#720 – Hyper Growth and OpenClaw Interns

Chris Gammell: This is Amp Hour Podcast. Released March 31st, 2026. Episode 720. Hypergrowth and Open Claw Interns.

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: Any fuel rationing there yet?

Chris Gammell: Fuel rationing? No. Yankee land? No, not yet.

Dave Jones: You guys are net exporters, aren't you?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, we are. I'm mostly benefiting from having a very... I don't really leave my block that often.

Dave Jones: Right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's the real benefit. If you're going to do anything, do that.

Dave Jones: Yep. Well, we're having to quickly re-possibly re-evaluate plans for Easter and stuff like that. So, yeah, I think it's imminent here. That is my prediction. So, yep, unless things totally change.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, I hope that...

Dave Jones: Although, I totally expected this, but I haven't seen it yet. You know how I do a lot of shipping, right? Yes, great. I'm shipping every single day, right, overseas. And I have not seen an increase in the emergency fuel... Well, they scrapped the emergency fuel surcharge. I haven't had any report of them bringing it back in yet, which is really weird. So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think they pre-purchased... They have, like, known volumes. I think they pre-purchased fuel and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, I'm sure they do. Yeah, I'm sure they have their own reserves. And they're hoping it just blows over before they panic all their businesses out there and...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: ...levy up the fuel surcharge. Yeah. For those who don't know, during COVID, they introduced the emergency fuel surcharge. Because, you know, it was expensive to get fuel during COVID. And the emergency situation surcharge as well. Emergency situation.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like hazard pay effectively for their workers and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: I actually like to think that I got them to drop it because I emailed DHR... Yeah. It was still there. The emergency fuel surcharge was still... Emergency situation surcharge, sorry, was still there, like, four years later. And I emailed them and said, hey, this is bullshit. COVID's over. Why do you still have it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Eh, okay, we'll talk to management.

Chris Gammell: We really like that money, though. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Three days later, sure enough, everyone gets the email that there's no more emergency situation surcharge. So I like to think that was me kicking up a stink, you know? Yeah. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, I will be... I am going from zero weeks of travel the past two years, COVID style, to now six weeks of travel this year. Because, yeah, Goliath, the company I work for, got purchased.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. Goliath is now part of Canonical, which is the makers of Ubuntu. And it's pretty exciting.

Dave Jones: Which didn't make sense until I actually Googled their infrastructure chart, I guess you could call it their corporate infrastructure chart. Yeah, there's like a Wikipedia thing. Oh my God. Yeah. There's this massive chart of how they're interconnected into so many industries. And I went, oh, okay, that makes sense now. So we'll link in that chart down below because it's just, it's just crazy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's a good one. I've been an Ubuntu user a long time. Maybe 8.04, maybe 10.04 was the, and I don't know if you know the, like the name nature there.

Dave Jones: It means nothing to me. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So it's like year and then month. So 10.04.

Dave Jones: Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: So right now we're gearing up towards 26.04, which is, it's called LTS or long-term support. And basically that gives you five years of support for that specific distribution. So like the real thing being that like, if you say Python had like some vulnerability four and a half years from now, like, and you were still on, so like the Amp Hour, um, WordPress. They would be obligated to fix it.

Chris Gammell: You could basically just go update it and it's all backported to that. So any like update will be there. And then there's like longer support stuff that also like you can do 10 years, 15 years. And that's, that's really where a lot of the, um, that's where the, the businesses and supporting that sort of thing. And, and, uh, so you have to pay for that.

Dave Jones: You have to be a business. If you wanted to pay for those support updates or how does that work?

Chris Gammell: If you, uh, as an individual, you get three, three or five pro licenses. Um, so basically you could have five machines just by signing up. You can get like five machines and have 10 years of support. Okay. But then if, yeah, say you had like a fleet of machines, like it's like business. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And so, um, yeah.

Dave Jones: And then they charge per machine, do they, or is it a per seat?

Chris Gammell: I should know that. I should know that. You should know that. Your new overlord is. I believe, I believe it is per, per instance. Yeah. Yeah. That's like supported. So, uh, but I'm not working on that stuff. I'm working on a lot of the same things as before. So that's, that's great. And, um, there's actually also smaller, like, like smaller, smaller devices as well. So there's one called, uh, Ubuntu core that goes on the like raspberry PI level, like embedded Linux machines. Um, and that's like, just like, uh, the kernel. And then you can have like updates pushed down to it using snaps. And it can also like, you can have, it's also called immutable. So like you can basically update machines out in the field. Again, I'm learning about all that stuff. And then I'm still doing the same, like microcontrollers talking the internet. Bluetooth stuff. So yeah. Yeah. Cellular Bluetooth wifi. That's still my, that's my, that's my jam. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, and they're based in London, aren't they?

Chris Gammell: They are a hundred percent remote, but they have one office in London. So they have like one, like small office in London. And I, that's where I traveled a couple of weeks ago. That's when I had the meetup. Um, people might be able to put that together. Um, and yeah, I got to go to hang out the office for a little bit and it's cool. I mean, it's like right across from the tower of London and, uh, yeah, it's like right in the thick of things. So right on the Thames. Yeah. It was great. It was really great. Got to meet my teams for the first time for like, there was like people I, there was one person I've been working with for five years, never met in person. Uh, hang out with him in person and then meet a bunch of new people. So like, yeah, it was really, really great.

Dave Jones: So how many people worked at Goliath?

Chris Gammell: Well, still, it was 12, 12, right?

Dave Jones: Okay. I thought it was small. Yep.

Chris Gammell: So we went from 12 to like more than 1200 basically. And so like after that, that London trip was that. And then I also went to embedded world after that and I got to hang out the canonical booth, which was cool. Meet a lot more people, see a bunch of robots and, uh, yeah. So it was great. It was, uh, it was a whirlwind two out of the two out of the six weeks of travel this year. Um, the other ones, if you, if you look up online, that I know about, yeah, exactly. Uh, they do these things called sprints cause it's an all remote company. And so two weeks, usually a week per group, but like usually two weeks. So it's like engineering one week product, another, and, um, uh, they go somewhere. They, they go to different parts of the world and then everybody gets together, which is really cool.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Gotcha.

Chris Gammell: So yeah. Cool. Um, that'll be more travel, but, uh, but exciting to see a lot of coworkers and stuff too.

Dave Jones: Is it Mrs. Is this Mrs. Gamal approved? Uh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. They travel. Yes. Yeah. Can't, can't, can't wait to get rid of him. Oh, like that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, it's tough for the kids at home for sure. Um, but, uh, yeah, we've, we've had some, we've had some help, which is really nice. Um, cool. It's tough with little kids. You know, you don't want to travel. You know, you know, as little kids, you don't want to travel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Of course it changes everything. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's a exciting new world. It's an exciting new world out there, dude. So more, uh, more Linuxy things in my future. I think, you know, terrific. How about you? Did I hear you get a Mac?

Dave Jones: I did get a Mac. I got a Mac and a goatee. I actually, uh, grew a goatee. If you see the, um, thumbnail.

Chris Gammell: I don't, I don't know. What's going on here? Did you dumpster dive a Mac? Is that what this is?

Dave Jones: No, no. I actually purchased a secondhand, secondhand used. I didn't want to give the fruity company new money, you know?

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They're definitely hurt. They're feeling that too. Just like DHL, DHL and Apple are both like, well, Dave had a big impact on our bottom line.

Dave Jones: Totally. Totally. So if you search my EV blog two video, you'll see the thumbnail.

Chris Gammell: With, with a, a goatee.

Dave Jones: With a goatee. Yep. And a, yeah, a hipster. I'm in a cafe with my Mac.

Chris Gammell: Ah, okay. It's like a laptop. You got a laptop.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I got a Mac. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't get a thing. Yep. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: That's okay. Yeah. I mean, it's all so expensive right now. It's insane how expensive computer. Oh, I see it now. Oh my gosh. This is, this is quite a photo. This is quite a photo. It's great. This is obviously, obviously generated.

Dave Jones: I actually kind of like it.

Chris Gammell: Well, there you go, Dave. You just got a, I don't think you could grow facial hair like this.

Dave Jones: No, no, no. I think it's physically impossible, but that doesn't mean I can't include it in thumbnails just to troll people. Of course. Of course. Yes. Yes. Yep. I just released a video this morning and I didn't put the thumbnail in. Damn, I have to change that. All right. After this show, expect me to change the thumbnail of my latest mailbag video to include hipster Dave because I, I got a grok. I got grok to, to produce several variants of that, um, photo. So I've got various like facial expressions and hand expressions and stuff of me with the hipster beard. So, yep. Got it. Expect me to spend the thumbnails.

Chris Gammell: Put an AA to the test there. Yep. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Damn. Forgot to do it. God, I'm hopeless at this. But you think I'd, I think I'd have a clue about this business after like 17 years or something. 16, 17 years. You'd think so.

Chris Gammell: You'd think so. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But no, no. I got no freaking clue. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: You need, you need some kind of a personal assistant, Dave, perhaps install it on your Mac M2.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I was going to set one up. I was going to set up an OpenClaw instance. In fact, um, yeah, I was like, I had a little mini PC set up for it that I was going to, that I was going to do for. And then I heard, then I, you know, everyone was raving about OpenClaw. Oh, OpenClaw, OpenClaw. It's going to change the world. Didn't, um, Jensen Hwang or whatever his name is from, um, uh, uh, NVIDIA. Doesn't he say that OpenClaw like changes everything and like you either, and your company is going to die if you don't have an OpenClaw strategy or some crap like that? Didn't he? I'm sure he said that.

Chris Gammell: I didn't, I didn't see that, but I mean, I mean, a lot of things are coming out of that guy's mouth, including saying that the engineers should be spending at least $250,000 worth of credits and tokens per year. Yes. Yeah. Oh, and didn't you know, they just. Very interesting coming from the guy selling the token generators, you know? Yes.

Dave Jones: Yes. And of course they just invented AGI. They just cracked AGI. He came out and said it, we have cracked AGI. It's like, yeah. Okay, buddy. Good for them.

Chris Gammell: Good for them.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. Says the guy who's selling, betting the farm on AI.

Chris Gammell: Hocking, hawking the stuff. Keep propping up the values. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, honestly, propping up the economy at this point, but that's neither here nor there. Yeah. So OpenClaw, I actually did install it. It's actually running on a Mac mini M4 behind me. And it's pretty cool. I got it. I was very, very skeptical.

Dave Jones: It doesn't really need high-end hardware, does it? It does not. It needs decent hardware, but not. Yeah. It doesn't need high-end hardware.

Chris Gammell: I really did not understand why people said it was needed on a Mac mini M4, right? So I had one.

Dave Jones: Well, probably because the early stuff done with it was like super fast, real-time things or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Not really, though. That's the thing.

Chris Gammell: So I thought it was maybe something native about the Mac OS ecosystem, something like that. But what I've come across is basically if you wanted to... Okay. So first off, what is OpenClaw? It's basically a scripting setup, which Dave brought up as we were chatting before the show. Like you don't even... It's not even like there's an... Like its own LLM underneath the hood, right?

Dave Jones: It's not like its own thing. It is not an LLM. It is not an AI LLM. It is a scripting service that talks to your existing AI account, be it what Grok, OpenClawed, you know, all of them, right?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yes. So all of those things, basically it kind of interfaces with the everything that's out there that it's got its own scripting. It's got its own plugin infrastructure. Basically, people have built other plugins or skills and you can kind of choose from them. It can talk to a variety of API services like Slack and WhatsApp and Telegram and basically all these different communication mechanisms. But at the end of the day, it's basically like a set of timers. It's basically like a RTOS with like some intelligence hooks underneath, right? That's a very big simplification. But basically, a lot of people are using it to kind of handle a lot of incoming queries, dole them out to agents or subagents talking to potentially, you know, foundational models from Anthropic, like the various Cloud models or, you know, OpenAI's various GPT models, and then kind of bundling up that response and sending it back to you. So like, actually, I think a really good similarity or like similar kind of functionality actually is OpenClaw can basically act like Cloud Code, right? Cloud Code is actually this entire scripting ecosystem that's on top of Anthropic models. And it's fantastic, right? You can get all these different plugins for it, skills, whatever. And that's kind of its own like ecosystem that's on top of the foundational Sonnet and Opus models that are in vogue right now. Okay, fine. So then why OpenClaw in the first place? And the idea is basically it can stay local to your machine. It can have much like Cloud Code. It can have shell access. It can have, you know, file system access. It can access your various interfaces like on your computer, like if you want to have email or a variety of things like that. Whether or not you should is up to you, of course. Yes. We'll talk about that. I think the thing is it's actually very powerful in that way. So I sent Dave a video, and I'll share it in the show notes too, of like this guy who set up four different like personalities on there, and he interfaces to it with Slack, and he has a bunch of different channels, and like one of them is a marketing person, and one of them is his coder, and one of them is his admin. And so that kind of idea of thinking about them as kind of like employees, effectively, and when you start thinking about it like that, and each of those could also go and spin off sub processes and sub agents as well, it really starts to come together a little bit more, even to the point where like in the video he talks about building a Kanban board, like a Trello or something like that, and like assigning that to different personas. I went and built that this morning similarly and like hooked it up, and it's fantastic. Like it's a really interesting way of like thinking about and interacting with it where I'm just coming up with ideas, putting it on the board, watching it kind of slide across, you know, in progress, done, whatever. And like it's just a different way of thinking about it, thinking about it like employees, effectively. Like interns, but increasingly good interns.

Dave Jones: So how does it work? Because I haven't installed it yet. I plan to. Yeah, sure. And so you write your little scripty thing or whatever or your instructions or whatever, text instructions to do whatever it is you want. You know, please read this email, process it, and then do some action or something like that, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, that would be like a one-time thing. But really the more likely thing would be like…

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I was wondering how it continually does it. Do you have these little agents that…

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you'd say, I mean, literally it would just be chatting with me and be like, hey, you know, I want you to check out my email. Watch for new emails coming in. Maybe it's a webhook. Maybe it's just a timer and it's like pulling.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. So it knows to go…

Chris Gammell: But it's always on. And it's always doing that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Right, it's always on. Right. So you don't have to write your little script and then execute it and then have it continually run in the background. It automatically knows that you've told it to do that.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah. So like, for example, tonight, I… So you can also hook it up to different services. I have it hooked up to my… I gave it its own WhatsApp account. I have like a phone number for it. I have my own WhatsApp account. I like send it a message on WhatsApp and I said, hey, you know, give me the 20 latest stories in electronics and just see what comes back. And that's like a one… That's really like a one-time thing. I could have done that on Google. I could have done that on…

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.

Chris Gammell: I could have done that on anywhere, really. Like that's just a… That's just a search. There's nothing fancy about it. But then there's also like… Actually, I also get the top three stories every morning, right? So that's a scheduled thing. And then it could also be deeper intelligence where it's like actually, you know, if you see something about contextual electronics in there, you know, write up a report, do some deeper research and basically like kind of like further down the path kind of ideas, right? So you're starting to do more…

Dave Jones: It's like check the whole internet for people talking about me and send me a summary every morning when I wake up so I can destroy them. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. You remember me talking about like the Daemon, the book by DC Darknet and Daemon and Freedom is that book by Daniel Suarez. Like this is literally a Daemon running in my computer behind me. And I should also say it's running in a VM on the computer behind me because I like put it in a little box inside the box, inside the box, you know, like give it its own account, just didn't like let it touch my stuff. So like, you know, there's safety level.

Dave Jones: I like the idea of having it on a little mini PC that just sits in the corner and leaves it on 24-7. That's what I plan to do with more. Yeah. And then like… Should I run it on Windows or Linux or it doesn't matter?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I thought I had to run it on… So like I said, I thought I had to run it on Mac OS. I'd like seen all this stuff. But honestly, it's TypeScript, I believe. So it's running with like NPM. It's like an NPM install type of thing. So like that's Node. Okay. And then I think TypeScript's on top of Node, I think. But like you're just going to follow the prompts. So I think any of them would be fine. I would potentially, you know, like I'll tell you what I did. I put it inside a VM, right? So like I'm running… I forget what the VM service is called in Mac. But you could do it on a variety of different VMs. And so I just spin it up and down. And I actually even… Oh, I also have it on an external hard drive. Because it's also like my Mac mini only has 256 gigs of internal storage. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: So it needs substantial storage.

Chris Gammell: But that's also fine, right? It's like a Thunderbolt 4, you know, external SSD. And it runs like it's no problem at all. Yeah. So, yeah. But if I need to, I can go and unplug that thing, you know. Just unplug the goddamn thing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Just like in war games, yeah. Just unplug the goddamn thing. Just unplug it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Like I said, I'm still figuring it out. It's been only a couple days since I've had this thing going. But it's interesting. It's very easy to kind of kick off coding tasks, to kick off different things. I kind of see it as like this mix. But, oh, I should say this too. So I've now done two AI study groups with some people from the consulting forum, which has been fantastic. And I hope they're okay with me saying this, but two past guests of the show, Matt Liberty and Luke Bino, they built their own ERP systems. Like so basically like, you know, you can go and buy an ERP system. They went and built their own because it's just like more customizable. And it was just like, it was jaw dropping seeing how cool this was. It was basically they're building something precisely what their business needs. And again, you could have done this with like a cloud code, right? There's no doubt about that codex, whatever's out there. But the interaction model, like directly interface with it and actually like have like Luke has a chat agent directly in there that he like, he just says, you know what? Actually, I want this to work different. And it just goes and spins it up, reloads the page and you're off the races. Not saying it works for everything, but like watching Luke do it, it was fantastic. Fantastic. So I hope he's okay saying that. He might be on the show talking about this in the future. We'll see. We'll see how that goes. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, this brings up what I said earlier about I'm pretty sure Jensen Huang. Is that how you pronounce? Huang?

Chris Gammell: Huang. Huang, I believe. Huang.

Chris Gammell: Jensen Huang. Jensen Huang.

Dave Jones: In video, I'm sure he said everyone must have and every business must have an open claw strategy, right? So does that mean like we're going to see a suddenly see a lot more businesses have like API access and stuff like that? I'm thinking.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. I think so. That would be cool.

Dave Jones: That'd be cool.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I work for an infrastructure company, right? So like I think infrastructure companies are great. I think that's a good thing to do. And I think having like really well, you know, being well documented and like having it so that machines can like learn your stuff. Like increasingly I've been seeing even chip companies have MCP servers for their docs. Like Nordic has that or just like really digestible docs. And, you know, maybe this is what finally kills the PDF data sheet, Dave. I don't know. Right. But a boy can dream. You know what I mean? Got it.

Dave Jones: Here is what I'd like to use it for first. I've got the forum, of course. Right. Of course. And the annoying thing about the forum is it's just the bots love it. Right. So we've had to implement a ton of ever since day one, we've had to have anti-spam measures and things like that. But we've had to ramp that up recently to an absurd level to try and, you know, defeat all these bots. And so that means that unfortunately there's a lot of checks in place and a lot of legitimate users when they try and register for the forum get caught up in that. Right. So I've got an automated email that gets sent to them going, hey, if your account is not automatically approved, then please, you have to send me a manual email. You have to send me a manual email. David.EVBlog.com. Right. You're going to send me a manual email. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I definitely couldn't figure that one out.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And I, and I, they, it, they don't. Well, they actually only just in the last week have they started to figure that out. Before that, it's been working fine. They actually do not read those emails. They just don't know what to do. So, yeah. Yeah. But there's been a couple of instances.

Chris Gammell: I think that might change, Dave, unfortunately.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, maybe. Anyway. So they've been contacting me manually. And so every morning, one of the first things I do is I've got a bunch of emails of people wanting to manually do on the forum. And each one of those, I've got to click over to the forum. I've got to bypass the spam strategy because I'm using my VPN. And then I've got to log in and then I've got to do the, you know, cause it can't stay logged in and stuff. And then I've got to go to the admin section and then I've got to go in there and I've got to paste in their email address or their username. And then I've got to manually check that they're actually legit. Then I've got to manually approve them. And it's like, it's just annoying. It's like, you know, 20 clicks for each, you know, email or something. I'd love to automate that. I'd love for OpenClaw to be able to forward that email, to get that email sent directly to OpenClaw. And then OpenClaw has a foot, has its own forum account that has, you know, some low level admin thing that allows it to approve new registrations or whatever. And, and just do it, you know, that'd be great.

Chris Gammell: So, I mean, that sounds like, honestly, like, so just framing it of like, that sure sounds like something you would have given to an intern. Right. I mean, like, Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, I was thinking about having, I was thinking about hiring another packing and shipping person. Um, and that would be one of their jobs would be doing it. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. But if I can automate it with OpenClaw, then yeah. So be it. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm like, I might give that a go. Cause that's a real use case that I want to solve with a real problem that I want to solve. It's not just mucking around, you know, it's like, I really want to solve that problem. Yeah. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Another one that came up for me was, uh, thinking about discord. I hate discord with passion, but like all the Zephyr stuff is all like in there, you know, like all of Zephyr chat and whatever. And there's a lot of noise. Right. And like, just like any live forum chat thing, whatever. But like, there's also like these nuggets that are in there. And I'm just like, ah, how do we, I don't want to have to like be on there. And, uh, you know, so like something, something that's just like watching and you can set up discord listeners and stuff like that. It would have its own discord account. It would join the server.

Dave Jones: Um, I wonder if I can do that for the forum. Like, cause often there's a lot of fights, you know, cause the forum's huge. Right. And I can't monitor every thread. Right. It's just impossible. It's like 800, you know, different posts. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you could probably do like sentiment analysis and be like, this one's, you know, have it like, send you a WhatsApp message when things are getting spicy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's language. Yeah. That's great. That's a great use case. Right. I mean, like, and I do think like a lot of like human level things that are like that, like manual human level things. Yeah. It makes, it makes sense. It's never going to be, not never going to be, it's, I think for now it's still going to be human in the loop, but it's just like surfacing things. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: But I've only got so many hours in the day, you know, it's like, it's not like I can spend all day on the bloody forum, you know, reading stuff. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I think there's, there's definitely a lot of use cases in there. So plan on doing that.

Dave Jones: That's the plan. Cool. All right. Open claw. But, but the key is not to give it access because I've heard horror stories already. Oh my God, it drained my entire retirement account. Cause I gave it access to trade shares. It's like, Oh my God.

Chris Gammell: It's like, you know, that is, uh, yeah, that is, that is really, really something that is really, uh, not what I would be doing.

Dave Jones: Uh, or it, you know, it, it just decided to delete all my YouTube videos. Cause I gave it access to my YouTube account. You know, it's like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know?

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Again, like treating it like an intern, you wouldn't give your intern admin access to everything. You wouldn't give them your whole inbox, right? You would give them their own inbox. You forward them stuff. You know, you would never give them all the password. Like someone brought up to me, they're like, they're like, uh, one of the first, you know, it's like it's alphabetical. Like you're looking through the plugins that are available, like in this, it's nice onboarding guide as you're like selecting what you, how you want to communicate with it, whatever. It's like the, the first, the first skill that's on there is one password. It's like, do you want to give your one password access to your open clause? It's like, no, no, no, I don't actually. But you, you could give it its own one password and that actually does make a lot of sense. Cause it might need, you know, you might be like, oh, I could share.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. You know?

Chris Gammell: So like it has its own WhatsApp account. It has its own Gmail account. It has its own GitHub account. Right. It has its own one password. Like all of those things make more sense, but again, it is management overhead, at least at the beginning. So like, it's not, it's not nothing, you know? And like I said, I'll link in that video. I think it's really good video.

Dave Jones: Cool. Cool bananas. I will watch this after, well, I'm eating my lunch after this.

Chris Gammell: I'm feeling okay about things, you know, in the, in the AI space. It's definitely like, there's a lot of change. I feel like software friends are a lot more freaked out than I am. I think they're seeing the writing on the wall a little bit more, but. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But I don't know, the more that this stuff comes up, I just think like the more stuff there is to do. Right. I mean, it's like, I have no doubt that this is going to change. Like there's, there's no doubt in my mind about that, but like, I just feel like people are going to be asked to do more and then they're going to be told to do more. And then, uh, you know, I just think it's going, it is going to impact. I think people that aren't like sitting on their hands and not like even experimenting, they might get caught out, you know, unless they're super specialized, then there might not be things. So, um, I do think it makes sense to at least understand how some of this stuff works a little bit.

Dave Jones: I highly recommend not following or maybe following if you're morbidly fascinating, uh, tech layoff lover on X. Um, and it's, it's scary. It's like, like they're posting like daily about, oh, the latest, you know, we just heard from an insider, you know, they're laying off, you know, the entire team because of AI. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yes, no doubt there's stuff like that, but also like, you know, like I think about the converse of like, you know, someone who's like a degenerate gambler, you're like, they, they only tell you about the wins. You know what I mean? They don't tell you about the losses. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like someone who's like into watching tech layoffs, like they're only telling you about the losses. They're not telling you about the wins and there are still wins, right? It does balance out at some point and it does. And, and I think, you know, the economy is kind of shaky on shaky ground anyways. I'm not sure, you know, what the macro trends, there are a lot of macro trends at play as we talked about at the top of the show. And so like, it's, there's things happening for sure, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't be all, all consumed by it. Like you said, right. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, yeah, they, they only post the layoffs. Like they don't post the wins. So it's like, it's just morbidly fascinating to see it. I mean, I could read some of the posts, but it's, you'd know what the gist is going to be, you know, it's like, yeah. It's scary. Yeah. Anyway, LinkedIn down below for those who are game enough to follow it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Oh, you know, there's one nine hours ago. The head in his mass casualty event across Silicon Valley right now. Badgers going dark at 6 47 AM. 2,847 engineers got the slack notification that way, you know? Yeah. It's like, but I'm sure it's true. Like, you know, yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I wouldn't want to be a front end engineer right now, unless you were really good at other stuff as well. Uh, I think that's difficult. I think being like a, you know, if you were just like a UI designer, that's tough. I think there's a lot of things that are like that where there's, there are certain. But like those same people are like often very good at many other things as well. So like, you know, their job's probably going to shift. I think our job's going to shift. I mean, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, YouTube, hello. It's just full of bloody AI content now.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Sure.

Dave Jones: Of course. And, and, and a week, one week they're, they're totally against AI. Oh no, we want to get rid of the AI slop. And the next week is a new tool to you to generate, you know, to generate AI. YouTube videos. Oh God. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's annoying.

Dave Jones: Anyway, um, um, have released their own chip.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That was, you heard that actually people, um, have released a chip for those who don't know, um, do not make chips until now. It did have been going since, since the 1980s or whatever. They were originally in the BBC micro, right? That was where they first started. And arm stands for acorn risk machine. Yes. I got there. It was, yeah, but you don't remember the, uh, uh, I don't. You're right.

Chris Gammell: No. I remember reading the Wikipedia page, Dave.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. The, uh, Archimedes, Archimedes acorn.

Chris Gammell: Wasn't it? Yep.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yep. Yeah. Archimedes acorn. Anyway. Yes. So arm stands for advanced. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So they've, they've been an IP company for basically the entirety of this show. Right. I mean like, yeah. Uh, and, uh, well, yeah, I guess before that too. Uh, but very popular since the start of the show, at least. Uh, I think, I think we've been there through the whole rising. Yeah.

Dave Jones: When, when, when, um, was just a niche, uh, player, when we started, arm was like a, just a, Oh yeah. It's like, they make a few. Intel's brushing them off their shoulders. Sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then all of a sudden, no, they're in mobile phones and then boom, smartphones. And then servers. Right. That's the big one, the servers.

Chris Gammell: And that's ultimately what this is. So like Dave and I were, I think giggling, uh, about the size of like how big this chip is in the CEO. It's enormous. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, I'm going to estimate 60, 70 millimeters, maybe 70 millimeters, something like that. Yeah. That's square.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. And, uh, yeah, it's because they're going into server architecture and like Dave and I don't normally see, you know, H200 chips either. Right. So it's just like that expectation. And like, I'm used to like smaller and smaller and smaller chips. And, uh, yeah, this is, this is not one of them. I think it's really, I personally, I think it's really interesting. One, uh, what is it going to do to their, you know, this is probably the same coming off of every pundit's lips of just like, what is it going to do to their competition? You know, they basically they're selling the exact same IP to the people that they're now effectively competing with. Right. Uh, and that's, that's something. Uh, and then also what is the impacts of like, uh, of risk five? And like, is this really driven from like, is this driven from a profit mode? Uh, sorry, like a, a concern about dropping profits in the future. Right. Is this like a loss prevention thing? Is this like a wanting a bigger slice of the pie or is this something else entirely? You know, it's just like, Oh, we're so good at this. And chip making is so hands-off that it's just like, Oh, we just hired like a couple of interface designers and we're done. Right. Which is definitely not what they did. Right. Uh, yeah. Uh, but you know, it's, it's a big step for them and that's really, it's really interesting. I think. I didn't see what the stock price moved as a result today. Cause they are. Oh, okay. Right.

Dave Jones: Yes, they are. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I mean, maybe it was already priced in. Maybe someone's like, yeah, of course they're going to make a chip, you know, but, um,

Dave Jones: well, they've been sitting flat for the last five years. They've been going nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. Armor just like, yeah. Between a hundred and 180 bucks. And it's just like, just bounces for the last five years. So yeah, if you bought them five years ago, you were, you wouldn't be that happy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. And, uh, I remember the, so they had been, they had been bought by Masasan and the, whatever that massive investment company that lost all the money on work is called. Uh, and, uh, and then he spun out part of it. And that's basically when it, I think it spun back out as a, as a public company then. Um, and then he retained a bunch of ownership as well. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Speaking of, um, servers, um, server, um, one of the main manufacturers of server, other boards is, um, super micro super. They, they make massive server, you know, boards and stuff. Um, and, um, the, uh, CEO, um, the founder of the CEO or whatever. Um, just accused of smuggling two and a half billion dollars of Nvidia chips. Um, oopsie. Apparently he's been arrested and like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Um, smuggled and where?

Dave Jones: And then there's like photos. There's, I've seen security photos of how, how they got them. And, um, they were actually, um, using a hairdryer to get rid of like the two, to actually physically remove the, uh, the serial number labels or whatever off. Um, actual in, in, in video cards and putting them on something else. You know, it was like, there's like a fly by night operation.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Busted. Yeah. Um, oopsie. So yeah, you're the, you're the billion dollar phone and owner and, um, CEO of super micro. Um, yeah, it looks like he's gone straight to jail. Did not pass.

Chris Gammell: Accused of, of some smuggling $2.5 billion in chips. That's actually five GPUs. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: All five GPUs. Yeah. But yeah. Oopsie. Um, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Is that Dave Jones quoting Taylor Swift on the Amp Hour podcast?

Dave Jones: What? That's not Taylor Swift.

Chris Gammell: That is a Taylor Swift lyric.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it's, she didn't invent it. It's been around forever.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Does it change what I said? Okay. Okay.

Dave Jones: Let's, let's find the enter. What is it? The entomology of this word? What is it? I can never remember. I can, I goof that word up. Uh, yeah. Play stupid games, wins. I guess you're right. I would never have known. That's a Taylor Swift song.

Chris Gammell: It's a, it's a, it's, it's one of the, it's one of the lyrics in Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince. That's what Google told me. And also my wife had told me if she was in here. I have heard the lyric many times before, but I didn't know.

Dave Jones: Where did the phrase, uh, oh, I've, I've, I've got to go to Reddit. Um, no, I'll do the, uh, it's an idiom, blah, blah, blah, blah. The exact origin of phrase is uncertain. Rapid adoption in internet culture, the military and popular music, uh, is widely used in military as a piece of folklore. Um, okay. Internet in early 2000s. See, they're already talking about, um, Tom, Tom Clancy in the 1980s. Got it.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Yeah. Got it. So co-opted by both Dave and Taylor Swift.

Dave Jones: Yes. Dave basically taught Taylor Swift. You know what, everyone on the internet knows play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I mean, it's just, it's just a meme on the internet has been for. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Just a meme. Yeah. That's what a meme does. You know? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. All right. Sorry. Taylor Swift. Didn't, didn't mean to accuse you of being a Swifty, Dave. Jesus.

Dave Jones: Well, you obviously are, cause you know her songs.

Chris Gammell: I, I am, uh, I am. It's exposure therapy around here. So.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. I would not know a single song.

Chris Gammell: No, I would. Yeah. I would. I would.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Wouldn't know a single. If I heard it or heard the name, wouldn't have a clue. I have no idea what any, even couldn't name one hit Taylor Swift song.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's how divorced I am from that world. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Sounds like you're, we're switching over to a pop culture podcast now.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Okay. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Um, what was the other things I was going to put on here? Uh, I have a list of other things. Oh, uh, the routers. Um, so the U S is doing. Oh yes. Yes. Yeah. So Jeff, Jeff, you just posted about this, but obviously it's all over the internet. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I posted about it the other day. Um, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yes. FCC is saying they're going to somehow, uh, ban foreign made consumer routers.

Dave Jones: Uh, and, and we're talking, the key word is consumer.

Chris Gammell: Right. Uh, it is not.

Dave Jones: Apparently it's been, they've been banned in the military and other things for, you know, government stuff for ages, but sure.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They have sourcing, sourcing things, but, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't really know what they're going for. I mean, I know what they're going for here. It's probably grift, but, uh, it, I don't know how it's actually going to work because like every router I think I've bought in the past 20 years has been made in China. And even if it was like, you know, I have now have an Eero, which is like an Amazon brand. It's like, yeah, that's also be, you know, like that is like a high end Amazon owned brand. It's like, yeah, I guess what were those are made too, man? Like maybe Vietnam, but like chipsets are still, you know, it's just, it's just always a global supply chain. So unless you're doing, unless you're truly mandating like a U S only, you know, government made $5,000 router.

Dave Jones: And then like, yeah, you're, you're, you're, I'm not sure how they can do this at the consumer level.

Chris Gammell: You know, I think they won't, I think they're just going to charge for, you know, market access basically. I think that's what it's coming down to. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if it was the most charitable light of like, okay, well, we're concerned about cybersecurity. I think you would be doing many other things. Also something I want to bring up because I was at a better world and I've been talking about this a bunch myself. Uh, do you know what CRA is Dave?

Dave Jones: CRA.

Chris Gammell: Cyber resilience act. Okay. So this is something that, uh, I wanted to tell it, talk about it because I think some of our listeners probably heard about it. Some don't care about it. That's fine. Some don't know about it and they might get hosed. Uh, so basically if you, uh, are, if you have a CE mark on your product, which is like a lot of products, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Uh, then, and you don't comply to this by December of 2027, you can get 2.5 million, 2.5% of your total revenue, global revenues, or a 15 million euro minimum fine. Hang on.

Dave Jones: Is this in, this is in the EU.

Chris Gammell: This is in the EU, but like, think about everything that's marked with the CE mark, right? So the CE mark is on the back of everything, everything. So basically anything that is, this is an incredibly broad thing, but it's, it's basically any, I did a, uh, uh, uh, thing with Mark Omo, one of the, uh, one of the guys who was recently on the embedded FM podcast as well. He did like this really cool, um, safe talk, um, safe cracking talk. Um, but Mark works for Marcus engineering and we, he and I did a webinar together and he like taught me all this stuff. Basically it's like anything that gets programmed at the factory with a cable, basically anything that has a cable on it, anything that's basically electronic or has a microcontroller. You have to be able to update it. It's insane. And so it's like, it's everything. It's everything electronic needs to, that is going to be marked with a CE mark needs to comply with this. And so a lot of it is paperwork. Fine.

Dave Jones: So no OTP ROMs anymore. So I can't sell my multimeters in the EU anymore because they're non-firmware upgradable because they use, that's right. Like a one-time programmable ROM is a bullshit.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. I think that actually will have an impact. Right.

Dave Jones: And basically it's like, it's not just an impact. It's insane. It's so impractical. It's not funny. Everything ends. Everything stops. Your watch. It's insanely broad. You literally can't buy a digital watch because it doesn't have a programming port on it.

Chris Gammell: I mean, come on. I have a smartwatch. I have a smartwatch. So I'm fine.

Dave Jones: Well, I get updates every time it breaks.

Chris Gammell: Mine restarts all the time. Thank you very much. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, all of my watches get 10 years battery life. So no, no, no, no, no.

Chris Gammell: So there's like always the FUD and like the scary stuff. And I think like it's going to have a very big impact on the industry. Like I've, I've said before, I think, I think in June of 2027 or probably more likely like next year at Embedded World, like so like March of 2027. I think people are going to be flipping their shit. I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be like, they're going to have no idea. It's insane. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's insane.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They're going to see it coming down the pipe, whatever. I think from a practical perspective. So now like January 1st, 2020. What is the point of this?

Dave Jones: What is the point? What is the goal of this stupid idiotic act?

Chris Gammell: So like, again, to give it like a charitable view to not create botnets, it's really for a higher level processing things, right? So like even a lot of Linux based devices are out there.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but making it programmable makes it an attack. You're adding an attack vector to do exactly that.

Chris Gammell: So no, no, here's the thing. So you can also have as part of like your strategy, like, oh, we're going to deliver firmware updates to the user and we're going to have directions on how to reprogram a device. For the next five years. And like literally that might be enough. Right. And it's also like we're also going to respond to like critical vulnerability events like CVEs. Right. So CVEs. And again, like for a DMM, it's going to be nothing. Right. Or very likely nothing. So say you had a programming port on your DMM and you said the user can update it. I'm going to give directions for it. That's like that's going to be sufficient in that way. And then if there ever was a true like critical vulnerability, which is very unlikely to be. It's like, yes, you would have to deliver a firmware upgrade to that to the customer base. So that basically, you know, again, in a charitable manner, it's like so that they don't just chuck this thing out or it's very unlikely to be an actual like security threat. But it's like it's also cutting back on waste and all this other stuff.

Dave Jones: But this is ridiculous. They don't understand how many things are one time programmable.

Chris Gammell: Sure. No arguments there.

Dave Jones: Half of the electronic devices on the smart electronic devices on the planet are one time programmable. This is ridiculous.

Chris Gammell: I think that is shrinking, honestly.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, it's not, dude. It's not. Well, maybe, but, you know.

Chris Gammell: I mean, by volume, I think most things have more firmware to them, right? I think that is the general trend. It's not everything. Yes. And like there is a ton of, you know, like you said, one time programmable. Just like what about toys? Farsi novelty gadgets. Yeah, let's go to the extremes. Like a toy. I don't know.

Dave Jones: A watch is a classic example. Just like I said, every digital watch, right? One time programmable.

Chris Gammell: Or a slash ASIC.

Dave Jones: Slash ASIC, right?

Chris Gammell: Slash ASIC? What does that mean?

Dave Jones: Well, either a one time programmable micro or an ASIC. That's actually pro. Like, you know, say you got a calculator, for example, right? That doesn't use a microcontroller. That uses a custom ASIC designed by Casio, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, what the hell are you supposed to do? I mean, like that's programming the metal.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. You have to say, go into, everybody gets a microscope and they can decap the top of the chip and then they can go in and do laser surgery. Okay. So those are extreme examples. But I think the other thing too is like, when you look at like true enforcement, I don't think they're going to go after that sort of thing too. Like, I think if it's like documented, I think that's going to be fine. I think the, like again, charitable, a charitable look at this.

Dave Jones: There has to be an exemption for one time programmable devices or non-reprogrammable.

Chris Gammell: I think you're a little bit cued in on that. I'm trying to get through the rest of it.

Dave Jones: I'm totally cued in on that. I don't give a shit about the rest of it. You, because you made this out to be, you cannot sell a CE mark product unless it has a programming port.

Chris Gammell: No, I didn't say that.

Dave Jones: That's how you sold this to me. I have not looked into the details.

Chris Gammell: I didn't say if it has to have a programming port. I said, if it does have a programming port, it has to be updatable.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. So it doesn't apply to one time programmable devices.

Chris Gammell: I don't think so. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Or I got myself all upset or wound up for nothing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think maybe that latter one. Yeah. I think the real thing is like-

Dave Jones: Give me a link to the bloody act. I'll read it for myself.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, that's its own little spicy, spicy bit of nap time right there. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Or get AI to read it for me. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So I think the more likely thing, though, is that people that actually do have firmware on devices that are not like field updatable or they don't have documentation for it, like that's going to be the people that get hosed, I think. You know, like there are things out there where they just like ship without OTA, right? And it's like, okay, that's not smart. And like now it's like there's actual consequence to that sort of thing. And if they're not, you know, they also have to like support it five years, even past the end of the life of the product, too, which is like another wild thing, you know? So yeah, it's just what I'm trying to say is it's a big deal. Whatever this thing is, it's a big deal. And it was all over Embedded World 2. I talked to a couple people about it, you know? There was not as much fervor as I think next year will have. But I think the main thing I wanted to say is if people are listening to this and they do have firmware on their device, they should think about it and go read about it. Because like sometimes, like I didn't know about it until like five months ago, you know?

Dave Jones: Unbelievable. Anyway. Yeah. That just makes me depressed. Can we not talk about that anymore? Sure. Speaking of which, I've got kind of a segue. Are you depressed? We're talking about, you know, limiting government and military sales to, you know, only stuff designed in the country, designed and manufactured in the country. Like ITAR type stuff. That also applies. Yeah. That also applies here to Australia as well. So I know of a company now. I've actually spoken with them. I actually know one of the founders. And they're a new Australian startup. Well, yeah, startup, I guess you could call them. And they're looking, they're actually setting up manufacturing facilities here to manufacture test equipment here in Australia.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: Manufacture test equipment so they can get all of the government and all of the military contracts and things like that, where not just test equipment, but also routers as well. They're getting into the networking space and things like that. So, yes. Yes. I will send you a link to the company. I'm not sure. That's very interesting.

Chris Gammell: Are you going to go visit or? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, I've already talked to them in person.

Speaker ?: So.

Dave Jones: Okay. Oh, cool. I may be doing something with them in the future. Cool. But yes. Yes. They already have, including they have access to a fab here as well. They have access to a fab in South Australia. Yes. Yes.

Chris Gammell: See, this is what I always come down to though. Like, okay. So there's a South Australian fab. Is there packaging? Like, is there like die cutting?

Dave Jones: All the other things that it takes to do that stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like, yeah, it's transiting out of the country to do a lot of this stuff. I don't know. That feels like the big piece.

Dave Jones: Well, have you heard about SpaceX? Is it Tesla or SpaceX? I can't remember who's bloody done. Well, they're all owned. I'm saying.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Thing now. Yeah.

Dave Jones: The, what is it? The Giga? The Giga? No. What is it? The Terra factory or whatever? What's the Terra? Surely you've heard about it. Elon is so lame.

Chris Gammell: They're so lame.

Dave Jones: No, dude. He's freaking doing this. They're spending like $25 billion on this.

Chris Gammell: They can do whatever they want. He is so lame.

Dave Jones: Dude, have you seen the factories and shit they build?

Chris Gammell: Hey, man. I don't care about what they're building. He is so lame.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't care that he's lame. Like, what has that got to do with anything? All I care about is the shit they're doing.

Chris Gammell: Cause the gig of this and it's x.com.

Dave Jones: Terrafab. Terrafab. Terrafab. Terrafab. Yeah. Okay. Have you heard about it? What? What?

Chris Gammell: You think it's a joke? I have not. No. I think, I think he's so lame. I think he is so lame.

Dave Jones: Well, you can, fine. What has that got to do with the price of anything? Nothing.

Chris Gammell: Nothing. Nothing at all.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Build whatever you want, man. Personal dislike. I don't give a shit. Anyway, the Terrafab. They're looking at building. This will be in volume size, 10 times bigger than their existing gigafactory. It won't be one big building because, you know, it's just, it's too big. But they're going to do soup to nuts manufacture, fab packaging everything in house. There's no current factory in the world that does that. You know, because as you said, like, you know, the, the, the, the fab does the silicon wafer and then they export them to Malaysia to get them packaged. And then they're exported to somewhere else, Taiwan, to get dye bonded and packaged and, you know, like all sorts of things. Right. There's all these convoluted steps that they're going to do it all like all in the one campus, all on the one building, essentially. So, yeah, that's an impressive goal. So, it'll be very interesting. Surely you think that's, you know, fascinating.

Chris Gammell: I just don't believe it. I mean, like, if it comes to fruition, that's great. Well, it's probably going to happen.

Dave Jones: I'm sure you didn't believe the, that that'd be manufactured, that had the biggest US PCB manufacturing facility at SpaceX. Oh, SpaceX. They, they manufacture the Starling terminals in the, in the US's biggest PCB assembly factory.

Chris Gammell: That's great.

Dave Jones: That's great. Like what, you didn't know that? That's like, you know. I already know that. Come on. Dude. Anyway, very exciting. Yeah. I'm very curious to see how this pans out. Cause it's not, it's super difficult. Super difficult to do. Not, not impossible, but damn. But yeah, I don't know. The whole industry.

Speaker ?: I know.

Chris Gammell: I used to work in a fab in Austin. You may recall.

Dave Jones: Oh yes. I know. But that's just a fab. They didn't do packaging. Right. It was just a fab. Wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So the whole industry is sort of growing around all these separate tasks.

Chris Gammell: So like Samsung would get these, not subsidies, but basically they would, you know, get, they would be, have some benefits to domestic manufacturing. Right. We'd be making wafers on site and then they'd ship them to China and they'd cut them up over there and do testing over there and packaging over there. It's just like, okay. It's kind of silly, right? I mean like, and it would come back. It's yes. Yes. Go to like an equal factory. It's just like.

Dave Jones: Completely silly. Ship them halfway around the world. Ship these super clean wafers halfway around the world just so that you can, you know, attach dye bonds to them. It's like, why? But that's what the industry is growing to become. So this is turning that on its head. Apparently they want to do everything in the one building slash campus. So yeah. Great. Well, there you go. Oh, finally. He says, great people. Finally. Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's what I meant to say. I love you, Elon. I love you. Thank you. You don't have to love Elon.

Dave Jones: You can just take him out of the equation and just look at what they're doing.

Chris Gammell: Thanks for letting your cronies steal all the social security numbers, Elon. You're really great. You're a stand up chap and definitely don't have any issues. And not lame. Definitely not lame. Definitely not lame.

Dave Jones: Dude, you'll live a much less stress-free life if you do this than worrying about Elon all the time. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm not worried about Elon. Trust me. Don't worry. I don't think about Elon that much. But I have a co-host who does.

Dave Jones: No, I don't think about him. I think about the shit they're doing. I think about X. I think about SpaceX. I think about Tesla. I think about XAI and Grok and all the rest of it. So, sue me.

Chris Gammell: All right. I'll have my lawyer call your lawyer.

Dave Jones: Okay. Oh, the moon. The moon. Dude. Moon base is happening, apparently. Jared Isaacman just came out and gave a talk like, I don't know, 12 hours ago or something. I haven't watched it fully. But they've ditched the lunar gateway. Sorry. I know you don't care about the moon and space.

Chris Gammell: I need more context. I don't actually know what this is. So, who's Jared Isaacman?

Dave Jones: The head of NASA.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: But you may hate him because he likes Elon Musk. So, you're probably. And he's giving X contracts from NASA. So, you're probably going to hate him as well. So, yeah. Got it. Just putting that out there. So, what is the main gateway? Maybe on your watch list, you know.

Chris Gammell: He might be.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Here's the new head of NASA. He's the guy who, you know, owns his own rocket. Owns his own jet company that has, you know, MiG-29 fighter jets and stuff like that. Super rich dude. And he's the one who just did the spacewalk. He was the first civilian to do a spacewalk. Oh, cool. So, yeah. Yeah. He's been up on the SpaceX Dragon several times. Once or twice.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway. And he's the new head of NASA. Didn't you hear?

Chris Gammell: No. I don't really.

Dave Jones: No. You've been completely out of the loop. Anyway, he's the new head of NASA. He's just come in. And they've just scrapped the lunar gateway idea. So, that's been.

Chris Gammell: So, what is the lunar gateway?

Dave Jones: Lunar gateway. For the Artemis mission for sending humans to the moon, which is probably going to take off in like a week's time. We're sending humans back to the moon. If you didn't know. Artemis 2. I knew because of you. Yeah. I knew about you. Artemis 2 is going to the moon in about a week's time, supposedly. In fact, it's April 1st. Oh, God. I hope they don't launch it on April 1st. That would be meme-worthy. But anyway. So, yes. So, they were. Artemis 3. And to get humans back to the moon, they were going to build this lunar gateway. Which is basically a space station in a highly elliptical lunar orbit. Right? And then they were going to send the astronauts to there on the, using the Orion capsule. And then they were going to use the human landing system, which will either be Starship or it'll be Blue Origins human lander. To get them down to the moon. And then they'll go back to the gateway, to the lunar gateway. And then they'll come back to Earth. But they've got to build the lunar gateway first. And they haven't even started on that, really. So, that was a plan to get back to the moon. It was clunky. It was, you know, it was not great. Smarter Every Day did a video on how it's like a really bad idea. He actually did a video taking them to task. At their own facility. He actually went to NASA and gave, yeah, he actually went to NASA and gave a talk and guys, are you sure you want to do this? Like I'm being very kind here. I'm being very generous. I want to go back to the moon, but it's not really a good idea. And it was a great video. So, yes. Okay. So you have seen that or you are aware of that?

Chris Gammell: Yes, I have seen that one.

Dave Jones: Anyway, so they've scrapped that now. They've scrapped that plan now and they're going to go straight to the moon and they're going to, there's all this new, uh, plans to build a colony.

Chris Gammell: The moon says, build a base for the next seven years. Is that right?

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Something like that. I haven't looked into all the details yet. Got it.

Speaker ?: So they're going to the moon soon.

Dave Jones: Because it just came out this morning.

Chris Gammell: And then they're going to build a moon base at some point.

Dave Jones: They're going to build a moon base within the next five years. Yeah. That's the plan or something. It's five, seven years or something. Huh. So they've scrapped the, uh, the convoluted, uh, lunar gateway system and they're just going straight there now, which I think is better, which is great. But, uh, anyway, timelines are a bit, um, Elon-ish, you know, they're a bit, um, yeah. I don't think they'll make the, uh, timelines, but, you know, hey, there's a plan now. I'm excited. Great. Sorry that you're not excited about going back to the moon.

Chris Gammell: No, I'm just, I'm so out of the loop, Dave. I mean, like, I'm, uh.

Chris Gammell: All right. Fair enough. I guess the things that I'm paying attention to is not this, but interesting. Right.

Dave Jones: Yes. So anyway, um, yeah, huge thing. He just did a big press announcement today and it's changed everything and they're, um, yeah. So they're taking the $20 billion they were going to spend on it or something. And they're going to put that towards just going directly to the moon now and doing, you know, setting up a base there and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I mean, how do people like think about a moon base and not like imagine like, you know, moon raker and like, you know, they made documentaries about this. Right. Yes.

Dave Jones: I know. Yes. And including the documentary, um, for all mankind. Have you seen that series?

Chris Gammell: No, I haven't seen that. What is it?

Dave Jones: Oh, dude. Do you know about for all?

Chris Gammell: Maybe you told me about it. Someone told me about it. It's a show or something.

Dave Jones: It's an Apple TV show.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: And it's a, it's basically the, uh, synopsis is, is that, um, the timeline skewed into a tangent back to the future style back in 1969 or 1968 or whatever. And the Russians were the first to land on the moon instead of the Yanks. Right. And then the movie plays out from there. And then you've got, you know, then you've got a lunar battle. Like you've got battles in lunar space. You've got battles. They both set up competing, uh, bases on the lunar surface. And then the next season they go to Mars and they're setting up, you know, bases on Mars. And then the next season after that, they're doing asteroid mining. So it's like the, a lot of people saying it's a prequel to the, um, uh, uh, expanse expanse. That's it. Oh. If you've read the books and watched the TV series.

Chris Gammell: I've read, I've read the books three times. Yeah. Yeah. Expanse. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And they've done the TV show of that. It's with the series of that as well. That's right. Expanse. A lot of people saying it's kind of like a prequel to the expanse, you know, cause the fourth season they're out there, you know, mining asteroids and stuff.

Chris Gammell: Just like that book I told you you should read. Yeah. Yeah. Delta V. Yeah. Come on, man.

Dave Jones: Delta V. Yeah. I know. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You'll get that. Anyway.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's very cool. Anyway. Um, yeah, it's very good. It's the, um, Apple TV series. Yeah. Yeah. It's very, very compelling. It's, um, yes. The, uh, timeline. I've, I've done a video on it, um, where they sort of got some of the props wrong in the video. So timeline wise, but it's like a really exciting. Accelerated timeline. So by 1980, they're already on the moon, you know, it's like, yeah. So, you know, this space race between the Ruskies and the Americans really accelerated things and it just went crazy. And it's, yeah, it just follows that timeline. That's yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's fun. It's really good.

Dave Jones: Really good. I think you might enjoy it. So anyway, that's it. We're done.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Great.

Dave Jones: So we'll agree that, uh, Chris hates Elon and I don't care.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That sounds good.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome.

Chris Gammell: I mostly just think he's lame. Right. He's really lame. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't care that he's lame or that you think he's lame. Okay. All I care about is the stuff that they're doing. So. Cool. Yep. Yep. Awesome.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Chris Gammell: See you soon. Bye.

Speaker ?: Take care.