#207 – B Plus Boards and D Minus Cities - Uneath Urban Ubication

SPEAKER_01: This is The Amp Hour Podcast, recorded July 14th, 2014. Episode 207. Uneath Urban Ubication.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV Blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: Just us again.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. Got some good ones we'll announce at the end of the show coming up, but yeah, just me and you this week. And maybe not a full show again. We might be doing a little under an hour again.

Dave Jones: Yep, I've got to keep it short.

Chris Gammell: That's okay.

Dave Jones: I've got to get out of here, you know, with my busy, hectic social life.

Chris Gammell: Of course, right, right. There may be one or two personal interactions today on Dave's calendar.

Dave Jones: Not really, no. Yes, I am leaving the lab.

Chris Gammell: Good for you, man. That's good. Do that once a week, I think. You know, once a week and you're in good shape.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. So what's been happening the last two weeks that we... Was it two weeks ago? We did a show to you. Yeah, we're usually every alternate week, isn't it? But not always. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, the past four days, I've been in Detroit.

Dave Jones: How did that go? Did you find a house that costs less than a VCR?

Chris Gammell: That's Cleveland.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. Cleveland is the price of a VCR.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so Detroit is by definition worse.

Dave Jones: Detroit is apparently not... Yeah, at least... Yeah, by definition, it's less.

Chris Gammell: So I told... So I was out there with the Hackaday guys, and I told Mike, last time I went out somewhere with the Hackaday guys, I kind of scooped them on some stuff while they got their video together. So I told them I wouldn't talk about everything, but I can talk about some of the stuff we talked about or saw out there. And, you know, I... So this is my first time being out there, and I quite liked it, actually.

Dave Jones: As in the city of Detroit?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, it's... It's weird, right? It's really, really weird. It's weird.

Dave Jones: What's weird about Detroit?

Chris Gammell: Man, it is so run down. Like, it makes Cleveland look really, really, like, well put together.

Dave Jones: Right, so the tourism ad is correct, is it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and, you know, just beyond that, too, like... So it's really spread out, right? So Detroit was built, and it was built, you know, when it was being built up in the 60s around the auto industry, you know, it was built up for, like, 2 million people, and now they're, like, below 600,000, I think. Right. And this is the city of Detroit. So there's just so much...

Dave Jones: Right, that's just the city, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and there's so much sprawl, and it's so spaced out, and there's highways everywhere. But, like, once you get inside the inner loop, right? You know, like, most highways... Yeah. Most cities have, like, you know, one or two loops around them, basically, and then, you know, intersecting highways. Once you get inside those outer loops, though, or you get inside the highway loops, it's just nothing there, man. I mean, like, it's just dilapidated.

Dave Jones: Why is that? Because no one wants to live in the city, or they like living out further in the suburbs, or what?

Chris Gammell: Well, for a long time, it was really dangerous. I mean, like, so in the 60s, there were riots, and then a lot of people left the city, and then a lot of industry left as well. And then, you know, basically then the companies moved their headquarters outside the city as well. Like, so Ford... Right. We stayed out in Dearborn, and Ford is, like, probably 20 miles outside the city. Right. So, you know, and if that's where all the jobs are as well, that means the tax base is out there, right? This is just, like, socioeconomic type stuff.

SPEAKER_01: Interesting.

Chris Gammell: And because of that, then, it just totally changes the dynamic of the city. Now, what's interesting about all this, right? So we kind of... There's actually... There's still a lot of racism there. I mean, like, it's a weird dynamic, right? Right. And it's, you know, it's interesting on one level. It's mostly sad, you know, like, just, like, how everything's developed and all that kind of stuff. But I think there's signs of hope there as well, though. Like, and a lot of the people that I met this weekend were part of that. But the things that were really interesting were, like, how everything changes because of that. You know, you think about an industrial district, you know, like, when you're a startup and you're looking for space, right? You know, like, cost is almost not even a factor now. You know, you have to pay taxes. But, like, basically, the buildings are almost free, right? And it's mostly you have to pay for security and kind of deal with that kind of stuff.

Dave Jones: Wow. That's totally opposite to here.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Yeah, that's... Yeah, exactly. And it's just really interesting. But the, you know, the people I met and a lot of the stuff that we got to see, you know, like, really interesting arts culture there. A lot of the people we talked to were, you know, it was not just technology, but it was a crossover technology and art. And, you know, it was good, a really good community of tight-knit folks. And that's awesome, right? I mean, there's still a lot of drug problems. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of socioeconomics problems. But, like, the people that are, like, into it are really good people that are really working hard to improve their community. And that was really, really, that was encouraging.

Dave Jones: Excellent. So, who's actually running all this sort of... Because I know they've been trying to get into sort of, you know, more high-tech stuff again. And is it a government thing, like a state government thing or a local council thing?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's kind of weird, right? Because, like, so the other thing with Detroit is that they actually, their city went bankrupt. Yeah. So, right now they're in this weird, like, martial law type of, like, economic martial law type of thing.

Dave Jones: I was going to say, yeah, economic martial law.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's really weird. No, yeah, yeah. There's no way it would be martial law. There's not enough police people for it to be martial law.

Dave Jones: I shouldn't laugh, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah. I mean, but they are trying to do stuff, right? And then the really crazy thing, though, is you go outside, you go to Dearborn, and it's like, you know, any town USA, right? You know, it's, you go to all these outer ring suburbs, and it's just, they're just suburbs.

Dave Jones: Right. And there's no, yeah, it's nice, and there's no crime, and there's families and schools and whatnot. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So, it's just the city, really, the inner city that's sort of gone to crap.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And so, we had met by chance Suzanne, who's this, she's the creative director for the state of Michigan. And so, she, like, knew everybody, and that was really cool.

Dave Jones: And I'm impressed that a state has a creative director.

Chris Gammell: I was very impressed as well. Like, I, like.

Dave Jones: Is that normal in the US? Because that, like, I don't think that exists here.

Chris Gammell: I've never heard of that before.

Dave Jones: Heck, Australia doesn't even have a science minister anymore.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I know. Oh, geez, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's what I got to.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, let's not get started on that. But she was, she was really cool. And so, she knew a lot of the stuff that's going on, a lot of the interesting stuff going on. And one of the things that she talked about is actually, you know how they do, like, art districts? They try and, like, encourage arts in certain districts. They're trying to do that now with technology as well. Mm-hmm. And I wonder about that. Because you look at, like, cycles inside of cities. You know, oftentimes it starts with art, artists and stuff like that, and you have art districts. And then they kind of become the hip neighborhoods. And then people move in. Right, right. And then, like, in San Francisco right now, right, the companies also move there because the people want to work near where the culture is as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, it's interesting because I was talking to her about this, and they're trying to leapfrog, they're trying to leapfrog the art stage. And I wonder if that kind of thing will work.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: You know, like.

Dave Jones: I found that San Jose was like that, which is smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, really. Yeah, right. San Jose, like, you know, you walk around, there's just art everywhere. You know, I got that vibe that they really take that sort of thing seriously. Yeah. You know? It's great.

Chris Gammell: Right. And, yeah, it is great. I think that really drives, you know, it's, you know, from a working perspective, right, it's kind of, that's what drives a lot of decisions these days. Like, especially San Francisco, right? Like, you know, we hear about, like, the Google buses and stuff like that. The reason those are such a big deal is because people want to live where near other people are and where there's culture and things to do at night and stuff like that. They don't want to necessarily live in Mountain View where Google is anymore.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And so, that kind of stuff actually does impact a lot of things, it seems like.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: But my question is, you know, if you try and leapfrog that where you say, all right, we're just going to go straight to technology. I was arguing with my wife about this. I think that it might not work. I mean, it'll be interesting if they try it and if it does work.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I think I agree. I don't think you can.

Chris Gammell: Because, I mean, it seems like a lot of the, you know, it would be closer in, right? You'd have, you know, if you have a city type setup, you'd be closer in so people wouldn't necessarily just commute for that. But I think that, you know, if you don't have stuff where people want to stick around at the end of the day, you know, people want to live near interesting stuff, usually when they're younger and then usually good schools when they're older, right? I mean, like, I don't know. It's just interesting because a lot of this stuff does impact it, right? You know, you see, especially like a lot in the 80s and 90s, you know, a lot of these industrial parks where people had to commute out to them and they were often these large schools.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they were awful, yeah. Sprawling campuses. And that's like where I live right now. I'm on the outskirts of Cleveland. Concrete jungles, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. It's all car based and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Right. I will probably go ahead on a limb here and say that probably the best and most prosperous cities in the world are based on art culture.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I agree.

Dave Jones: Somebody proved me wrong.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, I definitely agree. And the only downside to that, I think, is that oftentimes then, you know, if you look at cycles of cities and especially, you know, especially as technology moves in, right? Like San Francisco and stuff like that, oftentimes it prices the artists out. Now, the life cycle type of things is usually the artists go and find other places. Like right now, there's a lot of artists living in Oakland. Oakland's getting more expensive as well. And it kind of just shifts around like that. Same thing happens in New York and big cities like that. And so it's unfortunate because then they get displaced. But, yeah, it kind of seeds, it sows the seeds of like places people want to like live and where cool stuff is happening. And then it seems like technology and where these offices, you know, when you start having offices move in, it's kind of the tail end, right? It's kind of boring then. Right. Like who wants to live near a big office park?

Dave Jones: No. Same thing happening here in Australia. I will admit Melbourne has got Sydney beat because it is arts-based. Melbourne just really put a lot of effort into that. The government put a lot of effort into stealing all of our events and everything else. They just stole everything from that that was traditionally Sydney, you know, festivals and shows and, you know, even racing, you know. Through the streets of, you know, Melbourne, like, you know, Formula One and all that sort of, you know. These other states just stole, you know, pretty much everything. And Melbourne, that's just got Sydney beat. Yes, Sydney is, you know, the, well, you know, it is probably the best city in Australia in terms of, you know, like what people think Australia is like, right? You know, you want to come to Australia, you want to see the Opera House and the harbour and, you know, the bridge and everything else, right? It's all in Sydney. Okay, great.

Chris Gammell: But that's historical more than like current culture, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, current. If you're, yeah. But Melbourne has got Sydney beat hands down from the design point of view. You go out at night and there's so many, you know, little alleyways open and they've got culture and they've got, you know, alleyways filled with art that you can just wander down. And Sydney's got, you know, it's trying to come back. Sydney is trying to do their best to come back. But, you know, Melbourne has that leg up.

Chris Gammell: It's priced out. You said how expensive Sydney is too, right? I mean, it's hard, you know, you're not going to get an artist when you don't, when art isn't necessarily funded, right? It's hard to maintain a contingent of artists. You know, we've talked about, you know, you got to hear, oftentimes you hear a lot about, you know, STEM becoming STEAM. Yeah, right. You know, sometimes people scoff at that kind of thing. But, I mean, if you look at an overall society and cultural type of thing, I think a lot of that stuff is necessary. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. I agree. It's bang on.

Chris Gammell: And so the argument with my wife ended last night of, like, basically what it ultimately comes down to, you know, especially when you're talking about technology type things. And this is changing as well, but, like, what it ultimately comes down to, I think of, like, New York and San Francisco, the nerds want to be near where they can get a date, right? Right. And that's probably going to be near the cultural districts, hopefully. And, you know, maybe that's changing, right? Maybe the, you know, the ranks of the nerds are becoming a little bit more balanced as well. But that's part of it, right? That's just the reality of the situation. So it'll be interesting over the long term seeing how that changes.

Dave Jones: Interesting. Speaking of fun. They should read your book then. Yeah, they should. Yep. Yeah. Art of internet dating, folks.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: That's 14 years old now.

Chris Gammell: Is it really? Wow.

Dave Jones: Yep. 14 years old. I wrote that in 2000.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's scary, isn't it?

Chris Gammell: So the other things we saw, we were up in Ann Arbor as well. We saw a couple of smaller companies up there. That's where University of Michigan is, which is one of the top engineering schools.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's one of the.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, wonderful school. I used to recruit up there for Keithley. It was really fun. I always loved. I mean, like, and like, talk about the disparity in recruiting, right? So I used to go recruit at my alma mater case here in town. It would be like 50 schools versus, or 50 companies recruiting versus like 400 recruiting. Wow. You know, and like, one time I was, you know, recruiting at a table next to Apple, right? And like, I'd never, ever seen them at an event before. So.

Dave Jones: See, that's crazy. It changes stuff. We don't have that sort of thing, these recruiting fairs here. At least not that I'm aware of. Please, if anyone's a current student, please let me know. But we, you know, it's like a culture. It's embedded in your culture out there. Just like, you know, moving out of home to go stay at the university, as we've talked about, where they force you to, you know, stay at, to live on university accommodation. And then they have all these big job fairs and you're supposed to, you know, and then companies are supposed to fight for new graduates. I mean, here it's like, oh, you're a new graduate. You want a job? Yeah. Come suck up to, you know, come and do all the hard work and suck up to us. Don't, you know, we're not going to actually go into there and beg for you to join us. Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think it's mostly, it's, it's shopping around for the, you know, like there's a larger base here in general. Yeah, of course. But then you're really, they're really shopping around for the top talent. That's what they're.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's a real reason they're on campus, right? Yeah. Right. They're shopping around for the best. They're not shopping around for numbers.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Yep. That makes sense.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. So yeah. But Ann Arbor is beautiful. It's a cute little town. I mean, it's, it's, you know, I'd been up there before. It's much nicer in the summer, obviously, than February. But yeah, we got to see, I don't want to spoil too much, but we did get to see Backyard Brains. Have you ever heard of them?

Dave Jones: No. What's that?

Chris Gammell: They're, they're like a kit. They're like a quasi kit, quasi educational business where they actually interface to bugs, where they actually control cockroaches and scorpions and stuff like that. And they have kits that do that. Another one. That stuff was so cool. I mean, like, so yeah, there will be a hackadavities about that eventually. That's good stuff. Really, really cool stuff. And, you know, like, and like that cool crossover too, right? Like that whole biological thing. So yeah. So you got to see them. And then Pinocchio, which is like, kind of like Electric Imp, kind of like Spark, kind of like a similar type of thing, except, except they do meshed networks instead. So they have a single Wi-Fi connection point and then everything else is meshed together. Meshed, meshed together. Which is interesting. I got it. So I like them as well. Oh, and Spark. Speaking of Spark, they just raised a bunch of money, right? So we had- Who is Spark? We had Electric Imp on the show, right? So they do- Electric Imp is kind of like a more, a little bit more closed for the server side of things, right? But there's still Wi-Fi based, you know, talking up to the server and stuff like that. Spark is more, Spark is, I believe, based on the CC3000. I could be wrong about that, but it's kind of like module plus Arduino type of thing. But then on the server side, you know, getting things connected there, they have a completely open, I'm not sure about completely open, I'm pretty sure it's mostly open ecosystem. So you could basically replicate their server, I think. Got it. If not, yeah. So it's slightly different than Imp, but they're one of the ones who went through Hackcelerator, the Shenzhen program, and then they raised like 600 grand on Kickstarter for their platform. So they just raised 5 million, so that's cool.

Dave Jones: Every man is dogs raising money on bloody crowdfunding sites now. Oh, goodness.

Chris Gammell: Well, this isn't 5 million on crowdfunding. This is venture.

Dave Jones: No, they're through outside, but they got it first on Kickstarter, didn't they? And then they went to...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, technically they got it first on Hackcelerator, because that's one of those programs. Oh, Hackcelerator, right. Okay. Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Money's too easy to get these days.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, it is getting easier.

Dave Jones: And I often, I'm going to go, once again, go out on a limb, hang my balls out there and say, that's a problem.

Chris Gammell: Why is that?

Dave Jones: Money's too easy to get, and that is always a problem. It's the problem why Sydney's so expensive in rent, in housing is so expensive, because money's too easy to get, right? And the same thing is happening in the hardware side of things. Money is too easy to get, so you've got every Tom, Dick, and bloody Harry coming along. Sorry, I should have thrown a girl's name in there.

Chris Gammell: Mary, instead of Harry. Tom, Dick, and Mary.

Dave Jones: Right. Tom, Dick, and Mary. But then there's a two-to-one ratio there. Okay, just let it go, Dave. Okay. And anyway, money's too easy to get, so you've got every freaking person coming along with their stupid idea, right, and then, or it could be a good idea, and then no idea how to freaking execute on it, and think that just money can buy the solution. And they just fail. There's so many of them just failing to produce anything. It's pissing me off.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, it pisses you off, but that doesn't really actually hurt anything. I think, actually, from a lot of our listeners' perspectives-

Dave Jones: Well, no, it hurts all the people who invested in the bloody thing. I'm talking crowdfunding here. I don't care if they still venture capitalist money. They're just, well, sucked in. You're a professional, right? You're a professional. You should know, you know, you're investing money. You should do your due diligence and know what you're buying into. But all the, you know, people out there getting sucked in on these crowdfunding campaigns, and nobody's delivering anything.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Wasn't there an example of that this week or something?

Dave Jones: There's heaps of examples of this.

Chris Gammell: Was there a new example? I saw you posted something, right?

Dave Jones: Did I post something?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, the Ars Technica article. Oh, yeah, this, another password thing. Another-

Dave Jones: Oh, yes, right. There was an article on Ars Technica website about this Kickstarter project. It's a USB password dongily thing. And they basically raised 3.5 million bucks and then pissed it all away with- Well, they did finally get like a few units out to people, but apparently they were buggy as hell and, you know, just worthless. And so they basically pissed away 3.5 million dollars because they just re-spun it and re-spun it and changed direction and changed direction. And before you know it, 3.5 million bucks is just gone for a little USB password dongle thing. Goodness.

Chris Gammell: You know, I have to say, I don't really care. I don't care about people that back crowdfunding and don't understand. Like, I know that public might need to be protected.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, I know where you're coming from. I know where you're coming from there, but it just pisses me off that these people, like, they didn't fail for good reasons, right? They failed because they're totally incompetent. Yeah, it sucks that there's no punishment. Yeah, no, there's no punishment at all. They should be using their own damn money to fail, not other people's. And, you know, and that's, I don't know. I just hate that. You know? And they just walk away. Oh, yeah. It failed. And they don't even say sorry. They just say, you know, oh, look, you know, 85% of new businesses fail.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right, right, right.

Dave Jones: That's just what happens. And thank you for the money so that we could have our little shot and screw it all up. But no, I, no.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know how to deal with this kind of stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there's got to be personal responsibility, right? You're investing your money. There's got to be personal responsibility. But these campaigns are so slick. And they make it out as if they're, you know, they've got experience doing this stuff. And they'll be able to produce it, bang, just like that. And, no. The onus has to come back on the developer to actually deliver what they promise.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think the other thing, too, is the, you know, so Kickstarter, what was that, a year or two ago now? They put in that prototype.

Dave Jones: Yeah, the prototype clause. Yep.

Chris Gammell: You know, and I saw a campaign yesterday, today. It was a campaign today I saw.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That kind of did it, but, like, it wasn't, it was for some, like, so it was touted as, like, make boards at home, make PCBs at home type of thing. Yeah. And then I went to the page and it had, like, 3D renders and then, like, shots of, like, circuit boards. And then, like, shots of, like, them etching copper in, like, a bath manually. And they're like, oh, yeah, we're going to have a fully done up project by the end. And I'm like, this isn't a prototype, right? I mean, like, so. No, it's not. What it ultimately comes down to is, you know, maybe Kickstarter's looking at this kind of thing, but I don't know. I think eventually the responsibility comes down to them for, you know, having in-house talent that actually can understand. Yeah. I mean, ultimately the gatekeepers, like, Kickstarter are going to be where the failure point happens, right? Because if they let some shonky piece of crap through, then, you know, what are you going to do? Yeah.

Dave Jones: But then how do you vet the people's experience and ability in getting this done? They may walk in with their prototype, which they've produced, but they may be absolutely clueless. Or not just clueless, but they may have the mentality that, oh, well, you know, the feature creep mentality, which kills a lot of these projects. Oh, look, we've got all this money. We'll add this and this and this. And that just, the sheer weight of doing that just, you know, sinks the entire project.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I wonder if they did.

Dave Jones: And so that's hard to vet out. I mean.

Chris Gammell: What if they did, like, a mandatory margin on pricing, right?

Dave Jones: Right. That's interesting. You can't do it as a loss leader to get into the market.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Not only that.

Chris Gammell: So you have to show your actual costs.

Dave Jones: Right. Interesting.

Chris Gammell: Your bond costs and everything else. And then there's a mandatory 75% margin on that, right? Right. Like, that could take care of a lot of crap. You're probably, unless you're, you know, unless you actually get bamboozled, right, by, you know, a couple factories, take your money. You know, you don't go over to China or anything like that. Yeah, exactly. And you try and give them your money. But 75% could definitely. And they hold it in escrow. I don't know. Like, but it all becomes heavy handed at that point. So.

Dave Jones: Oh, it does. Yeah, yeah. But no.

Chris Gammell: I think part of it means you just have to accept the failure and be like, yep. Sorry, folks. You got taken for a ride. Welcome to the world. All right. Good thing it was $99 versus, you know, a million dollars, right? I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, there's got to be more ability for people to pull out. If they're not happy, right, you give them the money, they get their money. But then some mechanism to automatically bring up. Like, if you're not happy, if they miss a schedule and you're getting the heebie-jeebies, right, that these people aren't going to deliver, you should be, you know, maybe that would put a bit of fire up their bum. That there's an ability to.

Chris Gammell: That's pretty tough, though. What if you had like an 80,000 set of tools for, you know, for shooting plastics and then.

Dave Jones: Right, yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: All of your people decide to go away and your operational cost will only be another 10 grand, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't know. I know. I know. It's hard. I don't pretend to have a solution for it. But, you know, it's. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just sick of seeing it all, you know?

Chris Gammell: I know. Well, and yeah, it makes the news a lot as well, right?

Dave Jones: And it gives crowdfunding a bad name, right? Right, right, right. Because I encourage it and I want, you know, people to get that leg up where they wouldn't be able to before and that's great. But then all these idiots are coming in and ruining it.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: And I don't know. There's just so many of them. And it's probably not their fault. Often it's not their fault. You know, as we've said before, they go in with the best of intentions. They aren't deliberate scammers, but they just don't know how to run a hardware project. They've got no clue.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think you just got to. I guess we got to just accept the cost of failure sometimes, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't know. I just wish it didn't happen so often.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: That'll shake itself out eventually. Yeah. There was another article about this kind of, you know, about, you know, we've obviously have been keeping an eye on the hardware market, right? That's our market and seeing this kind of stuff. And there was an article on O'Reilly from Max Schron. And he's talking about basically how it ends up that, you know, like basically what are we doing now with all this data coming from hardware and why is all this hardware coming out now? So, and basically, you know, looking at the reduced cost of entering the hardware market now means that there will be many more hardware devices spewing data onto networks as well. But basically he was asking about why it's gotten so much cheaper, you know, like why has this all happened in the first place? Yeah. And, you know, personally, I think it's because of a lot of, you know, a lot of these, you know, if we look at like a Spark, right? Spark's building off an Arduino, it's building off of the CC3000, right? You know, that kind of stuff. And it's all in there. And, you know, and that's going to enable other stuff, but then that's going to enable other projects in the future. But it is, as a result of it, it is going to end up dumping more data onto the networks as well. And, you know, what are the consequences of all that kind of thing?

Dave Jones: This also brings up the article, which I think is on the list. I loved the comparison of the Internet of Things to Pet Rocks.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? Yes. I didn't know if I saw that one.

Dave Jones: Is it? I've seen it. Was it on this list or was it, did I see that somewhere else?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Somebody compared, somebody wrote an article comparing, yeah, the Internet of Things devices, right? That you're going to hook up to, to Pet Rocks. You know, like they'll be, they'll have an initial, you know, warm, fuzzy thing. You, you, you like this, but then you just realize it's a rock, right? You get it and you're all excited to get it. And you, you know, pat it and, you know, you talk to it and it's all great, right? And then you realize it's just a freaking rock. It's useless. Like, you know, like when you hook an Internet of Things device up that, you know, tweets the temperature of your, you know, of your room or whatever, who cares?

Chris Gammell: It's just, it's pointless. What is that really adding?

Dave Jones: It becomes a pet, it doesn't add anything. It's just a Pet Rock. It's a useless lump of hardware.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: And I think it's not a bad description. And that's their fear is that it will become, you know, there'll be so many, all these devices out there that connect and people are buying all these devices that connect to it and they just use them once and they go, oh, that's just useless. Why did I bother doing that? And then it just becomes a rock.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's interesting too, because, well, okay, so, so eventually people will catch on, right? They'll eventually see, yeah, I don't need any more Pet Rocks in my house. But I saw a thing today about, you know, a lot of these chip manufacturers as well, they're looking at the marketplace and they're saying, oh, well, Internet of Things, they're not looking at it as like, we're going to make so much on a per device basis. They're just looking at it as we're going to sell so many devices, right? So the whole article I saw was about like scaling up, scaling up chip fabs and how that hasn't happened in a long time and basically how, you know, they're starting to finally see this kind of stuff. And it's like, yeah, but I guess there really is no guarantee of success. I mean, there's never a guarantee of success, but there's no guarantee that people are going to want additional gadgets in their house and everything, right? So. That's it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It was the Embedded FM podcast. Oh, it was Alicia. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, no, no, Craig Sullender of Chipsite. He was a guest and he made the comment. Yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah. All these Internet of Things, they're pet rocks. They are only a product as long as somebody loves them. And when the love is lost, they are just a rock. End quote. It's perfect.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I haven't listened to that show yet. So I'll have to check it out. Of course, everybody knows Embedded FM is our, or Embedded the podcast is our partner. Is that our sister podcast? Yeah. I was going to say our partner podcast. So, yeah, that's great. I'll have to check that one out.

Dave Jones: I love it. Ah, boy. Internet of Things. Hey, we've got a Maker Faire in a couple of weeks here.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you do? Oh, that's cool. Again.

Dave Jones: Yeah. The Sydney Maker Faire's back. Hasn't been a year because I think it was only last November. Or something.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: So it's only been like, you know, seven or eight months or something. And, no, four weeks. It's on August 16th to 17th.

Chris Gammell: Any big plans?

Dave Jones: Me?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Are you going to, like, present? Or are you going to...

Dave Jones: Oh, well, I... Attend?

Chris Gammell: Are you going to attend?

Dave Jones: Oh, I'm going to attend. And it's two days this time, which is great. It was one day before, which was not enough. You know, well, especially for someone like me. It was probably enough for your average Joe to walk around and see everything. But for me, where I have to go around and, you know, and shoot video and talk to people and, you know, and people who know me come up and, you know, and we chat for ages and stuff like that. And, yeah, it's easy to blow a whole day and not actually get around and talk to everyone. So, excellent. But, yeah, I've been... There has been initial discussions that I might be involved in a panel or a debate or something like that. So I won't be presenting as such. But, yeah, I might be involved in some way, shape or form.

Chris Gammell: Cool. Cool. Well, that's always a good time. Yep. Make your fare and such.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, that's in four weeks, August 16th to 17th over the weekend. And there's something else on at the Powerhouse Museum as well. So, you know, it's combined with something else. Yeah. And it's really good. This... I think this is here to stay, you know? And... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They usually stick around for a while.

Dave Jones: Ironically, the Melbourne one, as we were talking about, the Melbourne one did it for one year, and then they dropped the Maker Faire thing because they didn't like the way Maker ran stuff, you know? Oh, okay. They thought they put too many conditions on them and all that sort of stuff. So they went and named it Urisco. And they did that once, but I'm not sure how popular it was. I didn't hear many people rave about it. Um, and that's, that's the thing. What is in a name? What's in a name?

Chris Gammell: What's in a name of a conference?

Dave Jones: No. You will. What, what value is in the name Maker Faire? Does it add that... Oh, well... Does it add so much legitimacy that if you try and compete with your own thing, um, is it even possible? I don't know. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. We, uh, yeah, it's, uh, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Are there any examples in the U.S. where people have gotten fed up with Maker with all the terms and conditions that they've gone bugger it? We're going to run our own show. Isn't there, wasn't there like a, an open Maker Faire or something or something? Yeah. I think there's something along those lines where a group of people got fed up with Maker and they formed their own sort of, uh, company to put on their own independent shows and stuff like that. Yeah. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, people have been doing art and technology fairs for a long time, right? But it's just a matter of...

Speaker ?: Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. How do you convince people to go, I suppose? Uh...

Dave Jones: Well, that's right. And, uh...

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it makes, makes a difference when you have someone like the Powerhouse Museum here in Sydney involved, right? And, A, you've got an awesome venue, right? You've got a, you've got a museum of art and technology and, you know, and stuff like that, put it on the show. And they've got all the resources and they've got the cool venue and, yeah, and you add the Maker Faire name behind it and it's, you know, I think it's got wind written all over it. Definitely.

Chris Gammell: That helps, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, remind me what that is again. What is the Powerhouse?

Dave Jones: The Powerhouse Museum is a local, uh, museum dedicated to technology and stuff like that. Art and... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Cool. It's the best way to describe it. I, uh... I got to go to the, the Ford Museum a little bit as well in Detroit. Right. We were up there.

Dave Jones: Is that like just Ford as in the motor cars or is it, is it a car museum or is it a...

Chris Gammell: Or is it just labeled Ford? It's quite a mishmash actually. It's, it's really odd.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: It's really odd. And, and some of it, so apparently it was meant, uh, you know, obviously Henry Ford was, uh, pretty rich by the end of his life. And, uh, so he has like Edison's lab up there. Oh, wow. And he has like, uh, like Lincoln's house and like all this crazy, like we didn't get to see all this stuff. Yeah, yeah. But then obviously there's a huge car component to it and there's a big plane component to it. And there's a lot of tie-in as well. Like I think that some of the old engines might've been made by Ford, like the airplane engines. There's a large agriculture area. I think a lot of that stuff might've been Ford stuff as well. But by far the most bad-ass stuff was the power generation stuff they have there. Like that just blew me away. Like the old steam engines and translating steam into like, so they had like a DC generator, like Edison's early generators for DC, the DC grid. And, uh, and then also, you know, the bigger ones for AC stuff. And like that stuff was just unbelievable. Like, like that, just cause you never see that scale up close, right? Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And like, like see the photos and it's, you know, it's different, you know, you go there and see the person and it's, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Unbelievable. So. Yep. That was really cool. Um, but yeah, that's where they have the, uh, the Detroit, Detroit maker fair, which is in a week or two as well. So.

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: So yeah, it's good.

Dave Jones: Are you going to go to that?

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: Are you going to go to the Detroit? No? Don't want to go back to Detroit?

Chris Gammell: I'm done traveling for a while. I'm. All right. Yep. I got to travel on August. I told you you'd get sick of it. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be a, I'm going to DEF CON in August, so. Right. I'll be at that in Vegas, so.

Dave Jones: Oh, Vegas. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Vegas. There you go. Here we go. Yeah. Powerhouse Museum. Australia's Contemporary Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. Huh. There you go.

Chris Gammell: That's cool.

Dave Jones: Yep. So if you're ever in Sydney, if you're ever visiting Sydney, it's right at Darling Harbour there, like right in the city. Just go to the Powerhouse Museum. It's very cool. It isn't big in the terms of, you know, in the scale of worldwide museums, but yeah. But still cool, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. Yep. Yeah. It's worth a look. So they've got a genuine Apple One there, folks.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. It's awesome. So anyway, that's in four weeks. So if you want to meet me, I'll be there for both days. It's part of the Sydney Design Festival or something.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so another art thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's another art where we're trying to beat Melbourne at their own game. I like it. Actually, there's a few things going on there. There's one thing I want to see. So hopefully I'll get on site and get a visit. Maybe not during the festival, but maybe before or after the festival if I can get a special tour. And yeah. Anyway, we'll see.

Chris Gammell: That's good. That's good.

Dave Jones: Yep. I need to get out of the lab. I need some fresh air.

Chris Gammell: You should keep an eye out while you're there. Did you see the new Raspberry Pi B Plus?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So there's a new...

Dave Jones: Am I supposed to be excited about a new Raspberry Pi?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't know. That's why it's interesting to bring up here, I suppose. What changes? So basically they did a rev of the hardware. They changed it to four USB ports. They changed out the audio stuff. They removed the composite video. They increased the pin headers from 26 to 40.

Dave Jones: To make it incompatible?

Chris Gammell: No, it is compatible. So the bottom 26 are still compatible. Basically, the way that they talked about it is that it's... You know, you could just plug on a new one. You know, you could still fit old stuff onto the old set of headers. So that's good. I mean, that's good they kept that stuff in mind. That's a... You know, it's always tough new version stuff to a new version. You can really mess up a lot of stuff. But as long as you don't start diverging the firmware as well, then you're usually in good shape, right? You don't have to maintain multiple versions. Yeah. So the really interesting thing, though, is that... So I got to hang out with Jason. I was hanging out with Jason this weekend, too, from BeagleBone, or BeagleBoard, rather. And we were talking about it a little bit. Element 14 has been making these as well, right? So they've had... Right. You hear people talking about how hard it is to get these platforms, especially because people start integrating them into products, even though you're not really supposed to. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. What do you mean you're not supposed to?

Chris Gammell: So they have, like... They say you're not supposed to use it in a commercial context. Like, you're not supposed... Like, they're not supposed to... Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, I didn't know that. What? This is the BeagleBone and the Raspberry Pi?

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure about Raspberry Pi, but I think the BeagleBone.

Dave Jones: Oh, the BeagleBone. You're not supposed to. Why? Because they only want to force you to use it for education, or what? What's the deal there?

Chris Gammell: Yes, I think so. Well, I think it's just basically an availability thing. You start to lose... You know, you think about a supply chain type of thing. If you have someone that's willing to buy up stock of 1,000, they're probably going to get... You know, for putting it into a product, they're going to probably get priority over someone who's buying 300 at a time to sell them onesie-twosie in their online store, right? Yeah. Or at least they're going to just suck up the inventory quicker.

Dave Jones: Does that mean that they're not making any money on this, and they're not going to continue to run a huge service actually producing these things and not making any money on them? Is that...

Chris Gammell: Who's they?

Dave Jones: They. What do you mean? Whoever produces the beagle bone?

Chris Gammell: I think everybody's making money. Maybe not on the Raspberry Pi.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, the Raspberry Pi was supposed to be a non-profit educational thing, wasn't it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And...

Chris Gammell: I think so. I'm not sure how the economics of it all work.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure someone's getting paid in there. They're not doing it... You know, the board house doesn't do it on charity, right? No. They might be getting paid by a foundation external to the actual hardware costs, but... Yeah.

Dave Jones: But I don't think there's much margin in these products. I think there's both at all, either.

Chris Gammell: No, I don't think so, either. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, I think the only one making money here is Farnell's selling them, Element 14. Maybe. I don't know about that, though, either, because... And even their margins there have got to be small.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm sure that they make their money on the other stuff, right? Right. So, if you go to Farnell or Element 14 to buy Raspberry Pi, it's likely that if they charge you $10 for a Raspberry Pi case, you think that's fine, but then it's actually $0.50 to make that, right? That's where they really make their money, then. So, that makes...

Dave Jones: So, in the long term, is this just unsustainable? I mean, if you get a winning product like this that can be used in a commercial context in its thousands, I'm not talking in hundreds of thousands, but in its thousands, then does that ruin the whole thing?

Chris Gammell: Well...

Dave Jones: If nobody's really making any... Can it continue?

Chris Gammell: I think it can. Yeah. I mean, I think there's always enough... You know, they wouldn't do it unless there was enough money to sustain itself, right?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Even if it was foundational money.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but management can come along and go, well, look, we're not making enough margin on this. Sorry. Gone.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but any product... I mean, like, you know, Apple charging you $2,500 for a laptop. Tomorrow, they could say, well, we need to charge $4,000, and then they kill the business because of it, right? I mean, so there's really no guarantee in that case, but...

Dave Jones: Because these platforms aren't open, are they?

Chris Gammell: You know, Raspberry Pi, I've never been really sure about that. BeagleBone is, right? So if you look at the BeagleBone, it is open.

Dave Jones: So anyone can go along and continue to produce it yourself. So if you design it into your product, and you suddenly find that they're going to stop making it, well, you just take the files and go to a, you know, a board stuffer and get them to make you a thousand boards, right?

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly, yeah. And maybe you pay more for that, and maybe you don't get the right, you know, the same pricing that they would at volume.

Dave Jones: If it is open source, right, how do they say no? You can't use it in a commercial context. Oh, are they using that license? They can't be using the open source hardware logo and name, because by definition...

Chris Gammell: I mean, there's no way you can stop anyone, right? You can't stop someone. Oh, no, no, you can't. If you sell something at a fixed price, if a buyer from a company goes out and buys, you know, 200 boards at a time, well, what are you going to do, right? Yeah. No, you can't stop. But it's more about what you encourage, right?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, what's been interesting, so the whole reason I... Man, it takes a while to get here. So, Element 14, though, started making BeagleBones as well, right? So, they had done a lot of the stuff behind the Raspberry Pi, and now BeagleBones are also being made. They're branded separately from the BeagleBoard CircuitCo ones.

Dave Jones: Oh, right, so they've got their own flavor brand, do they?

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah, and it's just following... It's following the same thing. It's basically saying, you know, this is open source. They wanted to basically help the marketplace and offer other boards, and then they'd make money on it as well, and cool. Right. Everybody's happy.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Because if you didn't know, I mean, it's been hard to... It's been pretty hard to get BeagleBones for a while now.

Dave Jones: Oh, I've heard, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, this is the... I mean, so, and this kind of goes back to that same embracing hardware thing on O'Reilly, you know, like, on the one hand, you know, even if they're not supposed to be using them for, you know, commercial context, even though, even if they are, right, that kind of helps speed the marketplace along, right? The time to market drops pretty significantly because of these pre-made devices, especially because of the communities around them, right? All the libraries are written and everything else. Mm-hmm. So, that does definitely change things. So, it's interesting to see how that's worked. I think all that really ends up mattering is there's no... You know, the only step in between is someone taking the files and reconfiguring it into their own format and then, you know, integrating it into a product. So, I think eventually that is the goal for every product that uses it to start with, but... Oh, yeah, you would.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But if you, you know, sometimes often easier just to go, well, you know, I'm just going to buy a thousand of them and I'll just have a board that plugs on top, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: Often that's easier. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: It's always a hard choice to know at what volume and what point you swap over to doing an entirely proprietary board for a product. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, and the other problem there, too, is like, so if you look at like, if you're a company that's integrating like a shield or whatever they call the... They call them like capes or the beagle bone. Yep. You know, you could, in theory, the smallest technology you would need to use is the 0.1 mil headers that are on there, right? That's all you really need to populate. You could use everything else through a hole. 0.1 inch. You could use really... 0.1 inch. Oh, yeah. Sorry. 0.1 inch. 0.1 mil is pretty small. 100 mil, yeah. Yeah, 0.1 inch, yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Long day. Sleep all the time. Yeah. And so you can, you know, you can use pretty big stuff on there, right? And that's... Hmm. And that changes the dynamics of what your assembly house needs to use and the cost because of all that amortization of the equipment on hand and stuff like that. Yep. All that boring crap. Terrific.

Dave Jones: Hey, you know what I've been doing?

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: I've been going through old magazines and I love them.

Chris Gammell: I saw your pictures. So you find anything juicy?

Dave Jones: No. What I'm going... Spoiler alert. What I'm going through and doing is, you know, how we talked about, was it last week, how the TTL is 50 years old.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, 7400 series, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, the 5400 series is 70 years old. So I thought... 50 years old. So I thought, hey, I've got magazines from 50 years ago. Can I go through and find the first reference to them? And the first commercial project... And the first project... First do-it-yourself project that used 7400 series logic.

Chris Gammell: Huh. And? Nothing?

Dave Jones: And it's fascinating. I'm not there yet. I haven't finished. I've been searching through a few years. Wow. And spoiler alert, yes. I've been searching through a few years, you know, so I started with 1964, okay, because that's when the 5400 series was released, okay? So I started looking through the magazines, every issue in the places that they're, you know, and no mention of it whatsoever. There's some mention of some Texas Instruments DTL stuff for about two years later. And I found the first IC-based project, which was 1967, was the first IC-based project. So although they released this stuff in 64, right, but that was only the 5400 stuff for the military project. So it's not surprising that you wouldn't find it in the hobbyist and commercial mags. So, but 7400 apparently came around two years after that. Can't find a mention of it. So I'm still looking. Huh. So my task continues. Hopefully I'll have the video up tomorrow because it's way back Wednesday.

Chris Gammell: Oh yes, of course. What about, so do they have any associated costs? So like that IC project that you were looking at. Yeah, yeah. Does it have like associated costs?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, the, yes, the first chips are like $1.08 or $1.50 each or something like that. And is that in present day dollars? That was pounds. That was pounds because Australia hadn't switched to decimal currency then, I don't think.

Chris Gammell: Okay, okay. So I think that was British pounds. 1.5 pounds, but was that in 1960s dollars?

Dave Jones: That was, no, that's 1960s dollars. I haven't done the translation of Australian pounds in 1960s to current dollars, but I'm sure it would have been expensive, right? Yeah. It would have. And you had to buy them directly from Texas Instruments, right?

Chris Gammell: Right. And you had to phone someone up, you had to be like, can I get one? And they'd be like, click.

Dave Jones: And there was this article in there about, you know, talking about how, I don't know, Signetics or somebody was ramping up production to 40,000 chips a week or something like that, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: How many would they manufacture now? I mean, you know, millions.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. And it was like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I have no nostalgia for that kind of stuff. Like, I just, that must have been terrible, you know? Like.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. But it's just fascinating how long it took. You know, I'm not there yet. And I don't know. It might be the 70s until I find the first 7400 series.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: Do-it-yourself project. Even though it might have come out in 66, it could take four or five years before it actually gets down to sort of like, you know, the hobbyist enthusiast type level. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Who knows? I guess you don't see us playing with 286 chips right now, right? When does that stuff kind of finally trickle down?

Dave Jones: Well, see, it's different these days because you take for granted the fact that you can order the latest release chips. You know, they come out on DigiKey as soon as they're there. Bang. You know, you can order them anywhere in the world for, you know, reasonable one-off prices. Yeah. You know, reasonable market. You know, there's almost nothing in there that's not reasonable in one-off quantity. If you want to make one project, I mean, you know, the prices really aren't that unreasonable. You can get anything you can imagine. And, well, back then, as I said, yeah, you had to buy them directly from Texas Instruments or some other company, you know, local reps and things. No, the companies set up their own networks here. And you had to go through them and you probably had to turn up in a suit and a tie and say, I would like 10 7400 chips, please. Certainly, sir. Let's fill out this paperwork, you know. And then you'd have to pay by bank.

Chris Gammell: Three carbon copies, please, yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And you'd have to pay by bank check, you know. No. It's, yeah, it's a totally different world.

Chris Gammell: I love it. So you found any of, so my favorite thing through the old magazines is always the ads. Do you find any good ads? Oh, there's ads.

Dave Jones: I deliberately stuck. I mentioned a couple, but I actually tweeted a few ads, actually. So if you're not following them on Twitter, you're missing out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I must have missed those. I saw some of these. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, yeah, I love the ads, but I'm trying to stick. The video's long enough already. I'm trying to stick to just finding this 7400 series logic. And I'm not there yet. And I'm going to look through every issue. And, yeah, it's taken some time. So you can't say I didn't research this one, folks. Can't say I slapped this video together.

Chris Gammell: Finally. Finally we can't say that.

Dave Jones: And I'm liking my new bench.

Chris Gammell: I saw that, yeah. That was a nice second bench. Actually, yeah.

Dave Jones: I just put it in the middle. And then I didn't realize, hey, I can now sit in front of a bench, with a bench in front of me, and shoot a video that way. So instead of my usual talking head shot, where I'm just sitting on a stool, like, you know, actually a meter away from the camera, when I often start those videos of those talking head shots, and I just wave a product around, well, now I can actually sit with a bench in front of me, and I can do things on a bench. And why didn't I think of this five years ago, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: And it's actually not a bad angle at all. I rather like it. So you'll see this in the video hopefully coming up on Wednesday. Although I did include a screenshot on Twitter, where I showed the new angle of the video. Yeah, I'm looking at that now. I rather like it. Right. Right. You know? It's just more flexible when you can put things on a desk in front of you, and pick them up, and manipulate them, and show them. And, you know, I think it's going to be really useful.

Chris Gammell: There you go. Any word on how, is the writing appreciably better? Like, do you notice the stylistic differences when you read? I'm not sure how much you're actually reading articles as well. Right.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: These are probably full-time staff writers, right? I mean, like, that's what I think back in the day.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, yeah. They had full-time staff writers, and also contributed projects as well. Exactly the same as they did. Nothing, I'm telling you, nothing has changed in 50 years.

Chris Gammell: Well, the amount of advertising.

Dave Jones: In some cases, the contributors haven't changed in 50 years. Right? I'm reading Jim Rowe wrote this. I'm showing an article Jim Rowe wrote 50 years ago. He still writes for Silicon Chip magazine.

Chris Gammell: That's awesome.

Dave Jones: 50 years later, he's still producing projects. Yeah. Good on him.

Chris Gammell: That's awesome.

Dave Jones: I know. Right. And nothing changes. And my writing style comes from what I read in those magazines. Right? Right, right. So, you know, people who contribute projects to these magazines don't just do it blind. They do it because they've read, they've spent a decade reading all these projects in there. And then that's how you end up writing, either consciously or subconsciously. So, all the articles pretty much, and the wording and the style and all that sort of, you know, grammatical stuff all stays pretty consistent throughout history. Yeah. It's rather remarkable. It really is. Yeah. The only thing that changes is parts.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say, I guess it's not getting any better either then, huh? Right.

Speaker ?: No.

Chris Gammell: We get what we get, folks. It's... Yep.

Dave Jones: It's not going to be Shakespeare.

Chris Gammell: Best case scenario, it switches to a new medium. And, well, you're hearing how well that's working out. Yeah. And on that note, that's the end of the show. Yep. So, next week, we will have Nadia Peek, who I mentioned two weeks or however many weeks ago. She was one of the speakers at Solid, a Riley Solid conference, and talking about reconfigurable CNC type of machines that she wrote all custom code for. Very impressive machines. And she's doing some cool stuff at the Media Lab. So, I'm very excited to talk to her next week. And then two weeks after that, we have a special guest as well, which I won't announce yet, but it's very exciting. So, I'm looking forward to it.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Chris Gammell: All right, man. Well, catch you next week. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's it. That was a very professional ending there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Bye. Bye. Bye-bye.

Dave Jones: Bye.

Chris Gammell: Bye.

Chris Gammell: Bye.