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Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. This podcast
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Speaker 1: com slash tech stuff Food. Welcome to the podcast. My
Speaker 1: name is Chris Polette. I'm an editor How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: and sitting next to me as usual, although a little
Speaker 1: scarier this time is the senior writer, Jonathan Stricklin. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a tall order, a little scarier, just a little. Well,
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna talk to you about scary technology.
Speaker 1: It's our special Halloween episode. Yep, it's a it's both
Speaker 1: a trick and a treat. So let's let's get started.
Speaker 1: The first one I wanted to talk about really quickly, um,
Speaker 1: just the technology that you might find in a modern
Speaker 1: haunted house, now haunted house with the kind that's run
Speaker 1: on Halloween, not the kind that actually ghost. So. Um.
Speaker 1: Here in Atlanta, which is where our headquarters are based,
Speaker 1: we have a haunted house called nether World. It's actually
Speaker 1: um pretty highly ranked in a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of websites. I saw it as a number two haunted
Speaker 1: house in the United States at one points and coast
Speaker 1: to coast something like that. And so they use live
Speaker 1: actors and things and and and spooky settings. But they
Speaker 1: also use a lot of really advanced technology like audio animatronics,
Speaker 1: where they have these huge audio animatronic figures that have
Speaker 1: a wide range of motions, um, that are pretty convincing,
Speaker 1: especially when you're in a dark, dark room. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't have a lot of you know, the luxury
Speaker 1: of light to show you that you're just looking at
Speaker 1: a big rubber monster that just can you know, move
Speaker 1: its head back and forth and swing its arms or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's pretty scary stuff all on its own. UM.
Speaker 1: They also use things like pressure mats and UH and
Speaker 1: sensors so that these these animal truning figures trigger when
Speaker 1: you reach certain points of the house. So it kind
Speaker 1: of personalizes your your experience and it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: not just like running on a on a loop, which
Speaker 1: is far less convincing. UM. And of course they're always
Speaker 1: gore special effects as well. Which you know I love
Speaker 1: and Chris hates. So uh and what's that hoverboard? And
Speaker 1: not no unsfortunately, not a hover with it. Just the
Speaker 1: sort of the scary in the sense of things we
Speaker 1: like to do to to thrill ourselves and kind of
Speaker 1: get that feeling of being in danger when in reality
Speaker 1: you know you're pretty safe. Um. Mega roller coasters. If
Speaker 1: if you know me, you know that I am a
Speaker 1: roller coaster fanatic. I love roller coasters, and so I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of give a shout out to my
Speaker 1: favorite roller coaster that I've ever written. Now, granted I've
Speaker 1: not written all of them, so don't write to me
Speaker 1: and tell me that, hey, what about such and such,
Speaker 1: because IBLY haven't been on that one. My favorite Millennium Force,
Speaker 1: which is at Cedar Point roller Coaster Capital, United States
Speaker 1: of America, and Millennium Force is three ft tall and
Speaker 1: when you're on it, you reach us top speed of
Speaker 1: around ninety three miles per hour. Yeah, when you're in
Speaker 1: a little exposed roller coaster train, that's really freaking fast.
Speaker 1: Um awesome roller coaster. Two thumbs up. I wrote it
Speaker 1: maybe five times in one day. It was fantastic. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to go again. So those are those are
Speaker 1: my two starting off, just to get the fun stuff
Speaker 1: kind of ease us in before we get into the
Speaker 1: really scary tech. You got some for me, Well, I
Speaker 1: have a couple. Okay, Yeah, that's pretty scary. It's definitely
Speaker 1: scary to Microsoft. That's true. Um, you know, just when
Speaker 1: we were talking about scary technology, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: all these kinds of things that uh yeah, maybe you
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily think of as scary. Yeah, by things that
Speaker 1: you know, sort of our I mean this the depending
Speaker 1: on whom you ask this day was let out the
Speaker 1: door a little early, as everyone will tell you this
Speaker 1: to came out a little too early. My Microsoft PR
Speaker 1: people will tell you all right, but yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's had some problems, it's caused some computer malfunctioning, and
Speaker 1: it got a lot of bad press early on, which
Speaker 1: still haunts it to this day. Yeah. I like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you've got thank you. So you've got Vista
Speaker 1: where most people say now that the big problems that
Speaker 1: we're really plaguing this to early on or I've been
Speaker 1: taken care of. They've been addressed and and it's a
Speaker 1: much better operating system now. But they it's still has
Speaker 1: that stigma that was attached to it back when it
Speaker 1: had all these problems, and so it's just not You
Speaker 1: still have people going in buying a new computer and saying,
Speaker 1: can I get Windows XP on this instead? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a big problem even since it's been discontinued, which is
Speaker 1: kind of why it's scary to Microsoft's also probably why
Speaker 1: Microsoft are you talking about Windows seven? There? You know
Speaker 1: they're skipping right over it. That's that's all right, I
Speaker 1: got another one ready. Okay. So there's this exoskeleton, this
Speaker 1: robotic exo skeleton produced in Japan, which allows the wearer
Speaker 1: to carry ten times their normal carrying capacity. Um. So
Speaker 1: that alone is kind of scary because it makes someone
Speaker 1: ten times as strong as they were before and they
Speaker 1: can crush you like a grape, right. But what really
Speaker 1: makes it scary is it's called how h and it's
Speaker 1: made by a company called Cyberdyne. So, for those of
Speaker 1: you who aren't familiar, how of course, is the name
Speaker 1: of the computer gone Haywire in Arthur C. Clark's two
Speaker 1: thousand one, and Cyberdyne is the name of the corporation
Speaker 1: that produced the Terminator robot and the Terminator movies. So
Speaker 1: clearly what how will eventually do is become self aware
Speaker 1: and start killing women named Sarah Connor. Yeah, so look
Speaker 1: forward to that in the near future. They're actually already
Speaker 1: being offered for rent for a thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you've got if you've got a grand
Speaker 1: and you need a months more of those stuff moved
Speaker 1: from one side the room to the other, you can
Speaker 1: totally look into that. That sounds like fun. All right,
Speaker 1: I got I've got one lithium iron batteries. Oh nice,
Speaker 1: I like, I like where you're going with these? Really
Speaker 1: outside of the box. Uh yeah, because I was thinking
Speaker 1: these are fine. These are the batteries that we use
Speaker 1: to power our laptops and our iPods, I mean our
Speaker 1: generic Inn P three players and are power tools. They're
Speaker 1: they're great, they were chargeable, they're they're white compared to
Speaker 1: some of the others, you know, like lead acid, which
Speaker 1: is heavy, like you know, lead um. They also have
Speaker 1: something called thermal runaway, which is when the chemical react
Speaker 1: and in the battery gets a little out of hand
Speaker 1: and it gets even more out of hand and it
Speaker 1: starts to heat up and you know, makes everything catch
Speaker 1: on fire, Yeah, which is kind of scary. I've had
Speaker 1: a battery overheating problem before. It is pretty scary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's actually it's we're sort of semi
Speaker 1: joking about it, but it can actually cause a problem.
Speaker 1: They've had laptops overheat on planes. I mean that's a
Speaker 1: that's a serious issue, you know, and in the middle
Speaker 1: of conferences. Definitely scary. I mean if you don't have
Speaker 1: anything to you know, it's an electronic device, I mean
Speaker 1: what you do, put it out, it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: not super scary, but it's not something that you want happening,
Speaker 1: especially in an environment like I don't know, like an
Speaker 1: oxygen Then yeah, okay, I got no one. Okay. Laser
Speaker 1: eye surgery, Okay, so interest a full disclosure. Uh My
Speaker 1: wife got laser eye surgery performed upon her, and I
Speaker 1: watched the procedure and what makes it scary is the
Speaker 1: first thing they do, the doctors do and the laser
Speaker 1: eye surgery is they cut a app in your cornea
Speaker 1: and they lift the flap back and then they shoot
Speaker 1: a laser into your cornea to reshape it. And then
Speaker 1: once they're done, they put the flap back in place
Speaker 1: where it will hopefully he'll without problems and then you
Speaker 1: have corrected vision. My wife, for example, I think she
Speaker 1: has twenty fifteen vision now, so it's actually better than
Speaker 1: But watching this happen really creepy. For one. Thing that
Speaker 1: use a device to keep your eye open that looks
Speaker 1: hauntingly familiar if you've seen the movie Clockwork Orange. Um so, yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely scary. Worth it, totally. My wife would tell you
Speaker 1: right now, totally worth it. And she she's the one
Speaker 1: who can't handle needles or anything like that. Um but
Speaker 1: I'm still wearing glasses and she cut the laser eye surgery.
Speaker 1: So there you go. You stopped talking. Can I unplug
Speaker 1: my ears now? You can? You can? You can listen again,
Speaker 1: it's safe. Um So Another one r I F I
Speaker 1: D radio frequency identification chips very useful, don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: you got a card in your wallet and you can,
Speaker 1: you know, go up and buy a taco a taco
Speaker 1: bell and just scan your card over the reader and
Speaker 1: you don't have to sign anything or you know, it's
Speaker 1: just done with a little chip. Or you've got a
Speaker 1: security badge and you use it to push put up
Speaker 1: against a reader. That unlocks the door and lets you
Speaker 1: into a building. There's a video of a guy on
Speaker 1: Boing Boing of somebody implanting an r f I D
Speaker 1: chip inside himself. Wow, these are the chips that you
Speaker 1: also could use for your dog or cat, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: And people say, well, you could you know, embed your
Speaker 1: credit card number inside your hand and then you have
Speaker 1: to do a scan in your hand. You don't have
Speaker 1: to carry your wallet with you. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: some people say that this is the number of the
Speaker 1: beasts that you have to do to use to do business,
Speaker 1: as mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Uh so, I
Speaker 1: just think of the pretty the number of dismemberments go
Speaker 1: up as people try to steal your card by plopping
Speaker 1: your hand off. Actually, yeah, I think that that's probably uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's a realistic you know, we're regardless of it.
Speaker 1: You feel about the biblical part of it that you know,
Speaker 1: that's the reasonable thing. And but my thing is what
Speaker 1: happens if your card expires? Yeah, and even beyond that,
Speaker 1: there are devices out there that can read an r
Speaker 1: f I D chip and spoof it, which means that
Speaker 1: it can replicate the signal so that someone who has
Speaker 1: one of these devices. If they get close enough and
Speaker 1: they can detect your r F I D chip, they
Speaker 1: can replicate it and then either use it to purchase
Speaker 1: things or access buildings. You know. It's r F idea
Speaker 1: is definitely not a perfect technology by any stretch of
Speaker 1: the imagination. That actually really is scary. Yeah, that that's
Speaker 1: an everyday scary thing because somebody could have one of
Speaker 1: the readers in their pocket and all they have to
Speaker 1: do is walk by you. They don't have to touch you,
Speaker 1: they don't have to let on. All they have to
Speaker 1: do is walk through a crowd and pick up everybody's
Speaker 1: credit card number and go shopping. So yeah, I got
Speaker 1: another one, then yeah, okay, okay. Raytheon's Silent Guardian also
Speaker 1: known as the pain ray. Now, Raytheon is the people
Speaker 1: who invented the company that invented the microwaves. This is
Speaker 1: probably not far from that. It's kind of a milli
Speaker 1: millimeter wave. It's it's uses larger waves than microwaves. But
Speaker 1: the idea is that um, it shoots this ray that
Speaker 1: does not cause direct harm, but it stimulates the nerve
Speaker 1: endings in humans, which results in a feeling of intense pain.
Speaker 1: People have described it as a really strong burning sensation,
Speaker 1: um like scalding water, and that uh, they can direct
Speaker 1: this from the it's actually the ray that I saw.
Speaker 1: It's not like a ray, like a ray gun. It's
Speaker 1: this enormous machine that has a sort of a satellite
Speaker 1: dish kind of device on the top of it that
Speaker 1: they the operator can use to aim at an individual.
Speaker 1: And it's an idea. It's a less than lethal weapon.
Speaker 1: That's the category falls under, so it could be used
Speaker 1: to do things like break up a riot. You just
Speaker 1: scan it over the crowd and then from what I understand,
Speaker 1: enduring more than a second or two is unthinkable. It's
Speaker 1: just that painful, yuch, pretty scary. The storm worm, oh
Speaker 1: good one, which is a particularly uh persistent and difficult
Speaker 1: piece of malware that is going around the Internet, and
Speaker 1: it's uh usually going transfers by an email A lot
Speaker 1: of times. It has a newsy headline that makes people
Speaker 1: want to click on it and download it to their
Speaker 1: computer thinking that it's some kind of news related thing.
Speaker 1: Actually it got its name from the first email where
Speaker 1: people really caught on was it was about a storm,
Speaker 1: about a severe storm, and people want what's going on?
Speaker 1: And they clicked on the link infected their computers. But
Speaker 1: the thing is it's being controlled. It turns computers into
Speaker 1: parts of a bot net, which exactly, and they people
Speaker 1: can control it. They can manipulate it to attack of
Speaker 1: our computers and other networks. Um. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: scary because it could, you know, bring about cyber war. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: large hadron collider right now, not right now, no, right
Speaker 1: now it's offline, but the wind in the spring, it
Speaker 1: will be back online. And there are some people who
Speaker 1: are really really scared of this machine. Now, this is
Speaker 1: a super collider that's going to fire protons that near
Speaker 1: the speed of light toward one another, smash them together
Speaker 1: and then see what happens. It's a pure science application.
Speaker 1: It's designed to let us kind of get a better
Speaker 1: understanding of our universe and possibly how it even started. Um.
Speaker 1: But some people worry that it may cause things like
Speaker 1: a black hole to appear and then it would come
Speaker 1: sing us all, or that it would create this stuff
Speaker 1: called strangelets. So purely hypothetical, uh substance. At this point,
Speaker 1: no one's ever actually seen this stuff, but hypothetically, what
Speaker 1: this stuff would do is convert everything else that came
Speaker 1: into contact with into inert matter, so the Earth would
Speaker 1: just become a dead husk. Now, scientists will be quick
Speaker 1: to tell you. Scientists at the LHC will tell you
Speaker 1: very quickly that the likelihood of any of this happening
Speaker 1: is so close to zero that you could almost say
Speaker 1: it's impossible. But because they're scientists, they don't say it's impossible,
Speaker 1: because that's not really what science does. They just say
Speaker 1: that it's incredibly unlikely, to the point where you shouldn't
Speaker 1: even really worry about it. But that hasn't stopped people
Speaker 1: from doing just that. You know, I shouldn't go back
Speaker 1: to this, but I'd like to point out that Microsoft
Speaker 1: pr people say Vista isn't scary. I trust the people
Speaker 1: at the LHC. Well, maybe a little bit more. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be at a left field, all right.
Speaker 1: Blackberries Okay, Okay, people don't drive in BlackBerry or walk
Speaker 1: in BlackBerry because someone will run over you because they're
Speaker 1: on their BlackBerry. Yeah, California just outlawed texting and driving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not a scary tech, but it's scary people behavior. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: like cell phones. Cell phones, Yeah, we can actually go
Speaker 1: onto that too, because there's people who are worried that
Speaker 1: cell phones emit enough radiation to cause you to go
Speaker 1: sterile or get cancer. We should be quick to point
Speaker 1: out here that cell phones emit radio frequency radiation. Uh.
Speaker 1: The word radiation is kind of scary because we all
Speaker 1: associate it with things like plutonium that would cause you
Speaker 1: to get cancer and die a horrible death, or gamma
Speaker 1: rays which turn you green and make you very large
Speaker 1: and start to smash things. But radiation doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: nuclear radiation. It means that you're you're irradiating some form
Speaker 1: of energy like heat is radiation, that's infrared radiation. It's
Speaker 1: and granted, heat can be deadly if if it's intense enough,
Speaker 1: but it's not on its own gonna cause you to
Speaker 1: you know, just keel over. So uh, there's this great
Speaker 1: video on YouTube where it shows, uh, this group of
Speaker 1: people who put us I think it's like three or
Speaker 1: four cell phones in a circle and put popcorn in
Speaker 1: the middle and the cellphones all start ringing it. Once
Speaker 1: you see the popcorns start to dance around, then it
Speaker 1: pops um. Totally fake. People not real that there was
Speaker 1: a heating element under the table. It was all kind
Speaker 1: of a little pr stunt. Uh. So, don't sit there
Speaker 1: and think that you know, if you hold your your
Speaker 1: your cell phone up to your horrible red bucker, that
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a nice tasty treat in a second,
Speaker 1: because it's not gonna happen. That just sounds wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought I'd go with the reference androids. Androids are scary,
Speaker 1: sort of, It depends on how real they are. If
Speaker 1: you're talking like Honda z Asimo, he's not particularly scary.
Speaker 1: When you say real, you mean how closely they resemble
Speaker 1: humans exactly. This is what what a Japanese scientist named
Speaker 1: most A hero Mori suggested in the article in a
Speaker 1: journal called Energy that he called it the Uncanny Valley.
Speaker 1: And this is actually true for as Jonathan was pointing out,
Speaker 1: as I ran a suggestion by m yesterday, Uh true
Speaker 1: of realistic characters in computer games or movies express jumps
Speaker 1: to mind. Yes, yes, but well you know some people
Speaker 1: think Tom Hanks is scary anyway. Um, but but Morey
Speaker 1: said that the closer something resembles a human and you
Speaker 1: know that it's not really a human, the creepier it gets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally scary, but it's just like a you know, something's
Speaker 1: just off. So yeah, there there are some androids that
Speaker 1: that you know, are so realistic and they have all
Speaker 1: the the servos and the things in their bodies that
Speaker 1: make them move, and they make them even more likely
Speaker 1: to have facial expressions hums, going at. Yeah, the Japanese
Speaker 1: ones in particular, but they really unsettling. But they're extremely
Speaker 1: sophistically they are and creepy. Right, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: getting creeped out. I think we're gonna need to wrap
Speaker 1: this up right now, all right, because I'm getting really
Speaker 1: creeped out. Yeah, let's uh, let's in this for today.
Speaker 1: But well we'll take a little break and when we
Speaker 1: come back, I'll tell you about something else that's equally creepy,
Speaker 1: but in a non technology see at. This podcast is
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Speaker 1: go to Meeting free, does it go to meeting, dot com,
Speaker 1: slash tech stuff, So do you know what article I'm
Speaker 1: talking about here, Chris, I have an idea. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: want to check in with it? Here, I'll give you
Speaker 1: to give me a little hint. It's the top five
Speaker 1: hotels that will scare the daylights out of you, so
Speaker 1: you can check in. Joe, makes sense, right, right? I
Speaker 1: thought you were talking about a roach motel. No, that
Speaker 1: does not make but they don't check out. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is creepy. That definitely is creepy. Okay. This list was
Speaker 1: written by our friend and colleague, Charles Chuck Bryant, and
Speaker 1: it's a fabulous It's really amazing. If you, if you
Speaker 1: were not creaked out by the tech stuff, read that
Speaker 1: article that will really creep you out. It's live right
Speaker 1: now on how stuff works dot com and we'll trick
Speaker 1: or treat with you again really soon. Let us know
Speaker 1: what you think. Send an email to podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented
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