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Speaker 1: Hi there, everybody, welcome to tech Stuff. My name is
Speaker 1: Chris Palette. I'm an editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Sitting next to me, as usual, is senior
Speaker 1: writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, and uh, we have some
Speaker 1: sad news to announce that they're going to cancel tech
Speaker 1: Stuff and replace it with old episodes of Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know. Yeah, apparently we just don't have the appeal
Speaker 1: of Josh and Chuck. So we tried to hire Ira
Speaker 1: Glass to do uh this how stuff Works dot Com life,
Speaker 1: but wasn't available. And we really want to see if
Speaker 1: someone out there would draw a comic strip of us,
Speaker 1: just like Josh and Chuck got. But um, yeah, since
Speaker 1: I'm animated and not actually a real person. That was
Speaker 1: a problem. So I guess now we can just take
Speaker 1: the rest of this time to um to bad mouth
Speaker 1: everybody else, and then we can leave in a huff.
Speaker 1: Except that this is actually an April Fools joke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're actual. I hope you weren't taking that seriously, UM,
Speaker 1: if you were, got you so anyway, April Fools. April
Speaker 1: Fools has been really big in the tech sector for
Speaker 1: a really long time, and there are some tech journalists
Speaker 1: who absolutely despise April first with all their heart. Can't
Speaker 1: imagine why, Yes, with a hatred that burns brighter than
Speaker 1: a thousand exploding suns. But yeah, and it's because this
Speaker 1: is the day when a lot of people think they're
Speaker 1: really clever and they make goofy jokes across the Internet,
Speaker 1: and some of them are really funny. So of them
Speaker 1: aren't so funny, and some of them are convincing enough
Speaker 1: to send the nation into a tizzy every year around
Speaker 1: this time. Truthfully, I think UM on the web it's
Speaker 1: gotten to be sort of a a situation where everybody
Speaker 1: goes looking for the funky websites. Yeah, they're actually websites
Speaker 1: out there that just all they do is aggregate all
Speaker 1: the different April Fools jokes that that people notice as
Speaker 1: the day goes on, they'll they'll submit say, it's almost
Speaker 1: like a dig, except it's specifically for April Fools pranks.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think snopes dot Com sometimes does it,
Speaker 1: and some other sites probably do as well. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you can just keep your eyes open for that. But
Speaker 1: there's certain, um, well, there's certain websites out there that
Speaker 1: have made a reputation out of creating funny little April
Speaker 1: Fools gags that we can talk about. I've got too.
Speaker 1: In particular, I was thinking of that we could chat
Speaker 1: about for just a second. One of those would be
Speaker 1: Think Geek. I Think Geek, the website that offers various
Speaker 1: toys and gadgets for the geek you know and love,
Speaker 1: the mountain dew swelling cubicle dweller who works on tech stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: actually we should um go ahead. And you know, that's
Speaker 1: a good way of pointing out that a lot of
Speaker 1: the gag gifts, the April Fools gifts that Think Geek
Speaker 1: has come out with over the years, have to do
Speaker 1: with caffeine and Geek's fascination with caffeine, so they're they're
Speaker 1: they sell caffeinated soap and that's not a joke, No,
Speaker 1: that really is a product they actually sell, so you
Speaker 1: would that that of course makes these other caffeinated products
Speaker 1: semi believable, so you might actually fall for them. For example,
Speaker 1: the first year they ever did in the April Fools stuff,
Speaker 1: one of the products they offered was caffeinated meatloaf. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you would. They also have offered things like, uh,
Speaker 1: the caffe drm patch, so it'd be sort of like
Speaker 1: a nicotine patch, um, a caffeine inhaler where you could
Speaker 1: just in hail you're caffeine directly and get that blast
Speaker 1: as soon as possible. They also what about spas Troid's
Speaker 1: the caffeinated cereal, So yeah, caffeine is big over it,
Speaker 1: I think geek. Yeah, they probably make fun of, you know,
Speaker 1: make up some caffeinated mints, except they sell those two. Yes,
Speaker 1: they do. And they have plenty of other jokes that
Speaker 1: they have put on all of us throughout the years,
Speaker 1: and some of them have backfired. But we'll get to
Speaker 1: the backfired one. That's the that's the I knew you're
Speaker 1: going to go there. The piece to resistance is my
Speaker 1: my uncle would say. But some of the other things
Speaker 1: they've said that they were going to offer on April
Speaker 1: one include remnants of the Mere space station UM and
Speaker 1: Atari twenty system. They offered that for a brand new
Speaker 1: ad on April one, um Wheaton X, which was an
Speaker 1: operating system created by Will Wheaton. Actually, I bet he'd
Speaker 1: get a real kick. I'm sure I'm sure that he
Speaker 1: did get a real kick out of that. They offered
Speaker 1: Duke Nuken forever. I noticed that the it was Nuken,
Speaker 1: not Newcomb. So they had a PC easy bake oven
Speaker 1: that would attach via USB's real not at the time
Speaker 1: that they offered be Now they also a USB fonduce
Speaker 1: at USB Tanning Center. Uh they were. They're big on
Speaker 1: the USB devices, um so everyone else, which is why
Speaker 1: it makes him believable exactly. My favorite, my favorite until
Speaker 1: we get to the backfire one anyway, is the Beta
Speaker 1: Max to h D DVD converter, so you can convert
Speaker 1: all those Beta Max videos to h D DVD. That
Speaker 1: was awesome. Now, of course we all know that's a
Speaker 1: lie because HD DVD doesn't exist anymore. It's gone the
Speaker 1: way of Beta Max. I think more people are using
Speaker 1: Beta Max now professionals still use it probably, but the
Speaker 1: one that backfired on them was last year two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, they introduced the soundtrack t shirt, a shirt
Speaker 1: with a speaker in it that would play prerecorded sounds
Speaker 1: and I think they even had a slot for a
Speaker 1: card so you can insert your own music if you
Speaker 1: wanted to. And they had this goofy video of a
Speaker 1: guy going through all these different scenarios, and every scenario
Speaker 1: he had the perfect music to play in the background
Speaker 1: so that it would be the right mood. So like
Speaker 1: in the chase scene he had chase music, and in
Speaker 1: the fight scene it was a showdown music, and in
Speaker 1: the love scene it was that wonderful seventies walking to
Speaker 1: a wow music. Um. Well, there were so many people
Speaker 1: who wrote in and said this is a great idea.
Speaker 1: They said, why don't we do this? And so they did,
Speaker 1: and now you can actually buy a soundtrack T shirt
Speaker 1: on think geek, which before was just a joke. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm willing to bet, having been a
Speaker 1: think geek customer for for several years, that they would
Speaker 1: love if they could do that every year and have
Speaker 1: one product. It took off so well, and it's fakeness
Speaker 1: that they wanted to actually make it a real thing.
Speaker 1: I bet they would do that. Yeah, it would be
Speaker 1: happy with it. I don't think that would have been
Speaker 1: a burden to them, at least. Another website that's known
Speaker 1: for doing lots and lots of jokes Google So not
Speaker 1: only are they taking all your information and putting it
Speaker 1: up on the web for you, they are making light
Speaker 1: of it as well. So here's some of the Google
Speaker 1: jokes that have happened over the years. There was the
Speaker 1: Google Mental Plex that was a device that you were
Speaker 1: supposed to just stare at and think about what you
Speaker 1: wanted to search for and then click on it and
Speaker 1: your search results would come up. And if you did this,
Speaker 1: the search results were all about April Fools, and you
Speaker 1: got a message at the top saying there were too
Speaker 1: many voices in your head and it couldn't get the
Speaker 1: right search results. Uh. Then they had Pigeon Rank, which
Speaker 1: is where they revealed the page ran right where where
Speaker 1: they revealed the secret to their search engine results. Pages
Speaker 1: were a battalion of pigeons that would type them up
Speaker 1: in real time. Uh. There was the Google Gulp that
Speaker 1: was a drink that would make you more intelligent and
Speaker 1: make you better at searching on the internet. Uh, there
Speaker 1: was Google Romance, where you could find your soul mate.
Speaker 1: By searching certain terms, you would find other people who
Speaker 1: are also searching for it. Supposedly there was a Gmail
Speaker 1: paper where you could say that email. They would convert
Speaker 1: your email to hard copy format in paper, complete with advertising,
Speaker 1: and then deliver it to the person that you were
Speaker 1: sending it to. So essentially it was a letter. Not great,
Speaker 1: of course it again this is just a joke. And
Speaker 1: then there was the Google Toilet Internet Service Provider, where
Speaker 1: they were supposedly running uh internet cables through the sewer
Speaker 1: system and you would thus have a toilet that was
Speaker 1: hooked up to the Internet and would act as your
Speaker 1: wireless router. And then of course there was Good Day
Speaker 1: g d a Y, which was an Australian based web
Speaker 1: search engine that could search for web page that hadn't
Speaker 1: even been uploaded yet. They could search for web pages
Speaker 1: twenty four hours before they came to exist, because of
Speaker 1: course Australia is a day ahead of us. True, And
Speaker 1: weren't they going to build an interstellar base too? Yes,
Speaker 1: there was the Copernicus, which was a moon base. You
Speaker 1: know you can find all those online still, so if
Speaker 1: you are curious to read the whole thing. And and
Speaker 1: some of them have some quite amusing illustrations too, right,
Speaker 1: and there these are hardly long jokes and and it's
Speaker 1: just it's not just like a long joke with a
Speaker 1: punchline at the end, their punchlines throughout the whole thing. Yep.
Speaker 1: So let's see, do you have any more sites? Now?
Speaker 1: Those were the two big sites. I've got plenty of
Speaker 1: other jokes. But I figured i'd give you a chance
Speaker 1: to talk for a while so I can drink my tea. Well,
Speaker 1: I started doing research, and I found a list of
Speaker 1: some very famous ones at the Museum of Hoaxes UM.
Speaker 1: And basically I just I found tons of them. And
Speaker 1: course they're all kinds like the uh, the Taco bell buying,
Speaker 1: the Liberty Bell and some of the other ones. But
Speaker 1: I stuck with some of the tech stuff, and some
Speaker 1: of them I had never even heard of. Um, you
Speaker 1: know talking about you know, John C. Warreck and PC
Speaker 1: Computing talking about the bill going through Congress and uh,
Speaker 1: apparently it was going to make it illegal to surf
Speaker 1: the Internet while you were drinking, right, because you can't drink,
Speaker 1: drink and drive on the Internet super Highway. That's right.
Speaker 1: Of course, nobody gets the fact that the bill's number
Speaker 1: is zero four zero one wrote this in and the
Speaker 1: contact for that, by the way, if you're interested, is
Speaker 1: Lerpa sloof, which is April fool spelled backwards. Apparently, uh
Speaker 1: said Senator Edward Kennedy's office had to field a lot
Speaker 1: of phone calls because people said he was sponsoring this bill,
Speaker 1: and so people were calling his office to complain that
Speaker 1: they didn't want This has gotten a lot crankier since.
Speaker 1: But man, and that was way back in. Think about that.
Speaker 1: The World Wide Web was essentially two years old at
Speaker 1: that point. Well, um, okay, here's here's another one. Actually. Uh.
Speaker 1: In four there was announcement going around that the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union was going to join US. Net Um, here's another
Speaker 1: one that backfired because it was it came from an
Speaker 1: address from Turnienko at Krem vax Uh. For those of
Speaker 1: you who are probably the majority of our audiences who
Speaker 1: don't know what a vax is. It was a giant
Speaker 1: mainframeish computer, uh, from Digital which later evolved into compact
Speaker 1: and then hp UM and uh. You know these giant
Speaker 1: computers were how you used to get on the Internet,
Speaker 1: and everybody freaked out. They said, oh this is great,
Speaker 1: you know, they want to join the Global Community. Well
Speaker 1: it turned out it was a sort of a wishful
Speaker 1: thinking hoax for for for a prank, but um in
Speaker 1: when they actually came around, they chose krem Vas in
Speaker 1: honor of that as there as there uh their host names.
Speaker 1: So it gives you the warm fuzzies. That's kind of
Speaker 1: a you know, all right, all right, you got us,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, but there's tons of those little
Speaker 1: stuff like in BBC and they love their pranks too.
Speaker 1: Said that Big Ben was going to go digital, yes,
Speaker 1: which just makes me think of the Simpsons episode where
Speaker 1: you see the shot of Big Ben and it's flashing
Speaker 1: twelve over and over because no one's set the clock
Speaker 1: after the power went out. Um well, how about in
Speaker 1: nineteen seven there was a prank going around that said
Speaker 1: the Internet would have to shut down for a full day.
Speaker 1: I was that that was my next one. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well you go ahead and talk about that. Well no,
Speaker 1: I mean you were supposed to turn off, turn off
Speaker 1: your machines that were connected to the Internet because they
Speaker 1: were going to clean out email, FTP and Gopher sites. Again,
Speaker 1: this was and people were still using Gopher, and they
Speaker 1: said between March thirty one and April two, you would
Speaker 1: you should turn not only turn things off, but if
Speaker 1: you could disconnect them so that they would not be
Speaker 1: affected as the Internet was cleaned. And of course that's
Speaker 1: just a joke, and that joke dates back. I mean
Speaker 1: there were jokes that are similar to that that went
Speaker 1: back to like the phone company. Well, they told you
Speaker 1: used to have to place a bag over your phone,
Speaker 1: so they blew the dirt out of the lines. You
Speaker 1: don't want it to get all over your house. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it was coming from the Interconnected Network maintenance
Speaker 1: staff from the main branch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of another one where the m I
Speaker 1: T announced that they were that they were selling out
Speaker 1: to Disney for six point nine billion dollars and they
Speaker 1: were gonna they were gonna move it to UH to
Speaker 1: take apart the entire school and move it to Orlando. UH.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, they accompanied that with a
Speaker 1: picture of the famous dome on campus with mouse ears
Speaker 1: on top of it. Um, you know, it was gonna
Speaker 1: have the School of Imagineering and the Scrooge McDuck School
Speaker 1: of Management and the Donald Duck Department of Linguistics. Turned
Speaker 1: out the web page was hacked, it wasn't actually an
Speaker 1: official M I T. So yeah, so that doesn't even
Speaker 1: follow the real M I T hack philosophy, but well
Speaker 1: it kind of does, but it kind of shows. I mean,
Speaker 1: M I T wouldn't do anything that would cause damage,
Speaker 1: and you could argue that by hacking a site you are,
Speaker 1: in theory damaging somewhat. But um, I've got a couple
Speaker 1: of cell phone related pranks. In two thousand four, Virgin
Speaker 1: Mobile announced that it was creating a line of left
Speaker 1: handed cell phones and all the digital number pads were
Speaker 1: going to be reversed, and people were immediately excited and
Speaker 1: thinking like, wow, that's really cool. Let me clue you in, folks,
Speaker 1: I happen to be of the sinister persuasion, which means
Speaker 1: I'm ghosh, which means I'm left handed. And while I
Speaker 1: might be easier to dial that way, um I still
Speaker 1: read numbers left to right like everybody else. I don't
Speaker 1: have to turn a book upside down or anything in
Speaker 1: order to read it. So just a little Well, okay,
Speaker 1: I don't have to is what I'm saying. I might
Speaker 1: enjoy it, but I don't have to. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a joke. And if people have thought about
Speaker 1: a little bit more, especially considering what day that announcement
Speaker 1: came out, they might have figured it out. Another good
Speaker 1: one though, all same year, two thousand four, a Swedish
Speaker 1: newspaper and I'm not even gonna try and to pronounce
Speaker 1: it because there's there's no hope, but a Swedish newspaper
Speaker 1: announced that if you shook your old cell phone hard
Speaker 1: enough and long enough, you would be able to access
Speaker 1: the new three G network even though your phone is
Speaker 1: on the old network. You just had to shake it.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm wondering how many customers lost their cell
Speaker 1: phones in a frenzy of shaking and like flying. I
Speaker 1: just see cellphones flying everywhere in Sweden on this day.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful site, although I'm sure it wasn't when
Speaker 1: you had saw like all the batteries and stuff laying
Speaker 1: on the ground. Oh great, you know. Um, there was
Speaker 1: a press release about this company called web Node. They
Speaker 1: had gotten this government contract, um, and it was for
Speaker 1: the next generation Internet. UM. Basically you could buy a
Speaker 1: node for about a hundred dollars or more than fifty
Speaker 1: million of them, and basically the more traffic that came
Speaker 1: through your node, the more valuable it would be. UM. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: business Wire this this press lease went out over Business Wire.
Speaker 1: They didn't find it so funny. They actually filed suit
Speaker 1: against the people pulling a prank for fraud, breach of contract, defamation,
Speaker 1: and conspiracy. So uh, not really so funny. I got
Speaker 1: a I got a couple of actually have a trio
Speaker 1: of video game ones. Okay. The first one just comes
Speaker 1: from someone being industrious and going out and registering a
Speaker 1: domain name. Uh, and it was for g t A Chicago,
Speaker 1: which would be Grand Theft Auto, which immediately made all
Speaker 1: the fans of Grand Theft Autos think that there was
Speaker 1: going to be a new entry into the series set
Speaker 1: in the Windy City. Of course, I ended up just
Speaker 1: being a joke. Another one, which I think is even better,
Speaker 1: Bungee has a long running gag, Pimps at Sea. They
Speaker 1: announced this game years ago. I think maybe two thousand
Speaker 1: one was when they first announced that Pimps at Sea
Speaker 1: would come out. And not only not only were you
Speaker 1: a Pimp at Sea, but it was supposed to have
Speaker 1: the most comprehensive and deep economic system ever seen in
Speaker 1: video games up to that point. It was supposed to
Speaker 1: be incredibly realistic, and it was going to be a
Speaker 1: real time strategy game. And over the years they have
Speaker 1: occasionally brought Pimps at Seed back as a joke and
Speaker 1: added more features. So now it's like the most incredible
Speaker 1: video game that never existed. It's like at C plus
Speaker 1: something like that. Very nice programming language jokes. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the final one in this group is Monkey Island five
Speaker 1: fans of the LucasArts Monkey Island series. I was a
Speaker 1: huge fan. Now, in two thousand two, there was a
Speaker 1: group called Mix and Mojo that managed to contact Dominic
Speaker 1: our motto. Dominic was the voice for guy Brush three,
Speaker 1: would the main character in the Monkey Island games. They
Speaker 1: got Dominic to record a bunch of fake uh sound files,
Speaker 1: and then they uploaded the sound files on April one
Speaker 1: and said that this might be evidence of a brand
Speaker 1: new Monkey Island game. And the sound files are hysterical
Speaker 1: and you can still find them on the on the
Speaker 1: web at the International House of Mojo. Um or actually
Speaker 1: uh if Yeah, if you go there, you can find
Speaker 1: the sound files. They host them there. You listen to them.
Speaker 1: They're really really funny, but one of them does give
Speaker 1: away the fact that it is in fact an April
Speaker 1: Fool's joke. All right, then you know, I got a
Speaker 1: couple more British ones. The Guardian reported that British scientists
Speaker 1: had created a machine that would let them control the weather.
Speaker 1: You know. That means that they get long summers rain
Speaker 1: it would only rain at night and but always snow
Speaker 1: at Christmas time. You know, it might be nicely they yeah,
Speaker 1: no kidding. And they also send whatever whatever else to
Speaker 1: the rest of Europe Continental europe Um. And then in
Speaker 1: this is going to ring a bell with a lot
Speaker 1: of you probably when you hear it. BBC said that
Speaker 1: they were going to introduce Smell, a vision where they
Speaker 1: could do things on the screen and then you could
Speaker 1: smell things and people called in. They cut onions on
Speaker 1: on TV and brewed coffee and they said can't you
Speaker 1: smell this? And people called in and they said they could.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how psycho semitic stuff can take effect, Isn't that?
Speaker 1: Isn't that nice? So in two thousand seven, Facebook introduced
Speaker 1: a new feature, Live Poke. If you chose to live
Speaker 1: poke one of your friends, then Facebook would send a
Speaker 1: physical person to go out to that friend and poke them,
Speaker 1: except not really because it was a joke. That's an
Speaker 1: awesome joke, like live poke my buddy, and like just
Speaker 1: thinking about this person, like al right, tracking that person
Speaker 1: down and then running after them down the streets of wherever.
Speaker 1: No I have to poke you. It's awesome. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then here's another good one in two thousand eight. You
Speaker 1: remember what happened in two thousand eight at YouTube, every
Speaker 1: single featured video to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up?
Speaker 1: The YouTube Rick rolled the Internet completely blocked that. Thanks
Speaker 1: for you, welcome, And then I have a trio of
Speaker 1: iPod ones real quick. Yeah. So there was Gear four
Speaker 1: and two thousand six unveiled the Iron, which was supposed
Speaker 1: to be an iron iPod doc. You would dock your
Speaker 1: iPod in the Iron and it would emit steam in uh,
Speaker 1: in rhythm with the music you played. Then you had
Speaker 1: pop Express in two thousand six and they announced the
Speaker 1: ipop Bra, which was a bra that featured a pocket
Speaker 1: for your iPod and controls in the fabric. So imagine
Speaker 1: changing the volume on your iPod. Right, Okay, if only
Speaker 1: you could have seen what I just did. Unfortunately I
Speaker 1: did see what you just did. Way back in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, you had the I Shave application Systems. Heidelberg
Speaker 1: announced it. It was an electric shaving attachment for iPods.
Speaker 1: You would uh slide this into the top of your iPod.
Speaker 1: It would turn into an electric razor. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a cut above. Yeah. Yeah, um, let's see. You got
Speaker 1: a couple more um uh. They came out with total
Speaker 1: home Remote Electricity, where Atmar Industries of Switzerland was going
Speaker 1: to let you beam electricity through your house. You didn't
Speaker 1: have to have your uh you know, appliance as electronics
Speaker 1: plugged in. You can even make toast on your roof.
Speaker 1: Sounds very tesla esque. Yeah yep. And then uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this reminds me of your your Google mentioned a minute ago.
Speaker 1: Um Red Herring brought out the telepathic email um tidal
Speaker 1: wave of communications. You're a Maldini said that the technology
Speaker 1: for telepathic email was created from encrypted communications sent during
Speaker 1: the Gulf War. And they asked him how big it
Speaker 1: was going to be, and he just sat quietly and said,
Speaker 1: I sent you an email when they got back and
Speaker 1: said it's going to be huge, simply huge, and uh,
Speaker 1: I've got one that's that's really dated. In fact, the
Speaker 1: New York Graphic in eighteen seventy eight told people that
Speaker 1: Edison had had created a food machine, uh that would
Speaker 1: turn dirt into cereal and water into wine and other newspapers.
Speaker 1: I mean Edison was huge. He was the big guy
Speaker 1: in tech at the time. He everybody believed him and
Speaker 1: believe the paper, and they reprinted the story in their
Speaker 1: their newspapers and basically, uh, the graphic picked up on
Speaker 1: it and went, you know, we got all these people
Speaker 1: you know well, you know, um as I recall How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works has had one or two maybe Fool's articles
Speaker 1: in the past. You want to talk about those really quickly.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you would consider me an expert
Speaker 1: on those. Um. Yes, yes, in fact, we we have
Speaker 1: in the past. Uh. You won't find them if you
Speaker 1: search on our site. You would have to search somewhere else,
Speaker 1: like say, I don't know Google if you were going
Speaker 1: to try to find these, but you might find uh
Speaker 1: an article about water warfare called how Hydroordinance works, or
Speaker 1: um another about how animated tattoos work that was very popular.
Speaker 1: That wasn't quite a bit of email from that, and
Speaker 1: how cell phone implants work also got a lot of email. Yeah,
Speaker 1: partly because it's sort of semi true. Right, some of
Speaker 1: these have actually kind of come true in the in
Speaker 1: the years since we've written them. But then there's the
Speaker 1: one you wrote. Yes, last year, I had the honor
Speaker 1: of doing the April Fool's article and we wrote about
Speaker 1: how the Air Force one hybrid works. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: we got to to write about the latest in airplane
Speaker 1: hybrid technology and it was and it spurred a lot
Speaker 1: of thinking about how heavy those batteries were going to
Speaker 1: be exactly. Yeah, it's it's sad because we actually were
Speaker 1: putting a lot of thought to how would we make
Speaker 1: this work? Well, I mean, you know what, it's not
Speaker 1: really that important. It's a joke then no, but we
Speaker 1: want to make sure we make it believable. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there's a there's an art to it there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you want to try to make it at least
Speaker 1: semi believable. I mean, if you're going to get onto
Speaker 1: somebody else's computer and replicate more than you know, extra
Speaker 1: copies of their their folders so that you can't tell
Speaker 1: which ones which or reverse their desktop or you know,
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, you want to at least
Speaker 1: be something that that's yeah, that's going to be confusing,
Speaker 1: you know, remap the keyboard. Yeah, all these fun little things. Well,
Speaker 1: and so guys, while you're out there, you know, on
Speaker 1: the world Wide Web on April first, just remember you
Speaker 1: can't necessarily believe everything you see. Just keep that in mind. Also, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, don't fire off an angry email because in
Speaker 1: two weeks you're going to find it funny. Yeah seriously.
Speaker 1: So um, well, I guess that pretty much wraps up
Speaker 1: that topic, except that it does bring us to that
Speaker 1: special time that we all love. Oh no, yeah, listener
Speaker 1: mail can come out. Okay, So today's listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from Emily, and Emily says, since you have an affinity
Speaker 1: for hacks and zombies. Austin, Texas recently had a local
Speaker 1: hacker tap into the Texas d Ot roadside safety signs.
Speaker 1: The new message displayed on my morning commute said zombies
Speaker 1: are coming head to colder climates. Just another beautiful example
Speaker 1: of how unemployed, super smart people spend their time in
Speaker 1: a recession. Thanks for the podcast you Guys Get Me
Speaker 1: through the day. Well, thank you, Emily. I had actually
Speaker 1: seen this new story. Um. In fact, I wrote a
Speaker 1: little bit about it for an article I wrote for
Speaker 1: the Discovery Channel, and uh, it's it's a pretty funny one,
Speaker 1: although you do have to remember roadside signs are really
Speaker 1: there for the driver and construction workers safety, so to
Speaker 1: to change those Uh, while it's funny as a chuckle,
Speaker 1: it could also possibly lead to dangerous situations and possibly
Speaker 1: j yeah yeah, no, its does turn out to be illegal.
Speaker 1: Um yeah that it turns out that the people who
Speaker 1: who hacks that had to cut away a lock in
Speaker 1: order to do it, so um on more than one machine, right,
Speaker 1: they did on two? I think, so that would be um,
Speaker 1: that would be a bad thing. Bad. Yeah, don't don't
Speaker 1: don't break any locks people. No breaking and entering. It's
Speaker 1: not funny when you're jailed for it. No, well not
Speaker 1: to you anyway. So that brings us to if you
Speaker 1: want to write to us with any suggestions, comments, jokes, haikus,
Speaker 1: you can do so at tech Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And remember we have blogs. If you
Speaker 1: want to read our blog, our tech stuff blog, you
Speaker 1: can find it at how stuff works dot com. Just
Speaker 1: look over to the right and you'll see the blog
Speaker 1: section and uh, we look forward to talking to you
Speaker 1: again really soon, just kidding. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com,
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