#710 – Tugging on the Nerd Heartstring

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released December 6th, 2025. Episode 710. Tugging on the Nerd Heartstring.

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: Back from holidays.

Chris Gammell: Back from holidays. That's right, yeah.

Dave Jones: Are you going to tell people where you went to or it's a secret?

Chris Gammell: I have been posting photos on my site. So, chrisgamble.com has some photos of sea turtles and blue-footed boobies and Galapagos penguins. That last one probably is the giveaway there. Right. I went to the Galapagos on my honeymoon. So, this is a-

Dave Jones: Those boobies looked really nice. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: A lot of jokes about boobies out there. Yeah. Many made by me. Okay. I won't say I'm jealous. You won't say you're jealous. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: It was a lot of fun. I broke out my old camera. Like, Dave, I took my fancy camera-

Dave Jones: Film or digital?

Chris Gammell: No, no. Digital still. But like, I am ashamed at how good of a camera I basically use as a webcam. Like, I have a, you know, a GH5. It's not the best camera out there. But it's like, you know, a nice-ish camera. And most of the time, it sits on my desk as a webcam. And yeah, I finally took it off the stand, put the long lens on it and took it to the middle of the world and took some photos of birds basically.

Dave Jones: Awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I hate that everyone uses these, you know, like, you know, 5D SLR, 5D Mark bloody 20s or something. And they, you know, and they just use them as a- As a webcam. As like a- As a camcorder or a webcam. Yeah, but it shouldn't go anywhere.

Chris Gammell: It actually makes sense, I think. You know what I mean? Like, it's a huge, nice sensor. You could put glass on it. I don't know. Like, it does make sense in certain situations. And I do get lots of compliments on how good I look. Yeah, it does.

Dave Jones: But you can get, like, camcorders that actually, you know, you can get more optimized solutions. I was just- Actually, I was just walking around the other day. I was just walking through a building in the park here, in the business park, as I do occasionally.

Chris Gammell: You got to look for trash somewhere.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Got to dumps and dive wherever you can. Yeah, exactly. And I found this super secret filming, like it actually had the sign on the door. Super secret podcast location. It said super secret? It said super secret location, yes, on the door. That's great. I'll have to send your photo after this. Yeah, that's great. Like, yeah, this guy had a podcast. So I thought, you know, so I snapped a photo of it. Go, oh, I'll check out what this podcast is. You know, he's got, like, this office, like mine, you know. I think it was, like, 80 or 100 square meters or something. And so I thought, oh, geez, you know, he must be doing well. And so I went to check out his website. And, yeah, he does have a podcast, but I don't think it went anywhere. So now he's converted it into, like, you can buy, like, is in a for hire podcasting studio. Oh, interesting. Yeah, it's one of those, yeah, you know, for hire kind of things. You know, it's got a fancy desk with a fancy background and they provide the cameras. And they even will provide editing.

Chris Gammell: Maybe we could use that as a studio, you know, a studio location.

Dave Jones: We can use that as a studio, yes, if it's still the business.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, bingo.

Dave Jones: I'm not sure how much business he gets. But anyway, I'll try and link in the website for it. But one of the things on the website, like, yeah, they had these, like, you know, Canon 5D Mark 20 cameras or something. Yeah, great. Okay. And then there's a big asterisk next to it. Oh, these only record for 30 minutes. You will have to manually change the batteries. Like, you have to manually change the cards over and stop it. And it's like, oh, my God, get the right tool for the job, please. Like, most podcasts are like, you know, half an hour is not much for a podcast. You know, most of them are standardized. Exactly. It's in the name. Yeah, right, right. It isn't the amp half hour. And yes, but, you know, most podcasts are like standardized on that hour kind of format. Yeah, maybe. Sure, sure, sure. Or more, you know. I don't, is there like a 20-minute podcast? Like, you know, I don't think anyone does like a.

Chris Gammell: There are. Yeah, there are. But they're usually just, you know, edited more than ours are. Oh, right. Okay. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but, and I thought like, God, get the right tool for the job. Yeah. You have this professional studio. Then you have to tell people who are paying to use your studio. Oh, by the way, yeah, this is going to run out in 30 minutes. If you don't keep, and if you don't have someone there to keep track of it and change the cards and the batteries for you halfway through your bloody podcast, then, oh, my God.

Chris Gammell: I mean, some of the new ones, I can see that just because they crank out, you know, 8K recording. It's like, you know, it's like a gigabyte a second sort of thing. It's like, you need crazy. Like, a lot of the newer cameras, too, they just go straight into like high-speed USB SSDs that are USB-C SSDs that can plug in, like the little Samsung drives.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But even that's like, oh, only a terabyte. Oh, boy, I don't know. You're going to have enough? Like, hope so. But, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's unbelievable. Like, you know. Yep. Sorry. I'm a right tool for the job kind of guy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, well, I think that's tough if you're going into any scenario where you're not acquainted with the equipment. I feel like that's kind of a recipe for disaster. Plus, like, stream it to disk, right? I mean, you just use OBS and stream it to disk or something. I think that's the real move, you know.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, totally.

Dave Jones: It's like, you know, like, and they had the proper mix-in desks and everything, you know, like the Blackmagic mixing desks or whatever it was, you know. And, like, yeah, they could have, like, just, yeah, stream record it. But no, no, it's big, big disclaimer on the website, you know. Okay. Like, yeah, you must have someone there to take care of a voice. Like, God. What am I paying for? Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, speaking of big budget events, I mentioned last time that you and I recorded, so, like, three or four weeks ago now, I was going to the Tektronix event right after we recorded and I ended up going to that. And boy, that was the fanciest event I've ever been to. Like, I was like... Really? Yes. It was... I figured out why. And this is kind of interesting. So, first off, very much appreciate the invite that I got for it. It was very nice. I actually got to see old co-workers, sort of, kind of. Like, people who were, like, way above me. Right, yes. But there were some Keithley folks there, which is cool. And, you know, the new scope, new smooth that are out there, like, those are both great. But I don't... You know, they're not for me. Talk about right tool for the job. Those are not Chris Gammell tools, you know?

Dave Jones: You aren't in that business anymore. Oh, my God.

Chris Gammell: You don't need, you know, 10 gig samples per second. Exactly. It's so high-end. I'm like, I just... This is meant for, like, big business. That's really, like, the people that should have been there. I was kind of, like, a tack on, like, oh, Chris's media, sort of, kind of, in the new media sense. Right. Yeah, it was just, like, super fancy. And I found out later it was because the CEO of Raliant, which is, like, the Danaher and then Fortive and then now Raliant spun out of Fortive. So, if you hear Raliant in the future, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the name. But if you... That's basically, like, the test equipment companies have kind of been spinning out of the larger ones. Because Danaher also has, like, life sciences. Oh, God. But it's like, who's on first? Yeah, exactly. Well, and they just went public. But this is, like, the reason it was here is because they just opened their new headquarters in Raleigh, which is the city next to where I live. I live in Durham. That's in Raleigh. That's where this thing was. So, that sort of made more sense, too, where it was, like, a big corporate event in addition to, like, a scope launch in a thing. Another thing. But, yeah. It was cool. It was really nice. Very, very nice. Very high-end.

Dave Jones: A lot of corporate coin was spent, huh?

Chris Gammell: There was. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I was, like, eating the lunch and I'm, like, oh, this is, like, the fancy lunch. This is, like, an executive lunch. I usually am used to more, like, engineer lunch. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Well, the fanciest one I wear... Usually it comes in a box. There's a cookie at the end. You know what I mean? Like, everybody knows that box lunch feel. Yeah. That's what I'm used to. So, it's cool. Every once in a while. The splurge. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I went to a fancy one, which was the Renesys DevCon. That was way back. Way back. Way back. Orange County. Yeah, that was. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes, that's right. That was a long time ago. Only Galaxy far, far away. Anyway, I went to that and I'm not sure if I've ever got footage of it, but, you know, like, it was... There were, like, 500 people there or something. It was, you know, it was pretty huge. And they had this, you know, huge dinner night, you know, where they have this host of dinner and I had to get up there in front of, you know, 500 people and talk about the new contest or whatever it was. I did record that part. And then once that had finished, they opened the, you know, it was one of those massive conference centers, you know, in the hotels or whatever. And, you know, and you can join rooms together. You know, you can join, like, entire auditorium-sized rooms together. And once dinner was finished or whatever, they opened the curtain between all the doors between the hole, between where we were having dinner. And then they set up this entire game and gambling thing next door. Yeah. Yeah. They actually had people in who would, you know, you could do roulette and you could, you know, play all these games. And also, oh my God, it was ridiculous. Huge money was spent on that. And the year before that, at the event the year before, the DevCon before that, they got Adam Savage and Jamie Heineman in to do a thing. So it was like, yeah, they spent some-

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think that's like standard corporate thing. I went to a Samsung event like that once back, way back in the day. So, yeah. It almost feels like heady days of like the yesteryear. I'm sure money's still spent like that. You and I are so far outside of, you know, like I'm in startup life. Oh, I'm sure. You're on your own. You know, like it's just-

Dave Jones: Yeah. We're not in that world anymore, yeah. Maybe you should run an event. You.

Chris Gammell: You should. Yeah. The EEV stands for event. Yeah, why not? Or the E-Event Company. Yes.

Dave Jones: Oh, I tell you who I'd get. There's this guy who does engineering stand-up comedy. What's his name? He used to work at Intel back in the day, I think. Or was it Microsoft? Oh, no thanks.

Chris Gammell: Oh, God, he's really good. I don't think I'd like that.

Dave Jones: Why? That'd be great.

Chris Gammell: Is it like corny though? Or is it like actually good? No, no, it's fantastic.

Dave Jones: He does like these PowerPoint comedy sketches, you know? Oh, interesting. Okay. And he actually tours the US doing this, that's his actual full-time jig, is stand-up engineering. Hang on, I've got to find his name now. Stand-up engineering comedy. Can't even. Don McMillan. Don McMillan.

Chris Gammell: Don McMillan. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yep. I'm sure he has a website or whatever, and you can book him. So, for your next corporate event, I would recommend getting Don McMillan. He's fantastic. Anyway, go and watch any of his videos and you'll be laughing your ass off.

Chris Gammell: It's just great. I'm going to definitely check that out after this, yeah. Try and link in some videos there, yeah.

Dave Jones: And for the music, probably MC Frontalot. But perhaps some nerdcore rap, you know? We could have, you know, big event, spend some coin. What do you think?

Chris Gammell: I'll wait for my VAP pass, you know? Ship it to my house, huh?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Okay. Yep. No worries.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Speaking of shipping, I talked to a previous guest, Davide Andrea. He said he's sending you a connector book, man.

Dave Jones: Oh, I've got it. I have not opened it yet. It is here.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: But I want to open it on camera, so, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. It feels, oh, man, it's heavy. It's a big, I assume it's a hardcover jobby.

Chris Gammell: It is hardcover.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and it's like, what, 700 pages or something?

Chris Gammell: It's color, too. It's color print, too.

Dave Jones: Oh, man. I'm looking at it right now. I'm looking at the box it's in. Is it usable as a reference book, or is it more of just a coffee table pornographic, oh, look at these connectors, kind of?

Chris Gammell: I think it's reusable. Oh, actually, no, that should be at hand, is the Wendell and Eric photography book. Open Circuits is the book.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yes, yes. They are on the show. That's the one.

Chris Gammell: Come on, get back to it. Yeah. Come on, Chris.

Dave Jones: One of those coffee tables.

Chris Gammell: Editing, Chris, you can put that in there.

Dave Jones: They're coffee table books. Yeah, I've got another coffee table book, which is, it was a limited edition thing I think they said to me. And it's just gorgeous. It's just gorgeous.

Dave Jones: It's just gorgeous. It's just gorgeous. Maybe it was leather bound or something. I don't know. It was just insanely luxurious, kind of. Yeah. It's just crazy.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Yeah. That is definitely it. What about the way things work? Do you watch? Do you have that book back in the day? I don't know. I think it's a little bit behind you, probably. So, probably it wasn't super formative. What is it? The Way Things Work? Oh, I've heard about it. I've, yeah. It's not just electronics, but like, it's like, there's like mammoths all throughout. It was like all these like really whimsical drawings of like-

Dave Jones: There's quite a few books like that now. Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah, there's quite a few. I've looked at one recently. I thought, oh, that's a Christmas present right there. You know, and how to reinvent the world or something. There's, you know, like if you went back, you could have this book and it's got all how everything works. You know, it's like-

Chris Gammell: My wife had, when I met her, she had Way Things Work as a coffee table book and that's how I- There's a keeper. I knew it was going to work out. I knew she was a keeper. All right. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There you go, ladies. Advice for snagging a nerd. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. That's right. All you need is a couple of woolly mammoths on the coffee table book and you're probably, you know, and like how a CD player works with like ridiculous pulleys and, you know, like that's the one I always remember is like how a CD player works. Yeah. Because I was so like mystified by it. Oh, really? Yeah.

Dave Jones: When you're a kid, yeah?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Because it was like, you know, not, you know, I grew up in the nineties. So like-

Dave Jones: No, I was like, yeah. Well, lasers were magical back then.

Chris Gammell: They still are.

Speaker ?: Right?

Dave Jones: Lasers were- Lasers. Yeah. Like, you know, when was the first, like I've literally got the first portable CD player ever made, the Sony CD 101 or whatever it is. I can't remember. The Discman. The original Sony Discman. The original Discman. Really? Did you make a video about that? Oh, yeah. I've got an original. Oh, yes. Yeah? Yes. I've done a teardown video of the original Discman. I've still got it. Okay. Okay. And yeah, it's, uh, it's back then, like we're talking like mid eighties or something. And back then lasers were pretty magical. You had a Discman in the eighties?

Chris Gammell: You know, you couldn't just- Or are you talking CDs in the eighties?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: This was a CD Discman. I'll send you the video. Okay.

Chris Gammell: It was in the eighties. Okay. Was this like the one that you mounted? This is like the carry along or is it like the one that you mounted to like the car dash?

Dave Jones: No, no. This is the actual, you would actually carry this.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Here it is here. I'll send you the link. Okay. Copy link. There you go. I'll send it in the googly chat. There you go.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: Sony, it's a Sony D50 Discman. The world's first portable CD player. 1984.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Vintage.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Yeah, they say portable, but this isn't like, this is not what I think of as like the Discman. Like I think of Discman as like the one that you'd actually put in your pocket. This is not really, I guess this has a battery. It must have, right?

Dave Jones: No, this is, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is portable.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure this was very expensive back in the day. My God. Like I can't even imagine. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But anyway, yeah. The mid eighties, like to have something with a laser in it was, you know, futuristic, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right, right, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Jetsons. Have we talked about these ridiculous humanoid robots that are coming out? Like just over and over.

Dave Jones: Oh, there's just a ton of, I was, I almost did a video on that. What's that new one called? That looks like it's got like a.

Chris Gammell: The cloth one? Like the one that's got like the ears?

Dave Jones: Yeah. It looks like it's like a cloth. It looks like a.

Chris Gammell: It's a VO or Neo or.

Dave Jones: A stuffed animal or something. Something like that. Super creepy. Yeah. I was almost about to press record on a video for that and several other YouTubers beat me to it. And I just, I don't know. Had to do something else. But yeah, it's like, it's complete bullshit. It's all tele-operated.

Chris Gammell: Neo it's called. Maybe we even talked about that last time. I don't know. I can't remember anything. I'm vacation brain. So if I've said anything last, you know, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, whatever. That's vacation brain. Just, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, you can order this stupid Neo thing now. And it's like, and if you go on their website and you watch their video, you think, oh, this thing's like real. It can do you real useful stuff. But then they did like a behind the scenes. Some, I don't know, tech, some media outlet did an interview with the CEO where he basically admitted, yeah, it's a hundred percent tele-operated at the moment. You've got to actually sign it. So if you buy one of these and they eventually, you know, you get it in 12 months time or whatever, then it does nothing autonomous on its own. You have to give permission via the app for someone in like India or somewhere to actually log into it and remotely operate it.

Chris Gammell: And be in your house with cameras.

Dave Jones: Yes. And they will be in your house with cameras. And it's like, oh my God, what? What? And it's like, why would you pay money? It's a bit, oh, you're helping develop. Like, why would you pay money to help develop someone else's product? Yeah, exactly. You pay me and I'll use your thing. You know? Yeah. It's like, no, but they'll probably find no shortage of nerds who want to pay money to have this stupid tele-operated thing.

Chris Gammell: I think it's the thing. I think to like make a new product, you have to basically find a sci-fi concept. You have to make a facsimile that's close enough that you can make a ridiculous launch video about. And then like, then you can like raise all the money and get the buzz that's necessary to actually then go develop it. You know? Like, as much as I love making fun of the humane AI pin, like everybody wants that because they had that on like Star Trek. And you know what I mean? Like everybody wants a communicator. Everybody wants a, you know, tricorder. Everybody wants a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. It's just like, yes, they're just tugging at our nerd heartstrings. You know? Like, yeah. So.

Dave Jones: Well, I was actually just before the show, I was on the EV blog forum, as I am. As you do. Exactly. Just, and we were discussing what constitutes a fraudulent product. Like what actually, you know, where, like, do they genuinely believe in it or are they trying to fake it till you make it and is faking it till you make it? Is that actually fraud? Right. And at what point does that become fraud? I think it's only fraud if you get caught. Right. If it lives in your heart, it's not fraud. If you truly believe in it. Definitely that. Yeah. Right. Yes. If you believe that.

Chris Gammell: Right. I think eventually you get prosecuted because then eventually at some point, like lawyers get discovery and they get access to your email. Yeah. Right. And then somewhere in the chain is like, yeah, we're taking them for all their worth. Yeah. Right. You know? It's like, and that's the down, that's when you get definitely tagged for fraud. That's when you get busted. So don't email people. So you just have to really believe, you know? It's like you have to be a true, true believers. Don't get fraud.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I truly believe that we can diagnose all these diseases with one drop of blood. And it's not fraud because I truly believe it.

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure she actually did believe it, but. She probably believed it at first. She probably. I think that's right.

Dave Jones: You know, like.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you have to be an insane person to like start a company that big and like make all those claims without having the actual. Oh, yeah. Right. So. Yeah. I think it's like a rational belief for many startups out there.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And then eventually, you know, you kind of move people in the direction you want them to, you know, in the best case scenario. Right. Like if Jensen Huang was kind of nuts as well, except he was just also very talented in like. Exactly. The whole team at NVIDIA made it happen, you know, like. And they were also very lucky. Right. In a lot of ways. So.

Dave Jones: Well, my last post on there, I talked about the electric truck. Nikola. Right. By. What's the guy's name? Trevor Milton. Right. And he, you know, he came up with, oh, we're going to manufacture this EV truck. And it looked fantastic. And all the insides look fantastic. And it literally had nothing in it. And they rolled it down a hill, like demonstrating, thinking it was powered. Didn't even have a bloody motor in it. Right. So, obviously, you know, that's faking it till you make it.

Chris Gammell: But that's not. But they also made it. But that's. They made the outside.

Dave Jones: They did make the outside. And they got. Corollary. But that's a product where you could have got away with that. Right. You could have faked that until you make it. Because it wasn't. There wasn't any extraordinary engineering. Right. Or, you know, science going on here. It was just like, okay, it's an EV truck. You know, it's completely doable. So, once you've got that money, you could have actually made that a success, potentially. And then hidden the fact that, oh, it was. Yeah, it was a bit of fraud at the start. But that's okay. And totally get away with it. So, you know. But, unfortunately, it folded and he went to jail.

Speaker ?: So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's almost like fake it till you deliver a fully manufactured device that is road tested. Right. That would be like the long form of that statement.

Dave Jones: But they could have done that. As opposed to Theranos, for example. They had absolutely no scientific chance of doing that. Right. It was. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Right. It is theoretically possible to make an electric truck that's also beautiful. Yes. Right. It's just they did not build the whole thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It failed before they could actually deliver. And then, oopsie, they found out the tests were fake. Economics got in the way. Yeah, right. But they could have made it. That was the point. I was trying to make in this forum thread is that they could have made it and they could have got away with it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but probably not for the price. No, but they still could have made it.

Dave Jones: And then they would have been bought out by GM or somebody. You know, they would have been bought out by somebody. And then they probably would have got away with it. Yeah. But if they had actually been, if the engineers have actually been able to actually deliver something that kind of sort of worked actually before the money dried up, then yeah.

Chris Gammell: What's interesting about that is like, if you look at like, you know, car shows, like the big Detroit auto show and stuff like that, like the concept cars they take, like they are often functional cars. They can drive, but like, you know.

Dave Jones: You can't make them. Yes, you can't make them in volume.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. They're not meant to be made. They're truly just like a, they're a demo showpiece to like highlight some new feature or something you want to do. And it's just like super out there. And yeah. And it's a lot of the same methods, you know, like really nice industrial design and a lot of 3D printing and a lot of Bondo and, you know, a lot of, a lot of Arduinos inside, you know.

Dave Jones: Oh, I watched this YouTube video the other day. I'm going to have to find it. What's the name of the guy? He's an Italian designer and he designed all these wild, wild looking cars and planes and all sorts of crap. And it was a really good video and it was like, they're totally impractical, like completely impractical. But, oh man. Michelangelo. Michelangelo, right. But yeah, I'll see if I can find it and link it in because it was fascinating. And he did actually, in the end, actually developed a Canon camera that actually, you know, formed to the shape of your hand. And that was actually a success. Yes, he finally actually developed something that was an actual, you know, manufacturable thing. Yeah. An actual manufacturable product. So, yeah. It's very cool. I'll see if I can find the video. It's probably in my watch history there. Okay. Yeah. But yeah. So, yes, there's a difference between being able to produce radical looking designs and actually having something that's manufacturable.

Chris Gammell: Right. Especially in high volume delivered.

Dave Jones: In volume for a price target. Yeah. Yeah. Safe. That passes all the, you know, standards and things like that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Speaking of, you have a Regal video for what, a thousand bucks? What was that new one you just put out?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The new one. What's up with that? Yeah. The new HDO. Sorry. MHO. They keep mixing the letters up.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: MHO. I think it's the MHO 98 or 982, 984.

Chris Gammell: What's the MO? It's like reactants or? Mixed. No, I know. I meant what is the, you know, like the unit that's like a MO. MHO instead of an O.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yes. A MO, which is the inverse of O. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The MO. The MO. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Maybe they just got confused with that, you know. Maybe it just measures that.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. And they actually did that after they released the scope. It is the MHO. They also had the DHO series. And this is the MHO 900 series. Not to be confused with the DHO 900 series. And the DHO used to be called the HDO. When I originally reviewed the HDO 800, it was called the HCO. And then after a couple of months, they actually renamed it and rebadged them all the DHO. They swapped the letters around. After they started shipping.

Chris Gammell: They can't do that in the US with the MHO because then it would be HMO. And HMO is like a bad healthcare plan in the US. Oh, is it? Okay.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Anyway. Yeah. It's a pain in the ass. But yes. Basically.

Chris Gammell: Maybe they're saving money on the price tag by just getting all the letters. Like whatever's available, you know. Oh, it's so frustrating. Yeah. Oh, boy. Anyway.

Dave Jones: Yes. Once again, it's a game changer. Nobody else can touch it for the price per performance. We're talking, you know, you can actually hack. It already has been hacked. So, for the base $999, you can actually get a – it's actually a paid hack at the moment. There's discussion about this on the forum. There's, you know, somebody's actually done it and they're selling the paid hack. You can go to their website and you can buy, you know, for $30 or something. You can actually buy the hack.

Chris Gammell: The twist is it's actually Regal. It's like someone, Regal employee, just like, you know, bringing dollars into the back door.

Dave Jones: Well, no, the interesting thing about this – and there's another big EUV blog forum thread discussion on this. There's a lot of people who are for and against this. But the guy who did it, Norbert, his name is. I forget his last name. Anyway. Yeah. He sells the hack for this. And it's not kind of a hack. What he did is actually decompiled the software, modified the code to, like, I don't know, jump over the check-in or something. I don't know. And he's actually added features himself. Okay. So he's actually recompiled the software and added new features.

Chris Gammell: Huh.

Dave Jones: So that's why he's charging for it because he's actually adding features. He isn't just hacking the scope. So, yeah, yeah. It's a fascinating new development in the world of hacking. It's not just bypassing the, you know, the serial code or whatever. You know, no. He's actually essentially recompiled their own software. He decompiled it, made changes, added stuff, and then recompiled it. And he sells the recompiled version. So, you know, legality of that, I don't know. And that's what the big.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it is. There is, like, always the, you know, you've bought this machine. It is yours. You can do what you want with it. You know? Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, right, right, right.

Dave Jones: Whether or not you're allowed to actually sell a version, I don't know. I'm sure that varies by country to country, too. You know, it's like. Anyway, anyway, that's what the current hack is. So, basically, for $999, you can get a 1 gigahertz or at least 800 megahertz bandwidth four-channel scope with all, like, 500 gigs of memory. And it's just, like, it's just nuts. And a dual-channel 100 megahertz SIGGEN.

Chris Gammell: Dual-channel. Wow. Like, you know, it's just nuts. That's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And all the hardware is built in. The actual 1 gig bandwidth, although the 1 gig bandwidth was a limited edition, they're only making 2,000 of those. So, the regular one is 800 megahertz. But the circuitry is exactly the same. So, the front end is actually capable of 1 gig bandwidth. Because they can develop their own custom front end ASIC. They develop their own custom ADC. And just nobody can touch them for the price point. That's wild. Yeah. And instead of using a Xilinx FPGA, which are quite expensive, right? You know, you've got to have a high length. You've got to have, like, a relatively high-end, you know, Arctic 7 or something. Right? Instead of using that, they used a supposedly kind of – we're not sure if it's a rip-off clone of the Arctic 7, but it's a Chinese FPGA.

Chris Gammell: Is it Goan or someone else?

Dave Jones: Of some description, which we don't have the data sheet for. Oh, interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I guess I'm so far out of the FPGA world that I don't really know what the latest is there. You know, like, I just –

Dave Jones: Yeah, same here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. I do know that there are some insanely high-end ones. Like, the military uses – in the US at least, uses them, like, no problem. You know, like, $100,000 chip. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. We'll put it in a missile that blows up. It's like, okay, guys. But, like, from signal, like, in terms of, like, high-speed signal processing type stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You can process, you know, a thousand simultaneous channels at one gig sample per second all in real-time, you know, for your adaptive bandwidth phased array bloody radar missile thing, you

Chris Gammell: know. Whatever they need to do. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. It's mad.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: It's nuts. But anyway, yeah, there's this Chinese company that you've never heard of have this FPGA you've never heard of, and I'm not sure if it uses – if it's a clone and it uses the Xilinx software tool chain or whether or not it has its own tool chain. You just can't get a data sheet for it. You can't get any info. So, it's like – but I don't know, if you're in China and you speak Chinese and you talk to them, I'm sure they'll give you all the info you need to buy their product. So, that's how they're lowering the cost, yet again, whereas all the other manufacturers are still all using the Western brand FPGAs. So, you know – Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah, it all starts to add up, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, there's huge catch-up to be done by the others. So, I don't know how many years they're behind, but they could be secretly working on their own front-end ASICs and stuff like that, but RIGOL of damn. I mean, the front-end's got to be like where all the magic is.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I know you need all the signal processing and like the throughput and the logic for that sort of thing, but like there's – you can't really get around like having like really low capacitance, like front-end type of stuff in the actual silicon itself, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. It's – no, there's no beating it. Otherwise, you've got to use real expensive analog devices, parts everywhere, and your front-end's filled with them, right? But no, they can – they literally do it all in one ASIC, you know? It's just nuts. And, you know, probably ends up costing, I don't know, a dollar in volume or something, you know? And like nobody else can even touch it. It's just crazy. So, you can't get this sort of – imagine like – and the entry-level. The entry-level model is three – what is it? 350 megahertz or something? That's the entry-level now for $1,000. That's like without a hack, you're saying? That's – that's without the hack, yeah. That's without the hack. It's bloody 350 megahertz or something. It's just – damn.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Damn.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, it's like watching in slow motion as they go upmarket, you know, like just – like many other players do.

Dave Jones: It was a big step when we went from two channels to four channels was standard, right? Nobody bought a two-channel scope anymore, right? Yeah. That was actually – they also started that. Yeah. It was –

Chris Gammell: 1054Z, right? Or Zed.

Dave Jones: Yes, the 1054Z. Yep. And then subsequent models and – you know, you'd be mad to buy two channels anymore, but they're always still limited to that entry-level like 100 megahertz kind of bandwidth, you know? Now it's like, no, it's four channels and it's 350 megahertz and it's still less than $1,000.

Chris Gammell: This isn't $399 price tag either. No, no. It's a step up. It's all migrated. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's a step up. So if you want to save money, yes, you're still going to get that 100 megahertz bandwidth, you know? And then you hack it and you get the 350. But, you know, when they throw in – oh, by the way, there's two 100 megahertz bandwidth function gens, right? Yeah. Dual function gens that are 100 – Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: I don't even know – I don't know what I'm going to do with these sort of things, you know what I mean? I mean, if they want to send me one, that's fine. I guess I'll put it on the bench. But, like, come on, man. Like, I don't know. Yeah. I don't personally need 100 megahertz function gens. I'm not saying that other people don't.

Dave Jones: Oh, I find it pretty handy, especially if you're doing sweeping stuff. You know, 100 megahertz is really handy. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Great, great. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah, well, I actually need more than that at the moment because I've been meaning to do a video demonstrating the capacitance of ground planes in a four-layer board, right? So I was actually going to do a video, like, sweeping that. But I don't – like, I can't sweep it high enough. I don't have a – like, I'd have to get an RFV and A to do it, right? So, you know, I've got a 50 megahertz one here, and that's okay, but we only start getting to the interesting stuff at 50 or 100 megahertz, right? And then it sort of –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you want to see, like, the corner case, like –

Speaker ?: Yeah, it stops.

Dave Jones: It's like –

Chris Gammell: Facts and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: I want to see what happens at – yes, I want to see what happens at 500 megahertz.

Chris Gammell: Well, the physics kicks in and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. Yeah. So I wanted to show how effective a ground plane was in a PCB as a bulk capacitor. You know, I wanted to show it's versus a standard 10N cap or something like that, you know. Anyway, yeah, it's just – yeah, so I just need more bandwidth. More power. Anyway, it's still interesting if I do the 50 meg version. It's still kind of interesting, but not nearly as –

Chris Gammell: What you do is you use that as, like, your way to show that you need some help from local people that have fancier equipment, and then they come rushing to your aid, you know.

Dave Jones: Yes, right. Yep. You know, I could get one of those little cheap V&A things, you know, but they're not quite as – yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I had one of those in a shopping cart at some point, but I didn't do – obviously, I used to have a nice V&A. Right. Now that is with Jeff Kaiser. He bought that off me. That's fine. He did very nice upgrades to it. Yep. But, yeah, I don't – unless I'm doing, like, antenna design or something like it, you know, like – Right, yeah. Knowing when you actually need a V&A is also, like, the important thing, and I almost certainly do not for most things that I'm doing. So – and I feel like a lot of the times what I really need was, like, more like a TDR than a V&A, you know. So, like, testing out, like, how my circuit board looks and stuff like that, and I'm definitely not getting a TDR. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: No. Anyway, the world's changed, dude.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I know. I look around my desk and – It's completely left us behind. Well, yeah. I mean, there's also that. I'm getting mentally prepared for that on lots of fronts. But, yeah.

Dave Jones: But, anyway, this is an interesting discussion of where one company, Rigol, bet the farm, like, five years – they started developing these ASICs, like, five years ago, right? Yeah. So, they bet the farm on it back then that they would eventually own – you know, Siglin's been kicking their ass for many years now, right? Rigol were number one for a long time, and then Siglin came along and, wow, you know, the bang per buck was with Siglin now, right? It was clearly with Siglin, and it was like that for, like, probably the last five years, right? And now, no, they've suddenly gone, well, here you go. The thing is they didn't have to do this. They didn't have to price it at $999, right? Because it's so far ahead in terms of bang per buck that nobody can even touch it. The next – like, I did this in my video. The next nearest one was, like, you know, double the price. So, they didn't have to do – they could have made it $1,500, and it still would have been the best value scope on the market.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but there's, like, psychological, you know, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there's psychological stuff, and, well, it worked because I did a video, and now it's gotten, you know, 80,000, 90,000 views or something. It did pretty well, and everyone's talking about it. Everyone's going, well, everyone – every other manufacturer is dead. Right, exactly. Why would you buy anything else? Yeah, that's fair. You know, it's like, yeah. Even though, you know, it's not the best user – you know, there's lots of issues with it. It's not the best user interface out there. Some people hate it, you know, and things like that. But still, you can't beat the bang per buck.

Chris Gammell: People are willing to be forgiving when it comes to price of value. Yeah, flexible. Flexible, that's right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah, yeah. So, and it's tiny. So, if you've got, you know, bad eyesight and you only – you know, a little fiddly screen, you know, a little small seven-inch screen on it, you know, kind of thing. So, if you want a bigger screen, you can plug in an external monitor with it, which is great, but, you know, it's kind of not all-in-one then. Anyway, yeah, they didn't have to do it. So, it's massively aggressive market move, which I found quite remarkable. They're just like, well, here's the new baseline. See if you can meet it. Good luck. Because maybe they know, like maybe they know the other manufacturers – maybe there's corporate espionage going on and maybe the other manufacturers – they know that the others don't have anything in the pipeline. Or maybe they do. Maybe it's the opposite. Maybe they do know they have something in the pipeline that's about to come out. So, they aggressively priced it. Grab all the market now so that when Siglin come out with one in six months' time, everyone's going, shit, I just bought the Syspin all my money on the Riga one. I can't buy the new shiny Siglin one, you know, do you?

Chris Gammell: I'll lose my shirt. Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: So, I don't know. So, I don't know. I don't have any insight there of what they know and what the others – or what the others are doing at all. But, yeah, it's fascinating to be in the boardroom when they're working out the price. Because it's not uncommon for these things. Like, I've been – you know, because a lot of these manufacturers, they will send me scopes actually, you know, months before it's actually released. Right? And then I go, okay, how much is it? I need to include that in my video, you know. I need – like, that's one of the first things I'm going to say, you know. And they go, we don't know. And this is like a week before launch. And they go, we still don't know.

Chris Gammell: How much do you think we could get for it?

Dave Jones: They have actually asked that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, really?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. So, oh, boy, I won't say who. But, yeah. And, yeah. Yeah, and so they keep the pricing like it's a, like, last-minute decision thing. And this isn't just one manufacturer. I've found this across several manufacturers. Wow. That, you know, yeah, pricing is like a last-minute – Yeah, price is a construct, you know. Yeah. Construct.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Fascinating dynamic, market dynamics.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, for sure.

Dave Jones: What scope do you have at the moment? What's your home scope?

Chris Gammell: My scope collection is a collection of ones that have been given to me. So, again, if a manufacturer is listening, have it prominently featured on my bench along with the other ones I don't really use that much.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I've still got a Keysight. I've got an old Tektronix one. Honestly, the thing that I use most is just like a, you know, analog discovery.

Dave Jones: Right. Just because it's convenient, it's, you know.

Chris Gammell: Portable and software-based and, yeah, scriptable, that sort of thing. So, like, I am not the person they should be talking to. Anyone should be thinking about, you know, I'm just not making enough stuff that is like that requires this. I mean, I guess what it really is, Dave, is like I just make stuff that works the first time all the time. So, like, why do I need a scope, you know?

Dave Jones: Oh, exactly. Everything's perfect.

Chris Gammell: Why do you even need to design? I mean, really, I just, you know.

Dave Jones: PCB, like everything's being designed. Yeah, I guess so. You just plug blocks together.

Chris Gammell: I just, like, use my brain and then I, like, put it in a layout program and it's, like, always perfect. I don't know. Yeah, I just, I, yeah, so I don't have a, I'm not a good example for this stuff. What about you? What's your go-to these days?

Dave Jones: Well, same here. I'm not a good example. Jesus, I've got 20 oscilloscopes. But you have a bunch, right? Like, you know.

Chris Gammell: You have a greater variety to ignore on your bench.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: I still, I still say to this day that I prefer using the old school Keysight one.

Chris Gammell: How old?

Dave Jones: The old school Agilent Keysight. I don't know. It's just something, the interface that just agrees with me kind of thing. Oh, we're talking 15 years.

Chris Gammell: That's the, this is what I'm sure every marketer at a test equipment company hates, right? They come up and like, yeah. Yeah. You get these old curmudgeons that just use the same thing. Yeah, totally. Of course they do. Yeah. They're weird. Again, we are not the target market. They're looking at people that are, like, pushing the leading edge of silicon design and stuff. Like, that's where the money is anyways, right? So, it's like, okay, well, get the, get the in-house applications engineer at, like, NVIDIA or something. Okay. Oh, you're doing bench testing for your new thing? Okay, cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. But if I just want to, like, just measure a signal, like a basic signal, I don't want to dick around with a scope. I just want to power it on and probe a signal. Yeah. Yeah. I'm probably reaching for that Keysight because it just kind of works. It feels like home, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, but if I want to do anything fancier, yes, I'm picking something else. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know?

Chris Gammell: Yes, the signal goes up, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Like, if I want something with a larger screen because it appears better on video, if I want something, oh, this brand scope, like, I like the way that Siglin do their measurements on screen and things like that, you know? Like, there's some, like, each one has its own pros and cons kind of, you know, thing. So, it depends on what I want to show off on camera, really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: As to what scope I'm going to pick.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Alan Wolke, I did mention I was going to get to see him. I got to see him.

Chris Gammell: He was at the event, right? He was at the event I went to. It's great to see him. He's, you know, super, super nice person. He was given, like, a demo. And he was showing, like, this new scopes, like, multiple, multiple, you know, things that it can do. And again, I was, like, watching and just being like, this is for someone else in the room. This is not me.

Dave Jones: It was like a manufacturing context, too, you know? It's like you're watching the Doug Engelbart demo from the 1960s. You know, you're watching the mother of all demos. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I kind of had this same feeling, too. I don't know if you saw, did you say Stephen Hawes' recent video about the last PCB you'll ever buy? Did you see that one?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: So, Stephen does the Lumen pick and place, which is by Opnialo. That's his company. Yeah. Past guests of the show. We'll link him in. And so, he's been working also on, like, fast prototyping methods, right? Because, like, the Lumen pick and place is meant as, like, okay, you can do pick and place in your office. It's, like, great. You know, it can do down to, like, 402s. And it's, like, open source and got a bunch of stuff in there. But one of the problems is the same problem we always have, which is, like, okay, you have this pick and place. It's great. But you have to still, like, get a board. And so, then your options are, like, the usual, like, copper routing, that sort of thing. And so, basically, he made a PCB that's, like, the board itself is made to, as, like, a template for stuff. So, you already have, like, this kind of cross pattern of vias that are already there. Yep. And then you can use that. You could pull that whole thing in. Oh, yes. Yes.

Dave Jones: I know the ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, it's a great idea.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not game. Like, it's not. None of these home PCB fabric, a do-it-yourself PCB fabrication things will ever be game-changing, I think.

Dave Jones: No, yeah. Not in the era of, you know, $5 PCBs. $5 for, you know, 10 four-layer PCBs, you know, with solder mask and seal screen.

Chris Gammell: This is the point I'm getting to, is that, like, so, like, Stephen's been doing all these experiments with, like, lasers and this last PCB you'll ever buy and stuff like that. And, like, he's, like, he makes a bold claim, which I actually believe, which is, like, you could work on this thing, have this PCB actually manufacture it, like, and within, like, two hours have, like, a working PCB. Yes. You could. From, if you had the parts on hand, you know, big asterisk there, you could totally do that. And I was watching and thinking, like...

Dave Jones: But then again, so could I, back in the 1970s when I used to, and the 80s, when I used to manufacture my own PCBs.

Chris Gammell: Not at the levels. Yeah. Not at the levels that these are. Right. And so, that's, again, fair. But, like, the two-hour thing is, like, where I'm, like, yep, that's not me.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No. And it's not most people. Unfortunately, it's not most people. Most people are happy to wait a week to get their, you know, four-layer, silkscreen, solder mask, plate-through, you know, routed PCB. You know, like, everything, right? It's got all the bills and whistles, right? It's got the gold plate, and it's got all the bills and whistles. Oh, it's amazing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But there are some people out there, right? And actually, there's a podcast... What are they called? Not Amper. It was a server company. Man, I can never remember their name. They're a green server company. Anyways, they have a podcast as well where they actually are prototyping in-house and doing a bunch of stuff. They're, I think, a Lumen Pick-in-Place user as well. And they actually, like, are using this stuff to do, like, super, super quick turn prototypes. It's like, okay, great. Like, they have that sort of thing. It makes a lot of sense.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. No, no. There's a certain need for it, but it's not for everyone as well.

Chris Gammell: Oxide. Oxide.

Dave Jones: It's not going to change the industry.

Chris Gammell: Oxide is the company I was thinking of. And Oxide Podcast is called Oxide and Friends. There you go. Yeah. Good podcast. All right.

Dave Jones: No, they're great. I just, you know, don't think it's going to be, you know, it won't be on, it won't be in everyone's lap. No, yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think Stephen even says that. But it is a great idea for, like, having, you know, like, kind of that templating idea is something I never thought about before because I'm not cutting PCBs myself, right? Like, often it comes down to the, you know, if you know you're going to have through holes and you don't want to use, like, the available through hole methods, like, it is a good solution for that. So, yeah. Sure. If you were going to design a board yourself, you might want to do some on KeyCAD. The latest KeyCAD talks are also out. So, I can link those in. So, KeyCAD 2025. Talks as in? Yeah, the KeyCon. Sorry. I should have said KeyCon, I suppose. But KeyCon. Right.

Dave Jones: The talks from KeyCon.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, 2025. Those are out. Good. Some good topics. Friendly faces that I know some of the folks there. I'm sure some of them will be gracing this podcast at some point in the future. So, some of them have already. Cool. But that's. Yeah. But those talks are all now released, which is great. And there will be a FOSDEM. FOSDEM was uncertain whether there would be a hardware, open hardware room again. That's the one in Brussels every year in February. But there will be an open hardware room in Brussels for FOSDEM. So, that's a true like hacker conference too. Yeah, yeah. Not in like the hacker, like Black Hat and like those kind of hacker things. This is like a bunch of like European academics drinking club mate in a school cafeteria kind of. Yeah, like that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's its own flavor. It was very interesting going that one year that I went to. So, yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm just too far away from everything, dude. Australia's like. Well, you know, they do have these things called airplanes, Dave.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if you know that. Yeah. And do you realize how shit they are? Yeah, they are pretty bad. Yeah. I don't know, man.

Dave Jones: And now you can go from Sydney. No. What is that? Yeah. You can go from Sydney to freaking London direct.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say Perth to London has been for a while. But yeah, Sydney to London.

Dave Jones: Perth to London's been available. Now, I think they're talking Sydney or Melbourne to London direct.

Chris Gammell: Wow. My God. It's like 22 hours. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Jeez, you'd have to pay me to go on it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's nuts. That's a long time.

Dave Jones: Oh, no. I just, yeah. No. I used to enjoy it when I was younger. But no, it's just now it's my idea of nightmare.

Chris Gammell: I mean, the problem with that is, you know, you get off the plane and then you're just like in rainy old London. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, it's kind of cool. It's fine. I'm making jokes. UK people don't. I love London. Don't get me wrong.

Dave Jones: All right. Hold onto your phone tight. That's all. That's my only advice. You haven't heard that? Anyway, I won't go into details. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Sure. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, search on hold onto your phone tight in London.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: In fact, I can send you a Ricky Gervais thing about it.

Chris Gammell: I won't. I don't want to.

Dave Jones: No, you don't want to know. No. No, I don't.

Chris Gammell: I don't want to. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. No problem. Yeah. Because you like don't exist in the online world anymore, do you?

Chris Gammell: No. As people will see linked in the comments below, I basically post vacation photos to my own. I treat my own site like Instagram and Twitter and there's no one responding to it. And I'm okay with that. I'm an online loner. Yes. The antisocial network. He's a hermit, folks. It's there for people to see all my stupid musings. But yeah, send me a postcard if you have thoughts.

Dave Jones: Well, my latest post on X just got, I think it's approaching 10 million views now. 10 million views.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Look at you, Mr. Viral. 10 million views.

Dave Jones: I've had several posts now that another one went like 4 million views or something.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: So, you know, yeah, I'm going a bit viral on the XE.

Chris Gammell: Good for you, man. So, how are you going to spend those imaginary dollary doos?

Dave Jones: Those big, no, it's real money. I get paid fortnightly for being on X.

Chris Gammell: Mm.

Dave Jones: So, you know.

Chris Gammell: Same question. Burger money, you know. Burger money. All right. Hey, you know, burger money is not nothing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, exactly. Well, it was burger money. That's a bit more than burger money. My last one was 80 bucks for a fortnight. So, it's about 160 bucks.

Chris Gammell: That's like family burger money. Australian dollars. That might be like one Big Mac in Australia. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, no. This is Yankee bucks. This is freedom bucks, dude. Oh, well then. Yeah, this is freedom dollars. All right.

Chris Gammell: Now, call the wife and kids. We're going out. All right. We're going out.

Dave Jones: We're going out tonight. Go to Maccas.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You still can't get it right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's all right. I'm not allowed back in the country. Don't worry. All right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. What else we got? We got a few more minutes left. We don't actually have any, like, because Reddit's not a thing anymore, really, is it?

Chris Gammell: Not for us, at least.

Dave Jones: I can't access Reddit now at the moment. Really? Can't actually access it because they block people who use certain products, let's just say. Okay. That try to hide their location. Ah, I see. Got it. Got it. And I have absolutely no reason to hide my location at the moment, but Reddit seemed to think so. Got it. Got it. And yes.

Chris Gammell: Are you not allowed to say VPN? Is that what you're saying? Are you using VPN? You're not allowed to say VPN? Is it, like, sponsored by Nord and they don't want them to, you know?

Dave Jones: Yes, because that'll be naughty in a few weeks here. Mm-hmm.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I see. Got it. Not allowed. I see. Got it. Yeah. Lock him up. Lock him up. Absolutely.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Come and get me.

Dave Jones: If you can find me.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Anyway, yeah. So, it doesn't let me view anything on there anymore. So, not that I'm missing much on Reddit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, you're not. And also, luckily, all the LLMs consume all that content for you and then spit it back out as though it's an answer. Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. Okay. Yes, I could just say, yeah, ask it to summarize. Yes. That's right. Yeah. And just get it to, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Why not? Where are you in the generative tools these days? Are you using it for anything?

Dave Jones: I use it daily. I use it daily to, you know, collate information and stuff like that. It's really good for that kind of thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Not at the moment, no.

Chris Gammell: No collating there or anything like that?

Dave Jones: Maybe. Surely.

Chris Gammell: I've been using Gemini 3. That's the- The googly one. Latest Google one. Yeah. And it's better than 2.5 for sure. So, I've been using it for like a JavaScript project that I've been working on. So, like a web-based thing. Previously, I'd been using it for, actually, I haven't used the newest one on this web serial project I was working on, but I'll probably get back to doing that. And yeah, it's really interesting. The thinking models are always like trying to like kind of walk through the thought process and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see it, you know. Yeah, but they're adding all these weird tics. As it's going line by line.

Chris Gammell: Right. But it's like, wait, the user asked for this, but I thought about that and I'm thinking about this and it's just like, why did they program that in? Like, why are those verbal tics basically in there? Like, the number of times it says wait, comma, is just very odd to me, you know? I don't get why they're doing it. It's sentient. I guess so. Maybe it is. Maybe that's the real thing. Maybe it's just like those robots. It's just someone with a VR headset somewhere and being like, wait, I don't understand what Chris is saying.

Dave Jones: It's really an Indian guy in a server farm somewhere.

Chris Gammell: Just wait, wait. The user's asked for this, you know, and then he's pulling out some JavaScript and it's great, you know?

Dave Jones: Ask it. Are you actually in a server farm in Punjabi province?

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: Yep. Damn, you got me.

Chris Gammell: Cloud's just someone else's computer, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Oh, boy. Let's see. Other things. I'm just going back through my links here so people could follow along. I think I maybe mentioned, but the Zephyr folks, I'm a big fan of Zephyr. They have a new podcast now. It's episode 12. I saw it was just out.

Dave Jones: God, everyone's got a podcast.

Chris Gammell: I know, right?

Dave Jones: I just saw this morning that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone now have a podcast together.

Chris Gammell: Hey, what's up with you, Arnold? Yeah, I can't imagine wanting to listen to Sly Stallone.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I'm sure it's captivating, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Regularly. But here's the thing. They got great stories, no doubt. No doubt about that.

Dave Jones: No doubt. No doubt.

Chris Gammell: In terms of like, I mean, Arnold's actually a pretty good communicator. It's just, you know, sometimes it's difficult to understand, I guess. But like, between the stories and just the, it's very unique, for sure. Yeah. Anyways, back to Zephyr. Zephyr, the technical thing, Dave. Benjamin Cabe, who's been on the show here, and Fabio, who is another one of the maintainers, they have been doing it. I think they're on episode 12. And it's great for like, you know, kind of keeping an ear on what's going on. Some of it is very, very deep, deep inside baseball type stuff. Like what the, you know, a new feature in 4.3 that just released. But like, if you're just a casual user and you want to just keep up on things, I find it's useful for that sort of thing. Well, you welcome the competition. I don't think we're competition. You know, but I do mention Zephyr here, but I don't really usually know what I'm talking about. Usually it's more like, ah, Zephyr, you know? And they're like, yeah, Zephyr. You know? That's probably the difference in tone. We were doing podcasts before it was cool. We were, but we still are not cool. So there's also that.

Dave Jones: Well, it wasn't called a podcast back then. It was a radio show. Damn it.

Chris Gammell: I don't think that's correct. Is that correct? Yeah. Was it called a radio show back then?

Dave Jones: Well, we referred to it as a radio show.

Chris Gammell: Why did we do that? Not as a podcast. You're right. I mean, I guess we did, but.

Dave Jones: I'm pretty sure we did.

Chris Gammell: But iPod was out at the time. So I think they were called podcasts at the time.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they were, but kind of like a radio show was kind of like cooler. Like an actual podcast was not cool back then. So I was like, oh, you got a radio show. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Got it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, I guess we should wrap it up because we're out of things. Yeah. I'll have more electronic things the next time we talk, hopefully. There's a couple of holidays coming up here and then you're going on holidays. So we'll see how the end of the year shakes out.

Dave Jones: I'm going holidays in the new year. New year. Until January.

Chris Gammell: But oh, Jesus, it's almost. I know. It's almost December. Yeah. So by the time this comes out, it might be December.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We'll see. Scary. 2026. Here we come.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Chris Gammell: See you soon.

Dave Jones: Bye. Bye.

Dave Jones: Bye.

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