Speaker 1: What if you had a short cut, like a way
Speaker 1: to really get how the devices we use every day
Speaker 1: actually come into being. You know, how they're made, how
Speaker 1: they break, and even how the designs themselves shape our world.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what we're digging into today. Welcome everyone, We're
Speaker 2: doing a deep dive into the world and the really
Speaker 2: sharp insights of Andrew Bunny Huang. He's a well, a
Speaker 2: truly renowned hardware hacker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for this deep dive, we're pulling from excerpts
Speaker 1: from his fantastic book The Hardware Hacker Adventures in Making
Speaker 1: and Breaking Hardware. You look at the reviews and man,
Speaker 1: you instantly see why it's considered essential. Joy Itedo from
Speaker 1: MIT Media Lab. He calls it a hacker's point of
Speaker 1: view bible, and he really highlights Bunny's, you know, practical
Speaker 1: hands on experience and his knack for explaining the whole
Speaker 1: hardware ecosystem.
Speaker 2: And Lamar Freed Ladiata from ad of Fruit. She says
Speaker 2: Bunny is the ultimate tour guide of hardware hacking. She
Speaker 2: points out how the book takes you right into the factories,
Speaker 2: covering the tech side, sure, but also the bigger implications
Speaker 2: of all this stuff we make him buy.
Speaker 1: Right. Then there's Mitch Altman, the TV begun inventor. He
Speaker 1: just calls it entertaining and informative on China's manufacturing. So
Speaker 1: our mission here is pretty clear. We're going to unpack
Speaker 1: Bunny's unique view from navigating these super complex supply chains
Speaker 1: in China to thinking about ip ethics and even getting
Speaker 1: into hacking biology.
Speaker 2: It sounds wild, but it connects. Get ready for some
Speaker 2: really surprising facts, those aha moments that will definitely change
Speaker 2: how you see the world as stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's jump right in. Where better to start
Speaker 1: than manufacturing Bunny's adventures in China, especially that hardware ecosystem.
Speaker 1: The scale and speed just jump out, don't they.
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, it's kind of mind bending. Bunny talks about
Speaker 2: his first trip to Shenzhen's SAG electronics market. This was
Speaker 2: back in two thousand and seven. Yeah, he thought, you know,
Speaker 2: Akihaba and Tokyo is the peak, the absolute center of
Speaker 2: the electronics.
Speaker 1: World, right, the classic spot exactly, But.
Speaker 2: Then he hits seg and describes it as an orgy
Speaker 2: of consumer and industrial electronic purchasing, just way beyond anything
Speaker 2: he'd imagined. Colossal is the.
Speaker 1: Word, and the scale wasn't just the market, right, the
Speaker 1: whole city.
Speaker 2: The whole city shen Zen in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: nine million people. Places like Fox Cohn, you know where
Speaker 2: so much of our tech gets made. It had its
Speaker 2: own freeway exit over two hundred and fifty thousand employees.
Speaker 2: Just think about that number for a second.
Speaker 1: It's hard to even picture. And that's saying the one
Speaker 1: about food minisi wage.
Speaker 2: Shit, yeah, people consider food divine. Bunny saw this truckload
Speaker 2: of pigs heading straight for Fox Cohn off the highway. Wow,
Speaker 2: it really paints a picture, doesn't it, Not just of
Speaker 2: the sheer number of people, but the whole infrastructure built
Speaker 2: around supporting them. It's more than just assembly.
Speaker 1: Lines, absolutely, and that human element. It wasn't just about numbers.
Speaker 1: It was crucial for quality, even in high volume stuff.
Speaker 1: That story about the late night debugging, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: The Chumby factory June two thousand and seven. He's there
Speaker 2: at three am trying to figure out this problem, and
Speaker 2: the factory manages the text. They're right there with him.
Speaker 1: All night, providing gear too, right.
Speaker 2: Everything, soldering irons, X ray machines, microscopes, No complaints, just
Speaker 2: focused on fixing it.
Speaker 1: And the kicker is it wasn't even their fault.
Speaker 2: Exactly took out to be a firmware bug from the
Speaker 2: US side. And their reaction not anger, just relief.
Speaker 1: That says so much about their dedication.
Speaker 2: It really does. It ties into what Bunny calls the
Speaker 2: craft's people element. Like there was this one guy, a
Speaker 2: connector guy, yeah, hand placing connectors on every single Chumby
Speaker 2: for maybe five cents a unit, but it saved like
Speaker 2: two dollars per Chumby overall.
Speaker 1: Incredible human skill beating automation.
Speaker 2: On cost sometimes Yeah. And then there was Master Chow.
Speaker 2: This guy was a master pattern maker. He worked on
Speaker 2: cosmetic bags, for brawn cases for Microsoft, even medical braces.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Bunny points out before sophisticated machines, craft was literally the
Speaker 2: only way you got quality. It makes you appreciate the
Speaker 2: skills still involved.
Speaker 1: But there's that weird mix too, right, the automation paradox.
Speaker 2: Oh, definitely like chip on board Kobe technology. It saves
Speaker 2: costs by bonding the silicon dye right to the board
Speaker 2: used in fancy electronics and cheap toys.
Speaker 1: So high tech.
Speaker 2: Well yes, but here's the paradox you'd see these super
Speaker 2: advanced automated wire bonders making these tidy connections incredibly fast,
Speaker 2: right next to a line where other chips were being
Speaker 2: glued down and encapsulated totally by hand.
Speaker 1: So high tech automation side by side with manual labor exactly.
Speaker 2: It really messes with your image of a factory floor.
Speaker 1: Speaking of precision, getting the chumney cases right with injection molding,
Speaker 1: Bunny said that was no small hill to climb.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the keyword he uses is precision, absolute precision.
Speaker 1: How precise are we talking?
Speaker 2: Molds cut from hardened steel with tolerances better than hair thin.
Speaker 2: And after the initial cutting, there's this process called EDM
Speaker 2: electrical discharge machining.
Speaker 1: That sounds intense, it's.
Speaker 2: Terrifically tedious, he says, yeah, uses electrical sparks to slowly
Speaker 2: erode the steel into these super intricate shapes, but very slow.
Speaker 1: And they did complex stuff too, like the rubbery back right.
Speaker 2: The over moolding, putting that soft tpe layer over the
Speaker 2: hard abs plastic for the chumbies back bezzle that needed
Speaker 2: a special two shot mold where parts actually spun around inside.
Speaker 2: It's really an art.
Speaker 1: But all this precision. All this complexity leads to challenges,
Speaker 1: especially managing quality from AFAR and the cultural.
Speaker 2: Differences huge challenges. Bunny gives this great example, tell us engineer,
Speaker 2: I need a button here. Yeah, pretty much know what
Speaker 2: you'll get in China, though you might get something awkward
Speaker 2: and clunky, but as he puts it, darn cheap. The
Speaker 2: priorities and interpretations can be really different.
Speaker 1: And the story about the QA manager Shell Lee building
Speaker 1: Chumbies but not knowing what the World Wide Web was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bunny felt like a spoiled snob realizing his basic
Speaker 2: assumptions weren't shared. That disconnect, if you're not careful, can
Speaker 2: cause real problems with the final product.
Speaker 1: So that's why big companies send teams over Apple and
Speaker 1: mordor pretty much.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Apple sends a cadre of engineers to places like
Speaker 2: fox Conn for these intense stints. They know you need
Speaker 2: eyes on.
Speaker 1: The ground, and Bunny's approach was similar, being there himself.
Speaker 2: As much as possible. Yeah, being on the floor using processes.
Speaker 2: The factory was already comfortable with treating new stuff as
Speaker 2: multi week challenges, not just overnight changes.
Speaker 1: He even trained workers personally.
Speaker 2: He did like attaching these fiddly EMI shields with copper tape.
Speaker 2: He mentioned the language barrier, but relying on facial expressions
Speaker 2: body language to see if they got it really hands on,
Speaker 2: and that hands on approach highlights the cost of distance,
Speaker 2: doesn't it?
Speaker 1: Oh massively? He said new processes could take weeks to
Speaker 1: get right when he was remote because of FedExing samples
Speaker 1: back and forth versus versus maybe a few hours if
Speaker 1: he was right there on the factory floor. That time
Speaker 1: difference is huge.
Speaker 2: It really hammers home the value of just being there.
Speaker 1: So when he couldn't be there, he built his own
Speaker 1: system checks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a homegrown audit system for the chummy test results
Speaker 2: allowed him to debug from the US. But also crucially,
Speaker 2: the factory knew someone was watching the data accountability from AFAR.
Speaker 1: That's clever, which kind of leads us into this whole
Speaker 1: other side of the Chinese hardware scene, the Shanzhai gonkai. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this different philosophy of openness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating. It's way more than just copycats.
Speaker 1: Like his phone repair story, exactly.
Speaker 2: Gets his phone screen fixed in Shenzen half an hour
Speaker 2: costs less than just shipping the parts to Singapore whateff.
Speaker 2: That tells you something about the repair and recycle culture there.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Shanzhai, what does it really mean beyond copycat?
Speaker 2: Well, the characters literally mean mountain fortress. It carries this
Speaker 2: connotation of rebellious, individualistic sort of underground entrepreneurs. Bunny describes
Speaker 2: them as Robinhood meets che Guvara.
Speaker 1: Ah. Okay.
Speaker 2: These were often tiny outfits back in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2: Some were churning out two hundred thousand mobile phones a
Speaker 2: month with under two hundred and fifty people. Wow.
Speaker 1: And they weren't copying.
Speaker 2: No way, they were invading in their own style, integrating
Speaker 2: wacky features. He calls them like seven point one stereo
Speaker 2: sound on a phone, dual sim cards way before they
Speaker 2: were common, even functional cigarette lighters or uvleds to spot fake.
Speaker 1: Money seriously, a cigarette lighter yep.
Speaker 2: And creating these mashups like a Ferrari branded phone or
Speaker 2: phone watch combos that actually came out before the first
Speaker 2: smart watches. They were remixing and experimenting.
Speaker 1: So how did IP work in that world? It sounds chaotic,
Speaker 1: It's completely different.
Speaker 2: It's more like community enforced rules because many shans I
Speaker 2: owned their own factories. Sharing blueprints wasn't just giving away secrets.
Speaker 1: It was like advertising exactly.
Speaker 2: Blueprints acted as advertisements to attract business for their manufacturing capabilities.
Speaker 2: Totally unlike Western IP, which Bunny says aims to create
Speaker 2: impenetrable monopoly positions, it fosters a different kind of ecosystem.
Speaker 1: And the twelve dollars phone is a perfect example of
Speaker 1: this Gonkai system in action.
Speaker 2: A perfect tangible example, a real quad band GSM, Bluetooth,
Speaker 2: MP three player, oled screen keypad, all for twelve bucks contract.
Speaker 1: Free and rumored to cost less than ten dollars.
Speaker 2: To make, Yeah, under ten dollars. The design was incredibly
Speaker 2: cost optimized, no screws, It all just snapped together, hardly
Speaker 2: any internal connectors components, even the battery soldered right onto
Speaker 2: the board, plus bonus decorative LEDs.
Speaker 1: AH, and the chip inside was super cheap too.
Speaker 2: The media Tech MT six two fifty zero DA rumored
Speaker 2: to be under two dollars in bulk. That's cheaper than
Speaker 2: the micro controller and Arduino board.
Speaker 1: So how did they design these things so cheaply? Where
Speaker 1: did the plans come from?
Speaker 2: That's the Gonkai part. Schematics board layouts software tools basically
Speaker 2: available for free, he says, if you knew Chinese and
Speaker 2: where to look online, though crucially often without the original
Speaker 2: copyright holders legal out.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it feels open source but isn't legally right.
Speaker 2: Buddy nails it. It feels like open source, but it's not.
Speaker 2: It's a different kind of open ecosystem, open through practice,
Speaker 2: through sharing, not through licenses.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how does that differ legally from Western open source?
Speaker 1: Bunny did some reverse engineering himself, right with Fernvale.
Speaker 2: He did with his colleague jobs. They relied on a
Speaker 2: key principle in US law from the Vice Publications case.
Speaker 2: Facts aren't copyrightable.
Speaker 1: So they could document how the chip work exactly.
Speaker 2: They carefully navigated things like the DMCA and CFA, made
Speaker 2: sure they got files from public servers, use devices without
Speaker 2: restrictive eolas to stay within fair use.
Speaker 1: For Bunny, then open hardware isn't just about the license.
Speaker 2: No, it's broader, he says, whether it's Gonkai or open source,
Speaker 2: open hardware is about empowering users to be the masters
Speaker 2: of their own technology. It's about freedom.
Speaker 1: He even calls it a basic human right.
Speaker 2: Freedom to learn, tinker, and improve technology is so core
Speaker 2: to my person that I view it as a basic
Speaker 2: human right. It's a really powerful statement about ownership and
Speaker 2: control over the tech that surrounds us.
Speaker 1: It really is, and you see that philosophy clearly in
Speaker 1: his own projects like Chumby.
Speaker 2: Definitely the Chumbi one. The later version was deliberately made
Speaker 2: much more hackable, firmware on a micro SD card, easy
Speaker 2: to swap.
Speaker 1: Out, hardware with no secrets, right, that.
Speaker 2: Was the motto. They posted everything online, schematics, gerber files
Speaker 2: for the PCB layout, the source code under GPL.
Speaker 1: And those test points so tech astronomy, Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, little hacker easter egg. Those test points could actually
Speaker 2: bypass the authentication chip's rite protection, a clear signal we
Speaker 2: want you to tinker.
Speaker 1: With this, and people did right, turn them into routers
Speaker 1: and stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, three g to Wi Fi routers at touching
Speaker 2: keyboards for a console shell. The openness invited that kind
Speaker 2: of creativity.
Speaker 1: Then came Novina, the laptop project that seemed even more hardcore, hacker.
Speaker 2: Focused, totally bespoke. Bunny and Ops basically built the laptop
Speaker 2: they wanted to use every day, kind of ignoring standard
Speaker 2: market demands, and it.
Speaker 1: Had some unique hardware features.
Speaker 2: Absolutely USB on the go, a utility e prom for
Speaker 2: storing settings, a powerful spartan six FPGA connected like RAM,
Speaker 2: analog inputs, PWM headers, even a Raspberry Pie compatible header.
Speaker 2: It was packed with potential and it opened itself. Yeah,
Speaker 2: an internal gas spring and they intentionally left the internals
Speaker 2: exposed naked for easy access and modification.
Speaker 1: Plus that pikare like a breadboard for hardware.
Speaker 2: Exactly designed with Nodu Peak from MIT, a grid of
Speaker 2: threaded holes so you could easily attach custom peripherals or
Speaker 2: mounts without drilling into the case. All about hackability.
Speaker 1: And the special wood case for the heirloom version.
Speaker 2: Oh, the heirloom Novina. Yeah us this amazing custom wood,
Speaker 2: composite cork, fiberglass wood, super tough, super resilient. He'd bended
Speaker 2: ten millimeters and it just bounced back, didn't break.
Speaker 1: Imagine a laptop doing that. But manufacturing wasn't all smooth
Speaker 1: sailing even for them.
Speaker 2: Never is right. They still hit snags with injection molding,
Speaker 2: things like sink marks where plastic cools unevenly, or flow
Speaker 2: marks streaks from cooling too fast, led to, as Bunny
Speaker 2: put it, a small hill of scrap plastic while they
Speaker 2: dialed it in.
Speaker 1: And they had to fix a clock issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the built in real time clock wasn't great, so
Speaker 2: they just made a dedicated external module for it. Sometimes
Speaker 2: fixing is better than fighting a flawed component.
Speaker 1: Okay. Third platform chibb Atronics circuit stickers sounds simpler.
Speaker 2: Deceptively simple. Building circuits on flexible polymide using Z tape
Speaker 2: tape that only conducts electricity vertically. Super clever way to
Speaker 2: make circuits you could stick anywhere.
Speaker 1: The manufacturing simple things can be hard. To that test,
Speaker 1: they designed.
Speaker 2: The process capability test. Genius. Really, they designed a sheet
Speaker 2: of stickers with variations specifically meant to break the manufacturing process,
Speaker 2: define the weak spots exactly. The factory initially refused, said
Speaker 2: it was impossible to make, but it helped them understand
Speaker 2: the limits and make the final product more robust.
Speaker 1: And that lesson. Not all simple requests are simple for everyone.
Speaker 1: Like the multimedia right the.
Speaker 2: Circuit sticker sketch book needed a non conductive spine. Simple idea,
Speaker 2: but they had to physically teach the book printer how
Speaker 2: to use a basic five dollars moulditer to check it.
Speaker 2: You can't assume knowledge crosses industries. Another smart move avoiding
Speaker 2: multiple firmware versions.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Lesson learned if a component can be placed incorrectly,
Speaker 1: it will be so. Instead of four different sticker types
Speaker 1: needing four firmware.
Speaker 2: Files, they made one firmware.
Speaker 1: One firmware, and the sticker's behavior blinking, fading, whatever, was
Speaker 1: set by just adding one external resistor. Much simpler to
Speaker 1: manage on the factory floor.
Speaker 2: But language was still a barrier sometimes even for blinking lights.
Speaker 1: It seems absurd, but yeah, Trying to translate the subtle
Speaker 1: difference between a fading pattern and a twinkling pattern into
Speaker 1: Chinese was tough. They used videos, but it still caused
Speaker 1: quality control headaches.
Speaker 2: Wow, and logistics Chinese New Year huge impact.
Speaker 1: Individual vendors might take two weeks off, but because everyone's
Speaker 1: holiday is staggered, the whole supply chain basically grinds to
Speaker 1: a halt for a month.
Speaker 2: You have to plan way ahead, and shipping wasn't straightforward
Speaker 2: either air versus Ocean. Surprisingly, yeah, for a shipment of
Speaker 2: sixty cartons, Ocean ended up being more expensive than air
Speaker 2: freight because of various search charges. They just weren't shipping
Speaker 2: in a volume to make ocean efficient, another hurdle for
Speaker 2: smaller players.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've seen the making side. Let's switch to
Speaker 1: the breaking side, the art of hardware hacking itself, tools techniques.
Speaker 1: Bunny's approach seems practical.
Speaker 2: That's about fear, definitely practical. He says, you have to
Speaker 2: break eggs to make an omelet. Likewise, you have to
Speaker 2: be willing to sacrifice devices to hack a system, no
Speaker 2: fear of breaking things. His rule of three start with
Speaker 2: three identical devices, one to tear down completely, one to
Speaker 2: probe wallet's working, and one kept pristine as a reference.
Speaker 2: Smart way to manage the.
Speaker 1: Process and hacking that PIC micro controller. It started with
Speaker 1: getting inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, using failure analysis services companies that specialize in this
Speaker 2: to decapsulate the chip, basically dissolve the epoxy package.
Speaker 1: And inside he found shields.
Speaker 2: Unusual metal shields right over the security fuses that peaked
Speaker 2: his interest.
Speaker 1: His insight came from old tech, from uve proms.
Speaker 2: He knew flash memory could be erased by UV light.
Speaker 2: The challenge was getting the light past those metal shields.
Speaker 1: And the solution was physics.
Speaker 2: Basic physics, refraction index mismatch, like when you're underwater looking
Speaker 2: up the surface can look like a mirror at certain angles.
Speaker 2: He figured out how to use that effect to bounce
Speaker 2: UV light under the shields and erase the security fuses. Brilliant.
Speaker 1: Okay, what about SD cards? That started with a practical.
Speaker 2: Problem, Yeah, investigating potentially fake sd cards during Chummy production.
Speaker 2: But then it evolved into a darpafunded project. Could you
Speaker 2: make an SD card do something completely unintended?
Speaker 1: And the tool they built the RPL.
Speaker 2: An interactive RPL shell, mostly built by ox Ops. RPL
Speaker 2: stands for read Evil Print Loop. Basically, it gave them
Speaker 2: a command line inside the sd card's own little microcontroller.
Speaker 1: So they could run their own code on the card.
Speaker 2: Itself exactly real time arbitrary code execution. Huge step for
Speaker 2: understanding and potentially manipulating.
Speaker 1: Them and net TV hacking HDMI without breaking HDCP.
Speaker 2: That was super clever. The goal wasn't to decrypt the movie,
Speaker 2: which is illegal. It was to overlay their own content
Speaker 2: onto the already encrypted video stream.
Speaker 1: How did they manage that?
Speaker 2: They built a device with an FPGA that sat between
Speaker 2: the source and the TV. It pretended to be a
Speaker 2: display snooped on the HDMI communication channel the DDC to
Speaker 2: grab needed info and then use that to encrypt their
Speaker 2: own graphics overlay using the same encryption stream.
Speaker 1: So it works with the encryption, not against it.
Speaker 2: Precisely. It's hacking around the security, not through it. A
Speaker 2: really elegant legal and technical workaround.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how he applies that thinking even beyond electronics
Speaker 1: to biology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where it gets really mind bending. He
Speaker 2: sees biology life itself as this ultimate reverse engineering challenge.
Speaker 2: Organisms as complex systems, just ones with absolutely no documentation, and.
Speaker 1: He sees parallels to hardware parts lists totally.
Speaker 2: He looked at the published data for a Bacterium M
Speaker 2: pneumonia and said, the supplemental material read just like a
Speaker 2: bill of materials for a product, enzymes listed with functions
Speaker 2: gene sequences as the source code.
Speaker 1: Framing biology like engineering.
Speaker 2: It makes it approachable, right, And then he applies that
Speaker 2: to something like the flu virus H one N.
Speaker 1: One, seeing it as data as bits.
Speaker 2: The entire H one N one genome just twenty six
Speaker 2: twenty two bits about three point two kilibites. He finds
Speaker 2: it chilling that it takes about three point two kb
Speaker 2: of data to code for a virus that has a
Speaker 2: non trivial chance of killing a human.
Speaker 1: That efficiency is terrifying, and.
Speaker 2: Hacking it means knowing tiny changes in that code, like
Speaker 2: one amino acid of position six twenty seven in the
Speaker 2: PP two gene, can drastically change how deadly it.
Speaker 1: Is, so you could theoretically creak it.
Speaker 2: Theoretically, yes, make it more virulent, or maybe alter it
Speaker 2: just enough to evade antiviral drugs. It highlights how programmable
Speaker 2: life is at its core.
Speaker 1: Which leads straight into antibiotic resistance.
Speaker 2: The superbugs like that one to four dot h four
Speaker 2: outbreak in twenty eleven. Analyzing its genome, they found over
Speaker 2: eleven hundred genes were a perfect mass, which to known
Speaker 2: drug resistance genes is basically carrying a huge arsenal defenses.
Speaker 1: And resistance spreads easily like open source code.
Speaker 2: That's Bunny's analogy. There's this reservoir of resistance genes out
Speaker 2: there in the microbial world. Even if resistant bacteria are rare,
Speaker 2: they hold onto those genes, and because genetic code is
Speaker 2: somewhat interoferable between bacteria, those resistance traits can get passed around,
Speaker 2: shared between.
Speaker 1: Different species like bacteria downloading updates pretty.
Speaker 2: Much yeah, which brings us to crispercuss, the gene editing
Speaker 2: tool that emerged around twenty twelve. Bunny calls it the
Speaker 2: integrated circuit of gene editing.
Speaker 1: And it comes from bacteria to their immune system exactly.
Speaker 2: Bacteria use these Crisper sequences, short repeating patterns in their
Speaker 2: DNA to basically store snippets of DNA from viruses that
Speaker 2: attack them before, like a most wanted list.
Speaker 1: How does the editing part work?
Speaker 2: An RNA molecule copied from those stored snippets guides a
Speaker 2: protein called CAST nine to the matching viral DNA if
Speaker 2: it shows up again, and CAS nine acts like more
Speaker 2: lecular scissors, cutting the viral DNA.
Speaker 1: But we can use it to cut any DNA if.
Speaker 2: We design the guide RNA correctly. Yes, it allows for
Speaker 2: incredibly precise cut and paste operations within genes.
Speaker 1: The implications for humans are huge, mind.
Speaker 2: Boggling, Bunny says. It's been validated on human cells, even
Speaker 2: human embryos. The idea of custom designed children is suddenly
Speaker 2: on the table, a technological capability that he thinks could
Speaker 2: change humanity more than Moore's law ever did.
Speaker 1: That's a heavy thought. And what about gene drive.
Speaker 2: Gene drive is a crisper based technique to force a
Speaker 2: genetic change through an entire population, overriding natural selection. Like
Speaker 2: making all mosquitos incapable of carrying malaria. Sounds good about
Speaker 2: risks huge ecological risks. You're potentially altering an entire species,
Speaker 2: and ecosystems are complex. Plus, as Bunny points out, mosquitoes
Speaker 2: don't recognize geopolitical boundaries. A change at least in one
Speaker 2: place could spread globally with unpredictable results.
Speaker 1: And his final parallel ties back to hacking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his warning failing to disclose and discuss vulnerabilities just
Speaker 2: invites zero days. Whether it's a software bug or a
Speaker 2: powerful gene editing tech, secrecy is dangerous. We need open
Speaker 2: discussion about the risks and capabilities before things go wrong.
Speaker 1: So, stepping back from all this hacking, hardware, hacking, biology,
Speaker 1: what are Bunny's big takeaways? His reflections on the journey.
Speaker 2: It started young for him, right, Oh yeah, classic hacker
Speaker 2: origin story age eight an Apple two clone, but without
Speaker 2: a case, just the circuit.
Speaker 1: Board any tingred.
Speaker 2: He admits, I broke it several times, even though my
Speaker 2: dad told me not to. I just wanted to see
Speaker 2: what happened when you put the chips in backward?
Speaker 1: Ah, what did happen?
Speaker 2: I learned very early on that putting chips in backward
Speaker 2: is a bad thing. Learned by doing by breaking stuff.
Speaker 1: That curiosity stuck with him, and that carried into his
Speaker 1: professional life, learning solid works, injection, molding.
Speaker 2: Absolutely learning by diving in. He feels that hacker spirit,
Speaker 2: that drive to figure things out and solve problems, gets
Speaker 2: stronger when things get tough, and he argues society needs
Speaker 2: to cultivate and tolerate it.
Speaker 1: What about his manufacturing philosophy? What do people miss?
Speaker 2: Two big things the ability to source the materials and
Speaker 2: the yield. He calls out the make magazine problem cool
Speaker 2: projects you can't actually build because the parts are obsolete
Speaker 2: or impossible to find.
Speaker 1: Practicality matters, and picking a factory not the biggest.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily the biggest, like fox Conn, where if all
Speaker 2: you bring is money, you're worthless. He suggests finding a
Speaker 2: factory that may be missing certain capabilities right, because then
Speaker 2: you can provide value beyond just money, maybe by training
Speaker 2: their staff on a new technique. It becomes a partnership,
Speaker 2: trading more than money. Builds a stronger relationship.
Speaker 1: And looking ahead the future of hardware, Moore's law.
Speaker 2: Slowing, he sees that slow down maybe performance doubling every
Speaker 2: twenty four or thirty six months now not eighteen, as
Speaker 2: an opportunity. How so it opens space for smaller players,
Speaker 2: for open hardware. It allows for what he calls artisan engineering,
Speaker 2: focusing on elegance, optimization, really user needs rather than just
Speaker 2: cramming in more raw power or futures.
Speaker 1: Could that lead to more standardized hardware like modular phones,
Speaker 1: he thinks as possible.
Speaker 2: As the pace slows, maybe we could see things like
Speaker 2: a standard tablet or a mobile phone chassis with interchangeable components,
Speaker 2: more sustainable, more repairable.
Speaker 1: He also talked about the perception of hardware changing.
Speaker 2: Yeah from rock bottom around two thousand and one when
Speaker 2: software and web two point zero or everything, to this
Speaker 2: hardware renaissance fueled by Kickstarter, but with a warning, a
Speaker 2: warning about a potential bubble. Yeah yeah, Kickstart is great,
Speaker 2: but it also enables scams. Not every shiny new gadget
Speaker 2: is viable or even real.
Speaker 1: And his thoughts on selling hardware retail versus online.
Speaker 2: He points out retail is fundamentally different it's about face
Speaker 2: to face sales relationships, different margins an older system.
Speaker 1: And online companies struggle with that transition often.
Speaker 2: Yeah, margins are much fatter online, he notes, So companies
Speaker 2: starting online might underprice their stuff initially, then when they
Speaker 2: try to enter retail with its highigher costs and lower margins,
Speaker 2: they can't survive a crucial business lesson.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, what an incredible arc from the factory floors
Speaker 1: of Shenzhend, deep into the guts of microchips, SD cards,
Speaker 1: HDMI signals, and then all the way to the source
Speaker 1: code of life itself, all through Bunny's hacker lens.
Speaker 2: It really is a unique and powerful perspective on the
Speaker 2: world of making in the broadest sense.
Speaker 1: So, thinking about everything we've covered, what really stands out
Speaker 1: to you listening in, How might Bunny's way of thinking
Speaker 1: about manufacturing, about openness, IP, even biology, how might that
Speaker 1: connect to challenges you face or just change how you
Speaker 1: look at the tech around you.
Speaker 2: There's a quote from Bunny that really resonates here. He says,
Speaker 2: engineers love to make decisions based upon available data and
Speaker 2: high confidence models of the future, But I think there
Speaker 2: real visionaries either don't know enough or have the sheer
Speaker 2: conviction and courage to see past the facts and cast
Speaker 2: a long shot.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, seeing past the facts. So here's a final thought.
Speaker 1: In this world that's getting more complex, more technologically driven
Speaker 1: every day, are there limits to just relying on fact
Speaker 1: based reasoning? And how much of that that courage to
Speaker 1: see pass the facts, how much of that sheer conviction
Speaker 1: do we actually need to truly innovate, not just with
Speaker 1: our tech, but maybe even with ourselves.