#22 – The Hard Work Hypothesis

Chris Gammell: This is the Amp Hour podcast, recorded December 21st, 2010. Episode 22, The Hard Work Hypothesis.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell from Chris Gammell's Analog Life. How are you doing, Chris? Good, Dave. Happy almost holidays, right?

Dave Jones: Almost, yes. Happy holidays.

Chris Gammell: You celebrate Hanukkah, which is, you know, already passed.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we're getting very close. What's the date today? The 22nd. Jeez. Well, it is here. It's the 21st over there, I guess.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that's too bad because it's our 22nd episode. That would have worked out well.

Dave Jones: It is the 22nd episode. It's the 22nd here. So there you go. Yeah. It lines up. Means absolutely jackal. So, did you see the moon last night?

Chris Gammell: No, I saw all the stuff about it and I talked to some people who wanted to know it. And then I looked at the forecast and it was overcast the whole time.

Dave Jones: Oh, it was crap. Okay. Well, if it's any consolation, I didn't see it either. I wasn't sure if you guys saw it. Well, not that we were going to see anything here. Yeah, up in Queensland, I think they had a view of it, but it wasn't dark enough here yet. The sun hadn't set or something by the time. So you would see, yeah, I don't know. It was very little or something. That's pretty cool though. Anyway, I've seen one before. So, yeah, it's not a big loss.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's nice with those too because you can look at it without those stupid little viewer thingies. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: Yeah, with the viewer things and you can, yeah. With the sun filter, yeah. So you can view it with the naked eye and it was red apparently. So I haven't actually seen any photos of it yet. No, I skipped them too.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, yeah, because if you don't know, it was going to be red because of all of our pollution these days. It was going to cast a red tint. The moon was going to turn red apparently. That must have been creepy. I don't know if it actually happened. I'm sure if you actually took a photo of it, post it and show us your photo.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I saw there was a couple of links to Wired. I just didn't click over yet. All right. Not to worry. What do we got on today's show? Well, we got a shout out. So we got one. All right. Awesome. Yeah. Awesome. So this one is actually, Jerry Ellsworth was the one who mentioned it, but the amateurlogic.com. It's a video podcast. So nipping at Dave's heels. Definitely a lot less often. I think it's like every, you know, a couple of times, maybe every month or two they post one. But it was pretty cool. It was, you know, like a ham kind of podcast like Sodder Smoke was. But we always like seeing more of them. Cool. Keep it up, guys. We hope to see more. I mean, that was what Jerry was talking about. I was hoping to see more of them. Clicked over, got to watch a couple. So pretty cool.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, I was, yeah, I'm not fearful of any competition like that.

Chris Gammell: And you have a new video too. I saw that. And I think we were supposed to talk about that today.

Dave Jones: Oh, well. I think so. Which ones are? That's the, did you? The dodgy components. Because we were going to talk, it was on the list last week. Dodgy components. That's right. We should, we should get onto that. But I, before I get, I guess we should segue into that. But before we do that, I just looked at Afrotech Mob, Mob's video YouTube channel. He's got a blog out there and he does really good electronics tutorials. Yeah. And he stole my idea. Oh, no. One of his latest videos. Oh, yeah. He stole it. Anyway, it's to do with super caps. He's using those big super caps to do some damage. You know, charges them up and. Oh, to explode components you mean? And blows up a few things. Yeah. Exploding components and tracks on PCBs and coins and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. I saw that. What, what my, that wasn't quite my idea. Well, kind of was, but my idea was that to actually show how much energy is in a typical AAA battery. Yeah. And this came about because my friend Doug Ford, he's been on the show before. We were, we were having lunch. Oh, God. It was probably two months ago now when we originally talked about this. And we got onto the topic of AAA batteries, as you do. And we were just, you know, I was saying that how much energy is in a AAA battery. Yeah. Is actually amazing. You know, it's X number of kilojoules or something. I don't know the exact figure, but it's off the top of my head, but it's large, the amount of energy. And it's only because of the ESR, the high ESR of the battery that you can't do any real damage with it. So I was thinking of actually demonstrating how much energy is actually in that battery by actually discharging the battery into a huge bank of capacitors and then blowing something up with, with, with just the energy that's in a AAA battery. So anyway, that was, uh, and he kind of stole that idea.

Chris Gammell: I don't think it's stole it, Dave. He just did it first.

Dave Jones: No, he's not stolen. No, he just pipped me to the post.

Chris Gammell: He's got some good, some good stuff. I like his, I like his stuff. Um, yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. Anyway, I just wanted to put it out there because, uh, I don't want people to think that I ripped off his idea if I actually go and do that. Oh, okay. Clearing the air. Because I've got, you know, I've got evidence that we talked about a month ago.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And speaking of ripping, actually ripping you off, uh, I, I saw your thing about NPR. That's, that's crazy, man. Like maybe you should explain that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. The bastards. Yeah. The, uh, NPR, the, what is it? The, what's the acronym?

Chris Gammell: National Public Radio. National Public Radio. Which I love. I love them. Don't, don't get me wrong.

Dave Jones: Right. Yep. They sound pretty good. And they did an article on the, um, Amazon Kindle. And, yeah. And basically e-readers in general and stuff like that. And in the first minute or two of their, I think it was only like a five minute segment or something on their show. And they basically, uh, used, they ripped my voice from my YouTube channel, my Kindle review and tear down. Yeah. They ripped it and they, they just whacked it in the middle of the show as an example of, you know, people in the industry talking about the Kindle and people have done tear downs and all that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They were talking about the enthusiasm for it.

Dave Jones: And, which is great. You know, thanks for using me, but they didn't cite me. Right. No attribution. They didn't, they didn't give me a credit. Oh, no attribution at all.

Chris Gammell: I know. That could have been, that could have been big. Did you write into them? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Did you write into them? I did. If you can actually follow it in the comments. I put comments on the blog. We'll link to it. And, um, yeah. And they replied back. Oh, I can't remember. It was some wank talk, you know, typical. Oh, how we do do it being a short segment and the brevity of it. We can't, you know, credit you on air and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: What we would have used to explain who it was.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes, exactly. Here's Dave Jones. You know, it takes literally less than two seconds.

Chris Gammell: Thumbs down to NPR this week.

Dave Jones: Ah, big thumbs down to NPR, National Public Radio in the US. And yeah, I, as soon as it happened, I started, people were driving home apparently and they were hearing my voice on the radio suddenly. Yeah. On their car radio popping up and they all emailed me and I got a flood of people telling me that they heard me on NPR.

Chris Gammell: Ah, next time. Next time, maybe. Next time.

Dave Jones: Ah. So, I replied back to them and they haven't replied back because they're a bunch of bitches. So, yeah. Yeah. There you go. NPR. Bad form, really. It's just, yeah, you could have at least given me credit on the blog or something like that. Yeah. So, anyway.

Chris Gammell: Oh, we have a shout out. Should that be a shout down? I don't know.

Dave Jones: That's a shout down. Yes. Yes. New segment here on the Amp Hour.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Impromptu and yet well-deserved. So, how about some workbenches? We've had some feedback that our workbenches stuff has gone on and on a little bit, but I think it's because we've been so excited about all the awesome pictures that have been sent in so far.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I just love looking at people. You know, I'm sorry. I get rather excited looking at people's workbenches.

Chris Gammell: Well, we all know that Dave's, you know, his test equipment fetish is a bit excessive, but it is acceptable. Not compared to some people. Come on. That's true. Some...

Dave Jones: Yeah. I live in Australia. I don't get access to all this cool surplus test gear like you guys in the US have. Oh, yeah. God. Hey, man. You could fit... I always said it before. You could fit out a $100,000 lab for $200.

Chris Gammell: I know. You can... Someone should come up with a business idea where they just, you know, become the middleman out in California and buy stuff for you and then ship it to you at some premium from like off eBay, you know, for people that want to ship internationally.

Dave Jones: Well, there's lots of companies that do that. There's lots of the vultures. Yeah. Yeah. All these test equipment vultures. They buy the bulk lots at auction from some military surplus, you know, thing or some uni that's shutting down or something and they flog all the gear on eBay for, you know, a hundred times what they paid for it. So, anyway. Yes. But our first person is Frank. Frank from Finland. Frank's from Finland. He says it's cold there. Minus 25 degrees C. That is unreal. Yeah. That's bloody cold. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit.

Chris Gammell: It's minus 60 maybe?

Dave Jones: Bloody cold. Yeah. Something. It's insane.

Chris Gammell: That's... I think that's the temperature where it starts like if you spit, it freezes before it hits the ground. I've only read about that. I've never experienced it. But that is unbelievable. So...

Dave Jones: Right. I think I actually see ice here on his bench. Well, maybe I'm mistaken, but I think he's got heaters inside. But...

Chris Gammell: I'm pretty sure there's a penguin somewhere on his bench. It's weird. Right. Just waddles into shot. Yeah. Yeah. What's he got though? Anyway, we won't... He's got an X-TEC. Is that X-TEC there?

Dave Jones: Um, what? The multimeter? No, that's the famous Vici VC99, which I smashed to bits in my 100th episode.

Chris Gammell: I don't do the handhelds, man. You know me.

Dave Jones: Right. Nah, you're a bench meter, man. Yeah. I don't know. You old Luddite.

Chris Gammell: Yes, I'm so old-fashioned. Me with my accuracy. Yeah, it looks like a nice bench though. It looks very well used. And, uh...

Dave Jones: Yes, yeah. It's like a typical mechanical workbench, which has sort of been commandeered into an electronics workbench.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because it has lots of, like, physical abuse to the surface of it, if you know what I mean. Yeah. It's been, uh... It's been banged around a lot. Yeah, it looks sanded down. He's got like a little homemade... Yeah, he's got a homemade power supply there on the right-hand side in a box with a couple of, uh, LED panel meter readouts. Yeah. And he's got a Rhygol, of course. Everyone seems to have a Rhygol. Yeah. And he's got a light that comes over the top and he's got a little draw thing with ohms, kilo-ohms and mega-ohm resistors.

Chris Gammell: I like the, uh, the project he said he's working on. So, you know, if people are just listening right now, you can't see it, obviously. But it's, you know, it's a... He said it's a new power supply. And the thing that I like about it, I can't see who actually makes it. It looks like Norate or something like that. But it's this monstrous toroidal transformer. And if you don't know what that is, it's basically like a donut, you know, a ferrite donut wrapped with wire, you know, to step up or step down voltages. In this case, probably step up. And that thing is a monster. I love it. I love transformers like that. That thing's awesome. So...

Dave Jones: Yep. So, yeah, that looks like it's coming along. So, uh, yep, good luck with that one. And thanks for sending your photo. He's not in the photo, of course, which is a bit, uh, bit disappointing.

Chris Gammell: No shout-down on that one, but, you know. No, no, not at all.

Dave Jones: Not at all. And he's got the, and of course, he's got the resistor color code up on the, uh, up on the wall as well.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so we'll post links to that picture of his bench for Workbench of the Week. And one more. We have Nathan Bowers as well.

Dave Jones: Yes, Nathan. Thank you very much. And he's in the shot. There we go. His first photo is a bit, uh, blurry, but his second one, there he is. In the, uh, shot. Managing a bit, managing to crack a bit of a smile there. Come on.

Chris Gammell: Almost. He's almost got it.

Dave Jones: And it looks like it's in his garage. There's, there's the roller door, I believe. I don't know. What do you guys call those in the US? Is it a roller door?

Chris Gammell: I call it a garage door, Dave.

Dave Jones: A garage door. Well, okay. Well, they call it a roller door here because they actually roll, well, this one doesn't roll up. It looks like it opens and comes out flat, but our ones here actually roll up. Oh. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They're called, actually, it's a brand name. Roller door is a trademark here. Okay. So that's what we call it anyway.

Chris Gammell: And Nathan is actually, he's a link to us before. He had the Amp Hour logo on his homepage. His was a sober newt, if you remember that. But, um.

Dave Jones: That's right. I thought I recognized the name from somewhere. So. There you go. There you go.

Chris Gammell: But, and he works on guitar pedals. So that's, that's pretty cool. I like, I like it.

Dave Jones: Yep. And as he, I think he mentioned in his, uh, comment when he posted it, you don't need much gear to work on, on these, uh, these actual pedals. So, you know, and, and it's true. You don't need a big lab setup with. With a lot of stuff really, right? $100,000 worth of gear to do something useful. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, you can have your, you know, a pair of side cutters and a multimeter and a solder and iron and oscilloscope and, you know. Yeah, maybe a power source.

Chris Gammell: That helps too, but.

Dave Jones: My power supply.

Chris Gammell: But you can always do wall works if you really need to. If you're just doing little stuff. So.

Dave Jones: Oh, of course. Yeah, I like it. Or batteries or anything.

Chris Gammell: That is the, the minimalist, uh, award for that one. That's, that's good though. That's, you know, lean and.

Dave Jones: I wouldn't say minimalist. He's got, you know, he's got parts cabinets and stuff. I know, but just from what I described it. I think once you graduate to parts cabinets, I think you're getting a bit serious. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like, uh, like Mike. Oh my God. That picture. I'm still thinking of that picture from last week. Oh yeah. If people haven't gone to see it yet, you should click on episode 21. That is a ridiculous panoramic view of Mike from, was it Mike's Electronics.co.uk? Yep. My God. I'm surprised more people didn't link to that picture. I thought, I thought, like, make or hack a day or someone was going to do that. It'd go viral, huh? Maybe you'll see it next time. Right. Whew. That's a crazy picture.

Dave Jones: That's excellent. Yeah. Yes. So, yeah, you certainly don't need much. And the minimalist, you mentioned the minimalist approach. I think that is like a, like one of those starter kits you buy from Artifruit or something like, you know, you can buy a starter kit and it's got like a $10 multimeter and it's got a pair of side cutters and it's got a little spool of solder. Soda. Yeah. And, you know, that's basically it. Yeah. So, and a couple of clip leads or something. That's a minimalist.

Chris Gammell: I guess, yeah, that would be minimalist. But, you know, whatever works is, you know, whatever gets the job done. Like crowbars sometimes. Absolutely. You know. It happens. It happens sometimes. Whatever, whatever works. So, I think that's all of our, our workplace, workbenches. Workplace of the week. Workbench of the week. Yes.

Dave Jones: We won't make, we won't spend too much more time on that because I think we spent about 25 minutes last week.

Chris Gammell: Oops. But we love the people sending stuff in. That's so great. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes. Thank you very much. So, we mentioned at the start of the show, which we should probably get into before we forget, which is the dodgy components. Yes. Which we were going to get to. Yeah. Which we didn't talk about last week. But now I have actually posted both of my videos on my dodgy components. The first one was dodgy components from DigiKey. And the second one was dodgy components from Maxim. I didn't see the DigiKey one.

Chris Gammell: I saw the Maxim one.

Dave Jones: Oh, you didn't see the DigiKey one. No. I must have missed that.

Chris Gammell: You know, I saw your feed was down. Maybe that's why.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Yes. I've had a lot of problems with my feed. I can't. I think I finally figured out it's the WordPress cache. Oh, the super cache. The cache thing that I use. And that, yeah, super cache. And that was apparent. If I turn that on, my feed dies. If I turn it off, the feed comes back. So, I don't know. I've got to jump on the forums and figure out what's going on there. And anyway, so I've got no cache at the moment. So, maybe if I get, you know, if I get on Slashdot or something like that, I'm in deep shit. I don't mean to laugh at you like that.

Chris Gammell: I laugh at that thing about my own. I'm like, man, I don't think that's ever going to happen. So, I don't know. I still don't get the Slashdot. I don't understand that people still read that, but whatever. To each their own. No, yeah, I don't either.

Dave Jones: I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I still read EE Times and a lot of people don't read that. So, you know.

Dave Jones: No, I don't read. Well, I get a weekly email from them, but mostly I hit delete unless there's something in the title that, you know, interests me. So, yeah. So, let's hear about these dodgy components. Isn't anything more than a curse? Dodgy components. Yes. The DigiKey one for my microcurrent project, which I'm kitting up, which I kitted up for again. They're almost sold out again, by the way. I think there's only one or two left in stock. And anyway, these use 0.1% resistors in them, right? They're precision resistors, 0.1% tolerance, you know, low PPM, you know, 25 PPM or less. And you rely on the fact that those resistors are 0.1%. It's not like you get them and then you measure each one to make sure they're in spec. Well, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And how would you, I mean, every resistor, you'd have to like, you know, step the temperature and then, oh, that would be a mess.

Dave Jones: I know. It's just stupid. Anyway, so I did my usual thing. And I've manufactured these microcurrents heaps of times before and they've always been spot on. No unit has ever failed, you know. So, you know, so you build up confidence in your supply chain and your build process and all that sort of stuff that it's going to work. So, you don't think twice about it. You get your parts, you order them from DigiKey. I didn't get them from, you know, I didn't buy them off eBay or something like that. So, you get them from a, you know, from a source. They're actually made by Burns, who are a top quality, you know, manufacturer. Yeah. And buy from DigiKey so they're genuine. I ship them off to my assembler, you know, assembler sends them back and I test one unit and it's okay. That's what I do. I test, I fully tested one unit and it was fine. And then I tested a bunch of others and then I only spot checked them and just to make sure that they were functional. Because I knew that they were going to be in spec because they're 0.1% resistance.

Chris Gammell: Well, they better be.

Dave Jones: Right? Well, yeah, they'd better be. And it turns out, nah, you know, fail. They weren't. And I'd already shipped out a dozen or more units or something. And I think 15 or 18 units. And then I sort of noticed, I was testing the next batch and sort of noticed that it wasn't quite meeting the tolerance on one of the ranges. So, I looked into it and sure enough, the resistor isn't 0.1%. It's a couple of percent. And, you know, I've been had. I got dodgy components from DigiKey or from Burns. You know, it's not, turns out it wasn't from DigiKey as such, I don't think. They're still investigating, but it looks like it may have come from Burns. But anyway, they're still investigating.

Chris Gammell: The question I had for you for both of them, I didn't know there was a second one, but, you know, you had a Maxon video too and you said they responded. So, my question for you is, you know, how are they responding to being called out? Because that's what I'm really curious about. You know, because you think about big semiconductor companies who don't even respond to some of their, you know, $100,000 customers or even million-dollar customers. How do they respond when it's more public?

Dave Jones: I think you'll find they do. Well, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Not always, though. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, they do, but not always to the degree that the users want, right? So, you're selling $100,000 worth of someone's chips a year, right, in your product. And, yes, they're probably responding to you on the really big stuff like, hey, all of these parts are broken. But it's like, hey, you know, these parts are, you know, moving, even though the spec's wide, it's moving around within the spec. They're not necessarily going to respond to you about that stuff. So, what my question is is, how do they respond when it's more public like this? Because before, if it's just you going to Maxim and saying, oh, well, you know, your parts are crap. And they come back and they say, well, sorry, you know, we did this a little bit wrong. Here's another. Now, but now what you're doing is you're saying it very publicly on a video, you know, or even like Twitter or something like that, which a lot of semiconductor companies don't have experience, as much experience with. How did they respond? Was it faster than you expected or slower?

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Yeah, it basically was. It's much faster than I expected. And they're much more apologetic. And they're much more forthcoming. And I typically get responses higher up in the food chain than you'd normally get. You know, normally you get some applications engineer or something just contact you or some lowly person. Oh, yeah, sorry. We'll refund your money. And, you know, that's it. But, yeah, I actually get in the case of the DigiKey one, I got someone high up email me and they wanted me to send my microcurrent unit back to them to burns. I don't know why. We just want one. I don't know why the hell they want that. We just want one. But, yeah, they want to do a thorough investigation and analysis and all sorts of things. And, yeah, I don't think that would have happened if I just complained and, you know, as a regular, regular, I'm using the quote marks, customer, which isn't highly visible, you know, which isn't visible outside your, which isn't publicly visible. And they really do respond.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, the question I would have is, is there some kind of, like, competitive advantage to opening up your, not necessarily, because you don't want to, like, seem like, you know, like, if you always did this kind of thing, right, eventually people would stop doing business with you probably. Because they say, I can't afford that kind of visibility. But now, say, 10 people did this, right? So, and one of your, and your Maxim stuff was for work, right? Yeah. So, I mean, there is a competitive advantage to doing that kind of thing because there is better, not necessarily from a relationship standpoint, because, you know, you know this and I know this from, on the professional side of things, like, relationships between companies really matters because you need to be able to, you know, talk to the quality person at a component engineering, or a component, manufacturer, right? You need to be able to call them directly. That's a big deal. Whereas, so if you ruin that relationship, then that's something else. But maybe this is a competitive advantage for, you know, opening up your problems and explaining them on the internet and getting better responses. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I think it comes down to, they won't voluntarily do that. You know, they will, if something goes public, they will typically respond to it because they know that they have to because everyone's watching. But are you talking about them being more transparent? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Chris Gammell: I'm saying that you as a part user and me as a part user, right? Say we're both using a Maxim part, right? And you're pissed and you do a video and I'm pissed and I do a video. And then maybe, you know, 10 more people have a problem and they do videos, right? Okay, do, you know, does that 12 group of people, group of 12 people doing their own videos and getting this pretty good response being the squeaky wheel, is that an actual advantage? So might we see, you know, companies doing this kind of thing? You know, you were doing it for your personal project, right?

Dave Jones: And is it an advantage to them or to the user? To the user? Oh, it certainly is. And it's always going to be, there's only going to be a certain number of people who are going to go to the effort to do a video and, you know, publicly out an actual problem. Yeah, there's a very limited number of people who would bother to actually do that. Most people would go, just forget about it and just refund my parts, please. And nobody ever hears about it. You know, they might rant a couple of years down the track in some forum post somewhere, but that's about the extent you'd actually hear of it. So, yeah, it's a huge advantage. I found almost every time that I've ranted about something, the company has come good very quickly, admitted the problem, and they've fixed it. You know, I can't think of one case where they've told me to shut the hell up or, you know, or it's ruined a relationship. In fact, it's built the relationship, typically. Wow. You know, and even when, you remember the X-Tech meter that actually blew up in my hand. Yeah, I remember that. Right? That was a shocking, you know, I went and did a video about that. And to most companies, that would be the most horrific thing anyone could do to you is to release a video showing how this product blew up in their hand, you know. I mean, that is a public relations nightmare, right? But they took it on board and worked with me and they're redesigning the product straight away and investigate. They even offered to fly out here. So, you know, it's huge. And that didn't ruin the relationship. I was actually a bit concerned about that because I had a good relationship with X-Tech, and I still do, at the time that happened. And I thought, oh, you know, am I going, you know, if I do this video, they might never talk to me again. Yeah. You know, so I've ruled out being able to review any X-Tech products in the future and all that sort of stuff. But no, if anything, I think it's built the relationship rather than harmed it.

Chris Gammell: But so the lesson is possibly, you know, if people out there are working with products and having issues instead of just grumbling and, you know, going in forums kind of thing, but make it open, you know, go on YouTube, go on, you know, make your own podcast, make your own blog and talk about this stuff. And I mean, it's a little bit different because I think, Dave, you have a little bit more visibility than.

Dave Jones: Oh, I've got much more visibility. Yeah, which makes a big difference.

Chris Gammell: At the same time, I mean, that kind of thing that still happens, you know what I mean? So, you know, I think, I don't know, it just struck me as something that could be a competitive advantage. Like if you were a business, you know, like if Dave Jones selling microcurrents became a business, right? Or, you know, a full-time business, then that is a definite competitive advantage. So that's all I wanted to say about that.

Dave Jones: Well, anytime you give good service and good response, people are going to be impressed and they're going to spread the word. Right. You know, whereas if you do something shit, it's, you know, it's going to go in the opposite direction. You're going to get a bad rep. So, yeah, I, you know, they can't, they really can't do anything but respond in a positive note, really. Because it's too visible. Is that what happened with that programmer too?

Chris Gammell: Didn't you have that programmer problem? Did they talk to you about that or no? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Ah, yeah. The microchip programmer. Oh, that was huge. I mean, that's one of their highest rated videos on YouTube there when they did a video response to my video. Oh, yeah, that's right. That made them out to be, and the, and the CEO called me personally and talked to me for half an hour. You know, I mean, this is, that was such a massive response. It, it almost went viral, that response. You know, it was so positive in the community. Everyone go, wow, look how responsive microchip are. And they got massive mileage out of that. Yeah, it's kind of weird. And they know it. Yeah. So, the interesting point with about exposing this sort of stuff on my blog, I had quite a few people comment that I shouldn't have done it. Right. I should have, I should have talked to the company first, got all the facts, and then waited until it was all resolved, and then talked about it. Well, you know, I, my opinion is that, no, I shoot from the hip first, and then I tell the story as it happens, and then I let the company respond. And that's, that's how I think it should work. Because if I waited, if I didn't publicly put comments out there and put video out there, then these companies may not have responded at all. They may have, well, just sent me new parts or something, and that's it. And they don't investigate, and they just sweep it under the carpet. Right. But doing a video up front puts a bit of fire up their butt.

Chris Gammell: Dave, are you trying to be the Julian Assange of electronics world?

Dave Jones: I'm trying to be the Julian Assange of electronics, yes, who caught me out. Jealous of the other Aussie. I just think, if you see a problem, you, you know, and you've got a public audience like I do, you speak up about it. And, you know, I mean, it's not a blanket rule, but, geez, I didn't see any problem with telling the story of how I got dodgy parts from DigiKey. You know, I mean, even if it wasn't DigiKey's fault, it's, well, they can respond, and they can say it wasn't their fault. And that's fine. And I'll happily publicly admit that, you know, that it wasn't their fault, and they're great, and they fixed it, and et cetera, et cetera. So, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I saw another side of that. So, more of the prevention side. So, talking about those programmers, the programming cables and stuff like that. So, you ever read Annie Pasto hardware blog? Do you know who that is?

Dave Jones: I've seen it occasionally, but I'm not a regular.

Chris Gammell: It's Matt Stack, and he's from, I think it's Stack. He's from Liquidware, though. So, they make a lot of the BeagleBoard and BeagleTouch. You know, they did that graphing calculator on the BeagleBoard. Oh, yes, yes. So, they make really good stuff, and they actually sell kits that are very, very nice, actually, of using the BeagleBoard. So, anyways, he had a post today, I think, and he was talking about innovation in the open source hardware community, and it was really interesting reading about it because he's talking about we're kind of moving into a new age of open source hardware, and basically that we're kind of getting to the cost-cutting mass production side of things. And that he hates it because he thinks that we're going to see more and more of the crappy programming cables like you talked about and just like the underdeveloped dev boards because no one cares. You know, they turn them once, and then they throw them away. And so, I wanted to read a quote from it. He said, And he's basically talking about, you know, it can't stop here. You know, just because the Arduino is a regular platform now, and people are trying to cut costs and do mass production and stuff, it doesn't mean that you should just, you know, buy the cheapest shield out there. You should go out and make your own shield, even if it's similar.

Dave Jones: Oh, heck, you shouldn't even be using the Arduino. Yeah, exactly. Really, if it comes down, you know, because the Arduino is an expensive, high-level platform. It's great for the beginner, but if you want to go out and, you know, I mean, if you're making a quadcopter or something and you want the minimum possible weight, you know, in your design, size and weight to fit on there, you don't use a bloody Arduino. You go out and lay your own board and use, you know, and do the minimal amount of circuitry required to actually get the job done. You do fully custom. Yeah. So, that's...

Chris Gammell: Anyways, his article was just like spot on. Everyone should go read it. It's a really, really... He's a really great writer. Excuse me. He's a really great writer. And this is just about, you know, how open source hardware, it was kind of at a stalling point and then it picked back up with the Arduino a couple years ago. And now... But he fears it as like, you know, we're going to see more of these crappy cables and crappy support from vendors and how everybody should be opening their stuff up. You know, go out and make your own stuff, but then go open it up too because that's just as important.

Dave Jones: Does he give any reason why that he thinks that they might be crap? Is he talking about companies like, you know, TI or something? Oh, Pew ever. I won't name them. But companies that actually are jumping on the open source hardware bandwagon and they're releasing these products and not... Is he implying that they're not doing... That they're not releasing a fully finished product like they normally would? They sort of toss it out there. Oh, open source. The community will take care of it and finish it off for us.

Chris Gammell: He did mention that there's more corporate involvement and stuff like that. I mean, and that's kind of a reality. We're seeing that more and more.

Dave Jones: Well, of course. I mean, well, that's the thing. I mean, the corporations have the money and the resources to do really good open source hardware products. So, I don't have a problem with them doing it as long as they open it and it's a good product. And, you know, I don't know. I think they can do really good things. No, no. I don't think that's bad. So can the individual, but...

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right, right. No, I think his thing is more... Well, I don't know. Maybe he can talk about it sometime.

Dave Jones: But basically that... Well, the best thing...

Chris Gammell: If it's just one and done kind of thing for a dev board and it's just left there and it's kind of face value open source, right? Oh, this is open. Here's our files. And then it's left to dead. Right, and they don't support. That's no good. You know, so...

Dave Jones: Right, and he's got a photo of George W. Bush with the mission accomplished banner across it in the article. I think that's brilliant. But, oh, yeah. But the thing with open source hardware, right, is that, like it or not, the most popular open source platforms are done by... You know, aren't done by one guy in his garage. They're done by large... Well, you know, it's getting towards larger companies like TI and the Beagle Board and all that sort of thing. Even the Arduino, right? If you think the Arduino is one guy in his garage, it's not. It's freaking, you know, they're a $5 million a year company or something. You know, they're getting very large. If you think, you know, Artifruit are small. You know, you think she ships stuff out of her bedroom. No, they're a, you know, they're a million dollar a year company and they're getting bigger. You think SparkFun are small.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they're 12.

Dave Jones: No, they're a $10 million company, you know? Yeah, yeah. And it needs these companies with the resources and the money and the full-time and people who are working on it full-time to produce and actually supply to the market these open source hardware products. Do you think the Arduino would be as popular as it is if nobody was selling a kit, if you couldn't buy the finished product?

Chris Gammell: Oh, hell no. No.

Dave Jones: No, of course not. No, if somebody just put the design out there on the web, oh, here's the Arduino and here's the circuit and, you know, go and make your, go and etch your own PCB. And no, it wouldn't have caught on at all.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you need buy-in from a lot of people, right? And then code base is just as important, right? Yeah, you need buy-in. Same with the, like, do-it-yourself drones, right? I mean, there's 12,000 people on that site. They're cranking out code all the time and always helping each other out, you know, and kind of centering around different platforms. You know, they have an Arducopter, however you say it, and they have other boards, other, you know, microprocessor-based boards that are doing different, you know, same function, but different boards, basically, in there. And it's all because of the code base and the people gathered around it that really gives it the power.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I've mentioned this before, I think, that ultimately, you know, 90, it's probably the 99, the 90 slash 9 slash 1% rule again, in that, you know, 90 plus percent of people who use open source, who make open source products, open source hardware products popular, use the finished product. They don't go around and muck around with the source code or, you know, design their own, you know, they just want to buy, they just buy the finished product. That's why it's popular. Right, application site. You know, I'd go as far to say as 99% of Arduinos are used by people who just buy the finished product and hook stuff up to it. And that's, and of course, that's the goal of it, is to be, you know, so you've got to have that finished product in place, available, supported at a good price, you know. And for it to be, for it to be popular. So open source hardware is more than just, the success of open source hardware is more than just publishing stuff out there and making it open. Yeah. You know, somebody has to actually produce it. Right. So as opposed to source code, which is, you know, but it's a similar sort of concept with source code. How many people use Linux? How many people compile their own kernel for Linux? Not me. Right? No. Not many. Right? Not many. They want the professional Red Hat distribution, right? They want the support. They want everything else. It's called, you know, Ubuntu or something like that. They want the fully supported, finished, polished product. They don't want to dick around with some half-assed product. So, yeah, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Whoa. Is that enough open source? Yeah. I think that gets our usual quota in there.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking about it.

Dave Jones: Well, actually, I think we've got some other stuff on the list, but maybe we shouldn't touch it. Oh.

Chris Gammell: Oh, do we really?

Dave Jones: Oh, I don't know. Possibly.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking of open, so like communities and stuff like that, right? So there's two new things that I saw that I wasn't sure. I don't know how much coverage they had, but two things that are happening, at least in the US. One thing is they're opening up the low-power FM. So all those hams out there might be kind of excited about this. But basically beforehand, all you could do, the only way you could get an FM station, you know, you could transmit in your car using a little iPod adapter and whatever and transmit to your radar locally. But now you can get a low-power transmit tower and you can run your own radio station, basically. You have to get a permit still from the FCC in the US. Right. But basically, they're opening up the entire FM band to people instead of corporations.

Dave Jones: Interesting. Well, I presume that it's only unused channels on the FM band. I presume you can't go and just pump out 10 watts on the same channel as some other station.

Chris Gammell: Well, you can, but yeah, you'll get in trouble for that. No, because this has to be sanctioned and you have to have a license. But basically, you couldn't get a license before and now you can.

Dave Jones: Right. And is it expensive or is it a pretty trivial thing to get a license?

Chris Gammell: I didn't see anything about the cost, but I think it's going to be more accessible, basically. But I was thinking about it from a community standpoint. Maybe if you had a critical mass of hackers or makers in a city, you could have in San Francisco. Well, I don't know how open the band is there, but say you've managed to get one for a band there and you could start your own radio station about making stuff. It might be easier to do in Kansas because there's more airspace there, but I thought that was cool. And I think there's a market for, like right now, a lot of the radio stations are all owned by the same people, but they're opening that up here. So I think there's an opportunity to kind of community source the new radio stations.

Dave Jones: Awesome. Sounds fantastic. We can take the Amp Hour live on the FM band.

Chris Gammell: 24-7.

Dave Jones: 24-7 just rehashing it.

Chris Gammell: No, I'm just saying, you know, like our schedules are so off. You know, we only have like an hour crossover that works, right? So I'll record 12 hours and you record 12 hours. I'll hand the baton off about 4 p.m. 4 p.m. and 4 a.m. here. So whatever that is there.

Dave Jones: Sounds good. No, well, that's a big step forward because these licenses used to cost millions of, I think it was $10 million to buy an FM license here in Australia or something. It was huge money. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So this is only a US thing, obviously. I haven't heard anything about that here.

Chris Gammell: I feel like my news sources are all very US-centric. I mean, it's not just me being, you know, like geocentric here.

Dave Jones: Right. I try and avoid US news sources because they're somewhat censored.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, don't give a study.

Dave Jones: But let's not go there.

Chris Gammell: And then the other one, though, is Google. So, you know, apparently in Japan, I talked to my friend who, you know, visits Japan a lot. And he said it's been around for years now, near field communications, where basically your phone can, you know, beam, you know, RF energy to a reader and then it will do like a card transaction for a credit card as opposed to swiping a magnetic card. I mean, how 99 is, how 95 is that, right? I mean. Yeah, exactly. So, they're pushing that, though. And then, you know, it's an open standard, too. So, that's like another venue for things that people can hack, hopefully. I don't know if that, I don't know if they're going to open that up on the phone side, but I think that.

Dave Jones: Well, they need to be encrypted for transfer of, you know, actually money information, transfer of financial information and stuff like that. So, I presume that is almost unhackable. If it was hackable, the industry would. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I would think that'd be software side. Wouldn't be very frightened. Wouldn't you encrypt it in software, though? That's what I would do. If I was sending a credit card number.

Dave Jones: Yes, yes, you would. It'd be, it'd likely be, yeah, on the software side of things. Yeah, I'd make a. Well, it ultimately is. Right, right.

Chris Gammell: I would make a stupid transmitter, not stupid, but, you know, a non-encrypted transmitter and then I would have a software side of things that would do all the SSL, AES, blah, blah, blah, transcription. Yeah. Encryption. And then, but that would be great because now, if this is going to be in every phone now, now maybe we can have, you know, you have little RF transmitters on every phone. And, well, you always had an RF transmitter, but now you have a open RF transmitter. That'd be pretty cool. I don't know. I don't.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I think that'd be awesome. You could do all sorts of, all sorts of stuff with that, I'm sure. But it's, you know, it's another step above RFID. Right. Readers and stuff like that. The RFID industry, which has been around for a long time. And yeah, everyone's talking about it now. You can get chipsets from some of the major manufacturers, which have, you know, you can get microcontrollers with built-in near-field RF interfaces. And things like that, I believe. Yeah, I've seen them. I can't remember who it was, either Microchip or somebody else. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: TI. Huh. I haven't seen those at all.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, yeah, expect to see, expect to see and hear much more about that. Near-field communications might be the new buzzword for the, the tens. What is this decade?

Chris Gammell: It's not the aughts. Last, last one was the aughts. The teens, I guess, would be, right?

Dave Jones: Right, the noughties or the noughties.

Speaker ?: The noughties.

Dave Jones: They used to, well, that's what we called it here, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Nice.

Dave Jones: We called it the noughties here, but I don't know. What is it? What is the name of this decade?

Chris Gammell: I would probably call it the teens.

Dave Jones: The teens?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, 2013, 14. I mean, once you get past 11, 12.

Dave Jones: Yep, right.

Chris Gammell: 19, 18, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We'll see. I'm sure somebody will go, yeah, I'm sure we'll all agree. We'll agree on some consensus for naming of the decade. I don't know if you got any good ideas. Yeah. Leave comments. Yeah, we'll set that up here.

Chris Gammell: Right. Just mail in your submissions now, folks, and we'll all be sure to get that to the, whoever makes these decisions.

Dave Jones: Well, the Amp Hour makes these decisions, obviously. Right, right. Because, you know. Vital, global importance.

Chris Gammell: Right, well, now we'll have our own FM radio station, at least in the US, in Kansas. In Kansas, right. Yeah. Oh, dear. So, how about these execs? Have you seen, have you seen this stuff? Have you seen this? Have you heard about this?

Dave Jones: I read a little bit about it. Well, you know, what's, what's news there? Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Do tell. A bunch of a-holes. I mean, let's see if people are surprised.

Dave Jones: Let's see how shocked people are.

Chris Gammell: I mean, basically, for people who haven't heard about it, you get these executives who are consulting, you know, they're, they're going out, they're, they're executives at ABC Semiconductor, right? And ABC Semiconductor is about to announce that their, you know, $40 million deal is going through with XYZ Semiconductor. And, oh, by the way, your executive there has also been consulting on the side about ABC Semiconductor. How is that possible? I mean, I mean, we don't see these stories in the Semiconductor and like electronics industries nearly as much as the banking industries, but it's like, really? This is, how did they?

Dave Jones: They get away with it because they're so brazen about it. They, they have such an, you know, they surround themselves with such an awe of, of, you know, how legitimate it all is because I should be, you know, democracy, freedom. I should be allowed to, you know, consult for, I'm an expert in my field. I, I should consult to many different companies. I do this on a regular basis. Right. You know, and yes, I'm the member of five different boards for often competing companies. And it's just normal. They build up. Yeah. They're so arrogant about it, I think. And I don't know. They seem to get away with it an awful lot. But in this case, you know, somebody's caught up with it.

Chris Gammell: A bunch of bankers influxing into the, into the electronics industry.

Dave Jones: Hey, look, they get, they get away with it.

Chris Gammell: I guess bankers do too.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Yeah. It's, I think it's the same in, in, in the industry. They just, they just get away with it because that's the way it is. They're almost untouchable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, I wonder about that sometimes, you know, like right now, you know, I'm an engineer, Dave, you're an engineer. You know, I think about that, you know, like that some, for some people who are started as engineers, that is their eventual career goal. They want to be making the big shots. You know, they want to be making the big bucks, calling, calling the big shots. Right. And that's just got to be such a different world. I mean, I mean, I, I sound like green saying that kind of thing, but like, really like, like, you know, millions of dollars salaries and, you know, how do you decide to build a $5 billion fab? Right. Like, it was like, oh, well, yeah, of course we're going to do that.

Dave Jones: I'm sure it works on whims just like it does at the engineering level, right? Throwing darts. They just sit around and have a couple of, you know, a couple of drinks and, oh, yeah, okay, done deal. Yeah. Where they, you know, they'll, you know, a billion dollars will suddenly just appear out of nowhere and, and a fab gets built. Yeah. You know, that's really interesting across cultures too.

Chris Gammell: I was listening to a story about, about China and doing business in the U.S. and, and how, and, and, and I've noticed this with like Asian companies I've worked with in the past, you know, decisions aren't made in, in meetings necessarily. They're made like over dinner or over drinks. And, you know, like it's a, it's a really, it's kind of a weird idea that that would happen. Like, I can't imagine that, like I was saying before, like if I ever became an executive, right? I can't imagine like going out for a beer and then being like, yeah, let's do this. I'm in the right state of mind right now. I'm, you know, I've had a few, let's, let's go ahead and do this $5 billion fab. But, you know, that's, that's how it happens sometimes. And that's the new reality, I guess.

Dave Jones: I think it does. Yeah. You know, you, you get some idealistic vision that they all sit around in a meeting with a huge whiteboard and they brainstorm everything and they get all the experts and they get all the input from everyone and they get all buy in as they call it from everyone. And they come to a global, you know, a consensus that everyone agrees on that it's a good idea. And then they do reports and investigate it for months and months.

Chris Gammell: None of that happens.

Dave Jones: Cost benefit analysis. I don't know. Some of that happens, but yeah, I think, I think there's alcohol involved.

Chris Gammell: That would make a lot of sense. I got to say.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Maybe we're just, I don't know. Are we just so dumb about what happens at the corporate level? Are we so, you know, blind by what happens up there? I don't know. Are you the CEO of a company? Are you listening? They're not listening.

Chris Gammell: They're not. They're not listening. And if they are, they don't want to talk to us. If they are, they're closet electronics hobbyists. I guarantee that. Right. No one is going to pull a Dave and be like, well, I heard on the amp, they're going to get on the YouTube channel. I heard on the amp hour, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Dave Jones: Maybe we should follow one of them around for a day or something like that. See what they really do. That would be great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Don't mind us. We'll just, we'll just sit over here while you make these confidential decisions. Yeah. Goodness.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't know. It seems almost instant. You know, when I was dealing with a company, you know, huge deal with a couple of major, huge semiconductor companies. And you do wonder how they come to the decisions. They're so massive. They're so, you know, the company's so massive. They've got so many things happening at once. So many different divisions. So many different, you know, parts of their business. How does it all, you know, how do they make decisions on all that sort of stuff? I don't know. Is it hit and miss and just...

Chris Gammell: You know, we talked about that before with Mark Hurd. And I think someone commented about that. How, you know, we were talking, we were bitching about how they, how he got like $40 million. And it's, oh, he makes all the decisions and he gets in trouble. Well, guess what? Guess what, folks? I just saw an article today about that guy. If you didn't know, Mark Hurd is the HP guy. He's the former HP guy who got in trouble for inappropriate behavior. And this is not trying to turn into TMZ, some like gossip show. But basically, you know, they say, oh, well, he got in trouble and, you know, he made these decisions. And that's why he should get this huge parachute. It's $40 million. Yeah, that would work if he didn't go directly to his competitor and get hired the next day. So, you know, electronics is a small industry. It doesn't seem like it because it's so global and it's so, so much money. But it's so small. It is, I, I've only touched on the tip of how connected people are in the industry. Not even like at the top level, but just like the small things. You know, like, there's just not that many of us relative to the world population, you know? You think, what, maybe 100,000, 500,000 people even?

Dave Jones: I don't know. It's hard. Does anyone have, can anyone point to numbers on that sort of stuff?

Chris Gammell: I can't. I don't know. But even at 500,000 people, right? So, half a million, there's 6 billion people in the world. That's a very small percentage. You know, like? It is. Maybe 500,000 is way too low. Ah, well. Anyway.

Dave Jones: So, our industry is insignificant, huh? I guess so. Oh, well, no, we are. We are. But somehow, the industry has a momentum all of its own.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You wanted to talk about, you wanted to do a follow-up on the PhD thing.

Chris Gammell: So, we talked about that last time. And I didn't have any numbers about that. But I saw that a couple days ago, there was an article in The Economist, which is, usually, they have really great articles in that magazine. But they were talking about the actual numbers and percentage above, you know, getting a high school degree. So, if you get a high school degree, you would be considered, you know, 0% above median, right?

Dave Jones: Is it called a high school degree?

Chris Gammell: What do you call it? Is it actually a degree? What would you call it?

Dave Jones: A high school diploma, is it right? I don't know the difference, I guess.

Chris Gammell: I didn't graduate high school. Well, you should. You're an American. Anyway, so, and then over that, there's a premium. Oh, I didn't write the number in there. So, I think there's a premium of like 13% to 18% or something like that for a bachelor's degree over that. So, like in terms of earnings. And then the next step up would be a master's degree. And that is 23%. And so, last time, we were talking about...

Dave Jones: Over 23% over what? The high school.

Chris Gammell: Over the high school, yeah. So, that's the base level.

Dave Jones: Right. So, the high school diploma is our benchmark.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. And so, then last week, we were talking about PhDs and how there's really no economic incentive of it. And this article confirmed that it's 26% compared to the 23% of a master's degree. And not only that, you know, if you spend six, seven years working on a PhD past when you would get a master's degree, then you would, you know, you lose that in terms of opportunity costs. And if you think, you and I...

Dave Jones: So, you actually make a loss.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. I mean, effectively, you do. And not to mention, you know, the...

Dave Jones: Maybe 30 years down the track, you might not. Right, yeah. But it'd take you 20 years to recover that financial hit, possibly. But I can't believe that, you know, 20... A PhD only earns, on average, what, 26% more... Right. ...than someone with a high school diploma. That's just... Well, that seems remarkable, doesn't it?

Chris Gammell: ...overge over geography and, I mean, countries and, you know... Right. You know, life... I don't know if it was lifetime, but it, you know... But you think about it, you know, like someone who's an electrician, you know, they can make some serious dough because they're... Oh, of course. It's all about supply and demand, which the economist loves talking about, obviously. But, yeah, the... It's just interesting to see those numbers. And I really like the... One of the ladies in there was talking about... She was a professor that was accepting... Because they were talking about not just engineering PhDs, so maybe that's another distinction that needs to be made.

Dave Jones: Right, yes. Engineering might be different, yep.

Chris Gammell: But she mentioned that we need academic birth control. You know, basically that they're letting too many people in and they're oversupplying everything based on this because it's cheap labor for... I mentioned last time that, you know, it's cheap labor for, you know, people foreign to the US. I was corrected about that in the comments last time. But, you know, if you think about just grad students, that is cheap labor. You know, if you have a grad student who's working there six years, they're making not that much money.

Dave Jones: Not much, yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And they're working hard, too. I mean, like, I know some PhD people and they are working hard. So...

Dave Jones: More fool them.

Chris Gammell: I mean, and you think about, like, if you actually did start cutting back on how many people you let into universities for PhDs, that would, you know, raise prices for people that have a PhD. And I don't know if it would hurt research, but it would be good for... It would be more incentive. You know, there'd be more competition for those spots then.

Dave Jones: Right. That brings me to a saying that I like to repeat often is that hard work is highly overrated, people. If you have to work hard for a living, you're doing something wrong, I think. Like, or you're doing it the wrong way. Oh, maybe. Really. Really? You know, I... If you're working hard for the man, then I reckon you're doing it wrong. Like, you know, if you're slaving away, doing all the overtime and everything else, and, you know, there's no light at the end of the tunnel, then you're doing it wrong, I reckon.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if I agree with that.

Dave Jones: I think hard... Don't get me wrong. Hard work is good if you're doing it for your own self, you know, interest, self-reasons, things like that. But if you're working hard for the man, I reckon you're doing it wrong.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I mean... Yep, absolutely. Because at the other end of the tunnel, when it all comes down to it, they don't care. You know, they're just going to whip you and, you know, and toss you away at the end.

Chris Gammell: So... Yeah, that is a... Yeah. That's true. I mean, and that's kind of the corporate stuff we were talking about, too. I mean, like, not to get down on corporations, because a lot of it's good, but, like, at the end of the day, like you said, it's business, right? So...

Dave Jones: Exactly. It's always business. And, yeah. And that points towards working for yourself. I mean, hard work's great if you're doing your own business or your own hobby. Fantastic. But, you know, well, even for your own business, you know, these people who go out there and do consulting gigs and think it's great that they're working for themselves, but they're actually working 80-hour weeks. Well, and they're having no life. Well, you know, I... I don't know. Is that worth it? Well, maybe to them it is. But to someone like me, it's not. My ultimate goal is to work as little as possible, you know, is to do the least amount of work for... The most amount of work to make a living. They want to just... So, why would that not be a goal?

Chris Gammell: ...sit there and complain and complain about Maxim and everybody else. Do a 10-minute video once a week.

Dave Jones: If I can live off a 10-minute video once a week, I'm going to do it. And then he'll be in the canyons. You bet your ass I'm going to do it.

Chris Gammell: Making videos, right? Exactly.

Dave Jones: I'll be out bush or I'll just be designing stuff in my own time, doing whatever I please. And, yeah. That's the holy grail.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that would be nice.

Dave Jones: Well, the holy grail is not to work at all, not to have to do anything for money, you know?

Chris Gammell: I guess so. That would get boring eventually. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, no, it wouldn't. See, I... This is... No, okay. We'll probably finish off with this. We've only got a couple of minutes left, right? But I... My wife is probably in this camp, right? If she won Lotto, if she won a million bucks in Lotto, she would actually go back to work, right? Because she enjoys it and, well, she thinks that she needs something to do, you know? Shit, if I won a million bucks in Lotto, I'd quit my job and you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't see me again.

Chris Gammell: Well, you probably see on YouTube, probably. I keep on doing the blog. We couldn't get rid of you on YouTube.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. But, no, it's just I've got a million things that I can do with my life. I've got endless hobbies out there I can go and work on. I don't need to work for somebody, you know, actually have a paid job to have meaning in my life. That's just crazy. I don't understand people who have the financial benefit and then just go... You know, have the financial freedom and then still go work for someone else. I can understand if you want to go work for a charity or something like that, you know, doing it for the goodness of your heart. But, I don't know, going back to work is just working for the man. Even if you enjoy it and the people are nice, I don't know. Having to turn up nine to five...

Chris Gammell: I think that's about purpose, you know? Like, some people can't find... I mean, not can't find, but like... Well, yeah, I know. You know, if you're working on, like, DNA sequencing, right, Dave? You probably... You might not be doing that in your house.

Dave Jones: No, exactly. Well, yeah, granted. I mean, you know, everyone's different. But from my perspective, in my little world, I, you know, if I had the financial freedom, I wouldn't be working. The only reason I turn up nine to five is because I need to pay the bills, really. So, you know, and I've got dozens of hobbies out there. I can, you know, hobbies I haven't even started yet, haven't even thought of yet. I can go out there and do...

Chris Gammell: Imagine hobbies.

Dave Jones: There were all the causes I could jump on and all sorts of things, you know? But, yeah, everyone's different. But that's how I feel anyway, is that, yep, I certainly wouldn't go back to work.

Chris Gammell: That's for sure. Well, Dave, maybe you should ask for that for Christmas. Or holiday. A million bucks. Whatever. Oh, dear.

Dave Jones: See, you could go out and blow a million bucks, right? There's all these people out there saying, oh, you can't live off a million bucks. Well, yeah, if you go buy a house and a bloody Ferrari, of course you can't live off a million bucks. But, you know, even at 5% investment, it's $50,000 a year. I could live off that and just do supplementary stuff on the side. And, you know, I can eke out a living on that. No problem at all. So, yeah, I don't know. These people, they win lotto and they go back to work. You know what?

Chris Gammell: I'm going to show up next week and Dave is going to just not be there. And I'm going to email and be like, he'll be like, sorry, I'm in Aruba. It happened. See ya.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Santa came through. Yeah, if all of a sudden you see me drop off the grid, then you know what's happened.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, either that or one of the component companies got to you.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. DigiKey sent out the hitman. The DigiHitman. Well, they're a billion dollar corporation now. They've got a lot of clout.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they can make stuff happen. You know what I'm saying?

Dave Jones: Yeah. God, have we gone for an hour already?

Chris Gammell: I think the amp hour has been amped out.

Dave Jones: Unbelievable. What did we miss out on? What are we carrying over the next week?

Chris Gammell: You know, we've got some stuff on here from probably weeks ago. If people don't know, we keep a list. We just kept... But we skipped some stuff. Yeah, there's a spreadsheet. So, that's okay. We got the good stuff.

Dave Jones: I think we got through seven items today, did we? Yeah. Eight. Seven, eight. Eight. Seven, eight items. There you go.

Chris Gammell: And a whole bunch of waffles. Yeah. I think mostly waffle. Waffle? Never heard that one.

Dave Jones: Waffle. Waffle. Yeah. It's just random talk. I would call that fluff. Useless, pointless talk.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Fluff. Yeah, fluff is another term. Same thing. Waffle. Fluff.

Chris Gammell: Waffle with fluff.

Dave Jones: And that's enough for this week. Thanks for joining us, guys.

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