#45 – Texas Instruments, OPA & Chevy Volt - Nerdy Neuroelectronic Neurosis

Fat Man: This is the Amp Hour Podcast, recorded May 30th, 2011. Episode 45, Nerdy Neuroelectronic Neurosis.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEVBlog. And I'm Chris Gammell of Chris Gammell's Analog Life. And we have a third member of the team today.

Fat Man: We do. Sort of.

Dave Jones: Kind of. Well, he's only a couple of weeks old.

Fat Man: Yeah. No. Yes, how's it going now? Little Sagan. Papa Dave.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's my new news.

Speaker ?: Woohoo!

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: The video's up, if you haven't seen it. The video of my latest neuroelectronic project. Project.

Fat Man: And we will, of course, post that in our show notes, of course, as well.

Dave Jones: Absolutely.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, yes, I have a little baby boy. Sagan, his name is. Yes. And he's sleeping at the moment, but you may hear some cries in the background. Who knows? Yes. I doubt it. He's actually been around for a couple of weeks. Yeah.

Fat Man: And Chris has known for a long time, and he's kept his mouth shut. You have? I'm impressed. Thank you very much. I am impressive with myself, I have to say, because I'm very crappy at keeping secrets.

Dave Jones: A few people knew. I noticed Jerry blurted it out on Twitter at one point.

Fat Man: Yeah, she did at one point. Yep.

Dave Jones: She did. Thanks, Jerry.

Fat Man: Ah.

Dave Jones: That's all right. I didn't get anyone actually catching on to that, so maybe no one listens to Jerry's tweets. I doubt it. No. Okay. I doubt that, too. There's lots.

Fat Man: Yeah. So, how's it going so far, though? I mean, first off, we should clue this up. So, Sagan is after Carl Sagan. Is that right?

Dave Jones: Pretty much, yes. After Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer and astrophysicist. Yep. That's pretty awesome, man. Yeah. I love it. Well, we wanted an unusual name. Yeah. So, you know, with Jones being the last name. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't want something ordinary. I wanted something I could get the domain name for, so.

Fat Man: Did you buy that already?

Dave Jones: I did. I'm now the proud owner of SaganJones.com.

Fat Man: Man, growing up with a website the whole time. I'm sure that happens out there, but I've... Oh, yeah. I wouldn't have thought of that.

Dave Jones: I'm one step away from The Truman Show. Oh, there you go.

Fat Man: Yeah. I love that movie.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's great. I know.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And I did actually briefly consider that, and then I thought, nah, too much work. Yeah. Get those advertisers, you know. Yeah. It works much better on television than it does in real life.

Fat Man: Yeah. I mean, you could set up a Ustream channel, but there's always that fine line. I mean, that line is blurring, of course, between people's personal lives and online lives. I mean...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Fat Man: But especially with kids, too, where they don't have a choice, you know, so...

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, speaking of Jerry again, she's got a camera running 24-7 in her shop, doesn't she?

Fat Man: Uh, she did. She tore it down for a while.

Dave Jones: Oh, she did, did she?

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, why? Just got sick of it?

Fat Man: Uh, because of the blank, blank, blank contest.

Dave Jones: Oh, right? How did, how did that correlate?

Fat Man: Oh, because when we were doing the Ustream, the final announcement thing, she tore up her rig in order to record like she used to do with Fat Man and Circuit Girl. Oh, okay. Right. And so she just hasn't had a chance to put it back together, but...

Dave Jones: Got it.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah. I've considered that, too, but it's boring as batshit. It's tough, man. It's tough.

Fat Man: You know, like, even talking to other people, and, you know, like, Dino does that in his shop, too, and it's tough because if you're actually doing work and you're, like, over a circuit board or soldering or something, it's tough to interact and even...

Dave Jones: Yep.

Fat Man: And unless you're interacting, it's kind of boring, then, so then it's just about the people in the chat room.

Dave Jones: Well, exactly, so there's no point. So, yeah, otherwise you end up spending your whole life on there, so...

Fat Man: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: I didn't want to do that.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's understandable.

Fat Man: That idea was dropped. Yeah. Pretty quick. So, how soon will Sagan have a soldering iron in his hand?

Dave Jones: I don't know. That's dependent on the wife approval factor.

Fat Man: Ah. Okay. Yes. So maybe a toy soldering iron to start, you know... Possibly, yeah. A little fluffy multimeter. Start turning up the temperature each month. Yep. Really get used to those burns.

Dave Jones: Somebody suggested on the comments on YouTube, we should get, like, a little fluffy toy multimeter. I did a quick search and there's nothing out there.

Fat Man: Really?

Dave Jones: There's no, like, toy fluffy oscilloscopes or multimeters or anything. There you go. I didn't check soldering iron, but...

Fat Man: You know what you need to do is hook up with, you know, Make Magazine. There's Craft Magazine is the...

Dave Jones: Oh, is there? Okay. Yeah.

Fat Man: Maybe talk to some of those folks, see if they're... Because they're all... I mean, like, and they're true to their name. I mean, they are crafty. They make some cool stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they craft stuff. Yeah, I'm sure someone can craft a multimeter in an hour, right? You know? Oh, well, I don't know about that. Just stuff wadding and, you know, knit a thing and then sew some... Yeah, just know the thing, right? ...dials and knobs on and stuff. A dial. Because there's got to be a dial, right? Well, yeah. Like, digital rubbish. You know, you've got to start him out on an analog.

Fat Man: Yeah. Oh, well, yeah. Yeah. You know. You don't want to break it at first, right? Yeah. Yeah, I like that idea, though. I mean, there's definitely a nerd niche to be filled there, you know? Yeah. I think so. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'll have to do it.

Fat Man: My buddy has a set of flashcards for... And I don't know if they're actually for the baby or so much as the parents.

Dave Jones: Right.

Fat Man: But it's like, you know, there's a counting flashcard set and there's a letters flashcard set. And there's some nerdy stuff on there. I mean, it's like Maxwell's equation. Oh, okay. Right. Maxwell's equations.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Einstein's equations and stuff.

Fat Man: Yeah, exactly. So... Right. It's pretty nerdy. And there's a lot of nerdy stuff out there, but I guess no stuff multimeter yet.

Dave Jones: No. Which is a terrible shame, I think.

Fat Man: Well, maybe you'll be the first. That's got to be a small market to play. I'll have to fill that niche.

Dave Jones: If you're a crafty person out there and you want to make me a fluffy multimeter, I'll certainly promote it for you.

Fat Man: Make me content and I'll advertise for you, right, Dave? Right. Yeah. There you go. Exactly. Because I can't craft for shit, so...

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I've never tried. I don't think I've tried to craft something like that. I don't know. There's the next stage in your life. Right. I'll be sitting in my rocking chair just knitting away.

Fat Man: There you go, man. Knit one, purl one. Excellent. Knit one, purl one.

Speaker ?: Right.

Fat Man: Awesome.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's very fun. They're a bit disappointing, though, because they don't do much. They don't. They just sort of eat and sleep, really. Yeah.

Fat Man: Once they get to two, though, they're going to be a terror.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They start engaging and wanting to learn stuff. And that's when you can manipulate them.

Fat Man: Yes. I love it. Yeah. That's fun. That's real fun.

Dave Jones: Yep. And then they hit 16 and tell you to piss off, don't they? Is that the... Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what... Pretty much.

Fat Man: I think that's what Paul Clark said on Twitter today about 11 and 13. All they do is give negative feedback constantly or something like that. Right. Okay.

Dave Jones: So, I'll have to get him the t-shirt.

Fat Man: Yeah. There you go. Right. Brilliant. There you go. Yeah. Now, you can start printing your t-shirts in baby clothes.

Dave Jones: In baby clothes. Yeah. I think you can get them from the Zazzle store. You can get them baby type ones. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Done.

Fat Man: All right. All right. There you go.

Dave Jones: In a future blog, you'll see him in a t-shirt. And if you've got any good ideas for t-shirts, let me know.

Fat Man: Yes.

Dave Jones: Excellent. Anyway, they are great fun.

Fat Man: Congratulations if I didn't say otherwise. I'm sorry. Thank you very much. I think I've said congratulations. But I'm sure the Amp Hour audience is very glad to hear it too.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Fat Man: So, what about the future of the Amp Hour though? So, we're going to keep going?

Dave Jones: Yeah, we're going to keep going.

Fat Man: He's in there sleeping. So, one and a half hours a week. I think the wife's going to cover for you and the Amp Hour shall continue.

Dave Jones: Or he just sits out there crying his eyes out. He's got to learn. You don't interrupt the radio show. Toughen them up. That's right.

Fat Man: Yeah. I'm sure the children...

Dave Jones: No, it'll still go on. Yeah. The show must go on. In fact, two weeks ago, I shot the show and I was, what, first day back from the hospital or something? First morning. That's true. That's true, yeah. Yeah. And I managed to squeeze in an hour there to do the show.

Fat Man: That's when Jeff and Jeremy were on. I was actually... I had them lined up. That's right.

Dave Jones: You had them lined up because you expected me not to be there. Right. We got back from the hospital on the Monday night. Yep. No, on the Monday. And, yep. Yep. Late on the Monday.

Fat Man: Well, we got our first chance to have four people on the show. I backed up. Yeah, that's good.

Dave Jones: Excellent. And we couldn't just boot someone at the last minute, could we? No, of course not. So we ended up with four. You know. Once you invite someone, that's...

Fat Man: Well, especially not Jeff or Jeremy. I mean... Well, exactly. Yeah. But we will be looking at more guests soon. So, you know, there's a thread, actually, on EEV Forum that we can... We'll post a link up there. But if you have more suggestions about people to invite on, you know, we're working on some people. But, you know, if you have anyone in mind that you want to hear about, I think... Maybe we've promoted that on here before. But I'll throw a link in there, too, about, you know, how you can suggest people on the forum.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Fat Man: So, what do we got this week?

Dave Jones: Please do. All right. What do we got? Well... Unless you want to talk about Sagan some more. There we go. Shout out to Sagan.

Fat Man: I mean, do you have anything else to say? I mean, other plans for electronics in the child's life? I mean, are you making any funky baby monitors or anything like that? I mean...

Dave Jones: Well, I do have a baby monitor, but the wife doesn't like it because, you know, it emits radiation. She doesn't like it. You know, she doesn't like having a Wi-Fi transmitter right next to the... Ah! Really? ...kin's head, you know. So, it's a meter away.

Fat Man: It drops with a square of the distance, you know? I know. You should just get the whiteboard out and explain it to her.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Come here, darling. Well, I've already done a blog on that.

Fat Man: We're going to talk electromagnetic radiation here.

Dave Jones: That's right.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Next up will probably be a blog on an EMR sensor. I'll probably get one of those and she'll make me sweep the whole house.

Fat Man: You know, we have actually had a suggestion on the show before about people that are electromagnetically sensitive and how it's just...

Dave Jones: That's right. We had it on the list for quite some time.

Fat Man: Yeah. And I saw... I was just at my fiancé's house or family's house for... And they have cable there. And there was a show about it. And I was just like, oh my God. Like, really? The same day we're recording the ramp hour? Yeah. It's a little ridiculous. Nothing against your wife. I mean...

Dave Jones: No. Well, yeah. My... I haven't really investigated it much, but I do believe there is something in it. I'm sure a lot of it is, you know, psychological kind of stuff. But I do believe there is something in it. And certainly, you know, if you have a cell phone against your head for cell phone. Jesus. Being Americanized here. Throw it in the trunk. For, you know, five hours a day. If you're a traveling salesman, then, well, good luck to you. Because, you know, RF heating of cell tissue is real. So... Right. And I'm not saying there's no chance.

Fat Man: I do believe that's a problem. I'm just saying that the people that are really... Like, they were showing people in Sweden that were like... They were like living like Luddites. And they said... Yeah, well... I've developed a rash on my neck because, you know, you've got your video camera near me. And they had to switch over to like a lower power camera or something like that. Because these people are that adamant. Right. Yeah, yeah. But they...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I don't know. That's...

Fat Man: A lot of that is psychosomatic, I'm sure. Yeah, I think it is too. Because then they show a, you know, a double blunt... Not double blunt. But experiment, basically, where they have a person in an anechoic chamber, which is, you know, for RF radiation stuff. RF anechoic chamber, yep. Yep. And so the person's sitting there and there's a screen, so they can't see past the screen. And then there's an antenna on the other side. And they turn the antenna on and off and they ask people if they can feel the difference. And basically there is no statistical...

Dave Jones: Exactly. That's right.

Fat Man: Yeah. So... Yeah. I could have called that from a mile away. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, but as far as, you know, long-term health risks from under power lines and stuff like that, you know, they could certainly... Yeah. Apparently it leads to an increase in leukemia and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, I mean... The problem with that is the time. There could certainly be something in that. So I certainly wouldn't live under a set of power lines. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Fat Man: Yeah. It's got the automatic play gem for the kid, man. I mean, I'm just saying.

Dave Jones: Right.

Fat Man: Right. Okay. Yeah. Monkey bars. There you go.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Flu-ro tubes. They can run around with the flu-ro tubes and light them up. Smashing them against stuff. Woo-hoo.

Fat Man: Oh, like that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: All the mercury comes out. Wait. Yay. Great fun for all the kiddies.

Fat Man: Just have the Tesla coil run in the backyard and have them light up the tube with different distances. Yep. A little closer. A little closer. There you go.

Dave Jones: Oh, I love it.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, so there's our rant on EMR. There you go. Electromagnetic. Yeah. Sensitivity and, yep, radiation.

Fat Man: Yeah. If your wife makes you do a sweep, I would be interested in that, you know, picking that up or, you know, seeing what kind of things you can pick up.

Dave Jones: Well, because you can get meters, you know. Oh, yeah? You can buy them from X-Tech and other companies like that. You buy these low-frequency EMR radiation meters. Huh. It is a real instrument. You can, you know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. These aren't toy instruments. These are real instruments for real problems when there are problems with, you know, things down at that sort of frequency. Um.

Fat Man: So do they target specific frequencies and then they, like, rectify it and measure the.

Dave Jones: The low ones are, like, under 200 kilohertz or. Oh. Under 200 hertz or something like that. Yeah. Really low-frequency stuff. So, yeah. Yeah.

Fat Man: And they're not, like, swept, though, like a spectrum analyzer or anything like that?

Dave Jones: Oh, I'm not sure how they work.

Fat Man: Because that's how I would do it. I would try and sweep frequencies and see where you see spikes, right? That's the. Yep. That's what I did. Something like that.

Dave Jones: But, you know.

Fat Man: Anyway.

Dave Jones: Maybe I can get one from X-Tec and investigate. There you go. That'd be interesting. As opposed to RF radiation detectors, which are a dime a dozen, you know. So. Yep. For bug sweeping and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Ones at the really low frequencies, they're the ones that are hard to do research, you know, on. You can, you know, at really, you know, 50 hertz radiation or 60 hertz in the U.S. from the mains wiring and stuff like that. Yes. Whereas you can easily show that a cell phone, you know, heats up cell tissue, you know, when it's pumping out a watt, you know, five centimeters away.

Fat Man: Yeah, but they don't do a watt anymore, do they? I mean, they're microwatts.

Dave Jones: The peaks are. Yeah, of course. You're talking GSM, though, right?

Fat Man: Is that why?

Dave Jones: GSM, yeah.

Fat Man: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Well, CDMA, yeah, it's a spread spectrum. But, gee, you know, I still wouldn't like to have one against my head for five hours a day.

Fat Man: I agree with that. Better. Yep. Better safe than sorry, even if it is.

Dave Jones: Even if it's a load of crap, right? No. Prove it. There has been lots of studies on the cell phone thing, and there is a correlation between tumors and cell phone radiation. Really? I thought they proved it the other way. Still to be conclusively proven. Well, there's a couple of studies that show not, but there's others that show, yes, there is a correlation and stuff like that. So, yeah. Yeah. There's more than one, actually. So. Yeah. I don't think it's all bunk.

Fat Man: Yeah. I can't imagine it's super healthy.

Dave Jones: No. That's right. All right. What have we got? Any more shout outs?

Fat Man: Yeah. A couple of shout outs. So, there's actually a new podcast. We always have people kind of asking us, hey, we listened to The Empire this week. It's only an hour. Can you guys do more? And the answer is, Dave's a dad now. Sorry, guys. And before that, it was no, too. Yeah, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Should we do more feedback in the comments, please? Will people get tired of it?

Fat Man: Will we run out of shit to? I don't know if we'd run out of stuff to talk about, but maybe if we didn't have people on here, it would just start to be more of a full-time venture than if we had people on every show. And we'll always have to deal with it. Anyways. I would be interested in that, too. So, if people want to leave comments about that, more amp hour, please? Anyone? No? Yes? No. Let us know. There we go. Definitely silence. Yeah. So, there's a new podcast from EE Journal, which is another-

Dave Jones: Yep.

Fat Man: I saw that. Had a quick listen. Yeah. Not too bad. It's short.

Dave Jones: It's all right. What's her name? Amelia, is it?

Fat Man: I believe so. Let's see. Amelia. Amelia Dalton. Yes.

Dave Jones: It's a girl. Yes.

Fat Man: Bonus.

Dave Jones: But it's just her, and it sounds scripted. A little bit.

Fat Man: That's okay, though.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's like she's already done a blog post, and she's just reading the blog post. So, I'd be surprised if it's not actually scripted. Yeah. It seems more like a news update. That's what it comes across to me. That's how it hits me. It's like a news update thing. Yeah. Exactly.

Fat Man: That's cool. That's another form of- Not everybody wants to hear people like us drawing on. So, it's a news update. So, it's interesting.

Dave Jones: Hmm. Yeah. Well, it sounds very similar to some text bloggers that I not just read, but some of them do an audio version as well. So, they'll write their text blog, and then they will do an audio over that as well for those who actually prefer an audio podcast of each post. Oh, interesting. So, they will just actually read out their post, and they won't add anything extra. There'll be nothing added.

Fat Man: So, if you're just listening in the car, you can throw it on. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You can have it auto-download to your iPod or your iPhone or something, and yeah. And you can hear it in your car. You can read your favorite text blog in the car.

Fat Man: You know, my commute's not that long, but I actually really like that. I mean, I listen to talk radio anyways, but I think it's great. I'll put on an e-book, or an audio book, rather, and just do it in 10-minute chunks sometimes, and that's pretty awesome. So, kind of...

Dave Jones: Well, the thing with blog posts is that they're usually quite short, you know? Yeah. So, they're all over in like, you know, one or two minutes. So, very quick.

Fat Man: Yeah. That would make it tough if we actually tried to script all this junk out, huh? Right. It'd be impossible. That's why we just talk about other people's stuff. That's why we just wing it and babble on. Yep. Yep. Oh, man.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's good. Yeah. They need a proper website. Like, I'm just looking at it. You just put up a link to the archives section or something. Is there an actual webpage for it?

Fat Man: I haven't found it yet. Someone else linked me to it, so I haven't found it. Right. I think it was John Shook. So...

Dave Jones: Okay.

Fat Man: I'll poke around a little bit.

Dave Jones: It needs a dedicated, you know, page, site. I'm sure it's probably got one where it's just too dark. Oh, there it is. No, archives. Fish fry. Yeah. Yeah, it's actually in the archives. So, there's a drop-down menu on the Electronic Engineering Journal site. Oh, yeah.

Fat Man: There's a whole site for it.

Dave Jones: Maybe it's not a new show. Maybe it's just archived. I don't know.

Fat Man: I don't know either. Well, anyways, if people are interested, there's a whole new site. There's an Amp Hour alternative for you out there. Another one, because there is that electronic design show as well.

Dave Jones: Which is still going, is it?

Fat Man: I believe so. Yep. I haven't listened in a while.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Have they changed anything after our negative feedback of them?

Fat Man: Don't think so.

Dave Jones: No, I don't think so. They've still got the monotonously read ads and the... No comment. Reading white papers and stuff like that.

Fat Man: Yep. Anyways, next shout-out. So, Lucas...

Dave Jones: Good luck to them. Variety, right? Oh, yeah. Spice of life.

Fat Man: Yep.

Dave Jones: Some people might like their papers read to them.

Fat Man: Yes. So, another shout-out. Lucas Weekly, who has been a Workbench of the Week alumni. He linked to us from his site. So, thanks a lot.

Dave Jones: And what does he do weekly?

Fat Man: That's... Oh, that's his last name. That's his last name, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Sorry, Lucas. Lucas.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I didn't actually... Yeah. Yeah. I didn't catch on. Right. I thought that was the name of your site, Lucas. And it is, but it's not spelt weekly, as in day of the week. Right. Weekly, but W-E-A-K-L-E-Y. Yep. That's right. Don't. Okay. I'll just shuffle off to the quiet corner of the anechoic room here.

Fat Man: Well, don't get quiet, because we've got some ranting to do.

Dave Jones: Oh, awesome. I love to rant.

Fat Man: All right. About what? I don't care. So, internet bubble is not necessarily coming back, but it's on the rise. You know, so you've got the Facebooks and everything else out there. Yeah. But LinkedIn, the site where you throw your resume stuff up there, $9 billion. How did a site that makes nothing and has the worst ads in the world get to that point? I don't get it. I don't get how that happened, and I really don't want the tech bubble to come back. I don't know about you.

Dave Jones: Well, simple. It's the same old formula. It's complete and utter bullshit. Yeah. End of story. You know? It's...

Fat Man: The only positive I thought about it is, you know, this is my memory of the run-up to the crash, like, so 97 through, like, 2001, whatever. You know, it was exuberant, right? There was people buying and selling like crazy on these stupid stocks. Yeah. And at the end, though, obviously, it all fell apart. So, there's two... Go ahead. Oh, okay. So, it seemed like there was two things there. You know, you could... If you knew what you're doing, you could get in and make a little bit of dough. But the good thing that came along with it is...

Dave Jones: A little bit?

Fat Man: Well, you could make...

Dave Jones: You could make an absolute buttload of money. Right. A lot of people did.

Fat Man: Yeah. But then you had to keep it out of the market, too. That was the other key.

Dave Jones: Well, it literally did not matter what you bought back during the tech bubble. It went up. You doubled your money. Yeah. You know, I think I've said this before. I was in there during the tech boom and I was sitting at work. Everyone would, at lunchtime, they'd go check their share portfolios. Yeah. And I'd check mine and I'm going, holy shit, I just earned more today than I will work in for this whole week. What the hell am I working for?

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know? Yeah.

Fat Man: That's when day traders came up and everything. I remember that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's... You know? That was a mess. Yeah.

Fat Man: It was so easy to make money back then. So, from that, you can make some money for later. So, you can make it for a rainy day, basically. Yeah. But another thing that came out of it was there was all this investment in other types of companies, too. So, you know, that's when a lot of the... They laid out a lot of the optoelectronics lines, or optical lines, rather, which then enabled all the 2000s stuff with a lot of outsourcing overseas, which is its own thing. But there was a lot of hardware investment as well. So, basically, you know, it's kind of like a rising tide, floating all ships kind of thing, where if there's a lot of money in the market, it's going to help hardware companies and these silly software companies. Right. Yeah. But, man, $9 billion. I know.

Dave Jones: It was nuts. Yeah. It's just crazy. Tell them they're dreaming. I know. Is the classic Australian expression.

Fat Man: I know. Dreaming. I don't get how that happens, but, you know, if people do it...

Dave Jones: Well, because... Well, it's a valuation, right? Which is just pie-in-the-sky stuff. They haven't been offered, have they?

Fat Man: No, they have. They opened already.

Dave Jones: Oh, did they turn down an offer? No, no, no.

Speaker ?: Who's wrong?

Dave Jones: No, no, no.

Fat Man: This is... They went public. So, they were a private company. They had an initial public offering.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Oh, right.

Fat Man: And however high the stock went, you know, they...

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Times the number of stock. That's their valuation. Oh, okay. So, $9 billion. I'm with it now.

Fat Man: Which is huge. I mean, it's not how much the company is necessarily worth in total dollars, you know, but it sort of is. I mean, like, if someone wanted to buy them out and they wanted to buy all the shares, they would... If they wanted to take them private, it'd be $9 billion right now. So, it's crazy.

Dave Jones: Ah, just wait a couple of weeks. It'll... Yeah. Maybe. It'll drop.

Fat Man: But still, it's just ridiculous to me.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's crazy. Well, IPOs are another thing. After the tech crash, you know, there was a complete almost stop in tech IPOs, regardless of whether or not it was software or, you know, hardware or anything for, what, you know, half a decade at least. It's even still happening now. People are still scared to do an IPO. There's, you know, companies doing anything to have up until... Well, even now, they're doing anything to avoid doing an IPO. They'll get bought out privately by Google or Microsoft. That's the new model. Whereas back in the, you know, the 80s and the 90s and during the tech boom, the IPO was the big thing, right? That's how you made your money back to your... That's how your investors made their money back. But, you know, IPOs are few and far between now. So, it's very interesting that they actually did an IPO in its own right.

Fat Man: Well, yeah. And so, this next story is interesting, too, because it is a hardware company. So, LinkedIn, $9 billion. Some company that doesn't make anything, basically, they are glorifiedmonster.com and, you know, social networking pushed together. People know about it.

Dave Jones: What's their actual income? What do they actually make?

Fat Man: I don't know.

Dave Jones: How much do they make? Well, the data must be out there. There's no way you can do an IPO without having your income publicly available out there. So, it's, you know...

Fat Man: Oh, it was... Here we go. $15.4 million in profit last year.

Dave Jones: Oh. Yeah.

Fat Man: So, that's reminiscent of... If people remember pets.com, you know, these sites that didn't do... Right. I mean, not that LinkedIn doesn't have value. It's just not $9 billion.

Dave Jones: Okay. I can give you a reference there.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. Altium, my former company. Yep. At their peak, they were making about that each year in clear profit. Yeah. Right? And they were on $50, $60 million income or something like that. They were making large profit margins because they're a software company. Their overheads were low at the time before they decided to go stupid. Anyway, let's not go there. Yeah. The... Yeah. They were making $15 million, yet they were only valued at, you know, even at their peak, they were only valued at a couple hundred million dollars. So, you can see how, you know, LinkedIn at $9 billion with only $15 million in profit is just nuts.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just crazy. Yes. And look at Altium as a, once again, as a reference point. Because I know it. It peaked at $5 a share. It's now worth $0.10 a share. Right. So, eh, you know. Yeah. I mean... Make of that what you will.

Fat Man: Yes.

Dave Jones: Unbelievable.

Fat Man: Did you say... I said $15 million, you know, right? With an M? Yes. Okay. $15 million. Okay. I thought you said billion. All right. No, no, no. Million. No, no. Altium's not that big. No, I know. Okay. Not even close. So, that's the reference point now. A software company, $9 billion. Now, we have a hardware company, Freescale Semiconductor, which was taken private previously. They were bought by... That's right. ...by Blackstone. Blackstone. It was a private group. They leveraged a bunch of money to buy this thing out. And, you know, I use these parts at work sometimes, and they scared the crap out of me when this was happening. And now, they went IPO as well. But now, they're worth like a billion. Instead of how much? Instead of $17 billion. $17 billion.

Dave Jones: $17 billion. So, they went newly IPO at $17 billion, and now they've dropped 17 times to a million dollars. A billion. A billion. Sorry. Oops. Yeah.

Fat Man: So, I don't know if there's engineers sitting in these investment firms doing this crap, but if they are...

Dave Jones: Or if engineers were dumb enough out there, oh, yeah, I like Freescale Parts. I'll go invest in their IPO. No, IPOs are designed to suck money out of gullible people for the investors. They're not designed to make the new investors in the IPO any money. So, yeah, beware of that.

Fat Man: I don't know what I'm trying to say with all this stuff other than it's ludicrous.

Dave Jones: It's a crock of shit.

Fat Man: And then, watch your back. If you can make some money, make some money, but you can lose just as easy, people. Get the hell out. And if you're starting a company, make something. Please, for the love of God, just make something. You know? That's the message here. You know? I really love that, you know, there's all this, like, micro-manufacturing kind of going on. Like, all the... A lot of electronic stuff and everything else. And even with the 3D printing now. I don't know if it's actually going to take off, but I love it just because people make stuff. You know? Yeah, because it's cool. Not even cool. It's just tangible. It's important, you know? It feels like it's more human nature than $9 billion for a resume site. I know LinkedIn is more, but man.

Dave Jones: Well, you know, granted, LinkedIn is an important site. But, yeah, it's just not worth that amount of money. It cannot sustain that. But with revenues of $15 million a year, profit, sorry, not actual revenue. Revenue is higher than that, I'm sure. Well, it has to be to make a profit. Yes. Financial advisor, David. Yeah, Dave's been going to business school. It is off time. I have. Yeah. And, yeah, it's just there's no way it can sustain that. There is no model that it can suddenly take off and sustain that. It's literally impossible. So anyone who invested in that is just mad. Crazy. It'll always be a speculative amount.

Fat Man: Yeah, exactly. They're hoping to make money.

Dave Jones: That's how the entire stock market works is a speculative – it's a speculative – the share price is a speculative figure over what your actual company worth is.

Fat Man: Right. So future earnings. People are saying, I think it'll be worth –

Dave Jones: For a tech company, it might be 20 times earnings or something like that. But for a sensible bank or something, it might be 10 times is the actual – is the industry ratio.

Fat Man: Yeah. It's all based on growth and everything else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So I –

Fat Man: And I think that's why they like software companies too because it feels like you can grow faster because all you do is – oh, all you do is throw more programmers in there. Oh, of course. And then you're bigger. Yeah. It's like, well, not really. I mean, there's more to it. But it is maybe harder to scale up manufacturing, which is the whole other beast, right? Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, I don't know. Oh, yeah. I hate that stuff. Yes. Yeah, what can you do but sigh and – yep. But anyone who invested in – well, Serge, you're right. If you invested in free scale at $17 billion IPO, well, tough titties.

Fat Man: $17 billion buyout, actually. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, buyout. Right. Yeah. So – and, yeah. The thing I've learned is that companies – the share price can always go down. And I can tell you exactly what figure it can go down to. Ten cents. It is nothing. Oh, yeah. That too. No. It is actually nothing. Nothing. That's right. They can go out of business. Yep. That's right. Especially software companies who don't have any tangible –

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: – value. What are you going to do is sell off the laptops? They can just disappear overnight. Yeah. Yeah.

Fat Man: Not getting a lot of money for those.

Dave Jones: Most of those are rented anyway.

Fat Man: Yeah. And that money is probably going to the backers first. So if you own the stock – That's right. Yep. Good luck with that. Yep. Anyway. It's interesting. Like, should we actually be interested in this stuff, right? So there's this article about how engineers are kind of getting demoted – not demoted. That's the wrong word. But criticized in popular culture. So it's on construction.com is this site. So they're talking about civil engineers in this case.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Fat Man: But basically they're talking about how engineers are – at least in construction – they're requiring less certification of engineers for drawings and everything else so that then they can demote the importance of engineers. And this writer, his name is Rakesh Tripathi. He's like railing against it. He's like, well, would the American Medical Association do this kind of thing or the American Bar Association? It's like he could not believe that this kind of thing happens. But you see this every day where engineers are not necessarily chided or called out. But, you know, it's – engineers are less important than they used to be. Let's just say that much. Well, walking inside. I don't know. Stick it up your ass. No, they're not. I mean – but it's also because engineers are less likely to want to get into politics, right? So engineers say, well, I'm not going to politics. I want to keep making stuff. And so when politicians go and demote engineers' importance, then, oh, well, what are we going to do? We don't have anyone in there. Or when engineers get taken advantage of during IPOs, oh, well, we're not investment bankers except for, you know, Jeremy's friends that are going to Wall Street. But we're saying that they're not really engineers anymore because they're part of the system. So, you know, how do you – I don't know how you really do that kind of thing. I don't know how to deal with that other than people biting the bullet. No, you can't.

Dave Jones: We just have to keep doing what we do and that's it. Maybe. Maybe you're telling people to stick it.

Fat Man: Really? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, like, should engineers band together and start lobbying? I mean, at least in America. I don't know about other places. Right. That seems to be the only way stuff gets done in America, at least, is there's, you know, the American Medical Association and the Bar Association, they have huge lobbying groups where they get – they have tons of money that goes towards getting their agenda put through. So you're not going to find doctors that aren't licensed or –

Dave Jones: Well, you're not going to find the IEEE out there picketing. No, well, IEEE is – The White House, are you?

Fat Man: No, they do lobby, but –

Dave Jones: Oh, they've got some clout. Yeah, I'm sure. But, well, they think they do. Yeah. I don't know how much, but – Yeah, I don't know. Well, I have to take you to task there. You mentioned the Bar Association twice. You're not seriously comparing lawyers with engineers, are you? Yeah. I mean, in terms of – Come on.

Fat Man: What? I mean, like – You're going to be kidding me. Lawyers are the scum of the earth. Well, it's an important association, though. You know that the Bar Association –

Dave Jones: No, it's not lawyers. It is. We talked about this last week. Aren't lawyers the most – No, that was marketing people, right? Anyway, same thing. I'm going to – Where's my list? Where's my list? In the same – No, I mean – You know, the comic we did last week about them – Oh, that was – If we –

Fat Man: Yeah, corporate finance.

Dave Jones: Come to the apocalypse and enter the world, who's going to save the world? It's going to be the freaking engineers, right?

Fat Man: That's true, but –

Dave Jones: It's not going to be the damn lawyers.

Fat Man: That's true. It was a corporate finance. What do they do? Nothing. You're right. I mean, you're right. That stuff maybe doesn't matter. That's what they do. But, you know, at the end of the day, the engineers might be saving the world, but after it all turns around, it's going to be that corporate finance or their corporate lawyer. They're saying, oh, where's my share? You know, like, so from that perspective –

Dave Jones: And they will tell them to stick it up their ass and it's a new world order and you guys don't exist anymore.

Fat Man: Maybe. Yeah. But there are no laws. There are no lawyers, right? That's right. Yeah. I don't know. I thought it was an interesting article.

Dave Jones: When the zombie apocalypse comes, right? Yeah.

Fat Man: It'll be the guy that knows how to work or to design the new zombie shotgun, right?

Dave Jones: That's right. Yeah.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, no. Then you start up the military industrial complex again. Oh, wow. Oh, God. They're a vicious cycle. Yes. Yeah. All right. All right. I give in. Okay.

Fat Man: All right. Well. Enough of that. Yeah. So, what else we got on this week's show? Because obviously that was a dead end with Chris running into the brick wall of Dave's hatred of lawyers.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Even though your brother-in-law is one, isn't he? Well, there's the world's smallest 3D printer.

Fat Man: Yeah. This is an interesting article. I think Adafruit posted that one, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Fat Man: You know, I had posted this because it looked kind of – I saw a 3D printer and very small and I was thinking, hmm, printed circuits, anybody? Nah.

Dave Jones: You're right up there with the forecasters for these IPOs. Yeah. You dream it.

Fat Man: Yep. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I don't really have a huge gauge on how small – oh, yeah, they're holding it up there. There's a photo of them holding it.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Presumably they are the developers there.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And they're holding it up. Yeah. Yeah. It's neat. I'm not sure how big it can produce objects. Most likely, given that it's that small, it can only produce small objects. It only weighs 1.5 kilos.

Fat Man: Yeah. I'm not sure what the –

Dave Jones: Current going rate at 1,200 euros. You can buy it, can you? Yes, you can. Or is this a – oh, no, the – no, that's just the prototype. So, yeah, I don't think they actually have it available for sale yet. I think it's just the first prototype kind of thing. Yeah. So, they're saying – I don't know. Don't quote me on that.

Fat Man: They're saying a 20th of a millimeter, so that would be 0.05, right? 0.05 millimeters or 50.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Fat Man: Wow. That's the – My brain is farting this morning. Micrometers or microns. That's the resolution, is it? Yeah. Yeah. So, it's 50 microns, which is pretty good.

Dave Jones: How does that compare with the MakerBot, for example?

Fat Man: Oh, that's not even close. I mean, those things are – yeah. Are you talking about the resolution of the XY stage? I think this is actually –

Dave Jones: Well, it's not hard to get that sort of resolution on an XY plotter, but you need the – but the extrusion, the plastic extrusion thing. Yeah, that's the limit. Gizmo needs to be, you know, needs to squirt out enough, you know, a small amount of stuff.

Fat Man: Junk.

Dave Jones: So, yeah.

Fat Man: Plastic goop. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Plastic ABS glue or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that's the – the limit is your extrusion nozzle and your little thing there. So, I don't know. Done a lot of 3D printing, huh, Dave? Yeah. I'm a real industry expert, can't you tell? Yeah. Yeah. The thing I'm about –

Fat Man: The way this one works is more like a photolithography process, it looks like. So, basically, they harden different areas, you know, so positive or negative resistance, and they actually harden the plastic, and then they probably somehow get the other stuff out of there.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Oh, right. What? So, they start out with a – oh, okay. I'm going to have to look more – so, what? They start out with a sheet, and then they harden that, and then they layer – ah, layer for layer. Yeah. Yeah. I guess.

Fat Man: Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You can actually do that with laser as well. You can actually get a thin, you know, mylar or something, some sheet, and you can actually cut out all of your layers, and then you can stick the layers one on top of the other, and bingo, you get your 3D object. Ah, cool.

Fat Man: Cool.

Dave Jones: That's, you know, that's a sort of a rough method to get a 3D printed object. And the MakerBot and things, it works exactly the same way. It builds things up each layer. Yeah, layer by layer. Layer upon layer. Yeah.

Fat Man: So, yeah. That's pretty cool. Hmm. It is. It's a good – I like it.

Dave Jones: And it actually looks like it's a fully refined product. It's in a nice custom case, and it's got, like, serial interfaces and, you know, power, and it just looks like the real deal, you know. Whereas the MakerBot still looks very do-it-yourself, you know. Yeah. Well, it is. I mean, you put it together. Yeah. Well, it is, but, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's, yeah. Yeah, this one just looks like a commercial product, really.

Fat Man: Yeah. And it looks like, you know, they're talking about in the article about, you know, printing real fine-pitched stuff. So, like, for hearing aids and other things. So, it's interesting. I don't know about –

Dave Jones: I'm sure it can't make – it looks like it can't make anything bigger than, like, an inch square or something like that.

Fat Man: Right, because of the actual platform where it's printing on.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Just the physical platform looks, you know, tiny. Mm-hmm.

Fat Man: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: Anyway, that has its own niche, you know. If you need a custom little screw or a widget or something like that. Bingo.

Fat Man: Great. And I could see that, actually. So, there's an article about convergent technologies, actually, on – where is it from? It's actually from – Wank word of the week. I know. Conversion technologies. It's actually from the IEEE, and I got it through Ray Kurzweil's site, actually. So, he's got – that guy's kind of bonkers, but – Yeah, right. He posts some good stuff once in a while. So, there's – they did a study about, you know, upcoming healthcare and electronics, you know, how they're going to merge together even more and where that kind of stuff is. And so, one of them is bioelectronics, bio-nanosensor technology, and neural engineering. So, all that kind of, like, sensor interfacing to actually developing, like, nerve-ending kind of sensors. So, if you could actually interface with a nerve and then, you know, print some kind of sensor that could either focus light or smell. I mean, I don't think they figured that one out yet, but – ! So, I mean, that – Oh, no! They've got devices that can do that, I think. Devices that can smell?

Dave Jones: Oh, sure, I've read about those. Yeah, sure, I've read about those over the years.

Fat Man: Really? I didn't think so. I don't know. But this kind of small 3D printer would be good for that. So, another one on here is, like, medical or bio-robots with real small – you know, they always talk about, like, nanites and – not nanites, that's the wrong word. Yeah. But, you know, like, things that are actually in your bloodstream and doing work on cells and all that other junk. And so, you need small-resolution printers to be able to make things that will fit inside your body. So, I guess that could work, but it still has to probably get a little smaller. Yeah. And I think a lot of the sensors are still on chip and that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Cool.

Fat Man: Yeah. So, that's interesting. We'll post a link to that five hotspots where medicine and technology are converging. I thought that was a pretty interesting article.

Dave Jones: Awesome. And that blends well with my neuroelectronics. That's right. Yeah. A little different.

Fat Man: Project. Yeah. I don't think they listed children as a hotspot where medicine and technology are converging.

Dave Jones: I had quite a few commenters actually say that for the first minute or two, they thought it was actually a little dog or something like that. Yeah. All right. It was a little, you know, it was all fake, but no, I can assure you, he's real. He wiggles around and cries. And spits up everywhere. And spits up everywhere. Yeah. If you watch the outtake, well, kind of. Gross. Not really outtakes at the end, but.

Fat Man: Gross. Yes. So, are you.

Dave Jones: He did puke over himself at one point. Oh, gross. Which was lovely. Yeah. What do they talk about? You know, animals and children. Yeah. Never work with animals and children. Yes.

Fat Man: Yeah. Show business. Yeah. So, are you going to, you know, get the proverbial minivan? Are you. Is that part of the future plans for you guys?

Dave Jones: Minivan? Oh, God, no. No. No. Two absolute tops. Although, no, we do have a new seven seat car. Oh, there you go. Fancy. That was only because it was, it just happens to have an extra two seats in the back. We wanted it for the room to lug stuff around it. Yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah. No, we don't have a minivan.

Fat Man: Yeah. So, have you seen the E.E. Times thing? Or, I guess it's through UBM. But, Brian Fuller's actually going to drive a Volt. Speaking of cars.

Dave Jones: Yes. He's driving a lucky bastard. He's driving a Chevy Volt. Yeah. From one side of the U.S. to the other? Or is it around the U.S.? What's the deal?

Fat Man: I think he said he was going, like, yeah, west coast to New England kind of thing. And, uh.

Dave Jones: Right. Did he? I read somewhere it's going to take 12 months.

Fat Man: Yeah. I don't know how the heck he's doing that. But, I. That's a lot of driving.

Dave Jones: That's a getaway from the wife trip. That is.

Fat Man: I guess so. Unless she's going with him. Sorry, honey.

Dave Jones: They're making me do this. Yeah. Yeah.

Fat Man: I'm going to drive an electric vehicle. Maybe he has to stop and wait for it to charge each time. Maybe that's why it's going to take 12 months.

Dave Jones: Gosh darn it. You know. Right. 12 months to get across. Yeah. Well, the first time I saw this and I didn't read the article, I thought, ah, that's pathetically lame. But then I realized that because I thought, because they're a printed magazine, that all they'll do is they'll drive it across and they'll do some stupid article on it and that'll be it. No. Right. But, no, they're actually doing a YouTube video and they're going to film it, which is, you know. Yeah. Better. Yeah.

Fat Man: Brian's good about that stuff. I mean, he did. Yeah. When I was at ESC, he actually, he was doing a bunch of videos there and stuff. So, he's a fun guy. Which nobody actually watches because I don't think anyone subscribes to those things.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, that's the thing. They'll do this and they'll probably get, you know, 50 people watching. And it's a shame. Yeah.

Fat Man: It is a shame. I mean, they'll probably do some good stuff.

Fat Man: Yeah. But, you know, if they do fun stuff, we can point it out. And, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Fat Man: I don't know.

Dave Jones: And if any electric car manufacturer is listening to The Amp Hour, I am available to drive a car across Australia. Yeah. Top gear road trip style. Yep. And, yeah, I'll happily do it and you'll get 8,000 or 10,000 viewers. There you go. Much more bang for your advertising button.

Fat Man: And now, thanks to a new experiment, you'll probably get spit up all over the back seat, too. Right. But don't ask for it back, people. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. It's pretty slick looking. I mean, like, I really hadn't seen it much. I hadn't seen much about it. I mean, I'd heard about it.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's an ordinary looking car, isn't it?

Fat Man: No, the console inside. There's, you know, there's a really nice.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. I haven't seen the console. The 10-inch console. Right.

Fat Man: So, you know, they, I mean, it's similar to the Prius. Prius has that kind of thing, too, but I don't know.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. But it may be a bit further than the...

Fat Man: I'm always a sucker for, like, shiny lights.

Dave Jones: I'm like, ooh, shiny. Yeah, right. Ooh, look, it lights up blue.

Fat Man: You know, I was impressed, too, because the Volt, it got 100, you know, they do weird stuff for actual, like, mile per gallon ratings. But... Yeah. The Volt got a 106 miles per gallon rating. And I don't know what that'd be, kilometer per liter, however you guys do it.

Dave Jones: How do you get that on a fully electric car?

Fat Man: Well, it has a range extender, so that's the other thing about it. So, we've talked before on here about... Huh?

Dave Jones: But you're talking about per gallon.

Fat Man: Per gallon. So, I think it's based on...

Dave Jones: This thing actually uses petrol, too, does it? It does. Is it a hybrid?

Fat Man: It does, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay, right. So, it's not fully electric. Okay.

Fat Man: Yeah, I don't think there's any without a range extender, because you wouldn't be able to use it. I mean, I don't think Brian Fuller would be taking this car across the country if it only had a 90-mile charge, unless it really did take 12 months. Well, I meant 90 miles for today.

Dave Jones: Well, you could do that in the US. You could drive at 90 miles, stay the night, recharge. I guess so. Next day. I guess so. That would be a boring trip. 90 miles across is the US, and how many?

Fat Man: It's at least...

Dave Jones: 90 per day, say 100, if you're lucky.

Fat Man: I think California to New England would be about 3,000 miles, so divide that by 90.

Dave Jones: Right, okay, 300 a day, yeah, it's a year. That would be horrible.

Fat Man: I hope Brian's not having to do that, but man. Right. Yeah, so it's got a range extender. I'm not sure how they actually calculate. Maybe they do some kind of funky calculation for actually taking into account charging, you know, like having equivalent energy or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like gasoline has a very defined, you know, energy potential in it. Yeah, that's right. Maybe they did it like that, but... Yeah, so 106 miles per gallon, though.

Dave Jones: Well, that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? To use the petrol one to get across the country instead of the...

Fat Man: Well, it'd be both, though. I mean, you'd charge it overnight.

Dave Jones: Electric one? Oh, yeah, but no, I don't know.

Fat Man: Well, and there's two different things with electric cars, though. So there's ones that actually drive the camshaft, which is actually making the wheels move, right? But I think on the Volt, it has a petrol or gasoline engine, which then actually charges, you know, turns an alternator, and then it charges the batteries. And I think... Well, no, I thought that's how they all worked, is that they all have...

Dave Jones: No.

Fat Man: Not all of them.

Dave Jones: ...electric hub wheels, and the engine just recharges the battery.

Fat Man: That's how Volt works, I believe, but I don't think that's how all of them work.

Dave Jones: No, well, I thought that's how the others worked as well.

Fat Man: No, I don't think that's how all of them work.

Dave Jones: Okay, well, that's not how the Toyota Prius works, but how the newer ones work. Right. Because the Toyota Prius is a heap of shit. Nah.

Fat Man: Yeah, because that's... Well, that's different, though. So that's a car with battery backup, basically. That's how I think of a Prius. Whereas this is an electric car.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah.

Fat Man: Yeah. So, but we had talked on here before about Bob Simpson and how he does that. Remember we talked about the electric car conversions on here? Yeah. So he actually has a direct drive where it actually drives on the camshaft. If I'm saying that right, I know nothing about cars. I think I've...

Dave Jones: No, they're usually a hub. They don't... They usually have one motor per wheel. So it's a hub motor. Wow. Usually that's how they do it. That's not how Bob did it. They don't actually drive an existing camshaft and then drive the wheels through a camshaft. I don't think that's... You know. Yeah. And there's the new Itzibishi I-Miev or something. Oh, yeah? Like that. That... I think that one's, you know... Yeah. That one's pretty good and... Yeah, I don't know. Everyone, every man's dog seems to be jumping on the bedwagon these days. But you still can't buy them.

Fat Man: Well, you can. You just need a little bit of dough.

Dave Jones: Well, you can't buy them here. They're already...

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. You need a lot of money and there's a big waiting list. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know. Oh, yes. Well, you know, there's a two-year waiting list, sir. Thank you. Yeah.

Fat Man: Yeah. So, we'll have to see what comes out of this. I don't know. Anyway. I hope there's not like electric vehicle nuts out there who like, you know, would learn us good. But maybe it would be helpful to know the difference about the, you know, driving a camshaft versus an individual car or individual direct drive on a wheel.

Dave Jones: So, you know.

Fat Man: I don't know.

Dave Jones: I don't know. They have a lot more torque, though. They have a ton of torque.

Fat Man: Yes, they do. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Absolutely amazing. Yeah. I've seen drag races. Maybe I'll be able to find the video of a drag race between this homemade... Yeah.

Fat Man: The white lightning?

Dave Jones: Electric car. It's like a little mini. Yeah. Or something, right? And it takes on a full-on, you know, 800 horsepower. Yeah. You know, big, you know, manly V8 engine. And it leaves it for dust.

Fat Man: Yep.

Dave Jones: Absolutely leaves it for dust off the line.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because they've got so much torque, it just drags the thing straight off the line. And, you know, it just cannot compete. Yeah. Regular gas petrol engines cannot compete with it. Yeah.

Fat Man: There was a design news article about that. I just found it. It was called White Lightning, the car. It was this little...

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. I think that's the name of it. Yep.

Fat Man: It was like this little tiny junker, basically. Yeah, a little. It's awesome. Yeah. But they called it slamming current, where they basically, you know, they dump many, many amps of current. I think hundreds of amps, actually. Yeah. Right. For sure. Yeah. Yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But these motors just have so much torque. And it's available instantly, whereas petrol actually takes time to combust. Right. And, you know, and actually generate its energy and transfer that. Yeah. Stuff like that. So all that physics stuff. Yeah.

Fat Man: So they said 360 volts and 1,600 amps of current. So theoretically, that's 576,000 watts or 0.576 megawatts of power instantaneous. Damn.

Dave Jones: And if it hits 1.21 gigawatts, you're in deep shit, right? There you go.

Fat Man: And that's gigawatts, not gigawatts. Gigawatts, of course, because it's a J, not a G, right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. 1,500 foot-pounds of torque. I hate these units. I swear to God. Foot-pounds and miles per gallon. RPM. But then they amps. You know, amps is all SI based, right? And volts. Kilovolts. Yeah, yeah. Megavolts. Milliamp.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Fat Man: Gosh darn imperial units.

Dave Jones: Well, it is the backwater USA, isn't it?

Fat Man: Yeah. Well. Yeah. So now, will you teach Sagan about imperial units? Will you let him know about the craziness of the US? Will you teach him that day? I will. Okay.

Dave Jones: When I was a boy, we had imperial units and those crazy Americans. Hopefully by the time.

Fat Man: I still use them. By the time he grows up, he'll be able to call up, you know, Chris Gammell Jr. and, you know, the amp hour too, and they'll be able to talk SSI units and actually be able to communicate about that stuff. Because Lord knows, I'm all miles and, you know, feet. Ugh.

Dave Jones: Fantastic. I hate it. Hey, maybe in 10 years time. There's a show.

Fat Man: I'd have to get making babies. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, buddy. Well, get onto it, dude. I think I'll... I can tell you how it happens. I don't... But not that kind of show, Dave.

Dave Jones: I figured it out.

Fat Man: Breaking news. Nerd has figured out procreation. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes. Love it. We've got, like, seven minutes left. Should we have a chip of the week?

Fat Man: Chip of the week. Yes. It's mine this week. I figured we'd trade off. So, uh...

Dave Jones: I don't know if we're taking turns each week. It's just whoever happens to put one on the list, really.

Fat Man: Okay. So, this week... Dump-da-dump-dump! It's not LT. This week is not linear technology. So, take that, guys. We've finally been outmoded. Because they didn't sponsor us, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: There was no money forthcoming, so we dropped them. Yeah. Like a hot potato.

Fat Man: That's not really the point of this, Dave. But, you know... I know. So, this week is OPA 171. So, I'm an op-amp nerd. I love op-amps. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff you can go out there for. You know, you can go out there for low offset voltage if you're doing, like, real low sensing of voltages. You can do low input bias currents if you're doing... If you're, like, you know, measuring photodiodes or something like that. And, basically, I wanted to find one that kind of does everything. And this one... This one's been out since about fall of last year. But this is a TI part. It's an op-amp. And, like I said, I love op-amps. But it's low noise and low offset drift. And low bias current. You know, it kind of just has it all.

Dave Jones: Oh, wow. 475 micro-amps.

Fat Man: What?

Dave Jones: Per amplifier, you can fly to the moon on 475 micro-amps.

Fat Man: Well, that's quiescent current.

Dave Jones: Come on.

Fat Man: It's low power. I don't need low power for what I do. I mean, like, a lot of people need low power. That's not that bad. And you cannot fly on 475 micro-amps. Come on, Dave.

Dave Jones: Oh, of course you can. Come on.

Fat Man: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: You can.

Fat Man: No, you can't. They were doing it with low processing power. They were doing it with low current.

Dave Jones: Oh, way of the moon and back, dude. No. On 475 micro-amps.

Fat Man: No, you say that all the time. But you... No.

Dave Jones: Bullshit. And a high enough voltage? Of course you could.

Fat Man: Okay, high enough voltage. They weren't doing high voltage. They were doing high current.

Dave Jones: Thank you very much.

Fat Man: Yeah. So, anyways, I like this one. It's got, you know, super tiny parts. So, like, SAT 553s, which I hate working with because they're so tiny. But... Oh, they're a bitch. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know. I don't know what else to say about it because it doesn't have, like, super crazy... It's an op-amp. Yeah, it's an op-amp, right? So, you use it for everything. But I think this one's good enough that you could use it for a lot of different stuff. And it's not super, super expensive. It's probably more expensive than you usually like using, Dave. But, you know, you're not going to be able to throw it into a consumer product. But if you're doing something fancy, you know, like some kind of fancy measurement circuit or something like that or, you know... Oh, it's got RFI-filtered inputs. Yeah, I'm kind of torn about that. I mean, I like RFI-filtered inputs, but I feel like, you know, sometimes it actually messes with your circuit. Because usually they do that with, you know, like a capacitor or a diode or something like that. And more so with the parts that have static electricity protection, right? Yep. Because then they do have a diode in there. EPSD protection, yep. I mean, most...

Dave Jones: Yeah, that can... Yeah, the parasitics of that diode can screw with your... Right, yes. Usually that's... The performance of your circuit, yeah.

Fat Man: Yeah, it's...

Dave Jones: Have you actually tested the RFI input filtering capability? Have you stuck a GSM phone up next to it? No, I haven't. It's a good test, though. See if it filters that out.

Fat Man: Yeah, that's a good test.

Dave Jones: Absolutely.

Fat Man: Yeah. So, I don't know if we've ever talked about all the different op-amp things to look for on here, but I've talked about it a little bit on my site, I think. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff to look for and trying to balance it all out and go through DigiKey. It's like, oh, sometimes people just want to be like, tell me apart, good Lord.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know.

Fat Man: I've done that a lot.

Dave Jones: Oh, op-amp. Try and search op-amps on DigiKey or mouse. I know. It's just...

Fat Man: Yeah, it's a mess.

Dave Jones: Op-amp, you know, you have, you know, we have found one of 10,000 devices.

Fat Man: And the worst part about that is usually there's, you know, because for one part, so like an OPA-171 might be on there. And then they also say, oh, well, there's four different package types and there's leaded and non-leaded and you can get it in a reel or in a tape or in, you know, whatever. And so by the end of it... Or in a DigiReel. Yeah, exactly. You get like 16 or 20 different options for the same part and you're like, just, just, just tell me apart. Good Lord. You know, they need like a super simple, stupid, like, you know, like everything. I mean, I know you could filter it all out too, but...

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah, you can.

Fat Man: But when a beginner goes to a DigiKey or something like that, it's, it gets, it's tough. It's tough for that kind of thing. Because you have to, if you don't know what you're looking for, what do you look for, right?

Dave Jones: No, yeah, exactly. Well, you know, well, if you don't know what you're looking for, then probably just any op-amp will do a 741 will probably do it just fine and dandy. Yeah, that's true.

Fat Man: That's when you have like a, you know, a drawer of... Yeah, it's a drawer of op-amp sitting around the lab with some TLO72s or something. Something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. TLO72. Yeah.

Fat Man: Yep. LM324s. Gotta love them. Just sitting around them.

Dave Jones: There's still being, you know, and there's a reason that they're still around. Yeah, yeah. And people still use them is because they're, you know, a lot of the time that's all you need. You don't care if it's got two milli volts offset. You know, who cares? Whoop-dee-doo. Yeah, right. You know, or if it doesn't work rail-to-rail. Whoop-dee-doo.

Fat Man: Right, right.

Dave Jones: You know, I...

Fat Man: Yeah, it's tough. I don't think I'd pick an op-amp every week for chip of the week, but this one struck my fancy, so I thought I'd call it out, you know. Right. Yeah. So... It's been named and shamed, hasn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, I like that one. What about... So, I mentioned, you know, ESR.

Dave Jones: I love the photo. Oh, the photo. On the TI page. You can clearly see that they've photoshopped the part number onto a generic image of the SO8 package, and they've got the text at the wrong angle, and it really looks stupid. Really? Oh, yeah. If you go to the... I'll send you the...

Fat Man: Yeah, I got it here.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you've got the link?

Fat Man: Oh, yeah. They put, like, a slant on it. It's like, what?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. It's got a slant on the text. Yeah.

Fat Man: It just looks... That looks a little weird.

Dave Jones: Amateur hour at Texas Instruments.

Fat Man: Ah, it's a 3D model anyway, so they're...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. It's just a generic 3D model. And they've actually probably got some sort of script that actually is typing the number, and it just overlays the text automatically onto that image, and that's the image they save for the website. Yep.

Fat Man: Has SOIC part number, or... Yeah. So, you can actually generate this picture then, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Fat Man: That's funny. For reference only, Dave.

Dave Jones: Right. Damn, my parts don't look like that. They must be counterfeit. No.

Fat Man: So, I mentioned ESR, protection and the input of stuff, but you had an item on here about people taking you to task about that on some of your reviews before. I want to mention that before we close out the show.

Dave Jones: Well, our hour is up, but we can mention that very quickly.

Fat Man: I mean, you had asked...

Dave Jones: What was it? Yes.

Fat Man: You had asked, do people actually do good grounding practices when they're working at their bench? And, uh...

Dave Jones: And I'm talking always. Always.

Fat Man: Do it. Right.

Dave Jones: Because I was taking a task that I didn't wear an ESD strap. Yeah. Even though I had an ESD mat, didn't wear an ESD strap when I was doing the teardown. And, in theory, fair enough. I've worked at companies where you would literally... It was a sackable offense... Really? ...if you entered a lab, yep, and you did not have your ESD strap on, and you did not test it every time you entered the lab. You would actually get fired if you did it.

Fat Man: Wow. Sorry? It was like a demerit, or you just got tossed out on your ass?

Dave Jones: No, you actually got tossed out of the company. You were fired instantly. Wow. It was... They made it very clear one day it was a dismissible offense. Wow. Instantly. Regardless of who you were, how important you were for the company, because the boards in there were worth... You know, they were all one-offs, and if you blew them, you know, the whole $10 million project has gone to shit. Wow. You know, so they took it really seriously. Um... And, yeah, and granted, I agree, right? Technically, yes, you should be using your ESD strap, but I do it because it's a real-world test. Most people who are going to get this multimeter or this product, they're going to take it apart to have a sticky beak inside, aren't they? And they're not going to wear ESD protection, and quite frankly, it's part of the test. If somebody, if a product fails ESD, I've never killed a product in over 20, 30 years by taking it apart without an ESD strap. Now, that's not to say it's not going to happen, but if a multimeter died by me doing that, you're not just going to come out and say, well, oh, of course it's going to die because you didn't wear your ESD strap, idiot. Well, no. It's not a robust... You know, that could be indicative of some other problem, right?

Fat Man: So you're saying you should scuff your feet on the floor and intentionally stick your finger over top of the board.

Dave Jones: That's right. Get my nylon jumper out. I call this the 4 kilovolt test.

Fat Man: Zap!

Dave Jones: Right. It's the human body model test. There you go.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, but come on.

Fat Man: Also known as the idiot board designer test, right? So if you've designed your board poorly or you don't have the right kind of, you know, ground planes and everything, then yeah, you might be really sensitive and you might have some problems, so...

Dave Jones: Yeah. Most fully assembled boards are fairly robust. You know, they're not foolproof, but they're fairly robust. Hell, the whole Chinese computer and toy gadget industry is built on no ESD protection, right? And it's, you know, and they usually survive. Well, you know, there might be some infant mortality and some failures and all that sort of stuff, but it's not a big deal. And anyone who calls me out on it, I'm going to call them a hypocrite because I can guarantee you they've done it themselves, right? There is no way every time they open a product, they walk into their bench and they put on their ESD strap and their ESD coat and their mat and their everything else. Right.

Fat Man: Yep.

Dave Jones: And even if I did that, I'd still get taken a task by anal retentive people who said, oh, you're not using an ionizer. You haven't got your lab coat on. You haven't done this. You don't have an anti-static floor mat. You haven't a static fluid to your chair.

Fat Man: I need my garage. Come on, people.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Give me a break. Yeah.

Fat Man: I mean, you're right. A lot of the parts, I mean, they have it built in and they see that voltage build up on a pin and it's just going to dump it through a diode. So that takes care of itself a lot of the time.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Yeah.

Fat Man: And not like...

Dave Jones: And quite frankly, I'd be very concerned if a product I took apart, especially when I was actually still using an ESD mat, so I'm actually taking more precautions than most people would. Yeah. And yes, I do occasionally wear my strap if I deem it to be important. But if I'm doing a tear down of a board, I typically don't wear it out of sheer laziness. And I think, well, it's not a bad test anyway. So, yeah. So, tough tip. Yep. That's what I'm going to do. Anyway, I'm calling everyone a hypocrite if they challenge me on that.

Fat Man: Hypocrites all around.

Dave Jones: Do you wear an ESD strap when you take something apart?

Fat Man: I do at work. Not at home, though. I just, you know, touch a case.

Dave Jones: Take it apart and have a sticky beat, don't you? Yeah.

Fat Man: Just touch a case.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Take your chances.

Fat Man: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You just take... Yeah. You know, like you don't go... You know, you're actually aware of it because we're engineers. We're aware that, oh, okay, yes, we've just been shuffling our feet across the carpet. Yeah. And we've got our nylon underwear on today. And, you know.

Fat Man: Yeah. Some hand wrap underwear.

Dave Jones: And, you know, so we're aware of that sort of stuff. So, yes, when I'm aware of that, I don't deliberately go out and try and zap the boards. Goodness sake. Anyway. Yes. Brr.

Fat Man: Well. End rant. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out whether or not I should say this, but I think it's clear, folks, that in all but one thing in his life, Dave uses protection.

Speaker ?: Right.

Fat Man: See you next week, folks. Bye. Yeah.