#14 – China, Entrepreneurs and Blue Collar Reality

Dave Jones: Hi, welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell from Chris Gammell's Analog Life. How are you doing, Chris? I'm great, Dave. Welcome back. It's good to hear from you again.

Chris Gammell: Thank you very much. Yes, I'm back here in Australia. I'm back here in the study. And last time I recorded a show, it was in a hotel room in Anaheim, California.

Dave Jones: Yes, a bit of a difference, huh?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I had the arduous 14-hour flight back here. That's horrible. Yeah, it's not pretty. But I did have the new A380 Airbus, which is much nicer than the 747, the old.

Dave Jones: I don't know, 747s are pretty nice too, I mean, with those high ceilings. I mean, flying's never fun. I mean, I'm guessing you probably didn't fly first class.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I didn't fly first or business, no, no. Cattle class all the way.

Dave Jones: That's right, yeah. Well, better than the cargo bay.

Chris Gammell: Very true, very true. But yeah, I was surprised. This was my first time on the A380. And it's much bigger, smoother, quieter, more room, everything than a 747. I was very impressed.

Dave Jones: That's awesome, yeah. You know, traveling's never fun, so whatever gets you through better is important. Usually for me, it's a nice stiff drink.

Chris Gammell: Right, okay. And I can't sleep on planes, so I was up for like 40 hours or something straight. Oh, God, that's horrible. Yeah, that was... Ah, well. I've had a good... I think I've had about 12 hours sleep overnight. Oh, good, good. I'm fairly recovered. Anyway, this isn't about travel. Back to work for you today? Back to work, yeah. I'll be back to work today. After we finish the show, I'll be headed off.

Dave Jones: So... That's crazy. That's always a tough day back, but hopefully you'll have lots of side things to edit on the EEV blog forums and such. I'm sure you'll be...

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. I've got a ton of... Oh, I've got a ton of videos to edit. I think I tweeted that I've got so many videos to edit, both for the blog and personal videos and other stuff, that I've had to actually make a list. Otherwise, I'll actually forget everything. So...

Dave Jones: Good. And I'm not usually a list person. We're looking forward to it. I mean, I have that on the list. I mean, I wanted to ask about your speech. I haven't seen your speech yet. Where's that? I mean, is that on the way?

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's coming up, but I don't know why everyone's making a big deal about that. It was hardly a speech. It was just they wanted me to get up there and introduce the new design, RX design contest and stuff like that. And I just rambled on for a couple of minutes. So saying who I was and...

Dave Jones: You made it sound like a 10-minute speech that it was like, oh, big deal. Here comes Dave Jones. Welcome to the world of EEV blog dominance kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, it was something like that. Yeah. Because they flashed up the video on the screen and the lights dimmed and all that sort of stuff. Nice. Yeah. But anyway, no, that video is coming. I'm not wearing... So my list doesn't have an order on it. So it'll get done when it gets done. Okay. Well, we'll try and be patient. And that's just... I'm sure it's a lot of stuff. Yeah. Although I did upload one last night. That was the interview with DJ Delore about the JITA, the open source EDA package. So that one's up there now. Okay. Although I haven't put it on the blog. It's actually uploaded to YouTube, but I haven't had a chance to transfer it to the blog yet. So...

Dave Jones: See, now, when you told me about that, I figured... Because your second day video, I think it was, you were actually talking to him after the session. I was. Yep. And I figured that was the actual video and that was it. That's what I thought it was.

Chris Gammell: So... No, right. Yeah, I guess a few people might have thought that, but no, that was just a small snippet from it. It's about 12 minutes, the entire interview. It was all done in one take, which was quite good. I just... We just sat down in the hallway of the conference center and, uh, so you can see people wandering past and, and, and, yeah, it was hardly, hardly, uh, studio conditions.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's even better when they got that, you know, someone's walking by and they got that dumb look on their face like, hey, what's going on, man? Oh, camera, okay.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you're recording something, are you, dude? Sorry.

Dave Jones: And then they do this, they do this stupid wave. Yeah. Hey, mom. Yeah. Hope you see me on Dave's, Dave's site. Oh, dear.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Anyway, that, that, that video is now up. It's a 12 minute interview. Um, I, I didn't have any set questions. I just thought I'd grab him and, um, talk about, uh, Jeter, the open source, um, tool. And he talks about, uh, you know, the history of Jeter and, uh, where it's at and stuff like that. And it's relevance to open source hardware, um, which, uh, segues directly into one of the, uh, rants that, um, was it I was going to do? Because everyone, every man and his dog apparently took me to task, um, over the fact that I was calling it open source hardware and everyone's saying, oh, that's incorrect. It's open hardware. Um, even DJ himself corrected me on that, but didn't you go to an open source hardware summit?

Dave Jones: No, it was actually, if you, you know, I, I made that same mistake myself. It's the open, even if you look at the site name, it's open hardware summit.org. But the thing is source,

Chris Gammell: yeah, but it's got open source hardware summit plastered everywhere over the site. It's got, it, it seems to mix the two.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's, it seems like it does, you know, whatever.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Okay. It's not a big deal. Right. No, I mean, I can, no, I think, I think you're

Dave Jones: right to, to call it out and say, this is ridiculous. But I mean, I, I don't really care. I mean, whatever. I mean, like, you know, like that's, that's like saying, oh, oh no, it's, it's not like, like around, around here in Ohio. Right. Yeah. They call there's the, the big state university. It's like a big football team. It's, they call it, you know, it's, it's Ohio state university, right? It's Ohio. But people make this huge deal about calling it the Ohio state university. I catch that. I catch that all the time. And I'm like, who cares? What are you talking about? It doesn't matter. I mean, like, but it's to some people it matters. So, you know what, those people can have their V and other people can have their subtracted source and, and we'll have the open hardware summit or the open heart, open hardware and the Ohio state. And you know what? I'm just going to go on with my life and I will say whatever the hell I want to anyways. Excellent. Well done. Yeah. Starting to get my attitude then. I was going to say, I've learned very well from you, Dave. I mean, because I get taken to

Chris Gammell: task a dozen times a week over the way I pronounce something or, or even spelling on the site. And you know, I mentioned something that's not quite a hundred percent correct, or I say AC current and everyone goes, Oh, it's not AC current. It's just AC. And you know, all that sort of

Dave Jones: rubbish. I know. And it's like, you know, it's almost the best thing to do at those point at that point is to develop some, some, and I've learned this from my significant other as well. Uh, you know, is to just develop a look on your face and then someone's going to be like, they'll be like, no, no, it's AC. And then you give them that look and then they'll be like, whatever. Right. Yep. Yeah. Uh, and that really is the best method. I think, I mean, I've, I've learned, I've learned pretty well. So yeah, absolutely. I've,

Chris Gammell: I've learned to just laugh at everyone who critiques the, you know, the, just the silly aspects of my blog and stuff like that. So anyway, there were quite a few people who pointed out. So I thought I'd mention it and considering that it's a new sort of, uh, well, it's not new because here's another rant, right? I've, everyone craps on about open, this open hardware business. Jesus, I've been doing open hardware for 20 years. So has DJ Delori. So has anyone else who's ever published anything in a magazine or something like that? So anyway, I think I've ranted on that before, but people think it's all new and everything, this open hardware thing. It's only new from a point of view that, you know, they started up this license, you know, thing. So yeah. Anyway, so it's fairly new,

Dave Jones: but yeah, it's like a, it's like a branding thing, right? And all the crap from, it's like the element 14 and everybody else and marketing is such a big deal these days. And it's like, okay, I understand you want to have a consistent message. That's cool. Whatever. But from a perspective of, you know, if you're talking to another engineer or if you're talking to a, someone that, you know, cares about what you're doing instead of what you're saying, then who gives a crap? Eventually you're going to figure it out. So.

Chris Gammell: Well, any smart engineer is going to figure it out. Whether you call something a, a, a mill or a millimeter or a, or a puff instead of a picofarad, you know, they're going to get it. You know, there's, there's no one correct way to pronounce things and do things. So yeah, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I get what you're saying. Uh, yeah. Yeah. And if nothing else, they're going to clarify

Chris Gammell: it. So that's, that's the important thing. Yeah. So you, you did mention the element 14 thing. Um, should we, should we talk about element 14? We probably should.

Dave Jones: I don't think so. I, I, I don't really have anything else. I mean, if you have something else to say about them, you can. I don't want to sound a contrarian, but I, uh, I, I don't know. I'm over them.

Chris Gammell: Right. And anyway, if people aren't aware, um, Farnell just this week, um, or it's last week have just announced that they're rebranding themselves element 14. They're ditching Farnells. Um, now I'm not sure if this is worldwide. I haven't actually fully checked the details, but I believe it would be. Um, now you said the announcement was yesterday, right? I mean,

Dave Jones: like the, I thought we had talked, I think the problem is I, I'm confusing because you and I predicted that. We did predict it. Yeah. That's right.

Chris Gammell: And then I tweeted last week because I got some inside info that yes, that was definitely true and it was happening. So I tweeted that and, um, and yeah, it turns out that yes, it's true. I've, I've got the official email and everything from, from them, but I, but I got the email from Farnells Australia cause I'm on the Australian list. So I, it's definitely happening in Australia. I'm pretty sure it's happened worldwide. There's no reason why they're just doing in Australia, but anyway, yeah, Farnells are changing their name to element 14 to consistently brand themselves across the entire, you know, market space of not only their, their company, but now their element 14 blog, which they've had for like a year or something like that. Um, so I don't know how long has element 14 been going? I can't say it's been more than a year and a half. I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah. It certainly isn't much, but anyway, my opinion of it is as well, you know, I can understand it from the marketing point of view and having a consistent thing. But once again, the engineers understand that you can have different branding for your online community space and different branding for the company. So, uh, and considering that they're marketing exclusively to engineers, well, I can pretty much assure them that we don't give a shit. Um, so yeah, so really you just, I think you're just wasting your effort because they're, they're probably got marketing people in there and directors who are so used to, oh, you know, that's what they do in consumer companies. You've got to have a consistent brand, but you're not, you're an engineering company selling engineering parts to people and, uh, you know, we just don't care.

Dave Jones: So it's just a waste of time and effort. I wish they would put their, put their efforts into like changing their colors. Cause already I, I, that's the only really offensive thing to me,

Chris Gammell: the orange and green and blue. Oh, right. I'm not fussed over the colors. The colors really don't,

Dave Jones: it just doesn't, it's not my palette. I gotta say it's not my palette, you know, anyways. Right. Okay. Well, yeah, fair enough. Let's move on. Uh, let's get some shout outs here. Uh, we actually had some, some, some shout outs that we wanted. So, uh, Jack Gansel, that was, that was, that was nice. He actually, uh, thank you very much, Jack. He, uh, he mentioned us on his, uh, embedded.com blog. Yeah. And, uh, he called me a young feller. I thought that was

Chris Gammell: young fella. Yeah. I saw that. Yeah. Nice young fellow or something. He called you.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That was great. Yeah. I'm not sure if, uh, he, he said we're a blog of, of many interesting things. I was worried he hadn't actually figured out that we were recording stuff, but, uh, yeah,

Chris Gammell: I, yeah, I got the same impression. So yeah, I think he's just, hopefully he's listening. If not,

Dave Jones: if not, maybe he'll figure, you know, he'll get there eventually. He'll figure that it's actually

Chris Gammell: a radio show and not just a text blog. So yeah. Either way, uh, if re if listeners hear,

Dave Jones: haven't ever read Jack's column, Jack is supremely wise. If, if, uh, if hams are the bad-asses of the analog world and Jack Ansell is the bad, uh, bad-ass of the, uh, embedded world. Yeah. Right. Yeah, definitely. So, uh, and he mentioned Jerry as well, and that was a well-deserved

Chris Gammell: shout out for Jerry's, uh, garage chip making. Yeah. So, but he, he seemed to make it, I, I think he sort of made it out that, um, and I think this was a discussion point we wanted to talk about is, you know, can you make your own, I mean, we've mentioned before, can you make your own, um, you know, silicon in your own house? Right. Right. I did. Did you guys talk about that on the last show? By the way, um, thanks, uh, Jeff for doing the show. Oh yeah, Jeff. Thank you very much. Last minute. Yes, that was great. Because I will.

Dave Jones: Jeff and I did talk about it. We talked about Richard, the one guy that posted on here about the laser printer. Uh. Oh yeah, that's right. Right. And the actual, the interesting thing is Jeff did some research in the, in, in, after the show, and he was posting about MOSIS, the metal oxide silicon. Yep. Uh, crap, crap, crap. Uh. Yeah. I've, I've, I've seen his blog post on that. Right. Yeah. So he posted about that. We'll link that in there. Uh, but the implementation service, that's where the IS is there. So metal oxide semiconductor implementation service. Basically it's, you can go out and buy, you know, a chip for 10, $20,000 and have it manufactured, you know, some upfront NRE. And, uh, we didn't talk about that during the show, but you know, that is a really cool service. I'm not sure how, how economical it is in this day and age, but, uh, it's definitely an option. It's out there, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah, it's great. I mean, those options have always, uh, been out there at various, uh, price points, depending on how, you know, how custom I'm doing the quote marks you want to make your, make your actual chip. But, um, yeah, I've, I've worked on stuff in the past where it has been, you know, $20,000 to do a custom chip or something like that. So it hasn't, it hasn't been or ever really totally out of the reach of the, you know, the keen, um, small company or something like that. Um, but yeah, is it worthwhile? Well, you know, you would have to have something extremely niche, um, to make it worthwhile, um, in terms of, you know, God, you had to make something so small that you couldn't do it with individual devices. So I, I know that Jeff talked about on the previous blog that, uh, you can get better performance on a single, uh, silicon for say RF stuff than you can on, um, you know, just using discrete components on a board and, uh, things like that. But yeah, you would have to have something very specific to want to warrant going to a custom ASIC in any way, shape or form. So, yeah, I just don't see why anyone would have to these days.

Dave Jones: Right. You know, the, the thing, there's two things that I really got from the Moses thing and, and it's, it's a really cool service. And I know that a lot of it caters to like, uh, students that are working on their designs and stuff too, which is a very good thing. The two things that I would think about are aside from the, the, the niche, niche, uh, nature of a, of a chip, you know, that you need to be able, you need, you need to have something that's very specific to your process. Right. But also I think you need volume, you know, like in any, in any, in any kind of manufacturing situation, you know, you're really going to get the price breaks when you start making 10,000 chips or, I mean, most chips are, are, are many, many orders of magnitude above that. So, you know, it's 10,000 is good. But a million is much better. So that would be, that would be the first thing. The second thing would be if you actually, you know, if, if, if you and I, Dave decided tomorrow, we wanted to make some, some ASIC, we probably wouldn't have the manual or not the manufacturing, we could, we could buy the manufacturing capability. The thing that we wouldn't have is the software capability in order to design that chip, because this isn't sketching it out on some piece of graph paper. This is actually using a cadence or, you know, a mentor kind of software that is very integrated with the fab itself and is easily translatable into their already designed processes. So, you know, when, when you have a, if you, if you really have, you know, you think about like a batch PCB or anyone else like that, the DRC files that are used to make, to make an actual PCB. So DR, uh, design, um, you know, design rule chain. I'm not sure what the C is on that. Checking. Checking. Okay. So DRC is, is the type of file you give to a,

Chris Gammell: a PCB fab, right? And it's a Gerber, a, the actual DRC is a process which you do on the Gerbers before you send them away. But that's right. Thank you. So you send someone the Gerber,

Dave Jones: which is the actual design file. And then they're going to take that and they have a very well-defined process and that's how they make it so cheap in the first place. Right. Yep. And they, from taking the Gerber to the output and that's why it's so cheap. The same thing happens in a fab where they're going to have a very well-defined process from going from a mentor kind of software all the way out to a finished chip. So if you don't have that stuff and that stuff's not cheap, if you don't have that stuff, you're kind of, you're going to have a creep without a paddle

Chris Gammell: kind of thing. So. Exactly. And it varies vendor to vendor as well. It depends on who you go to. They've got different manufacturing processes and ways to do things. Whereas, you know, down at the dumbass, uh, board level, right? Anyone, you can send that same Gerber file to any, uh, any, uh, fab in the world and they're just going to make it easily for you. It's, you know, it's not very, I mean, there are some aspects that are process specific to an individual, um, lab, but for most designs, you really don't have to worry about that. So you send them the Gerbers and you get your board back. It's, it's as simple as that. Whereas a, whereas a custom chip, you know, it's, it's, it's a totally different ball game. It's orders of magnitude complex above that and, and specific to that particular fab and their process techniques and right. God, anyway, we won't even go into it.

Dave Jones: The details are. And maybe someday, who knows that it might get standard enough that, that the, it's very similar to a Gerber file going to a board house and, and designing it out where you have a standard format and maybe there's even an open source tool eventually like Jita for chips that ends up making a final implementation of a chip. But right now that just doesn't exist. So there's.

Chris Gammell: No, I, no, I believe there are, uh, quite a few open source tools available for chip level design. Um, don't quote me on that. I've, yeah, I've never used them. Um, but I have heard somewhere that that is the case. Um, but how relevant they are to any particular fab is, yeah, I don't know that. I don't actually know the details, but yeah, I mean, I don't think that we'll ever get to that level because there will ultimately be a trade-off, uh, that simplistic generic level that all fabs, you know, will accept the same information and all that sort of stuff because there's just too many process differences. You probably could get to that point, um, to make it more generic, but then you start to compromise the performance that you can extract from that particular foundry or something like that. So yeah, I, yeah, I just don't see the point. So, um, yeah, or, and back to the original thing we were talking about, which is Jerry's, um, you know, she made a, uh, she made a FET in her house with, you know, chemical processes and silicon and the whole works. And she actually manufactured her own FET, which is very cool, but is it useful and practical? Well, no, of course not. Um, and it never will be. So, um, really, you know, it's, it's just a neat, fun thing to do. So, and, and I think where Jack's article, he sort of thought, Oh, look, you know, people are starting to what's next. Somebody is going to make their own, you know, 6502 processor in their basement. It's just, come on. Right. I think we've mentioned this before. It's just not going to happen to any, at any practical level. So anyway, that's my prediction

Dave Jones: and I'm sticking with it. All right. And you were welcome to it. Uh, another shout out we had was, uh, for Dean Kamen, actually, uh, the creator of the Segway personal transporter and what else did he do? He did the, uh, he did a couple of medical devices like a wheelchair that can raise people up that are handicapped up to eye level and, uh, uh, insulin injection pump. Anyways, he has a show now called the Dean of invention on, on discovery. So it's, uh, definitely nerdy and awesome. And I'm not sure about Dean is a, uh, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's, I mean, he's awesome. Like he started first. I mean, like the dude, he has his own Island called little dump or North dumpling or something like that. I mean, like this, this guy is like Uber nerd, but like, I'm not sure about him as a show. We'll, we'll see. I mean, you can watch it online at least the first episode. So definitely check it out, see what you think about it. If you're out there listening and, and, and let us know, but, uh, I like it so far. I think it's cool. They were focusing on, on, uh, biometric stuff. So. Okay. I haven't actually seen it yet. I've been to the website, so I'll definitely have to check that out. Yeah. Yeah. And finally for shout outs, we were, uh, added to the podcast bunker. So thanks, thanks to the owners for that. But, uh, yes, it's always good to be linked somewhere. So yeah. And, and as a reminder to all listeners, if you put the amp hour logo on your site, we will definitely mention it on, on the show. So please, please be sure to add it to your site and don't be afraid to add, uh, don't be afraid to put your stuff online and get a website going for your own personal projects. It's always a good idea.

Chris Gammell: Absolutely. Yeah. Now we had a, a link to a, which we'll have to put up. Um, I'm not sure if it's carry over from a previous show, I don't think you mentioned it where, uh, these, uh, guys go up and they climb up these, um, uh, these transmitter towers and they repair these, uh, transmitter

Dave Jones: towers. Have you seen that? I have the, uh, the video for that. It's just crazy. Unreal. It is unreal. And, and it's not really like directly related. I mean, obviously you and I work with, you know, or not work with, but we, we had take the, take advantage of, you know, sell your, sell your signals every day. Right. You know, you have a cell phone, I'm sure. And I do too. And, and, but like,

Chris Gammell: except it's not called cell phone in Australia. It's called mobile phone. That's right. That's

Dave Jones: right. Yes. Cell is very American. Yeah. But it is proper. It is proper. I mean, they are cells,

Chris Gammell: Dave, you know, from the tech, um, from the technical aspect of how they originally started out operating and they still do. Yes, but ah, not sorry. Mobile phone. Mobile. Okay. All right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But the video itself, oh my God. Like these guys are, they show like the scale at the beginning of the video too, like versus the Sears tower and the empire state building. It's bigger than the Sears tower. Yeah. I think it was like, it's some of the highest stuff in the world basically. And oh, it's, it's dizzying. And these guys basically free

Chris Gammell: climb it. That's the amazing thing. Like, it's not like they hop in an elevator and go up this thing. I know. They, they, they actually free climb the outside. Well, it's just a steel. It's just a steel frameworked tower. Yeah. Right. And these guys, you know, for the first a hundred, 200 meters or, you know, 500 feet or something. Yeah. There are some ladders to sort of climb up, but once it gets past that, they're just, ah, it's just, all they're doing is just hanging onto these, you know, just a little rusty run or something like that. And, and they're not clipping in. I mean, they do have harnesses to actually, um, to actually clip in, but they don't because it would take too long. If you've got to go up a tower, that's, you know, what is it? 500 meters high or half a kilometer high. Yeah. You just can't climb it. If you have to clip and unclip each, uh, meter or each, you know, six foot or something like that, you would just never get up there because they've got to climb up there in a day and fix the problem and come back down. And right. And they mentioned

Dave Jones: in the video too about, about the weather, like they see clouds rolling in or something like that. And you can see clouds for, you know, 18 miles or whatever that would be in kilometers, like 30 miles coming or 30 kilometers coming out. Right. And, uh, my God, like the, it's just amazing. You don't think about it. You know, it's just, it's just one of those things that's there and we don't think about it, but there are people up there and they are risking their lives and they, and the crazy thing is I would have, you know, if I was ever ballsy enough to get, get my butt up there and, and fix something like that, I would at the very least have a parachute on, you know, like, right. Yeah. I know. Just

Chris Gammell: in case you fall off. Yeah, exactly. I would, I would have one of those base jumping

Dave Jones: parachutes. Absolutely. Exactly. And you know, Oh, maybe I felt like maybe, maybe you're into that anyways. And you fall, I mean, you're more of a thrill seeker than I am, Dave. I mean,

Chris Gammell: you're, you're canyoning. Yeah. Well, you know, or just from the aspect like, Oh, look, I, I, you know, there's a lightning storm rolled in and we're going to get hammered, you know, I'd rather jump off than, you know, try and get a rather base jump off than stay up here in a, in a lightning storm or something. Exactly. Yeah. That's an even better reason for like,

Dave Jones: it's, you know, safety reasons. It's, it's either jump or get electrocuted and, you know,

Chris Gammell: going flat is a lot more instantaneous. Right. So. Yeah. I've been up, uh, well, not these towers, but I've been up some RF microwave towers and, um, and yeah, and you get up there and you climb up and they sway these things in the wind, like you get up the top and they sway like, you know, meters side to side. And if you're, I, I like, I'm not someone who gets seasick or something like that, but I can imagine that if you're one of those people who's prone to motion sickness, that's me. Oh, really? Oh, you go up there and it literally swings just meters side to side. So I'm not sure how far these big ones, um, you know, the really half a kilometer high ones. Yeah. Sway from side to side, but oh man, it was bad enough on the one I've climbed up. So yeah, it was, yeah. My hats off to these guys. Definitely. And, and definitely, you know,

Dave Jones: like go check out the video. It's, it's awesome to watch and, and it'll give you, it'll give you a,

Chris Gammell: uh, a respect for those guys for sure. Well, and interesting aside, uh, for this video is that, um, the guy who originally made it, um, he got the video from his friend who actually climbed up the tower and he put a camera on his helmet and, um, and he got permission from the guy to post it, I think something like that. And then he put it up on YouTube and then it went viral. It went, you know, within a day or something, it, it had, you know, a million views or something like that. And then the guy, um, who did the video, um, got hammered by his company because it looked like it was all unsafe and everything. And you know, so he tried, so they took it down. The guy, he asked his friend to take it down instantly and he did, but it had already been copied and spread virally within a day. And now, so all those copies up there now that you see and we'll, and we'll link to is, is a bootleg copy of this video. And that just goes to show the, the viral power. Once you put something on the internet, it's, you know, it can really be out there forever. So you can't just pull it back. It's crazy.

Dave Jones: And that is the danger today of making video blogs.

Chris Gammell: Oh yes. Yes. That's why you've got to adopt the attitude of, ah, I don't give a toss.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Publish and be damned. I always say. Well, speaking of not giving a toss and, uh, danger, what about this, uh, 500 kilovolt? Did you

Chris Gammell: check out that link at all? The, uh, look at that. Yeah. High, high voltage generators. There's a lot of people out there who are into this sort of shit and yeah, it's crazy.

Dave Jones: It's actually from 2001. So there's this video and basically it's, it's this guy or no, it's not a video. I'm sorry. It's a site. This guy took a transformer, a power line transformer. So it was, it was from the U S he got it in a scrapyard went from, I think, uh, line voltage. So 200 kilovolts. It was probably stepped down by that point, maybe 10, 10 kilovolts, stepped down to one standard 120 or 240, whatever it was. Yeah. If it was U S it was probably 120. And basically he used it in the opposite direction. So, you know, transformers work in both directions and he was stepping up voltage now. So he was taking power out of, out of a standard wall socket and now stepping it up to hundreds of hundreds of thousands of volts basically. And then he put it through, I'm sure I forgot what the, there's a certain type of multiplier there. And basically this guy was using a multiplier. What was it?

Chris Gammell: Uh, it's just a standard voltage multiplier. Yeah. Oh, they're using TV sets and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: So, okay. I thought there was some specific name for it. Basically. Yeah. I think there is, but I forget it. Yeah. This, this guy was a Mark's generator is called and, uh, he was using it to disaggregate rocks. So the voltage was so high, it actually separates the mechanic or the, the different minerals out from rocks. And it's just, that's insane. That's unreal. 500 kilovolts. That's like 500,000 volts. You would die instantly, you know, like, and so definitely check out his

Chris Gammell: site. I mean, like, Ooh, it's awesome. There's so many sites out there. So many YouTube channels dedicated to high voltage, high energy Tesla stuff, you know, it's all the rage. These, every man and his dogs doing all this Tesla type stuff, you know, real high voltage, high energy, you know, can crushing, you know, is a big thing and coin crushing and all that sort of stuff. They get this, this big, you know, pump a ridiculous amount of energy into coils and you can just do some real scary things.

Dave Jones: So, well, you know, micro volts are boring, you know, like they're hard to measure and hard to, hard to source, but you know, they're boring.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm a micro power guy. I'm not a big power guy. Everyone goes, well, why don't I do shows on Tesla coils and stuff like that? Well, I'm not into it. I know I'm a micro power guy. I love my nano amps and Pico amps. Exactly. Me too, man. Oh yeah. It's much harder, you know, like you can't,

Dave Jones: you can't hand wire, uh, inductor for, uh, you know, for Pico amps or, you know what I mean? Like, and, and, and yeah, it's a, yeah, it's just a different kettle of fish. Whereas yeah,

Chris Gammell: all the Tesla coil is just big grunty, you know, wind in your garage kind of, kind of gear and right. Yeah. I mean, it's still impressive. And stuff like that. Oh, it's very impressive. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It has to be, you know, like it's so big and massive and energetic, but you know, it's no pun intended. It's, it's hard going, it's hard going both directions basically, but, but, you know, Dave and I trend towards the, the, the small measure, the small measure,

Chris Gammell: the small source kind of stuff. So. Yeah. I've, I've always said it. Anything over 12 volts DC scares the shit out of me. You know, I just, I don't like working on mains stuff. I don't know. And let alone anything above that, you know, real high power stuff, just never been into it. My entire life I've always, yep. I don't know why it's just one of those things.

Dave Jones: You know, the, uh, I have, I have a cautionary tale for our listeners out there. The, uh, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I was working on the, the, the sub panel in my house and, uh, you know, I bought a house two years ago and very inexperienced with, uh, with, with line, line cycle power stuff. You know, I, I, to the point, you know, like it's like you get all the way through university and you, you study all this stuff, but you're studying kind of non, non-related stuff. If you were going to be an electrician perhaps, then, then maybe you study it, but it's just something you don't think about. And it is very common sense in the end. It really is. But I didn't think about it anyways. So I'm working on my sub panel. I have it open. I had installed a, uh, uh, circuit breaker on my panel and I was messing around with it, went off to do something else, came back. And the second time I came back, I didn't turn off the main panels power to the sub breaker to the sub panel. Yeah. And so I'm reaching in there and I slip and fall. And for a very short instant, my hand, my finger touches the bus. And so my girlfriend's sitting upstairs and she hears me go, ah, and, uh, she's like, are you dead? And I'm like, no, I'm not dead, but I just touched the bus bar. Oh God. So, uh, so kiddos, turn off your sub panel power. You do not want that stuff flowing cause it'll go through your heart. And, uh, I got lucky. Kitties don't even work on it, period. It's just, you know, you know, it's okay to work on it, but you just gotta be careful, you know, like it's, I felt so stupid.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's actually illegal here in Australia. You're not allowed to work on your own. Technically, I can't even, um, take a PowerPoint like, you know, actually unscrew the PowerPoint and retighten the connection on the back. Legally, you're not allowed to do that unless you're a licensed electrician. You can have a PhD in, you know, in, in EE and you cannot even unscrew your PowerPoint. Wow. So anyway, yeah, that's what it's like here in Australia.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the difference though because of the 240 also versus 120. So the U S trends at one, it, you know, the voltage is 120 here. If listeners don't know. So the, you know, higher current, lower voltage in the, in Australia though, it's 240. So, you know, less current flowing,

Chris Gammell: but more potential to flow through your heart. But it's the same, but it's the same amount of energy available, same amount of energy available. But yeah, it is, it, it is higher AC voltage. But, um, and the other student, now that I'm on the subject, I wasn't going to talk about this, but, uh, the, to become an electrician here in Australia, like to actually get your license to do this, you used to be able to just sit the exam and, and if you passed it, you got your license. And that's how, and I, I'm, I'm actually regretting that I didn't do that 20 years ago, but now the laws are such that, um, you know, you could go on, you know, you could have your degree, your master's, your PhD, whatever in electronics engineering or anything like that. And you cannot become an electrician. You cannot get your electrician's license to get it. Um, it's, it varies from state to state, I think, but you basically have to go back and do a full apprenticeship. You have to go back to square one, do your four or five year apprenticeship to get your electrician's license to change your PowerPoint. That's how crazy it is. Yeah. So I don't know if, um, yeah, people in other countries can tell us what, what your particular laws are, but yeah, it was here. Um, I think a Silicon chip magazine tried to get it changed. They had this huge petition thing a couple of years ago and they tried to lobby the government to change the laws or something like that. I don't know what actually happened

Dave Jones: to that, but yeah, pretty draconian stuff. That's interesting because another, another thing we, I had on here is about the micro, the guy, have you ever seen dirty jobs that show? No, no, I haven't. It's a show on discovery about like all the jobs that people, you know, like, like garbage men and, and working in like really gross industrial, uh, companies, you know, like working with petroleum kind of stuff. And yeah, basically he, he, uh, had an interview recently and we'll post a link for it, but basically the, you know, you mentioned apprenticeship, but the, you know, the, the divide that's happening between what technically or what, uh, traditionally was called blue collar jobs and white collar jobs. And it's interesting because the, he, he states it as, as there's too much focus on white collar jobs and, and it's like almost people are looking down on blue collar jobs. But, but like you said, Dave, you know, you really have to go through it. Like if you're doing a traditional blue collar job, like an electrician, right? There is some rigorous standards still like doing the apprenticeship and, and sit in that exam and everything like that. And, and, and for good reason too. And, and, you know, like it's important that people understand that not only is it difficult, but it's, it's important that people do that stuff too. I mean, like, and that's, that's why they get paid well too. So it's absolutely.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's, um, yeah, there, there is a big focus on the, on white collar jobs and really an electrician, for example, is in, in Australia, I'm not sure whether or not it's the same in other countries, but yeah, it is deemed to be a blue collar, you know, it's a low level, you know, blue collar job and, um, and it's a skilled trade, right? It's, it's a skilled trade. Yeah. It's one of those skilled trade things. And yeah, trade is looked down upon. Um, and you know, there's not much focus on that. Um, but, uh, yeah, it'll be interesting

Dave Jones: too, because, because you and I, you know, like we talk about on this show about, about like the maker movement, stuff like that. Right. And like, you think about people that are actually working with their hands on a daily basis and making stuff and, and you look at like the skilled trades, like, you know, people that are working in metal shops or wood shops and stuff like that. And it's almost like that's the crossover point from, you know, if you're making stuff often, it is a skilled trade, you know, like metal workers are awesome. You know, like if you're, if you're a welder, you know how to make stuff, you know, like that's really cool. Exactly. I have no idea how to do that. Uh, and I even tend to learn it, but, but like, you know, like that, that is still in the skilled trade area versus like the, you know, if you were a metallurgist or, you know, like if you're studying material science, that might be the white collar side of things. So exactly. It's an interesting kind of, uh, cultural divide that, that exists and, and, uh, uh, cultural stereotype that then kind of needs to go away. I mean, it doesn't need to go away, but hopefully it will because there's people retiring all over the place. You know, I've said that analog engineers are going away. Well, electricians are going away too. And, and people need, they need this stuff, you know, like they need this, they need their house wire just as much as they need the next, uh, low noise op amp,

Chris Gammell: you know, so. Exactly. Well, I've worked my, my fair share of these dirty, you know, hands-on jobs. I don't, I haven't always sat in front of three computer monitors all day, which I do at the moment at, uh, work, you know, and, and basically, um, you know, I don't really get my hands dirty, um, anymore. So, but yeah, I've worked in those side of things and there are still, let's say, um, there's really, uh, lots of examples here in the electronics industry. If you're working at an assembly factory, if you're an assembly engineer, you know, and you're working the pick and place machine. So, you know, you can be a, a degree qualified, you know, EE and you're working in that side of the industry. Well, is that a blue collar job because you're programming and, and maintaining and operating pick and place machines or, or is it a white collar job? Right. You know, what is it?

Dave Jones: Right. I don't know. It's probably both. It's a, uh, like blue, you know, right. Right. So it's a

Chris Gammell: baby blue. Uh, right. So we, so we have to define another color. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. Right. White and blue collar. It's not enough. Right. Yeah. Here's a real question for you

Dave Jones: though. Uh, which did you, I mean, obviously there's benefits to each, right? But do you ever miss the hands-on side of the job versus the sitting in front of a computer side of things? I mean,

Chris Gammell: I think that's a real, absolutely. I mean, you know, I, I did some really fun, um, hands-on stuff, but then I did, I, then I did some real dirty shit, which I'd, you know, I would never touch again. So, oh yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's always best to have, uh, have a combination of both. I still enjoy getting hands-on and, you know, and, and building something that's fun or it can be, or it can be, you know, boring as bad shit. Right. Depends on your frame of mind and, you know, what sort of attitude you have that, that day or that week. So,

Dave Jones: Right. You know, that's how I always sell it to engineering students or not even students, but just students in general. You know, they ask, you know, why do you like engineering and, and, and what, what do you, why did you decide to do it? And it's like, because it doesn't matter what you do. It's just, you want variety, you know? And I feel like engineering in general, and not even just engineering, but just working with electronics or whatever you're going to do. You want to learn stuff on a daily basis. You want to do something different. You want to challenge yourself. If you're clicking a button the same way for 30 years or 40 years, it's boring. But if you get to go out and, you know, build something one day and the troubleshoot it the next and write a report on it the next day, present it the day after that, you know, like that's really, that's one of the strengths of engineering. And that's one of the things that if you were out there talking to younger, you know, younger people, and they ask why you do engineering, that, that's a great way to sell it. You know, you will not be bored if you do it right. And there's some, like Dave said, you know, there's some stuff that you might not like about it, but that's any job, you know, the best job in the world. People are going to hate it some, some days, but engineering has its share of variety and awesomeness. So it can do. Yes. And

Chris Gammell: I get this all the time on my forum, you know, people come in and mostly beginners or they've been in the industry a couple of years and they say, oh, you know, I don't really enjoy my job. I'd like to get into a different area. You know, how can I, how can I do it? How can I get out? Well, just get out. If you don't like it, you don't, and if you want change, well, get a different job. Just do it. Jeez, don't, you know, there's no hard or far, you know, and, but they always ask, oh, if I go and study this other course, will that give me an avenue to get out? Well, no, not really. Just get out and go and get another job. The thing I always say is like, you got to go,

Dave Jones: if people really ask that, I think, I think the best thing to do is to do it. You know, like I think of like, so like John at Tronix Stuff, he's from Australia too, right? Melbourne. Yep, he is. And, uh, you know, he is studying something unrelated to electronics, but like he started a site and he started doing tutorials as he went along, you know, and, and that's given him credibility. It shows his learning process and that helps other people. And it's like, you know, he's actually moving up into the point where he's getting mentioned on different sites and, and, you know, he's showing his own electronics knowledge. And it's like, he's a perfect example of someone that maybe didn't necessarily want to do everything that he, you know, he's studying at university, but, and, and, and he's just changing it. He's just doing it. And, and that's kind of the power of like the maker movement or whatever you want to call it. It's just, you go out and you do it. And then later you figure out, oh yeah, I'm, I guess I'm pretty good at that. And then people might hire you based on that, or you start your own company based on that. So exactly. That's what I

Chris Gammell: like about it. And that's what I've always done. That's where my blog started from. I just went out and did it. You know, I didn't, I didn't think about it. No plan, no nothing. And the same thing with this radio show. We just went out and did it. We didn't, you know, decided that, oh, it's something we'd really like to, you know, do and, oh, how can we go about and do it properly? And no, you just go out and do it and see if it works. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it, you know, it doesn't, you move on. Yeah. So this brings me to an entrepreneurial talk. You, you went to. Yes. This is, this, this scares the shit out of me. I, I hate the word entrepreneurial.

Dave Jones: You know, so did they. You know, in quote marks. Right. I, you know, I don't think they liked it either. So I went to a talk last night. It was hosted by a local thing called Nortech, which is like a, you know, encourages local investment and stuff like that. But Dr. Zurbuchen from University of Michigan. And, and, you know, I hear people talk about Michigan. Have you ever heard of

Chris Gammell: University of Michigan? Yes, I've heard of it. But another thing that scares me is once again, it's an academic talking about entrepreneurial stuff that scares me even more. Right. You know,

Dave Jones: so anyway, go on. And you know, that was the same stuff. And I have the notes I took from it yesterday sitting right here. And that was one of the things, that was one of the things I was worried about. You know, how do you, how do you go about doing that? And, you know, and you know, people talk about passion, but like, you can just hear it in this guy's voice. Just like he, he gives a crap, you know, like he, he really wants people to learn this stuff. And, and here's the best part. This is the part that really struck me. They came and they came and they, they talked to students at their school and they sat them down and they said, well, what do you guys want from us? You know, they didn't actually say anything about this. And they said, we want to know how to start businesses, you know, because people in generation Y or younger generation, whatever the hell you want to call it, they want to control their destiny. They don't want to work for big companies. Not, I mean, some of them do some, and that's okay too, but they want to control their own destiny, you know, in whatever direction that goes, you know, like it might, it might mean failure, but regardless, you know, working for yourself or working, you know, in a small company is, is a big deal. And so, uh, they came, they came to this session, whatever, whenever it was, and they said, look, we want an entrepreneurial type center. And so they started it. And, and Dr. Zumbukan was one of the big ones that, that kind of helps get it off the ground and, and it's done pretty well apparently. So. Okay. So it's like a, a school program, is it? It is. And you know, they, you know, it's, it's part incubator and it's part, uh, classes. So they'll actually teach classes. And so I actually asked the question, you're like, you know, like, how do you actually teach this stuff? You know, like what, what do you, you know, you think about like starting a business and, and, and he said, you know, like you don't teach it really. You kind

Chris Gammell: of do it. You just encourage it. That's right. I, I was going to say that you can't teach it. You just go out and do it and you learn from your mistakes and you learn what works and what doesn't. Right. Because everyone, every single company and person is going to operate differently. There's no hard and fast rules. That's why you can't teach it. Right. And that's the

Dave Jones: best part about it, right? I mean, you can, you might get it completely right the first time or you might fall flat in your face the first time. So, uh, that's good. I mean, they, and, and so one of the things they, they really do is they provide like, uh, resources, you know, that might be the thing that, that you or I might not have access. You know, like if you have access to a lab, say you can't afford a lab starting up, right. But you have school property and the permission to use it. Well, that, that's a big starting point. You might be able to start an electronic company starting out of there. Now people don't otherwise, but, uh, you know, or, or legal advice or even just a place to work. So I think that's a lot of what they, they really provide to their students. And then, and then just kind of encouragement and mentorship and, and it's just kind of a concentrated area. So I haven't, I mean, I've heard about a couple other programs, but this is the one that was most in my face and I really loved it. I mean, I, I was just knocked flat by the talk last night.

Chris Gammell: So it was, it was awesome. Cool. Any, anything that encourages, um, gets my thumbs up. Anything that tries to teach something gets my thumbs down really, because you can't, you know, you get, uh, you get a lot of academics or you get a lot of people who have written a book, you know, how to be successful, how to make a million dollars in a year and all that

Dave Jones: sort of bullshit, you know, it's just, it's garbage. I know. I feel the same way, you know, like anytime it's been published in a book, that means it's such a tired idea that why are you reading it? Go out and figure it out. You know, like this is not, this is life. You know, like that, that's like the point where it crosses over from school into life and life is what, that's what matters, you know, like that. So I'm really glad that they kind of just kind of push people into the world and get them started. You know, they, they, they encourage people to pitch to VCs on a, on a regular basis and pitch to anyone basically on a regular basis. So I like, I like everything they're doing and, uh, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to keep up with them and hopefully keep up with other programs that do that kind of thing. So I was very impressed.

Chris Gammell: Well, that brings me on to the, uh, EcoSwitch, which I wanted to talk about. Yeah. Tell me about that. Okay. The, the EcoSwitch, um, we'll put up a link, but it's, I think it's ecoswitch.com.au. It's an Australian invention. Once again, I'm using those quote, uh, I'm holding up the quote marks on radio here. It works really well. It's a, basically all it is, is a mains cord. It's a mains cable with a switch on the end of it. And that's it. Okay. And this is an invention and it was actually on the new inventors show here in Australia many years ago. I think it was like three years ago now or something. And, um, you know, and it won some, uh, thing as, as an, because it's Eco, what it is, is it basically it's a, it just allows you to switch, um, your, your appliance or whatever often on, uh, via an extension cord basically. So it's a thing that plugs in line with your PowerPoint and PowerPoint and your product. And then the switch just runs up a cable. And so you can put the switch in a convenient location. Like, you know, if I've got my desk here, I can't crawl onto my desk and switch something off. It's a pain in the ass, right? So you just bring this extension cable up and, and you put the switch in a convenient location. And, um, anyway, a real basic product, but something no one's ever really sort of, I, I wanted the idea. Um, I wanted something like that years ago and I went looking and there was nothing. And that's when I found the, um, the Eco switch. Nobody had actually really bothered to do it. But basically what the story is, is the guy behind it. Um, he spent, I can put up a thread. It was actually, he posted on the, uh, Usenet news group when I asked about it a couple of years back. And basically, um, he got taken for a ride by these invention companies, which I think we've mentioned before. We have, yeah. Yes. There, here we go. So, and, um, basically they took his money, they took two years and they produced nothing. Um, and then, and he spent like 25,000 us dollars, um, trying to back when the Australian dollar was shit. So that's a lot of money back when it was worth 50 cents, you know? Yeah. Um, and yeah, he wasted, poured all this money down the drain and these companies who, you know, tried to market and, and market his actual product for him, develop it. They just took his money and, and produced nothing. And then he, he didn't learn from that. He went to another one and then they screwed him around for eight months and produced nothing and they failed the, it failed the safety testing. And it's a goddamn switch in, on, on the end of a cable. That's all it is. Yeah. And, and he spent three years. And anyway, well, the reason I mentioned is that it's finally, I think it's finally available. You can actually buy it after three years. It took him to get this product to market. That's ridiculous. That is crazy. So kiddies, that's an example why you should not touch these, you know, in invention companies, it's just crazy. Do it yourself. Um, even if it's ugly, you know, cause it looks quite nice. It's got nice, proper molded things and everything, but, oh, for goodness sake, you know, you can go and pay, I'm not sure how much it is, but you can go to a local approval authority and pay, you know, a thousand dollars or something and get them to approve it. Or, you know, it's, it's not rocket science. It's, um, so that's pretty easy.

Dave Jones: The idea behind it is basically to reduce like, uh, quiescent power. Standby, standby power. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So you don't leave your product running, but, um, yeah, so it's really, uh, products are so low power. They've all got, you know, with the new eco standards coming out, they all have to have low power standby. So it's a bit of a, bit of a waste these days. So he may have missed the boat on that, but it, no, but it's still handy. I mean, I've got some RF versions of this, you know, where you plug in like a PowerPoint and you've got a little remote control and you can put, sit that on your desk and you can turn things on your desk off and on via RF remote. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, it's an okay solution, but it draws static power as

Dave Jones: well. So when you aggregate it over a long time, that, that, that vampire power really starts to add up. So it all adds up and stuff like that. But yeah. So anyway, that's, it's

Chris Gammell: just a, it's just an interesting example of how it is the most basic product I've ever seen. A switch on the end of a cable and it took him three years to get that to market. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's unfortunate, you know, like it's, it's, well, it kind of reminds me of, um, the TV be gone, Mitch Altman's TV be gone. And I've, I've posted a link to his, um, talk before on this and it took him like, I don't know, it took him a year, six months or a year or something to get this product to market. And it's basically a micro, you know, it's an eight pin pick with a lead on the, with an IR lead on it and a battery. And that's it. And it took him, what was it? $20,000, $30,000. It was a lot of money. I remember that. It was a lot of money because he did all custom tooling and he went, you know, he wanted to do it right. And well, you know, you don't have to do something right. Just get it to market. That's right. You know, near enough is, is good enough. Right. Get something to market and get it out there and then make it roll from that. Don't put all your eggs in the one basket

Dave Jones: right up front. Right. You know, one of the, uh, sites I read on a, on a regular basis is, uh, get rich slowly. You ever, you ever heard of that site? I've heard of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a personal finance site, but JD Roth, one of the guys that, that, uh, writes the, the guy that owns it, he always quotes this one thing called good is the, uh, perfect is the enemy of the good. Basically that if you spend all your time trying to get it perfect or trying to get it completely approved in this, in this case, you're going to spend, you're going to have so many diminishing returns on your, on your investment. You're never going to get it out there. So just get it out of time and money investment. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Just get it out there. Sell it on, sell it out of your trunk, you know, like sell, sell it at a electronic show, sell it at a maker fair, who cares? You know, like, and, and then use that money to keep going on, you know, like, so exactly. Yeah. And that'll help you vet your product too. You know, like if, if you sell it at a maker fair, you know, that if the, if the echo switch is a piece of crap, no one's going to buy it and you're going to figure out real fast that, oh, maybe I should think about this. So that's, that's good feedback as well.

Chris Gammell: Absolutely. Now you wanted to talk, no, um, you wanted to talk about, um, Chinese companies.

Dave Jones: We have three different, we have three different items on here about China and I hate that we saved it so long, but I'm sure this could carry over for the next four weeks. No, I'm sure it could. Uh, anyway, let's, let's get into it. We've got about 10 minutes left. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's, I mean, you, you mentioned about the rare earth supply and, uh, I mentioned, uh, about, about the, basically it's a U S China thing, at least. I mean, I'm not sure how Australia fits into it or Europe or other people, but, uh, yeah, we're usually pretty insignificant. You know, it's just a big rattling of the saber, saber right now. And, and, uh, and it's start, it's starting to kind of shake me up a little bit is like a consumer and a citizen and, and whatever else, you know, we've, we've gotten, we've gotten, speaking of feedback, we've gotten numerous mentions on, on that survey we did that basically you guys don't want to hear about politics. And, uh, I don't want to sound politicky here because it's, uh, I don't think there's a right or wrong, you know, like there's a, but in, in terms of like international trade, you know, like there's, if you're living in the U S if you're not living in China, China is a threat. And if you're living in China, then the U S is a threat, you know, like, or, or Australia is a threat. And so it's a big deal. And basically, uh, in the U S they're, they're starting to, U S and Japan are both starting to take actions against China. The U S is talking, they introduced a bill in the, in the U S politics basically to, to really like force them to move their currency around and, uh, you know, basically disadvantage China against the U S and in China, they're responding by saying, Oh, you know, those, you know, all those rare earth elements that you use in your hard drives and your tantalum capacitors and all that stuff. Well, we own 90% of that stuff. So I think you might, and not to mention all the stuff we make for your stores and stuff like that. And so there's all this, there's international stuff and it's kind of just brewing in the background, but, uh, it's going to get really big soon. I think, I don't know, maybe not.

Chris Gammell: I, well, I think it is. And the interesting point with the rare earth magnet supply, like China don't actually own, you know, 98% of the world's supply of this stuff. It, it, it's, it's, it's actually, no, it's actually very common. Um, I think I can put up a link, uh, to it somewhere. And, um, yeah, they don't actually, you know, you will think from reading all the stories that they actually have all the world's supply of it and it's only found in China and nowhere else. So no, apparently that's not the case. It's, uh, common as mud, but China have already the infrastructure in place to extract it cheaply and stuff like that. So the supply, it's all about the cheap supply. It's not about the actual supply of it. It's all about, it's all about the economic, the cheap economic supply.

Dave Jones: And it's probably not easy to get out of the, or it's probably not healthy to get out of the ground either. I'm sure. So that probably doesn't help. Yeah. Something like that. There's

Chris Gammell: probably issues involved there, but yeah, so they don't have a monopoly in terms of the amount of the stuff. It's just, yeah. Right. Once again, it's, it's politics and money.

Dave Jones: Right. And we talked about that earlier about how the Afghanistan has like tons of mineral deposit, like a trillion dollars of like awesome mineral deposits. But you know, I'm not going there. I don't know about you, Dave, but I'm not, I'm not touching that stuff. I'll, uh, I'll, uh, I'll pay two extra dollars for a tantalum capacitor if I don't have to go. Right. You know, like, yeah, sounds good to me. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. So we'll, we'll see what, I guess there's, there isn't as much stuff to talk about as I thought there would be, but you know, like the, it's, it sucks because, you know, there, there, it's, it's like a brother and a sister, you know, like just like arguing and like, you know, like slapping each other back and forth and like, Oh, he hit me. Oh, she pulled my hair. And, you know, you know, it's kind of like that. Right. In the end, they both, they both are still related. They're still intertwined. They still love each other. You know, like the China loves the U S because they buy all their crap. Right. And the U S loves China because they give them all their money for the debt. So whatever happens, they're still brother and sister. And, and, you know, Thomas Friedman from the New York times has written about, you know, he doesn't think that stuff will ever, he doesn't think anything will ever happen. And, and you hear a lot of like saber rattling and, and political posturing because of like election year stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Uh, so hopefully nothing does, but you know, like it, it's still, it still shakes me up personally to, to hear about that stuff because I think about it from a personal perspective and a, and a electronics perspective and I

Chris Gammell: get a little frightened, but well, it's a, it's a, well, it's a global world and you know, it's a global industry, you know, you can't just work in isolation. Everyone's got to work together and be, you know, I think short term, be excellent to one another. Right. Exactly. And

Dave Jones: short term, I think the U S should focus on something completely different other than, you know, supply and money and everything else. Here's the real thing, U S and, and maybe Australia and probably a lot of other places in the world. Uh, China is really smart and there's a lot of smart people coming out of there and we're getting left behind. And that's what, that's what the real focus should be on. I think, uh, because education, that's the real power in the end. And if, if we're going to keep, you know, being dumb dumbs or if other people in the world are just going to keep lagging behind, China's going to take it by default because they're going to have the brainpower. And, and, and from a totally non-political perspective, I am impressed with, with Chinese students on a regular basis. And, and if the U S can't, or Australia can't, or India can't, or anyone else can't raise to that same level, then they're screwed anyways. So that's all I have to say. I guess, I guess it's a bit of a

Chris Gammell: ramp, but, uh, that's not bad. It's not bad at all. But yeah, I don't know. It's one of those, it's, there's just so many permutations in that. It's not funny. I know so many factors. How can

Dave Jones: you possibly discuss it? Hopefully we didn't lose too many, too many listeners just talking, me, me blathering on about that. You know, I was, I get fired up. China. Well, that's a, that's all we

Chris Gammell: ever talk about on here, isn't it? Uh, China and, uh, open source. Is that, uh, is that pretty much it? Yeah. Right. Maybe we can try and have a, uh, Chinese and open source, uh, free, uh, blog for

Dave Jones: the next one. What do you think? A, a free open source, free of open source and free of China?

Chris Gammell: Free of open source or China talk. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing about China, nothing about politics,

Dave Jones: nothing about open source, nothing about. All right. That sounds good. Yeah. And if people have suggestions, they can, they can all, yeah, I mean, I, I have some, I have some fun design challenges coming up. I, I, I might be able to talk about it. So, uh, Oh, okay. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. I don't think I'll be able to talk about it this time. Well, hopefully I'll be able to talk about

Chris Gammell: a couple of projects coming up as well. Oh, good. Recently. Now, now that I'm back, because when you go overseas like this, it really puts a lot of stuff on hold. You know, I had projects on the boil and, and you just can't do anything one or two weeks out. You know, you might say, Oh, I want to send something away to the manufacturer, you know, I bought away to be manufactured. But then if you're not here to answer technical questions or to, you know, or to redo it, you know, in a hurry in case something's wrong, it just totally screws up. So yeah, that's a problem with going on these overseas trips is you tend to shut down like a week or two before. Yeah. And in terms of, you know, stuff you're working on, because you know, you know, I better not do anything this week because I'm about to leave and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So now, now that I'm back, I'm back into things and hopefully, well, I've only been back for a day, but anyway, I'm sure you'll- A lot of stuff I've got to work on.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to your videos for sure. I can't wait to see some of those. Jeff and I talked about that.

Chris Gammell: Don't get too, as always with my videos, people, don't get too, uh, don't get too excited because I think they're not that great. And everyone expects them to be wonderful and I put so much work into it. You know, I don't. And yeah, I put the minimum amount of effort possible. I'm sorry. And there's no, you know, just like my tour of Apex Electronics I did. Right, right, right. I haven't edited that one yet, but we had, you know, we had no time at all to go there and just wander through and everyone, I'm sure everyone, when the video goes up, everyone will go, oh, why didn't you look in all the drawers? Well, if I did that, you know, the video would be two hours long and, you know. Yeah. So, anyway.

Dave Jones: I don't worry about it. You know, I think engineers have, they understand that it's more about the content in the end than the, uh, the, you know, you don't need to be super detailed. We want to just get the gist of it. We want to, we want to see the, the big piles of junk, not necessarily what's in the piles.

Chris Gammell: Well, there's good piles of junk there that I show off. So, that's good. So, hopefully everyone will be happy with that, but.

Dave Jones: I can't wait.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Trust me, I am my own biggest critic. I'm sure. You know, when it comes to the blog and, yeah, I can assure you, every time you think, uh, you know, you complain about something, well, I complain to myself every day that I didn't get it right or I didn't, you know, oh, I should have done that better. I should have explained it better. And I'm, I'm sure you're, you're probably doing the same thing with the amp hour, right? You're, you're maybe learning the same thing that you go, oh, that was okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, I wish I talked about that or wish I'd mentioned this. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's just the, uh, yep. It's part of the process.

Chris Gammell: That's the way the cookie crumbles with the, uh, with the blog. Yeah. It's all part of the, uh, the live process. Cause we film the, we film, sorry, we, we record this thing live. There's no editing. So it's just one continuous, uh, rant for an hour.

Dave Jones: Right. I'm sure this week I'll be like, oh, I shouldn't have brought up China. Right. And I'm sure I'll also be like, uh, wow, I shouldn't have talked so much. I think we're about five minutes over already.

Chris Gammell: I think we're over. So we'll call it quits.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Can't wait to, well, next week, Dave, we'll talk again.

Chris Gammell: All right. We will do. Thanks for listening, everyone. Talk to you soon. Bye.