#291 – Artificially Intelligent Party Platform

Chris Gammell: This episode of The Amp Hour is brought to you by... That's usually where a company goes. We're actually completely supported by our audience. We really, really appreciate it. If you want to help out, you can go to patreon.com slash theamphour. All that money goes towards microphones and servers and making the show better for you. If money's not your thing, iTunes reviews will also do. Thanks to Paul Stevenson for the music you're about to hear. This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded March 16th, 2016. Episode 291. Artificially Intelligent Party Platform.

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. What's up, nerd? Hello again, my friend.

Dave Jones: You're quite proud of your new t-shirt.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. It's not released yet, though.

Dave Jones: It's not released yet, but I've seen it and I like it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And you did it yourself. Maybe it'll be released here by the time this posts.

Dave Jones: Why don't you just whack it up on Teespring?

Chris Gammell: That's where the picture was from. So, yeah, maybe.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Well, what do you mean maybe? Just hit go. What's the...

Chris Gammell: Okay. Sure. Go.

Dave Jones: How much...

Chris Gammell: It now exists there.

Dave Jones: How much procrastinating do you need to do to release a t-shirt?

Chris Gammell: Well, I was thinking about if maybe I just wanted it for myself, you know? There is like a value in that. I like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: But then everyone will ask you, where do you get one? Then you'll eventually cave in and do it anyway. Right. So, you might as well do it now.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And we've talked about it now on the show. So, you're just going to get a huge amount of interest. Maybe. People are just going to flood.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I'll never tell people what it is, though. Hmm? Hmm?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe you've got to find it. That's the... Yeah. Yeah. It's like a scavenger hunt.

Dave Jones: You've got to randomly search. Yeah. Scavenger hunt.

Chris Gammell: Everybody already stopped listening after this instead of... Right. They don't care about the shirt. They also stopped listening.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. Boy.

Chris Gammell: T-shirt. Maybe. Check it out. Mystery shirt.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: What's new with you?

Dave Jones: I don't know. I just make videos and stuff.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: Maybe. Occasionally. Cool. If I'm not busy doing other crap. Yeah. Although, as I said, I've now got a new outro.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So exciting. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, that'll be on the next video, right?

Dave Jones: That'll be on the video. That's currently rendering in the background now, which is a repair video.

Chris Gammell: Oh, cool. Okay. Good. Yes. So, two things that'll be posted that are not posted while we're recording this. Correct. Cool. Nah. I spent the weekend...

Dave Jones: So glad we don't do this show live. Anyway, you spent the weekend...

Chris Gammell: I spent the weekend in Austin, actually. I was in Austin.

Dave Jones: Your old hometown.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Is it not? Yep. And...

Dave Jones: How many years did you spend... Were you born and grew up in Austin? Is that the...

Chris Gammell: No, no. I was born...

Dave Jones: Tell us the Chris Gammell life story.

Chris Gammell: When I was a boy... No, no. I grew up in Buffalo. No, I was down there two years after school. And that's when I worked at Samsung down there. Oh, right. So, it was like two years. But it's a great town. I mean, it's really... I mean, it's grown a lot. So, it's been like eight years since I've been there. The entire skyline looks different now. Like the... Right. The tallest building in town is different. It's a lot of condos, unfortunately. But what are you going to do? You know? Meh. So, yeah. But there's a lot of good companies down there, too. Right? I mean, there's... Well, some formerly great companies. Like IBM is down there. They have... I think they had a chip design group down there, too. FreeSkills down there. National Instruments is down there. Samsung, obviously. So, there are a good chunk of companies down there. Oh, AMD was down there. Oh, sad story. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Whatever happened to AMD? I never really followed it. Are they still... Yeah, they're still making processes and crap, aren't they? Or are they...

Chris Gammell: I think so. They... I'm pretty sure that they... Bought out 20 times? They spun out their fabs. Right. I think that's what became Global Foundries, I think. Maybe that's wrong.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: AMD fabs became something else, I'm pretty sure.

Dave Jones: Ah, interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. But... Yeah, so they sold them to Global Foundries. Um... And that's... That's still cranking. That's just a... That's just, obviously, a foundry. So now it's... Um... And that's... I will restate my prediction for the future. I predict that eventually Intel will also spin out their fabs as a foundry group and then have the chip separate. Maybe. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. But... He's cold at folks. Yep. Lining the sand.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Uh... Yeah. So there was a lot of... I think Mike Crow might have been down there, too. I mean, so, like, I remember seeing a Silicon... They called it Silicon Hills because, you know...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Why be original? Um... Hey. And, uh... And it seems to have changed a little bit, but there's still stuff down there. I mean, that was really big in, like, the mid to late 90s, VLSI days, I think. Um... And that stuff still exists, of course, but there's lots of changed alliances. Oh, uh... Obviously, Silicon Labs is down there. That's one of the big... Right. Big ones right downtown, too. So... Yeah. Cool. So I was at South by Southwest, though, and... Uh...

Dave Jones: How'd that go? I saw a photo of you sitting on a panel looking a bit... Mm...

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So I was on a panel with Scott from Dragon Innovation, who we've had on the show before. And, uh... You know, Scott did a lot of the talking. Uh... That's right. But it was good. It was good. You know, it was a panel about, you know, taking your stuff to scale from a prototype. And Scott was obviously more on the, okay, well, here's how you go to, like, super... People remember Scott was... He did the iRobot stuff in the Roomba.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. And so he had a lot of experience with that. Mine was more like, make sure your board isn't crap when it goes to... You know, because, like... Right. Yeah, yeah. There are significant differences from, like, a first prototype to even just a run of a hundred, right? Of course. There's a step up. Yeah. Yeah. Um... And so that was kind of more what I was talking about.

Dave Jones: Well, it depends on how you do it. It depends on how disciplined you are in... Well, I don't know if discipline's the right word, but how... What your process is for doing your prototypes. I know some people that go for broke on their prototypes, you know? Like, you know, nothing less than an absolutely perfect final PCB and BOM is good enough for a prototype, just a one-off prototype, you know? Right.

Chris Gammell: I've seen that on super high-end stuff before because you're going to spend so much on a prototype anyways. You might as well take the time, get it right, that kind of thing. Versus... See, I've... Yeah.

Dave Jones: I've done that where, you know, it's pretty much all, you know, all or nothing. It's like, take my micro-calc, for example, which is my credit card thin calculator, right? Scientific calculator. It's all about the final form factor. There's no point prototyping it on a breadboard or a variaboard or whatever because, like, it's just a micro with some capacitive touch sensors and, like, of course it's going to work, right? There's no point prototyping it. That's just stupid. It's all about the final form factor. So I had to go and actually design the final thing was my first prototype.

Chris Gammell: Right. And then any kind of subsequent stuff is just small tweaks. It's just tweaks. Yeah, exactly. Stuff like that. And that makes sense. Fixing the screw-ups. Yeah. I've done that... I've done it both ways. I think the other way is interesting just because if you're, like... It's almost like you're even earlier stage where you're kind of just trying to figure out what you should even be putting on a board, you know? Right. Oh, yeah. Like we've talked about on here before, kind of making it... Not making modular, but, you know, like... Testing things one at a time and just spinning through them. Right. And then eventually integrating them together. That's another way of doing it. But... Yep. Sometimes the... I mean, yeah. Like, look at a lot of the products these days. It's what? Sensor plus Bluetooth module. It's like, okay, well, that plus the power source and...

Dave Jones: Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Might as well prototype everything. And I think that over time, too, that that makes more sense just because there's higher integration levels in chips, you know? It's like, if you're not getting it right around that chip, it's probably not working at all. So. But I think about even, like, the... You know, not necessarily schematic and layout and stuff like that, but really the parts. That's the stuff I think about. You know, like, when I'm doing a prototype...

Dave Jones: Well, you do work for parts.io.

Chris Gammell: Well, yes. No, but not even like that. I mean, like, whenever I do... I think we've mentioned this before, though. Like, when I do stuff for my designs, I don't actually put in, like, real part numbers. You know, I'll put in just, like, 1K, 5 point... Oh, yeah, right. 5 point whatever K. Yeah, same here. And then just use what I have in the lab. And actually, that's my favorite thing because that's really where the prototyping is happening. You're trying different values. That's right. You're tweaking stuff.

Dave Jones: And then I'll add the part numbers later. Yeah, exactly. Once I decide, right, I'm going to spin off 100 of these or want to do a pre-production of 10 or something, then I'll start adding the part numbers, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And there's other, like, costing down type things as well. And, like, this is what happens sometimes when you, like, hand off a design to a, you know, more like an EMS type thing. They'll actually take it and redesign certain parts of your circuit to actually have topologies that are cheaper too, right? So if you can get away with not having a buck converter and you can just have a simple linear regulator because there's, you know, it's just a little bit of power loss or something, maybe it's worth it. Because you save 20 cents on your bomb, which is huge. Yep. So, or just re-putting in new circuits, stuff like that. That's really the, that's the DFM pieces that I think about, like, the design for manufacturing. It's almost like design for cost-optimized manufacturing. You know, like that kind of, especially when you're doing consumer high-volume type stuff. That's where it really gets valuable. But I don't, I don't get my jollies from that stuff. Because I'm also not building stuff that's, you know, million pieces kind of thing. So that's where.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, of course. It makes a big difference. What have we got on the list today?

Chris Gammell: We should probably pull that up, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah, we probably should, you know, considering that we don't have much to talk about otherwise. Do we? I don't know. It's the same old, same old.

Chris Gammell: Well, let's do a little bit of backtracking to other guests. If you remember Gerald and Bertrand from Audim being on the show, that was the. Oh, yes. The voice recognition chip.

Dave Jones: The voice recognition, yes, it was. It wasn't voice synthesis, was it? It was just voice recognition. No, just recognition.

Chris Gammell: That is now available.

Dave Jones: Speaker independent, yep. Oh, it's now available. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and it's actually called the Movi. I posted it as the Audim, but that's the company. So the Movi is now available. And, you know, kind of pricey, 90 bucks. But also, when you think about having that on a chip versus having to go to the cloud kind of thing. Oh, yeah. You know, that's pretty nice.

Dave Jones: No contest.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Cloud.

Dave Jones: Schmoud.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Unbelievable. I wanted to talk about the cloud a little bit. Oh, God. Actually, I wanted to get worse. I wanted to get way worse. I wanted to talk about the Internet of Things, Dave. It gets worse? Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. No. No.

Dave Jones: Why?

Chris Gammell: Well, because that's what my weekend was. I was at the, you know, South by Southwest, and everybody there is interested in the IoT stuff. And I just...

Dave Jones: Of course there are, because they're all people looking to jump on a bandwagon. Yeehaw! Let's ride a pony into town.

Chris Gammell: Right. I'm still not sold. That's really... Yeah, right. That's where it comes down to. I don't know. It's just like... Why?

Dave Jones: Okay. Why are you not sold? Why are you still not sold? On the Internet of Things? Or the Internet of Things? Well, the Internet of Things is cloud, right? I mean, it's all one.

Chris Gammell: So, well, there was a couple of people that were, like, demoing stuff. And, you know, I think that South by Southwest kind of shades towards software people, maybe. You know, there were some hardware companies there. There was the whole South by Create, it's called, where it's kind of like a mini Maker Faire there. But even that was more, like, demoing of, you know, educational material, stuff like that. And there were some other things. But all this stuff that I saw that was, like, you know, app-based connecting to this or that or this or that. You know, it wasn't... Really, it wasn't bad. It just... I was talking to them. I just... I'm like, I don't want any of this stuff.

Dave Jones: You're right.

Chris Gammell: You know, it was, like, controlling things that, like... So, there was a couple different ones. But, like, one of them was controlling things in the home. And it was a really nice app. It really was. It was very nice. And there was nice people working on it and stuff like that. But, honestly, it was, like, controlling existing consumer-level stuff, right? So, like, the Sonos. Yeah. Like, Sonos has Internet-connected speakers and stuff like that. Or the Alexa, right? Like, the... That's the Amazon Echo. I think Alexa is the name of the thing you talk to. But it's actually called the Echo. It, like, sits... It looks like a cylinder. It sits on your kitchen table or something.

Dave Jones: Meh. Right. I've seen those things. I know. It's like, yeah, I don't want it. I don't need it.

Chris Gammell: Now, obviously, you and I are not the target audience. And I would be willing to guess that even some of our listeners are not.

Dave Jones: Other people ultimately don't want it either.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: They might be convinced to buy it, but that's different to, you know, actually having a real need for it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. I mean, you know, and there's nothing new here. It's just, you know, gadgets over the last hundred years have been fads, you know? People get suckered into buying them because they think they need them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. And they don't. That's never taken off, you know?

Dave Jones: No. And then they just end up in the tip. Edison, you're full of crap. You know?

Chris Gammell: Light bulbs. Right. Why don't people just use whale oil lanterns?

Dave Jones: I mean, you know, to me, the classic example is still the internet connected freaking light bulb. You know? It is just.

Chris Gammell: That's the one that, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's almost a parody, yet people take it seriously as if they need it. Right. You know? Oh, I need to change the color of my lights using my iPhone. You know? Like, no, you don't.

Chris Gammell: Well, and that's honestly what it came down to. So, what I was thinking about. Okay. So, like I said, the software people I was talking to were really nice, and they had good stuff going on. Right? But the thing I didn't realize is that a lot of the times, you have to set up each thing independently. Right? So, each light bulb you have to set up independently. Each device you have to set up independently. And then they all have APIs that you have to tie into. And that's what this software was kind of doing. It was kind of linking all that stuff together. And that's what was surprising to me. I figured that it would be like, there'd be kind of like, there's still no standards. That's what I'm getting down to. Is like, there.

Dave Jones: Well, even if there are standards, it still doesn't help the usability side. Like, the practicality and the need side of things. Well, some of the things I could see. It makes setup easier. Right?

Chris Gammell: Some of the things I could see. But honestly, what it comes down to is. So, like you said, the light bulb. That's a great example. And the thing is. And I think we've talked about this before. You know, the convention that you and I are used to, and many people are used to, is the switch. Right? And the fact that it has to be, it's all decoupled from that. Right? That's, I think, the next step. If it's actually going to work. And if they actually want to. Obviously, the price needs to keep coming down. And that's going to. That is happening already. And that's fine. And, you know, things need to be speedier in terms of connecting. You need to have things actually responsive. Right? So, that's kind of a thing.

Dave Jones: The thing I really hate is how everything's connected to the bloody phone.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. And that's what I mean. Yeah. Right?

Dave Jones: This is why I like the switch. Because it's in one place. It is fixed. Right. It's like the remote control for your TV. Right? It's always annoying. Because you never find the remote control. Because you're always moving it around. Same thing with your phone. You never find your bloody phone when you want it. Right?

Chris Gammell: Well, I think that's what it comes down to, I think, is that usability. I think you're spot on with usability in that. Okay. So, I was thinking about this when I was watching these demos. It's like, okay. So, you want to fade them and do all these different things. But it needs to be like a natural gesture. Right? So, and like you said, we need to have it built into the switch. So, I was thinking about like a squeezable light switch. Right? So, if the light switch could actually sense pressure. And if I squeeze the switch, that actually does some kind of action. Or if I push it in or has some other kind of built-in natural interface there. That's ultimately what's going to be.

Dave Jones: The switch is not natural enough? No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: So, say you wanted secondary functionality. Oh, right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Additional functionality. Right.

Chris Gammell: So, you want color changing ability, whatever. Right? Right. So, the switch still needs to control it. That's fine. It still needs to be responsive when you turn it off or on. Because that's how people are used to it. And people will disagree with this. That's fine. But then I would see the next. If you wanted secondary functionality, right? Then like you squeeze the switch or you push it in or you hold it longer or something. And that ends up changing the color.

Dave Jones: Just shout at it. Change, you bastard.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't think. I don't like that. No? I mean, the voice stuff is still pretty far off. Yeah, voice activate. Yeah, I know. And then the idea is that you could still control it from other things. But you still need to have that natural interface, right? The existing interface and like retrofit it almost. And that's what it seems like a lot of people are lacking. And I think that's opportunity to be honest. Like if internet connected, color changing light bulbs are really a thing. You know, obviously LEDs are going to be a thing. And dimming is still a thing. But if the color change is really a thing. And there's other indicators you want to have with that, whatever. I think you still need to have a natural interface like a switch and stuff that people are used to. Totally.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, the phone is just bullshit. I agree with that. If you're founding some startup and it's based on, you know, controlling stuff with your phone, like, ugh. It's good for demos. It can work. And honestly, it's an indication. It's good for some things.

Chris Gammell: It's an indication that it's controllable from another interface. It doesn't have to be that one. Usually people are doing it for demos. And that's fine, right? So maybe you want to do it so that when your phone rings, your lights flicker. I don't know why you do that. But, like, you can have it connected. But you still need to have those natural interfaces. And I think that's, I don't know. I think, honestly, what I really think is that the whole home thing is kind of a, that's farther off, I think. You know, there's a lot of interest in it. But, you know, really the connected device thing is stuff like Akiba's doing in the Ricefield stuff, right?

Dave Jones: But it doesn't have to be connected. The things you're talking about have no dependence at all upon the internet, the cloud, the connected, whatever BS you're talking about.

Chris Gammell: What do you mean?

Dave Jones: You're talking about squeezing the thing on the wall, having a different type of UI to control your lights. It does not have to be connected to anything. Why? Why does it have to be connected?

Chris Gammell: I mean, it would for, how would you actually communicate between the squeeze and the light?

Dave Jones: Via a wire that's already in your wall?

Chris Gammell: You're going to do like power line coupling type stuff?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Hello? I think that would be a different thing, but maybe. I think that's more difficult, but okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I just don't see why it has to be connected. If you want to make it wireless, okay, but it doesn't have to be connected.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no.

Dave Jones: Connected means to the cloud, right?

Chris Gammell: No, yeah, not like that. I would think like a Zigbee or something between them, like something like that. Right, yeah, yeah. Not necessarily a Zigbee, but some kind of...

Dave Jones: If you needed to go wireless, then go proprietary short range non-connected wireless.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so obviously I did not work on consumer. I have not worked on consumer, and I doubt I ever will. But to have an analog... Not with an attitude like this. Yeah, right. But there was one called... There was a standard called HART. Have you ever heard of that? H-A-R-T?

Dave Jones: I... It rings a bell.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so what it did is it used to... So it would be like... So there was like 4 to 20 sensors, which you know what those are, right? Yeah. So like 4 to 20 milliamp sensors. 4 to 20 milliamp, yes. Right. And so that's a... So that you don't have to worry about drops and lines and stuff like that. And then HART was this rather slow serial signal that went on top of it. And that's the kind of thing that I think that would be kind of interesting. That's like kind of what you're talking about. Then there was also wireless HART. Kind of like following those same trends. Obviously, those were very, very robust. So it wouldn't need to hopefully be that robust. But, you know, like using that as an example, it's like that stuff has existed in industry for many, many years now. Right. And honestly, I think that the industry stuff is probably the place... That's what I was getting at, is that industries where it actually needs to be connected, either, you know, mesh or cloud-based kind of thing. So, I don't know. I think there's a lot of examples out there. But I think that any kind of acceptance in a home setting needs to be more natural.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Somehow.

Dave Jones: So you still think cloud sucks?

Chris Gammell: Just because of the speed and the reliability. Yep. I mean...

Dave Jones: Speaking of the voice command thing that you were talking about, I actually have found myself using the voice command in the GPS in my car.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: More and more. I kind of like it, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I do that for Google, my Google phone a lot.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah. No, I don't do it for the phone.

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: I've never really, no, been into it for the phone. But the car, you know, because I'm driving... Well, I know, but that's what I use.

Chris Gammell: I use my phone for navigation. That's what I mean. Oh, right. Okay. Right. Got it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No. No. And it kind of, sort of, works. You know? I just go, voice command. But you can't do it if you've got kids in the back, you know, talking and screaming. You can't do it if your window's down. You can't do it if the radio's on. You know? Right.

Chris Gammell: It's got to be... Yeah. Yeah. No, it's definitely going to be a piece of future computing. I just don't know what. You know?

Dave Jones: Yep. It's been... That's an interesting... Speaker independent voice recognition is an interesting tech that's been around for... You know? They've been trying it for, like, 40 years or something. You know? They've been perfecting it for 40 years. And there's still a lot to go. I still think there's a lot of room for growth in that space.

Chris Gammell: Man, it is not easy. You know? Like that...

Dave Jones: No, no, no. It's not. It's rocket science. You know? Like, it's software rocket science. Like, I can barely understand you most days.

Chris Gammell: And so now a computer needing to, you know? Yep.

Dave Jones: But it's... You know? If you can crack it, there's a huge market there. Right. Huge market.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Mm. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And you don't have to crack it totally. You can just crack a niche application that's better than everyone else's niche application.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: And, you know? Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was having a conversation about robotics at one point over the weekend. And we were talking about... I think about, like, assembly. Like, electronics assembly and stuff like that. And how, you know, like, even with the price of labor going up all over the world, you know, a low-paid person will outpace a high-paid robot in a lot of scenarios. Including... Because, like, Rethink was there. That Baxter robot. And they have some new robot as well. Right. Oh, yeah. Rodney Brooks was there giving a talk. And, um... I don't know. I... I... I still... I'm still very intrigued by robots, but... And I do think that there are big changes coming, but it's... You know, it's... In terms of replacing humans, it's...

Dave Jones: Not...

Chris Gammell: In terms of dexterity stuff especially, that's... That's a big task.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Like, looking at that...

Speaker ?: Totally.

Chris Gammell: That video that... Of the Steam controller with all that beautiful robotics and stuff like that. Like, that was not a cheap thing to set up. That was a very, very expensive thing.

Dave Jones: But if you wanted to do anything else...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Like, you know, it just does that, and that's it. You know, like...

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You can make small tweaks to handle other things, but, you know, you've got to... Yeah. No, you can't just walk in. You can't just randomly walk in and go, oh, can you do this differently just for today or just for this one-off? You know, you can't... You know, you can't.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was wondering about that with, you know, the news over the weekend or last week about the Google... Is it Google? No. Whatever the AI that beat the Go champion. You saw that one?

Dave Jones: I heard it. I mean, you saw the news article. I don't even know what Go is. I don't...

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's like... I mean, it's a game of strategy. It's like black and white pieces. You try and surround your opponent, basically. I've never played it, personally. Same. It's a very, very classically difficult game for computers. Right. And now this new one just... I think it's like four-to-one computer versus human of, like, a world champion. And same thing with that, where it's like, you know, thinking about, okay, you move something a little bit off. It's like, is that a very specific system? Like, it learned... Obviously, it learned that to a significant extent, but...

Dave Jones: Yeah, but isn't it just brute forcing again? It's not doing anything hugely intelligent?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't know how that works.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But I think... I would think that it would have to be... It's not just, you know, regurgitation, right? So, like, for chess, it was like, you memorize all of the playbooks, all of the... And then you calculate all of the probabilities based on, you know, all the possible moves and things like that.

Dave Jones: And you compute, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and that's like a binary tree at that point, right? And then you calculate probabilities. I don't think that was possible for Go, so I think that's why this was more... I think because maybe because of the massive number of potential options out there that it just wasn't possible to do that.

Dave Jones: Well, that's... I can't see it being any more than chess. Chess is enormous.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but the...

Dave Jones: If you actually look at the math behind it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I believe that. I don't know. We'd have to look at this, I guess, but... Hmm. Yeah, it's just interesting.

Dave Jones: I actually watched an interesting video on that the other day. It was on the Humberphile YouTube channel, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was on Humberphile. And, yeah, the math of chess, you know?

Chris Gammell: Ah, interesting.

Dave Jones: Like, you know, how many moves are, you know, are possible? And it was really interesting. I'll have to link it in. It's absolutely fascinating. Yeah. It's, you know... Yeah, like 10 to the power of, you know, hundreds.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? Oh, wow.

Dave Jones: After X amount of moves. It depends how you interpret it and how you do various things. But, yeah, it's absolutely fascinating.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. Mm-hmm. So, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: We just have no idea about this stuff, do we?

Chris Gammell: Speaking of artificial intelligence, we are feeling stupid today. There was something I was going to mention about the... Oh, another past guest thing. So, that's how we started. This was talking about past guests. Yeah, we did. We actually... I didn't link in a video from last week when we were talking about the plasma fireball, like burning up a fiber cable. Mm-hmm. So, that's what Mark was talking about. Yes. And there is actually one now.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we didn't see that. I did want to see that. Yeah. So, you've got the video?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's pretty cool. So, I'll link that in this week. Maybe I'll go back and actually link the other video too. Probably. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. That's the way to go. It looks like... So, it looks like it's like light traveling down the line, and then I'm like, wait a second. If I can see it traveling, then it's not light, you know? Yeah, right. It's not light. You actually see the propagation down the line. It's like, no, no, no.

Dave Jones: It's like the difference between electrons and electron flow, you know? Electron flow is actually very slow. Right. You know? It's like, what is it? Millimeters per second or something? It's very... Sorry. Drift velocity, you know, is the correct terminology for, you know? Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, everyone thinks electricity, it's so quick. But if you actually look at the electron drift velocity...

Chris Gammell: Right. And that's like one electron going from one point to another, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Google it.

Chris Gammell: I will have to. Yeah. It's been a while.

Dave Jones: I need to get the number now. Right.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. That's interesting because it's a... I mean, it points out, though, that like a lot of things that we think about... Obviously, we talk about current and voltage and all this other stuff, but a lot of it is constructs, right? I mean, that's really what it comes down to.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. No, it's... You know?

Chris Gammell: And it's... So, like, that's one thing. And then, you know, like even just current in general, right? People... Many people will know, but in general...

Dave Jones: Somebody emailed me this the other day, and I always get a couple of similar ones a year, emails a year. You know? People who say, oh, I don't understand why does current flow from positive to negative? You know? And all this... And it doesn't actually... Well, it does, but... My teachers tell me there's electron flow goes from negative... Like, it... You know? And... Or another classic example is, oh, what is ground? How do you determine what is ground? It's like... You know? It's... It's what you define.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, but that's tough for us, though. That's part of, like, the whole, like, when you're in it for a while, you forget how confusing that can be. Right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. And I... Some people complain about this. I throw these terms... Often I throw these terms around in my video without thinking about it. Yeah. And they're not strictly correct. You know? Because we just end up getting... EEV blog. Not strictly correct. That should be my slogan. That's your tagline. Yeah. And... But it's true. You know? We get lazy about the way we talk. You know? Lazy in the way we talk about things.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: And, you know, we know what they mean. Right. You know? And it's like...

Speaker ?: Meh.

Chris Gammell: You know? It's tough when you're starting out. And actually, that's... Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Very.

Chris Gammell: Very. I started doing new videos, actually. On, like, simple... Not even necessarily simple topics, but just short videos. I've been doing two-minute videos on stuff. And so, like, for things like that. Because it's just... It's super confusing when you don't even know... You don't have any kind of reference point on that stuff. You know? Right. And you don't know what to go Google. That's the real reason. Right? And, like, sometimes when you go Google it, you're like, oh, okay, well, blah, blah, blah, Ben Franklin, blah, blah, blah, historical. You know? Like, okay, now you know that for current flow. But it doesn't make it any easier. And that's the problem. You know? It doesn't make it any easier at the beginning when you don't have any reference point for it. Yep. Yeah. That's another thing I've been trying to stress for my students and other people I talk to as well. That, like, sometimes... Because I know a lot of people that, like, will not only go look it up, but they'll get, like, kind of caught in a Wikipedia spiral. You know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, um...

Dave Jones: I waste a good lot of every day. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But, like, it gets kind of frustrating, too. Right? That's the other thing. It's like... So, if you're going on that Wikipedia spiral, like, say you're starting at op amp. Right? And then you're like, oh, well, there's... You know, you start looking at the... You know, just the assumption, like, no current flows in there. And then you're starting to look at current. And then you're starting to look at all this other stuff. And you're looking at input FETs and all these other crazy things. And you could get to the bottom and be looking at an article on, like, Miller capacitance. And then eventually you just throw your hands up and you're like, I guess I'm never learning electronics. You know?

Dave Jones: No, that's right. Yeah. No, it's an infinite field. I mean, you know.

Chris Gammell: Well, sometimes you just have to... The thing I try and stress is that, like, in certain cases... And I try and point it out. In certain cases, you have to just be like... Just get through it. You know? Just kind of... Right. Just kind of muddle along. Write down the things you don't understand. And then you go back to them later. I was making a video about that just because... Yeah, man. It's like you get caught in a spiral. And you'll get super frustrated. So... It's important to just... Sometimes just keep going.

Dave Jones: And it's hard. Because if you're one of those... I don't want to use the word anal retentive. You know? But if you're like, everything has to be correct. And, you know... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know? You'll never get anything done.

Chris Gammell: Right. You know?

Dave Jones: Like, it's just... It's crazy. Right. You know? It reminds me of the video I did just to really annoy some people. But it's fascinating too, which was, does current flow through a capacitor? Oh. You know? And it's like... Yes and no. Right, right. And it depends on how you look at it and how you think about it. But, you know, and then, oh, you'll get some people that, you know, are so adamant that, no, it does not because blah, blah, blah. And then, you know...

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Well, that's another thing where it's just a construct. It's a construct. It's a construct. It's a construct. How can you analyze your circuit? Just think about current flows through a capacitor. Right. And if you'll go look at the Maxwell's equations. Well, you know, it does. There's a theory there where it does.

Chris Gammell: Look at the Maxwell's equations. That is a hole, man. Like...

Dave Jones: But it can back up, but it can also back up your theory that it does flow through a capacitor. Yeah. So, you know, like... Yeah. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I've been... So, I've been talking to people about this though too. Like, so I've been trying to promote the idea of top-down electronics recently. Because like something like that, right? Where it's like, oh, well, a lot of people... Well, obviously, this is because, you know, thinking about education and stuff like that. But a lot of people in a lot of schools will be like, okay, well, let's start at first principles.

Dave Jones: Here's an electron. Here is... Right. Exactly. Or how about here's an equation?

Chris Gammell: That's even worse. Like... Oh, you know. You know, like that's rough. And it's like, oh, well, let's talk about equations.

Dave Jones: You've lost people straight away. Right. Exactly. You know?

Chris Gammell: So, top-down is like you start with... Consider the iPhone. And most people can under... Most people who have seen one, at least, can visualize what that is. And then eventually start talking about software. And apps. And apps run on, you know, on operating systems. Operating systems are built on programming language. They run on hardware. Which run on blah, blah, blah. All the way down to eventually it's like... And eventually you start talking about a camera sensor. And in a camera sensor, there are CMOS, you know, individual bits of CMOS. And then you could start talking about that. But you're going to lose people all the way through either way. Right? Of course.

Dave Jones: But no. But I think you're going to keep more ultimately over the long term if you start from a top-down approach.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I totally agree. And the other thing is that even if you lose people on the way down, they still learn something. You know? Like, it's like... Exactly. Exactly. Now I know that an app runs on an operating system kind of thing.

Dave Jones: And... If you start top-down, they will stay in the game longer. Yep. Exactly. They'll be interested for longer and learn more than if you start from the bottom up. You'll lose them straight at Electron. You know? Yep. Like... Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. So I'm giving a talk on that when I'm in Belgrade.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Cool.

Chris Gammell: That is also the name of my potential book. I started a book.

Dave Jones: Seriously? You're going to write a book?

Chris Gammell: No. Well, I'm not going to finish it probably ever, but it's... I have a half a chapter written. That counts, right? I'm an author now, right?

Dave Jones: It does count. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So that is the idea there. We'll see if that ever goes anywhere. Mostly I'm just trying to claim all of the top-down electronics, you know. Google juice.

Dave Jones: Do you own topdownelectronics.com?

Chris Gammell: Not yet. I will by tomorrow. Actually, I was thinking about that today. I should buy it. I do have the... It's on LeanPub is top-down electronics.

Dave Jones: Right. LeanPub? Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: LeanPub, you publish a chapter at a time kind of thing. I think I mentioned that too.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Yes, yes, you did. Okay. Right. So is it published?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no.

Dave Jones: No, but you've put it up like it's a private repository, is it?

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Okay. Cool. Yep. Yep. And you do realize you can't make money from books, right?

Chris Gammell: Oh, of course. No, yeah. Yep. Yep. No, no, you make...

Dave Jones: Well, you can, kind of.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, some people can, but it's not going to be me, and it's not going to be about electronics, you know? No, that's right. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm not worried about that. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: There you go. I can't believe you haven't bought up the Hackaday Prize yet.

Chris Gammell: Well, I was talking about other work stuff, so... Yeah. The Hackaday Prize, yeah.

Dave Jones: You aren't really a loyal company, man, are you?

Chris Gammell: I guess not.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: It's back again. It's back. It's back, and it's going to be... It's really interesting this year. I actually really like the things they're doing.

Dave Jones: I like the different categories, like the citizen scientist, for example, and automation, and assistive technology. You know, they've got these different categories.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, I like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, that's... That was... You know, we were talking a lot about constraints and stuff like that, and that kind of helps to form... You know, because it's like, if someone walks up to you and says... Have you... Well, I don't know. Have you ever spoken another language at all?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: I suck at...

Chris Gammell: I also am not good at it, but it's like... So, I used to take Japanese classes, and if someone walks up to you and they say, oh, say something to me in Japanese, right? And it's like, there is literally the entire language, which is an option, right? If someone walks up to you and says, how do I order a beer in Japanese, or how do I say hello in Japanese, or in French, or whatever, like in German, whatever, you know, like, these are... That's a more constrained problem, and it's like, your brain will start to at least register it's like, I know that or I don't, and then maybe I can figure it out, or maybe I can speak it to you. But if you just say anything, you know, at least my brain always locks up. Same with like, oh, well, just design an electronics product. Yep. Oh. Oh. So, I think that constraints really help for that kind of thing. Of course. So, I like that. I like the other... There's two other things I like is, one is the leaderboard thing, so that if you go and vote, you can vote and give people, like, early money for, like, prototyping, which is actually really good, I think. I think it's like up to 200 bucks, you know, just for parts and stuff like that. All right. Cool. Vote on early ideas. And then the other thing is that each of those five categories you mentioned, 20 people in each category will get $1,000, which is like... I mean, I think last year was only like 400 or 500 entries, which gives you almost a one in five chance of, like, winning. So.

Dave Jones: Awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. $1,000.

Dave Jones: And there's all new judges this year. I won't be one of them, because they want to rotate every two years. Mm-hmm. Yep. So once you've done, well, two contests.

Chris Gammell: Right. Every two contests, right.

Dave Jones: It gives more than one a year. Yeah. So once you've done two, which I've done, they go, sorry, can't be a judge anymore.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Boo-boo. So. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. So there's all new judges, which I like, because it keeps it fresh. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So some good people there, too.

Speaker ?: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: I, unfortunately, I don't know who half of them are.

Chris Gammell: Well, maybe you will after this, you know? Maybe I will. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Go check out their profiles. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: There's some cool stuff in there.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think that's it for the prize. I don't know. The video was kind of fun, too. But that's about it. People should enter. I think there's, I think all those different stages are staggered as well. Like, you can enter more than one if you want to, like, put your thing into more than one category. So if you were, like, a, you know, citizen scientist plus, like, but it was, like, an automation thing, so if you were, like, automating measurements of weather balloons or something like that, you could probably enter it in two different things. So, and then the last one, whatever wins can go to the end.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And tell us the prize, son.

Chris Gammell: I believe 150 grand. Is that right? I'm not looking at it. It is, correct. I should look at it. 150 grand.

Dave Jones: Second price, 25 grand, which is a decent amount of DOSH. Yeah, man. And 10K, 10K, and then 5K.

Chris Gammell: Not bad at all.

Dave Jones: So even those aren't bad money at all. Have you heard anything about any issues with giving the prizes to the winners in the previous contests?

Chris Gammell: No. Any legal hassles? No, because we, there are very, like, the official rules are all laid out. Like, so there's a couple of countries that actually can't participate, which kind of stinks. Right. But it's on those countries. So I think, like, Italy and, like, I think, not even a country, I think Ottawa and Canada. Like, it's just something like you have. Right. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Part of Canada is, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it's all because, like, the restrictions are on, like, you need to have the languages and you need to have it in the local language and all this other stuff. And it's just, there is a lot of, yeah.

Dave Jones: There has been a big to-do about the Keysight contest. You know, their scope month, which is still running at the moment. Yeah. You can win a scope a day. You know, you can win a 15 grand scope every day. Wow. Yeah, it's crazy. It's insane. And they've been having so many problems actually giving these things away. Really? Giving them to the winners. Yeah, yeah. And, like, some people have had to turn them down. I think a couple of people already have won them and have had to go, I've got to turn it down.

Chris Gammell: Because of, like, taxes or what?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I cannot accept this 15 grand scope. I can't pay five grand in- Five grand? I don't have five. Some people, yeah, they're going to get charged, you know, 30%.

Chris Gammell: Whoa.

Dave Jones: I don't have five grand. So, you know, it's like some people are going, well, donated to the local hackerspace, you know. And apparently they're trying to make that work, but they're not sure if they can make that work. And, you know. Oh, wow. You know, and people from Australia can't even enter, right? Wow. Which is nuts. Even some states in the US, I think New York and Washington or something, can't enter. You know, like, and it's just.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's turned into a huge balls up, really. And there's a huge forum thread on it, 20 pages long or something about, you know, people kicking and screaming. Right. And it's just, yeah, it's. I hate these bloody things. You know, lawyers get involved and it's just all over.

Chris Gammell: You know, it is tough. I mean, I think that it's, unfortunately, it's like it's tech coming up against government type of stuff. So that does not make things easy. Not at all. Well, that's unfortunate. Hopefully they, hopefully they do figure it out. Especially like the hackerspace idea. That's a good idea. Especially if the space can come up with the money. It might be. Yep. You know, it's like getting 66% off effectively.

Dave Jones: Right. And then somebody, I think somebody on there said, oh, hackerspaces don't deserve it either because it'll just go missing in the first week. Oh, I hope not. Yeah. Yeah. Boy. So. It depends on your type of hackerspace too. I mean, you know, I know hackerspaces that are, that don't do much electronics at all. You know, they're more into, you know, other mechanical or woodwork or, you know, 3D printers, laser cutters or whatever. And they don't have need for a 15 grand scope, you know, like a 15 grand, one gigahertz scope. So, yeah. It varies. But that's a pretty good idea. So, if you can make it happen.

Chris Gammell: I'm, I'm super nervous to bring up a topic here. Do it.

Dave Jones: Just, hang on. Just whisper it to me first. Okay. And then we'll see if it's okay. Politics. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Why not? I'm nervous about, I'm not nervous about our listening audience. I think they can handle it. I'm nervous about you. Why? No, so, okay. So, obviously, all right. So, I don't want to talk about anything.

Dave Jones: You're going to leave the country if Trump wins.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. I'm not going to say anything about the actual ridiculousness that's happening around here. I think everyone can agree that there's ridiculousness happening around here. But honestly, this thought honestly popped in my head yesterday.

Dave Jones: All right. Go for it.

Chris Gammell: What if I ran for office? And then I started thinking about it.

Dave Jones: I've been thinking the same thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And then I started thinking about it. Okay. So, like, very sad. Like, I think we've talked about on the show before that the U.S. has an insignificant number of people. I think in the 538 seats in the U.S. Congress, there's, what, like two or three that are even remotely scientific and one that actually was a scientist or a chemical engineer or something. And then you compare it to China and China has everyone. Everyone was an engineer, right? Almost everyone. And I think that's changing a little bit. But it's still incredibly well represented in terms of scientific thinking and yada, yada, yada.

Dave Jones: Well, this actually, I don't know if we've talked about this on here way, way ago. This is, I probably can't even find a link to it. I might be able to. Some, it was in the U.S. somewhere in some tin pot town in some tin pot state. Right? Sorry to whoever lives there. But, yeah, right? It's a little town in the middle of nowhere. And somebody actually got, they just rocked up and they were the only one there. And they put themselves, right, I'm going to nominate myself to be the Republican candidate for this little tin pot town. And they won with, like, three votes or something because nobody turned up. Nobody else. There was no competition.

Chris Gammell: They say 90% of success has just shown up, right?

Dave Jones: It's just showing up, yeah. I'm sure we've talked about this on here before. Maybe, maybe. In some way, shape, or form. Yeah. And so, you know, a lot of it is, yeah, just going out there and showing up. Right. It's sad.

Chris Gammell: I don't think that would be it for me. But what I honestly started thinking about, though, is like, okay, well, what does that really look like? So now from an electronics perspective, because I do want to still bring it back to that. So what are some of the things, like, so say you and I were going to start a political party right now. And again, I don't want to talk politics, politics. But just in terms of the thing, this is honestly a thing that, like, what's important to us, right? Right. And what would be our platform, right? And I think there are some very realistic things in there. And I think that there would be a lot of disagreement with our audience and a lot of unexplained details, yada, yada, yada. Let's suspend disbelief for a little while. But just in terms of what do we care about, right? I would think about, like, education, obviously, would be a big piece. Of course. Yep. I would think about encouraging manufacturing, right? That would be another big piece, right?

Dave Jones: I was thinking about this just the other day.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah? What part?

Dave Jones: I would, well, it kind of comes down to if I was the president kind of thing. Okay. It would be Mars shot. Okay. You start, you know, you, like, think big again.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: Think big to get people to believe in something again.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, you have to think, yeah, okay, you can do incentives to start up manufacturing and everything. That's great. But what, you know, like, people used to believe in stuff, right? Back in the 50s and the 60s and, you know, that was even before I was born. So that's a long time. Right. But people would believe in things. It was like, you know, you would go to the World Fair and it'd be about what our city's going to look like tomorrow. And, you know, all this sort of stuff. It was all, you know, everyone was excited about the future. Nobody's excited about the future anymore. All they care about is now.

Chris Gammell: I'm excited about the future, but I'm also terrified of it.

Speaker ?: That's right.

Chris Gammell: That's another problem.

Dave Jones: And it just doesn't, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think.

Dave Jones: People don't believe in things anymore. So we need that.

Chris Gammell: I think that's a great point, though. Like, definitely, like, you know, big, big, big stuff that, you know, a company, well, maybe you can do, but, you know, just big stuff. I think big stuff's good. And then.

Dave Jones: I'll tell you what. Apple have enough cash on hand to actually get humans to Mars. I kid you not.

Chris Gammell: Really?

Dave Jones: They have enough cash on hand. Using the Zubrin. Using the Robert Zubrin Mars Direct approach, which, you know, depends on how you price it, 30 to 50 billion. They have enough cash on hand to do it.

Chris Gammell: To get humans to Mars. How much do they have?

Dave Jones: 30. Oh, Apple, last I had, last I checked, had at least 50 billion in cash. Apple cash on hand. I'm Googling it. Okay. They've got 200. They have 203 billion in cash. And this was in, yeah, 2015, July 2015. 203 billion.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: They could get to Mars and still only use a quarter of their cash.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: Right? This is, if I was the Apple CEO, this is what I'd be doing. Yeah. Come on, Tim. This is what I'd be doing.

Chris Gammell: Come on, Tim. Right?

Dave Jones: This is what I'd be doing. Yeah. If I was the Apple CEO and I had that much cash to throw around. Screw the government. We don't need the government. We can get the whole world believing in something. Let's go to Mars.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, what happens, so if you went to Mars and they put Apple logos everywhere, but yeah, it would be classy, I'm sure. It would be well designed. Oh, right. They'd send Joanie Ives or whatever his name is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Jonathan Ives would be. Yeah. Yep. Would be the designer of the Mars face. Chief designer, yeah, of interplanetary designer. Right. Right. But seriously, that's what I'd be doing if I had access to that sort of cash. Right. You know? Be it either the CEO of a huge company like that or the president or whoever. Right. Who could make calls like that?

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and then so I started thinking about, oh, and crypto. Crypto would be another one. Like actual. Crypto? You know, like decent cryptography practices.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. As in settle the privacy shit once and for all. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's lots of little things like that. Of course. And obviously this. I'd change.

Chris Gammell: But then I honestly, I started thinking about other things too. Like, and this actually kind of was a little bit broader of a thought than just like being a politician. Because a single politician usually would never be able to do all this stuff. No, of course. But just kind of those thoughts of like, okay, so thinking about a lot of the issues that are out there. And, you know, so like things like homelessness and poverty, stuff like that. Started thinking about like, okay, like, so say you were, say you were running as a politician. Would that even be relevant of like, you know, there are things that can be done? Because maybe it's just a money thing, right? Or maybe it's a social thing.

Dave Jones: I watched an interesting TED talk on that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah?

Dave Jones: Where, yeah, I'll have to try and find the link to it. Where the persons, I can't remember who it was, they gave this TED talk. And their theory was, is that simply give homeless people enough money to live on.

Chris Gammell: That's like a basic income type thing.

Dave Jones: It's a basic income. Just give everyone a basic income, including homeless people. And there's actually, they've actually done this in certain regions and countries and stuff. And it's actually worked.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It has actually worked. People don't freeload. They don't actually go, oh, I'm getting money. I don't need to work anymore. It actually makes them want to go out and work.

Chris Gammell: Well, and so I've read about that. I think that was in that robotics book, right? So because they were talking about, okay, so what happens in a post-job future, right? Where like literally everything's automated. Like that's actually one of the things they talk about as well. Got it. So that's maybe not even a political issue. It's just kind of a reality issue at a certain point. I don't, again, some people-

Dave Jones: Or it becomes the Star Trek utopia. Right. Where isn't the Star Trek future where everyone, you don't get paid. You simply-

Chris Gammell: You work for passion.

Dave Jones: You work for the society.

Chris Gammell: No, I don't believe in Star Trek future in the slightest. Because-

Dave Jones: You want money. You want to be rich and famous.

Chris Gammell: Well, no, not that actually. I just don't have a very high view of people.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: I mean, honestly, human nature is like- Yeah, yeah, of course. We've spent thousands and thousands of years trying to improve our station in life and propagate our genes. It's like- Right. I don't think that's going to go away unless there's some kind of thing that does that. Totally. Totally. No, but what I was also thinking about was just like, okay, so like thinking about like- Because like I said, we are in the electronics realm or in the software realm. Like people that are listening are likely people that are working on things that could have some impact on the world. But there's some things that actually don't- that could not be improved by that. And that's actually where some of the interesting problems are, I think. Like, you know, and that's where really like a lot of the social stuff crosses over with the tech stuff. Like thinking about like, you know, efficiency type stuff, right? That's a thing that could be solved by better architecture and, you know, enabling everyone online, stuff like that. You know, just reducing costs by making things more efficient. That's, you know, obviously a very hand-wavy thing, but- Right. But that's not going to work for everything. You know, that's not going to work if you, I don't know, need to build a road or something, you know, like, you know, it's not like you're going to build a, you know, you can't use necessarily tech to put down asphalt cheaper or something like that, you know, so-

Dave Jones: Oh, God, let's not mention solar roadways. Right.

Chris Gammell: Shouldn't have even brought that up. But I don't know. So like, this is just the stuff I was thinking about. And then I was also thinking about, again, I have a very poor view of people, especially when like I'm in a crowd of people. Like I just- Right. I become very, what's the word? I become a malcontent. It's not the right word. It's a philanthropist. And the other one is a, not a philanthropist, and a misanthrope. That's what it is. I become a misanthrope. I'm usually a misanthrope, but I can become more of a misanthrope. And just thinking about like, could, at least in the States, I wonder, could a scientific person even run for a high office like that? I don't know. I'd be very interested. I hope they would. I don't think it'll be me, but who knows? You know, maybe I'll get bored and try it some way. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We need some change because isn't the head of your science committee-

Chris Gammell: Oh, don't even talk. Yeah, don't. Yeah.

Dave Jones: A creationist, you know? Like, come on. Right. Jesus. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But yeah, no, I just think like having science and tech and having some view at the table other than like, hey, we make jobs would be nice.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I like, I watched a video, he'll digress Tyson, who's one of my favorite humans on the planet. Me too. And he mentioned, can I buy an engineer, please? You know, like, as in, can I buy a vowel? You know, like the, you know, the play in the game. What is it? Wheel of Fortune?

Chris Gammell: That's a jet, is it? No, it is Wheel of Fortune. You're right. Yeah, of course.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, it is. Like, can I buy a vowel? Can I buy an engineer, please? Like.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And that's funny.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But it's true. Yeah. Politicians are just.

Chris Gammell: Well, the other thing, again, I was thinking about that as well. Well, they're politicians. Like, could you use like tech? I mean, obviously a lot of interesting software people are getting into the whole advertising for politicians and stuff like that too, but actually like, like, like doing arbitrage and like online and like finding, I don't know, like using big data to basically find an easy way to, an easy election to win and then using that as a, you know, kind of like you were talking about. Like that kind of thing too. Ah, right. Yes. You know. Yep. Like gaming the system. That's what I'm trying to do. Right. Okay. Chris Gammell. Gaming the system.

Dave Jones: You just have to go to some tin pot town.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but, eh, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: Well, you're already in one. Ah. Ah. Sorry.

Speaker ?: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Ah, okay. Well, let's talk about actually changing the world for the better here. Ah, it's Summer of Code. This is actually a program that I really like. Um.

Dave Jones: Code's not going to save the world.

Chris Gammell: No, but kids working on interesting problems will grow up to be adults working on interesting problems.

Dave Jones: Software programmers. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, but this is for the beagle bone. I mean, like this is embedded kind of, sort of. Um. Mm. So anyways. I don't know.

Dave Jones: I can smell cloud.

Chris Gammell: I like that. Have you seen that sticker? It's a picture of a little cloud with like a frowny face and it says, the cloud is just somebody else's computer. Or I found out the cloud is just somebody else's computer.

Dave Jones: Right. No, I like that. Yeah. I think there's got to be a good t-shirt slogan in anti-cloud. Oh, yeah. There's got to be. Oh, yeah. There's got to be. Yeah. Yeah. Ah.

Chris Gammell: Uh. But I think.

Dave Jones: My video's finished rendering. I'm quite excited. Hang on. I'm just dragging. Sorry. I'm just doing work in the background here. Yeah. You know.

Chris Gammell: Who's doing anything else these days?

Dave Jones: No. Well, the show's almost over. Jeez, it's minutes away from ending. Oh, come on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Why bother, you know, concentrating through the end of the show? Not like we've. Here we go.

Dave Jones: We'll see if I can transcode using all 12 of my cores, my Xeon cores, and actually still, you know, do not only recording with Audacity, but we're doing the mumbly thing. The mumbly thing. Right. Am I still here? You're still here. Am I still audible?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There you go. Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: I could actually put in a screenshot of my processor cores all running 100%. Or they're like 95% or something. We don't.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's okay.

Dave Jones: No, we don't need that.

Speaker ?: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, so Summer of Code, if you're interested in helping, or you can basically help over on the IRC channel as well. So they're always looking for mentors and things like that.

Dave Jones: IRC. Yeah. Yes. Really keeping that future dream alive. That's right. IRC.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of the BeagleBone Black, this is actually a pretty cool project. It's posted a couple weeks ago, but it's called the Bella or Bela. I'm not sure. But it's just basically, you know, it's a shield, whatever they're called, the shield for on top of those things. Yeah, bloody. But it's using super low latency audio. And so it's nice. I actually, I had never really dug into the BeagleBone very much. But the thing I do know is that they do have two, there's like two basically real-time processors on there. A cape.

Dave Jones: Capes, aren't they called?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think that's right. So there's actually the PRU on board is what does, you can do like real-time stuff on there. And so basically it's like having two micros plus the A9 or whatever the main arm core is. And so I think this uses that. Basically it has hardware to do super, super fast audio. Because, you know, you think about any kind of lag, you start to build up different lags and stuff like that. Yep. So that's pretty cool. I like it. What else? Awesome. Oh. Oh. Yes. The mic. Mike Harrison from Mike's Electric Stuff. Did you see his video? It was a couple of weeks ago now. I did. But where he was stripping down PCBs.

Dave Jones: Are you talking about the one stripping down the PCB? Yeah. Routing. Routing. I thought, when I first saw the video, I thought, oh, okay, he's going to de-laminate them. You know, just peel them off or something. But no, he actually got a CNC machine to route the things out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And it's great. It's like it's a time lapse too because you can really see it like peel back. And it's, how else do you see it? Are you saying like through etching? Is that how you've seen it before?

Dave Jones: Oh, well, I've seen, you know, you can peel back the layers, you know, because they're actually glued. They're epoxy glued. And, you know, well, you can kind of. It depends. You know, sometimes you can. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I would think you take up a lot of the traces with it too.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yep. So. No, it's very cool. Etched them away and did the same thing to a chip as well. Actually, CNC routed the chip. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So he did like the. Yeah. What is that stuff called? Polymide? No. What's that? What's the black stuff called? I don't know.

Dave Jones: Mental block.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he took that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he got down to the silicon. The black. Yeah. Yeah. So that's good.

Dave Jones: And I think he's got a video on how he did it as well. How he actually shot it as well. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. But I haven't watched that one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Chris Gammell: All right. So one or two things left here. This is another interesting one that just came out the other day. Someone posting about making a Linux computer, an embedded Linux computer. But really, I was more interested in using Oshpark, actually, for BGA stuff. So it was just on the edge. I think he or she actually broke some of the rules and kind of just went for it. Right. It was a 0.4 millimeter pitch BGA.

Dave Jones: But doesn't the software flag it and doesn't let you manufacture the board or something?

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

Dave Jones: Oh, really? It doesn't do any sort of DRC on the Gerbers?

Chris Gammell: Nope.

Dave Jones: Okay. I don't think so. Well, then, yeah, you can just go for broken.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I think even if you went through, like, an advanced circuits or something like that, you can still ignore it. I think it'll still do it. I mean, they might call you, too, but... Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't think Oshpark does the... I've never tried it, actually. I just do DRC locally, so...

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't know. I should try that. I should try, like, a one-mil trace or something and see what happens.

Dave Jones: I mean, I know it'll happen, but... So, what happened when they pushed the limits?

Chris Gammell: Well, it worked still. I mean, so, yeah.

Dave Jones: Down to what?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I think it was just... It was, like, four and a half mils instead of five. I think the limit on the service was, like, five. So...

Dave Jones: Half a bee's dick.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, it wasn't... It wasn't, like, a huge thing, but, you know.

Dave Jones: By the way, do you know what an actual bee's dick is?

Chris Gammell: I bet you're about to tell me.

Dave Jones: Somebody on the forum actually researched it, and a bee's dick is actually several millimetres long. I think it's four millimetres long. So, half a bee's dick is, like, two millimetres. It's huge. It's actually huge. Who knew, you know? Like... I'm going to have to stop using the term now. I'm totally...

Chris Gammell: Thank goodness. Thank goodness.

Dave Jones: Totally demoralised. Yeah. I'm going to have to, you know...

Chris Gammell: Just like everyone who hears you say it all the time. All right.

Dave Jones: I had no idea it was two millimetres. There you go. Well, now you know.

Chris Gammell: Boy. Oh, man. Well, the other thing that's interesting about this post, I thought, was, you know, doing... Doing BGA stuff at home, too, I think. And I think we've mentioned that on here a little bit. I still have not taken that leap. I feel like that's the next one that I need to try. I still... You know, I'm not usually picking up chips that are BGA, but... I've talked to some friends about it, and it is surprisingly... You know, it's self-aligning, stuff like that.

Dave Jones: It's not... Yeah, it's self-aligning. The surface tension, you know, pulls the chip in line. And, you know, as long as you get the... You know, you can use one of those cheap-ass Mylar stencils, you know? Yeah. Yeah. You just put the paste on there.

Chris Gammell: Well, the key thing is just not... I found in all things, you know, like soldering with solder paste, it's just like not using too much. That's like... That is like the main... All right. The main thing that I've learned.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because you don't want shorts under your BGA, so... Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: You'll never find them.

Dave Jones: Because you only have to get a small amount of paste on there to get at least a connection. It might not be the world's most, you know, long-term reliable connection or something, but it's going to connect. Whereas if you get too much paste, you know, you've just ruined your day. Yep. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. So, I think... But it can be done. I think that's it for me. I don't know what else is on the list. Oh, there was a cool video about a 1953 documentary on the transistor. That was fun to watch from Bell Labs. I might have to watch that. Yeah. Yep. It wasn't too long. It was like six, seven or eight minutes, so...

Dave Jones: It's... I love those videos back in the day. It's just... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: So funny. Do-do-do. They've got the music at the start and... Yeah. And the transistor, Western Electric Recording. It's great. I think I might go sit down with my lunch and watch this.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's a good one.

Dave Jones: They've got the orchestra music. Oh, here we go.

Dave Jones: We've got a shaky shot of some components.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Speaking of components, someone also... Nick's Fu. I'm not sure who that is. Also posted some nice Shenzhen pictures. So, that was nice as well. On our subreddit.

Dave Jones: Just some like downtown pictures or in the markets?

Chris Gammell: Oh, in the markets. Sorry. Yeah, in the markets. Right. Yep. So, those are good too. Those are kind of some links you just have to watch or look at. So, you can do those. Sweet. Other than that, I will be out in California again next week. And I will be doing a meetup on the 24th. So, if people are in San Francisco and listening to this, I will be doing a meetup on the 24th. Take a look on meetup.com for hardware developer Didactic Galactic. Come hang out, drink some beer.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. So, this is an official Hackaday thing.

Chris Gammell: Supply frame thing, but yeah.

Dave Jones: Supply frame, whatever.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, these are those talks that I've been posting lately too. Yep. So, and I still need to post James, bald engineer. He gave a really good talk last time on Capacitor. So, I need to post those. Cool. Yeah, it was good. All right, man. Way done. Yeah, I think so. I guess have a good week. We'll talk next week. Catch you next time. See ya. See ya. See ya.

Speaker ?: See ya. See ya. x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x