#576 – A literal trainwreck

Missouri: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released February 6th, 2022. Episode 576. A literal train wreck.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the AEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. We can't get enough of watching train wrecks.

Missouri: Slow motion train wrecks.

Dave Jones: And it's not a metaphor.

Missouri: I was going to say, not the social media emotional kind. Right.

Dave Jones: You can almost like insert problem here, you know, and it's like a train wreck, right? Yeah. Yeah, true.

Missouri: Yeah, it could be applied to a lot of things. Troubleshoot. No, no, this is an actual one that Dave posted on Twitter and was a... Apparently, there's people, like you said, they just watch trains all the time.

Dave Jones: They're train aficionados. And it's great. I'm a bit of a train hobbyist myself. And yeah, they set up this camera they paid for. Actually, they got it sponsored. Anyway, they installed this camera in the middle of like this big train junction thing in the middle of Kansas City, Missouri. Oh, Santa Fe Junction. I've actually heard of Santa Fe Junction.

Missouri: Dave, if I may, it's Missouri. It's Missouri. Missouri? You will be corrected. If you go to Missouri... Really? And you say Missouri, they will be... No, it's Missouri. Really? Yeah, it's weird. I don't get it.

Dave Jones: I've been hearing the term Missouri for like... Yeah, forever.

Missouri: I think that's like an in-crowd versus out-crowd thing. Yeah, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. All right. Okay. I'll be sure...

Missouri: You may be familiar. Some social groups, such as Australians and others, have certain ways of saying things. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Okay. Well, there you go.

Missouri: Yeah, it doesn't matter.

Dave Jones: Anyway, Kansas City, Santa Fe Junction. I've actually... I just realized, yes, I've heard of Santa Fe Junction. It's famous. So that's why, anyway, they went to the effort to install a pan-tilt-like remote camera there in the Middle East Junctions, just so that these train hobbyists can watch these trains. You know, they can pan around and watch to follow the trains as they go all day, every day. And you've got to see this. They captured, oh, this is their... Like, this is the greatest moment of their life, I'm sure.

Missouri: Yeah, this is the car crash in the Indy 500. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Missouri: Yeah, this is the hole-in-one while watching golf. This is the effective... Yep. This is the Super Bowl of watching trains, I think.

Dave Jones: Yep. And it's like, there's also planes. There's the plane spotters who go out there, and they sit at the end of runways, you know, near the airports, and they sit there all day, and they film every plane coming in and taking off, you know? And I'm sure they're secretly hoping there's going to be an incident so they've got it on camera. You know, I'm like... Although you don't want to see people's lives put at risk, you know? No, definitely not. Or you don't want to see, you know, like, you know, a couple hundred people die or something like that. But I'm sure they're hoping for a tail strike or something like that. I saw one of these the other day.

Missouri: Let's just say, out of the ordinary type of stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah, out of the ordinary. Yeah. I saw some... Actually, did I re... I'm not sure if I retweeted, but yeah, I saw it on Twitter the other day. It popped up. I don't know where from. I can't watch that stuff. And yeah, there was this huge tail strike.

Missouri: I get very anxious.

Dave Jones: And the jet takes off. Sorry.

Missouri: Anyway, it was great. And yeah, and I... I think this is good too, because this is for people, you know, so like you're sitting here listening and you're like, well, what is my hobby? I sit here, I tinker with electronics, I solder stuff.

Dave Jones: I watch Twitter, you know? Yeah.

Missouri: Yeah. Exactly. Trains. I bitch on Twitter. You could always... You know, there's hobbies everywhere, folks. So, you know, if you're... I get to experience this first... Not the, obviously the crash, but the train enthusiast crowd. I was on vacation at a local place called Wilmington, North Carolina, and just a couple days on. And there's not a ton to do there. You know, it's a nice little cute little town, but I went to a train museum, the Atlantic Coast line, which was at one point the longest train line in the world.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Missouri: I went to a museum there. And so I got to meet a lot of train enthusiasts as well. In fact, if you go in at noon on a Tuesday during a pandemic, there's about four older gentlemen who will tell you everything you ever want to know about trains, and even if you didn't.

Dave Jones: Yes. I've been there. They're great. They're great. I love it. Yep.

Missouri: Yeah. I was thinking, you know, the hobby, you know, that is a hobby where there's still a lot of hands-on electronics type stuff with very practical applications, you know, basically foot switches controlling all the tracks and stuff like that. You can make custom controllers for that sort of thing. Oh, nice.

Dave Jones: And there's, yeah.

Missouri: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of cool things you can do if you're in that space. I never really got into trains myself because one is just, it takes a ton of space, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it does.

Dave Jones: I had a 16 by 8 layout when I was a kid. That's feet. Sorry. That's feet. 16 foot by 8 foot. You got to realize? Sorry. 16 by 4. I had two 8 by 4 tables that I joined together in the garage.

Missouri: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Cool.

Dave Jones: HO gauge. I know that you're wondering that.

Missouri: Okay. Yep. Yeah. I had a train of some gauge at some point, but it just never really took.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, I've got an N-gauge train set right behind me here. Up on the shelf. There's an N-gauge train set. I get down, put it on the floor, and have a play with it.

Missouri: Huh. Yep. Oh, that's the tiny, tiny little one, right?

Dave Jones: That's the tiny one. The N-gauge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're great. There is smaller. There is Z-gauge, which you can find, you know, like people put them inside like a briefcase. Like you can have like a little, like you can actually make a complete track inside like a briefcase with a Z-gauge, and it's kind of cute, you know? But yeah, really ultra fiddly.

Missouri: Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, the, uh, when the, when the crash happens, it's not as much rendering of metal.

Dave Jones: Right. Anyway, we didn't get to the point of what, what actually happened. Yes. They captured a literal train wreck. This freight train, which had a bunch. Well, it had some empty cars and then some light tankers. And I'm not sure if the tankers were full or not, but anyway, it's, it's going under this bridge and it derails and then one of them starts, you know, one starts derailing and that sets the, you know, the billy cart starts wobbling. Then it folds another one and another one. And then the one behind that, which is like a, an empty sort of like truss car kind of thing. I should know the name for this. It isn't a box car because they're, they're just the flat. It's got like a box car of the frame kind of with, you know, like a frame on it with an empty frame.

Missouri: Holding lumber or holding like sheets or something. Right.

Dave Jones: Probably for lumber. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Something that does long things that don't roll it. So they can't roll out or something. Yeah. Anyway, it's a, yeah, this long, you know, freight car. And then it sort of like jumps the other one and then it gets pushed up and up in the air until it hits one of the girders of the bridge. And then it starts compressing. And then the, the funny thing about it is that you think it's going to stop, right? It's like, yeah, this bridge is big, solid steel. It's going to, you know, it's going to stop this train in its tracks. And then the train, then the weight of the cars behind that go, in this house, we obey the laws of physics, right? And yeah, I'm going to keep pushing until that metal breaks. And the bridge didn't break the actual rail car. Yeah. All the girders on the rail on the car just, just started a collapsing. And then, and then it still wasn't done. Once it was done with that, it still wasn't done. And then, then the tankers behind it, they all just folded and went off the tracks and eventually did run out of energy and stopped. But, oh, it's glorious. Classic. It's glorious. Oh, and, and there's audio of it too. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, shout out to virtual rail fan for collecting, for installing this camera and being there, Johnny on the spot when this happened. Oh, goodness.

Missouri: So G, G rail was, uh, that was like a, so like I went to school in Cleveland and just up the lake. So just going like North, Northeast along Lake Erie was Erie, Pennsylvania. And that's like one of the headquarters of G rail. And so like a bunch of people at my school ended up going there, but I never quite understood. I guess there's control. I mean, there's obviously control systems and all these things, even on like the, the huge diesels, but I never quite got what the electronics would have been in all this. I guess it is just control systems and large scale stuff in the, in the engine.

Dave Jones: It'd be large scale control SCADA type systems. Yep. And stuff like that. My, my mate, Doug Ford, I've done a video of him talking about, he's worked on the, uh, PA systems inside trains. And he actually talks through the design of the PA system and all the trade-offs for that. So that's fascinating. If you're into your trains and why, why, why, why trains sound like there's coming to six o'clock central or like, you know, like it sounds like really muffled. If you want to know why it all sounds pretty shit on trains, then, uh, yeah, go watch, uh, Doug's video anyway. So, yep. I love train.

Missouri: I mean, obviously I just, I think the real thing with, with the GE stuff though, too, is that like, it's often they were doing trains. Like, I think a lot of like the train high speed stuff in China and Europe and things like that, you know, those are actually like modernized train systems versus like freight diesel based. It's like, oh, okay. I guess you can get more efficient, but, uh, not sure, not sure what's going on inside those, those cars. If people are listening and you're, you know, either enthusiast or a employee, we'd love to hear about it. Be interesting.

Dave Jones: All trains are very efficient by the way, whether they be diesel or- Yeah. Yeah.

Missouri: One of the most efficient, uh, methods of- Electric, yeah. Of, uh, moving freight. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Absolutely fascinating trains. I love them. In fact, um, a family joke. I'll, I'll tell you a family joke that happened recently. We'll just, just on holidays. We have our big yearly holiday, right? In, uh, January. And we're deciding where to go text year. Like, you know, if you want to rent a place in a nice location for like a week, like a week or two weeks, you have to book like a year ahead, right? So, so we're, we're, we're, so we're sitting at our current, uh, place and we're already thinking where we're going to go next year, right? Because you have to book early. And, you know, and some, somebody says, I want to, I want a farm place with a tractor,

Speaker ?: you know?

Dave Jones: And, and then I said, I want a farm place. Yeah. It's got to have a tractor and it's got to have a train line so I can sit and watch the trains roll past and everyone just cack themselves. And I was serious. I want to, if we're going to, you know, get a farm property in the middle, I want a bloody train line. You need something to look at, right? You know? Exactly. Exactly. Preferably with a rocking chair. Yeah.

Missouri: Dave, Dave's entering his later years where he just wants to sit and rock on a porch. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And watch the trains. And I was serious. You know, I would sit there and watch the trains all day. It'd be great.

Missouri: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah. So there you go. Anyway, everyone was cacking themselves for days after that. And then we're looking for places and we found one. We found one that actually had a train line and everyone's poo-pooing it. So I don't know. Anyway.

Missouri: Well, if you have a train line and you're going through the heart of a country, you might want to stop. Speaking of Ohio and my old, my old stomping grounds, you might want to stop at Intel's new facility opening in, in your question mark.

Dave Jones: In 2032 or something. Yeah.

Missouri: In your question mark, for a dollar, for many billions of dollars, Intel is apparently opening a new facility.

Dave Jones: 20 billion dollars.

Missouri: 20 billion minimum. They said starting at 20 billion up to 100 billion outside of Columbus, Ohio, which is the capital of Ohio. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It literally does say up to 100 billion dollars.

Missouri: Yeah. Whoa. Well, you know that fab equipment doesn't come cheap, so.

Dave Jones: Whoa.

Missouri: Yeah. This is really weird to me.

Dave Jones: How many fabs do you get for that? Like, I'm sure you don't just get one line.

Missouri: Really? Oh, it says actually eight total fabrication plants. Okay.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right.

Missouri: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Wow. Okay. Right.

Missouri: I don't understand this at all, actually. Come on. It's a bargain.

Dave Jones: The first one's 20 billion dollars and then they reckon they can build eight for a hundred.

Missouri: Yeah. Right. Right. Buy one, get three feet free or something. Right.

Dave Jones: What's that rule of government spending? Why build one when you can get two for twice the price? You know? Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Anyway.

Missouri: So the thing I don't get about this, they've got a lot of stuff going for them, but not everything. Right. So they have. So usually what you want, the three things that I know that you want when you have a fab, which other places don't really conform to this either. So maybe I'm just completely off my off base is access to a lot of resources. So like water. Water.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Missouri: Water being one big one. And then power, like really, really reliable power being another, you know, nuclear is best. And then talent and the talent one. The other ones. Okay. Yeah. They have some water. It's not like they're on lake and one of the great lakes or anything like that, but I'm not sure they'd be allowed to be. I think they have nuclear close enough by, and I'm sure they would build a power plant otherwise, even if it's gas based. Okay. That's all makes a ton of sense. In Ohio in general, like they get snowed on, but they don't have bit earthquakes. They don't have, you know, like it's so like, in terms of natural disasters, it's mostly bad winter weather.

Dave Jones: Right. Snow. Okay. Which is all outside, not inside.

Missouri: Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah. Like earthquakes are rough and, you know, mudslides and flooding and all that stuff. All the stuff that happens in Japan mostly. And cyclones. Sorry. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Tornadoes in the U S isn't it?

Missouri: It's not cyclones. Yeah, that's true. They do have, they do have some tornadoes. Usually that's not like as bad in Ohio, but.

Dave Jones: Right.

Missouri: There are, there have been some that touchdown. Okay. So all that stuff out of there, but the real one that I don't get is like the talent piece. Like this is, there's nothing there. I mean, like there are university, they have the Ohio state university, which is the big state university. Good, good engineering program. Not as good as my alma mater in my opinion, but you know, people differ. And you know, Cleveland is not too far away as well. That's a two hour drive away. But like, there's no other fabs in, you know, the closest fabs to there are in Albany, which is, you know, another nine hours away by car. And so like, they'd have to be pilfering people. And so like, they're either going to develop talent.

Dave Jones: I was going to say, that's their plan. Chris, you just offer people money and they come.

Missouri: I guess, but I just, I don't, but this isn't like, this isn't like some like also ran fab either. Right. This is like Intel is bleeding edge, you know, this is, so yeah, I don't get it. I just, I, the talent piece is the part that is very confusing to me for all this stuff. I understand why it's probably Ohio is because I'm sure they got. State benefits. Gigundous tax breaks. Of course I did. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, fine. Okay. And that's also, you know, I was thinking about, I was like, why, why outside Columbus? Then I was thinking like, oh, well, uh, you know, the, all of the fabs in New York are outside of Albany, which is the capital of New York. And all the fabs in Portland are near the, within two hours of the capital and all the fabs in, uh, Arizona are near the capital. And it's like, oh, okay. All right. Yeah. I'm starting to see the, see the trend here a little bit. Right. Yeah. So yeah, we'll see how it goes. Here's my thing though. Here's my real gripe about all this stuff. Unless Intel really is hitting the, uh, the, the, the, the foundry stuff hard. I don't care about more Intel processors. I want more, I want more switching converters. You know what I mean? Like I want, I want TI to open more fabs and they're not.

Dave Jones: Do, do Intel make anything other than their own, uh, dog food? I don't know.

Missouri: Intel has started. So Intel started a foundry business.

Dave Jones: Right.

Missouri: They have not, as of yet, they have not split out their businesses, which is my big prediction is that at some point they're going to split out their IP business from their foundry business. Uh, and you know, take on TSMC in a true foundry model.

Dave Jones: Right.

Missouri: But yes, they have started actually doing foundry stuff, but it's like bleeding edge foundry. So it's still, it's not, you're not going to do, you know, like analog chips there. Right. You're, you're, you're going to be doing FPGA and custom ASICs and things like that. You know, like when Apple is making their next M1 or M2 or whatever they're making, they're going to shop it around a TSMC and Samsung and Intel, and all of them will bid on it. I'm sure. And they'll choose one based on price and availability and whatever.

Dave Jones: So here is my prediction.

Missouri: Okay.

Dave Jones: It has to do with funding and this actually happening. Anyway, here is my prediction. And it's not to do with how it works. It's to do with whether or not this actually happens or not. If you read down in the article, it says to dramatically increase chip production in the United States, the Biden administration aims to pursue Congress to approve $52 billion in subsidy funding. So there you go. So that bill is being Nancy Pelosi, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, would include $52 billion in funding. Right. So if this doesn't pass, this doesn't happen. I bet you, I bet you it is contingent upon the funding bill passing, which is not a guarantee. But, you know.

Missouri: I mean, it's been, they've been talking about it for, I mean, we don't even talk about the U.S. politics stuff, but this has been a driver in all of these announcements that we keep seeing coming through. Like, oh, TSMC building a fab in the U.S. And Samsung expanding in the U.S. And Intel building more fabs in the U.S. It's like, yeah, that's all tied to getting some of that drip feed.

Dave Jones: That's how it works. Because I guarantee you, in the background, they're all going, you know, they're talking to the intels of the world and everyone else. And they're going, oh, look, if we put this bill through, will you make announcements now that you'll, you know, do all these magnificent plans and everything? So they come and say, oh, yeah, yeah, of course. So they come out with these press announcements and make these grandiose plans. And, you know, that's, it all feeds on itself. That's the idea.

Missouri: Yeah, I think that's right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because this bill wouldn't receive any support if these companies hadn't come out public and said, we're going to build it. We're going to build all these, you know, magnificent, you know, $100 billion worth of plants.

Missouri: I think it was a thought exercise, though. Like, okay, say Australia did the same thing. And they said, we want to invest $52 billion. We're going to entice TSMC to build here as well. Like, it's not that, like, it's not the same scale of difference, but like moving a whole fact, I guess TSMC is probably a good example, right? They're talking about opening a US facility and having an IP transfer and all that stuff. And so there's going to be some TSMC official people. There's probably be some local people. They would, you know, this is much, very much like how I used to work at Samsung, right? Samsung had some official Samsung people there and then a bunch of US employees and same kind of thing. And they did, they trained me, right? That is, that is my job out of college was that. And so all that stuff makes sense. But, but like the, the move and, and the thought exercise around like why the US and like, couldn't every country do this then? If they had the, the wherewithal and the dollars behind it to do it, couldn't they all do it? And it's like, it doesn't seem like. No. There's other people doing this sort of thing, but, but I'm not sure why.

Dave Jones: You've got to have the commitment from the major companies to do it. You can't just, you know, Australia just couldn't come out of nowhere and say, we're going to build a fab plant. And then yay announcement. Even if it passes and here's your $50 billion champagne port and corks pop and everything. And then, and then they sit there twiddling their thumbs and you know, okay, well, who's going to build it? And they start looking, eyes start darting around and you know, because yeah, you know, that's why you have to have these agreements at, at least handshake deals in place that, you know, look, you guys, where we're going to announce this funding, you guys make the big press announcements that you're going to, you know, expand. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Missouri: They go hand in hand. I mean, I think the thing that I dislike about all this, I mean, there's a lot of things I dislike about all this, but that this level of like, so like advanced manufacturing, if we just call it advanced manufacturing, that it has become like state craft and maybe it's always been state craft because you know, like I remember seeing like a meme that was about how people being so excited about microcontrollers and transistors and all this stuff. And it's just been about building bombs from the beginning. You know, it was like going to the moon and building bombs and like all the military involvement in early Silicon as well. And it's like, yeah, I know. Shut up. I don't want to know about it. Yes, I know. I know. Yep. I think it's great. I just dislike that. It's all tied up in, in the state craft piece. You know what I mean? Like that this, that this stuff is all pieced together like this, but it, it is. I mean, there, there is like a technological dominance.

Dave Jones: This is all gigantic international dick waving contest. This is like, you know. You're right. Yeah. Of course it is.

Missouri: But there's some actual, yes, there is that at the, at the beginning, but I think there are, you know, some true implications as well. Right. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Of course.

Missouri: Yep. If some like, you know, random country in the middle of nowhere wanted to like go and build an AI engine that was going to be super evil. Right. They at least would have to then get over the hurdles of like all the technological hurdles as well. And whether or not people believe that, you know, the countries that are currently capable of doing all this stuff are, are not building these things. They at least are much closer to that capability. And so it almost is like, it's almost like a nuclear deterrent type of area that we're in now as well. You know, it's like a AI chips are this, are this new weaponized thing. Yeah. Maybe I'm just super, you know, super naive that it's always been weaponized and I'm just super naive about it, but, but I dislike it, Dave. Fine. Harse is my vibe.

Dave Jones: You want to know? Okay. Can we go on to something that I dislike? I'm just, I'm just like, I'm just like peace. I'm just like peace, man. You know? All right. I think, no, no, it's great. I, yeah, no, bring back capability to, in this case, the, uh, US. I mean, that's where freaking Silicon Valley is and all of the, you know, well, a lot of the world's leading tech is not happening.

Missouri: You can afford to build stuff there. That's for sure.

Dave Jones: You know, it's like, yeah, bring it all back. Absolutely. If you're going to, you know, if you're going to, if Congress is going to fund something, yeah. Fund something like this, not another bloody, you know, 200 F bloody 35s, you know?

Missouri: Yeah. I mean, Jesus. Totally on board. Totally on board. Yeah. Yeah. The, the downstream effects of, again, all of the, all of the, all of the military stuff that might've built up Silicon in the first place. We are all benefiting from it. From the fact that I am talking to Dave across thousands of kilometers with a very fast connection based on Silicon and optic fiber optics and everything else. So.

Dave Jones: Yep. Anyway.

Missouri: Cool. Technology.

Dave Jones: All right. So Chris is not a fan. What I'm not a fan of.

Missouri: All right. Let's hear it.

Dave Jones: Is yet another freaking Indiegogo marketing wank.

Missouri: Other things that technology are enabling. Indiegogo campaigns that are completely bogus.

Dave Jones: Here it is. It's, it's another Indiegogo. I'm, I might shoot like a video on this or I might not. I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm like losing the will to live almost against these products. It's, it's, it's the Cara Pure. Make water pure from the air. Yes. Where have you heard this before? I've, I've done at least two videos of two different water from air things. The bloody font.

Missouri: My dehumidifier that used to live in my basement. Dehumidifier. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Oh, but it's not a dehumidifier. It's not. It uses a magnificent new desiccant technology that makes it not a dehumidifier. Yeah. Right. Oh, bloody hell. Anyway. It's, it, yeah, it's raised almost a million bucks. It's got a five. It's got two days left. And yeah. And basically this one is not really advertising that it's, well, it is water from the air.

Missouri: That's, you know, thing like it's in the title and everything. Well, make your own water from the air is kind of disingenuous as well, because you're just collecting water from the air. Really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm not worried about that.

Missouri: You're like, okay, let's gather some hydrogen, gather some oxygen.

Dave Jones: I have no problem with making water from the, with claiming make water from the air. It's fine. It works in quote marks. Okay. This, this, this, this product works. It's fine. Right. But then, then you go watch their videos and all this stuff. And then they sort of like very quickly forget about all that. The water comes from the air. The thing that differentiates this is that it's got a filter inside and it's got an alkaline thing. So it's the most seven mineral enriched. It's got a pH of 9.2 and it's got, you know, like it's the best tasting water ever. And it's like, oh my God, you've got this thing. Okay. Literally in the photo, in the thing, it is sitting next to what's called a kitchen. And in this kitchen, I can see what's called a tap. Okay. Humans have gone to all this effort and expense to like plum water to your house. It's magical. You turn the tap on and water comes out and it's almost free. Like you pay very little money for that water. Like per liter. And then you can buy these amazing things that attach to your tap. They're called filters. Oh, and they filter your water and they make, and they can even change the pH if you like and make it taste any way you like. This thing is doing absolutely nothing except costing you money.

Missouri: I'm starting to think you're feeling a little snarky here. Yeah. What's interesting about this. I was just talking to a friend about prototyping tools that are out there and like some of the platforms. So he made, it was called cut, make, cut or make, cut, make or something like that. I forget what it was. I could pull it up, but it was like a sheet metal thing. But we were, we were kind of going back and forth about just how easy it is to prototype products these days. And like all told, right? I think I mentioned, I did like a laser cut thing recently. I have 3d printers, you know, it doesn't look a hundred percent, but like the amount of stuff that you could like. So looking at this crazy Indiegogo thing, it's nice ish, but it's not anything crazy special, but to make an actual like prototype for this sort of, at least for a video shoot for an Indiegogo, like you could totally do that for like less than 10 grand. You can make a really fit and finished type of prototype.

Dave Jones: Oh, I think for this one, they spent a lot more because it's like, it's really big and it's like formed stainless steel and stuff.

Missouri: Yeah, no doubt you could, but I'm just saying that, I'm just saying that the capabilities are all there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. The advancements in prototype and technology are phenomenal. Yeah. Especially if you're making a small, small little farting, farting gadget kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Missouri: You know, we, we could, we could suck at people for money using real hardware, Dave. That's what I'm really trying to say. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, you don't need the fancy animations and stuff. You can actually make the real thing for not much. You know?

Missouri: That's right.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. Yep. I know.

Missouri: Oh my.

Dave Jones: So, oh boy. And it's just, oh, so I think don't quote me.

Missouri: Why does this still get to you? That's, that's why I don't understand. Like, why does this still get to you?

Dave Jones: It still gets me because people are being suckered in and wasting their money. I don't like when people are wasting their money on crap like this with basically with marketing that makes it feel like they need this. Right. They're making them feel like they need this. They don't. You've got a tap, which gives you water for free. You just add a filter to it and you don't have to expend a single watt of energy actually producing the water. It's already comes to your home. The energy's already been expended to get it to your home. Don't spend an extra 200 watts per liter, even if you can get that. In energy, the world needs to save energy, not piss it away with stupid products like this. Right? It's just, it's just ridiculous. Use the water pressure that's coming into your house.

Missouri: If you're going to be a crypto investor and then say that they shouldn't spend energy on this, I think that's a little disingenuous.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but that's infrastructure and. Yeah. Okay.

Missouri: Well, I'm just, you know, I'm just saying, just giving it a little back to you there. Fine.

Dave Jones: Fine. Fine.

Missouri: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But it's just like, no, but when you can do exactly the same thing that this does and you can do it for one fifth the price and you can do it for and expend no energy. Yeah.

Missouri: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I just. Like, it's just, it's just pointless. It is completely. No doubt. No doubt.

Missouri: I just, this, this personally doesn't, doesn't rile me up the way, the same way it does for you, obviously. But I get where it's coming from. I think I can, I can feel it, you know?

Dave Jones: Oh, I just, yeah. I don't like seeing people getting sucked out of their money. It's just. Yeah. Yeah. Well. Ridiculous.

Missouri: Don't go on Instagram. Oh boy. Or other, other platforms like that. Yeah. I mean, there's just at any kind of advertising platform is like that. Right.

Dave Jones: I post to Instagram. I don't use it. I don't like watch things on there. I don't follow anyone really on Instagram. I don't, I don't know. Why? Are you getting bombarded daily with like.

Missouri: No, I'm just saying any kind of, you know, like there's always, like, I feel like, you know, this is like a wellness product, you know, and this is the general wellness category. There's a lot of snake oil and similar in that, in that area of like high pH water.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. This magic patch will protect you from five extracts. Yeah. Radiation.

Missouri: One weird trick to remove belly fat.

Dave Jones: Right. And yeah. Right. Okay. All right. Ah, boy. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. They just keep doing this over and over and everyone. And, and, and the other thing is this will fail, right? People will get these machines and it will not produce the water from the air. Right. You will get like, you know, like one 10th of what they claim. If you're lucky, probably. It depends on your circumstances. And then you just, you know, Oh God, no, no. Anyway. Yeah. I might do a video on it. Just laughing at it. I don't know.

Missouri: Other things where money went down the drain. Sigfox, unfortunately has filed for bankruptcy. People don't remember Sigfox. Sigfox is a Laura, Laura WAN based technology where they own the towers and you rented them more akin to a cell service rather than a Laura WAN service where you might be standing up your own collector node thingy. Do you remember Sigfox at all or no? They had a very nice logo.

Dave Jones: I do. I vaguely remember. Yeah. Vaguely. It's like. Yeah.

Missouri: They were putting up a lot of towers, you know, a lot of the.

Dave Jones: Oh, they are French. Are they? Okay. That's right.

Missouri: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Missouri: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's a lot of moolah to raise 300 million bucks.

Missouri: I think they were selling. They were selling based on the promise of low power nodes everywhere. And the promise of IOT is, you know, the being, being what it is. They've been around for a while, actually.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But we have cellular everywhere that can do this. But that's not very good for low power devices, of course. But I don't know. The whole low power device thing is kind of meh. You know. Yeah. It's just going to always be niche. It's not like we're not going to have freaking sensors in every single freaking door and every single freaking light bulb and every single like, you know, it's just ridiculous.

Missouri: I think, you know, there's different waves that have come through. Obviously, there was Sigfox. There's LoRaWAN based things that are the Things Network. And now Helium's out there doing the same kind of thing as well. Speaking of crypto-y kind of things, that's Helium is like a backhaul that has blockchain who cares. You know what Helium is or no?

Dave Jones: Is it yet another crypto thing? I don't know.

Missouri: It's a crypto thing. I would say it is the closest thing that it's like it's a cryptocurrency, but it's the closest thing towards like an actual use case. But I don't feel like the economics are going to be there to support it all. So basically, anyone out there listening right now could go and buy, I don't think they call them minors, but they're basically like they're listening nodes. And if you have this, I'm just going to call it a minor, even though I don't think it's called a minor. If you have this minor setup, basically, it's like it has a Wi-Fi connection in your house or Ethernet connection. It has whatever the localized LoRa frequencies are. So in the US, it's I think 915. In Australia, I think it's 912 megahertz. In Europe, it's 898 megahertz. So whatever the local radio frequency is. And basically what it's doing is it's just listening for packets from various devices that might be out in the world. So say like I'm in my lab right now. I have view of the street and say a dog walked by with a dog with a tracker tag on it that was just chirping out, hey, my GPS location is whatever, whatever. And then my device listened to that packet and then sent it back over the real internet. I would get credit for that and I would be able to witness a transaction, basically.

Dave Jones: Oh, so you get like a finder's fee kind of thing, do you? Is that-

Missouri: Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. Yeah. And so that's how I understand it, at least. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: I have not. I've heard of it, but I haven't looked into it.

Missouri: Yeah. And so there's like proof. I forget what they call it. It's not like proof of transaction, whatever it is. But basically it's like if you've heard the same packet that other people have heard because these packets go much further, so it's almost like a overlapping cells like in a cell network.

Dave Jones: Oh, this one is proof of coverage.

Missouri: That's it. Yep. Proof of coverage.

Dave Jones: Okay. Everyone's, you know, there's all different stakes. There's proof of work. There's proof of stake. Yeah. Stake. And this one's got proof of coverage and there's a hole. Right. Okay.

Missouri: Yeah. And so if you do that, then you get some fractional amount of this HNT, the helium token, and then that could apparently be earned back. My argument against it is that there's not nearly going to be enough nodes. There's not enough dog collars in the world to actually pay all the people. Exactly. Would eventually. So eventually the economics are just going to peter out, I think. Yeah. No. That's my prediction.

Dave Jones: This will. Yeah. Yep. Same here. I have the same prediction for this now that I.

Missouri: Because at the beginning, all these people were, you know, they bought these miners and they were making all this money because they juiced the rate for, you know, each dog tag was worth, you know, if you heard it with your listener, it would be worth a lot. And so like people were like super excited about it and like, oh, I can make all this money. And so they all went out and bought them and now there's lots of listeners in city centers and, you know, they're making less and less money per transaction.

Dave Jones: So there's lots of listeners and no transmitters. Okay. Yeah.

Missouri: And so like, I get it. Like they're trying to build up a network. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally get the concept.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Missouri: Yeah. I think the big concern is that Amazon is doing the exact same thing. So now.

Dave Jones: Right.

Missouri: Amazon's doing the same thing. They're selling it as a, like a centralized service instead of this decentralized service and they call it sidewalk, which is confusing because Google also has a thing called sidewalk labs, I believe, but it's a different thing, but it's Amazon sidewalk. And basically now like your, your Amazon echo is in your house. It's already connected to your local wifi. And it also has a Laura capable listener. And now all of these, you know, echoes that are all over the place, all of these Amazon based devices, they're all listening. And then Amazon is basically bundling up and selling the service to someone that might be making dog tags. I'm just using the same example here, but they might be making a Laura dog tag. And then now Amazon is handling that traffic instead of helium. And so there's going to be like this, there's going to be more and more things like, I forget there's another one out there that's doing.

Dave Jones: Oh, I'm sure there's, I'm sure there's more than one.

Missouri: I think Comcast did it at one point, like every Comcast cable box also had it built in.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Missouri: Yeah. Yeah. And like, it was good in Philadelphia, like in that part of the area, but like, but it has, you have to be so ubiquitous to do the coverage. You either have to, you know, go and do it yourself and like put these nodes everywhere, or you need to make it so easy that they're everywhere. Like Amazon is probably closer to doing.

Dave Jones: Even if they, even if everyone has one, it still relies on people actually paying for the service somehow. That's right. And using it. And if nobody wants to track their dog, then, you know, I mean, or we track themselves, you know, then like all track their, I don't know, their keys or something.

Missouri: Sure. That's another good example. Yeah. Like asset tracking in general. Right. So like, yeah. Like your wallet, your keys.

Dave Jones: It's always going to be incredibly niche. I think. I think.

Missouri: No, I think it will be. Obviously I'm in this industry. I'm.

Dave Jones: Yes. Of course.

Missouri: Very invested now. But I think it's really a comparison against like cellular, right? Cellular keeps getting like cheaper and lower battery power. Right. That's really the big. Yeah. But because.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But cellular has a feature that every single human on the planet wants, which is their smartphone. Right.

Missouri: That's right. But it's basically piggybacking on that coverage. Right. So now like you have a low power device. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. On that coverage. Exactly. Using CADM1, using NB-IoT, these other like newer, newer power modes.

Dave Jones: Systems, I think. Unless. And that's why these other systems can only work. It can only succeed if they have a niche in say like low power. Whereas you can't really get that with cellular. You can't really, you know, run a little cellular transmitter every second for and power it from a coin cell. Right. At least I don't think so.

Missouri: Yeah. Well, you can't do that with lower either. I mean like just because of the transmit requirements. But yeah. I mean, you can. I mean, not from a. You could do it from a coin cell maybe, but it would not. It would not last very long. Yeah. Right. You need a lot of coin cells.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I think they're reliant upon some, you know, some other niche. Like technical requirement. Sure. Whereas otherwise, why wouldn't you just use cellular, which everyone's got and it's everywhere. Why would you build a new thing from scratch?

Speaker ?: So.

Missouri: Well, I think some of it is size and battery capacity and all that stuff. Exactly. That's what I'm saying.

Dave Jones: And it's going to have a niche, a niche market.

Missouri: And you keep saying niche. I get the niche part, but I don't understand. I don't understand what the alternative. You're saying the LP WAN stuff, right? So like in this case, Sigfox, which is gone now. Yep. Gone now. Yep. Laura based stuff, which might be using Sidewalk or might be using Helium. Yep. Yep. You're saying that's super niche in a commercial context.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Missouri: Yes. I agree with that. I think.

Dave Jones: I think it does not have the consumer ability to be worth, you know, $300 million or something. You know, it's like, it just doesn't have the market.

Missouri: I think that's probably right. Yeah. I think that the amount of instrumentation needed in a home or a mobile, you know, like on a person that might be walking down the street, walking their dog, how many sensors are going to be on a person that's talking back? No. Personally, I love that like sci-fi, like kind of feel to it all.

Dave Jones: Yeah, fine. It's fine in sci-fi, but you don't want it in the real world. Nobody wants it in the real world. Nobody's going to pay for it. So it's going to be limited to like factories and automated complexes and, you know, like stuff like that.

Missouri: I think that's right. I think maybe not factories for like LPWAN stuff. I think the perfect LPWAN application is like soil sensors on a farm talking back to a centralizing node, like a collector node. I think that is, that's like the number one. That's why my brain always goes there. I think that's very useful. There's no self coverage.

Dave Jones: You don't need that everywhere. Somebody just installs their own system. That's it. They install their own system for their own need.

Missouri: One or, you know, low number of collector nodes versus every household having a collector

Dave Jones: node. Yeah. No.

Missouri: I think that's right.

Dave Jones: See, even if you build it into everyone's little googly box, everyone's little Amazon box or whatever, it's like, it's still not going to get used because people just don't have the use case for it. People don't want sensors on their...

Missouri: Well, we're seeing people, but I think the thing that could be is there could be commercial intent within a city context, right? So I'm just kind of in my brain, like I said, I usually think for like LPWAN, LoRa based things, I think remote, no other option. You want low power. You want it to just be sitting there chirping back data. Fine.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Missouri: I think there is a potential. I think you are correct. People are not going to instrument the hell out of themselves and their dog and their baby carriage and everything else like that. I don't see that happening because there's just not enough nerds and there's not enough money in it for external people to be doing that sort of thing. However, I do think there might be enough coverage for like, yeah, I mean, maybe like, you know, like truck tracking and, you know, just general asset tracking in a commercial context within a city, you know, separating rural versus urban. There may be that sort of thing, but are there enough businesses?

Dave Jones: But, but they already do that successfully. Once it goes onto the DHL truck, like it's scam when it gets on the scam, when it gets off, why do you need to know? And they've got a single GPS transmitter in the truck. So they know where the truck is solution done. Right.

Missouri: There's richer data you could have from that, but I think you're right there. There are current solutions where there's like, where there's true value for it. Yeah. There are a lot of solutions already. Are there other solutions waiting to be uncovered? I think so as well. I mean, like, I think there are other things there, but I couldn't, I couldn't enumerate them. I just think that there is a potential for urban based multi-collector nodes, but it's definitely not that personalized. I need, I need to track my dog. I need to track my purse. I need to track my car. And then it's just talking all these different nodes. That's kind of like, also like the Apple air tag is kind of doing that too. And I think it's right. That's just using people's phones as the same, you know, I, again, I just think of them as collector nodes and it's the best systems there. I think the air air tag, which uses just Bluetooth and you're just walking, you know, it's like, all right, someone stole my backpack and it's just going past someone else's iPhone. And the iPhone recognizes this tag number and throws it back to the database. Okay. That that's actually pretty good. Like in a city context, it's somewhat likely that you might pick up that.

Dave Jones: Well, I was, I was, I was going to say some of these things already exist for free. Like if you do the iPhone, Apple tag thing, everyone already has this device as free. If you're talking about the Amazon Alexa or whatever it is, the googly box or whatever it is, right? Everyone would not say everyone, but like, you know, a huge number of people have all these things, right? They already have those things. So if you can build it into that, you essentially get the network for free. Right. And then whether or not you build on top of that makes no difference. You can either, it doesn't matter. Like the, the system's not going to fail. Whereas like this system, this one we're talking about, where is it? The Sigfox thing. Yeah.

Missouri: Sigfox was trying to bootstrap up a network themselves and building a network effect is extremely tough.

Dave Jones: Yeah. These boxes are, they're, they're just gone.

Missouri: Right. Right. Right. Right. I mean, and again, like, like you said with the cellular stuff too, there was a commercial context to build like the value to the cell companies to build out all these towers and do all the data sharing and do all the handling. Like you paid that. I paid that. We pay that every month with our cell phone bill. You know what I mean? Like that is what is funded all those towers.

Dave Jones: And it happens slowly over what, how long have we had mobile phones? 30 years or something now almost.

Missouri: More than that.

Dave Jones: Really? I mean, yeah, but I'm talking like, oh yeah. Like the first bricks and stuff, but you know, yeah. Anyway.

Missouri: 40, 40, 40 max. But it's still like, yeah, there's just so much value there that's been over time and so much like.

Dave Jones: And it's slowly built up. If it failed. If nobody wanted a big brick phone to walk around with and then it would have failed, right? Nobody would have built more towers, but you know, they, they caught on and Hey, all these high status people, they wanted their, you know, mobile brick phone. So they built, you know, more towers and, and just, yeah, it caught on, but, but it didn't happen all at once. Somebody didn't go right. We're going to do the entire city with, you know, a thousand freaking towers. And, you know, here's this new brand new technology. No, you know, happened slowly over decades.

Missouri: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, you know,

Missouri: Wendover productions actually just put out a video about self self first works. Oh, I haven't watched that yet. It was very good. What's interesting to me was like the amount of things that they had to explain. And then I was like, Oh yeah, like this is not common knowledge. Like they're like talking about like amplitude modulation, frequency modulation. It's like, if you're trying to like start from zero, you're trying to explain like basically RF is like, Oh wow. There, there was just a lot there. And you think about the, you know, and they get into like, I think like quadrature amplitude modulation. Oh really? Okay.

Dave Jones: I'm surprised they went to that depth, you know, Wendover.

Missouri: Basically they're just talking about like all of the different ways that they gain more bandwidth using cell towers and modern, modern methods.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Cause I can remember, this is probably before your time, Chris, but I can remember using the scanner. I can use it. I can remember using a, a scanner to listen to people's phone calls. Right. This is back in the old analogs and it's boring as batshit. Right. You know, yeah. I'll be home for, you know, dinner at six o'clock or, you know, like, Oh God. Yeah. Yeah.

Missouri: Think about how much they paid for that, for the right. Yeah. I know for that. Yeah. Yeah. Those phones were not cheap, man. They were not cheap at all. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But, but analog phones. Yeah. You could listen to the, like they had an analog part of the spectrum was I am, it was, you know.

Missouri: I mean, they were basically walkie talkies, right? I mean, that's right.

Dave Jones: They were basically like, exactly.

Missouri: They weren't even like time. Actually, I think Wendover stuff goes through this. They, they basically weren't even like time multiplexed or whatever. They said like maximum of 32. 32 calls in a city per tower at a time. Yep.

Dave Jones: And I can remember picking those up on the scanner. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's a, yep.

Dave Jones: Jeez. That, that, that would have been, yeah, that would have been late eighties. Maybe. I think. Yeah. I can't remember exactly, but yeah.

Missouri: Yeah. A throwback recommendation. If people have not basically around this time is when all the satellite stuff started up too. Right. So they talked about like starting up iridium satellites. Satellites, that was all to like replace the business traveler before GSM came out. That was the eccentric orbits. That's the book. The last third is kind of boring. You have to kind of battle through that, but it is a interesting story that I still recommend.

Dave Jones: I think you mentioned this before. Yeah.

Missouri: I have definitely. Yes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah. You have. I remember. Cool. Yeah.

Missouri: Yep. See, Dave, isn't the world of IOT moderately interesting?

Dave Jones: Until it fails and then you go to the next startup.

Missouri: I mean, here's the thing. I think the direct line to like needing a business case for all this stuff is pretty strong, right? If you don't have a good business case and you're trying to like start an IOT company, you are going to be in a world of pain. You could raise $300 million, but if there's not like a real business behind it, it's not going to happen.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. So what's the premise? Sorry, I haven't read the article. What's the final conclusion? Have they gone bankrupt and it's all just folded? They're trying to get bought, basically. Oh, they're trying to get bought.

Missouri: They're like in receivership or whatever. I don't know what the French version of that is, but they have assets. And there are people using it.

Dave Jones: They usually don't survive this. Even if somebody buys it, the system won't actually survive, I'm sure. So if you've got a Sigfox box, I reckon even if they get bought, don't expect it to work in a few years time. Yeah.

Missouri: It's tough too. I mean, so what happens with all this stuff and all of these services is like, okay, well, there are. So the article lists $24 million, sorry, 24 million euro of revenues. So people are paying them. So there are commercial users.

Dave Jones: That's pretty good revenue.

Missouri: Which means though, that if they're not stuck, if they don't stick around, then what? Right?

Dave Jones: Well, okay. If a company, if a $300 million company like this fails with $24 million in revenue, holy crap, that's only a 10 to 1 ratio. That's really, that's pretty good business for anyone that's on the stock market, right? A price to earnings ratio.

Missouri: Sure, but not for a startup, right? But this is $300 million raised, not a-

Dave Jones: Yeah, but this should be, if you've got $24 million in income, this should be a solid company, right? This should have a solid foundation.

Missouri: Well, no, 91 million euro losses. So that means their costs were- Oh, boy. Their costs were 91 plus 24.

Dave Jones: Too many half million dollar a year programmers, right?

Missouri: Yeah, 115, $115 million a year to operate. And that's the thing, like operating towers and equivalent stuff. It's just like, if it's people heavy, if it's tech heavy, and if you're trying to invest- You know, one of the things with a lot of the cell phone companies too, is like, they need to make enough money to be investing in the next generation. Oh, yeah. Like, my cell phone bill today is paying for development of 6G. You know, none of this 5G crap. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But that's how it's always gone, right? Like, you know- Exactly.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Missouri: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Wow. But yeah, I'm just like, if you can't make it with $24 million income, then nobody's going to make it, like almost. Well, it's not $24 million of profit, mind you.

Missouri: It's $24 million of revenue.

Dave Jones: I know, but that's actually a large, but that shows that there's a large user base for that thing. And if that user base wasn't enough to keep it afloat, then, you know, wow. Yes. As I said, I don't think you can make this happen. It is like, it is that, okay, there's a $24 million market for it, say, of people. That means you can't build your own infrastructure. You have to piggyback off something else, right?

Missouri: Maybe, yeah. I mean, so in an alternate case and all this stuff, right? So all of these things, you know, your cell phone, an LPWAN thing, whatever, they're all radios. All radios still got to talk back to some other radio, right? Yeah. There's no getting around that one. There's no talking to, I guess, even if they're talking to a satellite, they're talking to another radio on the satellite. And so I would imagine that in this case, they can maybe try and stand up their own Sigfox, you know, like basically receiving the same packets and trying to operate it themselves. So, you know, so again, so if you're making a dog tag that is on the Sigfox network and it's expecting all these Sigfox towers around France or wherever they're deployed to, you in theory could say, well, all of our customers are in Paris proper. We're going to set up our own Sigfox-based towers that are not Sigfox anymore and maybe handle that infrastructure. But the dog tag company is paying Sigfox to not have to worry about that stuff. Right. And so the downside is that there is no business case behind it that supports continuing on. And that's where it sucks.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yep.

Missouri: Yeah. So I feel bad for all the people that chose Sigfox. I hope they can transition out okay or they can buy the IP because that's just a, that's, imagine just cell phones not working tomorrow. That would, that would suck.

Dave Jones: Well, we've talked about this before how, you know, like this has been going on for a decade, right? All these internet of things, gadgets, everyone has their own little system for, you know, if you've got a data logger or something and then it uploads to the ethernets and uploads to the cloudy thing. Then they've got their own cloud servers. And then when that cloud server stops working, your whole system just shuts down, right? And stops working. It's, it's dead.

Missouri: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Missouri: Gonski.

Dave Jones: That's why I made the prediction donkeys years ago that, that the Amazon one would be the only one that actually survives. If you want a product that works in 10 years time, the Amazon one is probably the only one that's still going to be around. That's the infrastructure that'll still be around unless they do a Google and drop it. Like, you know, they drop the old, you know, products that aren't making.

Missouri: Google also has a cloud offering. If you didn't know.

Dave Jones: Oh, did they? Yeah. Yeah.

Missouri: There's many, many large scale players of different sizes, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it is true infrastructure stuff.

Dave Jones: I've actually used them myself. I've, I've used, you know, temperature loggers in the lab here and they just don't work anymore because, you know, the system isn't around. So.

Missouri: The system is down. The system is down.

Dave Jones: What's that from? I'm not.

Missouri: Strong, strong, bad, man. That's like, that's like such an old reference that I feel bad making it. It's from what? What is it? Explain. Strong, bad, strong, bad emails. No. I'm going to explain. It was called Homestar Runner. It was a web animation made with Adobe Flash, which has been dead for like 10 years. So I think this stuff came out in like, I don't know, 2001, like when I started college. And. Right. Okay. Right. Me and my friends were. Anyways. Okay. This is the early. You're cool. I love you.

Dave Jones: The early interwebs.

Missouri: All right. I'll send, I'll send you a link. I think there's a YouTube version of it. So.

Dave Jones: Okay. All right.

Missouri: I'm sure. You did probably listen to the show, but when Philip was on the show from Phil's lab, he mentioned something and he was like talking about like, oh, I, you know, I learned all this stuff on YouTube. And then you mentioned like, what was it like when you were in college? I was like, well, YouTube wasn't invented when I was in college. It's like, oh yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm going to be on Phil's lab Monday. Oh, great. Yeah. I'm going to be on this. Those are great.

Missouri: Yep. Great guest. Yes.

Speaker ?: Cool.

Dave Jones: Oh boy.

Missouri: I'm not going to stop feeling old anytime soon. Am I Dave? No, no, you're not. It's going to get worse.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know. Right. New daddy. Yep. And only accelerates from here. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Congratulations. Yep. Cool. All right. Do we have any last minute Reddit things?

Missouri: Another thing that makes me upset, ST Micro expects 16 to 20% revenue growth in 2022. Yeah. I wonder how they're getting that one.

Dave Jones: What are they doing? A stock buyback or something?

Missouri: No, I think it, no. It's just like people have to pay more to get their chips. Oh, people have to pay more. Okay.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. They charge more. Yeah.

Missouri: We just like tripled our price because we could. I don't know. Apparently it's hard to get our chips. Who knew? Oh, my God. Yep. Every time. Every time it comes up, I just cringe a little bit and people are like, oh, yeah, STM 32. Oh, boy. Okay. Well.

Chris Gammell: Yep. All right.

Missouri: Bubble gum tap shoes, Dave. Double bubble gum tap shoes. Okay. Yes. What else is on there? Nowhere. CryptoWallet. We had Joe on the show last week. That was cool. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. Although there was some dispute over whether or not it was actual reverse engineering. Whether or not.

Missouri: Yes. Me and my stupid tweeting.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Yep. Don't tweet.

Missouri: What's your take on this, Dave? Can you reverse engineer an open source product?

Dave Jones: I actually replied to you on the Twitter. I can't remember exactly what I said, but it was.

Missouri: I was on vacation.

Dave Jones: Right. I'm sure it was something along the lines of, yes, you. Well, no. I actually proposed a new term, forward engineering. Yeah. Forward engineering instead of reverse engineering. Influencers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that fell completely flat.

Missouri: Always trying to make a new term. A new term. Yeah. You already trademarked it, didn't you?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I bought the domain name. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: And yeah, that fell flat. But yeah, there's, you know, somebody else made the comment. I think it was just last night I saw that, yes, you can still reverse engineer an open source product because it's not just, there's more to a product than just the source code and the PCB file. Right. There's like more to the engineering behind it. And if you have to do something that's clever or subtle or something like that, that wasn't in the original design, then that's, you know, that can be deemed reverse engineering, I guess. But I am with you. I'm with whoever raised that, that it's not the correct term, probably.

Missouri: I think there should be another term.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Missouri: There's probably something better. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, hacking. A lot of people said hacking. Hacked is, yeah. I don't know. I mean, yeah. No. I think I'm just. But you're not hacking. I don't like the term. It's open source. It's designed to be hacked. So boasting that you hacked an open source product is not a boast. Right? Yeah. It's like, no. Right, right, right. I hope the case. No. It's like, it's designed to be. No. But I, yeah, I think I said in my tweets something along the lines of that Joe did something that the original intender was, like the original product was not designed to do. The actual product was designed to hide that pin code. Right? It was designed to hide that pin code. And he reverse engineered it in quote marks to extract that thing. And he didn't do it just by changing the source code. Right? He did it by actually, you know, hardware. Yeah.

Missouri: Fault injection.

Speaker ?: Fault injection.

Dave Jones: Fault injection attack on the hardware, on the supply rail or something. Right? So I still think it's, it has a decent claim to be called reverse engineering. But yeah, I think, I think there's a better term. I don't know. Yeah. Leave it in the comments. What do you think? Yeah.

Missouri: People can argue in our comment section. Please do.

Chris Gammell: You know, we really, we miss the arguments. Feeling lonely. Yeah. Yeah. Right. If you're ever sad and lonely.

Dave Jones: In the podcast world, it's just, it's lonely.

Chris Gammell: Leave an angry comment here. We don't even need a real email. Oh boy.

Missouri: I am a hundred percent Linux now, Dave. That is the last thing I'll talk about. Cause that's pretty much the last thing I have to talk about.

Dave Jones: Well, that was the last thing you posted to me about privately too. Was, you know, Oh, I'm all Linux now. And I'm super proud and puffing my chest out.

Missouri: I'm not super proud. I'm just saying it's just a thing, you know?

Dave Jones: Right. I have absolutely no, there's no driver that takes me to Linux. Get it. Get it. I get it. That's good. That's good. Here I'll wait. That's pretty good. Yeah. There's nothing driving me towards anything remotely driving me towards wanting to use. Yeah.

Missouri: I'm trying to think of what it would take to get you to Linux. I think probably not much. I mean, there's some things that are legitimately easier once you're in that, that mode. And there's some things that are harder too.

Dave Jones: For every person I've had told me, oh, switch to Linux. Everything's easier. I've had another person tell me. I don't, I'm not trying to, no, no, no.

Missouri: I'm not, I'm not trying to switch your, no, no, no. I'm not trying to switch.

Dave Jones: That's a nightmare, right? That you'll just be, spend all your time dicking around with stuff, right? And I don't want to dick around with stuff.

Missouri: I have done a significant amount of that already with my computer. So like, no doubt there is, you know, you've said many times on the show before, you just want it to work out of the box. Yep. I'm not sure Windows plays 100% to that tune, but that's okay. Oh, it's pretty. Yeah, it's close enough. I think a little bit closer, especially on some of the hardware drivers and the stuff that matters. No doubt that that is, I think, I think Windows is better than that. But yeah, I think on some of the development stuff, I think, I think what it really was, if it would be is if, if you were doing some more command line based development stuff, you would, you would probably see the light because command line in Windows, you know, WSL is a new thing, newer thing. But like doing command line code compilation is, I am not a fan in Windows or in WSL. I think that's our Windows subsystem. But I don't.

Dave Jones: So. Right. Exactly.

Missouri: So yeah, I think, I think you're right. I do.

Dave Jones: The only command line stuff I do in Windows is my handbrake script, which I've got. And also I do the occasional joining of clips manually using the DOS prompt.

Missouri: I will tell you another one that actually, that, that hits me is I cannot stand every time I see a tutorial and they're like, now open Terra term. And I'm like, this is a program from like the 1995. It has not changed at all. It is the most unintuitive thing ever. And that's like the best we have. And they're like, well, you can also use the serial output from Putty. And I'm like, that's like two years later. This is not.

Dave Jones: And it's. Yeah. I feel you. Yep. I'm totally in this. Yes. Yes. Every time like serial program. Why isn't there just one gorgeously simple serial terminal program?

Missouri: There were some people. I met some people in Chicago who were trying to do that, but they didn't, you know, they never found a business model around it because it's like, who's going to pay for a serial terminal?

Dave Jones: No one's going to pay for it. Yeah, exactly.

Missouri: One of, one of my favorites in Windows was to open up the Arduino IDE and just open the terminal button. That was actually very nicely done. I thought that was great.

Dave Jones: I have done that before. Yeah. Yeah.

Missouri: I mean, it's super simple. It, you know, so like that's. That's not bad. I'm not saying that's a great answer, but that's one of, if that's one of the better answers, then, you know, you're in kind of a rough spot. I really liked that part of, you know, having that on Windows or on Linux and Mac actually. Yep. But if you do it, you'll be a hero. If you do it. Yeah. Come on, folks. How hard could it be? Just go, go write some code and stuff. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Start a go for a starter, starter, a Kickstarter Indiegogo thing. The world's best serial terminal program. And you'll probably guess.

Missouri: There's just got to be something better for Windows, right? It's probably out there and I just don't know about it, but I don't.

Dave Jones: Same, same here. Yeah. I just, you know. Yep.

Missouri: And I thought, I thought WSL was going to be it because I had that and like, it's super easy to open. So screen is what I use on the terminal in Linux to open a serial terminal. Very, very simple. You can also do that in WSL, but like there's some kind of glue happening between this like virtual machine holding Linux on your Windows box, which is very cool that it can do that. But then like actually talking to the hardware, you know, there's a USB port somewhere. The software has to talk all the way down to the USB port and over those two D plus D minus and like out to the thingy. And I could never get that to work. So, and I think it didn't work until recently. So.

Dave Jones: Right.

Missouri: Windows.

Dave Jones: Until then I'll still use Terra Term. Yeah. Yeah.

Missouri: Terra Term. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There are others. Or Arduino. There are, I can't remember on my other machine. I've got another one installed because Terra Term didn't do what I wanted once or it was giving me problems or something. So I downloaded another one, but yeah, there's a few out there, but you know, best, hang on. Best Windows serial terminal program. The 15 best free terminal emulators for Windows. Hyperterminal, of course. Does Windows even still come with Hyperterminal?

Missouri: I don't know. If it does, it probably still has that same like terrible. I just, I have like the Windows 3.1 graphic in my brain that is just like seared on my brain. You know?

Dave Jones: This is interesting. This list of the top 15 best terminal emulators for Windows does not include Terra Term. It's got, it's got Commander, which is a CMD, Zock, Conemu, Minty, Moba Xterm, Baban, Putty, of course, Kitty, Xshell, Console Z, Zscope, Hyper, Fire, what? Terminus? Yeah. Anyway.

Missouri: These are Windows-based? Or these are? Yeah. These are Windows.

Dave Jones: Yeah. The 15 best terminal emulators for Windows. It's like, you know, okay. So anyway, there's another article which mentions Terra, yeah, the alternatives to Hyperterminal is Terra Term, Putty, Kitty, Smarty. I haven't heard of Smarty. There you go. You know? So there's already dozens and dozens out there.

Missouri: Yeah, because they want to put TTY in the name. I get that why they're doing it.

Missouri: But my God, just, oh.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I totally agree. There is nothing that everyone goes, oh, yeah, this is the tool that you use. Yeah, this is the answer, right. This is the answer for the modern age, right?

Missouri: Get on it, open source people.

Dave Jones: I'm sure there are. Well, I'm sure half of these are probably open source, right?

Missouri: That's true.

Dave Jones: You know? So.

Missouri: Well, then just they should decide on one and make that the thing. Anyways, every time I see a Terra Term or a Hyper Term or whatever all these terrible programs are, I just, I can't believe that that's still the best there is out there.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. That's how it is.

Missouri: And I'm not saying that's a reason to switch to Linux either, in case that's unclear. I don't think that's the reason. Exactly. But that is one thing where I'm like, oh, yeah, I feel better. Yep.

Dave Jones: Totally. Yeah, I just don't get it why something really cool doesn't exist. But no, maybe there is. Leave it in the comments if you know. If, you know, everyone's got their favorite tool. Oh, why do you need more than Terra Term? Terra Term does everything.

Missouri: It does it perfectly. VS Code actually has a terminal now, too. Oh, okay. So that's maybe how people are using it. Do you like me some VS Code?

Dave Jones: Actually, Windows 10, Hyper Terminal. No, it's not there.

Missouri: You got to really dig for it. You know, you got to open a DOS prompt and then.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because it used to come with, like, Windows was Hyper Terminal Windows 95 or something. Hyper Terminal Private Edition. Oh, my God.

Missouri: Yeah, no, it's fine.

Dave Jones: Hillgrave. Okay. And Platform Windows. Okay. No, it's owned by a company. Okay. I thought Hyper Terminal was a Windows thing. Meh. Anyway, it's Hyper Term. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. There you go. Anyway, that's all we have for this week.

Missouri: That's, that's, yeah. We're sorry that this, this has been a very complainy episode, but, you know, classic. Classic Amp Hour.

Dave Jones: We're engineers. Come on. What? You know, we just complain about stuff. That's all we ever do.

Missouri: We'll be back here next week. Complaining. Hopefully every week.

Dave Jones: Thanks for listening. That's something new. Catch you next time.

Speaker ?: Catch you next time.