#717 – Back on the road in '26

Chris Gammell: Hey everybody, Chris here, and as I'll talk about in the episode, I'm actually in London as I record and post this, and I'm doing it kind of last minute because I'm going to be holding a meetup on March 8th, 2026. This episode goes out about four days before that, but it's not too late to get together and nerd out about electronics. So if you go to theampower.com slash London 2026, no dash, no underscores or anything like that between London and 2026, or go to the show notes, you'll see a link to a registration page and you'll get updated information there. Really looking forward to seeing some of you having electronics and, you know, I'll bring some, you bring some, we chat about our projects, catch up after 10 years because it has been 10 years since I've been here, which is pretty wild. I'll also be at Embedded World in Nuremberg the following week. So if you're there, please look me up. I'll probably be on LinkedIn and similar to correlate some meetup times, and I'm looking forward to seeing other people at that very popular conference, and I'll have more to talk about there. All right, here's the show. This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released March 4th, 2026. Episode 717. Back on the road in 26.

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: You sounded a bit busy before the show.

Chris Gammell: I am busy, yes. Lots coming up, huh? Yeah, I'm going to be actually... Travel, you mentioned? Yeah, I'm going to be at Embedded World this year. So that's good. That's in Germany? That's right. That's the Nuremberg show. There's now a US version as well. That's in October or something, November. This one is the one that usually happens in the early spring in Nuremberg, Germany. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I'll be hanging out there. Usual spots, kind of like near the chip hall, near the Zephyr booth, that sort of thing. So I'll be over that.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So there's a couple meetups I may try to get to, but we've talked about in the past. I think they're happening again. The PCB Arts usually has a meetup. There's the IoT Stars has a meetup. Those are the two main ones. So yeah, I'll try and get to those.

Dave Jones: Well, I am traveling all the way into the Sydney CBD.

Chris Gammell: Whoa, that could take upwards of 45 minutes.

Dave Jones: It could. It could. Yes, there's another Sydney hardware meetup on the 12th of March. So I haven't actually registered yet, but yeah, I probably will. Dave, I believe in you. Yeah, I can do it. I should just get off my lazy ass and go in and socialize with other humans. Single button.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. And see, it's not something that I, you know, it's not something that I go out of my way to do. You know, it's like, oh, there's a hardware meetup. Got to get, you know, it's like, I've got to kind of like make myself do it kind of thing. I don't know why.

Chris Gammell: We all do, Dave. We're introverts. Yeah, I know. It's part of the game, man.

Dave Jones: As I sit here in my lonely lab all alone, the wife never visits. She visits the lab about once a year, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. My wife, I mean, obviously our lab's in my house, but my wife walked in today and said, the kids were walking in here. I was like, don't, don't step in here. You know, like you might step on her sister or something like that. And she's like, yeah, clean this up before you travel. I think, I think an animal make, make a nest in and amongst all the components. I was like, oh, well, it's, I resemble that.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: So do they do lightning talks at the meetup you go to, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah. I did like a five minute kind of. Yep. But only if you've got something to show off that's on the theme. Cause they, it's usually themed. I think this one's got a product and positioning. Ooh. Yuck. Yeah. I don't. Yeah. Anyway. So I guess, um, the talks will be about, yeah. Product design.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. And how you like what markets you're going after and yeah. Your users and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. I mean, people need to talk about that. You know?

Dave Jones: True. I, I was going to say that I, um, I'm not allowed to have a lab at home.

Chris Gammell: Because?

Dave Jones: Because then I would live in the lab and then she'd never see me and like, it's bad enough that I leave to come to the lab here. We could sell our house. We could like flip our house for like a large property. Cause we're not, I know you've been to my house. It's not exactly big, you know? Um, and the land's not big.

Chris Gammell: It's bigger now than when I was there.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, yeah. Yeah. We've got an extra story on top and I'm not allowed to put a lab on there. Yeah. And we don't have land to build like anything on there. Right? Right. So yeah, we could actually swap our house for somewhere nearby that, you know, has like a hectare or something like that. We could probably swap it. Do it. And, and outright swap. And then I could build my own and probably have some money left over. And then I could like build like a gigantic, not shed, but you know. What's stopping you, man? Start right now. Come on. Yeah, but I'm not allowed to.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. There you go.

Dave Jones: Like, like, like she's not against the idea of actually, you know, swapping for a larger property somewhere. But then I wouldn't, she won't let me build a separate lab because I would just live out there.

Chris Gammell: No, you get there first and then, and then you figure out the lab thing. Oh, you know, it's just, it's for the lawnmower. You know, that's, and the lawnmower, I need, it's an electric lawnmower. I need an oscilloscope.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it needs 200 square meters, three phase power. And yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. I have to, I have to make a new blade for the lawnmower. I need that CNC machine, you know.

Dave Jones: I need all those CNC machines and the 3D printers and the, yep, laser cutters and the, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I had a genius idea with regards to meetups. I can just schedule a meetup, like walking distance from my house. So that was the move, man. If, if I do it again, I think it's, it's super easy.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's because, yeah, you've got nearby facilities that you can just walk there, right? Yeah. Make people come to me, you know. You're within walking distance. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The lazy man move, yep.

Dave Jones: Well, I guess that's kind of the same thing here. If I really needed to, I could book something out within.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, just the local pub, you know.

Dave Jones: Walking distance, I think. Yeah, yeah, local pub or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Actually, speaking of local pub, there is a chance I will be in London the weekend before Embedded World. So, people are there and I've done one meetup actually, the last time I was in London was 10 years ago. My God, 10 years ago, 2016, yeah. So, yeah, I may be doing a meetup in London. That would be the week of, weekend of March 7th and 8th. So, I will send something out or, you know, raise a flag or figure out where I'm going to go. But, it's going to be a pub.

Dave Jones: How long does it take to get to London from your place?

Chris Gammell: There's a non-stop from my local airport, which is killer.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? To London?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: What is your local airport?

Chris Gammell: Raleigh-Durham.

Dave Jones: That's an international airport, is it?

Chris Gammell: It is, yeah. Yeah, they have only like five or six, but they go, for trade shows, it's great actually. So, I can go to London, I can go to Frankfurt, actually where I usually fly into for Embedded World. That's in Germany. I can fly to Paris, Reykjavik in Iceland. No, not quite yet. That'd be a hop, yeah. There's one or two other international ones, but yeah. Yeah, and you know, like big hubs in Europe, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Right. So, how long is the flight? How long is that?

Chris Gammell: I think it's only eight hours or something like that. It's not bad.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. That's tolerable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like enough to like not get any sleep, you know, like show up and then I slept four hours.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but you watch like three movies or something like that and you're pretty much done.

Chris Gammell: I try to sleep, but yeah, yeah. You're right, yeah. If you don't sleep, yeah.

Dave Jones: Are you flying business?

Chris Gammell: Oh, God, no. Flying is so expensive these days. Hell no. Oh, my God.

Dave Jones: Is it? I don't know. I haven't flown for ever.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. It's up there. I mean, that's the thing. It feels like it's the same price as before, but it's like everything just keeps getting winnowed down, you know? So, like I'm sitting in like the back, back of the plane, you know, like. Right, yeah, yeah. Because I don't want to pay like all the seats.

Dave Jones: Right, right next to the dunny, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I'm like cattle class and like so that is about the same price probably when I went in 2016. But, you know, if you want to like sit in the nice seats, it'll probably be like double what I paid in 2016. So.

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: But, you know, it's good to be able to go meet people in different parts of the world because I haven't been, I didn't go last year.

Dave Jones: Oh, it should be fun.

Chris Gammell: So, I will announce about that. I have some hardware also that I built that might be done in time. I think I showed you that board, the like the 22 millimeter wide board circle. Yep. All those 0201 components. So, those parts are sitting right next to me and I've got the stencil. I just have to get the gumption to actually try and place 0201s all over that board.

Dave Jones: You had to go to 0201s. You couldn't do. Why not 0402 with like a really tight footprint?

Chris Gammell: Well, it's single-sided.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it's got a ton of stuff on there. So, it's got a battery controller. It's got a Bluetooth chip. It's got 16 LEDs. It's got hardware security module. It's got a weather sensor. It's got a magnetic sensor. I'm not done yet. It's got a microphone. It's got a buzzer. It's got NFC. It's a lot. Like, it's too much, really. But the big thing was, this is like that donut design that I showed you in the past. So, it looks like a donut going around a 32 millimeter battery. That required a BGA footprint. And now I'm able to get it down to a QFN to fit on this. So, it's like much more reliable to do the soldering myself and really the de-soldering myself for if I mess something up. So, that was a real tough time last time. I think out of the five boards I made, I only got one to work with my terrible solder paste application. So, yeah. This will be much higher likelihood. Fun times. Yeah. What are you building these days?

Dave Jones: I was just looking at a design last night. But I'm not building. I'm not building. I was just looking at the design aspects, looking at some data sheets.

Chris Gammell: Window shopping.

Dave Jones: Yes. Window shopping, as they say. And, yeah. I might make another video. I did a video on a couple of years back, but I might make another video.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, we'll see. Yeah. I saw you've been making some more like kind of fundamental type videos almost like the DC offset on the scope and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Well, yes. That's DC offset on the scope. And then I still haven't finished my AC tutorial series, but I did three in a row there. They got the lowest views ever. So, I guess nobody cares about AC basics.

Chris Gammell: Who needs AC power, Dave? AI is going to fix it. Duh. Yeah, right. AC, more like AI. Yep. I actually saw this ridiculous. There was a TechCrunch. Yeah, I get like that TechCrunch newsletter. And it was like, solid state transformers are going to revolutionize the grid. I'm like, what the hell are you guys talking about? And like, first, I had to figure out what a solid state transformer is. And like. State transformer was. Do you know what it is? I didn't know it beforehand.

Dave Jones: Well, I can guess. Sure, give it a shot. There could be several implementations. Well, a solid state transformer is basically a DC. I would figure it is. It's basically instead of using a physical transformer, they're just doing a DC to DC converter. Yeah, exactly. Converter.

Chris Gammell: On both sides. Basically, it's like AC to DC, DC bus, DC to AC. Right? So that way you can like switch it, switch it down, switch it back up, however you need to do there. Fine. But like, this was very, very, very obviously like the investors of this company paid for this article. Like, you know, I don't say that often, but like, it's so stupid, right? It was like, oh, we're going to replace the grid. It's like, no, you're not. You're not going to replace trans. What you're going to be doing, you know, solid state. You know, I know that there's high voltage DC. You can definitely do it. But like the insanity you have to do to get like that amount of like transistors in line to get from 380 kilovolts down to something usable. It's just, it's stupid. It's like, it's a science experiment, not a implementation when the alternative is like winding wire around cores. Right? And obviously that's a very big simplification as well. But like AC transformers are not going anywhere. Right? They're like maybe at a data center.

Dave Jones: But high voltage DC transmissions getting pretty, pretty big these days. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Chris Gammell: Of course. But that's like, that's a different transmission method as well. And there's a bunch of losses there. That's basically saying, okay, we're going to take some losses at the, at the transition from, you know, the, the high voltage point, or I guess the, the mid voltage up to super high voltage because we gain so much in the high voltage DC transmission over distance. Like, okay, fine. You want to do say that you're, you're like basically doing trade-offs there, but like overall and like all manner of transformers, like the transformers that are on the tower on the pole outside of my house. Like nah, man, like just nah.

Dave Jones: So they're talking about like using the existing AC infrastructure, but replacing the trend, the AC transformers with solar state transformers. So like a drop in replacement.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. They're saying like, oh, this will replace everything. It's like, okay, you want to say this is going to replace stuff at a data center? Fine. Yeah, maybe. But like everywhere. It is. I don't think so. I don't, this is, it was, it was ridiculous. Unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding electricity, which I have done many times before.

Dave Jones: But that just sounds dumb. If they're talking about dropping replacements, it's like, no, no. Transformers are like 99% efficient and they're super reliable. Exactly. And they're, cause they're, you know, they are.

Chris Gammell: Right. And I was looking at like losses and it's like, oh, well, solid state ones are 96% efficient. It's like, okay. But like that percentage. That's actually a lot. Over enough megawatts. It's like heat. That is like, damn, you know, like 1% is enough to really take off the charge there.

Dave Jones: Yeah, nah. Not going to happen.

Chris Gammell: I guess we'll see, Dave. Maybe we'll just, maybe, maybe we're talking through solid state transformers right now. You know?

Dave Jones: Well, I guess coming up in a couple of weeks, we'll be talking about 800 volt architecture, DC to DC converters and stuff. Oh, interesting. Or AI data centers and things like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, there are huge challenges to solve at data centers, but I think it's saying that that's the tools for that job are going to solve the tools of the grid. Oh, yeah. Or it's someone, someone trying to pedal, pedal something, you know?

Dave Jones: I can remember when I was working on high voltage stuff and that was like 450 to 500 volts. And back then we didn't have the, you know, the high voltage transistors that we do these days, you know, because this was like 20 plus years ago or so, you know? And it was, it was difficult to do high voltage stuff like that, you know? There was like very few parts on the market. Stacks of transistors.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like very few things on the market that could do it. And now, you know, they're pushing them to 800 volts, 1000 volts and things like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. 1200 volts. Yeah. 1200. Yes. Yep. It's crazy.

Dave Jones: Yep. Gallium nitride, which is what we'll be talking about in a couple of weeks. So. Oh, cool. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's great. I do think we have to, the high voltage thing, you know, like somewhere alignment is laughing at your 400 volts. Oh, yeah. I'll see your 400 volts and raise your 400 kilovolts, right?

Dave Jones: Exactly. Not so. No, thanks. I don't want any bar of that. Anything over 12 volts DC scares the shit out of me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's correct. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Is that the same with you? Oh, yeah. Like do you get the heebie-jeebies working on high voltage stuff?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We've talked about it. Yeah. We've talked about it. Of course. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, speaking of AI data centers, I just released a video literally like 10 minutes before we went live or something. So you have not seen it. It's looking at the supply chain. It's looking at the supply chain all the way from a chat GPT prompt right through to sugar cane.

Speaker ?: Sugar cane?

Dave Jones: Sugar cane. Sugar cane is an essential requirement of getting a chat GPT output.

Chris Gammell: Is there a joke in here about a coder and like Red Bull or like Coca-Cola or something like that? No, no, no.

Dave Jones: I will send you the link here so that you can see for yourself. Someone I follow on X actually made this and it's very cool. It is an interactive supply chain thing where you can follow the dependencies from in this particular case. The example that is used is from a chat GPT prompt all the way back through open AI, back through, you know, Microsoft Azure, back to TSMC, back to some provider. Here is the link. I'll tell, I'll explain. Hang on. Yep. So if you have a click on the sugar link, it goes from chat GPT to open AI to Microsoft Azure to Nvidia, which goes to TSMC's parent, the subsidiary company, which does the packaging, which then goes to, which does the silicon packaging, which then goes to ABF substrates, which is a Taiwanese company. And they get the ABF film from a Japanese company who then get the varnish for the film from another Japanese company. The ABF film comes from a by-product of fermentation of sugar cane. Hmm. And these are all critical supply chains and some of them are single source. So if something goes down, like people don't know that. I think, did we mention this? Like 90% of the world's silicon comes from ultra pure. What is it? Oh God. Sand? No. Where is it? Oh God, it's all.

Chris Gammell: It's in North Carolina, I thought, right?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. It's in North Carolina. It's the pine. Yeah, we talked about it. What is it? The spruce pine. Yes. Yes. We did talk about it.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure we talked about it. A couple of years ago, there was an issue with it. There they go, a sourcing issue. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There was a sourcing issue due to a hurricane which shut down all supply from that and the entire market just went. Oh, that's right.

Chris Gammell: It was when, yeah, Western North Carolina got hit. Yeah. Hurricane. Yeah.

Dave Jones: With this hurricane and it totally blocked off access to this one mine in the world that supplies 90% of the world's quartz, ultra pure quartz to, yep. Yeah. It's just, it's just mad. So, yep. That's in Spruce Pine. Spruce Pine is the city. Yeah. It's the, well, the town or whatever, which has a town of 2,200 people.

Chris Gammell: I feel like economic systems kind of reward the consolidation like that though too, right? Like Spruce Pine has, you know, quote unquote, the best, I don't know what it takes about to make it the best quartz, right?

Dave Jones: The best pure quartz in the world.

Chris Gammell: But like their business is to try and export as much as possible. And so like, and if it is the best, then it won out over others. Interesting that like economic systems kind of drive us towards these single source type of things in highly specialized arenas as well.

Dave Jones: They do, especially as the technology gets so ridiculously advanced. I mean, we're talking three and two nanometer chips now. Yeah. Yeah. Where the purity of the silicon is everything. Yeah. And that has to be spun, that silicon has to be spun from this particular quartz in this particular mine. It's the only one in the world that can supply the purest enough quartz to do it. You know? Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. In volume. Yeah. Right, right, right. You might be able to get a little bit here and there somewhere else. You know, you can fill, you know, find a small source, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's fragile. It's a fragile supply chain for sure. Yeah, I get it.

Dave Jones: It's a fragile infrastructure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's nuts. That is an interesting visualization. It's fascinating.

Chris Gammell: You always tell a little vibe coding when you see Vercel. Which is fine, you know, like that's cool. Right.

Dave Jones: I don't know. What is Vercel?

Chris Gammell: Vercel is like not necessarily vibe coded, but I've done a couple of Vercel apps if that tells you how easy it is to use with some vibe coding. Got it. But basically it's like a kind of web platform that gives you databases and front end hosts. Maybe the, yeah, they have front end hosting as well and basically kind of pieces all together. So, and really very good documentation as well. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: And, and it allows you to do like these interacted bubbly things. Yeah, I could, but for what use? Yeah. You know, you have to have a need.

Chris Gammell: I know.

Dave Jones: You know, you can't just go in there and play with it. You've got to have a need.

Chris Gammell: You totally can. I mean, when I use Vercel, was Vercel for that one? No, I use the other one too, Netlify. Yeah. Netlify was the other one I use, but like, you know, when I spun up like a location app that could like, I don't know, hold, like it had, I was using like thingy 91s. I think I told you about this, right? I was like thingy 91s had like location data on them, but then also like your browser. Yeah. I definitely mentioned that on here. Your browser could all like, so the person viewing it could also like type in their name. It could grab their geolocation from the browser. And then like it, it would be like a quasi anonymous, like placement of a pin on a map. So if you were trying to like find each other, everybody could look at the same webpage and like you would type in Dave, you'd say, I'm here. When you wanted to check again, you would update your pin, that sort of thing. Got it.

Dave Jones: Yep. We used to have something like that for the forum, for the EV blog forum. We used to have like a mapping. This was before modern AI, you know, and there was this mapping thing and people could put their little pin in there where they're from and, you know, stuff like that. Okay. So I just go in there, make an account and then I type in some AI prompt, do I, and say, I want to do a geolocating map thing.

Chris Gammell: You could do it outside of it too. So like if you're in cloud, like at the time I was doing, it was like, I was using Gemini and it's just like, you know, it's like, what is the best way to post this sort of thing? Literally, it's like even recommending that I use Vercel or Netlify.

Dave Jones: Oh, which actual platform to write. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Because it knows all the documentation, that sort of thing. So it's literally like so abstracted. I'm not saying it's a right thing. I'm just saying that like when I see Vercel, I'm usually like, okay, this has probably been vibe coded because that's just a common output. It's not the only way, but it's-

Dave Jones: Well, no, like the amount of work that's gone into this, the person who authored this has probably just gone in there and right, pull all the dependency news sources you can of where, which company is actually connected to what, you know, because it's just something that they just added on X. I don't think they've been working years on it. You know, it's kind of like, no, it's something that they, you know, it's a decent amount of work, but it's not something that I think they spent months and months solid work on, you know. And then all the data that they gathered was, you know, maybe pulled in from, you know, they used AI to pull in that data maybe because they, they otherwise they would have had to go out and research hundreds and hundreds, maybe even a thousand different news articles and, you know, how all these companies are tied together and everything else, you know, whereas that is something that you can use the AI for, you know, going out and finding all the dependencies with information and stuff like that. So-

Chris Gammell: Just let it rip, man. Just let your open claw go out and do this overnight and you just come wake up to a new pretty, pretty chart, you know. What could possibly go wrong?

Dave Jones: What is, what is the thing with open claw? It's just like, you don't have to be reliant upon a, like a chat GPT or- You still do. Or a- You still are. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, this is like a agent that lives on your, your local machine that you might give access.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's just an agent. It's not actually like a, a large language model, self-contained large language model.

Chris Gammell: No, yeah. It's not like self-hosted. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: So this is like an agent that like sits on your computer. It, it's allowed to modify its own files.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So like, as it, you know, discovers new things, it can modify its own, like its sole document it's called. And yeah, it's, it's a weird time.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I don't know enough about it to speak. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I've only really thought of one application for it that I'm like kind of interested in. Right. For it. Like I don't care. A lot of people like getting their open claw to talk to other people's and like do all this stuff. The only one I've thought about is like, I really hate discord. I think I've said this before. I know we haven't a discord, but I just can't, I can't be in there. I don't, I don't get it. And there's so much like locked away info there that like having an open claw instance, that's just like sitting there summarizing what's going on. I don't want it to like respond as me or anything like that. I just wanted to sit there and like summarize, tell me what's going on. Right. Make sure I'm missing anything. Got it. That I'm not like, you know, you know, and it's just discord is such a.

Dave Jones: Well, everyone's abandoning that now. Didn't they just say, you know, there's an age thing now verification. Everyone's got to do like biometric age verification or something. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: I know they're going to go public and that is probably the beginning of the end. If you ask me.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm sure it was discord biometric verification. And everyone just went, nope, I'm out. I'm out. Discord. Yeah. Discord launches teen by default settings globally. That was 9th of February. Yes. So everyone's account is going to be demoted to teen account, teen level. Yeah. So it's super safe or whatever. Unless you can prove that you're an adult using, you know, biometric scanning or some crap. Oh, I didn't mention this. Speaking of biometric scanning, I went to Raging Waters, which is, you know, one of these water fun parks. You know, I swear I can tie in the biometric scan. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. No, no, no.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I went to a water park and they were scanning my bios. Seriously. Right.

Dave Jones: So we go into the water park, you know, we have our bags and, you know, got our bag, change of clothes and everything and all this stuff.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I know where we're going here. I know what this is.

Dave Jones: So we're going to put that. Yeah. So we're going to put it in a locker. Right. I figured it out. And we see all the lockers over there. Walk up to the locker and, you know, and I'm going on there. And the only way you can use the lockers is biometric face scanning. No. I kid you not. Well, no, they had one other method, which was an RFID tag. So I went over, I went, screw this. So I went over to the info thing and I said, look, I'm not scanning biometrically. Can I have one of these RFID tag things? And she said, oh, no, sorry. That's only if you've got like a season pass. And even then we don't really think it works properly or something, you know? And she said, sorry, I can't give you one. And I'm going, well, is there any other way to use the locker?

Chris Gammell: Should have drawn a face on your hand like Senior Wences and use that as your biometric. And you just have to have it there. I guess if it washes off in the water, then you're screwed.

Dave Jones: I was going to say, then I go on the slides and wash off. I can't get back into my locker. Oh, and she said, no. And the other thing was, if I use the RFID tag, even if it did work, you have to get someone to let you into it using the RFID tag. So you have to go call a staff member to give you access. And it's like, oh, my God.

Chris Gammell: So at a certain point, you're just going back to good old fashioned keys.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. A key that you put in, you know, you tie around your ankle or something, you know? I don't know. Or just a pin code. I mean, geez.

Chris Gammell: I feel like we're rapidly heading back towards that sort of level of things. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just dumb things. And so we went, oh, screw that. So we just stored all this stuff under a chair somewhere and Bob's your uncle, you know? Yep.

Chris Gammell: That was great. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it's just ridiculous. I was not going to put biometric bloody face scanning for a locker. I know. Unbelievable. Like, you know, I can understand if it's credit card or whatever, you know, look, you pay, you know, you swipe your credit card, you know, whatever. Okay. You know, I do that for everything else anyway. So that would have been acceptable. But no, biometric face scanning. Unbelievable. That's wild.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. So you would, you draw the line at the biometric ID, do you?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. You know, I think it's going to be like a convenience thing at a certain point. I might do it. I don't know. Like all the passport stuff is face scan now too. You know that? Like I was like so nervous walking, you know, I went on a trip to Ecuador a couple weeks, a couple months ago and getting back to the States, I was like flying through Atlanta. I was like, oh my gosh, this huge airport. Oh, it's going to be such a big deal. And like, literally it was like, one, we were the only plane that got there at the time. But then two, like I used to have global entry. Now it's like literally like, oh yeah, we looked at you. You're cool. It's like, oh, that's creepy.

Dave Jones: What, you didn't even have to put your head up to something?

Chris Gammell: You don't have to do any, like it's literally walkthrough. Global entry used to be like, well, we're going to scan your fingerprints.

Dave Jones: Right. So they don't do the prints anymore.

Chris Gammell: Nope. Not that I could tell. Or maybe they already have my prints, so they don't need them anymore. I don't know. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Right. Or they go, well, fingerprints, that's ancient. Jeez, we want to scan. Well, I've got everyone's face scan now.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, they tried to force that on us. The Yanks, you Yanks, you said that, no, everyone outside America has to now supply biometric stuff.

Chris Gammell: Excuse me, please don't rank me in with the people that are forcing, you know, biometrics on people. I didn't vote for that, you know.

Dave Jones: Doesn't matter. Sorry, dude.

Chris Gammell: It's true. I guess I do get lumped in. Yep.

Dave Jones: You have to get lumped in. You have to.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That sucks.

Dave Jones: Can we talk about solar state batteries?

Chris Gammell: Sure. What's the latest?

Dave Jones: Well, did we talk about Donut Lab?

Chris Gammell: We did, yes. We did talk about that.

Dave Jones: Yes. Well, Donut Lab, let me send you a link. Donut Lab have-

Chris Gammell: They were the ones who made the ridiculous claims at CES, right?

Dave Jones: The ridiculous claims at CES and they're tied into some bike, electric bike company or something that claims or that the first customer for their whiz-bang solar state battery that every, basically every major battery manufacturer in the world has said, no, they can't do this. It's a scam, right? So they had this website that had a countdown. Oh, let me check the word. Let me see if it's still there. Donut website. It's Donut. What is it? Donut battery.

Chris Gammell: Donut think this is going to work? Donut.

Dave Jones: Oh, I could- Hang on. Donut go in there. I can get it. I can get it if you give me a second. Oh, the capture. Because of all the AI bots, I've got to go through the EV blog capture on the- Anyway, they've got this-

Chris Gammell: Dave, am I talking to a bot right now? Could be.

Dave Jones: Did you see the video I did on my AI voice cloning? I used a self-hosted AI clone.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: That clone my voice. It actually did surprisingly well. In fact, it could do better because the script I read was only 30 seconds and I read it as a script, not as a sort of excited Dave voice. Oh, like the usual Dave voice? Idonutbelieve.com. Oh, okay. That's good. Yeah. I'll give them props on their URL name. Idonutbelieve. I'd- Anyway, they- Yeah, have they still got the countdown? Yes, they've still got the countdown timer there. Six days, 10 hours and seven minutes left until the next test report comes out. Anyway, they just released a test report yesterday from an independent VTT, the Independent Research Lab in Finland. It has their test report. So, oh, I haven't watched the video yet. But you can download their test report and everything. And it's like, well, the vibe I'm getting is that, yeah, nah. It's like, yeah, it can charge very fast, but A, they don't tell you the weight of the battery, which is kind of the crit- The weight and the dimensions, which is kind of critical if you want to determine the energy density of the battery, which is one of the big claims they made. So, they're still hiding that. And the fact that, yeah, they can charge it at charge rates of 11C, right, which is pretty quick. We're talking, you know, 280 amps or whatever into the cell, right? Super quick. But it did actually go up about 20 degrees in temperature. And they only did the one test. So, there's no characteristic curves, let alone characteristic curves over temperature, let alone endurance characteristic curves. It's sort of obscurity by authority is a term.

Chris Gammell: Is it Donut Lab hosts the site? Is that right?

Dave Jones: This is Donut Lab's site, yes. Wow. So, they did this website so that they can dunk on all of the haters, right? That's pretty good marketing. I mean, like, okay. Yeah, I know. I know. It's pretty good. I'll give them that. It's pretty first-rate marketing. Oh, everyone's talking about it, right? Including here on The Amp Hour.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: People don't understand that, oh, they've sent it to this independent, reputable third-party company for testing. It must be legit, right? Aha. What people don't understand is that whether it's UL or whether it's VTT or whether it's ETL or whoever the company is, okay, you can simply tell them, here's the product. You physically give them the product. Do these exact tests under these conditions and make a report.

Chris Gammell: Huh.

Dave Jones: They're not testing to any standard. They're not testing to any industry standard unless you ask them to, and they haven't in this case. There's no standard whatsoever. These companies will, you pay them, and they will legitimately do the test, but they will only do exactly what you tell them. They won't do anything more or anything less, and they won't speculate. They won't go, oh, we think this is a bit dodgy. We better do this test as well. No. No, no, no. They will do exactly. So this company has handpicked what tests we want to be done and what we want included in the report, and you're only to do that. So when you see companies doing that, you start sniffing around going, yeah, what are they hiding? Anyway, it did seem to increase 20 degrees Celsius, which is not great for longevity and stuff like that. So everyone's down because you can stress test cells, right? You can take existing cells on the market and then put them through a few tests, and you can exceed their maximum charge ratings, their C rate, right? You can do it. It's rated, okay, maximum charge is only 5C, but you can charge it at 10C. It's just that you're going to ruin the life of it, right? So that's what everyone on the forum is talking about at the moment, and yeah, it's going, well, yeah, you can make it past these tests, but whether or not it's revolutionary, like game-changing technology. Because if their claims are true, everything else is obsolete. Every battery company in the world is instantly obsolete overnight. Every EV battery in EVs and home storage and everything is totally obsolete overnight. And it's like, eh, yeah, really? Okay, sure.

Chris Gammell: I guess I didn't even expect this level of anything, so I'm interested to see where it goes.

Dave Jones: Yes, everyone's fascinated to see what the next test report's going to say. And there's the countdown timer, six days until the next test report, and they're going to just dribble out these test reports for the next six months.

Chris Gammell: That makes more sense why they have these test report timers, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, no, it's all pure marketing. So anyway, they do have something, but it doesn't seem to be anything better than possibly overstressing some existing tech. I don't know. Anyway, remains to be seen, but consider me skeptical.

Chris Gammell: That skeptical is your middle name, right? Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know if I'll do a video on it or not. Probably not. I'm just, you know, on the floor of talking about it.

Chris Gammell: I mean, until there's more data.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there needs to be more data. Yeah. Yeah, there needs to be characteristic curves and stuff like that. I can remember Batterizer tried this. Yeah, remember Batterizer?

Chris Gammell: I do.

Dave Jones: Yes, yes. Batterizer. Oh, they sent it to UL, Underwriters Laboratory, right? The most reputable test thing on the planet and had it tested. So, therefore, all their claims, all their marketing claims must be true. It's like, wah, wah, no. That's not how it works. Once again, they had a very, they had them test a very specific thing and that was it. And then they plastered UL certified all over their website. And UL actually saw that and they went, they actually tapped them on the shoulder and said, hey, no, no, take all that down. You are not to say this is UL certified. We did just a specific test that you asked us to do and that was it. That is not permission to use our company's logo plastered all over your product. And sure enough, they had to take it down. So, oopsie.

Chris Gammell: So, what does it take to be like the actual UL certification then?

Dave Jones: Oh, it requires, it probably requires to meet a standard or something like that. Because these companies specialize in testing to standards. So, if it's a multimeter, if you're testing to a CAT standard or whatever, then they will test it to that standard. And then they will register that in their database as, yes, it passed that standard, that your particular widget passed that standard. And then I believe you're allowed to use the UL logo. But just because, but these companies will, you can hire them to test anything, right? Just any random thing, you know, and they'll do it for you. They will happily take your money and test it, supply a report. But that doesn't mean you're allowed to use their logo.

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah. They have other things that are contingent on actually using that mark and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yes, something like that. I'm not sure of the exact details, but it's something like that. So, anyway, yeah, I do recall them having to get them to take it down. Yeah, I had to say that they're not UL certified. Otherwise, I can, you know, get a free energy thing, get UL to test it. And yes, it's outputting 1,000 watts. Okay, then they can write a report saying, yes, it's outputting 1,000 watts. And that's all the report will say. And then, oh, you had a hidden battery inside there, right? It's not free energy or you had some hidden, you know, primary battery in there or whatever. And they're not allowed to take it apart. They're not allowed to inspect it. They're not allowed to do any free thinking. That's not what you're paying them for. They, you know, they are not a debunking organization. They are simply a test organization. You pay them to do one particular test and then, you know, oh, yes, this is a UL certified free energy machine. It actually, you know, gets 1,000 watts out, yes, but it doesn't mean it gets it out forever. So that's where they'd sue your ass if you tried to do that. But they'll happily take your money and test anything that you want. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's why I was offered $20,000 in the flight to Canada once if I came and verified this guy's free energy machine in Canada.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Should have done it, man. Canada's beautiful sometimes. Yeah, I know. It's not in the winter.

Dave Jones: Yes, it is very nice, but I, yeah, no, I turned that one down.

Chris Gammell: And I was contingent upon actually certifying it?

Dave Jones: No, it was, oh, I don't, I can't recall the exact details, but, you know.

Chris Gammell: Missed your chance. Could have been hanging out and eating poutine.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. I'm watching, I'm finally watching Silicon Valley.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really?

Dave Jones: Yes, yes, because my boy Sagan, he's, he's now very interested in watching Silicon Valley. You're letting him watch it. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's a different flavor, yeah. Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: So, we're watching Silicon Valley because he loves these style of shows. So, yeah. So, yes.

Chris Gammell: How far, how far in are you?

Dave Jones: Oh, we're like fifth or sixth episode into the first season or something. Okay. Fourth or fifth episode.

Chris Gammell: Oh, boy. Enjoy the last episode of the season and the conversation you'll be having with your son about that episode.

Dave Jones: Oh, great. Okay. You can tell me about that after the show. Okay. That is a parental warning, is it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it sure is. It sure is. It is probably the funniest. It's like one of the funniest bits and probably the season. Right. The season for sure, if not maybe the whole thing. But my God.

Dave Jones: Okay. Because he freaked out. Like, he really wanted to watch it. He was so keen. And then he came in one day and he went, it's R-rated. It's R-rated. I can't watch it. And it's like, and I go, no, this is American R-rated. It means there's drug references and there's, you know, sexual innuendo or something like that, you know. And it's like, eh. So, we started to watch it and sure enough, that's exactly what was in there.

Chris Gammell: That's exactly what it is. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's bad. Bad language and sexual innuendo and drug use or whatever. And it's like, big deal, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, yep. So, anyway, you can tell me about that after the show. All right.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Thank God. I think I've watched that three times through now.

Dave Jones: Well, he's almost 15. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: You should be like live tweeting your takes. I mean, obviously, it's been a couple of years since that show has been finished now. But it still holds up, man. It's 2012 or something. Russ Hanneman. Yeah. What a brilliant character.

Dave Jones: I can't believe they mentioned like Bitcoin in it because that must have been very early on. It was. Because that was like, it was like 2012 or something. Yep. That's right. That must have been like, you know, it was a dollar back then or something.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And for a pizza, you know.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, exactly. Yes. That was, that might have been before the Bitcoin. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: There is a, there's a, there's a gap. I mean, that's the thing. Like that show is so amazing for like, obviously, Mike Judge, like, talked to so many people in the industry about it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It is very spot on, accurate portrayal of a lot of things. Working in a startup, Dave. I know all about this, you know. Yeah. Right. Of course. Of course.

Dave Jones: Of course. Yep. Yeah. Because see, he, he loves Utopia.

Chris Gammell: Utopia.

Dave Jones: But it's called something else in the US. Utopia. Did I tell you about that show?

Chris Gammell: I know Euphoria, but I don't know Utopia. Utopia.

Dave Jones: Okay. No, it's, Utopia is an Australian TV series. Oh, it's, it is called Dreamland in overseas. No, no, no. It's called Dreamland. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You've got to watch it. If you work in the public service, it's basically, there's this mythical government, Australian government department board called the Nation Building Authority. Authority, right? And they're, and the show is just all about them trying to build infrastructure and stuff. And of course, it never happens because of what, you know, it's all public service. Like, and everyone who works in the Australian public service says they can barely watch it because it's so hideously accurate to what happens in the public service. So yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's absolutely hilarious. And he loves that show. So Silicon Valley is kind of like a, you know, a startup version of that.

Chris Gammell: It's a good, like, cautionary tale as well.

Dave Jones: Yes, yes. Cautionary tale.

Chris Gammell: Son, don't get yourself into startups. Don't do like I do, son. We'll have that talk someday.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I think you'd really enjoy it. Yeah. I think you'd really enjoy Utopia or Dreamland. Dreamland. I'll check it out. Yeah, that's great. Yes. It's done by some famous people here in Australia. It's done by Australia's equivalent to Mike Judge, basically.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Great. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I have been in the market for a laptop and I recently bought one. I didn't end up buying the framework, but I finally, like, dug into the framework. Have you ever looked at that?

Dave Jones: Right. Because didn't Jeff do a video on the framework laptop?

Chris Gammell: Oh, he did do one about the 16. The 16 just came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was looking at the 13.

Dave Jones: What's the 16? Is that the model number?

Chris Gammell: So it's basically the diagonal size, sorry, in Freedom Units, but it's a 13-inch versus a 16-inch laptop. Oh, got it. And so they just named it after that. Yeah, no, it's really interesting how they do the modular plugs, though, underneath. I'm sure, you know, people probably know about them.

Dave Jones: Yeah, apparently it's really good, but it's like at the wrong price or something. It's the wrong price at the wrong time or something. Or that was the gist of the video. I haven't watched it all.

Chris Gammell: Oh, Jeff's review? I don't remember what the takeaway was from that. I mean, he was showing, again, the 16 has an actual physical slot for GPU and it's all very modular and stuff like that, too. But the repairability, so like Louis Rossman has a video about his framework a couple years on, and it's the fifth year of framework as well. So like there's people who have basically ship a Theseus their own laptop, which is super cool, where you can basically, you know, you know, the ship of Theseus is like you buy or sorry, you like replace every part of a ship. And is it technically still the same ship? The chassis would be the same, I guess, would be the only real thing in this case. But even that, I suppose you could switch that out, too. But yeah, I never really looked into the to the plugs on there. And so like they have these these slots on the underside where you can have modular plugs that are in it's all USB-C into the into the main board. But then from USB-C, it's then converted out to like DisplayPort or HDMI or and so they basically have this like kind of plug in modules that do that conversion for you. I'm not sure what the actual standard is, if it's truly just USB-C. But, you know, they can pass through the 100 watt power for charging. They can do HDMI, Ethernet, all that stuff. And just really fascinating space.

Dave Jones: Hang on. They've got a desktop as well.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yep, exactly.

Dave Jones: Oh, I haven't seen that. I'm just looking at the list. I just Googled it. And Jake from Linus Tech Tips, former employee, he's he's he's done a video on that.

Chris Gammell: They have a different channel, too. Right. Linus does the Short Circuit, I think, did it.

Dave Jones: Oh, OK. Right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They've got several channels. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But yeah, I ended up I ended up buying the a different producer who has the same chipset that's in the desktop. They don't have that in the laptop yet. So that's why I wanted to like go upmarket a little bit on a laptop.

Dave Jones: I would not be able to use a 12, 12 inch laptop anymore. This screen is too small. My eyesight's just, you know, not like I used to use like really small laptops. You know, I used to use all the little PC. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And before that, I had a Daewoo. I had a Daewoo. You remember Daewoo, the car company?

Chris Gammell: I remember the, didn't they have trucks?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Daewoo had trucks and everything. And they made laptops as well back in the day. Oh, wow. Yeah. I had a Daewoo laptop.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: It was great. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Do you have any photos of that?

Dave Jones: Well, no, because I didn't have a digital camera back then. This is like before. Right.

Chris Gammell: Of course.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Small laptop. It probably looked like this. I'll send you the image. Something like that. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's kind of like the quintessential laptop of the 90s, right? Yes.

Dave Jones: Very 90s. Yep. Very brick. Kind of thick brick-like. Yep. Kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Very loud keys. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. And I used to have a trackball on the side. I used to hang like one of those trackballs on the side of it. You know, one of those laptop trackballs? A thumb, you know? So you use your thumb as the trackball. Oh, man, I was legendary with that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, yes, yes, day with laptop. I don't know if I'd still have it. Don't know whatever happened to it.

Chris Gammell: Surely it's in the bunker somewhere.

Dave Jones: Oh, maybe. Yeah, but I don't recall ever seeing it in my travels around the dark recesses of the dungeon. Yeah, keep digging.

Chris Gammell: Sagan, someday this will be all yours to throw out.

Dave Jones: Yep. That's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so it's, but like I said, the plugs are very, very interesting from a, you know, modularity perspective. Because like you literally, you know, like, I don't know about you, but I'm always, with my current setup, I'm always just like, oh, God, if I just had one more USB-C or one more USB-A, you know? And you know, you get four slots, but you know, you're not in dongle hell forever, you know? So yeah, it's really interesting. And there's actually, it is an open standard too, so you can like go download the keycat files. You can like, I think they, I don't remember what part they standardize on, but I think there is a standardized part that you can put on the board as well so you can have kind of custom interfaces. So like someone made like a Laura interface. Actually, former guest of the show, Lucas Henkel, whatever his company's called, he does the amazing animations and explainers on LinkedIn and Twitter and stuff like that. He also had been working on like a alternative board that could fit in the framework frame. So.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: I ended up getting a Flow Z13 instead, which is actually an Asus. Oh, it's a ROG. A ROG, yeah.

Dave Jones: Touchscreen gaming laptop, ROG, ASUS.

Chris Gammell: It's like an insane tablet with like an AI.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Crunchy processor on there. Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: Yep. It's got one of those removable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't care about the keyboard.

Dave Jones: Keyboard things. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My coworker pointed me at it and yeah, it thing's a beast. So, you know, video editing, local models, stuff like that. So.

Dave Jones: And it comes with Windows 11. Do you use, do you nuke that and install Linux? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's, that's, that's getting Ubuntu on it. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Sagan's into Mint now.

Chris Gammell: Oh, nice.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's doing everything with Mint. He's nuking his machines. He's doing. Mint is. He just set up his own Minecraft host, you know, set up his own Minecraft. Minecraft server yesterday.

Chris Gammell: Nice. Yeah. That's the, the, the cinnamon desktop is really nice. I was on that for a while. I think I switched back to Ubuntu because of the, because of the kernel on my laptop that had a modem. It had like a cell modem and it was only working with like a certain version of the kernel and Mint wasn't there yet. And so I ended up switching back to that, which was fine.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I did like, I liked Mint quite a bit though. So a different coworker got me into that. Are you like the old man still using Windows? Is that, is that what we're hearing here, Dave?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm still using Windows. I'm thinking about switching. Oh, really? But I, I did a troll post on X that went viral. I, I basically said, um, paraphrasing what I put, but basically can, can all you, uh, Linux experts out there, please just tell a newbie like me, which is the best, the absolute best version of Linux to use. And then it went viral. It went just, yeah. Like I, I knew it would start a fight. Right. That was the whole point. Right. I'm actually trolling.

Chris Gammell: Opinions are like, uh, belly buttons, Dave.

Dave Jones: And, and, and then I got Grok. There was so, there were tens of thousands of responses. So I got Grok to actually summarize and list all of the recommendations and I'll see if I can find it. But Mint was number one and then Ubuntu was number two. But like, like I had about like 30 different versions people recommend. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, there's so many.

Dave Jones: It's like, it was, oh my God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And the, the consensus was that Arch was like, if you really wanted to put hair on your chest, you install Arch.

Chris Gammell: Uh-huh. Yeah. That's, that's, yes, that's the compile everything from source, you know, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And it's interesting. Like one of the reasons that I switched to FreeCAD, you know, one was just being upset at other providers, like Fusion 360 was like my first love for CAD, right? Like my first mechanical CAD. Right. And that was holding me in, once I got rid of like Windows video editing, that was the only thing holding me there because I don't use Altium. You know, Altium is another one that holds people there. But I think like Fusion is another one that holds people there. But like, I don't know, even just you could do Onshape and KeyCAD. That's great. You don't have to use FreeCAD in that. Onshape's all browser-based if you want like a high-end thing. And I think so many things are browser-based these days. You really could get away with a lot more and do things like, like the switch to Mint or similar. I don't know. It just doesn't, it's not as big a deal as it used to be when Windows updates are insane these days. So.

Dave Jones: Well, I found it. I just sent you the screen capture of the. Yes, I saw it. Yeah, that's great. Like that's not the latest up-to-date list, but you know, it should trend out pretty well. Yeah. Yeah, Linux, then Ubuntu, and then Pop. I've never heard of Pop.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Pop's another one.

Dave Jones: Pop OS, like 30, 46 people recommended Pop OS. Way above Debian. Like that's above Debian. Yeah, it's a very friendly interface.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, it's just.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, they're all like, it's like a family tree though, right? So like. Yeah, yeah, of course. So like, you know, Ubuntu comes from Debian, right? Yeah. And Mint comes from Debian. Yes, of course. And Fedora comes from, I don't know, further up the page.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And then there's Solace and Puppy and there's Slackware and there's Antix and there's RHEL and there's Lubuntu and there's Catchy OS and Bazite and oh my God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Bazite's like a gaming one. Yeah, they're all over the place. But like often they're just kind of like kind of small, not small tweaks, but like, you know, UI tweaks, things that are, you know, usability things that are on top. Yeah, exactly. So a lot of the kernel is tied back to the. I was actually talking to a friend about this the other day of like my first harrowing example of using like a Unix machine. I was having like sweat dreams about it. So it was in college and I was in like a chip design class and I'd never used Linux before. I never used Unix before. It was a Unix machine. It was like a Solaris machine. And you had to go to the lab and like, you know, just use it there. You had like a interface to one of the Sun Microsystems.

Dave Jones: You had a dumb terminal. Yeah, exactly. You had a VT100 terminal.

Chris Gammell: No, it wasn't a dumb terminal in that case. It was an actual like, it was a Sun Microsystems like actual desktop. Yeah. Yeah. But the other option was you could remote in and it was like the lab was closed and it was like two in the morning and I had to like figure out how to do this. And like I had never used Unix before and it's like, oh, just like SSH in and then start next server window and navigate the file system. And I just like didn't know how to do anything. It was the worst possible. Like just thinking about like your son using a very friendly Linux distribution like that with like UIs and like all the tutorials and stuff online and like versus God. That was such a bad, bad time. It was such a bad time. It was amazing. It could happen. You know, I was still across campus using these tools, but like, oh, and then at the end of the day, I was still using frigging Leonardo Spectrum to like do something. I had no idea what I was doing. I still don't know what I was doing.

Dave Jones: And you were using the original command line PSPICE, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yep. And good times. Why don't I go to chip design, Dave?

Chris Gammell: What a wonderful place. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, God.

Chris Gammell: The person I was telling it to, they're like, I bet they still use those computers. They're still using that software and that flow. It's like, yeah, probably. It's just like. Oh, boy.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, apparently Mint is the go-to. If you're just a Windows user and you just need to switch over to Linux or want to for some reason, just install Mint and it's the most Windows friendly like thing and it just works. Yeah. It's great. Yep. So, I might do that on one of my lab PCs here. Not sure about doing it on my main editing PC, although pretty much the only, you know, most of the stuff I'm doing on here, there's nothing Windows specific. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you can get Blackmagic.

Dave Jones: To Vinci Resolve. Yeah, right. They have a Linux version. That's right. So, I assume it works, you know. Yeah. But really, there's no point, you know, that it'd just take me days to get up to speed and, you know. But I might do it. You know, I was thinking about doing it on my machine that does my packing and shipping and my other lab streaming machine or something like that, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Those ones I could easily convert over. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Could do it. All right, man.

Dave Jones: Will, probably.

Chris Gammell: You're the Linux desktop for Dave. All right. You heard it here first, folks.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Keycat 10 is out. I think the release candidate's out. I have not tried it yet. That's on my list of things to try. Release candidate being what's going to hopefully, you know, like bug fixes and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I thought it was actually really. Everyone talks about it on NX like it's actually been released yet, but technically hasn't. Is that correct?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: There's only the release candidate. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Until they get a significant amount of bug fixes from that, I don't think they. Gotcha. They commit to it. Right. So, but yeah, you'll see it when it's when 10.0 is cut. You'll see that.

Dave Jones: That's a big, that's a big double digit to go to double digits. It is, yeah. That's kind of like, you know, a big psychological thing. It's like, it must be more better. You know, it must be an order of magnitude better than one.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if we talked about it on here. There was a, there's a forum post on the KiCat forum about all the, you know, kind of all the things it's doing. It's, it's a lot of incrementals, right? It's, but that's how it kind of marches along. It doesn't have to be anything like groundbreaking. Yeah. There it is. Top, top post on KiCat forum.

Dave Jones: Oh, I just found out something interesting today, just before the show.

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: You know how I did the videos on the three cent microcontroller, the Paduk microcontroller. Yeah, right. And, you know, people have always asked, well, what company would use one of those? I just found out today. Rode. Rode microphones.

Chris Gammell: What are they using it for?

Dave Jones: They're using it in the Rode wireless micro, which is one of those wireless microphones, not the one that I've got, which is the wireless go, which is the upmarket one that does video recording.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like the point to point for cameras, like you have a receiver unit at the camera and the other one.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. I think this micro is designed for your shoe phone or whatever. Like you plug it into your USB-C and then you can like, then which is the receiver and then you plug it into your, and then you have the wireless mic or whatever. So I'm not sure which end it's used, but yeah. So I know the guy who wrote the code for it and he said, yes, it only had 6K of memory and I had to hand code everything to fit into this three cent microcontroller, you know? So yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I didn't think that Paduk had like an ADC on board or anything. Did they go external for an ADC and then it's just, it's just kind of two and a bit.

Dave Jones: I don't, I have, I have no idea. I have no idea for which purpose it's being used. It could be an auxiliary function or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like a auxiliary. So yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't think it's actually processing audio. I don't think it's, you know, doing something like that. I don't think so, but I didn't get further details. I just heard that. Yeah. It was being used in there. So cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's interesting.

Chris Gammell: Well, on the other end, other end of the spectrum, did you see P Maroney or P Maroney? I never know which one it is. Yeah. Right. Yeah. They overclocked an RP 2350 to 800 megahertz.

Dave Jones: 800 megahertz. Yeah. I saw that.

Chris Gammell: Oh my God.

Dave Jones: What is it normally like 150 megahertz or something? 120 megahertz?

Chris Gammell: I think 180, I think is the standard. Maybe 130, maybe 133. But yeah, it's a lot lower than 800. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And they had to test 10 different chips before they'd find one that would actually do that. Because, you know, there is variance in the chip. It's not like.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, I think they cooled it like crazy too. Right. I think that was the other thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. Well, that's it. This week.

Chris Gammell: Cool, man. I'm about to spoil Silicon Valley for Dave so that he saves his son from. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, don't spoil it. Like, at least tell me that. Like, just the danger I've got to look out for. Got it.

Chris Gammell: Got it. All right. All right. See you later.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Dave Jones: Bye.