Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tex Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi, welcome
Speaker 1: to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette. I'm an
Speaker 1: editor here at How Stuff Works, and as usual, I
Speaker 1: have sitting right here next to me, senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: How do folks? And Uh, today I think we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about hacking, yes, and not as in that
Speaker 1: irritating cough that your coworker has its sitting in the
Speaker 1: cubicle next to you and you want to hit them
Speaker 1: over the head with a brick. Nor are we talking
Speaker 1: about traditional computer hacking where you hack into systems, where
Speaker 1: you create program hacks. We're talking about hardware hacking. Yes,
Speaker 1: And you know, hacking is not necessarily evil either. You know,
Speaker 1: it's got sort of a bad reputation. Hacking is basically,
Speaker 1: you know, taking something apart, seeing how it works, and
Speaker 1: trying to do something different with it than it was
Speaker 1: originally intended for. Yeah, it's really just finding new ways
Speaker 1: to accomplish certain tasks. So it's not in a necessarily
Speaker 1: evil at all. And uh, yeah we should we should
Speaker 1: just go ahead and get rid of that negative connotation
Speaker 1: of hacker, so you're on out. Hacker means someone who
Speaker 1: finds new ways of doing things exactly. So say I
Speaker 1: so say we all, I'll start galactical fans out there.
Speaker 1: So you want to go first, well, actually before yeah,
Speaker 1: before we get too far into it, I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what you kind of need
Speaker 1: to know in order to be a hacker. Um, you
Speaker 1: hurt yourself, Well, you need to know how stuff works.
Speaker 1: I mean you can't. You can't take something apart and
Speaker 1: improve it without knowing how it works in the first place. Um,
Speaker 1: or at least you can't do it and hope to
Speaker 1: be successful. So there's certain things that a lot of
Speaker 1: hardware hacks require you to know before you really get
Speaker 1: into them. A lot of that is just things like
Speaker 1: basic electricity, UM, how circuits work. If you're doing something
Speaker 1: with computers, you need to know all about things like
Speaker 1: bits and bites. You may need to know about resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors,
Speaker 1: um A. A healthy knowledge of how to solder is
Speaker 1: very helpful. Yeah, just knowing how to use certain tools
Speaker 1: like wire cutters and you know, or even something as
Speaker 1: basic as a screwdriver. And I'm not talking about the
Speaker 1: drink um and you can have one of those after
Speaker 1: you're done. Yeah, don't drink and hack. So really, hacks
Speaker 1: are not meant for the average person. They really meant
Speaker 1: for people who want to get into the whole um. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, let's figure out how this works. Let's let's see. Uh,
Speaker 1: I want to do some electrical engineering. I mean, the
Speaker 1: average person can get into hacking. Yes, they can learn
Speaker 1: how to do this sort of thing, but you can't
Speaker 1: just jump right in and expect to be successful and
Speaker 1: or safe. Yeah, it might might be a good idea
Speaker 1: to start small and work your way up. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got a small one I can start with. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: uh I saw something written by Michael Berman, who had
Speaker 1: the Maxwell smart shoe phone. Yeah. Yeah, his hack was
Speaker 1: about as simple as it gets. Now, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not I'm not trying to cast aspersions at Michael. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have done this, and he did a great job.
Speaker 1: It was very funny and I appreciate it quite a bit,
Speaker 1: so the Maxwell smartphone. If you aren't familiar with Get
Speaker 1: Smart the television series and not the movie. Not the
Speaker 1: movie so much but the television series Maxwell had a
Speaker 1: special shoe phone that he could use to dial back
Speaker 1: to headquarters. This was in the nineteen sixties before and
Speaker 1: you know, people had cell phones, so this was actually
Speaker 1: a novel kind of idea today, completely unnecessary but still funny.
Speaker 1: So what Michael did was he just he took it
Speaker 1: to the simplest level you can imagine. He took a
Speaker 1: man's dress shoe, he hollowed out part of the heel,
Speaker 1: and he shoved a cell phone into it. Thus you
Speaker 1: have a hacked Maxwell smart shoe phone. And that's really
Speaker 1: as simple as as it gets. I mean, a hack
Speaker 1: does not have to be complicated. It can be very
Speaker 1: very simple. Now the complicated wants tend to get a
Speaker 1: lot more attention. But anyway, that's my first one. All
Speaker 1: right then, UM, I've got a couple uh that I
Speaker 1: picked that I thought were kind of cool, different different
Speaker 1: things you can do. Um and I chose two of
Speaker 1: my favorite sites that I know there are lots and
Speaker 1: lots and lots and lots of hacks on of all kinds,
Speaker 1: um and um. The first one I chose from instructibles
Speaker 1: dot com, which which is an awesome site. UM and
Speaker 1: uh Basically the one I chose was someone had posted
Speaker 1: a way to use bluetooth, your bluetooth cell phone to
Speaker 1: make all the calls using your home's phone wiring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat, um, and I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: into great detail on how to do all these different
Speaker 1: pieces of the puzzle, but you know essentially what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do. Assuming that your your house is already wired
Speaker 1: for a landline service, but isn't connected to a landline,
Speaker 1: maybe you just have a cell phone to make calls. Um,
Speaker 1: you can actually take a cellular gateway and UM, you
Speaker 1: would plug like you go to the place where, if
Speaker 1: you will, like the terminus of all the the home
Speaker 1: phone wiring is and connect the cellular gateway and then
Speaker 1: you hook it up to the phone and uh, once
Speaker 1: you plug in the jacks, the phones into the jacks
Speaker 1: and you're in the different rooms. Uh, that goes back
Speaker 1: to the cellular gateway, which uses Bluetooth to make a
Speaker 1: connection to your phone. Um, and then it sends the
Speaker 1: call out to uh you know, via the cell phone network.
Speaker 1: So it's a very very elegant situation. Of course, you
Speaker 1: have to again went back to what you were saying,
Speaker 1: you have to know a little bit about the wiring.
Speaker 1: You have to know uh something about how the different
Speaker 1: kinds of cables work. You might be working with a
Speaker 1: couple of different kinds of phone cord um, but it's
Speaker 1: pretty neat now. He posed an interesting conundrum, however, So
Speaker 1: what happens if you step out for a while and
Speaker 1: someone's house sitting for you or you know, and it
Speaker 1: needs to make a call, say, I don't know how's
Speaker 1: on fire and they don't have the cell phone? What
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? Then? Well, were you're going to
Speaker 1: answer that? Okay? Well, they were saying that A simple,
Speaker 1: a simple way to get around that is you can
Speaker 1: actually add a second phone, like a paid uh like
Speaker 1: um when the prepaid minutes phones, you know, put an
Speaker 1: hour or worth of minutes on there and put it
Speaker 1: as the backup phone, and it will automatically channel UH
Speaker 1: to the other phone, and it will allow you to
Speaker 1: do that because the cellier gateway can handle making the
Speaker 1: switch from one phone to the other. You know, you
Speaker 1: could prioritize the phone one versus two, or if you
Speaker 1: have a plan, for example, if you and your wife
Speaker 1: were at home and you're on different carriers and one
Speaker 1: of them gets free weekend minutes. You could say, okay,
Speaker 1: well on Saturday and Sunday, we want to use this
Speaker 1: phone to make our calls. And all you have to
Speaker 1: do is pick up the you know phone jack phone
Speaker 1: at the local handset and it would make the call
Speaker 1: for you. So it's a pretty nifty, pretty nifty hack,
Speaker 1: I thought. Now Chris said, uh, specifically that it was
Speaker 1: a pretty elegant solution. Here's an interesting thing. Hacks don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to be elegant. Um, some hacks are really
Speaker 1: not elegant. It's just that they work. That's the most
Speaker 1: important part of any hack is that it works, not
Speaker 1: that it's pretty or that it aesthetically pleasing, which brings
Speaker 1: me to a very specific kind of hack. Um, it's
Speaker 1: a specific you know category, I should say, the Rube
Speaker 1: Goldberg device. Yeah, these are the devices where it's incredibly
Speaker 1: complicated and it just accomplishes a very simple task. So
Speaker 1: it may be something as simple as pressing the toaster
Speaker 1: lever down on your toaster and um, and cooking some toast.
Speaker 1: But it may turn out that you use you know,
Speaker 1: an erector said, and a coffee pot and a host
Speaker 1: of action figures and a fishing rod and all sorts
Speaker 1: of things order to accomplish this. Uh. The idea here
Speaker 1: is to try and make as complex machine as you
Speaker 1: possibly can that's really interesting to look at um and
Speaker 1: has a lot of different moving parts that looks like
Speaker 1: there's no way it should work, and yet it does work.
Speaker 1: And if you've never seen one, actually, YouTube has tons
Speaker 1: and tons of videos on Rube Goldberg devices. I recommend
Speaker 1: checking some of them out because when they work, they're
Speaker 1: really fascinating and and you chances are you have seen one.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a big car commercial that uses
Speaker 1: a Rube Goldberg device to turn a car on at
Speaker 1: one point, um or Peewee's Big Adventure. There you go.
Speaker 1: His breakfast machine was a big Rube Goldberg device, yea.
Speaker 1: And it was named for the you know, someone who
Speaker 1: is fascinated with these, um the drawings used to hear
Speaker 1: in magazines. Yeah, yeah, he would draw these these really
Speaker 1: weird contraptions, and it was that same concept. And of
Speaker 1: course Rube Goldberg was his name, and the device is
Speaker 1: course named after him. And it's so funny to call
Speaker 1: something a Rube Goldberg device. It's as generic a term
Speaker 1: as you can imagine. Because it can look like anything,
Speaker 1: and it can take up an entire house worth of space.
Speaker 1: I've seen some that went multiple levels and through a yard,
Speaker 1: and I mean, they're really fascinating things. And I recommend
Speaker 1: playing Raymond Scott's Powerhouse as you're listening to that. That's
Speaker 1: the song was Dun dun d you know. I have
Speaker 1: a classic hack to um. I'm thinking of John Draper
Speaker 1: Captain Crunch for those of you who who may not know.
Speaker 1: A long time ago, there used to be a whistle,
Speaker 1: a plastic whistle in a box of Captain ground and U.
Speaker 1: John Draper figured out that they hurts tone that the
Speaker 1: whistle made when you blew through it. If you blew
Speaker 1: it into a phone, it would let you make long
Speaker 1: distance calls for free. And even when he was in
Speaker 1: the Armed Forces stationed overseas, people would call him a
Speaker 1: long distance and he could blow the whistle and it
Speaker 1: would basically erase the call from the you know, because
Speaker 1: they had played the tone during that. That's that led
Speaker 1: to a lot of people learning how to hack um,
Speaker 1: you know, making these what they call blue boxes, you know,
Speaker 1: because people like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak used to
Speaker 1: make them for their classmates apparently in college. From what
Speaker 1: I've read, Yeah, the was was has quite the reputation
Speaker 1: of being the phone freak. Oh yes, yes, And and
Speaker 1: soon he will probably be voted off of Dancing with
Speaker 1: the Stars, if he hasn't already by the time this
Speaker 1: place that may have already come to pass, it hasn't
Speaker 1: even shown yet. Yeah, anyway, I hope he comes on
Speaker 1: a seg. I'm voting for him anyway. So I've got
Speaker 1: another one from also from instructibles. Okay. The neat thing
Speaker 1: about instructibles is it's not just that they show you
Speaker 1: a hack, but they will show you how to build
Speaker 1: it yourself, step by step, and in some cases it's
Speaker 1: not that difficult. Now in other cases it takes you know,
Speaker 1: a steady hand, especially when it comes to soldering things
Speaker 1: or taking any sort of potentially expensive piece of electronics apart,
Speaker 1: because you never know if you're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: play back together again. So um, I don't recommend you
Speaker 1: just rush out and try them unless you have a real,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a background with the source of
Speaker 1: stuff already, or are completely willing to ruin something that
Speaker 1: may or may not be valuable to you. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: also have to remember that whenever you open up any electronics,
Speaker 1: chances are you've just voided your warranty. So um, you know,
Speaker 1: anytime you're doing a hack, you know, you don't expect
Speaker 1: you'll be able to return it to the store and say, hey, my,
Speaker 1: my such and such broke because they're gonna say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you broke it. Um. But this one was a Game
Speaker 1: Boy DS that UH was charged by solar panels. So
Speaker 1: in this hack, the hacker used four sixty millimeter by
Speaker 1: sixty millimeter solar panels that perfectly covered the outside case
Speaker 1: of the DS and was able to wire those into
Speaker 1: the battery pack for the the DS, and it can
Speaker 1: charge the battery. Now, the only thing that was missing
Speaker 1: from that particular version of this was a a chip,
Speaker 1: a circuit protection UH chips, so that would prevent over
Speaker 1: charging because otherwise, if you left the DS on the
Speaker 1: sun for too long, it would overcharge the battery, which
Speaker 1: could be bad with a capital by but UH and
Speaker 1: and they hackor acknowledge that said it said that he
Speaker 1: got the chip and now he's redesigning the hacks so
Speaker 1: that it can incorporate the chip. So yeah, look for that.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting little way that you can recharge your
Speaker 1: DS just by leaving in the sun for a couple
Speaker 1: of hours. That's that's that's awesome. Yeah, and you know
Speaker 1: my next hack is a is a Nintendo related hack.
Speaker 1: This one came from Make TV. Actually it's Make magazine,
Speaker 1: which is O'Reilly's. Um. You know, I think this is
Speaker 1: sort of classical hacking because they tell you how to
Speaker 1: do all kinds of things. But um, they love taking
Speaker 1: stuff apart. Um. In fact, they have sort of a
Speaker 1: motto that essentially, if you haven't taken it apart, you
Speaker 1: really don't own it. Um. And uh, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff when I was a kid, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: how much of it works now. I was about saying
Speaker 1: I owned stuff that wasn't even mine. Well, um, the
Speaker 1: one that I thought, well, I I the one that
Speaker 1: I picked. There are tons and tons of cool ones,
Speaker 1: and um, the one I picked was actually from the
Speaker 1: TV show. Uh. They have a podcast which is not
Speaker 1: quite as cool as ours, but pretty cool. Nonetheless, Um,
Speaker 1: you know I have to plug us, you know. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they had someone had made a personal flight data recorder,
Speaker 1: if you will, um, using a we nun chuck of
Speaker 1: for those of you who are familiar with a Nintendo
Speaker 1: WE that's probably just about everybody on this podcast. Um.
Speaker 1: You know that the controllers are have motion sensors in them. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a little chip inside called an accelerometer. And UM,
Speaker 1: it turns out that you don't even have to take
Speaker 1: the nun chuck apart. Um. There is a little piece
Speaker 1: of electronic equipment that you can plug into the end
Speaker 1: of of the plug and uh it allows you to
Speaker 1: access the information in the accelerometer. So, UM, what they
Speaker 1: did was they got a micro controller board. UH. And
Speaker 1: this is a piece of electronic gear. Essentially, it's a
Speaker 1: a circuit board with chips in it. And you know
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing that you that you probably
Speaker 1: find in all kinds of different electronics. It takes user
Speaker 1: input from dials and knobs and translates it into instructions
Speaker 1: for the different electronic components. Well, if your input is
Speaker 1: coming from the WE nunchuck, you have a power source
Speaker 1: in this case, some double A batteries UM, and an
Speaker 1: l C D screen. All it takes is a little
Speaker 1: instruction UM from a laptop. You give it some very
Speaker 1: basic programming. UM. And they made a little plastic box.
Speaker 1: They took a a a Pelican case which is very
Speaker 1: h well known waterproof divers use these to protect different things.
Speaker 1: Because there they locked down in their waterproof um. They
Speaker 1: cut a hole in it for the l c D
Speaker 1: screen and put all the guts inside except for the nunchuck,
Speaker 1: and uh, what it would allow them to do once
Speaker 1: the board was programmed with the information was they basically said, look,
Speaker 1: tell me what the accelerometer is sensing and so uh
Speaker 1: they got it to tell them exactly what kind of
Speaker 1: gravitational force was was pulling on them at the moment.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, they rigged this up and went
Speaker 1: on a roller coaster at the Mall of America and uh,
Speaker 1: it's really great because they're talking about it and he
Speaker 1: said the the the person into the podcast says, look,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm pulling two g s Um. It's absolutely
Speaker 1: cool because you know there's no movie. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just the we nunchuck. UM. It doesn't require very very
Speaker 1: you know, it's it was probably uh, you know, forty
Speaker 1: worth of plastic and uh and circuit boards plus the nunchuck. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, very inexpensive and fun little project to do
Speaker 1: and not something that you would normally find, but really
Speaker 1: cool to see it something like the nunchuck used in
Speaker 1: such an unusual way. I thought, well, moving from very
Speaker 1: inexpensive hacks to incredibly expensive ones, um I have. Actually
Speaker 1: it's another broad category steampunk hacks. Now. I wrote how
Speaker 1: steampunk works and if you're not familiar, steampunk is kind
Speaker 1: of a well started off as a sort of a
Speaker 1: sub genre of fiction that kind of attaches to fantasy
Speaker 1: and science fiction. UM. Now it's almost a cultural thing,
Speaker 1: you know, a subculture. It's gone beyond just literature. The
Speaker 1: idea is that it's, uh, it's exists in a world
Speaker 1: that never was. It's kind of this Victorian age world
Speaker 1: where steam technology um continue to develop beyond things like
Speaker 1: the steam engine, so that everything seems to be steam
Speaker 1: powered and that we, the people who inhabit this world,
Speaker 1: have access to technology comparable to the the kind that
Speaker 1: we have today. But it's all steam powered stuff. So
Speaker 1: there's lots of brass and copper used, and there's lots
Speaker 1: of rivets, and everything looks really industrial and um, it's
Speaker 1: got a very unique look. If you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: what steampunk stuff looks like, you really need to do
Speaker 1: a search because it's very unique and um, I think
Speaker 1: it's gorgeous. Have you've ever seen the Wild Wild West
Speaker 1: TV show? Yeah, you know they would always pull these
Speaker 1: crazy gadgets out, you know, from behind the link in
Speaker 1: the in the train cars and you're going, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't have that kind of stuff. That was sort
Speaker 1: of a I'm guessing probably an inspiration for some of
Speaker 1: the steampunk type stuff because it's sort of in that
Speaker 1: same well, they didn't really have that kind of technology
Speaker 1: that well, you know, it's anachronistic like that. It's it's
Speaker 1: and and it also draws a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of inspiration from the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.
Speaker 1: Those are kind of the two patron saints of steampunk.
Speaker 1: So you think about like twenty Leagues under the Sea
Speaker 1: and you look at the Nautilus. The design of the Nautilus, Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally steampunk, I kind of get it. Or the time
Speaker 1: machine from H. G. Wells, those weren't to burst your bubble,
Speaker 1: I forget I said that anyway. So there are lots
Speaker 1: of people out there who do steampunk hacks where they
Speaker 1: take modern stuff, they tear it apart and they rebuild it.
Speaker 1: So it looks like it kind of has this old,
Speaker 1: tiny look. Retro futurism is a good way of putting
Speaker 1: it because it looks old and yet futuristic at the
Speaker 1: same time. And there are tons and tons of artists
Speaker 1: out there, and a lot of them are really really talented. Um,
Speaker 1: but I was just gonna talk about Data Manswer. Now
Speaker 1: this guy is really really phenomenal. He he will build
Speaker 1: out a steampunk keyboard for you if you want, and
Speaker 1: you can tell him what what materials you want and
Speaker 1: what style you want. And these things range from like
Speaker 1: they're really expensive, mainly because you're talking about workmanship, you're
Speaker 1: talking about materials, because copper is not cheap. Um what
Speaker 1: is if you, you know, go into the street lights
Speaker 1: and stealing. Well, that's sure, but he us not do that,
Speaker 1: I would like to think. Um, actually, I'm sure he
Speaker 1: doesn't do that. Everything has to be on the up
Speaker 1: and up. But he also gives them all really interesting,
Speaker 1: fanciful names. That's kind of part of the culture. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, he has a steampunk computer that is called
Speaker 1: and I'm going to butcher this name, but the Nagy
Speaker 1: Magical movable type pixel O Dynamo Tronic computational engine. Alright,
Speaker 1: then that's his computer and it looks awesome. His keyboards
Speaker 1: are amazing. He's got tons and tons of stuff. If
Speaker 1: you go to data manswer dot net you can see it.
Speaker 1: It's a and and he he agreed to UM to
Speaker 1: let me use some of the images for the article.
Speaker 1: So he's top aces in my book. You know, how
Speaker 1: about you got anything else? Now? You know I had
Speaker 1: my my too big in my classics. Okay. The only
Speaker 1: other thing I can talk about is that there are
Speaker 1: hacks out there that are dangerous. Dangerous hacks not just
Speaker 1: if you don't know what you're doing, but they're dangerous
Speaker 1: even if you do know what you're doing and you
Speaker 1: end up with them. You're not like talking poking yourself
Speaker 1: with a hot soldering I mean, that is dangerous, yes,
Speaker 1: but that's not what I'm talking Sucking yourself with a
Speaker 1: monitor that hasn't discharged the electricity from then also dangerous,
Speaker 1: is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about things
Speaker 1: that are dangerous once you build them and they're working properly,
Speaker 1: like spud guns. That would be dangerous. But some one
Speaker 1: talk like Chris, come on, work with me here about
Speaker 1: things like spud guns or pneumatic rifles. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of these out there and their hacks other and
Speaker 1: most of the people who make the hacks will tell you, hey,
Speaker 1: this is really dangerous stuff and it's neat to do,
Speaker 1: but you've gotta be really, really careful because one, if
Speaker 1: you put too much pressure in these things, they will
Speaker 1: blow up and you will be hurt too. If you
Speaker 1: pointed at someone and you pull a trigger, that person
Speaker 1: will be hurt. Um three. In most in many places,
Speaker 1: it may be illegal to construct such a device, So
Speaker 1: be careful when you are looking around at hacks that
Speaker 1: you want to tackle. Make sure that you know you're
Speaker 1: not going to be violating any laws. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: get any trouble, and you're most importantly, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: hurt yourself or someone else. Right. So that's advice we
Speaker 1: should all live by, don't you think. I think? So
Speaker 1: you know what that brings us to? Oh yep, well,
Speaker 1: listener mail, I wish I could hack that sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: keep wishing. So today's listener mail comes from Dale Johnson
Speaker 1: and this actually came to us via Stuff you should
Speaker 1: know that's a sister podcast of ours, and they wanted
Speaker 1: us to kind of tackle this one because it had
Speaker 1: the word hack in the title. But I don't think
Speaker 1: they read the email very carefully because it's totally different
Speaker 1: kind of hack. This is the hack hacks, the famous
Speaker 1: hacks from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Oh yeah, these are
Speaker 1: the These are not hacks in like the computer hacking
Speaker 1: sense or or really the electronics hacking sense. Basically, they're
Speaker 1: hacking their campus. These are practical jokes that they play,
Speaker 1: and no one ever seems to know exactly who's responsible
Speaker 1: for them. But uh, they make some headlines from time
Speaker 1: to time, opears to be more outrageous. One. There's been
Speaker 1: some really some really really great ones, And I've just
Speaker 1: got a few all run down to give you an
Speaker 1: idea of what kind of hacks were talking about and
Speaker 1: the sick twisted mines behind them. Brilliant, brilliant, sick twisted lines. No,
Speaker 1: I have nothing but admiration for these people. Uh So,
Speaker 1: for instance, here's one. Imagine waking up on m I
Speaker 1: T campus and you're walking toward the h was known
Speaker 1: as the Great Dome building has a huge dome, okay,
Speaker 1: and you look and you notice there's something flashing on
Speaker 1: top of the Dome and you look more carefully and
Speaker 1: there is what appears to be a Chevallet Cavalier cop
Speaker 1: car Campus cop car sitting on top of the dome.
Speaker 1: That night, students had assembled uh the shell of a
Speaker 1: Chevallet Cavalier around a wooden frame and they put working
Speaker 1: lights on it. There was no siren or anything, but
Speaker 1: they put working lights on ran and then they dispersed,
Speaker 1: and the next morning people will see this car on
Speaker 1: top of the Great Dome. It was a pretty cool
Speaker 1: And they've done other things to the Great That's actually
Speaker 1: a really popular place to to pull a classic hack
Speaker 1: because it's such a you know, it's such an iconic
Speaker 1: part of the m I T. Campus. Yes, uh so,
Speaker 1: for instance, in to celebrate the release of the Star
Speaker 1: Wars Episode one prequel, how little we knew back then, Um,
Speaker 1: they turned the Great Dome into our two d two.
Speaker 1: And one of the important things about these hacks is
Speaker 1: they m I T. People don't want to do any
Speaker 1: permanent damage now, so vandalism is out. Anything that would
Speaker 1: cause lots of headaches for someone to fix, that's right
Speaker 1: out the door, because it's considered bad form. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's uh, you know, I haven't really talked to
Speaker 1: anybody personally who's been involved with these, but I think
Speaker 1: that's part of the challenge, is to avoid doing any
Speaker 1: kind of damage. Because sure you could drill holes or
Speaker 1: you know whatever to make things stick or prop them up.
Speaker 1: But if you can do it without doing any damage,
Speaker 1: that hard, you know. And in this case, they use
Speaker 1: brick to make the R two D two panels, so
Speaker 1: they didn't, you know, there was no permit. They didn't
Speaker 1: paint the dome or anything like that. And there's several others.
Speaker 1: There's tons and tons more. I'll just give um two
Speaker 1: really quick ones, uh, and then we can conclude. But
Speaker 1: in two thousands there these both of these captain. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, Uh, the M I. T. Students
Speaker 1: play several do not signs around campus do not something something,
Speaker 1: and uh. They were all jokes that were based upon
Speaker 1: the location that do not sign was left at. So,
Speaker 1: for example, on the Department of Mathematics bulletin board it
Speaker 1: said do not divide by zero. On the window of
Speaker 1: the campus grill, it said do not has cheeseburger. But
Speaker 1: there were other ones, like in the hallway says do
Speaker 1: not do cartwheels, and uh, there's one that was upside
Speaker 1: down and placed way up on the walls as do
Speaker 1: not walk on ceiling. Lots of just silly little stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and they were all over the entire campus.
Speaker 1: And the other one, which I love because of my
Speaker 1: love of zombies. Two thousand and eight during the campus
Speaker 1: preview weekend, so this is when students prospective students are
Speaker 1: coming to the campus to take a look at it.
Speaker 1: Some students installed emergency zombie kits in a couple of
Speaker 1: buildings and it was a big case with a glass
Speaker 1: panel that had a chainsaw in it and it said
Speaker 1: in case of zombie attack, break glass. That's just awesome.
Speaker 1: And these are just a small list. There are there
Speaker 1: are tons and tons of these hacks. I mean, m
Speaker 1: I T is famous for them. Yep. And you know,
Speaker 1: of course that we are going to get at least
Speaker 1: one listener email from someone at cal Tech. He's going
Speaker 1: to point out that cal Tech has its own and
Speaker 1: they that may spawn other listener emails because there are
Speaker 1: some fantastic hacks that have happened all over the country.
Speaker 1: Harvey mud has has pulled pranks on Caltech in the past. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is one of those proud, proud traditions
Speaker 1: of various engineering and technologies colleges throughout the United States. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just m I T is particularly famous for them. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a great disc sussion. I guess we can wrap
Speaker 1: this up. If in any of you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: or comments or corrections for us, you can write us
Speaker 1: at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. And
Speaker 1: remember we have blogs now blogs he blogs, and you
Speaker 1: can read those blogs at blogs dot how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com slash category slash tech stuff. And remember you
Speaker 1: can read all about this sort of information on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And we will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
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