#668 – 50.0000 Ohms

Dave Jones: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released May 30th, 2024. Episode 668. 50.0000 owns.

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: I screwed up.

Chris Gammell: What'd you screw up, Dave? I'm sure it's not that bad. How bad could it possibly be?

Dave Jones: She must be a bae has ordered me to get new. Oh. Ordered to get replacements. Okay. All right.

Chris Gammell: What did you order improperly?

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Well, no, I didn't order improperly. Dumbass Dave drilled holes in the wrong location and screwed some things up.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Did you put your drill through a power main or anything like that?

Dave Jones: No, no. I put my drill through the front decorative side, whereas I should have done the back.

Chris Gammell: Oh, no. Okay. Got it. Oh, man. Yeah. I have a story about that, too.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Okay. Tell us. Then I'll finish mine.

Chris Gammell: Okay. For mine, I was, you know, I'm the good repairman around here, and I was going to put up a new shelf. And I had all these problems. And I was just like, you know, I knew I was putting in anchors. And so I was like, I knew I was putting in drywall anchors. And I just like, the drill would just not go through. I was like, I must be hitting the stud. And I moved just like six inches off to the right. And I just like, God, I'm hitting the stud again. How is this even possible? Is it a double stud? What's going on here? Right. And then finally, I'm drilling and drilling and drilling. And I poke through, and I hear crunch. And I'm like, what is that? Turns out there's a little bump out in our tile shower. Like they put it into the-

Dave Jones: Oh, you went through the tiles on the other side.

Chris Gammell: I went through the tile. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, nice. You know, sometimes they make the little shelves for like your shampoo and stuff like that. Oh, yes. Oh, right.

Dave Jones: So you had like a little recess thing. It's further into the studs. Yeah, recess.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, I went right through that. So I didn't even think. Didn't even think about it. Yeah. Real dumb. Yeah. All right. Anyways, back to your mistake.

Dave Jones: Oh, that is great. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: As you've seen on my main channel, I've done some lead lighting. I've got these big lead profile strips. You know, they're 1.2 meters long. They're quite large. Right. So I'm building these custom light strips. I had to make like half a dozen of them. You know, so it's quite a amount of work. You've got to, you know, prepare them. You've got to drill all the major holes for the mains cables to come in because they're just an extruded aluminium profile. Right. So there's no holes in them. So you've got to sort of like custom make them for your requirements. Right. So we've got mains cables coming in one side. So we've got to drill out like a really large hole in one side for the mains cables. And then I've got to drill holes for the little lead wire cables to go into the, you know, thing. So there's, you know, drilling happening everywhere. And then, of course, you've got to mount them to the wall. So the...

Chris Gammell: These are like up firing lights. Is that right?

Dave Jones: They are both up and down firing. So you can choose. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm just looking at the screenshot. It looks like you said it's extruded aluminum to hold the whole thing.

Dave Jones: Aluminium.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Aluminium. I can't even say it, you know. Aluminium. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Long extruded aluminum, but it just comes as one piece. You know, it's not, you know, it's a complete do-it-yourself solution. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I've had to drill the holes, but of course you've got to mount it to the wall and there's no bracket. You know, you don't want brackets because brackets look ugly, you know, and they stick out and it just looks bleh. Right. And then you'd have to custom make your own brackets anyway, somehow, you know. So no.

Chris Gammell: You've got to buy a lathe, you've got to buy a mill. I don't know what you'd have to do. CMC things. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it wasn't wife approved. Let's put it that way. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Sure. So these things, to drill them into the studs in the wall, you've got to drill holes on the back side of it where the one, you know, big one for the mains cable to enter and some more holes for the mounting screws to go in. So, you know, I set up my little production line of, you know, half a dozen of these strips. I'm drilling all the holes and everything. And then, you know, hours, many hours later, job done. Right. You know, wipe my hands off it. And then the electrician comes in to install all these lights and everything. Right. And he sends me a message and goes, um, there's something wrong with two of the strips. Luckily, only two. Luckily, only two of them. There's something wrong with the strips. The holes are in the wrong location. I thought, oh, it's just that, like, I've swapped them back to, like, the ends.

Chris Gammell: Your template was wrong or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Something like that. And, oh, I can, I can just unsolder the wires from one end of the strip and put it on the other just so that they match the others. I thought I'd goofed it like that. And, uh, no, he was talking about the holes. So I've got the large, I drilled them on the front, the decorative front. I drilled the mounting holes through the decorative front.

Chris Gammell: Not going to recover from that one real easy, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Unless you want to use some aluminium putty to fill it and paint them.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say, what if you, like, learn how to, like, uh, weld, weld it shut and then you, like, ground it down and.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But they're all like this, uh, like white matte finish. Like they're already like this powder coated.

Chris Gammell: Dude, this can all be solved by buying more tools. That's what I'm trying to say.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Solved by buying more tools. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, the wife just said, no.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Order new ones.

Dave Jones: Do it properly. So I guess I've got two of these, uh, custom light strips for the lab somehow. So I'll just, yeah. Business expense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So I'll just install them in the lab here and, um, yeah, she'll be right. So, ah, bloody spam call. Sorry. That's a, yep. That's right. It actually pops up and tells me it's a spam call. Does that happen to you? Does that happen on your phone?

Chris Gammell: No, none of my, I don't have a, it's like a landline. I only have a cell phone.

Dave Jones: No, no. This is a mobile.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Mobile does it once in a while. Yeah. If it's, um, it actually just silences it now.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. Mine just shows, mine still rings. Maybe there's a setting I can do to make them not do spam calls, but yeah, it shows up in B-REB, you know, cause like somebody else has marketed as spam and I guess if five people market as spam, then it, you know, your service provider.

Chris Gammell: I always market as spam. Oh yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yep.

Chris Gammell: It's worth it. You know, it's public. Oh yeah, no, no, it works.

Dave Jones: I get like two of these a day. It's really annoying. Yeah. That's too bad. Yeah. The, uh, the latest ones are all, do you need accounting services? No. No. Do you need, um, to, you know, this other service? No. Do you need lighting solutions? No. Well, they've got a solution for everything. So if you say no to one thing, oh, by the way, we also do this and we also do this. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Oh, bloody hell.

Chris Gammell: So you're buying off the shelf, just strip lights, just the strip LEDs. And then you bought drivers as well. Like I'm looking at just like these big heat sink.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah. Um, basically everything's off the shelf, but you have to combine them all together and actually build it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I never really thought about it. I mean, like, yeah, like the ballast type thing like that. I never thought that, of course you can buy it though. Yeah. That makes sense.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. You can buy it, but it's got to be the, like the long slim profile that fits inside this aluminium profile, you know? So, so they're quite long. So it's quite, uh, you know, it's pretty chocker in there actually. Even those things are very long. You've got to have the mains cable coming out the center. So it's got to run up the end and it's got to be long. The cable's got to be long enough so that you can pull the drivers out the end so that you can replace them later. Right. Because you don't want to have to, you know, unscrew the thing from the wall and, you know, dismantle the whole thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And of course the most, you know, the thing that's most likely to fail is the, uh, driver in it. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: What about the, so the LEDs themselves, do they require any heat sinking or no?

Dave Jones: Well, that's what the, uh, lead profile is for. You actually stick them down with a thermal adhesive tape. Oh. So yeah. Which I, I do, cause I just went back to the light shop to order, order more profile. And I was, I was talking to the guy there and, and I, I had to, like, and I asked him, have you got any spare thermal tape? And he goes, what's thermal tape? And I go, it's the stuff that is the thermally conductive double-sided tape that goes on the back of lead strips. And he goes, oh, is that thermal? Is it? I thought it was just regular double-sided tape. So, you know, I had to explain. He's like, oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: Bob's coming back in here next week, I think with some burnt out LEDs. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I had to explain the concept of thermal conductivity and, uh, how that works. You know, I've done an excellent video on that, by the way, way, way, way back. Like, you know, video number 20 or something. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Dig through or Dave, maybe you'll send me a little video.

Dave Jones: I will send you a link.

Chris Gammell: There we go.

Dave Jones: TV blog.

Chris Gammell: He's nothing if not a self librarian. That's, that's the important thing. It's an archivist. Yeah. That's great. So how, how soon is this stuff supposed to go? I mean, obviously yesterday.

Dave Jones: Oh, um, most of them are installed. The ones that I didn't goof up are installed, but power is not hooked up yet because um, the, the problem is we're installing some more, um, circuits and, um, you've seen my fuse box, right? Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: The.

Chris Gammell: Needs a little expansion.

Dave Jones: Electrician's going, well, we only need two more circuits to put in and he's going.

Dave Jones: We can squeeze them.

Dave Jones: And he's going, uh, when are you getting this switchboard upgrade? Cause I am trying, you know, I did have this switchboard upgrade arranged and then that got all screwed up because the bloody energy authority were going to change my meters on me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. So the guy was doing this. I remember thinking when I saw it, it was, it was a little more ad hoc than I would have expected.

Dave Jones: You know, it's yeah. Um, it's just been expanded so many times that you can watch my early videos and there's not much in there. You know, there's like four or five breakers or something. That's about it. Now I've got two home solar solutions. We've got five. No, our house has six heat pumps.

Chris Gammell: Six heat pumps.

Dave Jones: Six heat pumps. We have five air conditioners.

Chris Gammell: That's interesting. Yeah. You should do a power quality video. Have you done power quality? You probably have, right? Uh, I would be really interested to see what, what your power quality looks like now with like, just think about the inductive load that's causing. And then like, also you're feeding in all the solar stuff too. And just, yeah, that would be really interesting though.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But the thing is like, most of it's not on all at once. Like, it's just like, they're more convenience things. Oh, okay. We need to heat up this room for a little bit or we need to cool it down for a little bit. You know, it's not like we go whole house must be at 22 degrees Celsius all day long. And we're running our five air cons. You know, it's like.

Chris Gammell: I feel, I feel like you're, you're throwing a little shade there, Dave. Well, yeah, because. That's the same way. Come on, man.

Dave Jones: Well, I've got, I know people and I've got neighbors who go, why is our power bill like $2,000 a quarter? Oh, gee, I wonder why.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: You know, it's because that's the modern trend these days is you get these whole house ducted air cons and you just. That's the American way too. Yeah. Is it? Okay. And you just set it to 22 degrees. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is the downside is that usually, you know, they have like baffling that you can like do like motorized baffling and stuff like that. Right. But then the way it's sized in a U S house as well, it's like the, the blowers are sized for, you know, you're ducting too. Right. There's certain amount of air capacity. And like, so then you start blocking stuff off, like you might want to, to, you know, try and like.

Dave Jones: Right. It screws things up. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, well, like for example, in my, in my house, my, um, the bathroom that's near my office right now, it just has an outsized amount of flow, like airflow in the bathroom. So like, you know, the house is like cooling itself, whatever in the summer. And it was just, you walk in the bathroom and you'd be start shivering, you know, like it's just like, you know, so like you try and like turn it down a little bit, but it's just like, that's not really meant what the ducting is meant for too. Like the, the little blocking air baffle thing. So yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's a delicate balance, delicate balance.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Cause we're very energy conscious, you know, it's like, Oh yeah. The air con. Yep. It's just cooled it down just enough for us to be, you know, happy. And our thermal insulation is very good. Right. Um, you know, and we've just got a double glazing window update and that works. Wow. Wow. We, we really noticed that. It's like, Oh wow. The house is so much.

Chris Gammell: You're noticing it too, because it's, it's very expensive to get that done.

Dave Jones: And it's like, it's like buying those expensive audio cables. You're going to hear the difference, right? Yeah. Exactly. You're going to hear the difference. You're going to listen until you hear the difference. Yeah. Right. Did you see the video of my repair in quote marks, real simple repair of the $4,500 audio file? Oh, I saw that. Digital.

Chris Gammell: I saw the thumbnail. I saw the thumbnail, but no, what was the deal with that?

Dave Jones: Um, well, that was my neighbor. My, yeah. Hugo, uh, Dak. It's a, um, yeah. Hugo's the brand, I think, or is that the model? I can't remember. Anyway, yeah, it's, um, it was my neighbor's thing. You know, I was walking down the street and my neighbor was there and he said, Hey, I require the services of Dave Jones. And once I heard that, I went, okay, what have you got? That needs fixing. And, uh, because he, you know, I actually have the channel and I repair and I do, you know, do those sorts of things. So yeah, he's got this, or yeah, it's an audiophile Dak. It's like a little battery powered thing because you want it battery powered. Cause it sounds better. Of course, you know, you don't want to like an external plug pack power in the thing. And then all the crap that comes through on that, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, the nose feed them through. Sure. Right. Yep.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yeah, it's, um, it's 4,500 Aussie bucks. I think it is.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so like 50 bucks here. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Cheap as. And, uh, yeah. And it's apparently somebody in my comments said the person, the guy who designed it used to work at Burr Brown or somebody who makes Dax, you know, one of the major semiconductor companies who makes like premium high end Dax or Cirrus Logic or somebody like that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Wolfson maybe.

Dave Jones: Wolfson. I don't know. Something like that. Anyway, the guy who founded this, um, Hugo, come on. Oh God. No. Now we, now we have to get the name right. Um, here we go. EV blood audio file. A chord. Chord is the brand name. Hugo is the model. Okay. So chord as in C-H-O-R-D as in a musical chord. Huh? Um, yeah. Yeah. So the chord Hugo DAC, uh, 4,500 bucks. So yeah, apparently he left there cause he had this whiz bang idea of implementing this, uh, this serial DAC thing in an FPGA that does it magically somehow. I don't know. It sounds more better, you know, I don't know, which is totally legit, right? Like it's actually probably a very good technology and I, and I have no doubt it sounds excellent. Right. But the, but the question is, is it worth 4,500 bucks? Right. Is it?

Chris Gammell: Well, it is what it is. That's what the price is, you know, and whether it's worth it is, is up to you as an individual.

Dave Jones: You know, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Do you hear the value, Dave? I don't know. Do you hear it compared to like a $400 DAC? I don't know if my ears are capable of hearing.

Dave Jones: Your speakers aren't capable of reproducing the difference.

Chris Gammell: If someone walked me in a room, they're like, do you hear it? I would just nod my head and be like, yes, yes. Look at those. Oh, the highs and the lows and the mids. Yeah. Oh, those mids. Oh, the, oh, the staging.

Dave Jones: Oh, you can just, oh, the separation, the separation between the instruments.

Chris Gammell: Taste the EQ. Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Did I just, did I just hear the percussionist fart? Oh, this, this audio, this audio DAC is so great. I hear everything.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Anyway, my, my neighbor didn't pay the $4,500. He actually bought a secondhand cheap, you know? So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm actually looking at the screenshot of this and I'm surprised that like, it looks like there's a Bluetooth module.

Dave Jones: There is a Bluetooth module. Yes. Yes. So, you can stream over Bluetooth. That's surprising. You can either have audio in or you can have Bluetooth.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Or, or is it Wi-Fi? I can't actually remember. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Something like that.

Chris Gammell: Doesn't matter at this point. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, it's, I'm just surprised that the audio file types would let RF near anything, you know?

Dave Jones: Well, well, of course, you know, you can buy your $1,000 Ethernet cable to actually connect to your NAS, you know, which has your MP3 songs on it. Completely. Your high bit rate, lossy MP3. Oh, flack.

Dave Jones: Flack. Right. Yeah. Yeah. For those aficionados. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, bloody hell. Anyway, I'm sure it sounds very good, but you know, I wasn't seeing the $4,500 value. I was seeing $450 worth of value. None for me, thanks. You know? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Anyway, so it was apparently, yeah, the story of Guy left one of the big semiconductor companies because he had this idea and I guess now he's rolling it in, you know, selling a few thousand of these a year, maybe. Oh, wow. Something like that. Yeah. Good for him. Good for him. Yep. I'm sure it's a couple of million buck business for him and yep.

Chris Gammell: I bought a new product and I was a little embarrassed about buying it. It's a pricey product. It's called Invisible Computer and it's completely, I'm actually, I bought it. On a whim and I bought it because in anger, I bought it in anger. I completely gapped on a haircut that I had. Like I looked up, I looked up at my phone and yeah, I'll get there. Don't worry. The story will come around. All right. I was like in middle of the work day, I had scheduled, you know, this haircut because my barber for some reason is very packed and I looked at my phone and it's like, hey, you missed your appointment. We'll reschedule sometime in the future. You know, like, and it was like an hour passed. So like I just completely lost it and it's been happening to me more lately. Just I'd get deep into something and I just missed something. I'm like, I need to have like a heads up display on my calendar somewhere. And so I went looking for it and I'm like in anger, I bought this thing called Invisible Computer and it's basically an e-paper calendar. And it's like, it's a little embarrassing to be honest because it's like.

Dave Jones: Ah, so you, so you have this thing on the wall or something and you just.

Chris Gammell: And it updates.

Dave Jones: And it syncs with your Google calendar or something. That's right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And so it's just always there. It's always on.

Dave Jones: I can, I can dig that.

Chris Gammell: I can dig it. It's $175. Oh, okay. That's, that's pretty.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's a lot. Right. I mean, like I'm a little embarrassed about that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm sure we could do like an open source solution.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But that's the thing. I won't. I know I won't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. That's the point I've had in my life. I'm like more money than time. And I'm like. Yes. Of course. If I miss an important business thing instead. Right. That's way. Yeah. No, totally.

Dave Jones: It's worth more than that.

Chris Gammell: And so like, and, but I, I'm actually, I'm very impressed. It's like a, it's a hardware manufacturer out of Germany, very small operation. Really. It's like, you know, like e-paper, you know, people are probably listening to me like, oh, e-paper with ESP32. Like how hard is that? Right. And the answer is it's not. It's the, it's really all the software and the app development and like the setup and stuff like that. And then, you know, it's like, yeah, you're hooking in the Google map. The Google calendar API, but it's like, it just always has to work. That's all that really matters.

Dave Jones: This is, this looks really nice. It's got like a wood frame surround on it. Like, you know. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice. It's pretty schmick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really nice.

Chris Gammell: Nice design. I like it.

Dave Jones: I see a cable coming out of the bottom of it. Is it not like battery powered and updates like.

Chris Gammell: It's USB powered.

Dave Jones: Okay. That's a bit disappointing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, it could be battery powered. I'm sure. Right. But it's.

Dave Jones: Right. But how often do you update? You know, how often. Yeah. That's the thing.

Chris Gammell: It only really updates when it's. When you get. So like, there's even an option where you can turn it off so that it doesn't darken. Like, so right now. That's the end of my day. And so everything that was on my calendar today got kind of darkened out because it's like anything that passes, then you know that it's. Oh, got it.

Dave Jones: Yep. And by default, it shows the next three days. Is that.

Chris Gammell: Mine is just one day. I just want to see one.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. But it's like. You've got so many things happening in one day that you want. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think like three calendars at once. Okay.

Dave Jones: Right. My life is not that busy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But.

Chris Gammell: Work calendars. You know. I can appreciate it. Yep. Yeah. Work and personal and family calendars all at once. So, yeah. Now look. It's an interesting product though. Like it's a nice little design. It's nicely done. And like I said, it's, you know, what is the value? Well, it's in this case a lot because I haven't missed a meeting since. Right.

Dave Jones: Now, if I was to design this, how I would have done it is I would have had an internal battery, right? And I would have had a single button on the front, which is a sync button. So, what you do is you can come along and you can have a habit of manually syncing it or it syncs it once or twice per day in the morning or something like that. You know. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And if it didn't dynamically update throughout the day, I think that would totally work. Because you'd have, like you said, it'd be one thing a day. You put the processor in a deep sleep. Yep. E-paper has basically negative power. It has nothing, right? Yep. Yeah. And yeah, that could definitely work.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. So, I would have done that. So, there's no internal battery option. It's just a always extended.

Chris Gammell: I think there might be a real-time clock. It's got like a brass back on this one. Okay. So, it's the thing. It's like really not. I should really open this up, but it's not super fancy. It doesn't look very fancy. Like single circuit board, single.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: And did this just pop up somewhere and you went, oh, that's what I'm going to do. Or did you go actively searching for? I went looking. Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was surprised there weren't more options like this. You know, like a calendar. This is really meant as like, you know, it's meant as like a showpiece. You could have like an account. You could have. Oh, yeah. No, it looks really good.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It looks fantastic. Except for the cable coming out, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. A cable could be better, but like I said, I'm happy with it. And it definitely fits. Like it's on my desk, like right next to my camera and stuff like that too.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. So, it's right there. Yeah. I can totally. This is what I like. It is not a jack of all trades, masters or none. It does one job. Yep. Yep, exactly. That's it. Even, so, which is why I'm surprised they called it invisible computers, which implies that, oh, look, it'll do this too. And it'll do this. And it'll do this. And then it ends up just sucking at all of them, you know. Oh, maybe. Whereas I would have called it invisible calendar, maybe. But then you can't branch out later. You can't, you know, if you call your company invisible calendars, then you can't, you know. That's true. Yep. Yep. Yep. So, yeah, I can appreciate. Well, I would have called my company invisible computers and then this is the invisible calendar product.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's cool. So, you know.

Dave Jones: Anyway, very cool.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, yeah. Happy, happy customer so far.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So, people need something similar. Yeah. Nice little. And I think, you know, I look at something like this, it's like, it's like a product that could be produced by an individual. I don't know anything about the company other than it's in Germany. You know, it's like very reasonable. Like people that are listening, I'm sure as well, like thinking about this kind of like the target audience is maybe people like me, but probably more likely just like people that are going about their lives trying to solve a problem like this. And it's like, this is like electronics in the real world in a non-consumer context, right? It's not cheap, but it's not unobtainium, like $4,500. Yeah, no, it's not.

Dave Jones: It's, yes, it's not a $4,000 DAC. Yes. Right, right. You know, $175 for your productivity is not much, right? Right, right. But I think the key thing- It's actually quite a reasonable price.

Chris Gammell: You're making, the key thing to me is like the fact that it's like super accessible and easy. Like I think about like giving this to my folks, like they could set it up. Right, yeah, yeah. It's like all of the other stuff is, all the expensive stuff to me is not probably the electronics, you know?

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: In my mind.

Dave Jones: Yes. No, it's making it work and making it polished and, yep, making it seamless. So you can't, so it's not touch, you can't do anything on it? No. It's just a physical- I don't want to. Yep, exactly. I was going to say you don't want to. Yeah. Yep. Well, maybe if you wanted to like swipe across, you know, to give the next day or whatever. Nope.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. I think if you're not like, I want this thing to be like super passive, like-

Dave Jones: Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. If I need something more active, I go to the actual computer.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, which you're on the actual computer anyway, which is where you set stuff up. So- Yeah, exactly. Yep. Which is where you're entering all your calendar stuff and you're doing all that sort of thing. So you're planning your week and this thing just helps you, right, what's on today?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's really, it's habit building and stuff like that. Yeah. For some reason, I'm not good at checking my calendar and like really knowing when something- The other thing I could use in the same context is like something that like clocks me over the head when there's a really important meeting and I'm about to miss it. Right. Yeah. Just like literally shoots a spitball in my face. No.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. I find it annoying that my, you know, I, maybe I don't have things set up properly, but you know, things that I do have inside my calendar, I actually miss them. Like, cause it's not, yeah, there's, there's not a nerf thing to my head. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Nerf dart to my head to go, you've got an appointment, you know? Yeah. I was going to the doctors the other day. Totally missed it. I was sitting there all morning. Right. I've got appointment at 11 o'clock. Totally. Yeah. 11 o'clock. 11 o'clock. 11 o'clock. Still missed it. Still missed it because I, I don't know. I was just, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So this is an interesting thing too, because, so I was listening to an interview, Cal Newport was on the Prof G show, Prof G, Scott Galloway's podcast. Oh, right. And he was talking about like, so Cal Newport's like a kind of new agey, not new agey, but like, he's like a productivity expert. He wrote about like becoming an expert in certain areas. And he said he's a Princeton computer science guy, but also like a very popular author. Okay. Into like productivity hacks and stuff like that. Anyways, he was talking about like all this crap about AI, right? All of this like LLMs or whatever is like interesting, but ultimately commodity. And that like the real thing that needs to happen is the kind of that next level of like logic and reasoning and like understanding like a calendar, for instance, that was the example he gave where it's like, okay. So like the real thing for me is that like I could set up reminders, right? I could send up reminders that say like every time I have an appointment, ding really loudly. But the problem with that, from my perspective is that, you know, I have tons of stuff on my calendar. A lot of it doesn't really matter that much, you know, as much as I like to think that I'm important, it doesn't actually matter that much. But like-

Dave Jones: Or you can simply miss it. Like I could be down in the bathroom down there and my computer going, you know, loud ping, I could simply miss it, you know? Totally.

Chris Gammell: And like actually useful system in that case would actually, it would actually like figure out what is the most important thing. You know, the example he was actually giving us about email and like helping you to actually like discern what is the most important thing in your inbox at one time. But I think that could be extended to a calendar very quickly too. And like, you need to understand a lot more context around like the entirety of your schedule and like the complications of, you know, like basically like strategic planning around your entire life before you can realize that like, oh, no, no, no, that meeting at 1pm with, you know, customer A is the most critical thing that is on your calendar this month or something like that. And like, do not relent until you hear from me that I am in that meeting, that sort of thing. Right. Yeah. It's like, that's a lot of additional stuff rather than like, oh, here's 10 things that will make it, you know, so that you organize your office better, you know? Like we're still the listicle phase of LLMs and AIs and stuff like that. So-

Dave Jones: And then stuff like, you know, that you can't anticipate. Like, oh, your child has just been taken to hospital, you know? Right. Right. Yeah. That priority number one, instant priority number one. But how do you plan for-

Chris Gammell: Cancel everything else on my calendar, that sort of thing. Yeah. Totally.

Dave Jones: You know? Yeah. So, yeah. AI. Jesus. AI. I'm over it. It's just, no. Yeah. No. I'm sorry. Although I was thinking about trying to, you know, like, because I'm always dabbling, right? I'm, you know, I've been dabbling with, you know, all sorts of different types of AIs and stuff like, just to see what it's all about and everything. And AI is basically demo wear. Okay? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think that's right.

Dave Jones: It's like, they promise everything. 4.0 thing. Yeah. And then you try and use it and it doesn't do anything practical for you. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, there are exceptions. Yes, it can write pretty decent code. You know? Yeah. It can really help you out writing code, for example. Until it doesn't. Until it doesn't. Until it doesn't. Yeah. Until it doesn't. You get shot yourself in the foot. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think that's the thing that bugs me about it all. It's just like, yes, it's very impressive. Like, all this stuff underlying is like super impressive. But the thing that really bugs me about it is like the amount of like fervor and like investment dollars that are going towards it. And it's like, yeah, I know it's going to be a thing. Right? I just can't get enough enthusiasm about it being like this life-changing thing. And then when people start talking to me about it, it's so life-changing. I'm just like, I'm glad for you, man. I'm just not there. And I'm sure it's just going to snap on one day. And it'll be like that for me too. But I'm not a convert. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There'll be niches here and there. But I am not on the train of, oh my God, we're going to have universal AGI next year. You know? No. It's bullshit. I'm on the public record as saying AGI will not happen. Period. Ever. Ever. Ever. I am on record as saying that.

Chris Gammell: Well, there goes my chance of making it into a meeting on time, Dave. I mean, if there's not an AI helping me, I'm not sure what I'm saying.

Dave Jones: Heaps of people will claim it. I mean, it'll be claimed until the cows come home. Right? But it won't be it. It'll be some niche specialized thing. And of course, people are now wondering why AI, why, you know, OpenAI and all the other, every flavor of AI out there actually lies, hallucinates. It's because that's what humans do. It's trained on humans. Humans lie. They hallucinate. They get, you know, all sorts. Every human bias, every human problem that there is, that's how AI works. Because humans are language models as well. That's, you know, humans are actually language models.

Chris Gammell: I like to imagine that one of our listeners just smoked a huge bowl of pot and there he heard Dave say that and he's like, whoa, man.

Dave Jones: Humans are large language models. Yeah. Which is exactly, and people wonder why AI is lying to them. It's because that's what humans do. That's how our language works. That's how, even if, you know, if you get down to it, that's actually how humans think and work. Humans don't. I've been lying this entire episode. Right. How humans work is that we reason, we decide first and we reason later. That's how human, people think that people do reasoning and they come to a decision. No, that's not how the human mind works. The human mind works. You make a decision based on whatever that is, right? Whatever falsehood or truth that is. And then you reason it later. That's how the human mind actually works. And this has been proven in countless studies. So, yeah. Yeah. So, yes, we're reasoning machines. We're language machines. So, sorry to tell you. Run some monkeys, run some monkeys. And, yep. Anyway. So, yeah. AI. No. You know, people keep telling me it's, like, because I make long form content, right? We make long form content, right? We. Our shows. And people say, oh. Very long.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And there's the, you know, hours long, right? And there's these AI tools that will make snappy, that will take your long form content and produce fantastic guaranteed short form content from that long-term content. Nope. Every one I tried is just garbage. It's just garbage. It's, it, it, it actually is 0% hit rate, you know? Like, it is like, yeah. Okay. They're fancy formatted and they got, you know, it's, it's got the stuff, but it doesn't have the stuff that makes it work. That actually makes a, a nice short form content work, like a good short that goes viral. It just doesn't have that capability. It might luck upon it very occasionally, but nah, nah, it just, it, it just doesn't work.

Chris Gammell: It's not dark. Yeah, magic's not dark.

Dave Jones: No. And I, you know, and people saying, oh yeah, but it's just, it's just months away. It's six months away. It's 12 months. No, no, it's not. No, I'm sorry. You know, it's trying to polish a turd, you know, taking long form content and trying to make short form, a good short form, polished short form content. No, it's polishing a turd. Well, not polishing a turd, polish. I don't know what the analogy would be because the long form content isn't a turd, right? It's just one thing, you know, you can't, I don't know. Don't know what the analogy is. You've got like a, you have a car, which is a complicated machine, right? And then you try it. Oh, we can just take a few parts from it and make something useful.

Chris Gammell: Just take two wheels off and now it's a motorcycle. Yeah, and now it's a motorcycle. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It doesn't quite work like that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I agree. Bloody AI. I agree. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of polishing turds, I've been back in the 3D modeling space trying to improve my turd-like designs. Yes. And I have nothing to really add about the actual designs itself. But I did learn, did you know that USB-C has a defined outer diameter?

Dave Jones: As in the physical connector?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, like, so there's the metal, there's the metal housing piece. Yeah. I never thought that the overmold actually had.

Dave Jones: Oh, the overmold. Oh, I didn't, I have not looked into the spec. Did you know that? No, I didn't know that.

Chris Gammell: And I'm not sure there's different classes of cable and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there are.

Chris Gammell: So I had made, like, a really thick-walled, like, 3D print where, even though the USB connector was basically right up against the edge of this thickly-walled piece of plastic. Yeah. So, like, basically, the USB-C cable wasn't making it through, right?

Chris Gammell: So I wanted to make a, kind of an inset there. And I was like, well, how big does it have to be? I wonder. And it turns out, yeah, actually, that overmold is spec'd as, like, 6.5 by 13.5, I think, max. Maybe 12.5 max. Interesting.

Dave Jones: There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And then immediately, the first cable I plug in doesn't meet that spec. And I'm like, what is going on here? Like, of course, right? Right. But it was also, like, a higher-speed cable. Maybe it was, like, a Thunderbolt cable instead. Like, I still don't really understand the difference in USB-C versus Thunderbolt. I know something about, like, the rated speeds of these things. But I can't pick them out of a lineup.

Dave Jones: I couldn't tell you. No.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But, yeah, no, the USB-C standard, there's so many different, not variations, but so many different levels of it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's just crazy. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, they say it's all the same thing. But really, it's, like, the same common standard.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: And everything's backwards compatible to the slowest thing, right? Like, the two-wire USB 2.0. But then, also, you can start layering on Thunderbolt 3 and 4 and, like, you know, PD and all this other stuff on there. And then, it's doing the negotiation at the beginning to see how it's, you know, what it's rated for. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. No, and, like, you can't just buy a USB-C cable, right? Right?

Chris Gammell: You could buy them on AliExpress, man.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: But what does it do? I wouldn't trust them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've got... It charges at 500 milliamps, you know? Right. And it flips over.

Dave Jones: Well, I've got a... I just got something in the mailbag. It's going to be in my latest mailbag video. It's an automated USB-C cable tester. And it's got... And it's actually intelligent. It's got a little LCD on it. And it tells you... Oh, nice. You know, and it actually measures it. It tells you whether the ground is shorted to the shield. It tells you whether it's a USB 2 standard cable, whether it's a USB 3.2 standard cable, whether or not it's... Yeah. What value of resistor and chip ID it's got in there and stuff like that to do the various charge standards and whatnot. And it's just like, I'm plugging in all these different cables and they're all bloody different. But, you know, they've all got standard USB-C connectors on them, but that's about as far as the...

Speaker ?: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: As far as the similarity goes. The cables are all different, so...

Chris Gammell: I got burned by this the other day. So I finally, like... I've been... I finally... When did this happen? I switched back from Linux Mint to Ubuntu because I wanted... I really wanted to get access to the LTE modem that's in my laptop. And the latest kernel has support for it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But then I've been editing videos and, like, the Linux-y stuff that I do, it, like, doesn't have enough juice just using the integrated graphics. And so I was like, well, I do have this, like, old eGPU where it's basically like an RTX 1050 in there, like an NVIDIA card. And then you need Thunderbolt in order to talk to this dock. It's the Thunderbolt 3 dock. And so I was trying and trying and trying and installing all these different drivers and I could not get it to work, could not get it to work. And it's because I had... I'd been using the cable to a different USB-C dock that I had. And then I just went and plugged in, of course, the cable that came with the original dock. And I finally was like, oh, I wonder. And I went and plugged it in. And of course, that worked, right? Yeah, of course. Like, no doubt. I should, you know, waste it six hours or something like that. But now I have my graphics card back and that's nice. So all is forgiven.

Dave Jones: Well, you could say, well, you can solve all these problems by just buying the most highest end, expensive, best cable and use that for everything. But you've seen how bloody thick and inflexible those things are? I know. They're like, oh, my. You know, like if you get like the highest rated, highest bandwidth, highest shielded one that's got all the whiz-bang, you know, stuff in, it's got all the cores and everything. It's like you can't even bend the thing.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. And that's the kind that I plugged in where also the overband didn't fit into the. Yep, yep. Because it was meant for like a hard drive, like a really high speed hard drive to talk to a computer. And yeah, that thing did not fit into this 3D print that I did. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Interesting. Oh, God.

Chris Gammell: I've never designed anything. I've designed with USB-C connectors, but never like the fancy version. You know, I feel like it's like there's different like class levels, you know.

Dave Jones: Yes, you haven't designed some, you know, really high speed, you know, leading edge interface with USB-C.

Chris Gammell: I'm not doing anything like that, you know.

Dave Jones: Yep, yep. Same here. You know, I just haven't had the need. But yeah, it's just crazy. HDMI's like that too. Is it? It's like, yeah. Like, you know, I'm doing some HDMI cabling at home at the moment. And it's like, oh, which one do you know, like, oh, is 4K enough? And then there's new ones that are rated for the higher bandwidth 8K. And then there's another one on top, another rating for HDMI cable on top of that. Seriously? So you've got, yeah, you've got, you know, you can't just buy a HDMI cable. It's, it's, it's, it's a stable worse than USB.

Chris Gammell: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I have had problems. I have like, like a three meter HDMI cable and it like works 75% of the time. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, it's just, it, it is crazy.

Chris Gammell: Like what is happening then though? Is it like, what's happening in the receiver that it's like able to figure out that it does or doesn't work too? Like, that's what I don't understand. It's like these high speed transceivers are like doing some kind of like boot testing when they detect a cable that is there. I don't, I don't get it. I don't know. With USB-C there's like, there's like pull up, pull down type stuff, right? Like the 5.1K for like the old version.

Dave Jones: No, I think for these, it's just the, it's just the tightness of the twist in the cable and the shielding, which gives it the bandwidth and everything like that. Right. So, you know, it's going to have a tighter twist. So it reduces the common mode noise, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Yeah. It's got better transmission. Yeah. It's basically a better transmission line. Right. So I'm, I'm actually staring at the new standards, right?

Chris Gammell: How many zeros of the 50 ohms do they get? 50.000000.

Dave Jones: And how does the eye diagram look like at the other end? That's what it basically comes down to. Is it within the acceptable eye diagram? Yeah. And you need, you know, test gear that costs tens of thousands of dollars just to measure that. Right. And it's nuts. Well, I'm, I'm looking to stand at the moment. There is HDMI 1 to 1.1. There's 1.2 to 1.2 A. There's 1.3 to 1.4 B. There's 2.0 to 2.0 B. There's 2.1 to 2.1 B. Right. So there, there's 2, 4, 6, 8.

Chris Gammell: Can you imagine having to sit in that goddamn room where they're, they're coming up with these standards? Like, oh my God. Like.

Dave Jones: There are, there are 12 different levels that I can see here in the wiki table of HDMI cables, 12 different levels you can go to. And the highest ones are 112 gigbits per second. 112 gigbits.

Chris Gammell: That's, that's, that's insane. Right.

Dave Jones: Your normal 4K one, right. Your, your normal 4K one works anywhere from 6 gigbits up to 54 gigbits. Right. So you can buy, so even, so if you've got a 4K TV, right, you don't just buy a 4K capable cable. You've got to know what type of 4K cable cable you need. Oh, do you need a 2.0 or do you need 2.0 B or do you need 2.1 or do you need 2.1 B? Right. There's four different choices there just for a 4K TV HDMI cable.

Chris Gammell: This is why I watch everything in 480 interleaved. Just really to simplify my life, you know?

Dave Jones: Oh man. It's just, it's insane. It is almost black magic how they can get, you know, 10K 112 gigbits per second down a five, you know, a bloody 10 meter HDMI cable or something. It's just nuts.

Chris Gammell: I'm looking at a, right now that I just, I was just looking up the controlled impedance. I didn't know if HDMI was, what, USB, USB is 90 ohm, right? The controlled impedance.

Dave Jones: Oh, something like that. I can't remember. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it is.

Chris Gammell: It's 80 or 90. But HDMI is 50 apparently. And I was just, I found a layout guide that's interesting enough to put in the show notes.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I used to do that because I used to do HDMI design. Oh yeah?

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But this is like a decade ago. This is maybe 15 years ago, almost now, you know, 12 years ago at least. 12, 15 years ago.

Chris Gammell: HDMI minus four. Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: And it wasn't too bad back then, but you had to take care in your layout. And I did bit error rate testing on that because we could get a VHDL plugin for the FPGA that this HDMI was going into and you could run a bit error rate. You could just run it 24 seven. I just, you know, sat there watching it, you know, or error, error, you know, every hour or something, there'd be a single bit error. And that was because you didn't lay out your PCB properly. Right. Is it another spam call? No, it is Mrs. EV blog. Should I answer it?

Chris Gammell: Right. Definitely not a spammer. You know, that would be a really, that's really when you know AI is coming for us, Dave, is when the spam calls also sound like your wife.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. Yes. Because they've used AI to clone a voice. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Oh God.

Chris Gammell: Do you need any help with the accounting, dear?

Dave Jones: Boy. I'm just waiting for that prank call where somebody's already cloned my voice and then they use, and then they call me with an AI chatbot and it's like me talking to, it's me like spamming myself.

Chris Gammell: I think that's not as, you would know that's not normal, right? I think the ones that are scary when it's someone you know. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: No. Yes. Yeah. Yep. But I've got to say both, both yourself and I have so much audio out there. People could easily clone us. True.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It could be me calling you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You know.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Don't believe anything I say, Dave. That's all I'm trying to say. No.

Dave Jones: Well, that reminds me of the time that somebody impersonated me and I've done a video on this. Maybe we'll have to link it in EV blog impersonation.

Chris Gammell: I think. Yep. Any video like that has to start with my voice is my password.

Dave Jones: My voice is my passport. I think it was. Damn it. Yeah. Passport. Yeah. My voice is sneakers for those who don't know what we're talking about. So, yes. Sneakers. One of the best hacker movies. I actually did a poll on this. Which is the best hacker movie? Is it War Games? Is it Hackers? Is it Sneakers? Or is it, I put something else in there. I can't remember what it was.

Chris Gammell: I think the real thing is going to come down to, you know, where it landed in your personal story. Right.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. For me, it's Hackers. I think most people are probably going to. Oh, it's Hackers. Really?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I freaking love Hackers. I mean, those other ones are great too. Yeah. I mean, the other ones.

Dave Jones: Come on. It was Angelina Jolie, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, yes. But no, also like, just like, like there's so much, like the clothes are so bombastic and like the references are so terrible.

Dave Jones: And they're roller skating through that, you know, the big down ramp through that and they're playing the games. Oh, sorry. Roller blading. Yeah. Roller blading. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: There's so many like. Oh my God. So many references. Yeah. It's so 90s, right? It's so. Tons of like DEF CON references to like referring back to it. So like, yeah. Yeah. Anyways. Yes. That's, that has my heart. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Cause you're, you're too younger.

Chris Gammell: It's a terrible movie. Oh yes.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Totally. But I know I just watched it. Yeah. I just watched it a couple of months back. I think, you know, just like, I can't help it. You know, you kind of go, oh yeah, I'll give it another watch, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Cause you're too young to remember war games. Right.

Chris Gammell: I've watched, I've seen it, but I didn't, I didn't jam with it as much because it wasn't like.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The people that like really jam with war games were like, oh my God, look how great that computer is. And by the time I watched it, I'm like, what's up with this fricking computer? You know what I mean? Like it's like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Switches on the front panel, you know?

Chris Gammell: Well, I was just thinking about like. Giant. Giant 80s. Floppies. Simulated lines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But if you were like coming up in the computer era too, it's like, yeah, that was the jam.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've got a bit of trivia for you.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Hit us.

Dave Jones: Do you know who wrote the dial-in program, the famous war dial-in program? That's where the term war dial-in comes from, as comes from the movie war games. The war dial-in program. I do not. You won't be able to know.

Chris Gammell: No, I didn't.

Dave Jones: I'm sure you. Well, you probably even haven't heard of him. Captain Crunch. The famous Captain Crunch. Oh, I've heard of Captain Crunch. Yeah. Yeah. He's the one who actually wrote that war dial-in program for the movie. So that was used in the movie.

Chris Gammell: Captain Crunch has fallen out of favor. You're in general.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Has it?

Chris Gammell: Captain Crunch. Captain Crunch has some, some daliances at conferences is no longer welcome at many conferences as a, as a persona non grata. Yeah. Unfortunately. Oh, really? Why? What, what's the, some bad, bad stuff. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Oh, right. Okay. I have to check into that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'm pretty sure.

Dave Jones: Really?

Chris Gammell: Wow. All right. I should check before I start speaking.

Dave Jones: What's his name? Draper. Is it John Draper? Is, is, is that his name? God. I. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Banned from DEF CON at least for sexual misconduct.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. John, I was right. John Draper, Captain Crunch. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's sporting a white bushy beard now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, anyway, where were we? War dialing. Yeah. And the, yeah, yeah. You're just, yeah. I can understand that you watched it probably in the 90s. You watched the movie in the 90s or something. So you weren't there in the 80s to, to really watch it and fall in love with it. Yep.

Chris Gammell: War dialing, right? So war dialing is where basically you like iterate through numbers, right? That's like the idea. And you see what picks up. You see if any computers pick up. Yes. That sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You just call every number in Sunnyvale. Do you know war driving? Do you know what that is? Yes. War driving. Yes. You drive around and you look for open, open wifi spots or something like that. Yeah. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So interestingly, I have been looking at an API lately that allows you to basically like, you know, in your phone, when you like turn on Google maps and it's like, do you want to turn on wifi location? And you, if you say yes, basically your, you know, your circle gets like much smaller. Have you ever seen that?

Dave Jones: Circle. What circle?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So like your approximate area. So like the idea of being.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. You do on your, on, on the maps. Yes. If you turn on wifi, it can narrow down where you are better.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Yeah. Right. And so I've been looking at this, this API where it's been, they've been around for a long time, but basically you can put in the MAC addresses and the RSS IDs that you like see in your general area and it'll just spit you back your GPS coordinates.

Dave Jones: It's like so wacky to me.

Chris Gammell: Like I, I get, I get it like in theory, but the thing that really blows my mind is that like, uh, our phones are actually helping optimize that algorithm all the time. Right. So like I go, say I go to another country, say I go to like a fantasy world where nobody has ever experienced the wifi access points in that, in that world. Right. But if I walk into that, that world and somehow I still have, you know, cellular connectivity, my phone basically could wait for a GPS signal, which is expensive thing. You know, battery wise, it could then say, you know, within like 10 meters, Chris is approximate this location. And then it would capture all of the wifi stuff in that area. And then say, Chris is within this area and then Dave also walks in there and it starts to just over time, you know, Dave walks in there, Bob walks in there, Mary walks in there, all these different people walk in there. And then eventually it just starts to narrow it down and say, oh, you know, when you see these, uh, you, when you see these different access points, then you're approximated in this area. And then you start to see new things and you start, because you, you have the RSS ID as well, or sorry, the RSSI, the signal strength of it. You also start to get much better locationing and it's just, it's wacky to me that, that this has just been built up over time. And now it's something that you can go out and you could buy access to that data. It's just, yeah. It blows my mind. I don't know. I, yeah, it's just like, and that is as much as like the amazingness of GPS location is like, it has nothing on these wifi location because it's just like so accurate, you know, cause it's like a constellation of basically satellites that are within, you know, a hundred meters of you, you know, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: So we have zero privacy, learn to live with it.

Chris Gammell: It's not. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that is the thing. I don't know. It's just, there's, that's like one thing that's kind of blowing my mind a little bit, but it's really the, that's just the, the large numbers that go into that sort of thing, right? Like just the number of entries that are in that database and like the back calculation that happens from all that. I think the easier way in my mind that they would be doing that as being like, oh, well, you know, Chris has a Mac as Mac address of AABBCCDDE, right? And we know it's a precise location to the, you know, to the nanosecond of latitude, longitude is, is here. And then you build up that database because people registered it. Right. But they don't have that, right? They don't have like hard location. They only have everything that's relative.

Dave Jones: And they can, yeah, yeah. And they can just infer where you are. It's like a Google live traffic thing, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That is like, it can tell you that there's a traffic jam around the corner because everyone's got their Google shoe phone turned on and in tracking mode. And Google knows when you slow down at an intersection and everyone's sort of like stuck at the intersection or whatever, because I don't know, there's some, or stuck in the middle of the road. And it can tell you that there's traffic around the corner, you know, because everyone's got their Google shoe phone turned on.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Sure. But then the scale of that, right? The fact that they're doing it not just around the corner, but they're doing it at every corner, you know, like doing it everywhere.

Dave Jones: Everyone who uses Google maps. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Just the hyper, hyper, hyper scale of it all. It's just, I know it's like nothing new. Nothing's new here. No, nothing new.

Dave Jones: It's been going on for a decade.

Chris Gammell: I've dug into one corner of it and I'm just like, you know, like looking into the chasm and just be like, oh, wow. That's where all that money went.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yep. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: What else? Oh, I got nothing on the list, man. Oh, all right. Really? I have not been adding stuff lately. And unfortunately, Unmanaged has found something else to do, which is totally cool.

Dave Jones: Oh, yep. No, no. He sends me emails personally now. Oh, there you go. So I'm getting, yeah, I'm getting personal emails now. I'm getting personal things, which there's always something interesting, you know? Yeah, totally. Yeah. Which is good. Like I'll often, you know, send me something and I'll go, oh, that's cool. And I'll tweet it, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There you go.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, I think one thing we talked about last time and has continued to kind of propagate is just the Chipsack stuff. So there was another, there was one on here from, oh, look at that. Yes, I see that. An individual named Chris Gammell posted, basically Polar Semiconductor got another chunk of money, right? So like all of these things are going there. I think we did talk about it last time, but I was listening to something that said it was 30, it's 10 to one basically. So for every dollar the Chipsack is putting in, the chip companies are putting in 10, which is like wacky. So I don't know where it's all going to go. And like, you know, we've already seen kind of the stop start kind of capabilities of, you know, will they, won't they of Chipsack money? Yeah. But if it does, like it could be, you know, it'd probably be five years from now, maybe 10.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a long term plan. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it totally is. Yeah. And that part's exciting.

Dave Jones: So what do Polar Semiconductor, what's their range got? I thought Polar was tied.

Chris Gammell: I thought they were a rebrand of the Open PDK. I could be wrong about that. Open PDK. High voltage semiconductors. Because I know that one's in Minnesota.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right. I thought they were into, they were into high voltage.

Chris Gammell: Skywater is different. Yeah. Sorry. Skywater was the Open PDK. Sorry about that. Okay. Yeah. So high voltage is the Polar stuff.

Dave Jones: They do. And long and power semiconductors. Yeah. So, you know, that'd be more into your automotive and like high voltage solar semiconductors and stuff like that. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Technology.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I'm sure. I mean, if I'm being, if I put on my cynical hat as well, probably things the US military is involved in, interested in, right? Like.

Dave Jones: Well, the interesting thing about their website is they've got about us. They've got manufacturing. They've got technologies, markets, and resources. Where are products? It's like they've got, yeah, we've got all this whiz bang technology.

Chris Gammell: Chip fab, you don't have to. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's not like, that's why you probably haven't heard of Polar Semiconductor because, you know, maybe you can get them a digi key or something, but they've got 40 volt. Yeah. Here you go. They've got, they've got 750 volt IGBT transistors and stuff like that. Right. Right. So yeah, really, really high end stuff. But yeah, like they don't actually have a product tab at the top. So they're more into like, well, why do, what do you want a data sheet? Yeah. Which is very interesting because all the other semiconductor manufacturers will have a product tab, right? Products. Here's our product portfolio. Here's our, here's our table of, you know, you know, choose our different types of semis and then here's the parametric table and whatnot. And they don't seem to have it. So very interesting.

Chris Gammell: Something we have not mentioned and is also down on the list. I don't actually know if it matters at all, but Raspberry Pi is going to be going public soon. Did you know that?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I think we talked about this.

Chris Gammell: Did we?

Dave Jones: A couple of months back.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No. Arm was going public again. I thought that's what we talked about.

Dave Jones: Nah. Could have sworn we've talked about it.

Chris Gammell: I haven't been sleeping much, so. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: I think it's interesting.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm sure we did. I'm sure we did because, yeah. I think if you search prior episodes, I think you might find we've at least mentioned it. Either of that or I'm an AI who's hallucinating. I'm a large language model who's hallucinating.

Chris Gammell: Oh, there's one. Three months ago. Yay.

Dave Jones: There you go.

Chris Gammell: Our Raspberry Pi is planning a London IPO, but its CEO expects no change in focus. So yeah, you're right. Right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, the real way to do that is search the show notes.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Fantastic.

Dave Jones: So what we need for the website is an AI. See, here's the one thing I've been thinking about doing is that I've been thinking about searching for an AI that takes all of my videos, all of my tweets, all of my forum posts, and puts it all together so I can have my own little AI thing that runs on my website. Right. It's like search everything that I've done for this keyword.

Chris Gammell: All right, Dave. We're going to do a live demo here, just like they did on the stupid videos. Let's try them here. All right. Here we go. What are we trying? I chat GPT. Oh. Oh, my God. And it's talking Italian right now.

Dave Jones: I don't even have chat GPT on my phone. I do.

Chris Gammell: I have. Refereci continuare in italiano or in inglese? No.

Chris Gammell: Talk to me in English, you stupid robot.

Chris Gammell: Got it. What's on your mind today?

Chris Gammell: Also, I told my friend about this thing, and it sounds just like his voice, and it's really creeping me out. All right. Chat GPT, can you tell me about the Amp Hour Electronics Podcast?

Chris Gammell: Sure. The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast is a popular show focused on electronics, hardware, and the maker community. Hosted by Dave Jones from the EEV blog and Chris Gammell. They discuss various topics. All right.

Chris Gammell: That's enough of that. Can you tell us, did Chris and Dave talk about Raspberry Pi on the Amp Hour recently, specifically about the IPO?

Dave Jones: It's not going to do it.

Chris Gammell: Sorry, I'm having issues right now. No.

Dave Jones: No. No, because OpenAI is not a live search.

Chris Gammell: Oh, no.

Dave Jones: They do live. Yeah. Oh, really? Oh, it does live now. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: One second. Hey, Chat GPT. The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast. Come on. You're really messing up my demo. All right. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: I'm having issues right now.

Chris Gammell: Can you tell me if the Amp Hour- To find more detailed information. Oh, okay. We're done with that demo. All right. This does not make it for good radio.

Dave Jones: And dude, what's with that voice? You need the Scarlett Johansson voice.

Chris Gammell: I forgot about that. I just chose one of them randomly, but it really sounds like my friend, and like I said, it's freaking me out.

Dave Jones: You totally need the stolen- Yeah, I thought about that.

Dave Jones: Scarlett Johansson voice. Yeah. Anyway. I probably should install- Like, I thought about actually doing that the other day. I thought about trying to do a demo of this. Yeah. I have it on my shoe phone, and then doing like a live demo interacting with the AI.

Chris Gammell: This is the thing that I mentioned at the beginning of the show. Like, we talked about the demo mode. It just doesn't- It's amazing what it is. Like, no doubt. Right? That is cool. Oh, yeah. No, no. Totally. Super amazing. It's amazing technology. I was having a teacher work on my Spanish the other day. I was like- It's just how practical is it?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Technology.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Are we sure- Are we sure we're going to make this? I pronounced EEV blog properly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: Not OOV blog or something, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, is that what it-

Dave Jones: It actually knew to actually go EEV blog, and it actually- Yeah. So, I was kind of impressed by that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, people can go back and search for their own version of us talking about this three months ago, because apparently ChatGPT is not going to help us out, and Dave and I don't remember, so whatever.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Like, no, we talked about it and go, well, what's it going to achieve or something like that? And, you know, is it-

Chris Gammell: That sounds like us, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, have things changed since we talked about it?

Chris Gammell: I think the price went up. I think they're going to raise-

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Is there another bidder or something? Is there or- No, not like that.

Speaker ?: Oh, sorry.

Dave Jones: No, is there a- They're going public, so- Oh, they're going public, right. Have they gone public? Has it actually happened? They have not yet.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I guess. Except for June 2024. Right.

Dave Jones: But they've changed the price because they reckon they're worth more now, for some magic reason.

Chris Gammell: I guess I'm wrong. It says 40 million. That's not that much relative, you know, so-

Dave Jones: 40 million? Market cap?

Chris Gammell: No, 40 million. They're hoping to raise, so-

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Got it.

Chris Gammell: So, like, they're selling some portion of the company, and they're going to raise- I don't think they're selling a ton of the company.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right. Interesting.

Chris Gammell: They're probably going to buy something, buy someone, probably buy a bunch of chips. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, they need to, like, rebrand with, like, AI in their logo somehow.

Chris Gammell: Like the raspberry, like, eating the world. Something like that.

Dave Jones: Something like that, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Otherwise, you know, there's just no hype. There's no excitement.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh. Wish them luck with their IPO. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And that's it for today's show. We're done.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think so.

Dave Jones: Come on, dude. We're struggling here.

Chris Gammell: No, I mean, yeah, I got nothing. I mean, it's pretty late here, too. I'm running out of gas, personally. I was out in the yard all day, so yeah, I'm just, I'm toast, man.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: Wife and kids and home. Yep.

Chris Gammell: It ain't getting easier, Dave.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Just getting older.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: I, like, know how you feel, man, you know? Like, whoa, Dave. Like, whoa.

Dave Jones: I will do the get smart thing and loving it. Come on. Yeah. That's it. Wait up. Catch you next time. See you. See you.

Speaker ?: Outro Music