Transcript from 464: Please Make This Monster Look Scary with Christopher White and Elecia White.

Welcome to Embedded. I am Elecia White, alongside Christopher White. It is just us this week, and we have many things to talk about.

CW (00:17):

And we have a new co-host I would like to introduce. Say "Hello," JoJo.

EW (00:23):

JoJo is our new little dog.

CW (00:27):

Who does not say much.

EW (00:28):

Who does not say much. This is not going to be a dogcast.

CW (00:30):

Yes.

EW (00:30):

Like the podcats. I promise.

(00:34):

You posted on LinkedIn that you were looking for a job. I have some questions about that.

CW (00:41):

A contract. I have a job. I am fully employed by Logical Elegance Incorporated. And in fact, I am an officer of said corporation. So I am not looking for a job. I am looking for clients of Logical Elegance. Who which- To which I might write code. At which- For which. Got it! Sandwich.

EW (01:02):

Do you want a job with CAN?

CW (01:06):

I would <laugh> accept a job with CAN.

EW (01:09):

Do you want a job with LAN?

CW (01:11):

I will not do a LAN.

EW (01:15):

What about ham?

CW (01:17):

Wait, what?

EW (01:19):

As in green eggs and ham. I was going for a whole poem here.

CW (01:23):

Oh, <laugh> sorry. I heard "han" and I thought that was something else I did not know.

EW (01:25):

It says in the show notes, "Chris is looking for a job, in poem form."

CW (01:29):

<laugh> I got that we were headed to Dr. Seuss. I just did not know what "han" was. I heard "han."

EW (01:33):

Ham.

CW (01:33):

I thought you were talking about a Fourier transform window.

(01:36):

I will not process anything sold, sell anything bought or processed, process anything bought or sold. Yeah, I think we are-

EW (01:51):

Okay.

CW (01:51):

Yes, I posted on LinkedIn. I have had many responses. Thank you to those responders.

EW (01:57):

And so you are probably not looking anymore?

CW (02:01):

I am in talks with several entities, but if more entities would like to talk, I can talk with them. Perhaps they would like to talk to you?

EW (02:12):

I am pretty booked until January.

CW (02:14):

Perhaps they would like to talk to JoJo.

EW (02:16):

JoJo would like any work that involves...

CW (02:19):

Hiding.

EW (02:20):

Hiding, yes.

CW (02:22):

Which to be fair, I share that.

EW (02:25):

I think JoJo would be a really good manager. As long as the answer is always, "Nothing."

CW (02:32):

"Do not move."

EW (02:32):

Yeah.

CW (02:32):

Yes. So I am on the contract train. I expect to be having way too much to do, in the near future.

EW (02:43):

And that is okay.

CW (02:44):

I guess. But yeah, it is probably time for me to start doing things.

EW (02:49):

The holidays are coming up, so people will not be as expecting quite as much.

CW (02:53):

I was going to intro this show, telling you that I was not ready for summer to end. And then you were going to tell me that fall is about to end, and that I am an entire season behind.

EW (03:05):

I think maybe you are approaching two.

CW (03:06):

<laugh>

EW (03:06):

Of course. I do not really understand, because as far as I can tell, Halloween was last week.

CW (03:13):

Sure feels like it.

EW (03:15):

Okay.

CW (03:15):

All right.

EW (03:15):

The other thing that needed to be talked about was the Nordic giveaway.

CW (03:20):

Right!

EW (03:22):

We gave away the Power Profiler Kit II.

CW (03:26):

Yes.

EW (03:26):

To me.

CW (03:29):

Wait, what?

EW (03:29):

Because I wanted it. And because I control the giveaways.

CW (03:34):

I am pretty sure there are laws against this sort of thing.

EW (03:37):

Ow. Actually, Raul won the contest. But the contest will be going on, and I am sure I can win next time.

CW (03:46):

Okay. <laugh> So the way the contest is going to go on, is we will have a new drawing every month, for five more months.

EW (03:53):

Right.

CW (03:53):

So including November. And everybody who did not win in the previous round, will roll over into the next round?

EW (04:04):

Yes. And the question is the same.

CW (04:05):

Okay.

EW (04:05):

"What features are you most interested in?" Although after the third month, I think we are switching to a different question.

CW (04:16):

Okay. So we will probably clean the slate-

EW (04:18):

Clean the slate after-

CW (04:19):

Two more tries.

EW (04:19):

So you have two more tries.

CW (04:19):

Okay.

EW (04:19):

And we will clean the slate, and ask a new question.

CW (04:23):

Which means you will have to re-enter.

EW (04:25):

Right.

CW (04:25):

Okay.

EW (04:25):

But until then, you do not have to re-enter.

CW (04:27):

We will let everybody know. And if you have not entered, you feel free to enter for this month and next month.

EW (04:32):

Right, show@embedded.fm is the best way to enter. Or hit the contact link on embedded.fm.

CW (04:39):

I am almost ready to say, "It is the only way to enter," but...

EW (04:42):

I mean the entries through Squarespace comments, or YouTube comments-

CW (04:48):

YouTube comments is pushing it.

EW (04:51):

Okay. But it is a little easier for us, if you just hit "email," and then I can put you all into a folder.

CW (04:56):

I am not-

EW (04:57):

And then I shout through the house, "Christopher, give me a number between one and however many people have entered."

CW (05:04):

I do not really check the YouTube comments all that often.

EW (05:06):

I do get emails, so it worked out this time, but email is so much easier.

CW (05:11):

Yes.

EW (05:12):

Okay.

CW (05:13):

Well, thank you for entering everyone who entered, and we will have more.

EW (05:17):

And there will be an ad later in the show, but we will do a separate ad.

CW (05:21):

Or, perhaps right now.

EW (05:26):

<music> The show is sponsored by Nordic Semiconductor this week. Nordic is a market leader in IoT connectivity, providing hardware, software, tools and services to create the IoT devices of the future. They specialize in ultra-low power wireless communication, with a wide technology portfolio such as Bluetooth Low Energy, Low Energy Audio, Bluetooth Mesh, Thread, Matter, cellular IoT and Wi-Fi.

(05:54):

They have thousands of customers worldwide, with more than a 40% market share in Bluetooth Low Energy. Nearly two million systems on a chip produced every day. I can see that getting into the Nordic developer platform can be a little intimidating, but Nordic has their Developer Academy, which is an online learning platform that equips developers to understand how to build their IoT products with the Nordic solutions.

(06:21):

They also have the DevZone, which brings together tech support and a community of customers to provide assistance, troubleshooting, and all kinds of information on technical topics. Visit nordicsemi.com for more information. Visit academy.nordicsemi.com and devzone.nordicsemi.com for more information about their learning platforms. <music>

(06:48):

Okay, so now, because people have given us money, we need to find ways to get rid of it.

CW (07:04):

<laugh> I question your upbringing. Okay. Sure. Not, we can afford to pay for JoJo. Sure. Ways to get rid of it. Ways to get rid of the money. Drop computer equipment on the ground.

EW (07:23):

No, I am sorry. Okay, so I saw that somebody made an incredibly...

CW (07:31):

Colorful.

EW (07:31):

Beautiful, colorful, adorable ruler out of PCB with red and green and white-

CW (07:41):

Silkscreen.

EW (07:41):

Light green and copper.

CW (07:45):

It is colored silkscreen, right? Is that how they do it? Or?

EW (07:47):

Well, I think they only had two colors of silk screen, and they used the board and the masking...

CW (07:53):

As the other colors.

EW (07:54):

As the other colors.

CW (07:55):

All right.

EW (07:57):

It was really nice. So I was thinking, well, maybe we should do one, because we also got a request to do a badge after the Supercon badges. Which is weird because we do not go anywhere, so why would we need anybody to have badges?

CW (08:13):

I do not think they are real badges anymore. I think once they are like a foot wide, with a TFT 15 inch display and stereo speakers, it ceases to be a badge. It is more of a plate armor.

EW (08:28):

And so between these two things, I have been contemplating trying to make an embedded.fm board.

CW (08:38):

An embedded.fm board.

EW (08:40):

I polled the Patreon listener Slack group, and the highest priority- Possibly I did influence this some with my description was that it be pretty. After that, the next criteria was that it be a radio, or that it be used for learning embedded, and those were tied as criteria.

CW (09:01):

A radio?

EW (09:04):

I looked up simple FM radio circuits, and that is pretty straightforward. That is like ten components. I looked up one of the STM32 disco boards, which is one I use in my classroom. And that was a lot of components, in part because there is the whole programming subsystem. I wondered about that as at least that would be useful. I do not want to really make something that is not useful.

CW (09:35):

A radio is not useful.

EW (09:36):

I know. That is the problem.

CW (09:38):

Yeah. We could make a board that has an FM radio chip on it, and you could use that as one of your things to program with. I do not know. Yeah. I do not know.

EW (09:50):

Making a disco board-

CW (09:51):

Just another dev board is kind of weird.

EW (09:53):

I mean, if I could use it for teaching and stuff, it might be nice. But the disco board I was looking at retails for 20 bucks, and there is no way we would be able to make it for less than 40, because we would not be making as many. And once I made it pretty, it would be bigger. It would just- Ramify? How do you use that as a verb? I am sure that it works here.

CW (10:16):

Uh, the things...

EW (10:17):

The complexities ramify throughout.

CW (10:19):

Sure. Yes.

EW (10:20):

Okay.

CW (10:22):

One decision ramifies into further downstream decisions. It is a very Neal Stephenson word. Yeah. Did you actually go out and price a BOM out? Or?

EW (10:35):

No, I used it. If it retails for 20, and the BOM in 10K Q probably is five then. Which means that in hundreds, it would probably be four to five times that.

CW (10:52):

We could mostly break even on it, if it was just for fun. But there is a lot of work involved. You are not just going to slap a board together.

EW (11:01):

Well, I am not going to be the one, to be able to put together this board. Even with schematics from the disco boards available, if I want to make it pretty, I am going to go talk to somebody who has done that a few times. I started to be excited about this, and then I started to think about another T-shirt design <laugh>.

CW (11:22):

What about something smaller?

EW (11:24):

Like a ruler?

CW (11:25):

I think the dev board idea is more useful, but it is also, "Why?"

EW (11:30):

Way more work, and why.

CW (11:34):

I think we should continue to think about it, but maybe think about something that is more show related. Maybe has some programmability, but is- Like something that could run CircuitPython. That would not be as challenging, I think, as just an STM32 with a bunch of stuff on it.

(11:54):

CircuitPython with some pretty lights, and some fun stuff, with a logo. Put the FM radio on it, and have it do something with it. I do not know. Let us put some more thought into it. Or have people, if they have suggestions of what they would like to see. Because it would be a fun little artifact from the show. People like that stuff.

EW (12:13):

Yeah, CircuitPython might be the way to go. Then we do not have the programming subsystem, but we do have USB. One of the things- I started talking to Carrie at Alpenglow. She pointed out that if you are making these, you are going to have to test them, and there are not going to be enough to make a testing jig. So we are going to be programming these ourselves, and now the amount of work starts to scale up.

CW (12:44):

I am certainly not programming a bare metal disco board with anything, or testing it. So if you want to do CircuitPython, that is pretty tractable.

EW (12:54):

Even that, you still have to- Anyway, it is a thought. A ruler is still an option. That would be very simple. It would still be pretty, but kind of useless. But then the Patreon folks did say that they would not mind another ruler.

CW (13:10):

The other option to take some of the work away from us, is to still do a pretty board, still have something that does something, but just ship it as a kit. So we would have to build one to make sure the kit works, maybe two, program it. But otherwise it is a soldering- Make sure we pick parts that are solderable and stuff. But make a soldering kit thing, educational. That would not work for probably your class stuff, because you do not want to make students actually build their own boards, but those could be separate.

EW (13:44):

That is an option.

CW (13:44):

That would be something that could be- You could take that later and say, "Okay, send this to an assembly house for class purposes." I do not know. That would take some of the labor out of it, and if it does not work, then we would have to interact with people and say, "Okay, well maybe you need a replacement, this, that, or the other thing."

EW (14:06):

But then there is also the idea of just doing another T-shirt design.

CW (14:08):

Yep.

EW (14:12):

Which I would not do through Teespring again, because they were not great.

CW (14:15):

Yeah, sorry.

EW (14:17):

So yeah, I do not want it to be like a Teensy, where we are in the board manufacturing...

CW (14:27):

Not unless for some weird reason we were suddenly super popular, and we could just outsource the whole thing, and live in The Bahamas as board mavens.

EW (14:40):

Of course, Sergio mentioned that it had been a while since they last got an embedded.fm sticker. Asked if those were still a thing, and should we use generative AI to design the next one?

(14:54):

Let me get that first question out of the way. They are still a thing. I meant to send some to Supercon for people to give out, and then I did not because I just slacked on it. I have a box of stickers and I should send them out. I guess send me your mailing address and I will make sticker Christmas cards. Maybe that is the way to go.

CW (15:24):

Holiday cards.

EW (15:24):

Holiday cards, winter cards, New Year's cards.

CW (15:28):

Solstice cards.

EW (15:29):

For the most part, I only have New Year's cards. Yeah.

CW (15:36):

The second part of your question, "Should we use generative AI for this?"

EW (15:39):

<laugh>

CW (15:39):

The answer to your question is "No."

EW (15:41):

I am go get a cup of coffee.

CW (15:43):

No, no, I am done.

EW (15:44):

Oh, okay.

CW (15:45):

The answer was "No."

EW (15:46):

Oh, just that?

CW (15:46):

Mm-hmm.

EW (15:46):

I like our current design, so I do not know if we need a new one.

CW (15:52):

Sure, yeah.

EW (15:53):

But if we did, the answer would still be "No"?

CW (15:58):

Yeah, the answer would be "No." Unless you want to convince me.

EW (16:05):

Osau asked, "How do you make an ethical choice of LLM/AI?" Not the ethics of using LLM?

CW (16:14):

Large language model.

EW (16:15):

Okay. Right. "Not the ethics of using one, but assuming you are going to use one, are there ethical choices or ethical pathways you should follow, in order to choose which one?"

CW (16:32):

Ahh. I am not an expert on this, but I do know some things. So primarily what you are asking about is how the- Well, there are two parts, but the first major part is what it has been trained on. I think that is the major ethical issue, just for general use that people might be concerned about, apart from some downstream things. And that is a bit of a challenge.

(17:00):

So the big ones have been trained on the wide internet. So I think from OpenAI, ChatGPT has been trained on whatever is publicly available on the internet, whether it is copywritten or not. So Reddit, publicly available images, stock images, news images, people's personal images, Twitter, whatever, all that stuff.

EW (17:20):

But also Google has a bazillion books.

CW (17:25):

Bazillion books, possibly-

EW (17:26):

Many of which are copyright.

CW (17:27):

Possibly artwork. DeviantArt is a big, big independent art site, and I think they have all trolled through there. So it is difficult. So the big ones, I think Bard is Google's. I think that they are similarly trained on whatever Google can see. ChatGPT is obviously trained on a lot.

(17:50):

There are some smaller ones, and I do not have them off the top of my head, that are supposed to be ethically trained. Where they have either found things that are obviously public domain to train on, or gotten people's permission for large sets. I think Adobe has been trying to do that. So I think the stuff that is built into Photoshop- I think Firefly is what it is called? Do not quote me on that. I think that has been trained on things that are licensable, so that there are fewer copyright issues.

(18:28):

I know there are a couple of smaller open source ChatGPT things, large language models, that are claiming to be trained on things that are permissible. You are just going to have to look, and see what details you have about the particular model that you are looking at using.

(18:48):

It is different between ChatGPT and say the image models, although those are starting to cross pollinate. So ChatGPT and DALL-E are now kind of merged, so you can do image stuff back and forth with text stuff and have conversations. So that is doubly confusing as to what to do there.

(19:06):

It is not really a great scene. I think as time goes on, more things that will be clear about their training will emerge, and it will be easier to make a choice that you can feel better about, on the upstream side, on the training side.

(19:23):

On the downstream side, there are still the issues about what are you displacing? Are you really solving a problem, or are you playing with a fun toy? There was something else about- Yeah. There are a lot of difficult kind of things that go into the choices right now.

(19:46):

I use some of this stuff. I have been using- OpenAI has a model called Whisper, which is for transcription, which I have been experimenting with it for the podcast. It is not quite there yet. Mostly because it does not recognize different speakers, so it just gives you this wall of text of everybody speaking. And there are some apps that you can drop in all the separate audio files and it will transcribe them separately, but it is not quite working right yet. That is very useful.

EW (20:17):

But that is separate than the transcripts we pay for, and are available. Those are all clean and speakers are identified.

CW (20:27):

Yeah. What do you think about this question?

EW (20:30):

Well, it is kind of fun because you get pretty irritated anytime anybody brings this up. So there is some-

CW (20:40):

No, I can talk reasonably about it. I get irritated when people do not think about the usage, and are just evangelists for it.

EW (20:53):

I wanted to write a joke with it. I think I wanted to suggest that your post to LinkedIn be in Seuss form. Or be in the form of a dating profile where you were looking for a device to date. Not date, to work on.

CW (21:14):

Uh huh.

EW (21:18):

These were jokes that I just wanted to think about, I did not want to fully finish. But you have kind of convinced me that letting it write my jokes is probably not that good for me, or for the world. And part of that is because I saw from 3Brown1Blue or 3Blue1Brown? I never remember which way that goes, but the YouTube people with the math. That drilling is really important.

(21:50):

That mathematicians and scientists and physicists through history, the people we really look up to, Newton and folks, drilled throughout their lives. They did problems. They did problems they knew the answer to and they practiced. And that practice ends up building your intuition.

(22:19):

When we think about solving problems with analytics and intuition, you do not get that without all the drills. Or if you do, you are super lucky. But I need to see a problem a few times before I can really ace it off the bat. And I have to admit, looking at students in class, I feel like I am constantly being quizzed on things.

CW (22:48):

Oh yeah.

EW (22:50):

But I think that makes me better, because I am constantly being drilled on embedded topics. Like, "Why would you do this versus that?" and "Why do the bit masks work this way?" and "SPI versus I2C?" I am never going to get those two confused. I know some people will, but I will always know when to use those.

CW (23:10):

Yeah. I2C is the crappy one.

EW (23:13):

That is not true. But go ahead. They have their purposes.

CW (23:19):

No, it is fine. I just never get it right the first time. Whereas with SPI, I almost always get it right, the second time at least.

EW (23:28):

So between thinking about drills for math and physics problems, and thinking about having an LLM help me to write my jokes, I wonder if I do fall into the habit of letting it do that, if I get out of practice myself.

CW (23:51):

I think that is certainly something I have not necessarily-

EW (23:57):

It is something that I enjoy, except when I just half-ass it, like I did with, "You should do that in a Seuss poem."

CW (24:07):

That is something that is getting on the edges of something that bothers me about the LLMs. And probably would bother me about any AI that purports to converse and think. Not think, but that we can have conversations with, that we can treat as a sidekick, and has knowledge enough to do many, many tasks.

(24:28):

One of the things is what you are saying, like getting out of practice of mundane stuff. Now plenty of technology gets rid of mundane stuff for us.

EW (24:40):

Calculators.

CW (24:40):

Right. I am not going to argue that necessarily everyone needs to be super fast at arithmetic, in a world with calculators. That is definitely a benefit.

EW (24:50):

But it sure helps for estimation.

CW (24:53):

But I wonder about communication and writing.

EW (24:55):

See, that is the thing, is I was helping somebody write a thank you letter. I am like, "Okay, ChatGPT is the way I would go with this." But maybe that is because that is not a natural skill that I am good at. Polite talk.

CW (25:12):

Yeah. One of the things I said on Mastodon a couple of days ago, that I have been thinking about- It was triggered by somebody who was doing some writing. They threw their writing at ChatGPT, to have it proofread and check on some things and stuff.

(25:27):

I will just say what I wrote. "I have trouble articulating a lot of my qualms about large language models and where they are headed. But one of them is that it is going to be so easy to just grab one, and have it work with you on writing or brainstorming or getting a second opinion on something, rather than reaching out to someone and having a chat."

(25:45):

"Especially for people whom the latter, reaching out to someone, takes a bit of activation energy, introverted people. Some people will probably say that is good, that you have this thing to bounce ideas off of or to check you at a moment's notice-"

EW (26:03):

You are not wasting anybody else's time.

CW (26:06):

Okay, so first of all, I am interested in why you think that would be a waste of somebody's time. If somebody asked me to proofread something, I would say "Yes," pretty much immediately, would you not?

EW (26:21):

Sweet. I have many things for you.

CW (26:23):

Do you understand what I am saying though?

EW (26:25):

I do, but...

CW (26:27):

I mean, writing is a human process. Communication is a human process. I feel like if we are- I just worry about things. I worry that reducing opportunities for human interaction and improvement of communication, and replacing most of that with communicating with something that is the average of the internet, is not a net benefit, because everything will be dulled down.

(27:00):

It is like if you had Clippy, right? And Clippy was real good, and you let it just- People would react negatively to that, because Clippy was bad. But how much would you let Microsoft Word write for you-

EW (27:15):

A lot.

CW (27:15):

If you knew it was Microsoft Word? Really?

EW (27:20):

For cover letters-

CW (27:20):

No, no, no!

EW (27:20):

Or things that I do not care about.

CW (27:24):

Fine! I am not the writing police, but certainly boilerplate legal kind of documents are fine, whatever.

EW (27:32):

My book? No.

CW (27:32):

But those have been templatized forever, right? You could have gone before ChatGPT existed to Nolo Press or wherever, and found, "Give me a template for a business letter complaining about this." That is fine. But for a piece of professional writing or a piece of fiction or your book? You do not think your book would be worsened by running it through this thing?

EW (28:00):

Yes, it would be. Because from the sidebar on how we still use modems, to the detailed factual information that has been checked by experts, no, you are not going to get that from an LLM.

CW (28:17):

To take what you were saying. Now people are out of practice of proofreading, which means they are going to be worse writers. Because one of the ways to learn to write is to read other people's writing, and find out what is wrong with it, because it is hard to do that for your own work.

(28:38):

People outsourcing other stuff are going to get out of practice of the mundane writing. But the mundane writing is what keeps you sharp. There are a lot of emails we write and stuff. I am getting emails I am sure are written by ChatGPT now, because they just have that kind of fragrance.

EW (28:54):

But those are spam and junk emails.

CW (28:57):

Some of them, but some of them I think are on LinkedIn. LinkedIn now I just saw while I was there, has a button you can press to do all of your outreach stuff using an LLM. It will write all your-

EW (29:07):

Yes, but those totally feel like this person has not bothered to read my profile.

CW (29:12):

For now. Anyway, I do not want to go on too long about this, because I get off track and the people know how I feel. Having said all this, a few people seem to think I am anti AI. First of all, I hate the term "AI," because I think it is completely-

EW (29:30):

Nobody knows what it means.

CW (29:31):

Whitewashing all of this. I prefer the term "ML," because that covers a lot more things that are not necessarily neural networks. It covers types of neural networks that do very useful things in limited scoped ways. Anyway, I do not hate AI and ML.

(29:50):

I in fact have one and possibly two clients, where I am working on ML stuff. I am familiar with it. I know how it works. My opinions are probably verging on philosophical at this point, and not technical.

EW (30:05):

Okay. I have some lightning round questions. Are you ready?

CW (30:08):

That is a little late in the show for that, but okay.

EW (30:10):

Simon, "Finish one gig, or start a dozen?"

CW (30:14):

That is just right <laugh>. I am starting a dozen.

EW (30:18):

<laugh> I currently have four open tasks. Between teaching class, finishing the book, and two clients. I have a lot.

CW (30:30):

I am going from zero or maybe 0.25 clients, to possibly three.

EW (30:36):

Svec would like to know, "Pancakes or waffles?"

CW (30:39):

Ooh, well wait, wait, which kind of waffles?

EW (30:44):

I believe you can choose your own.

CW (30:46):

All right, I am going to admit something here. I eat a lot of toaster waffles.

EW (30:50):

Mm-hmm.

CW (30:50):

It does not necessarily mean I like them better than pancakes, but they are easier to make. The problem with pancakes- I am getting an intense sense of deja vu. Did we not have a very long discussion about waffles and pancakes on this very show, at some point in the last five years?

EW (31:07):

I do not know.

CW (31:08):

Somebody find that out. The problem with pancakes, is they are delicious for three bites. And then suddenly, for me at least, it feels like I have eaten that spray foam that you use to seal your house with. It comes out real small, but then it expands to 18 times its size. So I have trouble with pancakes, from a mass to enjoyment ratio standpoint.

EW (31:32):

And your toaster waffles do not expand at all, because they have negative calories.

CW (31:37):

Oh, they have got calories.

EW (31:39):

They do not have very many calories.

CW (31:44):

Okay, Belgian waffle. Final answer.

EW (31:50):

I would say pancakes, whether you are talking about the food, or the style of holding hands.

CW (31:56):

The what?

EW (31:57):

Moving on.

CW (31:58):

Excuse me? The style of holding hands?

EW (32:02):

Yes. If you hold hands with somebody, and you hold hands and your palms are together and your fingers touch your fingers, that is pancake style. If you do waffles, you interlace them, and that is waffle style of holding hands.

CW (32:19):

<laugh> I have never in my life heard this. <laugh>

EW (32:22):

Waffle style is okay, unless your partner's hands are much bigger than yours, in which case waffle styles can be uncomfortable. But pancake is worse if you are sweaty handed.

CW (32:33):

I am learning so much from this podcast.

EW (32:34):

<laugh>

CW (32:34):

I really think we are really helping people.

EW (32:41):

Okay, one more silly one, and then we will actually do some embedded stuff. Butter. Salted or not?

CW (32:47):

For just eating, salted. What are you? A lunatic?

EW (32:51):

Straight out of the carton?

CW (32:54):

For baking, unsalted. Did we not- I saw Paul Hollywood just answer this question. For unsalted, if you are baking, you can control the amount of salt in the recipe if you use unsalted. Otherwise you do not know how much salt you are adding.

EW (33:10):

Okay. As the person who bakes. We always use salted, because it lasts so much longer.

CW (33:14):

Well, there is that too.

EW (33:16):

And then you just taste, to figure out how much salt you need to add. But I know that that is not the correct way of baking, but it is so much easier.

CW (33:25):

Yeah. Well, I am not going to taste raw cake batter.

EW (33:28):

I know. And it is much to your detriment.

CW (33:30):

No, it is not.

EW (33:31):

Okay. I promised- If you could only use one microcontroller for the rest of your life, Pedro would like to know which one and why?

CW (33:44):

The basic stamp.

EW (33:47):

That is not true.

CW (33:48):

I know, I just thought I would be contrary. One microcontroller for the rest of my life? How long am I going to live?

EW (33:56):

<laugh>

CW (33:56):

Let us just get the parameters defined here.

EW (34:01):

Let us say, at least another ten years.

CW (34:02):

Oh, all right. Nobody ever got fired for using an STM32F4 something.

EW (34:15):

Yeah, I have an STM32F4 and an L4. I know those are kind of different, but they are not that different.

CW (34:24):

I mean, you can do an awful lot with one of those. The ecosystem is there and it is not going to go away. It is well documented and everybody has used it. That is the boring mainstream pick.

EW (34:38):

I have seen some M55s and some M85s coming out, but I am not very familiar with the specs on those, other than they go faster.

CW (34:48):

Um. Now I am thinking- Oh, I do not know. The problem is I do not have any particular- Everybody wants me to use something different, when I show up at a client, so I do not really form attachments. I know the ones that I enjoy using. Right?

EW (35:05):

Yeah, I know. Having said that, I am like, but you have the Nordic Thingy:52 on your desk, and you are playing with it and having a good time, and you do not even remember what chip is inside there half the time. And then...

CW (35:19):

Okay, so yeah, I am going to switch it around. I am going to say the easiest thing to use for a wide variety of applications. That is probably not an STM, because you have to have a lot of ancillary stuff with a lot of those. So something Nordic, that has got Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and...

EW (35:37):

It would depend on what I wanted to work on.

CW (35:40):

But that is the thing, if I have choose- Okay, if I have to choose one microcontroller to use the rest of my life, something has gone wrong. Therefore I do not think I want to work on embedded systems anymore. I am probably digging a moat.

EW (35:53):

Okay. Yes. Yeah, I do not know that I would use- I think about projects I would do. I would not use either one of those to do a big robotics project. I would actually use something Linux based. If I had to do a small robotics project with lots of motor control, I would go to the TI Piccolo line. If I had to do Bluetooth, I would use Nordic, unless somebody really made me use TI. Not that TI is bad. Just Nordic is a lot easier. And that includes Bluetooth, Thread, Matter...

CW (36:38):

Well, and you do not have to do-

EW (36:40):

Zigbee, whatevers.

CW (36:42):

Their dev tools are just nice. Okay. Split the difference. A bag of 8051s. Final answer.

EW (36:52):

Thank you. I am sure that is your final answer. Is there a contract or job that you did not take that you wish you had, and why?

CW (37:01):

Ooh, gosh!

EW (37:02):

I kind of wish I had gotten hired by Fitbit, when there were only a couple of engineers there. Before Heiko was the manager. Not that that would have been bad, just that I could have been hired then, when there were only a couple of engineers, and then I would have gotten lots of stock options.

CW (37:21):

<laugh> Oh, I see. I do not think there are any jobs I gave up, that were financial screw ups. There are definitely jobs I took, that were financial screw ups <laugh>. Let me think. There were not too many jobs that I did not end up taking contracts. No. Every contract I have turned down has been the correct thing to do, in hindsight.

EW (37:51):

They usually go off and you never hear from them again.

CW (37:55):

Right, but sometimes I check back, or hear things from people who- Sometimes it was in not a formal group of people, but I knew people who also were contracting at those places and heard later about things that happened. No, I have been pretty lucky or good about choosing. So there are no ones that got away, I do not think.

EW (38:20):

No. Yeah, I agree.

CW (38:23):

Certainly have been things that might have been lucrative, that people had expressed interest but never got to the point of me interviewing or anything, because I just did not want to do it. There are a lot that I nipped in the bud, before it even got to the stage of interviews or anything.

EW (38:39):

Because there are a lot of things you do not want to work on.

CW (38:41):

Exactly.

EW (38:41):

Just because you have the luxury of not having to work on them.

CW (38:45):

Yep.

EW (38:46):

Okay. Let us see. The next question was from AmBadAtEmbedded, who asked, "The favorite jack of all trades micro?" Or "A favorite specific task micro?" I feel like we have kind of covered that.

CW (39:00):

Yeah.

EW (39:03):

There is a follow-up question from the same person, "Is the Arduino Uno now obsolete?"

CW (39:08):

Oh my God! <laugh>

EW (39:10):

It was obsolete when it came out.

CW (39:11):

It depends on your definition of "obsolete." If you have got one, it can do things. There is plenty you can do still.

EW (39:20):

But even when it came out, it was quite expensive for what it could do.

CW (39:24):

Yeah, that is the thing.

(39:25):

It is a really old processor <laugh>.

(39:27):

I would not- There is a lot you can get for the same or less price now, that can do a lot more. Do they still sell them?

EW (39:36):

Oh yeah, they still sell them.

CW (39:36):

Oh, okay.

EW (39:36):

But on the other hand, they are the easiest, lowest common denominator. Almost everyone can get a compiler to run on their system.

CW (39:48):

That is the thing about this stuff. That is why I am saying it is hard to define obsolete. Computers get obsolete because of the software stops being supported. So a laptop from 2005 may not even be able to surf the web anymore, because it cannot handle- You cannot upgrade it to an operating system that can even do HTTPS or something. Right?

(40:10):

That is not the case with embedded stuff. That is why 8051s are still being used in modern things, or derivatives of 8051s on FPGAs or things. I do not think it is obsolete, as long as it does what you want it to. But again, I would not- There are other things I would pay more for, unless you had a really good reason to pay. There are other things I would, for equivalent price, would buy instead of an Uno for hobbyist stuff, before I would reach for an Uno.

EW (40:45):

CircuitPython would be much higher on my list these days.

CW (40:47):

Yeah. CircuitPython or- That does not even dictate what board it is, right. You could have a Raspberry Pi 2040 or Teensy-

EW (40:57):

Adafruit has a CircuitPython little itty bitty chip on a ruler, that cracks me up. I have one on my desk.

CW (41:07):

But if it works, then you have got them.

EW (41:09):

So talking about historical, I went and somebody linked to the Byte Magazine back issues.

CW (41:20):

Oh, neat.

EW (41:22):

I looked at the first one from 1975 and went through a couple of them, kind of thinking it would be fun to do a live- It is not tweet. Live Mastodoning? That does not sound right, no.

CW (41:36):

Live tooting? Live tooting sounds worse.

EW (41:38):

Live tooting sounds even worse. But reading those and commenting. Trying to read a magazine a day or a week and commenting.

CW (41:47):

Be fun!

EW (41:47):

It was kind of amusing. I did it a little bit for the Patreon Slack group. Just making fun of the idea of needing to repurpose keyboards, because they were not standard yet, and so you would have to change them around. But then there were other articles that were like, "How to Write your own Assembly," with the idea of how to understand assembly as you write it. Like, what is the piece? That article could be published today, and would be just as useful.

CW (42:24):

That is because embedded is...

EW (42:26):

<laugh> Stuck in 1975?

CW (42:27):

Still somewhat backwards.

EW (42:28):

But now we have new keyboards, so it is okay.

CW (42:31):

Yeah, you do not even have a big clacky one.

EW (42:34):

No.

CW (42:34):

That is what all the coffee achiever people type on. So you can hear them from ten miles away, mechanical keyboard people. You are fine. Sorry, I am not really mad at you.

EW (42:48):

<laugh> It is just that he had to share an office with me for so long, that he knows that if anything makes noise, it is my opportunity to turn around and glare at it.

CW (42:56):

Yeah, I had to type on a pillow <laugh>.

EW (42:59):

<laugh> That is not true.

CW (42:59):

The little letters that I Sharpied on.

EW (43:01):

<laugh>

CW (43:01):

Keyboard was inside there. It mostly lined up.

EW (43:10):

<laugh> Okay. So let us see what else we have next. "I recall an episode where you talked about installing an antenna to talk to your dad. How is that going?"

CW (43:20):

You know what? It is going. We always knew it was going to take us a while, because we both had to learn Morse code. And we both had to get radio stuff and learn how they work.

(43:30):

So, I have gotten Morse code to the point where I am bad at it, at about ten words per minute. Which is better than when I started, which was I was not able to do anything. So I can send okay. Receiving is still challenging, so I am working on that. I think my dad has gotten somewhat more proficient than me.

(43:54):

He has a radio and he has been testing it. He has set up his antenna. He is receiving stuff. I have a radio kit. He has the same radio I do, but he got it assembled, I got the kit. I started it this week, and I have wound a grand total of one toroid.

EW (44:16):

How many do you have to wind?

CW (44:17):

I think there are three or four, but this is a hard one, because it has got multiple winds. It has got 38 winds with two ends, and then five, and then five, and then five. And it is teensy. It is the size of a dime. So it is kind of fiddly with the magnifying.

EW (44:35):

I am just nodding.

CW (44:36):

Anyway. What? You know what "teensy" means. It is-

EW (44:38):

No, it is not the teensy part that I am nodding. It is the winding and the fives and the 38.

CW (44:43):

Five winds. It is just winding. You count them.

EW (44:47):

That is a lot of wine. Where is the cheese?

CW (44:49):

Anyway, that is going to take me at least a week or two to finish. Then yeah, I am going to set it up and see if I can hear anything. We will proceed from there. I do not know.

EW (45:01):

You have the wire for the antenna, but we have not set it up yet.

CW (45:05):

No. Yeah, I have the antenna. I am going to probably put it in the front yard.

EW (45:10):

Oh, I thought- Oh good. That is better than my idea of getting a crossbow and firing it into one of the taller trees.

CW (45:20):

You know my track record with projectile weapons.

EW (45:23):

I was going to get to fire the crossbow.

CW (45:25):

Projectile weapons and technology and trees. The last time I used a projectile weapon in the hopes of doing something technology related, I ended up in the ER. Yeah, the front yard, because he is east.

EW (45:42):

Okay.

CW (45:43):

So I need to have it- If I put it back here the house, I would have to get it pretty high up to clear the house. So if I do it in the front yard, I do not have to clear the house. So it will be oriented this way.

EW (45:54):

Ahh.

CW (45:56):

So it radiates.

EW (45:57):

We should put it along the path where the squirrels are. Maybe we can talk to them.

CW (46:01):

Yes, I am certainly. They know Morse code too.

EW (46:05):

We can build a squirrel army.

CW (46:07):

So yeah, the project is going. I am hoping in the next month or two to try it out. The nice thing about trying to talk to someone that you have an out of bound communication with, is we can pick a frequency, well texting to each other or even on the phone and say, "Okay, did you hear my CQ?" <laugh> So we will know if it is working. We are not going to just randomly try at random times, and see if anybody is listening.

(46:35):

Yeah, the hard part about Morse that I have talked about before, is I thought I got to the point where I could understand the letters, but once real words were coming past, it was harder to copy what was being said. The patterns of letters, when it is random, they tend not to have a lot of the quick letters together, as often as real words with-

EW (47:03):

Because E-I-E-I-O sounds a lot like...

CW (47:06):

Just very fast.

EW (47:07):

STQ.

CW (47:07):

Right. No, no Q.

EW (47:10):

CW (47:10):

Yeah, exactly. And common in English, common English words have the common letters frequently, right. And the common frequent letters are very short in Morse code for obvious reasons. But if you are not trained to hear them <click, click> go by real quick, you get lost. So there is that problem.

(47:30):

Then there are all these- Oop. I almost said something that would get ham radio people mad at me. But I cannot hear them because I do not have a radio.

EW (47:38):

Salacious. All of these salacious.

CW (47:39):

<laugh> I cannot hear them because I do not have a radio.

EW (47:40):

<laugh>

CW (47:40):

There are all these abbreviations for stuff.

EW (47:45):

Like CQ?

CW (47:46):

Well, there is that. There are the standard of ham abbreviations of the Q-codes and stuff.

EW (47:49):

And CW.

CW (47:51):

There are a few of those, and most of them are fine. But there are all these-

EW (47:56):

QC? Never mind. Go on. I do not know any them.

CW (47:58):

<laugh>

EW (47:58):

I am just randomly now putting letters together.

CW (48:03):

There is a mode in the app I am using to learn, which is called "QSO bot." It is a little- It is not a chat bot, but it is a bot where you Morse code at it and it Morse codes back at you, in a simulation of a normal code conversation.

(48:18):

I got one back from it, and it is just all random letters, and this is supposed to be English! In the app is a little glossary, it turns out, of common Morse code abbreviations of just normal words. They are not specific ham stuff.

EW (48:36):

Oh.

CW (48:36):

So it was like R for some word. FR for "from." So all these common words are just shrunk to- And I do not know any of them! So I am sitting here copying this, going "What is this thing saying to me?" <laugh> And it is like, "Oh, how is the weather out there?" And it was like "H WX RR."

(49:01):

I do not think we have to use that with my dad, but if I am going to talk to anybody else, I do not really know how to prepare for that. It is hard enough to learn Morse. I do not want to learn somebody's-

EW (49:15):

Language.

CW (49:15):

Stenography. Yeah. I do not know how often that stuff is actually used. Probably pretty commonly, because Morse is extremely slow. So obviously abbreviating things makes sense, but I do not know any of those. I may just have to print out a thing, big poster.

EW (49:31):

Cheat sheet.

CW (49:31):

Yeah. But thank you for asking. It is continuing. Slowly. As most of my projects do.

EW (49:42):

Let us see. I should mention the book, because I told O'Reilly that I had a podcast with listeners who might be interested in the book. It should be out in March. I have finished the first draft, so you do not hear me whining about how hard it is to write about motors anymore.

(50:03):

Now I can whine about my tech reviewers, which I will not do, because they have all been super nice and very helpful and have found things. And have often said, "Maybe you should show them work here. Instead of just jumping from, 'Here is what it is, here is the equation, here is the answer.' Actually show it out." So thank you to the tech reviewers.

(50:25):

When the book comes out, we will be having some giveaways. There will be some discounts for patrons or newsletter subscribers or people who ask for them. I do not know. But that is all in the March timeframe.

(50:43):

It is still on early release on the O'Reilly Learning System. I can get a 30 day subscription for that, for anybody who wants it. But again, it would be better if you are actually interested in my book, instead of just the O'Reilly Learning System, you might want to wait until March, when it goes from having diagrams that I have scribbled out to professional diagrams.

CW (51:10):

No, that scribble is a cool part.

EW (51:13):

There is the one that says, "Please make this monster look scary <laugh>."

CW (51:16):

<laugh>

EW (51:16):

And the monster I drew is just not scary. It is not even attempting to be scary. So yeah, that is closer to done. The tech review stage is hard, because I know that these people are helping me and they are really nice people.

(51:37):

They are going above and beyond, and yet there is still always the temptation to argue. Like, "I totally disagree with you, because I wrote it that way for a reason." That is not really true. I just wrote it that way, because I did not think of what they were saying.

(51:54):

It is like all ego in code reviews. You have to get around it and realize that it does not- They are not attacking me. They are trying to help me make it better, and they are succeeding. When I let them.

(52:12):

Classpert is doing their asynchronous cohort. Which has turned out to be kind of weird and not much less work than a regular cohort <laugh>. So that part was not successful. I do not know what is going to happen there. I do not know if we are going to do another one.

CW (52:35):

Stay tuned, I guess.

EW (52:36):

Stay tuned, I guess. But do not hold your breath.

(52:38):

For the book, I am starting to look for conferences to present at. Of course, not very many in person. Or mostly local to the Bay Area, if it is in person. Being paid is really nice and keynote positions are really spiffy and all that. But I am working on a couple of pretty cool topics.

CW (53:05):

Should go on some podcasts?

EW (53:07):

I should actually. Actually!

CW (53:10):

I hear people like podcasts.

EW (53:11):

Did you do that on purpose?

CW (53:14):

Of course I did.

EW (53:15):

Do you know what podcast I am on?

CW (53:17):

Yeah, the Building something. The Builders? Builders' Quadrangle.

EW (53:22):

"The Builder Circle by Pratik."

CW (53:22):

I was close.

EW (53:25):

With Sera. I was on. It is a podcast devoted to people with startups, and how to make their startups work. She is a mechanical engineer, and she has talked to a lot of electrical engineers. But she did not have a lot of firmware experience, or really understand the whole process.

(53:46):

So it is like I talked for an hour, hour and a half solid, very quickly in order to download everything. So yes, if you would like to hear more of me talking about embedded systems, which nominally is what this show is supposed to be about-

CW (54:04):

Oh, we did not talk about any of it today.

EW (54:07):

Please check out some other show. Please check out "The Builder Circle."

CW (54:09):

And?

EW (54:09):

There will be a link in the show notes, of course.

CW (54:13):

Okay, cool. Yeah.

EW (54:15):

The episode does not come out until the 28th.

CW (54:17):

Yeah, I think that is right.

EW (54:18):

Yeah.

CW (54:18):

What else is going on? There is other stuff. There must be other stuff.

EW (54:27):

Does there have to be other stuff?

CW (54:29):

Yeah, there should be other stuff. Because then if there is not other stuff, I have to go do some work.

EW (54:35):

Oh, I see.

CW (54:36):

Or exercise.

EW (54:38):

Actually, given the time, we both need to exercise.

CW (54:40):

Okay. Well.

EW (54:43):

And since we got a dog who is actually a lump of coal, we cannot take her for a walk. Because she is too afraid. Instead, we will have to exercise boring ways.

CW (54:55):

I am taking a picture of the dog in the podcast down here.

EW (54:59):

I see.

CW (55:00):

All right. Well. Sorry to everyone.

EW (55:04):

Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting.

CW (55:08):

What did you call me?

EW (55:09):

Thank you to Christopher?

CW (55:11):

Oh, okay. I heard "Chrisser."

EW (55:13):

Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to Nordic for their sponsorship. Thank you to our Patreon listener Slack group for their support, and for their questions. You can enter the contest or talk to us at show@embedded.fm, or hit the contact link on embedded.fm. You can do a comment, but we do not respond as quickly.

CW (55:40):

We might miss them.

EW (55:41):

We might miss them.

CW (55:42):

Especially on YouTube.

EW (55:43):

If you need pictures of our dog, let us know. If you would like to imagine what a picture is, all you have to do is go outside, look at the sun for about one second with just one eye. Then wherever you look after that, you will see our dog. It is kind of like a void in space.

CW (56:04):

EW (56:07):

[Winnie the Pooh excerpt]