#582 – The Same Wavelength

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release March 20th, 2022. Episode 582. The same wavelength.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the AEV blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. What's up, nerd? You know, I'm almost done with The Dealers of Lightning, that book I mentioned. Oh, yes. And I have to say, emotionally, it's a wild ride. Like, I mentioned how it was a kind of a airy verbiage, like very big words being used. And that's still the case. I've gotten used to it pretty much. But interesting things that have come up in there. They walk through the infamous Steve Jobs going through Park and, quote unquote, stealing ideas. Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: Everyone stole ideas from Parks. It wasn't just Jobs. It was everyone. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And then I think the most visceral reactions, though, were like, as the author describes, like, the engineers dealing with the bureaucracy. And like, just like how they had all these great ideas and like, just nothing happened. And it's just so frustrating to me. It's just like, oh, man. You know? And because they were like halfway across, they were all the way across the country. And, you know, there's big giant corporation, whatever. It's just, yeah. It's really, it's a great book. I really, really haven't enjoyed it. So I recommend it still. It's been an emotional read from, you know, from like an engineering perspective. It's just like, oh.

Speaker ?: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Feel the pain of these very, very smart people. You know, with a lot of hubris, too, of course. But, you know. Right. Yeah. Got it.

Dave Jones: Well, I'm almost coming to the end of a book that I've been struggling to read for ages because it's not that great.

Chris Gammell: That's tough. When you just want to get out of the way and finish it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I just want to get out of the way and finish it. But it's just, it was not as fun as the first one because it's a sequel to Ready Player One. So this is, of course, Ready Player Two.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I was not a fan of Ready Player Two. Yeah, I didn't like it.

Dave Jones: Right. So you've read it. You know what I'm talking about. It's like, it's a tough, it's like, you know. But anyway, the premise, spoiler alert. So tune out now if you don't want to know the, you know, the plot to Ready Player Two, which they will not turn into a movie, by the way. I'm absolutely sure of it. Yeah, I don't think so. It's just, you know, it's an interesting premise, though. You know how in the first one, they, you know, you put on the goggles and you go into the Oasis virtual reality, which I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg's a huge fan of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. You can't have to tell. Yeah. Interestingly, I tweeted out the other day, I wonder how much a metaverse NFT virtual lab is worth.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And everyone came up with the correct answer.

Chris Gammell: The same amount, anything else in a virtual, just the same as a virtual yacht.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but yeah, someone paid $650,000 for a virtual yacht.

Chris Gammell: Not real, Dave. Nothing's real.

Dave Jones: I know. I know. But I was, yeah. Anyway, so I put it out there. How much would you pay for an NFT virtual lab, like the ultimate lab kitted out in the metaverse?

Chris Gammell: It looks like, yeah, it looks like from the 1980s, like all of the stuff that it's like the VR simulations from the 80s to me. Right.

Dave Jones: I haven't actually seen, like I've seen like still shots of them. I've never put on a VR goggle and gone into the metaverse. Have you?

Chris Gammell: No, I've just seen videos captured. Ah, right.

Dave Jones: Yep. Right. Yep. I don't get it. So, yeah, it's dumb. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, you were about to spoil the book. Yes. Yes.

Dave Jones: So they had the VR headset, right? You had to put the headset on.

Chris Gammell: Lots of heads up here, folks. Lots of heads up. You can really eject now. Yep. We will talk about electronics. I promise.

Dave Jones: Yep. So Ready Player Two is, you know, a continuation of the first one. And so instead of the VR, he was secretly working on, which nobody knew about, he was secretly working on an implant. Right. For your brain. You know, it went straight into your cortex. You can bypass the VR. You know, you don't need the headset anymore. Right.

Chris Gammell: And that's where Elon started reading. That's where Elon started reading. Yes.

Dave Jones: That's where Elon started reading, right? Yeah. And how like the experience is actually real. And then they record people with these implants doing real things like surfing or, you know, the most popular one is-

Dave Jones: Having sex. Well, taking drugs, having sex and doing whatever, right? So they record all these people doing this and you can get that actual real experience. It's like the Mars thing. It's like, oh God, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mars movie, which I always forget the name of. Total Recall. Total Recall. Yeah. Recall. Recall. Anyway. Yeah. It's like the Total Recall.

Chris Gammell: That entire movie is summed up for me with Arnold pulling a ping pong ball out of his nose. That's really the entirety of that movie to me.

Dave Jones: Oh, really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's all you got out of that. It's my favorite part. And it shows the range of Arnold's acting. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Anyway, fantastic movie. Yeah. Total Recall. Love it. Anyway. Yeah. So that's the premise of this thing that they've got this artificial implant thing. And yeah, everyone's, you know, once they overcome the fear of putting an implant in their head, they realize, whoa, this is- But you can only turn it on for X amount of hours per day. Otherwise, it, I don't know, lobotomizes you or something. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It does something. But yeah, it's very interesting. So the premise of the book's really good. But oh, God. Yeah. You've read it, right? And it's just- Yes.

Chris Gammell: I was not a fan of the execution. It was-

Dave Jones: No. But you liked the first book, same as I did, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, the first book is just like a nostalgia bomb, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what they tried to do in the second book as well.

Dave Jones: Oh, second one. But it was on steroids, you know, and it was just, oh, God, no, no. Yep. So I'm struggling through that. But anyway, I think it's an interesting look at future tech.

Chris Gammell: So you just mean like the brain to electronic interface in general?

Dave Jones: The brain to electronic interface and how, you know-

Chris Gammell: I think as a sci-fi concept, I think, you know, that's the matrix.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's the ultimate thing, isn't it? Yeah. Yep. Yep. And of course, Elon's famously working on it. Although he just changed his name to Elon, but I think he's changed it back now. No.

Chris Gammell: I can't handle that guy. Yeah, right. The thing I don't understand about all these things, right? So like, you know, premises like that and really any of like the BCI things that are out there, like the brain controller interface, computer interface, whatever. Yeah, there's like an open BCI project as well. I don't understand how, you know, they always do it at kind of these mass levels, right? They're measuring voltage variations on, you know, like- Yeah, yeah. On the actual cranium and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's not going to do the business. No.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Like you think about how a neuron actually like- Yeah. Fires and makes connections. There's no way. There's no way I can do that. It doesn't seem like you'd be able to instrument all the way down to individual neurons. You'd have to, I don't know, like you can maybe measure, but then, but it's all electrochemical as well, right? Like you can't- Yeah, yeah, totally. Individually and knowingly squirt out little bits of norepinephrine and whatever the norepinephrine- Chemical things are, yeah, yeah. Blocking all the different reuptakes. You know, they do this in bulk normally. Like if you take like an SSRI, SSRI, the different antidepressant medications that's out there, that's like, that's just flooding your entire brain with these things. It's not like targeted strikes to each neuron. No, it's- Same thing for like monitoring on each neuron.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm stunned that they can do what they do already. Like, you know, they can put this cap on your head with, you know, like a hundred sensors on it. And then you can actually play Pong. You know, you can play the game, you know, you can actually control paddles and stuff. Kind of, you know, you've got to train your brain to think of it, I think. But yeah, I'm surprised that they can actually do that through the skull. But I, like, I can't see that expanding into greater scope. I think that's probably the limit of like, you know, skin resistance, like through the skull kind of thing. Like you'd have to tap.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think definitely at that skull versus-

Dave Jones: I don't know at what point you would have to tap in, but geez.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. I mean, even if you had like a true implant, like, you know, metal going through to the actual brain tissue and stuff like that, it's still like the interface just doesn't- I'm sure there's smart people working on this stuff. I just-

Dave Jones: Oh, I'm sure.

Chris Gammell: Intuitively, it does not make sense to me right now. No.

Dave Jones: Same here. Because people are actually trying it. Yep. Okay. So we're both on the same wavelength.

Chris Gammell: Dave, it's like we're connected, man. Brain to brain.

Dave Jones: Brain bugs. Brain bugs. If you've seen-

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I have not. No.

Dave Jones: Sorry. Brain bugs.

Chris Gammell: Is that like another movie reference?

Dave Jones: The movie. Once again, I am useless at recalling movie names, but I can recall every single detail and line.

Chris Gammell: Brain bugs. That's cool. Brain bugs doesn't sound that good, to be honest. So we can just leave it at brain bugs.

Dave Jones: No. Starship Troopers. Starship Troopers. The giant brain bug.

Chris Gammell: Oh, with Neil Patrick Harris.

Dave Jones: Yes. Neil Patrick Harris. Yes. Yeah. The giant brain bug. Yeah. There's this one big brain bug that he's, you know, and then he just uses the hand telepathy thing to, you know, to actually communicate with the brain bug. And yep. Yeah. Anyway. Great. Another excellent movie recommendation. Starship.

Chris Gammell: Terrible movie, but fun to watch. Oh, come on. It's great. It was terrible, Dave. Come on.

Dave Jones: You've got to know the-

Chris Gammell: It was so campy. On purpose. It was on purpose.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, no. It's very, but it's a very, if you go into the meaning behind it, it's actually, there's a lot of, you know, yeah, there's actually a lot of meaning behind it. It's not just a silly, I have not read the book, but I've heard that the book is excellent.

Chris Gammell: So, yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it's a commentary on society and all sorts of stuff, you know. So, yeah. Very cool. Anyway, so, okay, so we're both on the same opinion that it's just, I think we're probably reaching the limit, almost reaching the, asymptoping towards the limits of what we can do. Like, I think it's just-

Chris Gammell: Well, I have no doubt that they'll make further advances there. I just, again, I don't understand the control mechanism of like, so now you're, you know, and like, there's other things that are out there where you can, so like, what's that thing that Ben Krasnow used to work on? The, the, it was like a big magnetic core where you're basically doing magnetic pulses into different regions of the brain to actually impact things. And again, that's like, that's like hitting the side of a car with a hammer, basically. Right, right. You can do it more and more targeted, of course. Yep. But like, the stuff that Ben was showing was like, basically a huge electric impulse through a coil, which created a magnetic field that he targeted at his motor cortex and it made his arm twitch. And like, that was, you know, obviously that was the DIY version of this professional thing he was working on, but like, but like, even then, you know, you're, okay, you're selectively applying pulses.

Dave Jones: You can target because you can focus, would you be able to focus electromagnetic pulses into a, like a tiny volume?

Chris Gammell: Maybe, maybe, yeah. Into like a single spot? I mean, I'm sure you can get increasingly small, yeah, areas that you're, you're probing and maybe influencing. But, but again, it just feels like, you know, you'd have like this kind of reactive behavior. You're not like, you're not speaking their language, basically. You know, you almost need to, you need to speak the neurons language. Right. So I don't know. I, I still, I still am very, I mean, I'm, I would, if people are, are in the space, like the biological electrical connection type of thing, I think it's really interesting. I think it's actually more interesting for the biological realm, like basically like growing circuits using biological material is probably more interesting to me than the other way around. And that might be a way that you could, you know, potentially interface later.

Dave Jones: But I think there has to be some kind of interface layer that is not, that's the thing that we don't know about. Yeah. No, I don't think they've cracked that.

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, maybe they have in research, but I, I've not heard about it in the popular media, you know, that's the only time it's going to bubble up to the surface that we, we understand it. So.

Dave Jones: Well, every time I hear about Elon Musk, you're a link company. You vomit, me too. Well, the, the only thing I hear about is that it's massively overhyped. Everyone's leaving, you know, it's like, yeah, it's, yeah, nah. Yeah, nah. Is the, that is the official Australian. Yeah.

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

Dave Jones: Neuralink. Yeah. Apparently it's, it's like petering out into like, they're, like they're doing cool things. I don't want to take that away. Like, you know, they're doing very cool stuff and I'm sure they've got very cool tech, but it's nowhere near, you know, close to what they hoped. Apparently. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: That's too bad.

Dave Jones: No, I'm sure. Yeah. It'd be great to have a neural.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. What is there? Is there an official term for a. Well, they call it a neural link, but I just think, you know, brain to computer interface. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. Sure. There's someone. Yeah. We'll have to get someone on. That'd be great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. If there are, we did find a power person. He'll be on next week. So.

Dave Jones: Fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Or sorry. A grid person. Grid. A grid specialist. A grid. A grid type person.

Dave Jones: Fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Our audience is broad and knowledgeable and generous. So if you are one of these people who knows about biological stuff, please write in because our feedback at theampire.com, it works.

Dave Jones: Well, they're furiously going in the comments right now. You do realize that because we, we're just a couple of dumbies. Oh, because of all the stuff we're wrong about. Oh, no doubt. Yeah. No doubt. Yeah. Yep. Totally. All right. Anyway, that's enough of the neural thing. I want to know how the James West space telescope. Have you seen the new image that they just got of the focus star?

Chris Gammell: I saw you tweet about it. No. Yeah. Oh, it's magnificent. What was it?

Dave Jones: Listen, it's, it's the star that they focused on that they were doing their mirror alignment phase thingy majig with. And they, the first image they took, it had like, you know, 16 different stars because all the mirrors weren't actually lined up. Right. They, they weren't all focused, right. They weren't focused on one point. So they pointed it at one star in the middle of nowhere and they should have seen one star, but they didn't. And they saw, you know, 16 different stars, which they totally expected because the mirrors weren't actually focused yet. So they have to micro align to nanometer accuracy. I don't know if it's one, like, I think it's done out as tens or hundreds and nanometers. I'm not sure, but you know, it's in the realm of, you know, something like that. So they have to, so they have micro positioners on each of these mirrors. And now they've, they've actually done their first day, only the first stage of their alignment process of all, I think it's 16 mirrors. Is it? Can't remember exactly how many, but something like that.

Chris Gammell: That sounds right. I'm not sure. Yep. I know the beryllium. Beryllium. That's what I remember. Very flat and beryllium.

Dave Jones: And then gold. Yeah. And then gold sputtered, I think, surface. And they micro position these and they just got their first image back. And the star, they've all aligned perfectly. They get this one bright star in the middle and then all of these galaxies in the background just pop out. Yeah. Just like, you know, galaxies we've never seen before. You know, billions of years old because it took the light billions of years to get here. Anyway, fantastic. So these micro positioners, so we're going to link in a video from Breaking Taps. I don't know Breaking Taps channel, but he 3D printed a replica, like a miniature scale replica of the nanometer accuracy micro positioning thing of how it works.

Chris Gammell: It's reverse engineered from the paper.

Dave Jones: Reverse engineered from the paper.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if you saw this. The author of the paper shows up in the comments.

Dave Jones: Oh, does he? Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there he is. It's the first comment.

Chris Gammell: Ah, internet.

Dave Jones: I want to say how impressed I am with your reverse engineering. Your graphics and description are very well done. Yeah. Back then, we didn't have easy access to 3D printers. Yeah, so they did it with Legos. The first model. They did it with Legos. Oh, that's great. Fantastic. Oh, that is gold. Anyway, I was surprised at the almost simplistic crude, crudism. Is that a word? Crudeness?

Chris Gammell: It's not a word. No. Crudeness is a word.

Dave Jones: Crudeness of how they do this. It's like...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like... I can't... You'd think it'd be like lasers and like, you know, like tiny balloons and whatever. Yeah, yeah. That's what I thought it was. It's like, no, man, let's go into space.

Dave Jones: Like, I just assumed it was like micro-peso transducer positioning or something, right? No, it's a freaking stepper motor that just pulls via a couple of cogs that then pulls on these center arms, but those center arms go out to other arms that go up, which hold the plate in front. So you can move... So you can move the... So you're basically moving the posts that are holding up the mirror. So if you micro-move those...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think it's like you're putting them under tension, right? Under tension. It's a tension-based thing. You're translating to smaller and smaller dimensions based on that.

Dave Jones: And smaller tensions. So yeah. So they're just using these bloody large stepper motors to micro-position the mirror with nanometer accuracy. Because as you said, it was made out of erylium, right?

Chris Gammell: Beryllium is the coating. That's the gold.

Dave Jones: No, I thought that was the material it was made out of. And then it was gold-spotted. Because it has the greatest strength flexibility thing. Because they do actually physically warp these mirrors. And I think anyway. Don't quote me on that.

Chris Gammell: Okay. There are 18 hexagonal mirrors. Yep. We're on the internet as we speak. So we can do that. There are seven small motors fixed behind each of these. Their purpose is to move and reshape the curvature. Yep. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Come on.

Dave Jones: So they don't just move them around. They physically change the curvature of it. Yeah. They physically change the curvature. It's just remarkable. It's a nanometer precision using these bloody stepper motors. And they just, yeah. But they just pull on these arms. So they just pull the tension on these arms, which then slightly distorts the center point of the mirror and the ring of the mirror. And you can put it into any shape. Wow. It's like, it's crazy. Yeah. I think, like, I just, I'm stunned it was that simple. I just assumed it was, like, just crazy complicated. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it's not. Unbelievable.

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, it was tested and tested and tested and simulated and then tested. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's nuts. Nothing about this is trivial. No, no, no.

Dave Jones: And you said how many motors? Seven per?

Chris Gammell: Seven per mirror, it said, yeah.

Dave Jones: Seven per mirror.

Chris Gammell: And you were right. It was gold over beryllium.

Dave Jones: Gold over beryllium.

Chris Gammell: I'll link in all the stuff that we've been looking up live because I didn't know any better. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So they had to make it out of beryllium because that gave the greatest, like, it warped properly when you put tension on it. Like, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: And they said it's also non-magnetic and it's light and strong and yada, yada, yada, yada.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's just, this whole project's just a mind blow. It really is.

Chris Gammell: $10 billion worth, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just nuts. And it looks like it's all working. It's just incredible.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, interesting. Kind of lines up with this. But I, so, I, sometimes I run out of things to keep my daughter entertained.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: And sometimes we, we, there's this app from Kyrgyzstan, the YouTube channel. It's called Universe.

Dave Jones: Oh, Sagan is just got hooked on that.

Chris Gammell: The channel or the app? The channel. I didn't know there was an app. The channel. Oh, the channel is fantastic. Yeah. So, people haven't heard of this channel. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because if you haven't seen his channels, he does, like, science, what if, like, these silly, like, what, what happens if you exploded all the nuclear weapons at once? Or what happens if the moon crashed into the earth? And, you know, and he animates them all. Animates them with these little, cute little bird kind of thing. That's right. Cute little colorful bird. He spends up to 2,000 hours per video.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And you can, like, sponsor and get one of your, you can get, like, a special bird that's in the background.

Speaker ?: Oh, you can get a bird.

Dave Jones: Oh, all right. Okay, cool.

Chris Gammell: There's a, there's a gift you can get your kids.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But they also had a drive where they, they have an app for the universe. Right. And so really, really cool. Just, you know, scale of the universe. So, like, all the way down to a plank length. Right. All the way up to the, the observable universe. And so hang out with my daughter and we're going through this and just kind of showing her different things. And I, I, I started having a panic attack. I'm just like, you know, like looking at this app and just like thinking about the scale. It was like one thing I'll pull it up here just so I have the name of it here. But there's some.

Dave Jones: How old is she now? I mean, you know, like.

Chris Gammell: Oh, she's not even one yet. Not even one. So it's not like. She had no idea what was going on. It was just that.

Dave Jones: It was pretty, pretty colorful bird. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And that's the reason I was just trying to, you know, keep her entertained and, you know, whatever. But, you know, you zoom all the way out.

Dave Jones: I think it was more for your entertainment, Chris, than.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. It was just, you know, pretty colors for her. Yeah. But there is a feature of the universe called Virgo A. Have you ever heard of Virgo A before?

Dave Jones: I've heard of it, but I've never. Yeah. I couldn't tell you.

Chris Gammell: Virgo A, also called M87, has everything a self-respecting galaxy needs. Yes. A couple trillion stars, a supermassive black hole, and a few thousand globular star clusters. Our own Milky Way, with its few billion stars, looks quaint in comparison. And that one just started having me, like, panic breathing, just thinking about, like, the scale difference. This is just, like, one dot. You know, this is what they're going to point James Webb at. And they're going to find more and more resolution on this thing. But right now, it's so bright that they just, you know, it's just a dot, right? It's just, it's 980,000 light years away. And it's massive. And I just, my brain just melted in that moment, you know, just reading these things. So, anyways, the app is fantastic.

Dave Jones: For those who don't know, M87 is, like, the astrophotographer's staple, right? If you get into photography, if you get into your, you know, astronomy and stuff, that's the one that you photograph. You know, it's the one. It's the industry standard.

Chris Gammell: Virgo A or M87. Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't, I don't, haven't really heard anyone really call it. Not many people call it Virgo A, but, you know, maybe that's the bigger area. But the M87 Galaxy, that's the one. And so if you shoot, you know, if you just look up M87, you know, do it yourself photos or whatever. So yeah, that's what everyone does.

Chris Gammell: Well, after that, I was inspired. I was telling some of my friends, I was saying, I'm going to write a children's book called The Universe. None of this matters. We live in a big black void. What do you think? Is that a good children's book? Maybe don't quit my day job, you said?

Dave Jones: No, no. Well, no, I'm sure it's already been done.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: Like, you know, I'm sure someone's done it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Depressing. Depressing children's book.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Nihilist. Yeah. Just, no, it's all depressing. Yep.

Chris Gammell: It's all. No, no, actually, I think it's great. I love that kind of stuff. I mean, like once I get over the, you know, the breathing part of it and actually kind of regain composure, I'm like, you know what? That deadline I'm worried about, not that big a deal. Come on.

Dave Jones: Nah, exactly. It's, yeah, that's, you know. You're supposed to send Dave something? Yeah. What's the big deal? Yeah. What's the big deal? Yeah. That's all very Carl Sagan, you know. Yeah. Right, exactly. Yeah. There we are suspended in a, we're just a mote of dust, you know, suspended in a moonbeam. What is this? Yep. Yep. Totally. Nothing matters. The amp hour doesn't matter. Yeah. We just may not do it next week. We're just like, just.

Chris Gammell: 25 minutes in. And I think, I think people listening are like, yeah, we know.

Dave Jones: Anyway, fantastic. James West Space. I'm like obsessed with the, yep. Following that. It's just.

Chris Gammell: More and more content keeps coming out and I couldn't be happier about it. Yep.

Dave Jones: And they've got another month of alignment left or so. Another couple of months worth of alignment left. They haven't even like, God, the calibrations and alignment. I guess they couldn't send it up calibrated, right?

Speaker ?: Like, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. They calibrated it, but well, we're going to do it again because it was on a big shaky candlestick.

Dave Jones: Shaky rocket thing. And yep. And these panels that fold out and they might not fold out all the way, you know. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. It's just.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's nuts. Absolutely nuts. And it all worked. Holy crap.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Can't believe it. Speaking of things that are nuts, obviously there's two very big things in the news that nobody is surprised by right now. One is obviously the conflict in Ukraine. That's a big one that is impacting lots of things. You know, that's impacting things in the supply chain around like Neon and I don't know, stuff like that doesn't, you know, whatever. I think that's.

Dave Jones: That's. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: More specific to the. And we can come back to that too. But like more specific to the supply chain is that. Yeah. China. The Shenzhen shutdown right now.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Kind of a problem. So is it, I haven't checked the latest news because I think it's only happened in the last 24 hours that it got bad or something. I've just woken up. It's been. So they basically said a week. It's been getting a bit bad over days.

Chris Gammell: This. Yeah. This happened about four days ago. Really?

Dave Jones: But I thought that was still. Like I thought they were in lockdown, but I didn't know that. Have they stopped shipping stuff?

Chris Gammell: Is it. Well, I've had some borders canceled. I don't know about you.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. No, I don't have any orders going at the moment.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, nobody's allowed to like go to work and stuff like that. Okay. I think a lot of the port stuff is. Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's.

Dave Jones: And Shenzhen, like everything comes from Shenzhen. Like. Well, not, not ever. I. Does anyone know what. Is there like a. Like a pie chart of what percentage of. You know. Components and stuff actually comes from Shenzhen versus. You know.

Chris Gammell: It's huge. It's probably like a Pareto principle 80%. You know. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it's actually that much. I think. You know. It's. It's also. I think hard to like. To separate that stuff out. You think about like all the assemblies that happen. So like if you. I don't know. My iPhone's a bad example. But if you open up a piece of consumer electronics. Probably a lot of that. But if you open up a piece of industrial electronics. You know. Maybe the circuit boards are from there. But then locally. You know. The metal stuff is not. You know. Like if it's just electronics. Then. Yeah. Maybe a large percentage. But.

Dave Jones: Dude. It's worse. It's worse. 90%. Apparently. 90%. That's it. I'm reading. I read in a Forbes article. 90% of the world's electronics comes from Shenzhen. I. That seems too high. That seems too high.

Chris Gammell: That seems too. You think. Yeah. You mean. Too high as an estimate. Or too high as a. In a principle way.

Dave Jones: I. Like. No. No. It said. Like. Just. I. I don't believe it's that high. It can't be. Like. There's got to be. Like. More. Yeah. But no. It's. It's reported.

Chris Gammell: Is it the assembly. Is the assembly stuff there. I mean. Like. Do you count the silicon that was manufactured. You know. Somewhere else. South Korea. Or Taiwan. Or.

Dave Jones: Well. Most of the world's high-end silicon is Taiwan.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: The majority is. Yeah. Yeah. It's not actually done in China. It's. Most of the real high-end. Like. I'm talking real. The high-end silicons. All your Intel processors. TSMC. Right. Yeah. TSMC.

Chris Gammell: Totally.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But. I'm seeing. Like. It's. It's 90%. Is just. Popped up. From. All these articles. Maybe somebody made it. And then everyone else just. Copied it. But. That seems. Ridiculously high.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That is.

Dave Jones: Both in. Principle. And in practice. Yeah. Like. It. It. Should not be that high. If it is. Like. Let's just. Let's just go there. Which is why.

Chris Gammell: I think that's right. I. I don't know. I don't know how we. Get. Back from there. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well. Intel has just announced. Segway. Intel has just announced. $33 billion in R&D. In the EU. R&D though. What does that mean? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. That's the thing. That's not going to. None of this. None of the stuff that we. So like. There's. There's stuff on the move. Right. We talked about. Yeah. The guy two weeks ago. They're. They're starting to build other stuff. I think. You know. But I think it's.

Dave Jones: Everyone's had a giant wake up call. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: First off. It's going to be. Five years. Right. It's going to be five years. Before this stuff comes online. Least. Like. Packaging still goes to. Malaysia. And. Vietnam. So you still have like. Inner. Oh yeah. You know.

Dave Jones: This is one. For those who don't know.

Chris Gammell: Packaging is still not going to happen in the US. Right. Or outside of Asia. This is one of the crazy thing. Right.

Dave Jones: Everyone thinks that. Oh yeah. Everything's just made in one factory. Wafers are shipped all around the world to different sites who do different processes on the wafers. You know. Yeah. The wafer might be made. And wafers made somewhere else. And then it's shipped to another country. Which then does the actual. You know. The photo lithography. And exposure. And actually doing the thing. And then. Another. It'll be shipped to another country for packaging. And testing. And like.

Chris Gammell: Whoa. I mean. I think some of this is just. The efficiency. Of different markets. And like. What people have on hand. And you know. Where the specialization happens. So like. Yeah. So. As an example. Right. Like. So. Granted. All of my examples are from 2006. Right. That's when I. Right. Okay. Yeah. Electronics. The wafer industry. And stuff like that. But like. The wafers we had. The ingots came from Japan. That's where. Right. All the way. The silicon wafers. Were being made. Basically. Yeah. And there just aren't that many vendors.

Dave Jones: And you work for a South Korean company. Right. Samsung.

Chris Gammell: I work for a South Korean company. Building wafers. In a factory. In Austin, Texas. Right. Right. But. The Austin, Texas wafers. Went back to the same place that everywhere. They didn't go flying back to. South Korea. They went to Malaysia. And they got packaged up there. Right. So they. Got packaged in Malaysia. Cut. And packaged. And then they got shipped. Usually to South Korea for testing. Or. To China for testing. Right. And so. And then. So like. You know. You have to track all this stuff. All the way back. But like. Yeah. Because of all these different specializations. And so. I don't see. How. This stuff gets. Disentangled. Right. Like. No. It's not like. The US is going to get really good at packaging. Nobody's going to go and invest. You know. Like. Especially when you think about the economics of like. You'd have to lowball. Malaysian prices. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. For how many years. That isn't going to happen. Some. Some percentage of the. Of the. You either have to pay. The huge difference in cost. To have your own packaging. In country. Which. You know. You know. You can do. And you can do it for testing. Whatever. But at a. At a large scale. So then you're adding that. To every single piece price. That you have out. Yeah. And it's just like. I don't. I don't get how that changes. You know. I don't. I don't know. Dave.

Dave Jones: Well. Another crisis has to happen in that country. Right. So all the crap's going on at the moment. And people have to realize that. You know. China's not the best place. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I feel like. The most likely. Probably. It's. It's still not going to. Again. I know my view is very US centric here. But like. Just saying. US. US based packaging. Right. I don't think that would happen. Unless automation becomes. Dude. So incredibly cheap.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Dude. I'm sending you a link. I'm sending you a link. Sending you multiple links. Just come out. Breaking news. Breaking news.

Chris Gammell: Breaking news.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Forbes. Straight off the teletype. January 5th. 2022. American semiconductor is taking a step towards US domestic chip packaging. Yeah. I mean they're saying this. But I just don't. I don't really. Right. I know they're doing all this stuff. And it's like.

Chris Gammell: It's good that they're doing it. But it's just at the scale that is necessary to like actually de-risk the supply chain like this. It's just like. I don't. I don't know. I don't. It's good. There's investment happening. Don't get me wrong. Totally.

Dave Jones: Well I guess they. You know. Everyone. Like there's nothing happening in Malaysia. You know. Now is there. Like it's. Like there's nothing politically happening. There's nothing. You know. It's just kind of like.

Chris Gammell: I mean like that's. I don't know. Yeah. All of this stuff. I. Honestly. This is. Yeah. I mean. It's nuts. I mean. We're going to. I'm going to talk about Ukraine a little bit here. Like obviously. You know. Russia invading Ukraine is a tragedy. And it's shaken up a lot of the world right now. And. My heart's breaking over it. But another thing that's been happening alongside that is people being like. Oh. They're like looking at China. Like. You're not going to touch Taiwan. Right. You know. Like. Yeah. And I think. But I think. You know. I don't think that this. You know. This 50 billion dollars or whatever the US is spending. It's not because. We think that. Oh. This is some great new investment here. You know. It's. It's because. They're worried about China. It's a strategic thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Totally. Like. And like. But that's the other thing I don't understand. Is that. So now. We have. Okay. Intel is doing all this investment. And all these announcements that we. We talk about in here. That's great. I'm. I'm very glad that they're doing this. But like. You're not building me a six nanometer switching. Switching supply. It's just. It's just not happening. You're going to build it on a 90 nanometer or 45 nanometer process. If it's really. Really. Really. Fancy. And unless you start getting that stuff in there too. I don't understand.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But the US still has tons of those old. Fabs. Don't they? Not really. I mean.

Chris Gammell: There's a wiki page that we've talked about on here before. Yeah. I can pull that up.

Dave Jones: A list of. Yeah. But I thought there was still a lot. It's just not enough. You know what I mean?

Chris Gammell: And it's not enough for the whole world. That's. Oh no. Of course.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. You know. We're all dealing with this right now. We're all dealing with this crazy ass supply chain. Bubblegum tap shoes. And. Like. I just. You know. It's going to be three to four years before this even. Gets. Back to normal ish. And who knows what happens by then in the world.

Dave Jones: People keep asking me. Like. When is this supply chain thing going to end? And I go. It's not going to be this year. Or probably next year. Like.

Chris Gammell: I'd put it three years. I'd say three years.

Dave Jones: Yep. I'd put it at least three years out. Yeah. If. I'd be surprised if it. Was sold by the end of. 2023.

Chris Gammell: Three years until you and I are like. Oh. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. It's not that bad anymore.

Dave Jones: Yeah. When I was a boy. Yeah. We had this supply chain crisis.

Chris Gammell: It'll get better ish. But it's not going to be good. It's not going to be like. Oh. Man. Chips are so cheap. Cheap as chips. Yep.

Dave Jones: Oh boy.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Which it was. But.

Dave Jones: It's just nuts. Anyway. Well. Another thing. Which you put on here. Life as. There's. I. I think I know where you're going with this. Because you haven't told me. But. Life as a trucker.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. This was about.

Dave Jones: You put this on. Okay. Explain. There's an article in the New York Times. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So this was about a lot of those truck protests. You know. Yeah. The truck protests and everything.

Dave Jones: But life as a trucker. But I'm sure you have. But this does tie in.

Chris Gammell: Right. So the thing that was interesting to me about this. Is there's. There's a comment I put on here. Was. Was basically. You know. So this was kind of like. Explaining a socioeconomic thing around it. You know. Like. I don't agree with the vaccine hesitancy at all. But. Fine. There's socioeconomic stuff around it. And like. One of the things. Is. That this is an industry that is incredibly. Squeezed. Right. Everybody's. You know. Like. It's just a. There's no regulation around it. But there is. There is regulation on the safety side. But not on the. The wages side. And so. A lot of the. A lot of the monitoring that happens. Is. Basically. To. What did I say. There. They haven't. The. The monitoring and the technology isn't. For replacing workers. It's been brought in to manage declining working conditions. And so what I thought that was interesting in for our show. Is. You know. That is something that. So this is a. Socioeconomic event that's happening. And they're trying to explain it away. But. This is technology that's actually. Enabling. Safety. You know. It's being said. In one hand. It's safety. But on the other. It's actually. Enabling. Bad working conditions. Because they're just keeping people on the edge of.

Dave Jones: Of.

Chris Gammell: What they can work in.

Dave Jones: Your. So what technology. Are we talking about here? Like cameras that monitor that. Whether or not they're. Like dozing off at the wheel. Or.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. Exactly. So like. Yeah. Just.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Sensors. If they're looking at their phone. To change a podcast. Is one example. They give. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know. And it's just like. It's just.

Dave Jones: Imagine how many podcasts you could. Oh. That'd be your dream job. Chris. Wouldn't it? Would be to. Just be. I hate road trips actually. So no. It would not be. It would not be for me. Really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Come on. I would not do well.

Dave Jones: We've been on a road trip. Two of us have been on a road trip.

Chris Gammell: I mean. I enjoyed that as a novel thing. But no. I don't. I don't like.

Dave Jones: No. I love road trips. But I'm more interested. See. Where I thought you were going with this. Was that. How underappreciated. This is where my interest is. How underappreciated. How underappreciated transport is. People don't realize that. Trucks are the bedrock of everything. Everything in your life. You would be. Without absolutely everything. If it wasn't for trucks. You would. You would not survive another day. If it wasn't for trucks. I think that is definitely.

Chris Gammell: A piece of this as well. It's incredible. Kind of a. You don't know. How this stuff is getting to you. Or your stores. Whatever. Yep. But without that. And I think that's where a lot of the pricing pressure comes from. So like. If now you have people that are driving trucks. And if they're. Getting pressure from their bosses. To drive more and more and more. And they're saying. Well. And we're also going to monitor you. Yeah. And they start quitting like crazy. You know. It's just like this. This. Very. Difficult situation. I think for the workers. So. Yep. I think that's what they were talking about. In the social.

Dave Jones: I haven't. You know. Haven't they had to pay a lot more. For truck drivers. Recently. Somewhere. It may not have been in the US. But it was some country. Was it Canada. Or somewhere else. They had to. Like they were begging people. To become truck drivers. And we'll pay you. You know. An absolute.

Chris Gammell: But load. Yeah. I think there. Well. I think that's. Yeah. Some of it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. I think there's. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Upward. Upward pressures.

Dave Jones: But trust me. Everything in your country stops. If the trucks stop. People don't realize. These things just go magically through the night. You know. You don't see many of them during the day. But you know. Yeah. They're just like. Yeah. Yeah. This is what gets everything around.

Chris Gammell: Every time I use a courier service. Like UPS or FedEx. I'm just like. Oh yeah. I sent that yesterday. That's in Florida. That's in. You know. That's halfway across the country now. It's.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's up in Wisconsin.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Like. Oh.

Chris Gammell: How the hell to get there. You know. Like. There's just. Infrastructure. Built on infrastructure. Built on trucks. You know. It's just like. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Trucks. And in case of planes. If you're going. You know.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: In the state and stuff. It's just. It's nuts. Yep. People don't realize the complexities of the logistical hubs and the infrastructure.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think that's. You know. Like. So I think. Again. What I was interested in is. Like. It kind of. What this article did for me. Is it made me think about the. The other side of this. Right. So. The reason these trucks are so instrumented is one for safety. Which. I think. Everyone agrees with. Right. And then. Another is just for efficiencies. And for. You know. So that. I can get my package. Somewhere in two days. At. You know. The lowest possible price. Whatever. That's. That's all. That's the nice side of things. And you know. And so that. These businesses can operate. You know. A profitable business. While. While still. Dealing with all the human issues. That. That happen. But like. There are. There are people in the system. Right. There are meat controllers in the system. Yeah. There are. You know. That. Have to deal with the. The working conditions.

Dave Jones: What's. What's your prediction? Because I'm famously. Anti. Autonomous. Dry. Like. Not. Not anti. But I'm saying. It's not going to happen anytime soon. And I've been saying it for a decade. And I've been right. Right. We're still not close. We're still not even close. You're saying like. Elon Musk admits. Yeah. Elon Musk. That we are. He. He admits that we're not. Even close. We need. His own words. We need a gigantic leap. In. Artificial intelligence. Before. It's going to be. Really viable. Yet. He still. Will happily sell you it. For. $10,000. You know. And claim it's full self-driving. Anyway. Yeah. But. Trucks. Is the obvious. One. Right.

Chris Gammell: I think so. Yeah. Especially like you said. The driver's night. But. You know. It's just like. But.

Dave Jones: I think that. You know. One. I think the same thing applies. The technology is still not there. You can do it on the highways. And highways are great. Right. So you can potentially. Even now. I think we could probably have. The driver like sleeping in the cab in the back. As the truck hurdles down the highway. Right. I think that's possible. But. I think you still need that. That human. In there. To take over the last mile. As they call it. I think that's right. Right. You know. To actually navigate into the. You know. Through the city streets. Into the depot. Into the depot. And offload it. And then they've got to. And you know. If you're a tanker. You know. If you've been to it. Like a. Sorry. A gas station. In the US. You know. The tanker truck pulls up. It's. It's the guy driving the tanker truck. That then. Often. That then. Hooks up all the. Hoses. And puts all the. You know. The gas. Into the ground. And stuff like. Yeah. He's the one who operates everything. So he's not only the truck driver. He's the. You know. Guy who offloads the. You know. The fuel. And everything. Right. So. Yeah. Yeah. Like you still need. Like humans to do with that. I know that if you're talking about goods. Then you go into the depot. And then there's. Guy. Guys that come up in the little truck. The forklift truck. That then take the pallets off the truck. And stuff like that. But. You know. I. I still think you need a human for the last mile. Would you agree?

Chris Gammell: I think. I think so right now. Yeah. I mean. I think that's. I think that ultimately. That's what's. Holding up a lot of the. The stuff. With. You know. Self-driving modes. And various cars anyways. Right. It's just. Right. Right. You don't know when a dog's going to dart out in the road. You have to make decisions. Snap decisions based on that. You know.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: There's so many variables involved. Once you get off the highway. It's just nuts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think we're going to see increasing. And like. Like they kind of talk about in this article too. They say like. It's already getting. Started getting there. Right. We're. We're instrumenting things. And we're. Maybe even having machines step in and take action. I think there's just. More and more of that. That's going to happen over time. It's going to be kind of more assistive. Rather than. Complete. Yes.

Dave Jones: It's going to be assistive. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But I. I think probably. I think it's possible by the end of this decade. I think it's possible that we might. Be starting to have trucks that are hands off for the entire. Highway stretch.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It could be.

Dave Jones: In certain locations though. That would have to be. Approved. Routes. Right. So. Or routes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Maybe like only three lane highways where they can get all the way to the right.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And then once you. And then have the truck automatically pull off in. Into this truck stop at the. And then. An alarm goes off. And what wakes the driver up. And then he drives the rest of the way in. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I think. I think one of the problems. Like again. Just to bring it back to the human issue here though. Is that like. Over time. So you have more and more. Machine taking control. So it becomes a. Less and less. Specialized skill. Which means there's more and more downward pressure. On wages. With it.

Dave Jones: Again. You know. Okay.

Chris Gammell: It is what it is there. No.

Dave Jones: Well actually. The specialized skill. Comes in navigating a truck through suburbia. And everything else. I think that's your specialized. Skill. Like. I'd say any monkey could drive a truck down the highway. Maybe. But. I think it's a pretty specialized skill. To navigate and back up a truck. In. Like complex. You know. Suburbia and whatnot. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm just saying that. If. If you. You know. Continue to put guardrails. And things around the skill. Right. As. I think society wants us to. Right. I think that that's. You know. Just thinking about it. As people doing technology. Right. We. You know. You and I. Are not the ones doing it. But I'm sure some of our listeners. Are in this field. Being asked to do this sort of thing. So. There's. More and more guardrails. Around behavior. In this. Arguably. Very very dangerous space. I think then. That is a net positive. But the. The net negative. Is. Is that the people then. That are left. In that space. Are. More and more fungible. Right. They can be switched out. With one another. Right. There's. There's no. There's no number one trucker. It's just. You know. You pass some threshold. And you're saying like. Oh. Yeah. You're good enough. Because the computer is going to take the rest of it. I feel like there are going to be more and more. Technological issues. In this space. And not just trucking. Of course. You know. You think about like. Areas where. AI is coming in. Or other. You know. Maintenance of a plant. Right. So you know. Say you have like. Smart maintenance on all your. Your machines. Well. You don't need rusty. The number one mechanic. Right. Who happened to know. When a thing was. Needed to be. You know. Maintenanced. It would. It's. It's just. You know. Just Bob. That's just watching the meters. And then when something does happen.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: It's terrible. So like. That. You know. I don't think I'm making my point very well here. But I. I think that the. The technological impact. This is an. Unintended. Technical. Technological impact. And that's what struck me about this article. Is kind of the. The human. The human pieces of it. That I didn't. I didn't understand.

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: So as technologists. Something to think about. I don't think it's going to stop. You know. It's not. This is what's. Driving our industry. As people making electronics. But. There are. Impacts that I. Had not thought about.

Dave Jones: All right. What else we got.

Chris Gammell: Well. Speaking of.

Dave Jones: You've got another.

Chris Gammell: Happy hour. But we'll save that for the end. Yeah. Oh yeah. We should definitely mention that. You. Have been. Not dealing with trucks. But with paper. Lately.

Dave Jones: Paper.

Chris Gammell: DRM paper.

Dave Jones: Sorry.

Chris Gammell: DRM paper. Isn't that the.

Dave Jones: Oh DR. Oh bloody DRM paper. Oh God. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think it's been since the last time we had a show. Label.

Dave Jones: If you said labels. Instead of paper. I would have. Not exactly what you're talking about.

Chris Gammell: DRM labels or paper.

Dave Jones: DRM labels. Yeah. The bastards. They're trying to kickstart. DRM. Digital rights management. In the label industry. They're the first ones to do it. I do believe. And they've been hit with a massive backlash. I mean. It. It. Isn't just me. You know. It's. It's like tons of. It's gone mainstream.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yeah. Yeah. They're getting a huge backlash. And coincidentally. Dymo. Who did this. Are. Currently looking for. A new. Head. Of Dymo. A new head. Manager. To run Dymo. So. I don't know whether. That. Not that has any. They saw the writing on the wall. But. But I've heard. I've been contacted by people. You sure. And that. Remain anonymous. Going. Yeah. Everyone in Dymo. Is not happy with this. They're leaving. Yep. The. Writing's been on the wall. For a while.

Chris Gammell: And do you know how much it costs. To print that on the wall. Because. You know. DRM wall.

Dave Jones: Well. I know it costs 17 cents per label. That's how much it costs.

Chris Gammell: Oh my gosh. Seriously. Wow.

Dave Jones: Yeah. 17 cents per label. Unbelievable. So anyway. If. For those who don't know. I did. I did a video. Where. The. The new. 505 XL series. Printers. Have an RFID chip. Embedded in the label roll. So it's in the core. You know. How they got like a cardboard core. And then the labels on the outside. They embed an RFID chip in there. Which is a. Secure RFID chip. And. They write to it. So every time you print a label. It's got a counter in it. And every time you print a label. It. It has the number of. You know. Say it's got. You know. 500 labels on there. It counts down. And once that reaches zero. It. You can't reuse that reel. It's. It's got. And you've got to buy genuine. And it won't use third party. Reels either. Whereas. You know. Dymo. Like you used to be able to buy your Dymo ones. You know. From any third party manufacturer. Yeah. They make a whole range of different labels. And. And you get them for like. You know. Under a cent per label. But now. They're forcing you to pay 17 cents per label. To get the bloody official Dymo ones. Otherwise. It simply doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. It's. It's pissed everyone off. Yep. Not good. And. I busted them. I did a second follow-up video. Where they were reusing. In their Amazon listings of their old printers. Where they had thousands of positive reviews. Because their old printers were great. Right. Didn't have any of this DRM rubbish. And. And. You know. The old Dymo label printers are great. You know. The. 450 turbo. The 4XL. You know. Basically. Everyone. Anyone's got a Dymo label. Has a Dymo 450 turbo. Right. It's got thousands of positive reviews. They. Reuse the same listing. Change the photos. And the. Title. To be. Their new 550 printer. With DRM. So that they could reuse. The old positive.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Ratings. Right. That's as low as it gets. I mean. That's like. Shady. Third party. Dodgy. Amazon seller.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Trick. Right. Unbelievable. This is Dymo doing it. Unbelievable. Crazy. Yeah. So. Anyway. There's a lot. It has been. Actually. Last night. It was. I believe it's been successfully hacked. Somebody on the forum. Oh. Has done it. But no. I don't think that's good. No. I don't. I don't think. No. I don't want it hacked. I do not want it hacked.

Chris Gammell: I want people to boycott it.

Dave Jones: I want people to boycott them. I want them to send them back. And simply. No. I'm not.

Chris Gammell: You know.

Dave Jones: Never use a Dymo again.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So. Simple as that. Or reuse. Or buy a second hand. You know. If you've got. Buy an old. Old stock. You know. Buy old stock now. Well. Well you can. And you can continue to use it for the next. Five or ten years. You know.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Totally.

Dave Jones: Madness. Anyway. Bastards. So. Yeah. I want them to go out of business. I want. You know. You've got to stop this. Otherwise. If the other manufacturers. See that they get away with this. And oh. Okay. Somebody hacked it. So what. You know. Most people will buy the deer. And then the other manufacturers will start doing. Zebra will start doing it. Brother will start doing. Right. And then it snowballs. Just like the bloody toner and ink cartridge thing. Right. So. Yep. Your thoughts.

Chris Gammell: I have a really old label printer. So I'm. I'm cool. Right.

Dave Jones: No. But I think. Yeah. I mean. It's a big deal for anyone who does packing and shipping. You know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I think. And especially at the software layer too. When you like all of your.

Dave Jones: All of your software is built around a printer. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All of your integrations are going to be working with these big vendors. Because they're going to pay. Exactly. They're going to have money to support the software builds and whatever. So yeah. Yep. It sucks.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yep. So. Yeah. I think they should be boycotted and not hacked. Yeah. Although I'm not going to. You know. I won't actually. Poo poo a hack. But I'm. I'm saying no. Sure. Yeah. Simply don't buy the new printers. Yep. Yep. Yep. They must be sent a message. Yep. And. I don't know. Is that happening in any other industry? Like. You know. Like. Manufacturers trying to sneak in. Trying to lock you in. There any other.

Chris Gammell: Coffee makers were doing that for the Keurigs. Were doing that for a while. Juicing machines. Juicero. Juicing machines. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Oh boy.

Speaker ?: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Gotta stop it.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of sending messages. Yeah. Our friends over at the unnamed reverse engineering podcast. Did. We're doing an interview with. Oleg. Kutkov. Well done. Who is actually live in Kiev. And had. Things. Had explosions of the background. During the recording. So.

Dave Jones: Oh wow.

Chris Gammell: You can't hear him. But. He's like. Yeah. No. The air silences are going off rather.

Dave Jones: Right. But they're doing.

Chris Gammell: Uh. Starlink reverse engineering. So.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: In Kiev. They're actually getting like. Huge. Download speeds. From Starlink. Man. Freaking Elon again. But. You know. In a very positive way here. Um. And. So that's. Alvaro and Jen's podcast. You know. Unnamed reverse engineering show. We've done. Uh. Joint shows with them. They're talking to Oleg though.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But there was some talk that they could actually. Um. Target them. That. Because if you. Like. Like. In theory. The enemy could target. Those. Because you can. You know. They're actually transmitting. Right. So it's like. It's possible to. Get a fix on. On the location of these Starlink devices. And I think Elon himself actually tweeted. This. That they. That they have to be careful or something. Because they could actually. Technically. In theory. Be tracked. To their actual location. So. You know. You've got to be careful. So. Yep.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's a whole complicated mess. Over there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's. It's a very. Messy. All of it. It's terrible.

Dave Jones: Well. There's more reverse engineering. Which got the most thumbs up on the. Reddit. Almost. The Tesla Model 3 key fob. Somebody. Reverse engineered. Yeah. This is.

Chris Gammell: Not the first time this. This person has reverse engineered this. But. They dumped. They dumped the firmware off of the. Was it. CC25. 2650. I think. Yep. I lost my link here.

Dave Jones: Yes. I think. The CC20. The 13XX. And 26XX.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've used the. 2642 before.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I think it's like a. I think it's a. 8051. Is the core for the micro. I don't remember. It's not. There is a like a. There is a Cortex M3.

Dave Jones: It is the CC2640. R2F.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And there's a gorgeous shot of a. Inside the key fob. With all the. Breakout wires. Coming out.

Chris Gammell: It's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They went to a fair bit effort to do that. Nice. Yep. I'm seeing. Yeah. It's. It's not. Not much in the key fob. So what. Why are they reverse engineering. The key fob. To what end. Just. Because they can. Or. What's the. Use case.

Chris Gammell: I think it's. You know. To find security vulnerabilities. You know.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Open. Teslas. Anywhere. Right. Is that the.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't think it's like from a. I think this is like a research project. Right. I don't think this is going to be like. This. This person's going to go and. Steal Teslas.

Dave Jones: Oh no. I'm not. But they might go around for fun. And just open up all the Teslas. Or start them or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm sure that's part of it.

Dave Jones: Can't you. With the key fob. Is it. Can't you do the. The summon. Thing. Can't you. Is there a summon. I don't know how the summon thing. Or is that through an app. That's from a app. That's an app is it. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Leonard. The person doing this. Is a researcher. But using a chip whisper. So we've had Colin on the show a couple times. This is doing side channel. And glitching. And yeah. Able to. Cool. Dump firmware then. Reverse engineer it using Ghidra. I think I'm saying that right. I never know.

Dave Jones: So many acronyms. Too many acronyms.

Chris Gammell: No Ghidra is like the. That's the.

Dave Jones: Oh. It isn't an acronym.

Chris Gammell: No. It's. It's like a name of a. Serpent or something like that. It's. Okay. Right. It's from. It's like a. Open source version from the. NSA. For reverse engineering things. Got it. You know. I have not heard of Ghidra. G. H. I. R. D. A.

Dave Jones: Did we talk about. Last week. Last time. Two weeks ago on the show. About going back to work. About. We did. Yeah. Yeah. We did. Okay. Done.

Chris Gammell: We made jokes about that.

Dave Jones: Damn it. I'm back in the office now. Working on my own. Yeah. Yeah. Boy. And. You put this on here. What happened during the 2003 blackout? Are you talking about the. Is this the New York blackout? No. Eastern Canada. Eastern. Eastern seaboard. Eastern seaboard.

Chris Gammell: This was sent to me. In response to the stuff talking about. So we'll have someone on. Like I said. Yep. Next week. Talking about the. The grid.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: But this is. Kind of talking about. The various things. That happened. In the. Cascading failure. That was the 2003. Eastern seaboard blackout.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Which was almost 20 years ago now. Which is.

Dave Jones: I will have. That one. That might be my lunchtime. Video today. This is from.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Practical engineering channel. Which is great.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Practical engineering does. Different videos on. On the grid specifically. So. I'm sorry. Who sent. I forget who sent this to me. But. Yeah. It's. It's interesting show. You know. Like just kind of. Talking through. The logistics of. Stepping on power. Stepping power on and off. And then how do you do. Like. Other videos that. The engineering channel has. In there is like. How do you do that. Right. How do you switch in. New sources. Or. Test that a source. Has been shut down. And. You know. It's. They're very. Very big switches. Or big relay. Yeah. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Big ass switches.

Chris Gammell: But it's interesting too. Because you know. You see these things. At like. At like. Switching substations. And. You know. I see all these funny shapes. You know. Yeah. Yeah. These weird. Weird.

Dave Jones: Physical constructions. Yeah. Weird. You know. Alien looking objects. Based on isolation. And. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I just never really. Paid attention. No. If I'm being honest.

Dave Jones: Same here. I know. Yeah. Yeah. We. We actually visited. We actually visited a substation once. When we were studying. Engineering. And yeah. Yeah. Visited a substation. And was like. You know. They're. They're. They're almost begging us to get. Into the. You know. To actually. You know. Come and work in the industry. Because so few people. That like. Actually care about the grid. You know. They're almost begging us. It was kind of funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But. But. But even then. My eyes sort of. You know. Yeah. Okay. What. These big alien looking objects. Yeah. Okay. You know. Because I. I've. I've never been a high voltage guy. Right. I've always been like a low voltage logic. You know. Current guy.

Chris Gammell: So. I think one. One thing that's interesting. I mean like. You and I would not be working on projects on our own bench. For that. Right. So it's like. If you were in that field.

Dave Jones: Oh no.

Chris Gammell: There's probably some very interesting engineering challenges to solve. Yeah. But. There's. There is. Almost certainly no chance of. You know. Lone wolfing it. And building something on your own. And. You know. You've. You've talked about. That's how. You know. You kind of always did it. Because. Some of it was just. Not having other people around that were working on this stuff. But like. I think just generally. You know. People listening right now. Might be at their bench soldering. You know. A personal project. Whatever. There are really. Yeah. Just. Aren't many personal projects at that scale. You know. You get to do bigger. Cooler things. Maybe. You know. In the.

Dave Jones: There's only a few. You have to be a very rare breed. You have to be a. Andy from. Photonic induction. Right. You've got to be that sort of.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know. Level guy. But he works in that industry. So. You know. You've got to. Yeah. Like. I don't. I don't know. Can anyone name. Like a. A. A hobbyist. Who's just. Working on huge. Voltage. Step up. Yeah. I'm not talking Tesla coil stuff. Like. I'm talking. Yeah. Scale. Like. You can't.

Chris Gammell: Scale and the cost really. Like. Just to do that same kind of thing. You. It doesn't. It doesn't scale down to like a. No. A hobbyist level. No. It doesn't. Really. As far as I understand it. You know. Maybe you could.

Dave Jones: Well. Maybe you could set up your own. 500 kV transmission line. Yeah. In your paddock or something. If you really wanted to. But you know. To transfer. You know. Power from your house. To your shed. Which is. You know. Five. Five k's away. If you're on some gigantic.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And gigantic property or something. Maybe.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But that's like. Yeah. I don't. I can't say I've ever heard of it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Maybe it exists. But I haven't heard of it.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Leave it in the comments. So. That is. Potentially a downside. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We're talking grid. Well. You can't connect to the grid. Right. You can't. You know. Yeah. You've got your wires coming into your house. It's not like you can go. You know. To the local paddock. And actually. Climb up there. And hook something. Into the. You know. The 500 kV lines. I mean.

Chris Gammell: Right. It just.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I mean. It just doesn't work. I mean.

Chris Gammell: You can do it once.

Dave Jones: You can do it well. You can get close once.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Before you get. It's just. Yeah. It's just something that. Yep. It's weird. You have to. You have to work in the industry. Otherwise. It's. Right. Well. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I think the other thing too. Is just the scale of projects. Like. You get to do these. You know. Big projects. You probably. A smaller part of the overall. That's fine. You know. That happens. Even at the scales that we're talking about here. You know. Like. You and I might work on. Small microcontrollers. That's on our bench. But we're not. You know. Shipping a billion units. Yeah. Of that thing. You know. Nobody's shipping a billion units on their own.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Even if it is a small thing that maybe could be. We could do troubleshooting on a bench. But.

Dave Jones: That's an interesting question. Can somebody. Tell us in the comments. Who is the highest volume. Individual. You know. Who is like. You know. I'm talking one man band. From their shop. How many. Like. Units. Are they. You know. Selling. Shipping. Who's the biggest shipping. One. You know. Manufacturing. In-house. One man band. Kind of.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I mean. I think the other thing too. With that. Is like. So if they send out for. Circuit board assembly. Does that. Disqualify them from being a one. One band man.

Dave Jones: Oh. No. No. Not necessarily. I'd say. But if they're doing all the packing and shipping. In-house. You know. If they're doing like.

Chris Gammell: You're just putting it at the. Pieces. Pieces out the door. Huh.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Yep. Pieces out the door. Yep. We will award bonus points. For. Ones that actually. Assemble. In-house as well. So. Yep. And I'm not talking freaking Adafruit. Right. I'm talking one man band.

Chris Gammell: Well. I mean. Adafruit has. 100 plus employees.

Dave Jones: Yes. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean. Yeah. I think the scale. Yeah. I think it. It does reach. It becomes asymptotic. Right. Of like. Yeah. How many things can you actually assemble in a. In a day or week or month or year. Hmm. And then get out the door.

Dave Jones: But anyway. All this power stuff. So next week will be fascinating. But. I've always said like. You know. If you want some niche to get into. That's going to be very high paying. And not much competition. The power. Stuff. I. I think. You know. I think you'll be. You'll be. You'll be snapped up. Right. Somewhere. If you. If you're into your.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if I agree with that. Really. Why. I don't think you'll. You know. Have trouble feeding your family. I don't think you'll be. Rolling in dough.

Dave Jones: Really.

Chris Gammell: No. Oh no. You won't. I'll ask next week. Right.

Dave Jones: You won't be filthy rich. But like. You know. You'll get paid. I reckon you'll get paid a lot more. Than Joe average engineer. Just. You know. Doing some board layout. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But.

Dave Jones: And. Because there's less. Less competition. There is less specialists. Out there. That. That really know about this sort of stuff. So I'm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean. I feel like. I guess. I guess the. Maybe one thing in the plus column. Would be. That it's. There is. There is specialized knowledge around it. You probably need some. Level of certification. Again. We'll ask this stuff next week. But then. It is also something that is needed everywhere. Yeah. Right. Like every town. Exactly. Needs power. Right. So. That's. Tied in. But then also. That leads me to believe that it can't be that niche by default. Right. I mean. Like you can't. You can't operate the whole.

Dave Jones: But I'm talking about. You know. Not. Not just some maintenance engineer. I'm. I'm talking about. Like somebody who actually knows the design of the grid. And. You know. Like. Can. Can. Like. Do new installation design and consulting and stuff like that. I reckon there's got to be.

Chris Gammell: I see.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about. Just. You know. Stringing lines up or something.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Just. Just stringing up 500,000 volt lines. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like. There's a new town going up and you need new infrastructure. So your Joe Blog's. Joe Blog's power consulting. Business. Right. There's got to be decent money in actually consulting for that sort of stuff. If you have the knowledge.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Maybe you find out next week. We'll see. Yep.

Dave Jones: That didn't make a fascinating tour. If I get my ass back out there. Because COVID's over. Pretty much. Sure. So. Well. You know. Life's getting back. Well. Here. You know. And. And. And in the US. I'm hearing that people just don't. Don't care anymore. Right. And. You know. Here. It's like. Yeah. It's getting back to normal. Right. So.

Chris Gammell: I have a meetup. That's. That's how you can tell. Yes. Exactly.

Dave Jones: You have a physical in-person meetup.

Chris Gammell: Mm hmm.

Dave Jones: And. Yeah. But. I think. I might try and get a tour of a. Of a power station. That'd be really cool.

Chris Gammell: That would be really cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Someone wrote to me. That used to work in a nuclear plant. Around here. But. They don't anymore. But they might be able to introduce me. I don't think I'm going to get invited into a nuclear plant. But I would.

Dave Jones: Nuclear plants. I would make lots of homerous. And. That'd be interesting. But not as interesting as stuff to look at. As you'd get in a. Substation. Or something. You know. Like a huge power generation. Yeah. I'm talking. You know. I want to see big alien looking. Structures. With massive bus bars running. You know. I want to see stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: You want to feel like the hair on your arm. Like. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to. Yeah. It's going to light up.

Dave Jones: If I get too close. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Whereas. And that was the end of Dave folks. He had a good run. But you know. Yep. The universe is big. And nothing really matters.

Dave Jones: He really. You know. He tried to get that one shot. You know. He tried to get that really good shot. And you know. It's just. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Should have brought that long distance lens. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But yeah. That'd be cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So. I have a new meetup in Durham. Yeah. It's going to be Durham. Raleigh. And Chapel Hill. Sometimes referred to as a research triangle.

Dave Jones: You're right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We're going to do it just like we did in Chicago. And San Francisco. And Seattle.

Dave Jones: Is this going to be at a pub. Or are you going to hire a. Yeah. No.

Chris Gammell: This will be a pub. This will be an outdoor pub. That'll be the. So if you're listening to this. And you're in the area. First off. Why haven't you contacted me yet? Second off. Let your friends know. If they happen to be in the area. Love to. Yep. Geek out about some electronics. Show off some projects. With people. So. There will be a link in the show notes.

Dave Jones: Excellent. Well. I hope you get a decent turnout.

Chris Gammell: Even if I don't. If there's like one person there. I'll just.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Nerd out with them.

Dave Jones: Well. We have the. Electronics show. That's in April. I think.

Chris Gammell: April.

Dave Jones: April. Or is it. My. Oh God. I'm going to. Yep. It is almost April. As you know. Anyway. Two weeks away. Jesus. Yeah. No. It is April. It is April. It is April. It is April. Oh. Fifth. Fifth. And sixth. Yeah. That's not far away at all. Actually. Jesus. March now. Right. Yeah. 18th of March. Oh God. Come on. Really.

Chris Gammell: Three weeks away. Yeah. Three weeks away. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's not that far away. Wow. Fifth of April. All right. Jeez. Anyway. Yeah. I'll be there. I don't know if I'll be there for the two days, but I'll be wandering around. I guess.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: As a super secret after party, which I've been invited to. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Not secret anymore.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's. Yeah. If you've ever been to one of the after parties after a trade show, they're not exactly, you know. No supermodels walking around. There's no supermodels walking around. No. There's no, you know. Prince isn't playing a secret show or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. No celebrities wandering around and, you know. Yep. Getting. Getting. Absolutely. Hammered. No. It's. Right. Yep. Anyway. Cool. But yeah. So that's. So I only get one more shout out for that, I think, before we. Before that happens. Jeez. All right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, you should set up your own meet up there. Be like, hey, if you're going to be there. Yep. Meet up at a coffee shop or pub.

Dave Jones: Right. I'll see what I can do. Hmm.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: All right. Cool. Well, that's it. Our amp hours up. Our capacities. All used up.

Chris Gammell: Have a good week, folks.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time. Bye.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye. Bye. administered administered administered administered administered administered ! administered administered administered administered administered