#652 – For a couple weeks there...

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released November 28th, 2023. Episode 652. For a couple weeks there.

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

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

Dave Jones: We're back.

Chris Gammell: No, nothing. Is that like a reference to something? Or is that a...

Dave Jones: No, well, it was a bad reference. No, I think we should do the, like the Ghostbusters. We're back. You know, in the... Oh, did Ghostbusters do it? The second one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep, for sure. Have you seen the new trailer?

Chris Gammell: New trailer?

Dave Jones: What? There's a new Ghostbusters movie, dude. Have you seen the new trailer? Oh, no way.

Chris Gammell: I love the reboot one. The latest reboot, rather.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Right. No, this one looks... To smash that one out of the park. Like, this one looks way better. Nice. Yeah, it's great. Here's the way. Frozen Empire.

Chris Gammell: It's cool.

Dave Jones: Great.

Chris Gammell: I'll check it out right after this. Yeah, I got a lot of free time these days. I got a lot of free time. So, I'll be watching a lot of movies and working on a lot of hobby projects and, you know, sleeping. Just a ton of...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: A ton of sleep.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. So, there was a couple weeks there where we bonked and we didn't have an episode of that. That's because Chris was busy helping his wife have a baby. And so...

Dave Jones: Congratulations for number two.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. There are two tiny humans in my household now. And everybody's healthy. And so, yeah. We're all good. We're all good.

Dave Jones: Fantastic. Good to hear. Anyway. Anyway. Yeah. We're back at it. Still going after like 13 years or something. 13 years. Shit like that.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. So, yeah. We'll be racing towards the end of the year. And then, I think, what? You usually disappear for the holiday, right?

Dave Jones: I usually disappear in January. Yeah. I'll be gone for... Yeah. Quite a... Most of January, I think.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I got a bunch of guests lined up.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Don't worry about that. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: No problem.

Chris Gammell: What you been doing? I mean, I have a pretty limited story. I'm going to be honest about what's been going on here. A lot of... It involves a lot of diapers.

Dave Jones: Right. Like, did you take time off from your day job?

Speaker ?: Yes.

Dave Jones: Because you actually had... Because unlike me, you actually have a day job.

Chris Gammell: I do. And very generous policy. And, yeah. So, I took a little bit of time off at the beginning. And then, I'll actually be on parental leave the first two months of the year. So, that'll be interesting, too.

Dave Jones: Oh, wow. So, you're back at the moment, or?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'm back at the moment. It's kind of like a little break. Right.

Dave Jones: And then, you'll take another two months off.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yep.

Dave Jones: Wow. Groovy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Very progressive. Fantastic. Very grateful for having that, too. Yeah. Yeah, it's handy. So, I'm back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a lot of stuff going on there. So.

Dave Jones: Well, someone who's back is Unmanaged615, who has been nonstop contributing to our... Yes. ...our Reddit list of topics, but... Yes. ...which we have not got around to.

Chris Gammell: I've actually gotten to a pretty good feeling for Unmanaged's YouTube subscriptions, because there's a lot of like... Yeah, right. I see that video going across my feed, and then I see it here, too, and I'm like, yeah, that's...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. I've seen a good lot of them as well. Yeah. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's great. That's great. Thanks. Thank you, Unmanaged615.

Dave Jones: Should we just get into those? Because I don't have any.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I've got a bunch that I submitted as well, as I've been keeping tabs on some things. But it's been like... It's been at least two months, right? I mean, like since you and I... Yeah, yeah. ...didn't show the cast. A couple months. It's been two months. Two months. Well, let's talk about Dave videos first. How about that? What have you been making videos about?

Dave Jones: I don't remember. Okay. I've been... Slowly slipping into insanity. After a couple of thousand, you kind of like lose track. Yeah, man. You know, you're kind of like... Like, cause like people post or like people post my videos to me on Twitter or something like that. You know, oh, I really enjoyed this video. I'm like, shit, I forgot. Completely forgot it. I actually made that. That happens. That's really good.

Chris Gammell: That happens with The Amp Hour too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People are like, oh yeah, you know, this person said this while they were on their Ampower. Yep. Oh, I don't doubt it. Yep. People can come up to us at conventions and tell us that we've said something or, you know, we've been part of something. We'll be like, yes, of course. I was. I was there for the moon landing. Did you see the new Starship launch? I did. Oh man. Oh, so much power. That was, that was exciting. That was insane. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That was not a single engine. I I'm surprised that the stand held together, but that, that water deluge system actually worked. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So yeah, that's what they use in like NASA stuff too, right?

Dave Jones: No, they usually use like a proper trench flame, flame diverter thing. But the problem at Starbase there is that they can't dig down because it's all wetlands and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They built the thing on wetlands so they can't actually build down. They've got to like build up. So they had to, you know, so they had to, it's like, why did you pick that spot? You know, and it's a protected wetland and all sorts of, I never really figured that

Chris Gammell: out. It's like, right. It's right in like the lower tip of Texas basically.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And I've been near there. I think I've, I think we've talked about it in the show, but I went to a holiday once near there in South Padre Island where some of the people like film like, uh, amateur footage from, cause it's like a nice, nice ish kind of thing. It's like, you know, one of the nicer towns on the, uh, the Gulf of Mexico and yeah, it's, it's not bad. Uh, but, but it's like one of the closer towns to Brown Brownsville. Brownsville is like the, the, one of the lowest. Brownsville is near, but yeah. That's what it is. Yeah. Okay. Brownsville is like the, the, the town I think of is like the lowest, the lowest city at least, uh, in Texas, but maybe, maybe cause maybe, I don't know if they get materials from Mexico too. Maybe, maybe that's an easy way to, to just cross the border there too. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Maybe it's just, maybe they got the land cheap cause it's politics or something. Could be.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah. Yep. So I don't know what it is, but I'm going to keep watching it. Cause, uh, man, that 33 engines, 33 engines, 33 engines, I believe.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So big. Yeah. And they worked a hundred percent. And yeah, it's a shame that it didn't. Yeah. Anyway, it's a shame that mission wasn't a complete success, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They'll get there. Yeah. Anyway, the engines lit. So that's the main thing and didn't destroy themselves. Yeah. So didn't fly concrete up everywhere. And yeah. Anyway, very impressive show. But, uh, but I, I just heard today that, um, uh, Blue Origin reckon that they're going to beat SpaceX. They still reckon that they're going to beat them. Even though they really haven't launched anything. Well, to like mission, like to operational mission status, like to actually flying stuff into orbit and, you know, doing stuff like that. So it was like, that's what they reckon.

Chris Gammell: Bezos is just going to pay everybody off. And that's how you, you get to, you get to status faster. You're just like, just buy your way there.

Dave Jones: Well, you know, it's slow, slow and steady, right? Slow and steady. Like, yeah, you have to remember, right? The, uh, Saturn boosters, for example, right? Even though that wasn't exactly slow development, but you know, extremely careful and they all worked like they all worked first go, like none of this experimental stuff and the, um, the SLS, the space launch system, right? Worked first go. Right. Right. So like higher simulation, that sort of thing. Yep. Like, and well, no, they just, yeah, they're just a different mentality, a different design, design mentality to Starship, which is like launch now. See what breaks and then fix it. You know, it's, it's entirely different. Tirely different development.

Chris Gammell: Cause there's like, uh, I remember boards when we were doing them at Keithley, they would be like six months, six months between revs. Right. And like some people would look at that and be like, um, that's, that's, that's too slow. But it'd be like, so much testing and you have to do like so much like validation of stuff, especially like low level testing type stuff that it would, it really makes sense. And like spending that amount of time because, and also not a lot of volume, right? So you're not making a ton of boards and you're trying to get it right. You really, really want to make sure you get it right. So there's a ton of scrutiny over it. But then some people might say, well, I could do, you know, a hundred revs in that amount of time or something like that. Right.

Dave Jones: So do you do a partial, do you just slap a board together to test 90% of your new, uh, project? Right. And then you refine it later. It's like, I've done both approaches and they both have their pros and cons.

Chris Gammell: And I feel like these days it's, it's getting towards the latter for me, just, I think because of the nature of the designs I'm doing, but also just because of the, the cost equation just has changed drastically. Even just when I was at Keithley, which was like 2012, I think I left there. Yeah. And like, that just so incredible. Like the other day I bought a board, I bought five boards for five, four layer boards with the seven bucks thing. Right. It was of course JLC.

Dave Jones: Five four layer boards for seven bucks.

Chris Gammell: It's just like, I was telling my family about it. I was showing my family over the holiday here. Cause it was Thanksgiving. And I was like, this would have been like $500 at least like, you know, a couple of years ago, 10 years ago. Right. Yeah. And so, I don't know. It's just, it, that changes a lot of math. I feel like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, well, when I was working at Altium, it was like, we would get boards prototype, like they were candy, you know, but, but they were thousands of dollars each. Cause they're all big eight layer boards, right? They're all, you know, um, you know, big beastie boards and we get them sometimes turned in 24 hours. So you'd pay double or triple or something like that to get it turned into 24 hours so that you get a board quickly and you can spin up a new concept, a new, you know, thing or whatever.

Chris Gammell: And yeah, it's just, I went to a trade show, Dave in, in my city. Well, in a nearby city, um, there's actually a PCB trade show called PCB Carolina. And it was like, Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty great.

Chris Gammell: I mean, like it was small, but you know, it was like sponsors, a lot of, a lot of different sponsors there. So like, like an actual trade show floor, it was, it was at a university actually. So, or like the, right. The, uh, like the convention center of the university. So decent size for like a hundred vendors, all PCB focus, which was like, I was just, it just kind of, it didn't come out of nowhere. It's just came out of nowhere for me. And yeah, it was pretty good. You know, they had like soldering workshops, you can get certified and there was layout workshops and yeah, lots of, I just went to go hang out with people.

Dave Jones: But, um, is it all local, uh, supplies, local, like a piece of being assembly houses and stuff, or is it a lot of that? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: A lot of, uh, none of the overseas folks came, but, um, some of the larger, so like, you know, Keysight had some of their local people there. So like the bigger brands, like the national brands were also there. So like, uh, like Cadence was there promoting various pieces of software and Keysight, but then, you know, smaller players do. In fact, uh, twice guest of the show, Matt Liberty was there. I got to hang out with Matt for the first time, uh, and, and talked about the jewel scope, of course. Um, yep. So that was great. Cause he's up in Maryland. So pretty easy flight down for him. And yeah, I don't know. Like it was like, it felt like old school days, you know, like these tiny, like these trade shows just don't feel like they exist anymore. And it was very refreshing, even though it was like a small thing and only one day and whatever. I just, it was very refreshing. And also just to like look around and be see, um, like nerds in the area. Of course this area has some nerds, but I just, I don't know them yet. So hopefully you get to meet more of them. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: So obviously nothing like that here. I don't think we've ever had a PCB. I think probably. Well, they, they do attach it. Right. Well, there's a surface mount circuit board association here. Um, and they sort of attach that to the local show and they have like, you know, conference, like they have like a conference it's talks usually like it's, you know, it's just. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's great. I mean, that's the kind of thing. I don't know. Where do you get that? I mean, otherwise it's like either that or online. That's basically it. So I'll take it if it's in person and then you get to also talk to people. So that's great. I like it.

Dave Jones: Awesome. Oh no.

Chris Gammell: Sorry. I just, uh, activated one of the many, one of the many links that I had available here. Uh, I have all of the links that we have.

Dave Jones: You were playing a YouTube video.

Chris Gammell: I was no, I would like scroll through my tabs and this one popped up. And so, I guess we can cut over to this one. I don't know. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Why has the most influential risk five startup just cut 130 people? Ooh, breaking news.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. One month ago. This is tech, tech, it's potato. First off. Uh, it's a sci-fi. So sci-fi like did a bunch of sci-fi is like the ones they have some of the larger, um, cores that are available out there and some of the commercial silicon. Um, but they, yeah, they just had a big layoff and not really sure why.

Dave Jones: What is it? Well, that's, well, that's what I want to know.

Chris Gammell: Is it because of the commercial viability of running a risk five job?

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. Cause there's just so much competition. Like everyone's doing risk five. It's like, well, okay. So, okay. So you've got a risk five startup. Good luck. Um, yes, I think that's right. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, I think that's right. And I don't think that differentiates you from anything else at this point, you know, other than maybe low cost, uh, or really. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You, how would you differentiate? How would you differentiate with a risk fight? Because obviously like the core is open source. It's free. Right. So how do you. No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: The ISA is open source. The core. Oh, sorry.

Dave Jones: The instruction said architecture. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So like they offer, they offer like, you know, cores that are based on the ISA. Yeah, exactly. And so like, uh, you know, you could go and buy them. I think there's probably just not a big, yeah.

Dave Jones: But plug in cores for what? Yeah. Do you get the Verilog and you just plunk it into your FPGA? What do you do? Are they selling?

Chris Gammell: I think you put it under, I think it's validated for silicon. I think that's the, so they make their own silicon as well. Got it. So they're a fabulous semiconductor. So sci-5 is. Yeah. Um, and then you also, you can, I think go and buy from them. I think you could buy one of their cores.

Dave Jones: Um, I'm, I'm curious if there's any silicon designers out there, how would you do this? Would you, when you buy it, say you bought a core, like a predefined, a pre, you know, tested silicon core from this mob, would you just get the VHD or Verilog or would you get, or is there some other way it's like, is it like a literally a dropping core with all the process stuff attached to it and all that sort of jazz, if you know what I mean?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think you're right because peripherals definitely make the, make the chip overall. So like the Raspberry Pi folks were on and they were talking about the RP1. And I think hearing them talk about it, you know, they, they are not fit risk five. They're using arm and doing so great to great effect. I think, um, and, but, but then they were talking about like the, the peripherals that they're buying that are also in the data sheets. If you go to RP1 data sheet, you actually can see which rev of the peripherals they're buying from, uh, simplicity. No, what was the name of it?

Dave Jones: Right. So they're buying the peripherals as well. And yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: So, I mean, like, so all of the, I think one of the things is like, uh, the, the value prop of someone like Raspberry Pi is, is the fact that they're gluing it all together and

Dave Jones: they're testing it and they're, it's the ecosystem. It's actually gluing the whole thing together and you know, it's going to work at a top level. Cause when you, when you're buying a Raspberry Pi, whatever it is, you don't care about the lower level stuff. That's right. Right.

Chris Gammell: I want, I mean, I don't even want to buy this thing. I want to buy the actual Raspberry Pi five, which includes the RP one. And I just want to have, I want to have a blank Linux system that sits in a drawer. And I, you know, I just want to have this tool that I never ever use. Right.

Dave Jones: You want.

Chris Gammell: I posted today on a Mastodon that I, I found my Raspberry Pi one a today and I was like, oh man, I gotta, I gotta do a better job. Hang on.

Dave Jones: You posted on Mastodon. When are you coming back to X dude?

Chris Gammell: I'm not, I'm not going to.

Dave Jones: Come on.

Chris Gammell: No, sorry.

Dave Jones: Join the real world, dude.

Chris Gammell: Uh, anyways, uh, I, what do I do with this Raspberry Pi one? I don't know. Like it's got a four gigabyte. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I've got like a, yeah, I've like, I've got like a three hanging around. Like even a three is not that useful.

Chris Gammell: You know, actually, no, it's still useful, but you should tell, you should do this with your kids. I did a three. I put, um, so I had some time in the hospital. I put, uh, what's it called? Uh, pie pie. Pie Cade. No, that's not it. Oh yes. That's your pie. Yes. Yes. That's great. Oh, it's so much fun. Oh, retro pie.

Dave Jones: I have actually got one at home. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you do. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Dave Jones: I think it's a three. I did that on three was the minimum you could do it on. I think.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's certainly. You couldn't do it on earlier ones. No, no, you could do it on a two. You could do it on a two. I think, but it would be super. Oh, okay. Well, it depends which games you plan there too. Right. They're like, you know, when N64 games start, start stressing your ability. Uh, I was mostly playing, uh, Super Nintendo Zelda, a legend of Zelda. That's like my jam.

Dave Jones: They struggle. Yeah. It really struggles.

Chris Gammell: Like it's, you know, some of the games that it is amazing. The amount of stuff you can put under there.

Dave Jones: And it's all emulate. I know it's like, I'm still blown away. That's all emulated. And here I am complaining, oh, this is slow, but you've got to realize it's emulating an entire fricking like PlayStation console or entire, you know, Wii console or whatever. Right. It's just, it's just insane.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Just throwing.

Dave Jones: And it's doing that on one little raspberry pie chip. I mean, it's just, oh my God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Unbelievable. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So to go back to the, uh, RP one thing. Uh, yeah. So, uh, I'm looking at the data sheet. I don't know if you can see Dave, but I actually, now that we're using streamer, I can share my screen screen with you.

Dave Jones: I can, I can see it. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, synopsis. There's spy pass. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so it actually lists the synopsis DWAPB SSI. Oh, there you go.

Dave Jones: Version 4.02a.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Isn't that cool? Like, I think that's a great idea too. Like from a troubleshooting kind of thing, you'd actually be able to see, you could see like the revision control almost of, of which. Yeah. Oh, they switched out the spy driver. I don't know why they would, but like, but like more critical things.

Dave Jones: You can see change as it changes from one, as the data sheet changes over the years, you can see that all the latest silicon uses a different core from, from a different manufacturer. Yeah. You know, even though it shouldn't matter, but it does, you know, it might in some obscure circumstance.

Chris Gammell: I do think that new, um, so, so to go back to sci-fi then as well, I think sci-fi, you know, they, they're going to sell you the core and they have these essential performance, intelligence, automotive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, stupid names. Uh, but these are actual cores. They'll sell you and they have different capabilities and, you know, all the different things they could do here, but then they also make some silicon, right? So they also make, uh, where is it? Core IP technology. They definitely have some boards out there, uh, that have sci-fi on them. So, um, yeah, you can go and buy them.

Dave Jones: Anyway, they, they, anyway, they've laid off some people. What, uh, percentage of the company was it?

Chris Gammell: Hmm. Good question.

Dave Jones: That matters. Like, you know, okay. It's how many people, like three 130 people. But if that's, but the company's only got 150, then it's like, you know, if it's got a thousand, then.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Uh, what's that? Crunch base. Crunch base. Right. That's, that's usually how you can tell.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's, uh, can you, can you get employee count?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. 250 to 500. So that's pretty good. Oh, estimate. Okay.

Dave Jones: So half, maybe they laid off. And that's fairly typical. Like if you're a startup and if you're working in a startup and they have a retrenchment or something like that, like it's, it's usually like, it's not going to be 10%. Right. It, that, that usually doesn't matter a rats. Right. It's going to be half. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So this is one in five from the 25th. So one in five.

Dave Jones: Well, I've been there, done that twice. So that's, that's happened to me twice. So at a company. That stinks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where like half the company's gone.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That happened to someone else recently too. What was that? I don't remember. There's been, there's been like a bunch of weird layoffs lately. Like it feels like it's very spotty. It's like, you know, one thing here, one thing there. Um, Oh, uh, Nordic semiconductor had some layoffs. Right. And I think, I think some of it in the Silicon industry, at least like looking at the, the Nordic semiconductor stuff, it's just because like, some of this is also because the, the expectations were sky high after the shortage. Right. So like you look at the expected chip counts after the, you know, during the shortage, at least bubble gum tap shoes. Uh, and, and they're like, Oh, demand is through the roof. There's so many pre-orders, whatever. Cause everybody's pre-buying and being like, Oh, we need all these parts. And then when it's time for delivery a couple of hours later and things have leveled out, it's like, Oh, actually we're coming back down to earth. All these people actually got their orders in. And like, you know, you think about like, I have you had trouble finding parts lately? I personally, I haven't, there's still some stuff out. That's hard to get. No, no.

Dave Jones: No. In fact, there's an oversupply. That's right. Exactly. It's swung. Did you hear? Yeah. Did I tell you that, uh, Michael, uh, Burry, who's the big short guy, right?

Chris Gammell: No way. He's the guy that called. The doctor. Yeah. Yeah. He's the.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I was just watching big short the other day. It's one by Christian Bale. Oh, you were just watching the big short.

Dave Jones: Anyway, he's just made the biggest short ever. He's shorting the entire semiconductor industry. Holy crap. Yeah. He just put, yep. Him and his, what's, what's the name of his company? Uh, CYRO or something? Cyan. It used to be. Cyan or something? Yeah. No, I was literally looking at the Wikipedia pages. Cyan Capital or whatever?

Chris Gammell: It was, it was Cyan Capital. Then he closed it and he reopened another one.

Speaker ?: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Right. That also had Cyan in the name though.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. Oh, wow. That's interesting. Anyway, he just shorted the entire semiconductor industry. It's a massive play. It's a massive play. Everyone's talking about it in the semiconductor industry and everyone's asking, what's the panic, panic. But apparently the semiconductor industry goes through like a five year, six year normal cycle anyway. And some people think, oh, he's just betting on that or, or whatever. But yeah, he's making a huge, it's bigger than he did in the, uh, GFC. So it's a, that's the global financial crisis. It's a massive play. Yes. Of course. Yeah. Which is what the entire big short movie, if you haven't seen it, if you haven't seen the big short. Oh, it's so good. Oh man. Yeah. It's great.

Chris Gammell: It was, and it's on YouTube right now for free. That's why I was watching. It came up as like, okay, really? Yeah. It was in like, Dave, you know what I craved? I have YouTube premium now.

Dave Jones: Oh, you've got premium. Thank you very much. Yeah. It's a sensible thing to do because it gives your, every video you watch a tiny percentage of what you pay towards premium goes to that content creator. And you don't have to dick around subscribing to Patreon and everything else. It's just, you know, and you get rid of no ads. No, it's fine.

Chris Gammell: It's fine. I pay for other, other stuff. No problem.

Dave Jones: It's streaming. So yeah, it's, and to me, YouTube is the best value streaming service out there. I mean, I use it so, so much. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The real thing for me is because I was like, this is another thing that was driven by my, my time in hospital for when my, my child was born. Is it like when you're on a phone, ad blockers don't work. And then ad blockers really don't work on YouTube anymore. So I was like, okay, I got to do this. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. That's great. It's the best value thing I subscribe to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So what's the, what's the output of this? I mean, like.

Dave Jones: I don't, I don't know. People are like everyone's screen. Like you go on the finance tube, you know, you watch any of the finance YouTube videos or you follow finance Twitter or whatever. Everyone, you know, everyone was talking about it. This was a couple of weeks back. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Does he publicize it too? That's the other thing I don't get. Like how do they know when he's shorting?

Dave Jones: It's not like he tweets it, but no, people watch, people have him on a watch list. And if you're, you know, you can watch the markets and he's fun. You can watch what he's fun's doing because it's a public fund or something. I think, I think that's how they find out. Yeah. And yeah, so they follow it and they've got, you know, like an alert pops up. They've got software that, you know, you can watch people. So you can watch all the, all the, all the politicians, for example. So. Yeah. Right. Right. So that's all yeah. Apparently you can do it. I don't know the actual. Yeah. Maybe there's, maybe there's indicators. Interesting. So it was cyan capital and then it became cyan asset management. That was actually, they closed the capital fund.

Dave Jones: That is so weird. Okay. Well, I, I'm going to go look at that after this. This is really.

Dave Jones: Yep. That's a bit weird.

Dave Jones: That's a bit weird.

Chris Gammell: That's weird.

Chris Gammell: That's weird. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's weird.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. I don't know if you know this David, it was not a great output. That was not a great. No, no, no. Well, it was good for some people, but. Things went poorly for the general population. And I think in this case, we would be the general population. Yeah. I'll send you the first link that pops up. It is over on the Googles. There you go. You have a Google link. Okay. That was first. Burry famous for big short places bearish bed against semiconductor E-T. ! Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'll send you the first link that pops up. It is over on the Googles. There you go. You have a Google link. Okay. That was first. Burry famous for big short places bearish bed against semiconductor E-T. Okay. Yeah. So he bet against the, the entire market by way of an exchange traded fund.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah. There you go. Alrighty. Let's see how that goes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I, yeah, cause that I was looking at the iShares semiconductor E-TF the other day and I was going, yeah, it's a bit peaky.

Dave Jones: You know, it felt a bit peaky to me. So, you know, mate, I think it's a big deal. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's a bit peaky to me. So maybe. Yep. Anyway. Oh, it's up. The ETF's up 45% year to date. So there you go. There you go. The entire semiconductor market 45% year to date. And there's oversupply. There's rumblings about oversupply and everything in the natural cycle of the semiconductor market. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It just doesn't feel like as big of a bet. And also in the movie, it said that he's watching water generally. So that's interesting. Watching water. Yeah. They said the, the, so like at the end, you know, they do like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the epilogue at the end of the movie, you know, spoilers, uh, spoilers at the end of the movie, a financial crisis happens. Uh, but then at the end, there's like an epilogue and it talks about Dr. Burry's like watching one, watching, you know, an asset class, one asset class. Yes. Water. Yes. That's right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I've talked about it on here before too. It's still like, I know, I know logically that you can get around it, but like the fact that they keep building fabs in Arizona, like, I don't understand. Like, like that is like, is the dry, dry state.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It is one of the dry, dry states.

Dave Jones: I'm not sure.

Chris Gammell: It's like that Nevada, you know, it's all, it's a ton of desert there. And like, so I, I just, I I'm, I'm missing something. I, I, I must be missing something. Politics. There is. Yeah. There's that politics stuff too, but like, why not Nevada then? Right. And the taxes. Yeah, I guess so.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: But like, yep. But there's other states. So like you're Dave, you're, you're totally right about the, the, that has an outsized impact on a lot of things, but like, there is no shortage of states that are trying to lure people.

Chris Gammell: I mean like Ohio, New York, and like all of these different things. I feel like some of it's legacy perhaps, you know, like there is a talent pool.

Dave Jones: Well, I was about to mention legacy because if you look at the history of the semiconductor industry and where they started up, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: When Steve was on the show, did you ask him that? I don't remember if you asked him that.

Dave Jones: I think we might've, oh, we touched on aspects of it. I don't, I think, but not exactly. Not exactly. Give him a call.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. He's probably got a lot of extra.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I was calling up the CEO microchip.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, there you go.

Dave Jones: Bingo. Right. I was calling him up. Yeah. Yeah. No worries. Maybe we can get him live on the phone, on the show. Yeah. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: I mean, he was like a chyron with calling in live now. Steve saying. Oh boy.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yep. Anyway. Well, no, but the interesting thing to come out of my, the discussion with him is that about all the, well, to me, the, one of the more interesting things was about the chips act and all that sort of stuff and how they were golden handcuffs and how they were, you know, I referred to that. It's all just politics. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I know. I, I do wonder, you know, so like we, here on the show, we were talking about like, you know, I was like super jazzed about all these announcements of like, Oh, Samsung new fab TSMC new fab, like global foundries expanding TI expanding. Like all of them were like in preparation for the chips act. And I mean, I know it takes a while to start up fabs and like build stuff, but like there haven't been a whole lot of ribbon cuttings lately either. Right. So, you know, like I'll be excited again. On the surface it was all good. Everyone got all excited. And then once we see the, see the, the ribbon cutting ceremony, cause you know, like if there is an opening, they're going to do a ribbon cutting. So like, that's the next time I'm going to get excited personally. Uh, right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Well, um, speaking of, um, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, speaking of, um, Oh, no, we have competing speakings speaking of speaking of.

Chris Gammell: We, we, it's a, it's a segway off. It's a segway off.

Dave Jones: We will have to paper scissors rocket. Who wants to go first?

Chris Gammell: You go first.

Dave Jones: Okay. Speaking of fraud, um, the, one of the, uh, I just did a recent video on the nuclear diamond battery and, uh, the fraud lawsuit on that. That was, that was an incredibly popular video actually. popular video actually that's one of my more recent popular ones i mean i don't get many

Chris Gammell: popular ones i don't know you just like put that many things in a title and even like nuclear diamond battery yeah yeah you're just gonna get the dummy dummy dum dum dum dums now the the interesting

Dave Jones: thing about basically for those who don't know it made all the rage a couple of years ago and they were going to reuse nuclear waste to create these diamond batteries they're going to make diamonds out of them make these batteries it's basically a beta voltaic it's they're gonna power

Chris Gammell: evs it sounds like it sounds like something that's like in a bad bond movie you know yeah right yeah

Dave Jones: anyway it's a real thing these uh beta voltaics are a real thing you've been able to buy them for

Chris Gammell: decades yeah i mean like 100 microwatts right much like piezoelectric is like is an actual like physical phenomenon yes but it's not gonna energy harvest with it right exactly and you're not gonna power charge your shoe phone with it exactly exactly yeah it's basically like taking like it's basically taking a phys org dot or phys.org whatever the physics like kind of excitement website is and then being like yeah oh we're gonna just build a company based on this one article i read you know

Dave Jones: this one article based on this little test that they did in a lab that you know yeah yeah right and anyway it turns out um that the founder of that um is now being uh sued for fraud by the securities exchange commission now the interesting thing about this though that the the takeaway is that they didn't get him on any of the technical claims right so all the all the technical all the marketing bullshit behind it right none of that didn't touch it because you can't really because you can't take touch a belief right it's like a speech something yeah yeah it's like a yeah it's like a free speech kind like you can't like you can't sue somebody because they they they believe that solar roadways would be successful that's right exactly exactly right there's my heart of hearts they definitely say heart of hearts at some point exactly and some of them are true believers right so like they're like the solar roadways people they're absolute true believers right so you know there's nothing wrong with that right but just don't get sucked into it okay but what they got him on was that he actually made fraudulent statements about it had been tested at these two labs when it had these labs had nothing to do with it and it had been and based on that they put that in all their marketing stuff and then that's where all the investment flooded in and there were 200 press announcements and you know boom there's a certain point you like you can get hit for like wire fraud

Chris Gammell: though can't you like if that's like wire fraud if you're getting money for fraudulent claims isn't

Dave Jones: that wire it's frank it's a fraudulent uh yeah so he made a very deliberate fraudulent uh claim so yeah yep you're right you're right there yep yep this guy oh man two months later still getting phone calls yeah all right all right it is mrs evie okay well um yeah if you need to take it you can take it nah it's all right okay all right nah stop now okay oh boy i'm in trouble okay anyway yes so they got him on the fact that um there were two things one was uh the claims that had been tested at these like very prestigious uni labs right you know university of england or something i don't

Chris Gammell: remember the exact one but yeah anyway right university of avada germany us right really and

Dave Jones: and and and even at the time they came out and said look we have nothing to do with this please take us out of your press announcements and and but the money had already been raised you know and that's where they got him so yep yep and apparently he has actually admitted to it so it's like it's probably an open shut case i don't know for sure but you know nuclear diamond battery so yeah that one's kamigatza but not based on the technical details so um lesson here for all you want to be scammers out there i learned something today don't lie about your um testing okay yeah all right just good lie about your technical or just exaggerate your technical claims that's fine you can raise as much money as you want from seconds based on that and they won't go after you but yeah no they yeah bam got him so that was interesting all right yep all right yep and speaking of which i also busted the uh tipper the world's most efficient solar panel because did you know that solar panels are only 20 efficient and did you know that the other 80 must be reflected back out of the solar panel so if we use mirrors and then we just reflect that re reflect that back into another solar panel we can have another suck of the sav and then 60 gets reflected and then so on and we can get whoa eventually you just add that all up 120 efficient oh come on you know what they should do dave they should they

Chris Gammell: should somehow hook up some kind of harvesting device to your inexhaustible supply of enjoying busting all these videos over yeah yeah i i don't i don't have it in me you know it's perpetual motion

Dave Jones: but they got a half million pound grant from the uk government for that bullshit yeah man people are

Chris Gammell: liars and cheats all the time forever to the end of time until until humans are dead overall there's

Dave Jones: going to be this problem over and over yeah and then i went into like investigating the company behind it and then it's yeah it's one of those ideas companies you know so you go to their website and they got all these alternative you know a battery that uses alternative physics to you know to like get more efficient battery and they got all these wacky ideas on there and it's like well this is the one that seemed to have raised all the money you know so yeah just throwing off crap at the wall and one of them will stick for a grant funding somewhere and then then once you have the grant funding that that looks great on your uh start engine kickstarter indiegogo campaign right oh yeah we got funding from the uk government this is totally legit you know that's like oh god anyway that's basically my life in a nutshell is trying to bust these people oh boy anyway there's just so many of them it's ridiculous

Chris Gammell: yeah yeah uh i got a board back when i was in the hospital uh it's mostly did they mail it to the hospital they did not uh that was a good thing i thought you'd change your address to no really just in case i can't use any of my boards yeah i'll sign for it at the reception desk yeah i don't know i think i mentioned it on the show before we ended before we took a break but um yeah then i i figured out all the things i did wrong um and it wasn't a small amount i i'd like to blame uh sleep deprivation but i actually hadn't had a child at that point so i don't know i don't know i don't know what my real excuse was uh rather than you know actually i know i actually think i know what it was it was like uh last minute changes like i think the last five percent of the design is where i made probably 95 of the errors because it was like because i was like uh doing dfm type stuff and then it was like oh this doesn't work i should go and switch out this part and fix it and like get it done get it done get it i was like trying to get it out you know and that last five percent there is like when i was like super stressed about doing things and i just let mistakes slip through my fingers because i'm also was doing it on my own and uh right yeah that happened a couple times and it it actually got me because i was using um i really have been enjoying snap eda i don't know if you use

Dave Jones: them ever uh sure maybe i tried it once yeah they're like one of the so snap does like a lot of they're

Chris Gammell: like one of them there are many of them out there but they're like a footprint service basically tied into digi key so like ultra librarians another one that's kind of like it as well all right yep yep and i'd use them uh i know natasha from a while ago is the founder and it's like it's great great company and you know the it's the data wasn't wrong actually so like the real thing was right i i used it wrong so like i found something and it it suggested like so i was looking for a real-time clock and i typed in the real-time clock that i wanted and it's like yeah we have that footprint and i didn't look in and see that it was actually like oh actually this is the closest footprint we have and then it also somehow put in a footprint and manufacturing part number and then i like clued into that as well and it was like one off and so like for example on that real-time clock i was like oh here's an i squared c real-time clock and yeah i put in the part number for the spy real-time clock so like it is the right footprint and yeah but then when i go and try and like enumerate on the i squared c bus it's

Dave Jones: like no that's not here oh so it physically got through to the point of you assembling this thing

Chris Gammell: oh yeah yeah it was a it was a spy part on a it's the wrong part it has the same it has the exact same pin out and everything too it's just that like oh really yeah yeah yeah i mean it's really like wow it's usually you don't see that like usually it's like you kind of yeah yeah usually it's different yeah yeah you can just kind of rewire it i think yeah maybe it's a low pin count part or something but whatever it is it doesn't matter i made the mistake uh and wow that was a it's a lot of a lot

Dave Jones: i don't think i've known slamming that's the first time i think i've ever heard of a spy part and i squared c part having the same pin out of any type of device yeah uh really i don't i don't

Chris Gammell: pull it up here if you're interested yeah we're sharing screens here like my uh like that unlimited power yeah yeah uh let's see where is this part uh this one so pcf 85063atl

Dave Jones: and that's like an old school phillips part number yeah yeah and that is not the one that i wanted this is not the droid these are not the droids here we go look at that so

Chris Gammell: pcf 85063atl and then the this is the actual thing and btl btl look at that a versus b is that the only difference that's the only difference but you know what oh no one letter one letter

Dave Jones: matters a whole heck of a lot in the pcb one letter and it's a spy or ice squid c no way yeah yeah so oh that's the uh cursed part of the week yeah part of the week yeah this is just chris being tired and stupid um but it is like wow no no i would not blame anyone for for that at all that is awful yeah so if i do oh wow um yeah it was a stinker that was a stinker oh my goodness it didn't

Chris Gammell: stop there though dave let me let me tell you the depth and you paid a whole dollar for the privilege oh did i i didn't even notice yeah yeah 95 cents dude oh oh you meant oh i think you meant a dollar more no yeah look at that two wire two wire on that one spy on the other and it's like it's you know they're dfns there's a 10 pin dfn it's not that different right whatever uh another one that i got messed up on uh actually was much more important and actually very scary because so like this is a board that has an nrf9160 on it right so that's like a pricey pricey uh right it's a cellular modem plus uh so it's a cellular modem on one core and then the other core is like the application core this is

Dave Jones: what i use on lots and lots of my oh you've got a secure element in there yeah yeah oh yeah the

Chris Gammell: atex 608 yeah yeah that's yeah you don't actually need that it's just for experimentation but uh uh the nrf9160 and then i was like oh well you know these are it was just like again it's just laziness this is like the last five percent of my design where i'm like well i have yeah right pinouts right right all this stuff yeah yeah and then totally i went to go order it and maybe this was the maybe maybe i'm maybe this was my digi key problems as well where i was you know like looking on snap eda and digi key and like it just you know i'm just gonna claim tiredness generally but um siba there's like at the end of the part number here so nrf9160 dash siba and uh turns out that is the uh that is the nbiot only part so this part i'm i'm very interested in because it's got gps ltem and nbiot well it turns out the one that i bought only has nbiot and so it doesn't have gps or ltem and when you have a sim card that only has uh ltem access in the area you're in it's just like well i don't know how to connect the internet right now until you realize you have to go get a different sim card and enable that stuff and it's like all these troubleshooting things that i'm doing now where i'm just out of my is that pin compatible though it also pin compatible yeah yeah

Dave Jones: another one right right so you can just buy it so you can just buy the proper part and whack it in

Chris Gammell: yeah so like it works this is definitely this is all very rev a e you know this is very rev a all right ask uh and it is another like couple bucks for the privilege of having gps on there um but yeah it's the i think it's the sica um every letter matters it really does it really does yeah sica is that the one yeah this is the one yeah this one has gps i think as well there's siaa and sica and yeah every every one of those letters matters dave but ah there's something to be said

Dave Jones: about i said like a manufacturer just making one standard part and that's it yeah yeah like where do you where do you break it down vanilla and that's it yeah that's it yeah yeah i think the

Chris Gammell: problem is people aren't willing to pay for the privilege i think that's the downside right okay yeah yeah so a couple of dumb mistakes there but so it's always always speaking of thing no this is not what was your speaking of thing oh my speaking of thing was uh scotty's uh scotty's been on a tear again at strange parts so he did strange yeah i've seen that yeah he did the uh the world semi world world semi um he went to the ws2012 what's the name of the company yeah i think

Dave Jones: it's world semi yeah world semi yeah that i think so that rings a bell yeah and so it was like basically

Chris Gammell: like the packaging up because it's if you get a ws2012 it's also sometimes called neopixels that's the the name that adafruit gave to that um uh it's actually it's a controller chip it used to be the controller chip was i think it was a 2811 was the controller chip by itself it didn't have any leds attached so you had to like right it was like an eight pin soic and you had to like wire up the leds

Dave Jones: yourself somebody had the idea there of integrating it into the lead package you know yeah and then so

Chris Gammell: scotty goes through like and he shows the packaging the actual factory of how they package it yeah it's a really good video so impressive it is so so impressive like just the the speed of testing and just the i think that oh those pros man i always like compare the i'm always complaining about the cost of these things you know they're not cheap yeah but when you see everything that goes into

Dave Jones: them one has to be individually made like it's not like they mess you know each one's gonna be individually pick and placed yeah like and then bondwired over and tested and oh my god yeah yeah yeah and and and these things are cheap right these things are not well they're cheaper than they

Chris Gammell: used to be but they're not cheap cheap i don't think they're okay so so they're not a cent they're uh no i think they're like 10 to 20 cents each okay right i'll be carrying a digi key now okay

Dave Jones: oh uh oh well that's from art of fruits so they're going to be margined up yeah yeah they're they're

Chris Gammell: yeah i don't know if they sell them i've never bought them on their i don't think i've ever bought them loose before oh i've i've never adafruit sells them for 60 cents each so they're sorry the spark fund selling them spark fund resells them um yeah i don't i don't even know i i feel like that's the kind of thing you got to go direct and you got to buy a ton of them you have to buy direct

Dave Jones: from the one of the suppliers in china yeah i mean most people are interacting with these things

Chris Gammell: actually on flexible strip tape as well like that's the that's the way most people interact

Dave Jones: with them so it's even another step yes yes you can buy them pre-mounted yeah there's all sorts of there's so many people in the value chain here like adding value in different ways you know there's just like untold ones yeah it just stacks is there still only the one part is it still like oh are there like are there 10 different variants of this like we've just been talking about the variants with um or is it just still the same part it's been the same bulk standard part for like five years

Chris Gammell: now well there's the i'm not sure who makes the other one the so um is is there a competitor now i'm sure yeah so there's the apa oh you know actually um ben from mage oh ben henke is supposed to be on the show at some point um uh he mage not mage i want to say mage well but it's not uh electro mage so he does the uh the and i can't think of any of these pixel blaze pixel blaze first off is an awesome board so if you're like in the market to do these sort of things basically it's like a esp32 on a small pcb breakout and you can wire into like apa 102s i think is the one thing sk9822s right ws2012 so there are a bunch of different things there and and honestly the the writing your own driver for these things is actually if you're not using the library if you'd like try and do that yourself it's like oh yeah from scratch it'd be yeah yeah yeah it's really tight timing it's it's like basically like the one the one versus the zero is you you got to

Dave Jones: have because you're pumping so much data into it like yeah i mean it's like a it's like a store and forward kind of like thing but it's but it's the yeah because they're a shift they're a shift register it's basically forms one gigantic million lead long you know chain it's a train because this pin basically these these lead chips have power ground data in data data out and they're just whoop all in series yeah exactly yep and they've all got like an individual ran is it a random address or do i i don't know i've never set them up how do you assign them you don't it's it's

Chris Gammell: basically like you have to count so like if you had like a hundred in a chain and you wanted to turn on number 55 you basically say like oh send 55 pulses and then you will hit number 55 so you could send like 54 blanks okay and then a 55 but you have to do that manually and so like right so you

Dave Jones: individually address them based on their shift register position not based on an internal unique right exactly there's no yeah there's nothing like that no no okay that would be

Chris Gammell: interesting i don't even know i guess you'd have to like do a scan first you'd be like who's out there

Dave Jones: and then right no this is well you would have to loop it back you would have to loop it back to do a scan yeah right right exactly so you would have to yeah there's or make it like a bus because there's no data back out there's no well the data out only goes to the end of the line it doesn't come back so unless you physically wire it back yeah so i said maybe this software can you can actually plug the output back into the input and then you can train it so it can learn how many i assume maybe this um this uh blaze thing pixel blaze no pixel blaze is really just like it's using it so it's got

Chris Gammell: drivers on a low level right that's doing the timing and then it's just saying you know like it literally says like how many how many things are in your strip uh so like how many oh okay right things you have in your strip and then it's okay and then the the real magic of the pixel blaze is that you're basically logging into a access point on the esp32 and then it's all graphical and it's just a script yeah it's all graphical looks oh man it looks magical it is so so great and like because i tried to do this manually for a consulting project once and it was you know i was using like libraries it was so ugly like the way i did it like the way the stuff ben does nasty and other people that have done this similar kind of stuff too it's just is this is the way you want to move up as many levels as you can i feel like you're using them in an artistic way lean on other people's work

Dave Jones: you don't need to reimplement yes no you don't want to reinvent the wheel there totally yep yeah so

Chris Gammell: uh i talked about a while ago i gotta gotta give him a shout to have him back on the show uh yeah excellent uh yeah so that tour that scotty did it's fan freaking tastic so yeah hope scotty

Dave Jones: keeps it up yeah um got it what else is on which i've got to uh finish the um part two of my quantum computer to a video i've i've i've been promising that for like a month now uh where's this in your you went to a quantum computer yes quantum computer it's on it's not on my channel it's on

Chris Gammell: it's not on my main channel you have to go to ev discover i shant okay what's wrong with ev discover

Dave Jones: ev discover is an excellent channel thank you very much oh you had andrea didn't you have andrea on the show too no you what did you talk to him yes i did i think i converted into a podcast episode we we we we had basically an hour and 40 minutes sitting on his couch talking about uh quantum computers i might have released cut and released that as a as an amp hour i'm not sure you did i think i did i think i think i did yeah yeah anyway it's available also in uh video form obviously

Chris Gammell: yeah yeah but um 498 498 is the episode yeah yeah there you go okay so you're going back yep you do more quantum oh you have oh oh yeah it's on my ev discover channel no you said the new one is or the old it used didn't you say part two did you say part two did i miss that

Dave Jones: as in part two of the new visit that i've done i actually visited the i actually visited this is one

Chris Gammell: months ago i see okay so this is the new okay gotcha gotcha this is the new one this is the new one and then you have to do i still don't get quantum computers i i don't think i'm ever going to so i think i'm going to just i'm going to play the old card i keep getting older and i'm going to

Dave Jones: play the old card and just never gonna get it well he he basically laid it out flat to me that um you know look they don't you're basically the only thing we don't we don't know what we're doing yeah basically the only thing even the biggest ibm quantum computers and all the rest of them right even the biggest ones out there the only thing they're good for is learning how to program quantum computers literally that's the only thing they're good what is it what is it you say you make here uh research research papers yeah yeah exactly yeah um yeah it's basically that you know like so if you think uh you know the encryption stuff's going to be busted in a year's time no you're no no it's just no right yeah but but they are thinking 20 30 years down the track right they are thinking that far ahead that they're designing new algorithms now to actually so that their quantum proof just in case in 10 20 30 years time you know there is an actual quantum computer with an actual practical application that actually breaks all the quantum encryption and all that sort of jazz

Chris Gammell: you know right so pied piper did it yep right pied piper what it's a silicon valley reference it's yeah okay no you gotta watch you gotta watch all season all six seasons dave and you'll get that reference

Dave Jones: yeah okay got it sorry yep it's okay you should watch that one though that's one you should watch

Chris Gammell: right i've seen the crap you watch you should watch that that's a good one okay right yeah i probably

Dave Jones: should yeah there's a lot of fun well i started watching it and then we just gave up like oh you watched it with everyone says oh the first season's shit yeah you know it's like well what do you

Chris Gammell: do the last the last episode of the first season you had a power through to that and then you'll

Dave Jones: well what do you you know what what do you expect i know that's tough it's a tough season shit what do

Chris Gammell: you know i think you're right no you're right you're right you're right it's tough yeah yeah you know we

Dave Jones: gave it like five or six episodes i think it was like okay yeah it's kind of you know yep anyway

Chris Gammell: all right should we talk about um other dystopian topics um absolutely of which we know very little i think uh which is you know the amp our way uh first off i don't know what's going to happen here right so uh this might be tied to why dr michael burry is shorting the the industry but um china stopped exporting uh there's a germanium it was germanium and it was something else uh gallium so those are those are pretty yeah those are pretty important uh they're not we can't not work around it but like that uh when's this from when is this is from not uh september 21st that's when the the article came out and you know there's been hear about it yeah there's been some stuff in between right so like there's been some reopening of at least so you know i have a very u.s centric view of course we nobody's surprised by that um but this is also this is basically a response to the u.s saying you know you can't have now yeah advanced semiconductor no they've stopped all advanced semiconductor they've been they've been leaning on uh asml to not give the latest

Dave Jones: okay yeah right i'm looking at a graph now china own about uh 75 at least 75 percent of the world's

Chris Gammell: galia yeah they're they they are definitely germany's next biggest yeah yeah they they know they yeah so that's what's weird too it's like always these weird places not weird places you know kazakhstan but ones that you don't right you don't think of technology there right it's it's really it's a it's a raw element type of thing so like that's fine um and yeah it's it's weird with these deposits where they pop up too so like china's been doing a lot of work in the past couple decades uh to shore up a lot of their natural resources and understandable from a world stage but uh then i think as well when they price the market against the biggest supplier and then the biggest supplier says yeah you know what we're going to use this as a political lever as well which is not something the u.s doesn't do too of course right uh i'm just worried you know like this is going to i when you look at like gallium's a huge thing in this in the rf industry as well so like yeah that's what i would imagine would be one of the biggest hits um and then germanium as well in the rf industry but it's not like we're like you know using germanium transistors on an everyday basis like they did in the the 60s and 70s but like uh still very useful yeah still still out there and uh yeah so well i'm looking

Dave Jones: at well here you go i've got a breakdown of the global germanium demand by application fiber optics is about a third so fiber optics yeah uh infrared optics yes because the uh the actual lenses on front of your thermal cameras they're all germanium

Chris Gammell: lenses yeah um did you watch the uh veritasium video about the the night vision goggles that's

Dave Jones: pretty good no i haven't oh yeah you should check that one yeah yeah uh probably about a fifth is electronics and solar just okay generically and then about a third is polymerization catalysts

Chris Gammell: whatever that is oh catalytic converters polymerization catalysts no making polymers go faster i would say and that's probably what that is right drop it drop it in there germanium once again

Dave Jones: china once again china owned um china owned yeah about two-thirds of the germanium three quarters

Chris Gammell: of the world market yeah yeah they said in this article it says 60 germanium 80 of gallium so not nothing um yeah so yeah that's interesting so and you know this is again we're like talking about statecraft and all that other stuff that we know nothing about but but things that do eventually trickle down to us i think as well so another one uh bunny our our uh former guest uh two-time guest and and and friend and and uh a hero of mine uh he wrote about the restrictions on risk five so this is some some bs happening in the u.s currently which i what there's restrictions it's open source it's open so yeah and so basically it's become this like boogeyman in the halls of my government about like oh well because because risk five's open source and because it's enabling even though it is an isa it's enabling more interoperability and there's been a lot of development in china i think there's it's being used as like this oh well they're going to get around our ability to curb exports using like leaning on arm right so like that's one of the right there's a lot of stuff around that and there's a lot of concern around like uh technology at a global scale around around like china and ai right so that's like one thing at least in the u.s and so they think that risk five is going to be a way around that and the net result though is that you know like you and i are interested in talking about risk five very very often here and there might be like restrictions placed on it and so bonnie wrote an article about this he said regarding the proposed u.s restrictions and risk five basically a letter that he wrote to the to government about this and so i i do recommend reading through it and uh i do rec i do agree with many of the uh points in it as well so uh i'll have to have a read yeah it's it's uh it's a bunch of bs honestly that it basically it's it's using risk five as a boogeyman because it's not right it's it's an isa it's not like yeah so that is another one there um so everything is a

Dave Jones: political tool never underestimate yeah yeah no doubt ability of governments to use yeah the most innocent things as a yeah as a tool leverage yeah yeah um anyway other things that

Chris Gammell: happened while we were gone uh oh two different key cons happened or ki cons i've i've been trying to say key cad in 2023 dave i don't know if you know this yep i've been trying no right this is a yeah so it's yes yes i've been trying it's been i've been i'd say i'm doing like 75 accurate these days i've been trying okay yeah um and uh yes so the team ran a key con in spain in september so there's a bunch of talks there i'll just post a link to the uh to the the key cad youtube channel and so they've been posting some of the talks there and then they also had one in shenzhen a couple weeks ago and uh yeah there's much talks there as well which is great um keycads actually had really low uptake in asia generally so like seeing uptake is awesome i think oh they're still all outium they're all yeah that's right exactly yeah and that's right you know for lots of different reasons fine whatever but like that's great to like you know if you start seeing numbers go up uh in asia as well i think that would just be more ecosystem access and tooling and stuff like that so yeah i'm a big fan of that um so a lot of good talks that you can go and uh check out i was watching the dfm for designers uh talk earlier today and i posted that to our our youtube channel as well nice yeah yeah i was not involved because i was i knew i knew certain things would be happening around that time it was also in like this weird part of spain like i'd love to go i've been taking spanish for like two years now i like want to go to spain but uh yep not uh that was not easy to get to so the people that went were like really wanted to be there right yes of course yeah

Dave Jones: i don't know how you'd get to spain from here a plane i've never yeah i know but i don't think there's any direct i don't know if you could get a direct flight there i bet you'd fly through like

Chris Gammell: abu dhabi or something like that right no you couldn't get it yeah no you'd probably fly to barcelona through turkey against istanbul or don't know you know dubai or something like that there's like all that all those waypoints in the middle looked into it yep yeah sorry i don't think you'd be going for that uh also i would love to hear you speak spanish day especially like oh no spanish in spain not gonna happen baffalona

Dave Jones: oh boy all right do we have any last minute uh things because our amp is up yes um this is weird

Chris Gammell: i don't know what happened here uh wt microelectronics is buying future which is like one of the

Dave Jones: electronics yeah they've been around for and they bought somebody else or something i don't know

Chris Gammell: how many mergers have there been for future i will say now but they're they're actually huge future's quite large how big is the deal because this would be billions 3.8 billion yep yeah 3.8

Dave Jones: billion in in all cash somebody's somebody's cashed up who bought them wt microelectronics yeah so it's

Chris Gammell: like a company out of uh uh taiwan yeah out of taiwan okay um buying a distributor first off is like weird it's a weird you know they always seem to buy each other so like it's a hedge it's a hedge

Dave Jones: against the semiconductor market collapsing it's a hedge buy the distributors as well i guess but

Chris Gammell: like couldn't you buy a better one financial i've never been a fan of future i'll be saying i'll be honest i i liked uh i had a really great uh salesperson when i was in ohio yeah steve he was awesome um but future was always crap i like i only went there because like there was like a certain right because they had to cut a certain price terminal blocks that i wanted to buy and like yeah steve was great with that stuff but like god the parts they always covered like uh what did they cover uh what was the green i can't remember the parts they covered yeah it was always like the bottom end no no no sorry on the mic controllers i'm sorry on the op amps um i can't my brain is mush uh yeah so they were never good uh i i was never never a fan but you know it's also regional too right so it was always like you know like some places you might have better coverage or you might be in an industry where that really matters you never know uh i won't miss them but it's a pretty big thing right especially it's weird it is weird to see yeah they're one of the biggest they were one

Dave Jones: of the biggest uh suppliers yeah like like old school like how long have they been around god i can

Chris Gammell: remember using future 30 years ago yeah probably i don't know yeah geez yeah um okay last thing it doesn't matter at all but i i'm just gonna drop it here because you should go watch this too maybe you posted this who posted this no chris posted this um yeah uh the 19th folks that's right chris the name gamble uh uh 1975 computer history sperry univac factory tour employees in technology clearwater florida oh really i've gotta watch that yeah the hairdos the beards oh yeah the clothes and just like yeah and then the uh the quote where is that link oh my god they're able to produce two computers per day on a one shift basis so if that's not it i don't know it is like oh man that's so great uh yeah it's so much fun to watch uh i don't i don't know anything about like i've heard of univac right and um yeah i don't know anything i'm gonna watch that straight after this i figure this is like this is like dave this is dave catnip right here yeah yeah yeah yeah i'll be seeing a post from dave on x or twitter in a couple minutes probably post yeah well no i just found this video i just found this video yeah i just found this video i just stumbled across it dave goes and harvests i can't even find the link though on the reddit you know what dave i'm gonna do you a solid i'm gonna send it directly

Dave Jones: to you yep oh what a pal that's what friends are for

Chris Gammell: yeah oh boy all right that's that's enough for me uh yeah hopefully uh we'll talk before the end of the year i think we will yeah nope not planning to have any more kids around here for a good long time okay see ya catch you next time you

Speaker ?: you you