to, you know, yeah, exactly. It's just not important enough. You don't think it's important enough.

SPEAKER_01: Right.

Dave Jones: And, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: There must be some kind of tool that could help. I mean, like, I would think, like, I don't know, Google Glass or something like, I mean, like, obviously that's, you know, kind of an off-the-cuff comment there, but, like, you know, some kind of video. Because, like, even going back through and then, like, say you recorded something once in a while, right? You know, even if you had a regular video camera, right? You hit record. Okay, I'm going to try this test now.

Dave Jones: Yep.

SPEAKER_01: You're not going to go back and watch it, right? I mean, like...

Dave Jones: You're never going to... It's too time-consuming. It always comes back to this sort of documentation stuff. It always comes back to an issue of data sorting and data retrieval. Yeah. It's a database issue. So, it's...

SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's cultural, though, too, right? Because I think if you're followed by people... Like, if people around, you know, your office do the same kind of thing, you'll probably follow some of the same conventions as well, right? Yep. Yeah. That's how it works. Nothing was more difficult for this kind of thing when I was working on control system type stuff, like actually chasing variables around a loop.

Dave Jones: Oh, that sort of stuff I end up writing down, you know? That's, you know, really important stuff that takes... You know, if you set up an experiment to test it and it took you hours, then you're going to, you know, feel compelled to document that somewhere. Right. At a minimum.

SPEAKER_01: Well, but even that, I mean, like, in terms of, like, feeling insane, right? I mean, like, you know, if you're chasing variables around a loop, right, where you say, okay, well, at the input of the, you know, the control loop, it's, you know, two volts and over here, it's one volt and at the, you know, at the feedback point, it's half a volt. And then if I change the other one to two volts, now I got to change the other ones. And it's like, yeah, if you don't have a table of values and like... Right. Like a predefined scientific, you know, experiment, like a...

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. No, you're just...

SPEAKER_01: Actually following scientific method where you have a hypothesis.

Dave Jones: Wandering around in the dark aimlessly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God. That was a hard learning lesson. Pissing up a flagpole. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Pissing into the wind.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, God. It was so terrible. You learn fast, though. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: You do.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. I would be interested to learn about it. If people do have other tools as well, you know, like learning about that kind of thing, anything helps in that case. I mean, like sometimes it's just, you know, academic or intellectual rigor, right? Of actually taking the time to write it down and being burned enough times that you bother to. Yeah, yeah. But if people have other shortcuts, I love shortcuts too.

Dave Jones: Well, there's never going to be a universal solution for it. That they use this tool and it's the dark sky, you know, it's just never going to happen. Right. You know, it's like, oh, you must use GitHub for everything, you know? It's just not, you know.

SPEAKER_01: You don't have to.

Dave Jones: It's just, you know, I like it. Right. But it's not the tool for every job. No. No, I agree. I agree. Kind of to use a software analogy.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

SPEAKER_01: I learned another hard lesson this weekend, actually. This is not, it's sort of tangentially related, but I, you know, I basically, I bought like a piece. How Daylight Savvy works? No. Shut up, Dave. No, it was a piece of crap tool that I bought. I bought like a power washer.

SPEAKER_01: What's a, oh, like a jet washer for cleaning the car or whatever. Yeah, for like cleaning the car or a deck or a house, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. And it basically ended up, you know, troubleshooting. I turned it on and it didn't work. And it was because I, you know, it was a piece of crap, you know? Like I bought it two years ago and it was designed to last a year and a half, even though the, you know, or it's designed to last two years and a day when the warranty is two years, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. But it, but it, it's the same kind of thing that I've run into a ton of times before where like, you know, trying to decide, how do you decide when you do pay for quality tools? Like what is.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, look, I've got the classic example. I just did a video on a de-solder, a cheap ass de-solder, a sucker, right? Oh, yeah. De-solder sucker. That's de-solder in tools. Solder sucker.

SPEAKER_01: I call it solder sucker. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And I, I mentioned in the video, I had the same dilemma, right? I don't, you know, I don't run a repair shop here, right? So I'm not sucking out thousands of components every week. You know, I might be lucky if I need to suck off one through whole component a month, you know, that'd be a high throughput for me. Right. So, you know, I've always gotten by without it. And if I needed one, I've always had one at work, you know? So that's why I've never had one in the lab. So I decided to get one here, knowing full well that, you know, yeah, I'll only use it very

SPEAKER_01: two times a year.

Dave Jones: Sparingly.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I decided to buy the cheap ass sub $200 one instead of the proper name brand six, 600 plus dollar one. And yeah, it didn't work out of the box. Oh yeah. Especially here in Australia, you pay the Australia tax in quote marks, you know, on Haco stuff.

Speaker ?: What's that?

Dave Jones: Just like, you know.

SPEAKER_01: Oh.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. The markup, the artificial markup in Australia. Oh, just because of the ability and stuff? You know, for sub products, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: You guys are the backwater of the world.

Dave Jones: Exactly. So yeah, something you can buy for 200 bucks on Amazon suddenly is, you know, $600 here, you know.

SPEAKER_01: Hmm. Yeah. Well, you know, I'll ship it to you for $350. Yeah. You know? Just saying. Right. Yeah, but then I still have to buy a transform and operate. I could start an import export business like James Bond, right? I could just, you know, travel the world. That's it. Anyways.

Dave Jones: Anyway, so I bought, you know, against my better judgment, I bought the cheap ass tool. And sure enough, out of the box, it didn't work. Or at least I think so, because I opened it up first before turning it on. But the solar joint cracked, right, on the connector and the thing didn't work. And I had to fix it before I, you know, before it would work, you know. And once I got it working, it was okay, but it feels like it's not going to last forever. But, you know, for my purposes, they're probably good enough. So I'm reasonably happy with it, just ignoring the fact that it had a cheap ass cracked solder joint in it that just fell off. Yeah. You know, I'm reasonably happy. Like, it actually performed quite well. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01: That's not what I expected to happen at the end. I expected you to throw it in the dumpster room and then find another monitor or something.

Dave Jones: Right. No, this one actually worked quite well. It worked as, in my experience, worked as good as the name brand one. But will it continue to work? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Well, I was looking at that. I mean, the same kind of thing happened where it was like, I ended up approaching the problem like, okay, I know how to modify. Like, basically, I ended up getting a repair kit for this thing that I had. And then it did nothing fit together, right? I'm like, I can modify this, even though it's, you know, 1400 PSI and I shouldn't have done that. But I at least wanted to try it, you know, and blow my hands off. Right. But, you know, I think if you, I think at that point, though, the real measure is, even if it's cheap, if it's cheap in terms of final assembly, if you have decent input components, where it's, you know, it's actual solid metal for certain things. Right. Yeah, of course. Decent fittings, decent, you know, cables, that kind of thing. If you actually have... Then a cheap-ass plastic outer case isn't going to matter much. Exactly, yeah. If it's branding, if it's that kind of stuff, it doesn't matter. Like, the example I was thinking of is like, the milling machines you can get from Harbor Freight, or actually like, it's from this company called Sieg, S-I-E-G. And they make the X2 and the X3. And like, people take these, and basically they're decent enough quality, where like, even Grizzly Tools sells them.

Dave Jones: Right.

SPEAKER_01: And you could basically take them and mod them, and then, you know, like, there's like a whole community around hacking those things. But it's because they have decent enough input stuff, and you can kind of zero in for the accuracy and stuff like that. But the same kind of thing goes, where if that, you know, the input components for those, that solder sucker you have was good enough, then, well, maybe it's not as big a deal if you're going with the knowledge of, okay, I'm going to have to hack this thing.

Dave Jones: Well, the other reason I got it is because it had cheap replacement parts available locally. Right. Because often, you know, these things, right, you either can't buy the replacement parts, or they cost a fortune. Right. Whereas in this case there, like, you know, spare filters were a dollar. You know, a spare tip is like $9. And even the whole gun itself is like $30. So that's like, you know, that's a bargain. Yeah. In terms of, as long as they keep selling it, of course. I mean, you know, in 10 years time, I'm going to be able to buy a new handpiece for it.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Well, that's the problem I've had. That's the problem I had this weekend with, you know, the tool I was working on. But also, you know, with other soldering irons in the past where, like, you can't get, you can't get the actual iron anymore. You know, you could still buy the base for some reason, but you can't actually get the iron. It's like, okay. We don't get it. Like, I think the first soldering iron I ever got, you know, my folks gave it to me for Christmas. And the next day I go, I go onto the website to see if I can get replacement tips because it only came with one. And I'm like, nope, nope. We discontinued that a month ago. Oh, I guess my parents got it on sale. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, that kind of, for some reason, this popped in my head. An old forum thread here. Somebody, they're at a school. They're a student, right? And their school bought a whole bunch of those, you know, dumbass old school tech, you know, TBS 1000 series scopes, right? Ancient technology, right? You know, like 18-year-old technology. And they're still selling that shit, right? And, you know, and he asked, well, you know, would the school have been better off, you know, buying a new feature-packed Rigol, for example, for the same price? And, well, you know, it can go both ways. The answer is it depends, you know, because...

SPEAKER_01: Well, it depends what you're looking at, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, it depends. Well, it depends what you're looking at. It depends on what the support is like, right? In terms of the warranty and replacement and stuff like that. It depends on what sort of materials are supplied with it in terms of, you know, teaching materials and things like that. See, now, okay, so... Will the same scope be available in 10 years' time? See, that's the thing, right? If you're using old notes, you know, teaching notes that were written 15 years ago for the old model, they're still going to be relevant for the new model. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01: And getting new ones might be more costly. Well, the other thing that I think that those are all very good points as well. So the thing that I always think back to is, like, when I started playing guitar, I was really appreciative of, like, the piece of crap guitar that I started on. You're right. Because, like, when you start on a bad scope or a bad guitar or any kind of piece of crap equipment, you know, you either figure out how to fix it when you have to or you just appreciate when you move up a model, right? You're like, oh, God. You can, you know, you have any kind of memory depth on this new scope or, you know, like, this guitar actually doesn't buzz when you hit it on a certain fret. You know, like, all these kind of things where, like, if I would have started, you know, like, I think about people who start into hobbies like that where they, you know, they get, like, a $5,000 guitar or a $50,000 scope right out of the gate. They don't understand what's good about that kind of stuff. And you can't really appreciate it. Eventually, you know, when you have to use the other stuff. And you don't learn the limitations. Right.

Dave Jones: You don't learn the limitations of it, right? Because you can learn a lot through trying to get around the limitations of your tools. Right. That can take you in certain directions and force you to learn a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_01: Right. How about Alan Wolke's entire channel, right? I mean, like, okay, so, like, the tech scopes have been around for, you know, 30, 40 years now. You've been able to do a lot of this stuff for a long time. It's just you had to work a little bit more on it in the past.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01: It was triggering. You had to count. Triggering.

Dave Jones: Yeah, triggering. You had to count divisions and, you know.

SPEAKER_01: Ugh, counting. Calculating.

Dave Jones: And invert that time value on a calculator, you know, to get your frequency, you know.

SPEAKER_01: Yep, yeah. Yeah, damn kids and your fancy-ass scopes.

Dave Jones: And your damn auto-set buttons and your, yeah. I know. Oh, boy.

SPEAKER_01: But sometimes the old stuff's good, too. I mean, like, the old stuff, like, you can, not old stuff, but, like, simple stuff, like, you could still get quality out of it, right? And sometimes you actually save money by going simpler. Like this, this paste press. So, I forgot his name. I think it was John, maybe. I don't remember who sent it to me. But it's just a, it's a solder paste dispenser. Oh, I saw this. Yeah, yeah. You saw this? Yeah, it was, like, 60 bucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was comparing it. I'm like, oh, well, you can get, this is actually a really good example, right? You can get, you can get a solder paste dispenser on, like, eBay for, like, 100 bucks, right? So, like, the actual vacuum, not the vacuum ones, but the compressor ones where you actually puff out air and it pushes air down into a little syringe. And then it pushes out solder paste at, like, measured intervals with a foot pedal. And you can do that, except the $100 one is probably going to break in about a day because it's got an air compressor. And that means it's got O-rings and it's probably got crappy O-rings. Well, this is the, this paste press is actually more like a, like a caulk gun, you know, where you're, you know, squeezing out from, pushing from the back, basically. And it's, you know, some mechanical action, that kind of thing. And it's actually, like, a slow dispense and it's real control and that kind of thing. It looks stupid simple, but it's actually, like, very calibrated to your hand.

Dave Jones: It's got, like, a big handle on it, plus a, like, I didn't know the thing screwed up. I wondered how it worked. I've only had a brief look at it. Yeah, it looks kind of like a stapler. So you turn the screw up and that puts pressure behind the syringe and then the trigger lets out a controlled.

SPEAKER_01: No, no, no. So as you push down the trigger, basically, it pulls down the plunger into the syringe, right? So, like, you can use a caulk gun before we're actually pushing, you're pushing caulk out the front of it. Right.

Dave Jones: So you're using a leverage kind of, you know, a large extension of your hand gives a very small extension of the, of the lever in the, Yeah. Gun. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're using the lever chair. Right.

SPEAKER_01: You're translating motion. But, yeah, I mean, so, like, for doing solder paste stuff at home, and I was, you know, like, I was looking at this and it's like, I've never done solder paste stuff at home before. I've done it, you know, with work stuff where we had high quality compressor stuff. But, you know, like, this is good. I like this. I like this, being able to do this. And then you think you throw down a little skillet thingy and this, I mean, and honestly, it's becoming a necessity almost, right? I mean, between this and then some magnification, it's like, you know, certain parts you just can't, like, like, for contextual electronics, one of the parts that I'm using only comes in a TSOP. And it's like, TSOP's doable with drag soldering. I know. But, like, in terms of, like, if you're just starting out, right, I mean, it's good to learn that technique, but it's like sometimes you want to get it right and just have it work, you know? So, doing surface mount from home, or, sorry, a reflow from home would be nice.

Dave Jones: Yep. Plus, it's fun. I still don't have a proper reflow setup here, you know? I don't do it enough. Like, I just, you know, either do the drag solder or, you know, because keeping paste in the fridge and stuff, I don't even have a fridge here at the lab. Right. Right. Really? Oh, you don't drink beer. That's why. No, I don't drink beer. So, you know. So, I can't.

SPEAKER_01: Got to work on that.

Dave Jones: You know, I've been thinking about getting one just for, you know, maybe I can keep something in there, including solder paste.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, dude, you're going to find one eventually in your little garbage room there. You know you will.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, probably. Well, there was one there the other day, but it looked pretty crusty, you know?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, finding old tuna salad from, like, four years ago.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I have to fumigate that thing, you know? Mm-hmm. And, yeah. So, no thanks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So, I've actually never done this, you know, the skillet method before. A lot of people talk about that, but I've actually never tried that. I've always had an actual oven.

Dave Jones: Oh, I don't like the skillet. I would get a proper, you know, infrared oven. You know? Yeah. Yeah, well, a pizza oven. Once again, I found, you know, I found everything I needed down in the garbage room. I found a pizza oven down in there, but it wasn't the convection type, right? Oh, right, yeah. Which is the one you really need, you know?

Speaker ?: Oh, right, yeah.

Dave Jones: The convection one is the best. With that fan, that circulates the hot air, because you get a more even temperature inside, you know?

SPEAKER_01: Was it Mike that had one? He had a pizza oven or something?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people have them, you know, and they're pretty good, because you don't need, you know, contrary to popular belief, you don't need a fancy timer for it, you know? Look, you know, this thing only takes a minute.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly. Stopwatch and maybe an eyeball.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Just a cheap stopwatch put on top. You press the button and it dings when you, and you walk over to it and you press stop, you know? Because it's going to have a gradual ramp up anyway, which is going to be, you know, near enough. I mean, it doesn't match the exact profile, but, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: You're going to burn a couple boards first, too, and then you figure it out. Right. You know, just don't put your production level board in when you're starting out. Right, when you're first learning this thing, but, you know.

Dave Jones: No, these things are generally pretty good. It's actually, you know, they're pretty good in terms of, once again, if you get the convection type, because they're very, you know, because they're hard to go over temperature, because they, you know, the sensor in it is sensing the circulated air, you know, so they have less hot spots inside and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. Right. Yeah. Whereas if you just get the infrared one and it's just baking your board and the sensor's off in one corner, right? It's not measuring the temperature on your board, you know? Right. Which could be, you know, 100, 200 degrees hotter than, you know.

SPEAKER_01: I thought Sardomask was supposed to be green. Yeah. Anymore.

Dave Jones: Oh, those were the days where really, you know, they hadn't perfected Sardomask technology yet. And you'd get your boards back, even from the professional assembly houses. And they changed colour, you know, because the chemistry technology in Sardomask, I'm talking, you know, 1980s, early, maybe 90s. Yeah. Late 80s was the first time I saw it. Yeah. And, you know, and that was common to get your Sardomask back and it had changed colour. And they went, oh, there's nothing we can do about it. It's just how the chemistry is, you know. Wrong. Yep. Well, that's what the industry said. Yeah. We don't like this. So please, chemists, get your ass in the gear and give us some chemistries that, you know, stay the same colour. And sure enough, you know, people don't think about that today.

SPEAKER_01: Damn kids.

Dave Jones: But if you get it hot enough, you can still do it, you know.

SPEAKER_01: You damn kids with your purple Sardomask and your cheap stuff.

Dave Jones: When I was a boy, it was green and it changed our funny yellow when we put it through the oven.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Oh, boy. Well, you know, that's another thing about that. So that, that go back to that.

Dave Jones: And it would bubble. And it would bubble up. You know? Hey.

SPEAKER_01: Gross.

Dave Jones: Yep.

SPEAKER_01: That, that article from Jack too. I was thinking about that, you know, like talking about the old school days of having to do that for compilers and stuff like that, where you actually had like, you know, you didn't have much computing time. You weren't, you were really careful about what you're doing. You know, that's kind of a good analog to what you have to do for PCBs, right? I mean, like compile time on a PCB is about what? You know, three weeks. I mean, like depending how much you pay, right? But like, it's, you have to kind of do the same things. You have to have those where you want to think things out and you don't want to screw things up. You can't just change a variable. Well, you can change a variable. If a variable is a resistor, right? But, uh, resistor value.

Dave Jones: But you've got to put thought into the design to begin with so that you can have a bit of flexibility in your final, you know? Yeah. Oh yeah. For those contingencies. We've talked about that before.

SPEAKER_01: Of course. Of course. Actually, uh, you see, they're trying to do this in production now too with these, uh, the open, the, oh, there's a Motorola is doing the modular smartphone. You see that thing?

Dave Jones: Oh, I heard. Yeah. There was some, I haven't looked in the details. I heard about it. What, what is it?

SPEAKER_01: Because there was a thing, there was a thing a while ago that we never talked about called phone blocks that everybody was making fun of.

Dave Jones: Yes, that's right. Right. Everyone was making fun of it.

SPEAKER_01: And then Motorola comes out and they're like, hey, we're doing phone blocks effectively. It's like, oops.

Dave Jones: But is it, is it really? Is it? I don't know. I doubt it. Come on. I doubt it. It's just not all that practical.

SPEAKER_01: I too dream of modular electronics, right? I love the idea of it, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, so do I. I've been dreaming of that since I was a young whippersnapper.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Right. Cost. Cost is a thing. Well, cost is practicality. Just go surfing for connectors and look at how much that costs in relation to all of the tiny bits of sand that do all the processing on your board, right? I was complaining about this at work the other day. Like, I can buy a chip that does 16 channels of 80D measurement for like three bucks and I have to pay $7 for a big bulky plastic connector. And it's just plastic. There's a little bit of metal and a lot of plastic.

Speaker ?: Seven bucks?

Dave Jones: That's a cheap connector. I've paid hundreds for connectors.

SPEAKER_01: I know, right? I mean, it's just frustrating. Yeah. Stupid differences. But then you have a modular platform, right? And you have... If you want to design and reliability into that, you need good connection points at least. Even if it's not a physical connector. If it's just like, you know, contact points. But then you still got to design and quality there somewhere on the mechanical side of things.

Dave Jones: Nothing worse than cheap-ass connectors. Oh.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I have to say...

SPEAKER_01: Don't get started. I have to say, if there's one argument against a chip printer, it's actually the mechanical, like, the cost of doing mechanical right is really expensive.

Dave Jones: Hello? Right? Of course you can print a chip.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's my whole argument. Yes, you can print a chip. You can print a chip now. Right. Actually, there's an article about it. No, it's not practical. There's a million... I know you put something on there again, you fool. Whatever. You're just going to be proved wrong every time, right? This is fun, though. It's the practical... You just admitted it. It's the practicality of it.

SPEAKER_01: I do agree that the mechanical side is the tough part. And that's... Thank you. I win. That's the hard part. No, you don't win. That's the tough part. It doesn't mean... Dave, that's like saying, oh, well, we'll never get to the moon. It's possible.

Dave Jones: No, the moon is a defined goal that was practical. This thing's not when you already have alternative solutions called DigiKey, where you can buy 200,000 chips, fully tested, characterized, packaged, you know, off the shelf for a dollar. It's pointless. It's never going to happen.

SPEAKER_01: Are you finished?

Dave Jones: It's like saying, no, I'm not. Anyways, this week did you have a thin film. It's like going to the moon. Nobody had ever gone to the moon, right? It was like... It's not like you could go to the moon for 10 bucks. It's... Not the same thing.

SPEAKER_01: Anywho, this week, thin film developed a printed transistors and stuff. I think it's interesting from a, you know, from a sensor standpoint...

Dave Jones: I'm doing the whoop-dee-doo. Yeah. And I twirl my finger in the air. Yeah, yes. Hey, look, there's my mom.

SPEAKER_01: Whoopie. Anyways, so they did print... But the interesting thing is not just they printed sensors, because they've been doing that for a while, but they actually printed a bunch of the processing for the sensors as well. And so we'll link that in just to piss Dave off, because, you know, I do the show notes. Driving behavior like that.

Dave Jones: Or something that you're pissed off about.

SPEAKER_01: What?

Dave Jones: A celebrity calling themselves an engineer.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah. This got my goat this week. Right. We can end on a little bit of a rant.

Dave Jones: Let's do it. Yeah. Aston Kutcher.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: If that's how you pronounce it. I don't give a chance. I think so. You know, it's like...

SPEAKER_01: So this story actually made me go back and watch that 70s show, because I hadn't seen it in so long. And that was actually the thing that I really liked. Oh, was he on that, was he? Yeah, he was Kelso on that. He was awesome. All right. He was like the, you know, the stoner hippie dude who was hilarious. All right. And then he goes and tries to be a serious actor, and then he tries to be an engineer. But basically, Lenovo, formerly IBM, right?

Dave Jones: Serious actor when you're on Two and a Half Men?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but he did the Steve Jobs. So that's the thing that bugs me about this. I think that this is all promotion.

Speaker ?: Oh, the Steve Jobs.

Dave Jones: See, I haven't watched that yet. Yeah, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01: I haven't either. It's only in theaters, but it's like, he played Steve Jobs in some, you know, biopic that they just did. And now, like, he's being listed as an engineer, right? And so my main thing with this is actually not that it's Ashton Kutcher being called an engineer. No, no. It's the fact that his job there is being a marketing person. He's being a quote-unquote product engineer, which is a marketing person. And that it's the fact that marketing people call themselves engineers. That's what bugs me.

Dave Jones: I mean, that's, he's claiming, to be fair, he's claiming that he's not that, right? Because that's what a lot of these celebrities do. And he claims that's what makes him different, is that he has actually studied biochemical engineering, is it? He didn't finish. And he actually is. No, he didn't finish, right? But that's beside the point. He's actually done some study in the field. And he claims that he is actually working, you know, on the specs of the thing on the actual product development side.

SPEAKER_01: No, I don't.

Dave Jones: That's what he's claiming.

SPEAKER_01: So that's like me saying, okay, well, I went to college for, you know, I didn't, obviously. But how about you? You went to an acting college, right? Whatever that program was. You know, you did that program there, right? So you didn't.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I don't call myself an actor because I'm not. Right.

SPEAKER_01: But he's not an engineer. He didn't graduate as an engineer. No, no, no. And he is.

Dave Jones: It doesn't matter whether or not he graduates or whether or not his qualifications are. This comes down to the fact, are you doing the job of an engineer? Yes or no? If you are, that's your vocation. That's your vocation. Therefore, you deserve to get the title because that's what you're doing. And if he's actually doing real engineering work on this product, i.e. being involved in the design review meetings, I think it's not too far of a stretch to call himself a product. You are right.

SPEAKER_01: I should not say that about school because that obviously does not matter at all. Obviously, I've said that many times on the show before as well. You know, like people do engineering without having an engineering degree. However, I... Come on.

Dave Jones: No, no.

SPEAKER_01: You think he's programming a yoga tablet? You think he's designing...

Dave Jones: Well, that's what he claims, right? So who am I to call him a liar, right?

SPEAKER_01: I'm going to call him a liar. Okay, fine.

Dave Jones: I'm going to call all marketing people who collect specs another liar. I'm a people person, damn it. All right. Well, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Okay? He claims that he's working on the design specs of this thing. It sort of implies he's working on the design team. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

SPEAKER_01: Whatever.

Dave Jones: And he is specifically saying, yeah, you know, this is what celebrities do. They, you know, just put their name to something and, you know, it's just bullshit, right? They're just a marketing thing. He claims he's doing more than that. He claims he's doing a lot more and he's actually involved.

SPEAKER_01: My main argument is that he's a marketing person and that it's marketing people in general that do that kind of thing. And so the bigger question here is if he did the same thing where he said-

Dave Jones: No, he's being, don't confuse the two. He's being used because he's slowly being used as a marketing vehicle, but that can be a totally separate issue to him having actually done some real engineering on this thing.

SPEAKER_01: No, I'm saying that he's being a marketer. I'm not saying he's a marketing tool. Like he is being a market, he is a marketing tool in this case as well.

Dave Jones: Well, there's no doubt there, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no doubt about that. But I'm saying that being a product engineer, I think is a marketer. And what I'm, but the bigger thing is, is like-

Dave Jones: Oh, okay, right. I see what you mean. So you're saying people who work on the specs of the products aren't real engineers. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, yeah. It's probably a smaller point, but I'm just angry about this in general. So I'm going to take it.

Dave Jones: You're just a different kind. You're not a designer. Well, no, you could say you're a design engineer because you're working on the specs, right? It depends on how you define your job role, right? Who are you to say that's some good design engineer who didn't actually lay out the board, didn't actually cut any code, didn't actually choose the components, had nothing to do with that, but was involved in the design review meetings and the engineering of how the product works.

SPEAKER_01: So you're a manager? Is that right? Are you a manager then?

Dave Jones: No, but you're in, you know- How about this, Dave? Here's the real thing. Here's what the real issue is to me. You could be a design engineering manager, right? You could be a design engineering manager. You're still an engineer.

SPEAKER_01: I disagree, but it doesn't matter. This is all semantics and we're really just blathering here. Of course it is.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: My main point is if I go and I say, so I had a post a while back about when I was doing, working on wafers, right? I said I was a wafer doctoring because it's similar to, you know, kind of working in an ER, right? That's what I always kind of compared it to. But if I went out and I said, I am Dr. Gamble because I'm a wafer doctor, I get sued by the American Medical Association or whatever. Like there are actual, there's actual boards in place that get, you know, if I say I'm Chris Gammell Esquire because I argue points on the Amp Hour about electronics, I get in trouble for this, right? There is no recourse in engineering, right? Sanitation engineering is-

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no, it's not. It's different. No, exactly. Yeah. Oh, this is an argument that was, I could probably find the link to the thread on the forum. This was discussed extensively, argued extensively on the forum about how- How argued is better, yeah. Well, somebody, yeah, no, somebody, I can't remember who it was, sorry, but I think in the UK, they're from the UK and they wanted to protect the title engineer. They wanted to only, you could only get the title engineer if you had the degree and you were certified by the body, you know?

SPEAKER_01: Right, and they tried to do that with the PE here too as well, the professional engineering.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay, right, yeah, yeah. And everyone shot them down in flames because, you know, of the basic thing that, well, if you are doing the job of an engineer, that is your vocation, that is your role, why can't you have the title, you know? No, yeah. If the company bestows it upon you, you know?

SPEAKER_01: Well, and that's the rub right there, right? I mean, and the difference is, is that because you don't need the certification, right, you don't have to go through a standards board or anything like that. No, that's right. It's convenient on one side of things, right? Because then you don't have to go take stupid tests, you don't have to do continuing education, all that kind of stuff. You can just design stuff and work on stuff in it and that's nice. On the other side of it though, because there aren't these boards protecting that kind of thing, that also holds wages down as well. Because then if, you know, basically, you know, for doctors and lawyers and other people that have that kind of thing, you have this constrained group.

Dave Jones: It's a higher level. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's supply and demand at that point. Yeah, okay. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so basically, that's the argument. There's more hassle up front. It's a higher barrier to entry. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. It's a bigger barrier to entry. Yeah. To become a doctor, you have to have a medical degree, right? Well, you have to be board certified, really. And you've got to be board certified. You've got to be, yeah. And as a lawyer, you've got to be certified by the bar, right? Or whatever it bloody well is. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right.

SPEAKER_01: And there's tons of bureaucracy in either case, right? I mean like- Of course. So you have to deal with this kind of crap and I have to complain about this. Or you have to take tests and stress about- I think about my medical friends. They're taking board exams. Oh, God. I stressed about the FE exam, but I can't imagine boards or the bar exam or anything like that. I mean that's some insanity, but-

Dave Jones: Here's my viewpoint on it, right? If you're doing an engineering job, right? If you're actually doing the work, then you can call yourself an engineer. Right? That's it. End of story. But what I hate, I'll tell you what I hate, is people who've done their engineering degree and have never done a day's engineering work in their life and they will call themselves, oh yeah, I'm an engineer. That's bullshit. You're not. You have engineering qualifications. Well, what do they go do then? An example. Well, they'll go do sales or they'll go do something else. Just because you've got an engineering degree does not make you an engineer. Just because you've got a doctor- What about sales engineer? Degree?

SPEAKER_01: No? Is sales engineering a real thing, Dave?

Dave Jones: Well, that's because you've qualified the title, right? You've qualified it by saying, I'm a sales engineer, which implies that you don't do any engineering.

SPEAKER_01: I can sell you 10 types of engineer right here. Get your engineers today. Exactly. We've got short ones, fat ones, tall ones, nerdy ones.

Dave Jones: And I use the example, right? I use the example of I'm a qualified fitness instructor, right? I have qualifications in fitness. Do I go around calling myself a fitness instructor? No, because that's not what I do for a living, right? I don't do it. So, I don't go around calling myself, but I'm qualified.

SPEAKER_01: You should do a video of you doing curls with a soldering iron. A nerd. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. EV blog fitness routine.

Dave Jones: Somebody beat me to it. Nerd fitness. There's a channel. I love nerd fitness.

SPEAKER_01: Steve Cam. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: That's a different kind of nerd, though. That's really more like geeky, like Star Wars and all that kind of stuff. Right. Kind of. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Geek instead of electronics nerd. But still, great site. Yeah. I mean, see, there's the thing, right? And likewise for a doctor. If you've got your medical thing, right, and you've never practiced as a doctor, you're not, quite frankly, you shouldn't go around calling yourself a doctor. Just because you have a bit of paper which says you've done your bachelor's in medicine. It means nothing. If you've never practiced it, you shouldn't go around calling yourself, giving yourself that title.

SPEAKER_01: I think it's a sham. It's always that balance point of the, you know, wanting to protect it and then, but also then having to deal with the massive bureaucracy that it takes to protect that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: At times, yeah, I'm sure we'll get a lot of comments on this. But, you know, I'm going to give poor old Ashton the benefit of the doubt. I think we need more. Poor old Ashton, yes. Maybe we should get him on the show. Let's get him on the show. How about never? Using our extensive contacts. Contacts.

SPEAKER_01: How about no? How about no? We get some hits, dude.

Dave Jones: We get hits.

SPEAKER_01: I don't care. I don't care about hits, dude. All right. You want hits? I'll give you hits.

Dave Jones: You know who's on the show next week? Who's on the show next week?

SPEAKER_01: Forrest Mims is on the show next week, man. Oh, fuck.

Dave Jones: Hang on. Let's do it in, like...

SPEAKER_01: We are not worthy. We are not worthy. We are not worthy. Come on, bow down. We are not worthy. We are not worthy. We are not worthy.

Dave Jones: Dude, I had Forrest Mims books when I was freaking seven years old. I know. I bought them at my local Tandy store slash Radio Shack from Yanks. And, oh, man, I grew up on Forrest Mims books.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So, he is going to be on... He has... So, I've been kind of... I follow him on Twitter, at least, you know, kind of keep track of what he's working on and stuff. He's been doing atmospheric science, too, which is really interesting. He's been sending up space balloons and stuff like that and doing a lot of...

Dave Jones: I think he's been doing that for, like, 20 years now or something. He's been doing it for a long time, I think. Oh, right.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm sure, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, he... I don't think he's done engineering for... No, he has been. So, he has been doing that stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: And so, like, he's been building stuff for them as well. And so, he sent me a huge list of stuff he's been working on. It looks very exciting. Obviously, we'll talk to him about his past books and his legendary status, his very helpful participation in the 555 contest. And, yeah. So, I mean, tons of great projects. I'm sure, you know... What do you think? Anyone older than 30 is, you know, like...

Dave Jones: Oh, God. Well, you can still buy his books today. Of course, yeah. They still sell them, yeah. The Forest Mims Engineering Notebook.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think it's still for sale anyway.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah. No, there's a bunch of books that are still available. But, yeah, we'll ask them all about that. We need people to ask their questions of, you know, giving stories to... We'll have a post to the... Yep. A link to the subreddit. And, yeah, I'm very excited. Don't want to ever overshadow... We've known about this interview for a while, but don't want to overshadow past guests. So, I can't tell you about future guests, but there's other good ones coming up as well. And, yeah.

Dave Jones: But they're not Forest Mims.

SPEAKER_01: Well, who could match, right? So... Right. Yeah. Awesome. Anything else? I think... How long have we been going here? I don't even know. It's been a while, right? Hour 15? It's no... It's no three hours. Sorry, folks.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Dave Jones: We'll keep it to an hour. People... I don't think people like it when we go too long.

SPEAKER_01: Well, when it's just me and you, we just start rambling. More. Yeah. More than usual. I know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. About Ashton. Frickin' Kutcher. Yeah. Yep. Sorry about that, folks.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. All right, man. Well, I'll see you next week and people should get their questions in for Forest Mims.

Dave Jones: I'm sure there'll be many. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01: See ya. Bye. Bye.

SPEAKER_01: Bye.

Speaker ?: Bye.

SPEAKER_00: You know, I've really been meaning to write a review for the Amp Hour.

SPEAKER_01: I've been meaning to do this for weeks now.

SPEAKER_00: All day long I just sit in my den and I don't have anything to do but the Amp Hour keeps me

SPEAKER_01: company.

SPEAKER_00: I love it. What the fuck say?