#66 – Magnets, China & IEEE - Xenomorphic Xerox Xebec

Chris Gammell: Welcome to the Amp Hour.

Dave Jones: I'm Dave Jones from the EEV Blog. And I'm Chris Camel from Chris Camel's Analog Life.

Jeff Kaiser: And this is Jeff Kaiser of MightyOm.com. Hey, Jeff, you're back. Does he sound good? Hey, thank you. Thank you very much.

Dave Jones: Look at him and all his new fancy, fancy, fancy mic. Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, you know, I was tired of getting so much shit from you guys about my audio quality. It wasn't just us. That I finally, after what, like a year of being on the show on and off, I decided to finally upgrade my setup. So now I'm coming to you through a real proper microphone and a real proper amplifier. And the best part is it's got tubes. Is today your last time you're going to be on the show? No? No, no, no, no. Don't say that. Unfortunately, there's a return policy on all this stuff. But no, my voice is coming to you through a vacuum tube. Whoa. There's actually... Oh, no. Oh, no.

Dave Jones: You succumbed to the wank. You did.

Jeff Kaiser: You did. Well, there's actually...

Jeff Kaiser: There is this crappy, you know, $50 microphone preamplifier. If you look inside the box, I can see the warm glow of vacuum tubes.

Speaker ?: It's glowing.

Jeff Kaiser: Oh, the tube sound.

Dave Jones: Or if you've got one of those fake tubes. Tubes. Have you been duped? Yeah. It's just an LED, like an orange one. I haven't...

Jeff Kaiser: I haven't opened it yet, but I plan to. And I think there really is a tube in there. I'm sure it's like the cheapest Chinese, you know, knockoff tube possible. But, yeah. So, the power of, what, 50, 60, 70-year-old electronics. Yep. Enabling our show today.

Dave Jones: And you got totally sucked into the vortex of, oh, I must have an external amplifier. So, I've got complete control. I did. I did. You know, and I... Whereas we have learned the value of the simplicity of the USB mic.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, you know, and I... No, that's simple. I respect that. I messed it up all day. I absolutely... I respect that. I respect the USB mic. I just thought that I had to be different. I had to get something a little different from you guys and try a different approach. And so, I went with the old school XLR cables. And I don't know. It wasn't really expensive, but I'm pretty happy with it. And the best part is that if I need to, I can break it all down and sell all the pieces. And, you know, it's all just studio... It's an investment, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. That's what I like to think, you know? Investment in this Chinese tube amp. That's what he tells the wife. That's what he tells the wife. Yeah. Yeah. But actually, the best part is that I... My one hack involved in this whole setup is that I took a desk lamp, one of those, like, architects' swing arm lamps, like you see on desks. And I actually modified it to put the shock mount of the microphone in place of the lamp. So, I've actually got a full boom with a swivel and everything. And I think it cost me $30. Nice. Yeah. There's some pictures on Flickr of the setup. And I'm not, like, totally thrilled with the quality of my $30 desk lamp. That's surprising.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: But, you know, it works. And I can actually swing it out of the way whenever I'm not using it. And I don't know. I think it's pretty cool. But, yeah, I admit, I did go a little bit further than I was planning and spent a little more money than I wanted to. But, I don't know. It sounds good. Dave says it doesn't sound any different than the old mic. So, maybe I just threw $150 down the drain.

Dave Jones: Well, I thought your old mic was fine. Chris was the one who was bitching about it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well. He's the old audio dude. I have no reason to complain, given my usual audio issues. Yeah. Well.

Jeff Kaiser: Anyway, it's good to be back on the show. Thanks for having me back. It's nice to be back on again. That's cool. Yeah. Actually, back home again now. Oh, yeah. That's great. Travel Meister, huh? Yeah. I was so tired of travel. I'm just going to stay here for a bit until the holidays. At least one or two more weeks. And then travel again, and then bitch about it when you come back next time. Nope. I'm home. I'm home now. It's good to be home.

Chris Gammell: It's good, man. Well, you're home on the amp hour, as our Ed McMahon.

Dave Jones: And if it ever falls through here, you can be on another electronics radio show. Oh, yeah. Which you discovered this morning, Chris. Yeah. Come on. Let's talk about it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, we've known about the electronic design one. We've talked about that one before. And that's...

Dave Jones: Is it still going?

Chris Gammell: It's still going, yes.

Dave Jones: I mean, it's gotten a little better.

Chris Gammell: They still do.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: You know, the thing is, a lot of these magazines are trying to get more viewers or listeners, whatever. And I can't blame them. You know, like, they're trying everything.

Dave Jones: They're trying to get more advertising space is what they're trying to get.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they're trying to make a living. That's cool. Whatever works.

Dave Jones: Yeah, fair enough.

Chris Gammell: But, yeah, there's a new one from Design News, who I confused it for last time. So, when the electronic design one came out, I said it was Design News. And now Design News actually has one. So, yeah, there's a new one. I mean, all you have to do is tell them every last detail about you, and you can finally listen to it. So, it's a pretty great deal if you really like handing out information to people that will package you up and sell you around like a credit default swap. Right.

Dave Jones: And that's the thing. You cannot sign up to this. You cannot listen to this thing without filling out the, you know, the big form.

Jeff Kaiser: Who are you?

Dave Jones: Who do you work for? What industry do you work in? Blah, blah, blah. And creating, because they're trying to suck you into creating the Design News account, which then you can access, you know, all sorts of other stuff on their website. Right. Right. And that's what they, and they're the numbers that they sell to their advertisers. Right. And their hands are tied by their advertisers.

Chris Gammell: I get it. I get it. I know where it comes from. Yeah, I get it. Don't think for a second I gave them my real address or, I think I told them I live in Oregon now. And my name is Mike. And so, yeah, they might be able to back calculate that from what I just said there.

Dave Jones: But I wonder how many Bill Gates is from Microsoft there. There you go. There's a lot. Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just bullshit. Come on. Stop that. I agree. Stop that crap, guys. It's just garbage. I hate that stuff.

Jeff Kaiser: I hate that stuff.

Dave Jones: You can still get the numbers on your website without having, you know, okay, you've got a thousand listeners or whatever. You can still get those numbers without having to sign people into your bloody portal.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it is. Google Analytics. Ever heard of it? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's not rocket science. And it's just, nobody's going to listen to it if they have to sign up to the bloody thing. Yep. Yep. God. Yep. It's too bad. Anyway, it has the very creative name Design News Radio. Yep.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Dave Jones: Ooh. Yeah. Beep-a-dee-peep-a-dee-peep-a-dee. And I don't know what kind of audio they're using, but once again, it's very, it's not good quality. They're obviously not recording locally like we do. Well, they don't have tubes. There's no tubes. Well, there's no tubes. That's the problem.

Chris Gammell: We should mail them a tube.

Jeff Kaiser: Jeff, get on it. All right. Check. I'll have to check it out, though. The paywall, or not a paywall, but the registration wall sucks. But more electronics programming is good, right?

Dave Jones: Hey, I can't argue with that. That's great. We have no problem with other radio shows. In fact, we actively encourage people to start their own electronics radio shows.

Chris Gammell: I told Jeff he should start his own now. I think the Mighty Yum radio show shall go on. I mean, now that he's got all this time, he's not selling kits at all, right? I mean. Time. Yeah. I wish I had all this time. I know. I know.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, how are the kit sales going? Pretty good. Yeah. I don't know if you saw, but the Geiger counter kits are for sale at the Makershed and Adafruit. And that's a big deal for me. I've never had a kit for sale through a reseller before. So that was a big deal. And it's a lot of work to keep them stocked. So I've been madly stuffing kits in boxes. And Adafruit sold out within the first, I think, day and a half. And I've gotten a couple more orders. And then the latest is I just released a case. So I've got this cool acrylic laser cut case that you can get with the Geiger counter now. And I'm actually cutting those on the laser cutter here at the Austin Hackerspace. The Hackerspace got a laser cutter while I was in Europe. And so whenever I got home, I eagerly took the class and learned how to use it. And I have to say, I know way more about acrylic now than I did three weeks ago. Yeah, I bet. There's a lot of stuff that you can learn how not to screw up acrylic. Like acrylic sounds simple, but there's different kinds of acrylic. And the laser, how the laser interacts with it is different. And I don't know. It's been a big learning experience. And it's the first time I've ever done a mechanical type part for a kit. I've never done any custom machining or anything. But yeah, things are great. What kind of laser cutter is it? And I'm still getting a lot of... It's a Universal Laser Systems ULS PLS laser. PLS, ULS. So the company is ULS, which is one of Epilogue's competitors. Maybe Epilogue's only real competitor. Okay. And the laser is a model PLS 6.120. Better than POS. Yeah, it's the piece of... No, it's a PLS 6.120 with a 60-watt CO2 laser in it. And the cool thing about it is that I think actually out of all the hackerspaces, we have the biggest and most powerful laser cutter, at least in the United States. It's got a 32-by-18-inch bed, which is awesome. You can take these big pieces of...

Chris Gammell: 32-by-18-inch. Okay.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. It's big. You can put big pieces of acrylic, and I cut the cases 18 at a time in a big sheet. And it's cool. I mean, I've never... This was my first experience actually using a laser cutter, and it's really cool. Like, it's frustrating, and it's a lot of work to get it set up right, but once you get it cutting, it's cool. And I'm sure it's much better than any of the $3,000 or $1,000 Chinese laser cutters.

Dave Jones: Well, you can buy them for like $300 on eBay.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. Oh, yeah? This is... After using... Not kidding. No, there are a lot of really cheap laser cutters, but I have to say, after using this machine... Like the Cadillac of laser cutters, eh? Well, see, here's the thing. Once you get exposed to a nice piece of equipment, you learn... Yeah, you get that money guy. You learn, A, the value of good equipment, and B, you learn about all the little things that you can't do with the machine you've got. See, the machine we have doesn't have some of the features that some of the nicer ULS cutters do, like Air Assist. And that... Basically, there's all these options you can get, and ours is a pretty bare-bones machine. So now I want, you know, the $35,000 machine instead of the $30,000 machine. But anyway, yeah, it's cool. It's... Laser cutters are a lot of fun, and you can do cool things with them. And a lot of guys in the hackerspace, guys and girls, have been making all these little projects, and it's cool. It's a fun toy, and I've actually managed to turn it into something useful that I can sell. So that's a big win for me, certainly, to have access to it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Now, if anyone's actually used those $300 Chinese ones out there, I'd like to know, are they any good? You know, I'm... Assuming not.

Chris Gammell: ...for the project, what you can do with it, right? I mean, does it actually just melt? I mean, because you could probably tweak it, right?

Dave Jones: I think it's more of an engraver than a cutter, although it can cut, you know, thin things, but, you know, you're not going to cut an inch of steel or something on there.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, I mean, the metal thing is a big misconception of the laser cutters. CO2 lasers can't cut metal. So even the laser cutter we have can't cut metal at all.

Chris Gammell: Is there any kind of laser that can cut metal?

Jeff Kaiser: Oh, yeah. Obviously, a YAG laser with oxygen air assist is what the industrial... I mean, there's these huge industrial lasers that can cut out, you know, big metal shapes. And so laser cutters, there's a lot of different kinds of laser cutters. And the big industrial metal cutting ones are quite different than the ones that we've gotten, you know, the one that we have at our hackerspace. Noisebridge has a cheap full-spectrum laser that I think is around $1,000. And they've had some pretty good success with it. I think it takes a lot more fidgeting, and you have to be willing to kind of work on it. You know, it's a nice option if you don't have much money to spend, but it's kind of like the Harbor Freight version of the laser. Like, you have to be willing to... I guess, Dave, you probably don't have Harbor Freight tools in Australia. It's like the cheap import tool company. And a lot of the tools need minor modifications before they're fully functional. Oh, right. No, we don't have anything like that here. I mean, not to talk shit about full-spectrum, but I think they have a good product. But I think you also get into, like, the you-get-what-you-pay-for territory, where, you know, a $3,000 laser cutter is not going to be anything like a $30,000 laser cutter, which is really what our ULS is. It retails for, like, $24,900 or $28,000. Jeez.

Dave Jones: But I suspect that a $300 one isn't going to be that far off a $3,000 one. Maybe just in terms of quality. I think that might be... Because they're both, like, 40-odd watt lasers, you know, in terms of actual power. Yeah. They're not a huge amount different. So, you know, I'm... I don't think you'll see the same order of magnitude step up as you would between a $3,000 and a $30,000 one, for example, in terms of capability.

Jeff Kaiser: That's probably true. That's probably true.

Dave Jones: You know? So, yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I'm jealous. I don't know anyone's got a laser cutter, so...

Jeff Kaiser: Well, maybe your hackerspace will get one eventually. And then you'll have a reason to go there.

Dave Jones: That hackers... Yeah. I was going to say, that hackerspace I've never been to. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: I mean, that, for me, was a big win. You know? I think for hackerspaces to be successful, they have to appeal to people like me that already have a lot of nice tools. And as soon as the hackerspace here got a laser cutter, I was there every day. It was like, all of a sudden, I had, like, here's something that I can actually benefit from. Yeah. I think it's a real way for hackerspaces to make themselves relevant. Because they get this one tool that...

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Exactly. You get a tool that no one has in their own garage, and all of a sudden you get people who have really cool projects who are just limited because they don't have the right tools. But anyway...

Dave Jones: Then again, there's so many companies out there now that will... You know, you can order all these custom front panels all laser cut for you. Yes, you can. But it's not cost effective.

Jeff Kaiser: It's not cost effective. You know, if you've ever priced out... You don't think so? No, it's not. I looked into it... No, he's a cheapskate. Right. Well, no, I mean, if you're trying to make a living selling a product, you can't afford to spend $30 on a front panel, you know, for every product you're selling. I mean, assuming it's not like a, you know, multi-thousand dollar product. Yeah, a whole high-end. If you're doing an open source kit or something like that, you're really concerned about costs. And I looked into having the case for the Geiger counter made, and it's not worth it. Basically, if I didn't have access to the laser here, I wouldn't have done the case. Or I would have done it differently.

Dave Jones: That's why I try and design my stuff in off-the-shelf cases and then do like a front panel that's made out of PCB or something. So then I get the holes cut and silk screen and color all in one go. That's a really good idea.

Jeff Kaiser: That's a really good way to go. Yeah. And I, you know, I guess if I'd had the forethought, I would have designed the Geiger counter to fit an existing off-the-shelf case, but I didn't have the forethought.

Dave Jones: I reckon that's where 90% of my design effort goes into. I mentioned this on the other, the Toymaker radio show I was on the other week. And yeah, this is one of the things I talked about, is that I spend probably most of my design time actually trying to get that aspect of my things right. Like I don't like to just, you know, take all the parts from my junk bin and put it in, you know, drill the holes myself and just put it in any old case. Ah, it fits. There we go. It's done. Bang. No, I like to put in all that effort into actually making it fit perfectly into just the right off-the-shelf case, you know. And it fits with a millimeter to spare and everything's just beautiful and everything's right with the world. Ah, it's a thing of beauty.

Jeff Kaiser: I've always been really disappointed with the supply of cases from, like, Digi-Key. Like, I've never, you know, I've worked on...

Dave Jones: There's a massive amount of cases from Digi-Key. What are you talking about? There's like 10,000 of them.

Jeff Kaiser: I actually... Okay.

Dave Jones: That's half the art. And it takes many days. I will spend days just looking through all of the cases to try and find, you know, one that's most suitable. Well, here's the real question, Davis. And then I'll tweak my project around that.

Chris Gammell: Would you prefer to go to a custom one now? Like, if you had the means, would you go to that, even paying a little bit more?

Dave Jones: Well, I am for my Mark II micro watch. I have to, you know. It's something that you have to do.

Chris Gammell: That's something that's small, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. It's something that's so, you know. I've tried to do off-the-shelf case. In fact, I did. I got pretty close to doing it, actually, with an off-the-shelf case. But it's just not as good. So, no. Afraid not. But other than that, yes. I try and fit everything around an off-the-shelf case.

Chris Gammell: It's a good idea. You'll save cost every time. You get built-in economy of scale, right?

Dave Jones: Yep.

Jeff Kaiser: It's always cheaper to use an off-the-shelf part than to do something custom.

Dave Jones: And then those companies will custom machine it and custom punch it for you. But it's not that cheap. No. But still, they can do it if you want. And if you're talking high volumes, then it becomes reasonably cheap.

Chris Gammell: But, yeah. Well, speaking of custom, do you guys see everybody pointing me towards this lovely Xerox news from this week? No.

Dave Jones: What is this Xerox news? I heard some mumble about it. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, FinFilm is the company. And then Xerox, it's actually Park. P-A-R-C. Basically, they released a...

Dave Jones: Xerox Park? Are they still going? Yeah, apparently, yeah. As in Xerox Park as in the Alto fame?

Chris Gammell: I don't know about that. No? Xerox Park. It must be. It must be.

Chris Gammell: It must be.

Chris Gammell: It must be.

Chris Gammell: It must be. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: It's got to be the same.

Dave Jones: Xerox Park is the famous place that developed all of the... Ethernet, I think, was developed there. Oh, okay. I think the mouse... And the famous Alto computer. The mouse, Douglas Engelbart, and all the geniuses from the computer.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, yeah. It's the Palo Alto Research Center. Yes. Oh, that makes sense. Which is what Park stands for, yeah. Okay, it's got a lot to research. Okay.

Dave Jones: They're obviously still going then. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That was one of the craziest things for me. I was like, wow, Xerox is still around.

Dave Jones: And we think, no, Park is still around. Holy shit.

Jeff Kaiser: So wait, what's the story? I haven't seen this.

Chris Gammell: The story is basically them and a Norwegian company called Finfilm, they say they have a printable memory based off printed CMOS-style circuits and using printable organic electronics. And so everybody's all... Fantastic. Yeah, yeah. And so I'm going to jump the shark on this one. No, that's not the right word. I'm going to jump the gun on this one. I'm going to go against the people saying already that this is a Chris win for his argument. Oh, it's not. I know, it's not. But it's still pretty cool. I mean, it could be big in the future.

Dave Jones: I agree. Printable electronics will be big. Yeah. But you're not going to do it in your freaking home.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's yet to be determined. But, yeah, this is a good start. And there's a roadmap here. They say by 2014, you know, they're talking about right now there are 20 bits on a simple array, and then they're going to move up in terms of memory.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, you'd want to because you can't go down any further. The only way is up, right, from 20 bits of memory.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Yep. Yep. Sorry, I had to get that one. No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, a whopping 20 bits, you know.

Chris Gammell: But, you know, they're moving in other stuff, too. And there's a lot of the stuff that they've already talked about, you know, near-field kind of stuff, and RFID and everything like that.

Jeff Kaiser: So, hmm.

Chris Gammell: It's a good start, though. I don't know. Printable? Yeah, I'm with Dave.

Jeff Kaiser: We know where everybody is on this issue. I'm just saying. No, you know, honestly, I would like to see ChipFab in the garage. You know, I cringe every time I see. Sorry about it. I hear you getting beaten up, Chris, by Dave, mostly, about the home chip fab stuff. But I'm with Dave on this one. I think printable electronics is a pretty broad field, and I don't see anything that's going to go into the garage from this kind of an effort. Like, just because it's printable electronics doesn't mean that it's easier to make it home. No, exactly. Maybe.

Dave Jones: If anything, it actually requires more exotic machines, right? Yeah, exactly. Because you can etch your own chips at home, right? It's just a matter of the nasty chemicals and stuff, right? And the masks and things like that. I mean, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I've known that before. One of the big limiting things is the mechanical side of it, right? How do you get something? How do you get that kind of mechanical resolution that would really be required?

Jeff Kaiser: So, yeah, I get it. This is why I don't make printed circuit boards at home. And I always get crap for that. People are always telling me, you know, oh, why don't you make your boards at home? And, you know, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I've done that. It's crap. It's not necessary anymore. I know. There are so many services now that will make boards cheaply and very quickly. And it's like, why would I want to be trying to figure out if I can pour copper sulfide down the drain or have to take it to the hazmat center? You know, if I can just pay somebody to deal with all that stuff.

Chris Gammell: You know, there's an... Yeah. Yeah. No, never mind. I was going to say there's an easy way to figure that out. You just do it. But that's not very environmentally friendly, I guess. No, no, no. And I'm on record saying that now, so crap.

Jeff Kaiser: Guys in suits are going to show up at your door. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Might have to actually do it first, but... Oh, boy. Only 20 bits, though. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: I still haven't found the link that you're looking at. I still... I cannot find the link for this, but... Just look for Xerox.

Chris Gammell: You'll find it later. Don't worry.

Jeff Kaiser: All right. I'll do my homework after the show.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of low bid count, though, I was... I just... I had stumbled across this last night. I was doing some ham studying again, finally. Ooh, ham studying. Yeah. And do you guys know where the term Baud comes from?

Dave Jones: I don't even know the term.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they say like 300 Baud was like a... Oh, Baud. B-A-U-D. It's Baud here. Baud, Baud. You know, you pack the card and you transmit data and you do it by... 300 Baud. Bads.

Jeff Kaiser: Back the card, 1,200 Bads. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think I used to know that like a long time ago, back in the 70s, early 80s, you know, when it was still a big, you know, that's all you ever talked about was the Baud rate, you know. Right, yeah. It was a big deal. Now it's like nobody talks in terms of Baud rate. It's, you know, megbits per second. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So I don't see it in networking applications anymore. You see it in... I don't know where it came from. No. Where did it come from? It comes from Baud code. So Baud... Mm.

Dave Jones: That's it.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Oh, okay. It just suddenly clicked. Bang. Once I said it, you understood it immediately?

Chris Gammell: Once I said it, bang. Yeah, so you'd see it with like RS-232. They'll usually still talk in like 9,600 Baud. You know, it's in terms of those kind of rates. But no, Baud code is a five-bit representation of letters. And for all our binary challenge math listeners out there, or speakers as it were, that's 32 representations with five bits. So you could get 26 characters and a couple other things, but you don't have quite enough. Yeah, that's not enough. So that was a little short-sighted on Mr. Baud's part, but it was the 1800s. So we'll let that one slide. Right. But yeah, that's where it comes from. So it's a shortening of his name, and Baud is – I don't know the exact – there's an actual translation. I think it's 1 over F. I think that might be the simple formula. But I thought it was cool. It was kind of like a cool little piece of history. I was just reading through, and it was actually – it's for teletype. So teletype being, you know, the old for telegraph, right, when they were actually translating letters as opposed to Morse code.

Dave Jones: We still have one of those here on the Amp Hour. Yes, yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: The teletype news. Yeah, yeah. My dad had a teletype machine whenever I was a kid.

Chris Gammell: Whenever you were a kid, you don't remember when that was?

Jeff Kaiser: Well, this would have been in the early 80s, I guess. Maybe the mid-80s. He had a teletype machine for work, and it was this giant blue thing, probably IBM. And it was huge, and he had an acoustic coupler for it. Nice. Pretty cool. I love acoustic couplers. Those things look so retro and silly. Yeah. So, Chris, when are you getting your license? Oh, I got a while yet, buddy. So I don't know if we've ever talked about it, but I've been a ham for a long time. I've had my license since I was in college. I had a good friend of mine that talked me into getting my ham radio license, and we used to use our radios to talk from one end of campus to the other, because we lived in dorms that were like 20-minute walk apart.

Dave Jones: Hey, I used to do that. I didn't need no stinking license.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, he's the guy that got me into a lot of radio stuff. Actually, I think the reason I studied RF in college was because he was into it. He kind of talked me into it, and I played with packet radio and all that old-school ham stuff. So I've had my license for over 10 years now, and I upgraded to extra. So I've actually got the highest license in the United States that you can have. I upgraded about a year ago, I guess. Nice. Nice. Yeah. So I actually kind of got out of ham for a long time and just got back into it in the past couple years. And since moving to Texas, I haven't done much because I don't have an antenna set up. But I actually just today bought a radio kit. But you can actually build your own transceivers, which is pretty cool. I think as far as electronic kits go, that's one of the coolest things you can build is like a working two-way radio.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, one of my buddies back in my undergrad days, he used to talk to me about RF stuff, and I'd be like, you know, Charles, why are you selling RF? He's just like, well, to be honest, it's just the most magical thing there is. You wiggle a line over here, and it shows up over there. I mean, you understand the principles behind it, but that's what it kind of is, right? It's just like... Yeah, I agree. It's magic. I agree. It's some Harry Potter shit right there, you know?

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, I really agree. And I think if you think about specialties in electronics design, you know, you think you've got electrical engineering, and you've got analog circuit design, and then if you go even crazier, you've got RF circuit design, right?

Dave Jones: Well, there's magic in almost every area of electronics. That's true. It's just in how a transistor works is magic, right? That's very true. It's like, you know, down at the quantum sort of level, it's just... Yep. Yeah. It's amazing. Yep. You know, really low-power electronics, you know? That's magic as well.

Jeff Kaiser: Yep.

Dave Jones: There's lots of... Almost every area, I think, you can find magic and artistry in it.

Jeff Kaiser: But RF is clearly the best area. Right.

Chris Gammell: So you're saying, Jeff, the area you've concentrated on for a majority of your career is the best I mean, that's why I concentrate on it. Best area. Okay. Yeah, I mean, obviously. Obviously, you're very objective in this regard.

Speaker ?: Clearly.

Jeff Kaiser: No, but yeah, I think it is magical. I really do. And I've always been interested in how, you know, signals can just magically come out of the air. And to me, the really interesting thing about amateur radio is that if you start using radio signals that are down at the, what they call the HF, or high-frequency signal range, this is, you know, in the several to tens of megahertz range, the propagation of your signal is influenced heavily by natural phenomena. Yeah, like solar flares and all those other chunks. Exactly. Yeah. So the fact...

Dave Jones: Yeah, you can bounce off the stratosphere and do all sorts of...

Jeff Kaiser: So you're actually, you know, your signal is bouncing off things that are, you know, in the Earth's atmosphere and are being influenced by activity of the sun. Like, that's kind of far out, right? Yeah, it's like a lot of miles, actually. That's how far out it is. But it's, you're actually witnessing these amazing physical phenomena are actually influencing your ability to talk from one end of the globe to the other. And I think that's pretty cool.

Dave Jones: Well, I found that there was so much mechanical environment crossover in my seismic industry, which I used to work in as well. You know, you would walk across the floor and that would induce micro vibrations in your crystal and, you know, like, and that would affect the drift rate and all sorts of wonderful things, you know?

Chris Gammell: That sounds horrible.

Dave Jones: You found all these...

Chris Gammell: I know, it can be horrible, but it's fascinating when you figure it out. That sounds like a really frustrating, horrible, horrible experience. It's like you're working on electronics and you see a little blip, you're like, oh, come on, who farted?

Dave Jones: But then when you figure it out, it's the best thing ever. You go, oh, it was somebody who farted.

Jeff Kaiser: Like, we can recreate this.

Dave Jones: So you let one rip and, you know, it's great.

Jeff Kaiser: Identify the engineers by their flatulence. Yeah, right. By their characteristic response. Their characteristic response, yeah. Their impulse response. Oh, boy. There we go. It's true. Farts go into today's show notes. Yeah, I'll put that in there. Farts. Seismic farts. I think it's cool whenever behaviors, like, you know, things that the natural world influences electronics. It's cool. I mean, this is why people go into astronomy and, you know, radio astronomy and all these things. It's just, it's really interesting. And I think ham radio lets you actually reach out and touch some interesting behaviors of the universe. And lets you reach out and touch some interesting people.

Chris Gammell: We're in their shack being interesting people.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, yeah. With an average age of 65. But, you know, we've got to change that. And I think that... Yeah, no, I think so. I think it's doable, actually. And I've been thinking about this for a long time. And I agree with you, Dave, that ham radio has a very old... Like, a lot of the people that are in radio are really old. Well, it's a fact. I mean, it's great that they are, and a lot of them are, you know, super helpful, awesome people. But the problem is that if they all die away, then there's got to be somebody to continue this tradition or the spectrum is just going to get reallocated to somebody else. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I was thinking about that because, you know, people pounce on that. Like, I'm not sure how much utility it will have. But I mean, if it gets opened up for commercial and, like, you know, especially in terms of, like, a political side of things, at least in the US, I think, if there isn't, like, the ARL, like, fighting for that kind of thing, they'll reallocate that bandwidth in a minute, you know? Yep. Oh, you bet. Especially if there's money behind it.

Jeff Kaiser: And the hams have frequency slices through pretty much all of the spectrum. Like, there's little pieces at, you know, every couple few hundred megahertz and, you know, up to the many tens of gigahertz. And, yeah, I mean, it is a concern. But, you know, I think that there are ways of getting new people interested in it. I actually personally feel that one of the keys is to get hackerspaces to install ham radio stations.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Because then you're appealing to an audience that probably hasn't been exposed to it. And you actually, the best part about it is that by getting ham, by getting hackerspaces on the air, you actually have somebody to talk to, right? So, the problem in the past has always been that, oh, great, now I'm on the air, but I don't want to, there's no one to talk to. Like, who am I going to have a conversation with? And if you listen to ham radio, a lot of times you'll hear the most inane, you know, especially whenever politics or religion gets involved, I usually tune out. You know, I just turn off the radio. But if you get hackerspaces on the air, then you've got a worldwide network of, exactly, interesting people with a lot of things to talk about. And I think there's a lot to be done there in that area that would totally revitalize amateur radio. I don't know. Maybe I'm just dreaming.

Dave Jones: And you don't get charged for bandwidth usage.

Jeff Kaiser: There you go. No, you don't. It's a bargain, folks. You don't. You don't. So, I... Like I said, I've been kind of getting back into ham radio lately. And so, I got this book, The Electronics of Radio by David Rutledge. Which you received after me as well. I like that one. Exactly. I did. And I've... It's by... David Rutledge is a professor at Caltech. And this is a... I think a freshman course is based around this book where everybody who comes into the electrical engineering department has to build a working radio. Which I wish my school had had that. That's awesome. You know, I had that. Like, really. That is cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but some people just aren't interested in it. Right. Well, those people shouldn't be in electrical engineering. People might think, oh, this is boring as batshit.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, I say that if a student doesn't know how to solder by their third year of electrical engineering, they have no business being an electrical engineer. Oh, I totally agree. So, this gets people with soldering irons, building circuits, you know, identifying capacitors, identifying, you know, using test equipment. I think it's great. Yeah, it's like the rubber hitting the road, right? And I admit, not everybody... What? Sorry? Say that again?

Chris Gammell: I said it's like the rubber hitting the road in that case, where it's like, you know, you learn two years of theory in university, and then you can actually do something with it.

Jeff Kaiser: So, this is kind of a fun thing, and you do it coming in. And, you know, I know what you're saying, Dave. Some people don't care about this, and it sucks for them to have to go through this class. But I think that for the people who... But screw them. Screw them. Yeah. I mean, you can't please everybody. You can't please everybody. But, so the cool thing about this book, while I... The reason I'm going on and on about this is that... Was he going on and on?

Chris Gammell: I don't know if he was... Was he going on and on, Dave? No, I don't. I think he was just starting.

Jeff Kaiser: He's just getting started.

Chris Gammell: Go ahead, Jeff. Guest. Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff Kaiser: Guest.

Jeff Kaiser: I thought it was your Ed McMahon. So, the cool thing about the book is that it's based around a kit called the NorCal 40A.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Which is a 40-meter, 7 megahertz radio transceiver. And it's only Morse code. It's pretty basic, but pretty high performance. And so, this is a way of teaching electronics theory through building a kit, building a radio. And you actually...

Dave Jones: Why is it Morse code only?

Jeff Kaiser: Because that's easier to do. It's much easier to make a radio that just does CW, Morse code. Yeah. Oh. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's got a huge leap to give it an audio bandwidth.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, but then you have to worry about, yeah, having larger bandwidths and having... Yeah, I guess.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you know, if you're just doing CW, you're just, you know, on-off carrier, right?

Jeff Kaiser: Single sideband modulators are complicated. Yeah. So, this is simple. So, yeah. I mean, it's limited in capability. But apparently, the radio has really good performance. Like, it's actually competitive with some commercial receivers. And so, anyway, long story short, I ordered one of the kits, and I'm actually going to put it together while I'm reading this book. Oh, nice. And it's cool. I mean, it's kind of a, it's a very entry-level book. But honestly, sometimes it feels good to go... Well, I mean, if you're a, if you've got a degree, it's basically, you're going back to square one, like Kirchhoff's laws and V equals IR kind of stuff. I've heard about this. But it kind of feels good. And actually, it does, it does actually get into some advanced topics, like power amplifier design and crystal lattice filters and stuff that I didn't learn in school, but learned on the job afterwards. This actually lays out a lot of the theory and also practical side of actually building them. So, anyway, I'm sorry. I went on way too long about that. But I just think it's cool. It's that new microphone, Dave. That's what it is. It's that new microphone. I think it is.

Chris Gammell: You know, it was the tube. It was the tube. The tube extends my talk time. He sounds so good to himself that it just keeps going. Just got to keep talking. Well, speaking of where...

Dave Jones: Should we get onto one of our favorite topics here on the Amp Hour that we talk about? The IEEE.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: You've put almost a rant here. Well, somebody has had a rant.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it wasn't me. On the IEEE. But basically, it's about how they actually disallow. And so, IEEE is big in wireless, right? They have a lot of, you know, wireless type stuff, too. So, Jeff might still be interested here. Yeah, right.

Jeff Kaiser: I just renewed my IEEE membership, actually. Oh, man. I did. I did. I've been a member for 14 years. That's impressive. You have paid them a lot of money. I have. Well, my employers have paid them a lot of money in most cases. There's the key, folks. There's the key. But I'm paying it on my own dime now.

Chris Gammell: Well, you have an employer known as your customers. That's true. That's true. What utility you've seen with it, just before we get into this story?

Jeff Kaiser: I think the big thing for me has always been the email address.

Dave Jones: Right. See, I've never been into the email. I just, I like receiving the magazine. It's not bad. Yeah. Spectrum is great. Spectrum is awesome.

Jeff Kaiser: IEEE Spectrum is great. And also, having access to the digital library is really cool, too. Oh, wait. You get the fancy subscription? No, I don't have the full access. So you just get the abstracts? I get the abstracts, and I get the articles that I'm a member of the society. So I'm a member of the Solid State Circuits Society, so I get all their stuff. Okay. And in the past, I've been a member of the microwave theory and techniques, and I got their papers, too. Ooh, a bunch of funsters. Yeah. I bet there's some cool stuff in there. I think this show, this whole show, this whole show is Dave and Chris giving Jeff shit, I think. That's it. Jeff gets a new microphone and riles some feathers.

Speaker ?: You sound so good now, Jeff.

Jeff Kaiser: I gotta say. Yeah. Now, it's like, before you were just being nice to me, it's like, oh, I hope Jeff doesn't talk anymore, because he sounds terrible. So let's just, we'll just, yeah. Oh, no. Anyway, so this guy's compliant. We make fun of what we don't understand.

Chris Gammell: That's what it is, Jeff. Okay, so yeah, what's this guy's deal?

Dave Jones: This guy's compliant. He says a big title on his webpage, don't publish with the IEEE.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Why? What's his belief? Basically, because they won't release anything to public domain, and they'll refuse anything that's even remotely close to being released to the public domain, because it's-

Jeff Kaiser: No, no, no. Isn't the point that they won't publish things that are in the public domain? It's because I'm reading the second sentence. Yes, that's what I read. They're flat out refusing to accept public domain papers. That is kind of a problem.

Dave Jones: Well, I thought that meant that it was already in the public domain. If you've gone to all the work to do this paper, and you've published it on your website, then they won't accept it, right? Okay, that's what I was thinking, too. I might have said it different. That's just bullshit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's just, you know, that's garbage. Right. If it's an original paper, and you've done a lot of work, a lot of original research, why shouldn't they publish it?

Jeff Kaiser: Because they want to own the copyright of what you wrote. Bingo. Yeah, it's the money thing.

Chris Gammell: It is. It's too bad. I mean, it's almost like we need a, like an open, the thing is no one will go for it, though. You know, it's all about credibility, right? It's all about people that are doing research for, at universities and everything, they are publishing in the IEEE because it's seen by the people that read the IEEE, and there's a legitimate...

Dave Jones: And it's the thing to do. It's the esteem thing to do. Whereas I bet you a million bucks the IEEE looked down upon anything that's public domain. Oh, that's not real professional academic stuff, you know? Yeah, yeah. You know, their hobbyist garby putting crap up on web pages.

Jeff Kaiser: Their term for it is, it's not peer-reviewed. That's the expression that they use. Yeah. Yeah. Anything that's in...

Dave Jones: No, but to get it peer-reviewed, you've got... That's the idea of publishing something in there is so that it can... Be reviewed? You can get it peer-reviewed to get it in there. Right.

Jeff Kaiser: Right. Right. So, therefore, it's supposed to be of a higher quality because it's been reviewed by...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, if Jeff published a paper on wireless something, and then Dave and I panned it, is that peer-reviewed or no?

Jeff Kaiser: By the IEEE's definition, no. Really? Because you're not members of... You're not doing this as part of an IEEE society. Okay, so what if... Or a publication.

Dave Jones: It's a very closed shop. What if we... The whole thing is closed shop.

Jeff Kaiser: What if we started the Amp Hour Society?

Chris Gammell: I mean, like, would that work? I can charge you $150 a year, Jeff, if you want me to.

Jeff Kaiser: Unless the IEEE owns the Amp Hour, no, I don't think they would buy it. Well, who cares what they say, though? Actually, so... We're in a competition here, Jeff. That's what we're talking about. So, what's the difference between somebody publishing something on their website versus publishing it in, like, Nature, which is not an IEEE publication, but I suspect they would allow something that was published in a well-known journal, right? It's a journal thing, yeah. Or maybe not, actually. If you publish it in that journal, that journal would probably restrict your ability to republish it, right? Probably. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They always say printed with permission. And I'm sure there's... Yeah, yeah. You know, people out there listening, if you're a scientific author, please don't, you know, crack us over the head. Please explain it to us if we got this wrong, but it's... I'm sure we have. Yeah, I'm sure we have, too. I mean, this is probably, like, an auto thing, right? But, yeah. I don't get it. I don't get, like... It's just kind of... To me, it seems like it's just credibility based on others who believe in said credibility, like a currency. Oh, absolutely. It's a boys network. Of course it is. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. It always has been, always will be. So...

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, but, you know, there's pros and cons, right? I mean, on the flip side, the people who do the editing, like the editorial review for the journals, the standard is probably quite high, because these are people who are experts in their field, and they've been doing this for a long time, and they take pride in, you know, their work. It's different than just some guy publishing something on his website, right? Where you can publish anything.

Dave Jones: Or in a magazine like Silicon Chip or something like that. You know, there's a big difference.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Author of Nuts and Volts is quite different than author of Journal of Solid State Circuits for IEEE. It's just a different editorial review that happens if you're submitting something to a journal for IEEE or any other, you know, large society.

Dave Jones: And the funny thing is, is that if you publish something like, you know, that means nothing in the industry. In the practical industry, if you see, if I'm reading someone's resume and it says, oh, I've published these papers, and they're like, hey, I'm going to go, I don't give a shit. You know? And you solder. But if you publish something in Silicon Chip or Nuts and Volts, right, I'm going to go, oh, that's cool, right? That kind of matters.

Jeff Kaiser: You're kind of coming from the opposite direction. You'd rather see them published with the...

Dave Jones: And in the opposite direction, they think, you know, the more practical ones are shit. Yeah, yeah. And I think... They're just two different worlds, really.

Jeff Kaiser: At the end of the day, I think the problem is that the IEEE and all other large organizations are in bed with the universities. And the problem is that the universities publish through the IEEE because everyone else is doing it, right? And you can't publish into some other journal because then no one will read your stuff, right? So you want to publish your papers in a forum where your peers and, you know, the people who care about your research will actually read it. That happens to be the IEEE. So you can't just choose to publish somewhere else. You'll be, you know, you're not going to get the same... You'll be... Yeah, totally. Absolutely. So the problem is that this situation has occurred where you've got this one place that you can publish. So what we really need is we really need like a public domain or Creative Commons or some other venue to publish papers that for whatever reason, enough people can agree on using to make it relevant, right? The IEEE is the establishment just because they happen to be in the right place at the right time or because they got the right people. It's longevity too, right? I mean, they've been around a long time. No, I mean, they've been there. The IRE has been around since, what, the 1800s, right? Like this organization has in one form or another been around for as long as people have been doing research in semiconductors and certainly...

Dave Jones: And that's the only way things were done back then. Right. You know, like they don't have the... They needed the distribution network. They didn't have a popular electronics magazine like they do these days. Yeah, sending it in Baudot codes didn't work. And that's the thing. These avenues exist, right? You can publish. If you've got a cool thing, you can publish it in an electronics magazine. Yep. One of the, you know, the silicon chips and the nuts and bolts and the what have you.

Jeff Kaiser: Or publish it on your website.

Dave Jones: Or publish it on your website. Which is even newer.

Jeff Kaiser: Self-publishing. Right. Self-published. Right.

Dave Jones: Which probably isn't as, you know, esteemed as getting it published in a more traditional magazine.

Jeff Kaiser: I mean, it's kind of like, you know, you've got Instructables, right? Where you can publish things and people can rate them.

Dave Jones: That's probably like the bottom rung. I don't think so.

Jeff Kaiser: Reddit. Reddit is probably... Reddit might be...

Dave Jones: Reddit, right?

Jeff Kaiser: No offense to Reddit. I like Reddit. No offense to Reddit. Yeah, I agree. I like Reddit. Reddit. I like Reddit and I don't want Redditors to come and, you know, take down our website. But, yeah, you know, I don't like the way that it is. Unfortunately, it is the way it is. IEEE controls all the technical journals in electronics design.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I don't really care. It just is the way it is. Yeah, I don't... It doesn't bother me. Well, if I was doing research, it would bother me.

Chris Gammell: That's the tough thing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's the cost. I agree with that. That's pretty annoying. I agree with that. I would love to read these things. Like, granted, some of them are boring. They're not boring. They're just dry, right?

Dave Jones: Most of them are boring. That's their style. Right. It's research, right? That's their style, right? Right. You're getting information across.

Jeff Kaiser: That is a really good point, Dave. Yeah, electronics publications are really dry. Like, really dry. I've never had a time in my life that I really enjoyed reading the publications for, you know, any... Like, even whenever I was a grad student... Jim Williams. No, that's... But he didn't publish in IEEE journals. I thought you just had any kind of like time. To me, the only interesting journal articles I've ever read have been the ones from, like, the 30s, 40s, 50s for, like, Shockley and... Oh, yeah. Like, the guy who discovered the early effect, he wrote a paper that was in an IEEE journal. And I think his name is Early. And, like, some of those old papers about foundations, like, the articles about foundations of electronics are pretty interesting because I think back in the 1940s, they actually used a writing style. Well, they talked about things in a more practical manner, and it wasn't so hyper-specialized. So you could actually understand. Yeah, whereas now it is. Yeah, now it's like I've made some infinitesimal improvement in some transistor in some complicated circuit for an application that has no relevance to anything I'm working on. And it's hard to relate to that. But if you're in that field, then I guess it's a big deal, right? Right, right. If it affects your research as a researcher, then you obviously spend a lot of time keeping up on that. But it's hard for the layperson to, you know, relate to these things. And I've always had that problem with journals. But, you know, whenever I've got a design problem, I do like the ability to search the archives and, you know, look for ideas. And some companies have digital library subscriptions with the IEEE, so you actually get everything. Yeah, I've used the library. Yep. Yeah. I do miss that. It is a nice... It's not cheap. It is not cheap. Oh, no. It's like 10 grand. Yeah, it's many, many thousands of dollars. Yeah. But even as a regular member, you can get access to a small portion of it. You know, I think if you pay 10 bucks a month, you can download a few articles a month. Yeah. You can get like a little slice of it for not that much money, which is better than it was a few years ago.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Do we have a shonky product of the week? We've only got 10 minutes left, you know. Jeez. Jeff, you see what you did? You see what you did, Jeff?

Chris Gammell: Sorry. Sorry, guys. We do. I wanted to mention this China thing, if you guys don't mind talking about this real quick. Yeah, the China thing's kind of a big deal. Bingo. Yep. Well, basically, we talked about it on here before, though. Like the rare earths, you know, how China controls 97% of the market. Well, basically, the company that is in charge of that is in charge of a lot of the mining. They said, nah, we're going to stop for a month.

Dave Jones: Which means the company in charge of that, which actually translates to, in a communist country, the government. The government, right? Right.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. The government. Yeah, they call it the Mongolian something or other, I think, was the name of the Inner Mongolia Boutube Steel Rare Earth Group. Is that the I-M-B-S-R-E-G? IMSREG. That's a catchy name. Yeah, it really flows off the tongue, yeah. Anyways, basically, they're doing it just to, you know, make more money. It's kind of like OPEC. And I was reading that in the comments down there, too. You know, when you think about it like that, OPEC's pretty well defined in the modern world. They say, oh, well, you know, this week we're going to cut off, you know, a crap load of barrels of oil because the prices are getting too low. And people are like, people are usually like, oh, that's okay. But this case, what they say is, oh, well, you guys got it all anyways. And so it's going to be the same case here. There's not going to be anything you can do about it.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, I like that they do it and then they disclose why they're doing it. Like, we want to move prices upward. Yeah. We like money. Have you heard about this? If I did that, it wouldn't go over too well. Yeah. So this has some big implications for the electronics world, right? Because rare metals, rare earth metals are used in a lot of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Scandium, lanthium, cerium, thulium, presodymium, neodymium, which is the one most people know. I think some of these are just made up.

Jeff Kaiser: Like, some of these are not even real metals. They're just like, ah, we've got the world supply of gamelinium. Dividium. You're going to have to pay for it now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You should use it in all your widgetizers. Yeah. I mean, some of these are, I think that the big things for these are what, LCD panels, right? Magnets, obviously, for hard drives and things like that. But there's a lot of things that use rare earth metals, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, oh, there's tons of things that you're not really aware of.

Jeff Kaiser: Like, electric vehicles, I think, use a lot for stuff. Right.

Chris Gammell: Battery chemistries are getting more rare and everything. Yeah. And, yeah, so there's a new program.

Dave Jones: And the thing is, China is not like they have the world's supply of this stuff. We've talked about this before. They don't. I mean, other countries have similar large reserves of this stuff, but they don't have the infrastructure in place to process it. Yeah. Well, they got shoved out of the market, too, because of prices. China has the monopoly on actually processing this stuff and supplying it. It's not just, you know, rare earth companies. You know, it's not just the fact that they can dig it out of the ground and we can't.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.

Chris Gammell: But we should point out, too, that it's not that they're not ever digging it out of the ground, either. They're just not shipping it outside the country. So, to be honest, some people are not going to be affected by this because a lot of the component manufacturers are now in China. So, I don't know. Yeah, that's true. If anything, it's just, you know, it's getting very centralized there. And it's like, man, this is just a sign of things to come, I think. I don't want to be like a political pundit or anything. But I think, you know, it's just a lever they can pull. And it's a lever that can mess up a lot of stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah. So, well, we brought it on ourselves.

Dave Jones: It's the tail wagging the dog.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And so, there's this one small government-owned company who can wag the whole industry to their ways. You know, that's a fact at the moment. Yeah. Unless something's done about it.

Chris Gammell: And there is a program. It's called React. At least it's in the U.S. It's Rare Earth Alternatives and Critical Technologies. Great old acronyms again. Yeah. But basically, they're looking for new sources of magnetics and everything else like that. And, you know, they're trying to – they say there's a – I believe it's nitrogen and steel or something. That wasn't even close to right. But some kind of new magnet they're working on basically is supposed to be even better than neodymium. Neodymium. Neodymium. Europium. Candolinium. It sounds like the lineup for like a robo-wrestling kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Tonight on robo-wrestling, holium versus erpium. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And why do they all have um at the end of them?

Chris Gammell: Hmm. Um. I don't know. Um. Maybe they were like – Yeah. Hmm. I don't know. Maybe when they were coming up with the names, they were doing them all in order. So they were like Scandi, um, Lanthe, um, Sir – yeah. Okay, I'm done.

Jeff Kaiser: That's a good question. I don't know. I'm sure someone in science knows. Some chemist knows, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They'll just beat up on us because we're a bunch of dumb asses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Solder jockeys.

Chris Gammell: Oh, boy. Why don't you guys go smell some lead, huh? Yeah. Lead doesn't end in um? No, I think it's a lot of the older – It's a metal? Like the newest metals are like that with the ums at the end. The newest metals. Okay. Yeah. They're all usually down at the bottom of the periodic table. The heavier stuff and the more rare stuff.

Jeff Kaiser: Yep. Speaking of soldering – Actually, lead is from the Latin plumbum, which is the PB, right? Yeah. So there is an um. Oh, yeah. Good point. There's another um. Yep.

Chris Gammell: That's why we have Jeff on. Anyway. He knows the Greek or Latin. No, Wikipedia. Oh, oh. That was what it was. Wikipedia knows everything. Yeah, exactly. Quick.

Dave Jones: It can make even the dumbest people appear extremely smart. Quick draw from the wiki. Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Wikipedia making Jeff sound smart since 2007.

Dave Jones: It'd be funny if you had like a pair of glasses or something, right? That had like, you know, the little LCD projector things in them. Oh, yeah. So that you could see stuff. And then you could have a mic in there, right? That audio – this is a brilliant idea. There we go. I don't know why I've just given this away, right? It just popped in there. And you had a microphone in there that picks up and does voice recognition and picks up a word like, you know, eodenium or something like that. And instantly, bang, does a search of Wikipedia and gives you the information. So when you're talking to people, conversing, oh, yeah, you can suddenly all of a sudden just start talking like you're an expert on anything.

Chris Gammell: You know, you might be able to even do that with just a – if you just did Bluetooth back to like an iPhone or, you know, they have that new Siri thing. And yeah, maybe you could just do that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you could. Yeah. You had like a headset. Like you don't even have to have a visual thing. You could have like an audio. It just, you know, actually talks into your ear, you know?

Jeff Kaiser: And how long would it be before someone found a way to use it to show advertising? Oh, it wouldn't get off the production line unless it did.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. I think what would be better is how long until someone hacks it so you mess up someone's date. Oh, so the symbol for that is PB, which stands for peanut butter. From the Latin peanut butterous.

Dave Jones: That'd be brilliant.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it would. It's like that –

Dave Jones: I think that's a million dollar idea. I think it is too. That's another one of my million dollar ideas pissed away. There you go. I just gave it away there. Six months.

Chris Gammell: I give it six months. There we go.

Dave Jones: Right. And the Chinese one hung low factor is churning them out, right, for five bucks. There you go. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: At least you'd have it. Damn it. Yep.

Dave Jones: Fight a dollar for every time that's happened. Ah, boy.

Chris Gammell: Well, how about this shonky product then? Sorry I cut you off before.

Dave Jones: We do – no, that's all right. We do have a shonky product, I think. Who'd it come from? Dave. Dave? You Dave? Me? Not – wasn't me. Different Dave? I didn't – I don't think it was me. Oh, okay. It was you? No, it comes from a guy called Wilhelm sent this one in.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Thank you, Wilhelm.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. The first line says Wilhelm sent this in.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I must have read an email somewhere and I popped it in here and yeah. And here it is. Yes, it's a very sort of flux capacitor looking – it's an energy – God, I don't even know what it is. It's like an – The best ones never show you what it is. It concentrates the energy fields, you know, the natural energy fields in nature and puts them into your power wiring or something. I don't know. It's designed to hook onto your main system or something like that and yeah, focus the – here we go. It's the Fostak Maximus. Ooh, yes. Registered trademark. Oh, it harmonizes electro smog. Here we go. It optimizes the natural energy flow in buildings. It harmonizes electro smog. Brilliant. It repolarizes water veins and other geopathic interference fields and it increases the efficiency of electricity and raises its effectiveness. Wow, I want one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I need the efficiency of my electricity effectiveness raised. Absolutely.

Speaker ?: Who wouldn't?

Dave Jones: And it's got a – you can't go wrong. It's got a money-back guarantee with two exclamation marks next door. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Ooh. And what happens with electrons in the Fostak Maximus? Well, according to East-East Russian quantum physicists – that's what it says in this PDF – the whole atom undergoes a corresponding change of information. The electron develops their own spin according to this type of information, spinning in a clockwise or anti-clockwise sense. Hmm. Oh, my God. I don't even get – This is great. This is like – I need this. I need this product. This sounds like this should be like one of those lorem ipsum kind of like generators. Like, you know, like those – for like filling out websites when they're like doing that kind of thing. Like, it sounds like someone used one of those to generate this thing. Like, trying to –

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Man, it's not even close, you know?

Dave Jones: And no technology like this is complete without mention in Tesla. So, Tesla gets a huge mention on the front page of the PDF info sheet. Oh, wow. You know. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's great. Hmm. Electrosmog drains the energy of his surroundings, including houses, apartments, and manufactured premises. Oh. Wilhelm really struck gold with this one, I got to say. We still don't know what it's supposed to be, though. Obviously, it's supposed to save you energy somehow, which would make you believe it's –

Dave Jones: And it's got an outstanding cost-benefit ratio, it says. Fantastic. And it protects natural resources.

Jeff Kaiser: I do like natural resources.

Dave Jones: Oh, and it reduces fuel costs and lowers the consumption of fuel. This is brilliant.

Chris Gammell: It does everything. Oh, here's the real key. Here's the real key. The right of return. So, if you look in the fine print, right? It says, in many cases, the Fostak Maximus requires a specific startup period, in some cases, up to several months, or until you forget about it. Last part added by me. Until the harmonization can have the optimum effect.

Jeff Kaiser: Oh, my God. Well, you can't just go changing your electrosmog overnight. I mean, these things take time. No, no. Everyone knows. It takes time. Come on. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Keep it.

Jeff Kaiser: Come on. Be realistic. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Awesome. This is a good one. This is a good one. Thank you, Wilhelm. This one's very good. I wonder how many of these they've sold. You'll never know. Shrouded in secrecy to protect the electrosmog reducers. Wow.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Jeff Kaiser: I mean, like, why do we all have jobs? Like, we should just go and make things like this, because it's clear that you can make money doing this. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: If you couldn't make money, no one would do it, right? Yeah. That's right. Wow. Oh, my God. Yeah. This whole thing is solid gold, I gotta say. Like the connectors you use to plug it in. All right.

Dave Jones: And it's like a big empty box with these, like, white rods in it. They look like huge resistors, basically. Yeah, they look like massive power wire-wound resistors in there. But, you know, I'm sure it takes zero energy from the mains as well, because that's always a big feature of these products, is that they don't take any energy, you know, to actually use them, because then that would be bad. You know, you don't want the customer to be charged to actually run the thing. Yep. Yep.

Jeff Kaiser: There's also, there's a good dose of conspiracy theory in here, too. They have a white paper on mobile phone radiation and electrosmog. And they basically say that there's been a lot of research into the negative effects of electrosmog, but objective research, and I'm quoting, objective research and the impartial reporting of its findings are pitted against well-known economic interests. You know, we should stop talking about this, because they're going to clip up our voices

Chris Gammell: and use it on their website as a product, yeah. Endorsement. Yeah, exactly. The Amp Hour says.

Dave Jones: Fostak Maximus. Yep. Maximus bullshit.

Jeff Kaiser: Oh, what ensues is energy chaos. Wow.

Dave Jones: I don't want to live in a world of energy chaos. That sounds horrible.

Jeff Kaiser: Sounds bad.

Dave Jones: I must get myself a Fostak Maximus. Fostak.

Jeff Kaiser: Fostak Maximus. Oh, man. Wow. It's the, their motto is the energy experience. Yep.

Chris Gammell: All right, guys, I'm calling. I'm calling. We're done.

Jeff Kaiser: Free advertising for them.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Jeff Kaiser: Forever.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. When they see all these links suddenly come from the Amp Hour website.

Chris Gammell: Hopefully they listen all the way through and we can tell them they're totally full of crap. Yeah. All right, Jeff. Well, thanks again for being on. Thank you very much. We always like it when you're on here.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. It was a lot of fun, as usual. It's great to be back on. Yeah. It sounded great. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks. We'll look forward to the Mighty Home podcast coming one of these days. Maybe I'll pitch a podcast idea to Fostec Maximus. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: You never need a Scots person. You never know what kind of concept they want. Yep. Have, like, Jeff's The Mighty Home Healing Hour. Right. Right. Oh, Mighty Home.

Dave Jones: He waves around a copy of The Art of Electronics. Mysterious way. He does hand gestures.

Chris Gammell: He'll kill me. All right, guys. You can reach Jeff at at Mighty Home on Twitter. You can reach me at Chris underscore Gamble or Dave at at EEVblog. Yeah, I don't have weird underscores. Nope. Nope.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, we'll talk to you guys next week. See ya. All right. Bye.

Jeff Kaiser: Are you guys happy that I didn't talk about Arduino? Do I get, do I get like a, do I get like a reward? If, if I hear the Ed McMahon one more time, I'm, I'm out. I'm through, through with you and you're diminishing the importance of your occasional guest host.

Speaker ?: Thank you.