#136 – Hardware, Surveys and Giveaways - Radular Rental Ranting

Chris Gammell: This is the Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded March 12th, 2013. Episode 136. Radular. Rental. Ranting.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Chris Gammell's Analog Life.

Dave Jones: What did you just call me before?

Chris Gammell: Dr. Jones.

Dave Jones: I ain't no stinking doctor. I ain't got no PhD.

Chris Gammell: We know. We know, Dave. It's an honorary title, of course, you know, for when you finally give that keynote. Ah, right. One of those honorary degrees. Yes, right. Right. Maybe someday.

Dave Jones: When I've got a grey beard or someone who will give me an honorary doctorate. Yeah, right, right. I was wondering about that.

Chris Gammell: Do you get to put that, you know, like you're filling out forums online or whatever. It's like, maybe I'll just put doctor this time. I mean, obviously people could put it anyways.

Dave Jones: No, you're not allowed to. There are very specific rules behind that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: And yeah, yeah. And I don't believe you're allowed to.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, because there's other weird rules about that kind of stuff too. Like, isn't it like something like you're technically not supposed to put doctor if you're a PhD. You're supposed to put comma PhD or something weird like that.

Dave Jones: No, you can. That's the rule with the honorary PhD. You're allowed to put, but you're not allowed to call yourself Dr. David Jones. You're allowed to put David Jones PhD on, you know, or whatever the classification is for your honorary degree. But you're not allowed to call yourself doctor. But as far as a PhD is concerned, yes, I believe in most countries you can call yourself doctor.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which I don't really like because a doctor's a freaking doctor you go see when your arm's fallen off. You know?

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's just, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it does vary country to country. I think we've talked about that before with professional engineering, right? Because some, with how you can refer to yourself as an engineer, that varies country to country as well. Yes. Yep. And there's different silliness.

Dave Jones: Like in, I think it's India, don't quote me, but before the Amp Hour stuff, you know, I had my website and my articles. I used to get tons of email as well. And everyone from India would always call me professor. They'd always call me, they'd always assume I'm a professor. Like, I don't know what sort of, please. Like an honorary title of teacher? Yeah, like an honorary, like, or they just, yeah, they assume, yeah, if you're a teacher, like, because I'm teaching, I'm putting stuff on the web. So they think of me as a teacher. So they call me professor. Or, you know, they call me prof. Right, right. Or it says, prof, Mr. Prof Jones, you know, or something like, something weird like that. And it's like, I never sort of figured out the reason behind that. So if anyone from India, I think it's India, knows, please let me know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, maybe it's a- Why I was called prof all the time. Maybe the cultural difference is that prof is actually like a swear word over there. You prof of a prof. That would be funny. It could be.

Dave Jones: You never know. Yeah. Oh, boy. Yes, all those idiosyncrasies. So do you agree with me that you shouldn't call yourself doctor unless you're an actual medical doctor?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, no, I definitely agree with that. And you know another thing you shouldn't do? You shouldn't put Chris Gammell, say I was dumb enough to get an MBA. Okay. Chris Gammell, comma, MBA, or comma, PE, I guess sometimes you have to do for signatures. But people that put MBA after name, come on. What are we really doing here? Like, sign your email with your name.

Dave Jones: Well, they're having a wank. Yeah. Just like getting an MBA to begin with. You're having a wank.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Or like when, I think it was, I forget what it was. It was some other academic thing. I saw there was like four sets of abbreviations after their name. It's just like, oh. Right. Chris Gammell, SAT. You know? I took a test as well. Bring on the hate mail. Good thing no MBA is probably listening to this, right? Maybe one or two.

Dave Jones: I'm sure there are. Yeah. Please. Stick up your hand if you're brave enough to stick up your hand and say, yeah, I got a, you know, I got an MBA or a PhD.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I know. Yeah. Yeah. Have we talked about this before? That some people get a bit angsty where if you work at a company where they don't allow titles on your business card.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: Like they don't allow you to put PA, they don't allow you to put your academic titles on your business cards. Some companies are like that. I've worked at companies like that. And I've had colleagues who go, oh, I spent six years getting my master's degree. God damn it. Yeah. And, you know, why can't I put my, you know, you know, masters on there? My, you know, MSc or, you know. Yeah. Whatever. And they get really, yeah, they get really irate over it. They spend all this time studying and they can't put it on their business card. Well. Tough titties, I guess. Yeah. If you have like the company, leave.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. Yeah. I mean, then there's. Oh, goodness. It can get, yeah, it does get silly. But that's just mostly his ego, right? I mean, that kind of stuff is ego to show it off like that as a forward facing thing. If people were actually curious, they'd go stalking LinkedIn like we all do. Right? I mean. Right. Okay. Yeah. Good old LinkedIn stalking.

Dave Jones: And you'll, yeah, it's all the rage. Apparently it's like if you don't have a LinkedIn profile in the US now, you won't get a job. Or so the rumor goes, you know. Apparently that's HR's job now is to search your LinkedIn profile. Oh, I believe that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think they're, you know, the whole hiring manager side of things. It's like, yeah, it's not just crawling LinkedIn, but also sometimes Facebook or Google or anything else. And I think you and I got Google covered okay, but it's, I don't know. LinkedIn is messy. It gets real messy. But the interesting thing with LinkedIn is just like the whole business model is based on, you know, backdoor access to that, right? I mean, you pay 500 bucks a year as a recruiter. Oh, do you? Oh, yeah. That's what the, that's where they make all their money. I didn't know that. You can buy a membership and you can get access to anything. And I've seen job hunting guides about that before too.

Dave Jones: Well, but what extra stuff can you get if people don't put, like there's no hidden stuff on a profile.

Chris Gammell: No, but some profiles you can't see. Sometimes you can't access their information. Basically, there's some ways you can get like blanket coverage to anything. And then there's like advanced search algorithms.

Dave Jones: Oh, I didn't know that. The bastards are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when people get like recruiting calls about this stuff, they all, they can see everything. I mean, it's just.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. So they're paying big bucks and they think they're getting secret squirrel access to everyone's lives, you know.

Chris Gammell: They are. I mean, like anything you put on there, someone can see.

Dave Jones: Well, assuming that it's correct, assuming it's real what you put on there.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Well, I think the social proof side of things hopefully maintains that people won't lie in there.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the idea, I guess. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you could lie in a resume too if you really wanted. Eventually, you're going to be phoned out. Oh, yeah, you could. Or something. Yeah. Luckily, we don't need jobs right now, so. No, we don't. No.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You're still happy at your nine to five? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's still going good. I like it. That's the correct answer. Well done. They could be listening.

Chris Gammell: They could be. They could be.

Dave Jones: Do they even know that you do the show? Does anyone at your job know that you actually do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, that's been interesting as I go along. You know, it's been harder to conceal that kind of thing. At my last job, I didn't really tell anyone. But, you know, I think it's smart to talk about it. I mean, like, when I interviewed at a couple different companies, I talked about it, all of them. Because the other thing, too, and interestingly, you know, I talked to a couple companies, and one of them said, yeah, we don't want you to do that anymore. I'm like, well, that's not cool. Well, yeah, screw you. And then they kind of came back, and they said, well. Oh, because. Did they give a raise? No, just focus on work and that kind of thing. And they came back and said, well, as long as they didn't take up too much time. Well, interestingly, I talked to them later, and I forget what it was. The interaction that was, like, basically one employee talked to another saying, you know, what are you doing spending this time outside of work doing that kind of thing? It was basically, like, it, like, showed, like, no, no, this would have definitely been a problem if I had taken that job. Yeah. So. Right. I don't know. It's just been weird for that kind of stuff, you know? It's just.

Dave Jones: Hmm. Okay.

Chris Gammell: I wouldn't think it would affect you, but it can.

Dave Jones: Interesting.

Chris Gammell: I wouldn't think if cooking was a hobby, if, you know, someone would be like, well, you're spending too much time cooking. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: But.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Hey, well, no. Some companies I've interviewed at, yeah, that's a problem. Oh, really? Believe it or not. I have, oh, come on, I'm sure I've mentioned this on here, but what's the bloody name of the company? The guy with the most number of patents in the world.

Chris Gammell: Oh, Nathan Mirvold in Intellectual Ventures?

Dave Jones: No, no, no. Oh. No. Oh, I'm having a, I'm having a brain fart here. Somebody, people are probably screaming at their speakers right now, you know?

Chris Gammell: Keep willing, and Dave will get it eventually, folks. Clap your hands.

Dave Jones: I do have these brain farts occasionally. And I can't remember. He is getting older, folks. Anyway. I am. They do the print technology. And they've got like 10 million variations of the one patent, and he's got like 2,000 patents. Yeah. I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Right. Anyway, I went for a job there. They're super secretive, right? And this is before the blog, right? Yeah. Yeah. I have my websites and everything else. So all that stuff was on there, you know, on my resume, of course. Yeah. And I, you know, get in there for the interview, and all the technical guys love me, right? They'd all sign me off, you know? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I went through the two or three technical interviews, and they're fine. So then I went to meet the big, well, the second guy there. It was completely flat structure. There's one guy and then everyone else. But apparently there was, he had like a cohort or something. So I met with him, and, you know, he just looks at my resume and goes and shakes his head. And I'm going, why? And he didn't talk, you know, one of those ones who just doesn't want to talk to you and, you know, psychs you out and everything. So I said, you know, look, is it the, you know, the things I do outside of work? And he sort of gives a little sort of nod. And I go, well, what are the limits, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What if I was to write a book about gardening outside of work? Would that be okay? And he shook his head.

Chris Gammell: He didn't say anything at this entire point?

Dave Jones: No, no. No, basically didn't, you know, didn't say anything. He was just trying to, you know, trying to, you know. Sign the treatment, cold shoulder. Yeah, intimidate me. I've never had that.

Chris Gammell: That is a dick move.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. It's a bad move. Yeah. What a, you know, what an asshole. It's like, yeah, they would not, they were that paranoid. They would not let me write a book about, you know, or do any, you know, or have a blog to do with bloody gardening or something. As you said, or cooking.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Even though it's got nothing to do with the industry.

Chris Gammell: It's like at the end of the interview, you go, well, I was going to ask you about what you like doing outside of work, but we already know you don't like anything. So, see you later.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what a bunch of dicks it was at that point.

Chris Gammell: You know, like, you need that. I think people need that enrichment outside of work. I don't care what it is. You just need something outside of work because you get inspiration from that, right? If you keep focusing on the same problem every day, man, you're never going to get it right. You need people, there are no original ideas. You pull inspiration from other things, you know, and then you say you're a biologist, you'll look at a butterfly and be like, oh, I could use this. You know, I could integrate some kind of straw structure to suck up the nectar, you know. I don't know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Silverbrook. Silverbrook. Silverbrook. I don't know if I've heard of that. Silverbrook. Kia Silverbrook is the guy's name.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: 4,573 patents, supposedly, which he just had to all sign over. We've talked about this before. He, yeah, all his investors got pissed off and they finally gave him the flick after a decade and said, look, piss off and we're taking all your patents too, by the way. Up the ass, get out. Yikes. And, yeah, so, anyway, that was the company, by the way, folks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, that's crazy, man. Well, and, you know, so speaking of secrecy, so I had posted a question about bombs, bill of materials, right? Because, you know, I get sensitive about this stuff too. It's not just like, I don't obviously talk about work on here, like, specifically. And I wouldn't. I mean, like, that's just something I wouldn't do. But I get kind of antsy too, even with, like, vendors and, like, distributors and stuff like that. You know, some... Asking for your bomb. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, did you used to do that kind of thing?

Dave Jones: I had a phone call from Element 14 the other day. Oh, yeah? You know, they want me to get an account with them. Oh, you want to sign up for a 30-day credit account? Oh, no, not really happy with my credit card. But it's of benefit to you. And we can get you. Send us your bombs. And we'll, you know, and we'll quote for you. We've got a competitive quote system. Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, like, some of it, like, some of the times I'm like, well, what's the big deal, right? I mean, like, I already have, you know, anyone I'm dealing with on a professional basis, I usually have some kind of NDA with them, you know, like, on some level. And so it's like... And they always remind me of that. And it's true, right? I mean, it is. It's like, well, yeah, I could tell you anything. But it's, at the same time, I also interact with people on a daily basis. And I know what they say to me based on other companies. It's just like, well, you know, it's just like... Right.

Dave Jones: It's just like... Screw the NDA.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's not even NDA. It's just like kind of like generic stuff. Like, oh, well, you know, I was doing this thing at work the other day. It's like, well, I know it's a company down the road probably. And it's just like, you know, it's just a matter of how much you want to have out there versus how much you want to have back. I mean, like, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, I think for a bomb, I mean, there's no fear of giving somebody your bomb in confidence if that's going to help your, you know, if that's going to help your procurement or whatever, if that's going to help your job. Right. It's maybe different, for example, like open source hardware. Right. Big deal. Right. You can do all your open... I virtually never see anyone do this. Right. And I don't do it myself. And there's a reason for it. Right. You develop your open source hardware product. You publish everything. Right. Including your bomb. Yeah. But it's the simple version of your bomb. Right. I've got a version of the bomb which I release to the public, put on the website. Right. Which just has, you know... Op-amp. Just has the description and op-amp. Right. And tells you the part number. Yeah. But then I've got a more extensive bomb in the background, which is my, you know, secret, which has all the vendors that I get them from. Yeah, the links. And the vendor prices. Yeah. And the alternatives. And, you know, all that stuff which takes 90% of your... That's all your hard work.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that sort of stuff, you know... That's the one click kind of, like, I want to order 100 boards at once versus...

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: ...versus someone else, you know, ordering 100 for them and then you're out of parts, you know, because you're using the same links, you know, like that.

Dave Jones: Exactly. It saves somebody months of work to do all that and find all the prices and find the suppliers and find the alternatives and all, you know, and if you give that away, well...

Chris Gammell: Oh, you're even saying from, like, a competitive standpoint. And somebody can just push a button. So you're doing...

Dave Jones: From a competitive standpoint.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. So that... See, that's interesting because we've talked before about the, you know, like where you draw that line in open source hardware, right? Some people do it at the schematic. Mm-hmm. There's an old article I actually found about Raspberry Pi where they actually drew the line based on, you know, trying to maintain vendor relationships because they're getting, you know, upfront pricing and stuff like that. So they only did the schematic at first. Right, of course. Versus the whole, you know, the Gerbers and everything. And it's like, yeah, you know, like that is just kind of how they got through it. We grumbled about it, obviously, when we first found out about it. But at the same time, you know, they obviously, how big they've gotten, it almost seems like a necessity, right? I mean, like because you have to negotiate deals, there is the business side on the back end.

Dave Jones: Well, and that's the thing. With open source hardware, yes, everyone, you release all the information so that people can hack it themselves. And if they want, they can go into competition with you, right? It's not good karma to go into direct competition with the original designer if they're already in the business. That's one of my, you know, rules of unwritten rules in quote marks of open source hardware. Right. That's been around for donkey's years, ever since I'm, before I was born. And yeah, that's, that's, you know, like you just don't give away. I don't know anyone who sort of gives away all that information because, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right, well, because you want to offer a more convenient option. If you are a manufacturer, you want to have, you know, here, get what this is made of or buy it for me. Because, you know, I'd like to make some money on this design I worked on. Or even, you know, I worked on optimizing the manufacturability or something. You know, there are different levels of how people do it. And it's like, yeah, you don't want to just be like, here, click this now. I mean, like.

Dave Jones: And yeah, so these lines have to be drawn somewhere. Like, where do you draw the line? Oh, should you even make a profit on the things? Right. No, well, you know, some people, some purists in quote marks might think, oh, no, you have to release all of your production bomb with all your supplier information. And please give us the contact phone numbers of people you dealt with and the supplier. Right, give us your shipping number.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And the PCB assembler that you're using. So we can also make use of your paste, your stainless steel stencil, your solder stencil that you bought. Like, where do you draw the line, right?

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's got to be, you know, it's got to be at that base, you know, usually it happens at that base minimum. You release enough information so that people can, if they want to, reproduce it themselves.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But you're probably a fool if you give them all that work that you've done. Yeah. Especially if you're in the business side of things. If you're, you know, if you're a little startup and you're trying to make money out of open source hardware, great, awesome. You're a fool if you give away all your production info.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right, yeah. I think, anyway. I think for the, the other thing with the bomb is that, so on the back end, I've had a little more exposure, you know, in the past couple years versus before about just like the actual manufacturability side of things from a, you know, like a regular business standpoint. Non-open source hardware. But like, you know, when you are doing pricing and stuff like that, the price is not dependent on anything other than, you know, how bad you need that part. So if, that's kind of my other, my other constraint against it. It's like, you know, I enjoy working with vendors. You know, I don't mind telling them what parts I'm using and, you know, getting support. Obviously, it's in exchange for support and everything like that. Of course. But at the same time, if I say, yes, I'm definitely using this part right here, there is no chance I'll use anything else. Well, they're going to go tell their, they're purchasing people that. And then, you know, when I go to get quotes on it, it's like, Chris is buying this part. Well, of course we're going to charge more for it. It's like, you know, you know that it's going to happen. Right. And why wouldn't they do that? I mean, if I was on that end of things, if I knew someone was going to use this part and they didn't have any other opportunities to do anything else, they didn't have any backups or, you know, it's how all these vendors are moving to unique footprints, you know, so you're basically at least have a board turn in there. Yeah, yeah. It's like, man, yeah. It's like that. You want me to tell you what my bomb is? Then you go ahead and you make sure that you, that I have a second source. And I know that you're not doing that for me. So let's just go ahead and say, maybe I'll keep a couple of cards close to my vest. You know, it's like, I really, I mean, I love all the people I work with, like vendors and distributors are really great people. But it's like, man, it's just like this, this internal tension. It's just like, ah, you know, it's just like, ah.

Dave Jones: It's kind of like liking the people who work in your marketing department, right? Right. You like the people, but you hate marketing, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Yeah, I want to work with them. I want to help them out. I want to give them what they need to sell something. But then you just want to punch them in the face as well. Well, yeah. I mean, it's like, yeah, it's like, well, okay, I want to give you this feature, but I also don't want to stay, you know, every night until midnight to get it done for you because you also attach some ridiculous timeline to it, right? Because it's just, you know, maybe there's not context for that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01: Right. So, oh boy.

Chris Gammell: It's just a balance, right? I mean, it's like anything. It's just a balance of, you know, personal relationships and getting stuff done, you know? Like, there's just that balance point. Right. That's the part of engineering that I never saw coming.

Dave Jones: Engineers don't do personal relationships well. Engineers are generally, generically, you know, pretty unsocial animals.

Chris Gammell: I think they're getting better. I think in general, I think the younger generation is just more connected because they have to be, right? Or because they, you know, they live on Facebook or whatever. I think that hurts in other ways, right? We've talked about just like the general disparity in technical skill coming out of college in the 70s versus these days, right? I mean, just because not only of the focus, the extreme focus you need to get through an engineering program like that because, you know, how rigorous it was, but also like the fact that you had to do everything, right? You had to do all the math, right? It was just a much more focused study, I think. And these days, you can be a little less focused, more broad. Well, there's more stuff. Right. And you have to be these days because there's more stuff.

Dave Jones: There's more technology these days. They have to teach more stuff.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. You might not be learning machine code. You're probably learning C++ or Java or Python.

Dave Jones: And then you'll be learning MATLAB. Right, exactly. Yeah, you'll be learning the whole, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So much shit to learn these days.

Chris Gammell: There is a lot to learn these days.

Dave Jones: 20 years ago, they wouldn't teach you FPGAs. They didn't exist.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: They wouldn't teach you high-definition languages. Right. They didn't exist.

Chris Gammell: Hardware definition languages. Hardware definition. You said that last time, too.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I've made that mistake before. That's okay. That's what I meant. Yeah. People know what I meant. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. HDL. Yeah. Yeah, there's actually, so there's a new site about this. So it's actually a nonprofit. It's about programming because, you know, it's just become such an essential skill, obviously. But it's kind of a weird sell. So, like, you go to code.org, right? And then you watch this video and you're like, it's kind of like, all right, we get it. Coding is important, but you don't need to have, like, you don't need to, like, keep throwing it in my face like this. I don't know. Just like, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I've seen this video. Yeah. I've seen this video. Yeah. They've got, like, Bill Gates and they've got Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. And they've got, you know, all sorts of people in there. And then... Highly polished, highly produced video telling you how wonderful it is to learn programming. Right.

Chris Gammell: And then they have Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas. Yeah, that's right. And I'm just like, where... I mean, like, all right, so first off, I do respect Will.i.am and the Black Eyed Peas for doing that. They did that STEM concert a while back. And I do respect them for that very highly.

Dave Jones: They've been involved with lots of space stuff recently. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of NASA projects and stuff like that, yeah. Which is cool.

Chris Gammell: But then they, like, quote him and he's like, like, coders are new rock stars. That's all there is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Come on, really? Come on, really? Are you sure? Did you see Mark Zuckerberg? We just saw him talk, right? It's like... He's rich. So, who's going to be... Yeah, so we... It's like, you know, it's good that Will.i.am is very involved. That is good. But it's like, some of this is just kind of... I don't know. And the charity is a very good idea, too. But, I mean, in general.

Dave Jones: Of course. But who's going to... If the whole world learns programming, who's going to produce the freaking hardware that you're programming?

Chris Gammell: Well, we are. And then we're going to charge a lot.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Keep it a secret. Well, you know, I wonder about that. Secret squirrel for people in the know. Yeah. Yeah, people. Yeah, engineers get... Hardware engineers get paid a million bucks a year.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's the future we want.

Chris Gammell: Right. I dig it. I dig it.

Dave Jones: I mean, I think it's just going to... I've got to pay for my retirement, right? So, you know, Sagan, you know... Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's going to school. He's going to end up in, you know, engineering. So, yeah, he'll end up in the secret squirrel club earning a million bucks a year and pays for daddy's retirement.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Thank you very much. I don't think that stuff ever holds up. You know, like, eventually someone's going to write an article with, hardware is the best way to make tons of money. And then everybody shifts over there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's a five-year lag.

Dave Jones: Software is the best way to make money.

Chris Gammell: You know, it's just like...

Dave Jones: Well, that happened during the IT... It did, yeah. The dot-com boom, right? It did. The IT boom, right? People, you were... And during the boom where you got, you know, your certification, like you got your Microsoft or your Cisco, you know, all those, you know, networking certifications. If you got one of those, right, you were guaranteed a $200,000 a year job at the time. That much, really? It was going batshit. Well, I don't know. Maybe I'm exaggerating a tad. But, yeah, it just went batshit crazy. Yes, it did. And then all of a sudden the whole bottom fell out of the market and there's all these people going, I switched my career for this. And now I can't even get a $40,000 a year job.

SPEAKER_01: No one likes Java.

Chris Gammell: No one needs a Microsoft certified technician.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Suck, dude.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And to those people who are listening and getting back into hardware, we congratulate you because, come on, hardware. We salute you. Hardware rocks. And actually, so we've been seeing this too. I mean, I don't know if you've been seeing any articles, but South by Southwest, which is a festival down in Austin, there's tons of hardware startups down there. Like, that's just like, that's what everybody's writing the articles about this year. And...

Dave Jones: Yep, yep. It's cool. Every man his dog's doing a bloody startup.

Chris Gammell: I feel like we should really say there are no real hardware startups because no one makes just hardware anymore, right? I mean, with maybe the exception of like Touchstone, right? I mean, because they're doing, they're actually, you know, they're making, they're out and product as chips.

Dave Jones: Well, you're talking large scale startups here, right? Not just one midnight engineer in his garage doing an open source hardware product.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I'm talking like VC type funded stuff. You know, like, like VCs are funding like, you know, gadget, Bluetooth, pretty interface on an iPhone kind of thing. You know, like that's... Got it. You know, that's what they're all funding these days. And it's like, yeah, okay, I get that. And if you look at, there's other stuff though too. I mean, like, like there was a, oh shoot, I should have, I should have put this article in there. But there was a 3D camera. It's not, not a camera. It's, it looks like a, like a tablet. It probably is the guts of a tablet. But basically you, you basically hit, hit record and you walk around something. And basically it has accelerometers in there and, and some kind of position sensing, probably, you know, gyro accelerometer type stuff. Yeah, yeah. Basically it, it pieces that all together, much like a one, two, three D catch does with actual still images. This does it in real time. That's right. And then it pops out a, an image, which are a 3D, 3D model, which is cool. Got it. It's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, fine.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Uh, but you know, hardware's.

Dave Jones: It reminds me of, I think it was Jeremy Blum who's been on the show before. I think he tweeted the other day yesterday that I read, I thought it was funny. He said, uh, if you're coming to me with your startup idea and it starts with, it's like Facebook, but then go away or something like that. I'm paraphrasing, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's like, oh boy. Well, I heard rumor too, that he might've had a hand in that new MakerBot scanner too.

Dave Jones: So I'm not sure if that was a public, but, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, it was. Okay. He did the electronics. Oh, cool. Cause he's been working for MakerBot. I don't know whether it's full time or, or, or as a contractor for, you know, 12 months or something now. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Cause he did the, he did that, uh, that board on the replicator as well. So.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Yep. That's right. So yeah. So they got him to do the board. I don't know apart from that, how much he's been involved in it, but yeah, he certainly did do the board.

Chris Gammell: Seems cool. Definitely. Yep. So many, many congrats to Jeremy on his, uh, continued success. Of course, uh, you must attribute some of it to being on the Amp Hour. I'm sure. I'm sure. Of course. None of his past, uh, you know, impressive resume items. So. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And if you haven't seen this code video.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Eh. Oh, it's worth watching. No, it's worth watching. Come on. It's okay. It's all right. It's worth watching. Yeah. I tweeted it. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah. It's worth watching. Yeah. So anyway, eh, not that exciting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So no real segue here, but, uh, I was listening to the, the, the economist the other day.

Dave Jones: We are professional. I know. I know. The economist. You're going back to all your business. You might as well get your bloody MBA.

Chris Gammell: No. No. Yes. No, this is good. So they, they do a technology, every quarter they do a technology section, like a big chunk of the magazine.

Dave Jones: Admit it. You love reading about business and, you know, seven habits of highly effective people and shit like that.

Chris Gammell: I do like that stuff. I do like that stuff.

Dave Jones: You've got MBA written all over you. It's stamped on your forehead.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I'll do it without an MBA. Maybe I'll just, uh, do a thing. Right.

Dave Jones: Do it the old fashioned way. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Hmm. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I tell my, so my friend's going for an MBA and I'm like, you know, like I, I told him, I'm like, you know, he's, he's real stressed about getting into school and everything. I'm like, why don't you just go work for a startup? And I think, I think unfortunately the answer is a lot of startups want you to have an MBA. Some of them don't, but you know, like it's like this, you know, that would really give you context for actually like at that point, you know, you'd actually be useful going to get an MBA after that. Right. You'd be like, oh, well, I definitely need to learn this and this stuff's crap. And you know, like, you know, you can go tell a teacher something, be like, raise your hand, be like, this is, this isn't how it is. You know, like, like people that go back to engineering school like that too. Like they, you know, you, you know, that like, oh yeah, I've done that. They're a thing, but they're not necessarily relevant to everyday life.

Dave Jones: You know, it's just take it from me. They don't like that when you raise your hand and tell them how it works in the real world. Right, right, right. It's not appreciated.

Chris Gammell: I bet. Yeah. But still you do it, right? I mean, you still got to do it. Oh, of course. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You can't, you can't help yourself. Yeah. Well, at least I can't. Of course. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But anyway, so this, this, this, this article in the Economist was talking about modeling of RF on, on airplanes. So basically, you know how. Oh, right. Wi-Fi is, is kind of ramping up in airplanes now. Um, and.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because they're putting, I was on a plane last month where they had an iPad in the back seat. Yeah. And it's all Wi-Fi. Right, right, right. It's all Wi-Fi.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And a lot of, a lot of commercial flights around here, you can, you can get, you can, you know, pay like eight bucks for like your flight and, you know, get Wi-Fi, get relatively slow Wi-Fi access and, you know, it talks satellite and everything. Um, yep. But basically because it's, you're in a big metal tube, right? It's really hard to model that apparently. And so this, I was cracking up at this article because apparently, you know, instead of actually hiring people to, uh, go and sit in seats, you know, because you'd have to shuffle everybody in, sit them down, do a bunch of measurements and, you know, get sensors everywhere. What they found is that if you get sacks of potatoes, it actually replicates human beings sitting in seats.

SPEAKER_01: Which is great. We're all just sacks of potatoes. We're just sacks of potatoes. Yeah. And I'm sure that's what, that's all management think of. Yeah, exactly. Very do but like. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: So they said they had 20,000 pounds of potatoes. They brought them in, slammed them down in seats. And basically they, they had a, you know, 90% plus efficient model of what they referred to as the human bag of brine. What, you know, we are all bags of brine. So, uh.

SPEAKER_01: Did they draw like little, little smiley faces on them?

Chris Gammell: We can only hope. I, I, they didn't have that much details, but, uh.

SPEAKER_01: Ah, this is great.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. So, uh. Next time you're sitting in a, on an airplane and, and, uh, cursing about your, cursing, cursing about your crappy wifi signal, you just paid 12 bucks for, uh, blame Idaho.

Dave Jones: Right. And, and this is for, this is for, uh, RF absorption. Right, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, cause yeah, like 2.4 gig is pretty absorptive at, I think, HTO levels, right? I mean, like it, the HTO absorbs that pretty well.

Dave Jones: It's, well, your, yeah, well the, uh, the resonant frequency of the water molecules in your body is 2.45.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. So it's pretty darn close. Right. So you only get, but.

Dave Jones: I, I don't know whether or not that makes, I don't think that makes a difference cause you either resonate or you don't. So, you know, it's kind of, you know, so either you're spot on or you're not, I don't think there's much, you know, leeway there. If anyone knows the physics of the 2.4 gig, as opposed to 2.45, which they use in the microwave, sure. It's hundreds of Watts as opposed to, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Watts.

Dave Jones: Many orders of magnitude less than that. Yeah. But still, um, could you get hundreds of Watts of 2.4 gig and it would be a problem like 2.45 would. Mm. Interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, yeah. Sure, someone does. I mean, you think about like the actual bandwidth you need to, you know, actually take up, to go from 2.45 to 2.46, there is a lot of bandwidth in there. You know.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. There's a lot of usable stuff you can stick in there. Right. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Different than AM, right? Where you're down in the hundreds of kilohertz, right? It's just like, oof.

Dave Jones: AM? That's amplitude, dude.

Chris Gammell: I know, but the AM band in the US is like, it's like, I think it's like 600 kilohertz up to like 2 megahertz. Right.

Dave Jones: The entire band. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just like AM, AM broadcast, not the, the AM broadcast band, not, not the, yeah, the actual AM is the method of encoding. Right.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: You almost got me, Dave.

Dave Jones: Someone's got to keep you honest. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, there's, there was another, so I obviously went through this whole, this whole magazine, but there was another article in there about the sharing economy, right? So like, you know, Airbnb is a big thing and there's a couple of, you know, a couple other, there's a lot of companies doing that kind of thing. But I was wondering about it. Like there, there really doesn't, it doesn't exist for test and measurement gear yet. I mean, do you think that kind of thing would ever actually happen? I mean, for scopes and.

Dave Jones: I don't think so. I've got a friend of mine did a startup in competition with Airbnb or kind of.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Sort of in, well, in competition, well, but it failed though. Oh, okay. They realized they couldn't make, they couldn't actually make any money from it, but it was kind of, sort of in a similar field to Airbnb. But no, in this space for, no, rental test equipment, they're kind of doing this in Australia. There's a startup in Australia. It's been going for a while. It's called like the shed or something or the backyard shed or something where you open your tool shed up and you hire stuff that you own to people. Right, right, right. And they come around and they borrow it. Yeah. I'm not sure of the exact mechanism, but you know, yeah, it's the same thing, right? You could, it doesn't matter whether it's a power tool or whether it's a, you know, a scope or something like that. So. Okay. But I don't think it's taken off and I don't think it will. People just love owning their own toys and it's inconvenient, right? It kills your enthusiasm. If you have to go and drive somewhere and pay money and pick up a scope to come back and reuse it and, you know, to work on your project, your enthusiasm has just died. Yeah. Right there. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if it'd be for, you know. I guess the real thing would be like critical mass.

Dave Jones: Well, it'd be for high end stuff. Right, exactly. If anything, it'd be for high end.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: But there's already companies out there that do that. There's a, well, there is, I'm sure there is in the U S but here in Australia, I can go out to a test equipment rental company. I can rent a $50,000 scope for a day for 300 bucks or something. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I guess that would be the main thing is just like the size of the market and everything too, right? So if, if there's only, you know, 50,000 engineers and only, you know, a hundred of them need a gigahertz, you know, 60 gigahertz spectrum analyzer at any time, then, you know, then yeah.

Dave Jones: So that I've, I, as yeah, working at companies, I've done that before. I've made extensive use of rental, you know, test equipment rental companies. Yeah. We need something for a week. We'll hire it. Yeah. And, uh, because, well, you know, you're trying to get something past management to, you know, you know, you fill out your, I want to buy this $50,000 scope, trying to get the capital for that as, you know, like extracting teeth.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. I guess that's better because with, uh, with like a scope too, it's, it's like, you bring it in, you figure out how to do what you need, or, you know, maybe they, they give you some instruction on that kind of thing and then you do it. Right. And then it goes versus like, I was looking at like rentals for like 3d printers and stuff. And because, because of the, the amount of setup time and the consumables and everything that just didn't really exist yet. But there were a lot of places that, you know, you could send your files to as well. Whereas you can't necessarily send your.

Dave Jones: That has more. Yeah. I don't.

Chris Gammell: Test data.

Dave Jones: No. So if anyone wants to get into the test equipment rental business, it's a, it's already covered and B it's a, it's a non-starter. People just aren't going to do it. So.

Chris Gammell: What's the craziest thing you rented?

Dave Jones: Their existing company, there's a niche market out there and the existing companies are already covering it. Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: What's the craziest piece of equipment you rented? Was it a super, super high bandwidth scope?

Dave Jones: Uh, no, like, um, mechanical pressure calibrators and, you know, stuff like that, which, which you wouldn't have in. Just stuff. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Just stuff that was rare.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah. But there's a business there. Some sort of, you know, a rare vibration or shock sensor that we didn't have, you know, something like that. You would rent it. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's probably a business. It's probably just boring.

Dave Jones: And then the companies, I've probably talked about it before. Companies have no problem renting stuff and then they forget about it. Yeah. We've rented stuff for years. Yeah. Right. Yep. And yet, because it goes on a separate set of books to your capital expenditure.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: You know, so yeah, you can't afford that $50,000 scope, but you can afford $200,000 to rent it for a year. Right. You know, I mean, hey, this is Dilbert land, right? Yep. It's real.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Crazy. That is crazy.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Big corporate. Speaking of renting things, so Intel has a lot of capital equipment on their books, right? And, uh... You think? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They got a shitload. And so, so they're fine.

Dave Jones: No, I thought they were just outsourcing everything. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's what a lot of people do, right? So Touchstone, right? We interviewed the guys from Touchstone, and they are fabulous. They are fabulous, yeah. And they work with foundries. And then there's the model where you are already a big company, you do all your own production, and, you know, you do the design, and you do the manufacturing, right? And that's like Intel. Mm-hmm. Well, Intel has now finally jumped into bed with another big vendor, because they've already had, they already had one FPGA vendor that they were working with. I forget who it was. It was like, not Ventix, or it was something like, you know, some X in the name, you know. It was smaller, though. Pneumonix, maybe? Is that right? I don't know. Right. Ah, probably. It was a smaller FPGA vendor, but now they just announced that they're going to be doing a joint partnership with Altera, which is big. That's really big. That's like second biggest. In terms of, I think there's, I don't know who's bigger, actually, these days.

Dave Jones: I probably, I think they might be second biggest behind Xilinx, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Xilinx is pretty big.

Dave Jones: Possibly.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. But let's be honest, folks, there's really only two. I mean, there are more. Sorry, Lattice. Sorry, Micro Semi. There's, you know, it's like.

Dave Jones: No, there's two biggies and everyone knows it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's probably, you know, it's probably like 45, 35. I'm sure there's probably charts out there for market share, but still, who cares?

Dave Jones: There are. I've seen it. Yeah. It's about that. Right. It's, yeah. The others don't even get into 10%, I don't think. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So. And then, yeah, I think we brought the article up on here. I remember I seen an article about a year or two ago. It was like how, you know, every couple of years, you know, someone writes an article about, oh, this is the number five company. And they're like, yeah. Yeah. And then they showed the record of how poorly number five always did. And they just never lasted. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly.

Chris Gammell: I mean, because like Lattice and Micro Semi, so Micro Semi used to be Actel. I mean, they both got their niche. You know, they both do their own thing.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: But they just kind of keep playing in the same markets. You know, it's interesting to see from, to see which ones they all play into, because then they kind of optimize for that stuff too. But yeah, so Altera now gets access to Intel process technology.

Dave Jones: Why? What's that? Well, because they didn't want to expand their fabs or what? Well, Altera doesn't have any fabs. Because I assume, oh, they're fabulous. No, they, yeah. They're completely fabulous.

Chris Gammell: So they go with TSMC currently. And I think maybe UMC as well. I'm pulling that out of my butt. I'm not really sure about that. Okay. Definitely TSMC though. And, you know, so there's just downsides to that, right? Because Xilinx does this exact same fab. I mean, like they're processed next to each other. It's not a security thing, I don't think, so much as a, you know, when you roll your next technology node, then going from, you know, 40 nanometer down to 28 nanometer, there is no process, there is no variable between, you know, getting a chip out the door other than how fast you can verify something, right? So, you know, you design it and you verify it. But that's all, you know, it's all in your, the brain side of things. You know, you have to just get it all out the door so that then they can go make it. Because everybody gets the same node at the same time, mostly. I mean, preferred customers get it first, I think.

Dave Jones: But, well, Altera, they've gone to Intel because they want to use their 14 nanometer stuff.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. And that's the thing.

Dave Jones: So for their less complex stuff, they're going to stick with TSMC. Right. So they're only going to use Intel for their high-end 14 nanometer. Right.

Chris Gammell: 14 nanometer, right?

Dave Jones: That's like half a bee's dick.

Chris Gammell: Not even. It's like an eighth.

Dave Jones: Not even, half a bee's dick. An eighth of a bee's dick. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What if Google does like a bee's dick unit conversion?

Dave Jones: Half a bee's dick translation like it does for, you know, smootz. Smootz, that's right. How many smootz is a bee's dick?

Chris Gammell: Maybe you can lobby them to get that in there. Right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Who would you talk to about getting that put in there? If anyone has a contact at Google who can get bee's dicks put into the official measurement units, that'd be awesome. Please.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, this is interesting, though, because, I mean, Intel's never done this, you know, this. They've done it on a small scale, but now Altera is much, potentially much bigger. And so what you hear, though...

Dave Jones: Well, geez, small scale, they're jumping. I mean, there's basically very few dies bigger than FPGA dies.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right? They are, FPGAs are some of the biggest dies you can get.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but it's followed up by Intel processors, right? I mean, like, those things are, you know, server architecture CPUs are not small.

Dave Jones: No, they're not small, but FPGAs are some of the biggest...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm at small scale, like, roll out, like, number of times they've done this, certain how many wafers they'll roll off the line, that kind of stuff. But the real question there is why they're doing it, because...

Dave Jones: Well, yield, I mean, the size of the die has everything to do with yield, right? And whether or not it's viable, whether or not it's commercially viable. Yeah. Right? The larger the die, the more risk you take that your yield's going to be low.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true. You have to get a lot more stuff right. Like, all your process variation has to be low across the wafer and everything. Yep.

Dave Jones: But, no, what I would... Otherwise, your market is a bad die, and you've just wasted that... Yeah, that chunk of expensive silicon. That part of the wafer.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. No, I was saying more from a higher level, though, is, like, why they're actually doing it is possibly because Intel's losing, right? I mean, like, that's what, you know, you see everybody writing about, is that, oh, well, Intel's kind of finally seeing the light of, oh, crap, no one buys regular processors anymore because they're all buying, you know, ARM.

Dave Jones: So, we've got all this unused factory capacity. We might as well...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, this awesome... I mean, Intel's some of the best in the world. I mean, like, Intel... Oh, of course.

Dave Jones: ...leads the process. They're what they always have been. Yeah. Yeah. They always have been one of the leaders in, you know, fab technology. So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, why not sell it to the highest bidder? Because people should know...

Dave Jones: That's what they're in the bloody business for. I mean, jeez.

Chris Gammell: If you go to Altera and be like, I want your newest 14 nanometer part, right? It's going to be their biggest part, and you're going to pay through the nose. I mean, this is going to be thousands of dollars for these parts, you know? Of course. But they'll be, you know, 14 nanometer. Low power, I'm sure. Lower power. So... Yeah. It'll be cool. Man.

Dave Jones: Cosmic rays must be a bitch at 14 nanometers. I...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't know. Does anyone know? I don't know.

Dave Jones: I mean, jeez. I mean, we're talking... We're getting down to bees... You know, quarter bees dicks. Eight of the bees dicks. Yeah. Unbelievable. Well, we... Anyway, let's talk about... Is it okay... Oh, yeah. ...to steal hardware?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Is it? Is it okay, Dave? Is this a... Well, maybe we should define stealing hardware here, right? So...

Dave Jones: Well, we should define stealing. This was an argument... This is somebody... Sorry, I forget who it was. It's brought it up on the forum. Yeah. And it's an awesome question, and there's been lots of debate over it, in that they were trying to compare... You know, they were trying to compare hardware, like, say, an oscilloscope these days, which has all these software options, right? Yeah. Software upgraded bandwidth, and all that sort of stuff. Is it okay to hack that? Is it stealing?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, if you download software off the internet, and you don't pay for it, I think most of us would be in agreement that that's stealing, right? If you download software off the internet... Yep. You know, if you download a CAD program off the internet, and you get a license key generator, and you run it, and you get that software for free, then that is stealing, right? You're depriving the company of that revenue.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. If you think about it, people... They hire based on those, you know, revenues and everything. Like, they say, well, if we're going to sell a thousand programs this year, we can hire two new programmers, and... Yeah. So, it...

Dave Jones: Now, my contention is that it is different for hardware, because if I buy an oscilloscope, then I have entered into a legal financial agreement with that company. I have purchased the goods, and they become mine, and I can do anything I damn well want with them. And it's your... And if you're stupid enough, as a hardware company, to try and hide stuff in there, that I now have legal ownership of, I've paid you my money, and you want to hide stuff in there, don't complain if I find a way to access it. That's your risk. You took that risk. You have the option. You had... Unlike software, right? Software, basically... Software companies do not have an option to do this, but hardware companies do. They have an option not to hide that stuff in there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay? So, you know, I mean, I think it's fair game. I think when you purchase something, like hardware, money's changed hands, it's yours. You should have the legal right to hack it. See, yeah. And I'm not alone in this respect. In the consumer market, like, there's, you know, now there's huge fights in the industry should you be allowed to jailbreak your phone.

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah. That went to...

Dave Jones: You've purchased your phone. You've paid a thousand bucks for your phone. Should I be allowed to do... I own it. Should I be allowed to do anything you like?

Chris Gammell: Right, that went to the White House, actually. They were asked to comment on it. It did, yeah. It was huge. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Hmm.

Chris Gammell: I haven't been thinking about this.

Dave Jones: And what was the White House's comment on that?

Chris Gammell: They came down on the side that you should be able to unlock the phones, as far as I know. I mean, I've only read a little bit about it, but... Yeah, I don't. Right. Yeah, it's phones. Yeah. Whatever. But it could have implications here, right?

Dave Jones: So I think there's two separate arguments there.

Chris Gammell: You know, it could affect... You know, people could take that as a logical extension, right? You know, if you can't unlock your phone, then why can't you... You know, then you can't unlock your oscilloscope or whatever else, right?

Dave Jones: Well, it's the same thing. Yeah. I think it's the same thing. You've purchased... The thing with hardware is you've purchased it. It's yours. It's a physical item.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you'd think the easy way around this would be... So why can't... You have to put the piece of software on there, right? You know, if you really want to catch people on the act, right? Then you make a piece of hardware, you encrypt a key, an internal key, and an external key, and then you have to download something to it in order to unlock...

Dave Jones: Or buy a physical plug-in module. Right. Buy a physical plug-in module to do it. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And then at that point, that is the point of stealing, and that is the point of criminal entry, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I think it's... You know, it is semantics, right? I mean, because it... Either way, you could say it denies the company of revenue, but on the other hand, it's like, well... I mean, I see where the contention comes from.

Dave Jones: The thing with hardware, yeah. You have... You're not denying the company... Well, you've already given the company revenue, right? You're keeping that company employed. You're buying their product, and you're buying... You know, you're buying a physical item. Money has changed hands. That's different to software, you know, flat-out software piracy, where you haven't given a cent to the company, and you've... You know, a lot of people want to try and muddy the waters and go, well, okay, I've bought a CAD program, you know, and then they charge you options for the... You know, they charge you extra to get, you know... Oh, yeah. The nickel and dime you. Unlimited pin count instead of 10,000. Right, right. Right. You know, it's a different matter. It's a different argument. I take them each on their merits. So I think with hardware, yes, if I buy it, hand over my money, it's mine. Tough titties. Don't complain if I find a way to hack your oscilloscope. Yeah. I think it's, you know... If you were dumb enough to hide it in there.

Chris Gammell: Like, the demand level, right, at the beginning of the show with the bombs and stuff like that. I think that's probably what I'd go back to here, right? I mean, like, you're basically buying... You're buying everything at once, right? If you're buying a scope that has internal features that are, you know, unlockable that you then find, you know, you were just a... You were no longer a captive audience because you know how to unlock them. I guess that would be the way I'd look at it. I don't know. It's...

Dave Jones: And that's the risk the company takes by making the conscious, unforced decision to include and hide those features in a hardware product.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Now, what you could probably do is if, say, someone made a YouTube video about how to unlock a Rigol oscilloscope, you could probably go after that person, you know, for, like, revealing trade secrets or something. I don't know. But at the same time, like, I don't... You could, but they didn't.

Dave Jones: They didn't. You're right. In fact, they continue to...

Chris Gammell: They probably sold more scopes that way, to be honest.

Dave Jones: I know for a fact they sold more scopes. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like... Yeah. You know. Yeah. It was good for the company. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so you have to... I mean, like, that... Yes. You have to look at that as a, you know, how much did they gain from that versus how much did they lose? It's like, well, if it was just another scope, then, yeah, no one would have bought it. You know? I got a Rigol. I enjoy it. And... I didn't hack it. Well, yeah. I didn't... No one lost out in my case. I bought it and said I was going to. And then I'm like, I don't need this yet, so whatever.

Dave Jones: Well, in the case of... There are some cases like that. I won't say it's the case of Rigol, but some companies will actually lie to you. Oh? They will lie that, oh, no, trust me, when we sell you the 100 megahertz version or we sell you the 1 gigahertz version, it's physically different when it's actually not.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: So that takes it to another level again when a company will lie to you. Yeah. So... But I know for a fact, and I mentioned this on the forum, I won't name names, but there are more than one hardware company has sent to me that they accept the fact that people will hack their products. That is the risk they take. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it's a lock thing, right? It's like, you know, locks aren't there to stop criminals. They're there to stop trustworthy people, right? I mean, if you want to make that comparison, because I don't think that people that hack are criminals necessarily.

Dave Jones: And the people that hack it are never going to buy your, you know, $10,000 oscilloscope anyway. They just can't afford it.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. Yet. Yet the reason that might entice them to buy your lower end product is because they can hack it. So you're actually, this is where you're actually getting sales where you wouldn't have got them before.

Dave Jones: Exactly. That's where the, some, there's actually, like we said with Rygal, they actually made a killing selling these scopes because the hack was revealed.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's, you know, that's sales they wouldn't have gotten before.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's weird, right? I mean, that, that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know.

Chris Gammell: It's a whole level of economics that I don't understand at all. I should go get an MBA.

Dave Jones: And it's hard to get real numbers on it, but no. No. I think, but I think it's my right. If I pay money for a product, it's mine. And in the privacy of my own home or lab, I can do anything I damn well like with it.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. I completely agree with that. And it's like, it takes, as soon as you, you know, you start doing other things, it might take a turn. Like if you started, you know, modifying from other people, then yeah, maybe if you made a business out of that. Oh no, that's different. Yeah, that's different.

Dave Jones: If you made a business and you may, you know, you reverse engineered all this software and released the source code, you know, that's all like, that's a red herring. Right. Let's not.

Chris Gammell: No, yeah, yeah. I agree. I mean, that's what I'm saying that like, you know, you could take small steps away from it, but at the base of it, I do agree that if, if I buy a piece of hardware, it is mine. I am allowed to do whatever I want with it because that's how, that's how it works. I mean, like.

Dave Jones: And, and if you hide, if you attempt to hide something in there, well, that's your risk.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Dave Jones: Excellent. All right. We agree on something. One thing. We have. Except for the chip printing machine, which is never going to happen.

Chris Gammell: Ah, yeah. We should talk. So, I'd, so, okay. So, so here's the thing. Uh, we have the 2013 survey coming up. I'm going to put that out soon after the show.

Dave Jones: The Amp Hour survey.

Chris Gammell: The Amp Hour listener survey for 2013. Actually, I'm going to post it with the show. Um, so people can fill that out. That is great. Uh, so how is this related to chip printers?

Dave Jones: Because it, well, it, it, it helps us because if you could fill it out, because then we have data to give to potential advertisers here. It's a pure, purely, uh, selfish thing on our part. Right. Um, apart from we, you know, it's interesting stuff to know who actually listens. Yeah. But no, it's so that we have data to give to potential advertisers and sponsors, which will ultimately help the show go if we can actually find a way to make money from it.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. And in the meantime, so we don't disappear. Right.

Dave Jones: So Chris goes, Oh, I'm not making any money from this.

Chris Gammell: I'm not going to do it anymore. No, no. Come on. All right. Uh, no, but the other nice thing is that, so, okay. So because people have, you know, been very, you know, they've, they've interacted with our advertisers and we've made money from it and everything we are going to give back. And one of the things is, uh, so from this, this survey, uh, there's going to be a contest at the end and you'll be able to put in your email. If, if you're interested, you don't have to do it. Uh, you can put in your email, put in your name. We'll put them all into a drawing. And so the amp hour is going to have t-shirts finally.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: Have we even decided on design yet?

Chris Gammell: I haven't seen it yet. We have not, but we, we get some time. So we're going to, we're going to wait at least, you know, two weeks for the surveys results to come back in because we know some people listen later. Um, and so we can, uh, you know, we got some time on the t-shirt stuff and that's actually so the chip printer thing was working into the, might be on a t-shirt. Well, we don't know yet, but, uh. Well, t-shirt walk around. Oh, I own a chip printer. I was thinking, I was thinking, I want to believe.

Dave Jones: A chip printer. I want to believe.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So I have something like that.

Dave Jones: And so if, if anyone's got any great slogans, please leave them in the comments. We would love to have t-shirt slogans. And if there's any good ones, we'll get them printed. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so, and so the other thing is we're going to have a web shop too. So if people are interested after the fact, then we'll actually, we'll leave the t-shirts up there and we'll have more contests throughout the year and stuff. So, uh, kind of the idea is to kind of do it like Car Talk. They have the, uh, shameless commerce division. That'll be kind of like our, our Car Talk, uh, shameless commerce division. But, uh, yeah.

Dave Jones: And who's doing the t-shirts? Is it going to be through print, print fiction?

Chris Gammell: Yes, it will. Because then they can ship them for us. Right. Then we don't have to do anything.

Dave Jones: And we'll get a reasonable cut out of those as opposed to Zazzle where you don't get, you only get like 10% or something. It's pretty lame.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. So, uh, that'll be. And that money goes into the coffers to help us pay for.

Chris Gammell: More t-shirts. Server. Space. And servers and everything else.

Dave Jones: And bandwidth and more t-shirts.

Chris Gammell: Yep. And it just keeps building.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: What else should we talk about? We are almost out of time for the week, but, uh. We are. Hmm. What else do we have here? Hmm. Oh, so speaking of.

Dave Jones: Cree's making light bulbs or who cares.

Chris Gammell: If there's, uh, if there are US listeners, I think there might be one or two. Um, we talked about it in the past about a patent troll who's going after podcasters. Uh. Oh. Yeah, right? There, there actually is a thing. This guy's going after podcasters. But there, there is a S.H.I.E.L.D. act if you, if you, if you're into that. I don't think they'd ever come after us. We're kind of small potatoes compared to like Adam Carole and everything. But, uh, if you're in the US and you want to read this S.H.I.E.L.D. act and you want to call your senator, that could potentially help us someday. So, uh, that's a thing. Yeah. It.

Dave Jones: I, I, I, one part of me wishes that they did just so that we can.

Chris Gammell: What, co-after us? Tell them to stick it. Oh. Well, you know, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is, is actually helping support this act and, and actually trying to reform patent stuff because patents suck, man. I've been, I've been reading patents lately. I've been, I've been interested in this one technology and, and reading patents. And I'm just like, I can't believe there are so many resources devoted to this. Honestly. Like, it's just, it is unbelievable. It is just, ah, it's, I mean, like some of it's good.

Dave Jones: I, I support patents for genuinely. Right. Innovative, you know, really, really freaking, you know, genius, innovative stuff. You know, but. Yeah, it's a tough way to draw that line though too, right? It's a, I mean like. It's a 99%, it's 99.9%. Yeah. It's hard to draw the line, but it's got to be like 99.9% at least that are just garbage and unworthy. Yeah. Has to be at least that percentage.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, and, and reading through them is just mind numbing. I don't know. I don't know how patent attorneys do it, to be honest. Like.

Dave Jones: My brother-in-law's a patent attorney. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We might have to have him on sometime to ask him about it, you know, just by. I mean, and I'm sure it's different between Australia and the States too. I mean, like, I'm sure there's a lot of similarities, but.

Dave Jones: Probably. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I know, I know a guy that's a patent, what's that, a grantor? Not, the patent.

Dave Jones: Patent examiner. That's it. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Thank you. Yeah. And, you know, hearing stories about that stuff and you know, like, oh, it just sounds terrible. And it's just how many people they have to do it. I mean, they, I think an examiner only does like, like 30 to 50 patents a year and because you know, they have to go through all the.

Dave Jones: Is that all?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's not much. So you think about how many they need, right? You need a lot of examiners.

Dave Jones: Jeez, how many people would they need? Right. I mean, like.

Chris Gammell: That's ridiculous. A lot of costs there.

Dave Jones: And most of them know jack shit, right? Most of them know jack shit about what they're doing. Really. Yeah. That's why you see all these patents granted and you go, how could, geez, if you were in the industry, you would know that 10 million people have already done that. Yeah. But. You know, like. Were we talking about that? Because all they do is search freaking Google, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But who was, I was talking to someone about that. I don't know. Got too many podcasts. But basically it's the patent examiners. They're not meant to, they don't have to know about the, you know, they're basically just looking up the claims and making sure that those are valid against prior art and everything. Was that you telling me that? I don't know. Oh, I don't know.

Dave Jones: It probably wasn't me. But prior art includes knowledge of the industry and that ever present, you know, elephant in the room that, you know, it's not, that the patent should not be obvious to any practitioner in the field. No, but that's the thing.

Chris Gammell: They don't have to do. You know. No, I think it was my friend told me this. They don't have to do that, right? Oh, that. They rely on the legal system. That's only for defense, right? Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's right. They rely. Right. So to grant it, there's no. Yep. Yeah. So basically they just say, well. They don't care if it's obvious. This is written.

Chris Gammell: Okay. And move along. See you in court. Right. You know, like, ah. Don't support lawyers, folks. Don't feed the trolls.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yeah. There's a, there's a, um, analog design contest is there from TI.

Chris Gammell: Yes. And I said this wrong last time. And Larissa from TI was laughing at me about this. But, uh, the Engibus? That's how I would pronounce it. Engibus. I think it's someone's name, though.

Dave Jones: What a ridiculous word.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? Yeah. I think it's someone's name. I think. Uh, but yeah, we've seen this in the past. There's actually been, um, and this is actually the analog design contest is the, I think it's a chip-based analog design contest. I should probably look at this, huh? Uh. You should. Yeah. You put Donnie. I did. Yeah. Well, I thought I knew it from last year. Now I'm kind of second-guessing myself. Oh, no. I was wrong. Okay, yeah. So, it is board level. I'm sorry. But you have to be in, you have to be in school to do this, too. So, that's the other thing. So, they, you know, they'll give you, like, you know, free samples and everything and support. And you can win 10 grand and everything. But, um. All right. There's been some cool projects that have come out of it. I remember. Yep. Yeah. Last year, I think. You know, there's usually, like, energy-type stuff and measurement and a lot of TI. A lot of precision stuff, usually. So.

Dave Jones: I've been toying with the idea of foolishly starting up a design contest. Oh.

Chris Gammell: I believe I should quote a friend of mine who says, doing design contests is a whole lot of work. And I would agree. Yep. Yes.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Yeah. I, I don't know. I just think it might be fine.

Chris Gammell: Well, I will do a snarky judging video for you. It is a repayment for the 555 contest. I'll do it where it's only people from Cleveland and I'll give them a prize, which is sitting in my basement already. Give them a Cleveland prize. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Visit tour of Chris Gammell's basement.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'll cut him something on my CNC mill or something, you know. That'll be the prize. Right. Make you a little metal. It's like all mangled. Get a video of the winner just weeping over their crappy prize.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. I saw your video of where you were milling out a little one-inch pocket. Yes.

Chris Gammell: I finally started cutting metal. And it's exciting. Yay. Yay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Your video was like, put a comment on there, dude. Like, your video was like four foot, five foot back from the thing. Yeah, I know. And, you know, zoom in on it. Like, I want to see the action down in the drill bit. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. Instead, it's just a couple of pixels going.

Speaker ?: You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It actually didn't happen. It was all CGI. Crappy, crappy CGI. Right. Oh, boy. Actually, so one last thing. Speaking of close-up, this is a cool site I saw this week. It's actually another site showing the guts. I think I saw this on Hacker News. But, you know, we've seen this kind of stuff before. Hacker News? Hacker News. Yeah. News.ycombinator.com or whatever. Oh, right. But basically, they were decapping a bunch of ICs. And, you know, it's always fun to look at that kind of stuff. Especially looking at the different, you know, the different generations of geometry and stuff. You know, even just analog versus digital kind of stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, absolutely. It's fascinating. Even my wife likes looking at that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's cool as hell. So, definitely check that out. It's zeptobars.ru.

Dave Jones: She goes, oh, look, it's a little city. Oh, isn't it cute?

Chris Gammell: That's right. It's like in Tron, man.

Dave Jones: Oh, look at all the little roads in there. There's a little building. Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We're going to watch Tron right now. Right. This is your punishment. Yeah. All right. Well, people should fill out the survey. And you can go in the running for the inaugural Amp Hour t-shirts.

Dave Jones: Wow. Yeah. Awesome.

Chris Gammell: All right. We'll see you next week.

Dave Jones: Bye.

Speaker ?: Outro Music