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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With

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Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. This podcast

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Speaker 1: is brought to you by go to Meetings, the best

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Speaker 1: way to hold meetings over the Internet. Read these travel

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Speaker 1: expenses save time. Just hold an online meeting with go

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Speaker 1: to Meeting. Try it free, visit go to meeting dot

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Speaker 1: com slash tech stuff Food. Welcome to the podcast. My

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Speaker 1: name is Chris Polette. I'm an editor How Stuff Works,

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Speaker 1: and sitting next to me as usual, although a little

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Speaker 1: scarier this time is the senior writer, Jonathan Stricklin. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: That's a tall order, a little scarier, just a little. Well,

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Speaker 1: and today we're gonna talk to you about scary technology.

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Speaker 1: It's our special Halloween episode. Yep, it's a it's both

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Speaker 1: a trick and a treat. So let's let's get started.

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Speaker 1: The first one I wanted to talk about really quickly, um,

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Speaker 1: just the technology that you might find in a modern

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Speaker 1: haunted house, now haunted house with the kind that's run

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Speaker 1: on Halloween, not the kind that actually ghost. So. Um.

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Speaker 1: Here in Atlanta, which is where our headquarters are based,

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Speaker 1: we have a haunted house called nether World. It's actually

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Speaker 1: um pretty highly ranked in a lot of a lot

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Speaker 1: of websites. I saw it as a number two haunted

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Speaker 1: house in the United States at one points and coast

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Speaker 1: to coast something like that. And so they use live

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Speaker 1: actors and things and and and spooky settings. But they

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Speaker 1: also use a lot of really advanced technology like audio animatronics,

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Speaker 1: where they have these huge audio animatronic figures that have

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Speaker 1: a wide range of motions, um, that are pretty convincing,

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Speaker 1: especially when you're in a dark, dark room. You know,

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Speaker 1: you don't have a lot of you know, the luxury

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Speaker 1: of light to show you that you're just looking at

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Speaker 1: a big rubber monster that just can you know, move

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Speaker 1: its head back and forth and swing its arms or whatever. Um.

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Speaker 1: But that's pretty scary stuff all on its own. UM.

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Speaker 1: They also use things like pressure mats and UH and

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Speaker 1: sensors so that these these animal truning figures trigger when

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Speaker 1: you reach certain points of the house. So it kind

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Speaker 1: of personalizes your your experience and it's you know, it's

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Speaker 1: not just like running on a on a loop, which

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Speaker 1: is far less convincing. UM. And of course they're always

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Speaker 1: gore special effects as well. Which you know I love

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Speaker 1: and Chris hates. So uh and what's that hoverboard? And

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Speaker 1: not no unsfortunately, not a hover with it. Just the

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Speaker 1: sort of the scary in the sense of things we

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Speaker 1: like to do to to thrill ourselves and kind of

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Speaker 1: get that feeling of being in danger when in reality

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Speaker 1: you know you're pretty safe. Um. Mega roller coasters. If

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Speaker 1: if you know me, you know that I am a

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Speaker 1: roller coaster fanatic. I love roller coasters, and so I

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Speaker 1: wanted to kind of give a shout out to my

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Speaker 1: favorite roller coaster that I've ever written. Now, granted I've

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Speaker 1: not written all of them, so don't write to me

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Speaker 1: and tell me that, hey, what about such and such,

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Speaker 1: because IBLY haven't been on that one. My favorite Millennium Force,

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Speaker 1: which is at Cedar Point roller Coaster Capital, United States

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Speaker 1: of America, and Millennium Force is three ft tall and

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Speaker 1: when you're on it, you reach us top speed of

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Speaker 1: around ninety three miles per hour. Yeah, when you're in

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Speaker 1: a little exposed roller coaster train, that's really freaking fast.

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Speaker 1: Um awesome roller coaster. Two thumbs up. I wrote it

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Speaker 1: maybe five times in one day. It was fantastic. I

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Speaker 1: can't wait to go again. So those are those are

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Speaker 1: my two starting off, just to get the fun stuff

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Speaker 1: kind of ease us in before we get into the

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Speaker 1: really scary tech. You got some for me, Well, I

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Speaker 1: have a couple. Okay, Yeah, that's pretty scary. It's definitely

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Speaker 1: scary to Microsoft. That's true. Um, you know, just when

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Speaker 1: we were talking about scary technology, I was thinking about

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Speaker 1: all these kinds of things that uh yeah, maybe you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily think of as scary. Yeah, by things that

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of our I mean this the depending

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Speaker 1: on whom you ask this day was let out the

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Speaker 1: door a little early, as everyone will tell you this

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Speaker 1: to came out a little too early. My Microsoft PR

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Speaker 1: people will tell you all right, but yeah, it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's had some problems, it's caused some computer malfunctioning, and

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Speaker 1: it got a lot of bad press early on, which

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Speaker 1: still haunts it to this day. Yeah. I like that. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, you've got thank you. So you've got Vista

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Speaker 1: where most people say now that the big problems that

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Speaker 1: we're really plaguing this to early on or I've been

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Speaker 1: taken care of. They've been addressed and and it's a

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Speaker 1: much better operating system now. But they it's still has

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Speaker 1: that stigma that was attached to it back when it

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Speaker 1: had all these problems, and so it's just not You

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Speaker 1: still have people going in buying a new computer and saying,

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Speaker 1: can I get Windows XP on this instead? Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: a big problem even since it's been discontinued, which is

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Speaker 1: kind of why it's scary to Microsoft's also probably why

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Speaker 1: Microsoft are you talking about Windows seven? There? You know

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Speaker 1: they're skipping right over it. That's that's all right, I

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Speaker 1: got another one ready. Okay. So there's this exoskeleton, this

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Speaker 1: robotic exo skeleton produced in Japan, which allows the wearer

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Speaker 1: to carry ten times their normal carrying capacity. Um. So

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Speaker 1: that alone is kind of scary because it makes someone

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Speaker 1: ten times as strong as they were before and they

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Speaker 1: can crush you like a grape, right. But what really

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Speaker 1: makes it scary is it's called how h and it's

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Speaker 1: made by a company called Cyberdyne. So, for those of

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Speaker 1: you who aren't familiar, how of course, is the name

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Speaker 1: of the computer gone Haywire in Arthur C. Clark's two

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Speaker 1: thousand one, and Cyberdyne is the name of the corporation

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Speaker 1: that produced the Terminator robot and the Terminator movies. So

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Speaker 1: clearly what how will eventually do is become self aware

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Speaker 1: and start killing women named Sarah Connor. Yeah, so look

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Speaker 1: forward to that in the near future. They're actually already

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Speaker 1: being offered for rent for a thousand dollars a month.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, if you've got if you've got a grand

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Speaker 1: and you need a months more of those stuff moved

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Speaker 1: from one side the room to the other, you can

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Speaker 1: totally look into that. That sounds like fun. All right,

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Speaker 1: I got I've got one lithium iron batteries. Oh nice,

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Speaker 1: I like, I like where you're going with these? Really

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Speaker 1: outside of the box. Uh yeah, because I was thinking

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Speaker 1: these are fine. These are the batteries that we use

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Speaker 1: to power our laptops and our iPods, I mean our

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Speaker 1: generic Inn P three players and are power tools. They're

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Speaker 1: they're great, they were chargeable, they're they're white compared to

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Speaker 1: some of the others, you know, like lead acid, which

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Speaker 1: is heavy, like you know, lead um. They also have

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Speaker 1: something called thermal runaway, which is when the chemical react

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Speaker 1: and in the battery gets a little out of hand

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Speaker 1: and it gets even more out of hand and it

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Speaker 1: starts to heat up and you know, makes everything catch

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Speaker 1: on fire, Yeah, which is kind of scary. I've had

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Speaker 1: a battery overheating problem before. It is pretty scary. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's it's actually it's we're sort of semi

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Speaker 1: joking about it, but it can actually cause a problem.

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Speaker 1: They've had laptops overheat on planes. I mean that's a

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Speaker 1: that's a serious issue, you know, and in the middle

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Speaker 1: of conferences. Definitely scary. I mean if you don't have

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Speaker 1: anything to you know, it's an electronic device, I mean

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Speaker 1: what you do, put it out, it's it's you know,

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Speaker 1: not super scary, but it's not something that you want happening,

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Speaker 1: especially in an environment like I don't know, like an

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Speaker 1: oxygen Then yeah, okay, I got no one. Okay. Laser

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Speaker 1: eye surgery, Okay, so interest a full disclosure. Uh My

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Speaker 1: wife got laser eye surgery performed upon her, and I

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Speaker 1: watched the procedure and what makes it scary is the

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Speaker 1: first thing they do, the doctors do and the laser

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Speaker 1: eye surgery is they cut a app in your cornea

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Speaker 1: and they lift the flap back and then they shoot

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Speaker 1: a laser into your cornea to reshape it. And then

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Speaker 1: once they're done, they put the flap back in place

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Speaker 1: where it will hopefully he'll without problems and then you

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Speaker 1: have corrected vision. My wife, for example, I think she

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Speaker 1: has twenty fifteen vision now, so it's actually better than

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Speaker 1: But watching this happen really creepy. For one. Thing that

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Speaker 1: use a device to keep your eye open that looks

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Speaker 1: hauntingly familiar if you've seen the movie Clockwork Orange. Um so, yeah,

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Speaker 1: definitely scary. Worth it, totally. My wife would tell you

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Speaker 1: right now, totally worth it. And she she's the one

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Speaker 1: who can't handle needles or anything like that. Um but

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Speaker 1: I'm still wearing glasses and she cut the laser eye surgery.

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Speaker 1: So there you go. You stopped talking. Can I unplug

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Speaker 1: my ears now? You can? You can? You can listen again,

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Speaker 1: it's safe. Um So Another one r I F I

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Speaker 1: D radio frequency identification chips very useful, don't know, you know,

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Speaker 1: you got a card in your wallet and you can,

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Speaker 1: you know, go up and buy a taco a taco

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Speaker 1: bell and just scan your card over the reader and

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Speaker 1: you don't have to sign anything or you know, it's

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Speaker 1: just done with a little chip. Or you've got a

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Speaker 1: security badge and you use it to push put up

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Speaker 1: against a reader. That unlocks the door and lets you

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Speaker 1: into a building. There's a video of a guy on

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Speaker 1: Boing Boing of somebody implanting an r f I D

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Speaker 1: chip inside himself. Wow, these are the chips that you

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Speaker 1: also could use for your dog or cat, you know. Um,

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Speaker 1: And people say, well, you could you know, embed your

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Speaker 1: credit card number inside your hand and then you have

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Speaker 1: to do a scan in your hand. You don't have

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Speaker 1: to carry your wallet with you. On the other hand,

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Speaker 1: some people say that this is the number of the

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Speaker 1: beasts that you have to do to use to do business,

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Speaker 1: as mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Uh so, I

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Speaker 1: just think of the pretty the number of dismemberments go

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Speaker 1: up as people try to steal your card by plopping

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Speaker 1: your hand off. Actually, yeah, I think that that's probably uh,

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Speaker 1: that's that's a realistic you know, we're regardless of it.

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Speaker 1: You feel about the biblical part of it that you know,

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Speaker 1: that's the reasonable thing. And but my thing is what

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Speaker 1: happens if your card expires? Yeah, and even beyond that,

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Speaker 1: there are devices out there that can read an r

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Speaker 1: f I D chip and spoof it, which means that

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Speaker 1: it can replicate the signal so that someone who has

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Speaker 1: one of these devices. If they get close enough and

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Speaker 1: they can detect your r F I D chip, they

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Speaker 1: can replicate it and then either use it to purchase

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Speaker 1: things or access buildings. You know. It's r F idea

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Speaker 1: is definitely not a perfect technology by any stretch of

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Speaker 1: the imagination. That actually really is scary. Yeah, that that's

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Speaker 1: an everyday scary thing because somebody could have one of

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Speaker 1: the readers in their pocket and all they have to

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Speaker 1: do is walk by you. They don't have to touch you,

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Speaker 1: they don't have to let on. All they have to

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Speaker 1: do is walk through a crowd and pick up everybody's

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Speaker 1: credit card number and go shopping. So yeah, I got

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Speaker 1: another one, then yeah, okay, okay. Raytheon's Silent Guardian also

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Speaker 1: known as the pain ray. Now, Raytheon is the people

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Speaker 1: who invented the company that invented the microwaves. This is

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Speaker 1: probably not far from that. It's kind of a milli

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Speaker 1: millimeter wave. It's it's uses larger waves than microwaves. But

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Speaker 1: the idea is that um, it shoots this ray that

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Speaker 1: does not cause direct harm, but it stimulates the nerve

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Speaker 1: endings in humans, which results in a feeling of intense pain.

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Speaker 1: People have described it as a really strong burning sensation,

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Speaker 1: um like scalding water, and that uh, they can direct

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Speaker 1: this from the it's actually the ray that I saw.

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Speaker 1: It's not like a ray, like a ray gun. It's

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Speaker 1: this enormous machine that has a sort of a satellite

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Speaker 1: dish kind of device on the top of it that

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Speaker 1: they the operator can use to aim at an individual.

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Speaker 1: And it's an idea. It's a less than lethal weapon.

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Speaker 1: That's the category falls under, so it could be used

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Speaker 1: to do things like break up a riot. You just

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Speaker 1: scan it over the crowd and then from what I understand,

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Speaker 1: enduring more than a second or two is unthinkable. It's

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Speaker 1: just that painful, yuch, pretty scary. The storm worm, oh

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Speaker 1: good one, which is a particularly uh persistent and difficult

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Speaker 1: piece of malware that is going around the Internet, and

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Speaker 1: it's uh usually going transfers by an email A lot

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Speaker 1: of times. It has a newsy headline that makes people

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Speaker 1: want to click on it and download it to their

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Speaker 1: computer thinking that it's some kind of news related thing.

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Speaker 1: Actually it got its name from the first email where

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Speaker 1: people really caught on was it was about a storm,

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Speaker 1: about a severe storm, and people want what's going on?

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Speaker 1: And they clicked on the link infected their computers. But

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Speaker 1: the thing is it's being controlled. It turns computers into

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Speaker 1: parts of a bot net, which exactly, and they people

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Speaker 1: can control it. They can manipulate it to attack of

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Speaker 1: our computers and other networks. Um. So that's kind of

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Speaker 1: scary because it could, you know, bring about cyber war. Okay, yes,

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Speaker 1: large hadron collider right now, not right now, no, right

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Speaker 1: now it's offline, but the wind in the spring, it

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Speaker 1: will be back online. And there are some people who

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Speaker 1: are really really scared of this machine. Now, this is

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Speaker 1: a super collider that's going to fire protons that near

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Speaker 1: the speed of light toward one another, smash them together

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Speaker 1: and then see what happens. It's a pure science application.

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Speaker 1: It's designed to let us kind of get a better

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Speaker 1: understanding of our universe and possibly how it even started. Um.

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Speaker 1: But some people worry that it may cause things like

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Speaker 1: a black hole to appear and then it would come

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Speaker 1: sing us all, or that it would create this stuff

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Speaker 1: called strangelets. So purely hypothetical, uh substance. At this point,

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Speaker 1: no one's ever actually seen this stuff, but hypothetically, what

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Speaker 1: this stuff would do is convert everything else that came

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Speaker 1: into contact with into inert matter, so the Earth would

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Speaker 1: just become a dead husk. Now, scientists will be quick

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Speaker 1: to tell you. Scientists at the LHC will tell you

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Speaker 1: very quickly that the likelihood of any of this happening

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Speaker 1: is so close to zero that you could almost say

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Speaker 1: it's impossible. But because they're scientists, they don't say it's impossible,

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Speaker 1: because that's not really what science does. They just say

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Speaker 1: that it's incredibly unlikely, to the point where you shouldn't

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Speaker 1: even really worry about it. But that hasn't stopped people

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Speaker 1: from doing just that. You know, I shouldn't go back

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Speaker 1: to this, but I'd like to point out that Microsoft

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Speaker 1: pr people say Vista isn't scary. I trust the people

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Speaker 1: at the LHC. Well, maybe a little bit more. Okay,

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Speaker 1: this is gonna be at a left field, all right.

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Speaker 1: Blackberries Okay, Okay, people don't drive in BlackBerry or walk

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Speaker 1: in BlackBerry because someone will run over you because they're

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Speaker 1: on their BlackBerry. Yeah, California just outlawed texting and driving. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's not a scary tech, but it's scary people behavior. Okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: like cell phones. Cell phones, Yeah, we can actually go

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Speaker 1: onto that too, because there's people who are worried that

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Speaker 1: cell phones emit enough radiation to cause you to go

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Speaker 1: sterile or get cancer. We should be quick to point

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Speaker 1: out here that cell phones emit radio frequency radiation. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The word radiation is kind of scary because we all

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Speaker 1: associate it with things like plutonium that would cause you

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Speaker 1: to get cancer and die a horrible death, or gamma

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Speaker 1: rays which turn you green and make you very large

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Speaker 1: and start to smash things. But radiation doesn't necessarily mean

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Speaker 1: nuclear radiation. It means that you're you're irradiating some form

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Speaker 1: of energy like heat is radiation, that's infrared radiation. It's

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Speaker 1: and granted, heat can be deadly if if it's intense enough,

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Speaker 1: but it's not on its own gonna cause you to

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Speaker 1: you know, just keel over. So uh, there's this great

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Speaker 1: video on YouTube where it shows, uh, this group of

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Speaker 1: people who put us I think it's like three or

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Speaker 1: four cell phones in a circle and put popcorn in

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Speaker 1: the middle and the cellphones all start ringing it. Once

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Speaker 1: you see the popcorns start to dance around, then it

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Speaker 1: pops um. Totally fake. People not real that there was

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Speaker 1: a heating element under the table. It was all kind

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Speaker 1: of a little pr stunt. Uh. So, don't sit there

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Speaker 1: and think that you know, if you hold your your

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Speaker 1: your cell phone up to your horrible red bucker, that

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Speaker 1: you're gonna have a nice tasty treat in a second,

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Speaker 1: because it's not gonna happen. That just sounds wrong. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I thought I'd go with the reference androids. Androids are scary,

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Speaker 1: sort of, It depends on how real they are. If

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Speaker 1: you're talking like Honda z Asimo, he's not particularly scary.

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Speaker 1: When you say real, you mean how closely they resemble

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Speaker 1: humans exactly. This is what what a Japanese scientist named

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Speaker 1: most A hero Mori suggested in the article in a

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Speaker 1: journal called Energy that he called it the Uncanny Valley.

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Speaker 1: And this is actually true for as Jonathan was pointing out,

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Speaker 1: as I ran a suggestion by m yesterday, Uh true

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Speaker 1: of realistic characters in computer games or movies express jumps

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Speaker 1: to mind. Yes, yes, but well you know some people

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Speaker 1: think Tom Hanks is scary anyway. Um, but but Morey

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Speaker 1: said that the closer something resembles a human and you

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Speaker 1: know that it's not really a human, the creepier it gets. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: totally scary, but it's just like a you know, something's

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Speaker 1: just off. So yeah, there there are some androids that

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Speaker 1: that you know, are so realistic and they have all

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Speaker 1: the the servos and the things in their bodies that

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Speaker 1: make them move, and they make them even more likely

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Speaker 1: to have facial expressions hums, going at. Yeah, the Japanese

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Speaker 1: ones in particular, but they really unsettling. But they're extremely

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Speaker 1: sophistically they are and creepy. Right, you know what, I'm

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Speaker 1: getting creeped out. I think we're gonna need to wrap

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Speaker 1: this up right now, all right, because I'm getting really

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Speaker 1: creeped out. Yeah, let's uh, let's in this for today.

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Speaker 1: But well we'll take a little break and when we

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Speaker 1: come back, I'll tell you about something else that's equally creepy,

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Speaker 1: but in a non technology see at. This podcast is

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Speaker 1: brought to you by Go to Meeting, the web based

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Speaker 1: tool that lets you hold instant online meetings from the office,

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Speaker 1: conference room, or home office with people anywhere in the

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Speaker 1: world so you can do more and travel less, which

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Speaker 1: slash tech stuff, So do you know what article I'm

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Speaker 1: talking about here, Chris, I have an idea. Yeah, you

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Speaker 1: want to check in with it? Here, I'll give you

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Speaker 1: to give me a little hint. It's the top five

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Speaker 1: hotels that will scare the daylights out of you, so

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Speaker 1: you can check in. Joe, makes sense, right, right? I

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Speaker 1: thought you were talking about a roach motel. No, that

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Speaker 1: does not make but they don't check out. Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is creepy. That definitely is creepy. Okay. This list was

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Speaker 1: written by our friend and colleague, Charles Chuck Bryant, and

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Speaker 1: it's a fabulous It's really amazing. If you, if you

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Speaker 1: were not creaked out by the tech stuff, read that

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Speaker 1: article that will really creep you out. It's live right

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Speaker 1: now on how stuff works dot com and we'll trick

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Speaker 1: or treat with you again really soon. Let us know

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Speaker 1: what you think. Send an email to podcast at how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented

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Speaker 1: two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you