Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from hast
Speaker 1: dot com. Heyl and welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today I thought I would address some listener mail.
Speaker 1: I haven't done that in a while. And by address,
Speaker 1: I mean read it and answer it, as opposed to
Speaker 1: spinning out an address. You know what I meant at
Speaker 1: any rate to We're going to be looking at several
Speaker 1: questions and comments, including a correction, and also a little
Speaker 1: bit later, I'm going to bring in a special mystery
Speaker 1: guest to talk about one of the specific pieces that
Speaker 1: were sent in to me. So let's get started. The
Speaker 1: first message says, hello, longtime listener, first time emailer. I
Speaker 1: wanted to slip in a quick correction in regards to
Speaker 1: the Aircraft Carriers episode. In the episode, you said that
Speaker 1: the US aircraft carrier, the Hornet, was sunk. It's actually not.
Speaker 1: It's anchored in Oakland, California, across the Bay from San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and it's open as a museum to teach visitors about
Speaker 1: how aircraft carriers work. The flight deck, maintenance deck, and
Speaker 1: some lower decks are open to explore with or without
Speaker 1: a tour. The island and engine room are open for tours.
Speaker 1: There's even an Apollo capsule on board, as the Hornet
Speaker 1: was the recovery ship for two Apollo missions. If you're
Speaker 1: ever in or around Oakland, check it out. Regards Alan, Alan,
Speaker 1: thanks for sending in that correction. That's really awesome. The
Speaker 1: Hornet was one of the stories that I thought was
Speaker 1: particularly cool, and uh, and on it was an honest
Speaker 1: mistake on my part. I had so many notes about
Speaker 1: so many different aircraft carriers, and I should have been
Speaker 1: more careful making sure that all of those were accurate.
Speaker 1: And uh, Scott is not his fault at all. It's
Speaker 1: all on me. I shall admonish myself repeatedly. Next, Dan
Speaker 1: from Twitter asked, did I buy an Apple Uch? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: well we're ready to move on. Well, I guess I
Speaker 1: can address this a little further. Uh, I did not
Speaker 1: buy an Apple watch. I don't have an iPhone, so
Speaker 1: an Apple watch would be useless to me, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to invest in an iPhone just to get
Speaker 1: an Apple watch. That would end up being an incredibly
Speaker 1: expensive endeavor. I mean, you're talking around bucks for the watch,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, before you really start looking at
Speaker 1: really nice bands. Or anything like that. Then you've got
Speaker 1: another couple of hundred bucks for the iPhone, plus the
Speaker 1: monthly fee for it and everything, and all of my
Speaker 1: stuff is currently in the Android operating system universe. I
Speaker 1: use a Nexus six as my smartphone. That's not a
Speaker 1: plug for Android, it's not a plug for the Nexus
Speaker 1: line of phones. I like it, and I'm used to it,
Speaker 1: and all of my stuff is in that ecosystem, so
Speaker 1: it would be very arduous to switch to a different
Speaker 1: one at this point. I think the Apple Watches an
Speaker 1: interesting product. I'm curious how well it will do in
Speaker 1: the long run. As I record this, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of stories about the Apple Watch getting some recalls because
Speaker 1: of a faulty vibrating motor that's in some of them,
Speaker 1: and that the production may have slowed down quite a bit,
Speaker 1: which means it's going to take even longer for people
Speaker 1: to get their pre ordered watches. Um it's it's a
Speaker 1: bit of an issue for Apple, And honestly, the wearables
Speaker 1: field is still one of those where a lot of
Speaker 1: people are expressing a lot of skepticism about, you know what,
Speaker 1: what's actually the utility of a smart watch? Is there
Speaker 1: a need for it? Um, I own a Pebble, which
Speaker 1: I would say is a smart ish watch. It is
Speaker 1: good for giving me notifications that are coming through my phone,
Speaker 1: which is actually really useful for me. I don't always
Speaker 1: notice when my phone vibrates in my pocket, even though
Speaker 1: the next of six is as large as some countries.
Speaker 1: I don't always notice when it's vibrating. However, the motor
Speaker 1: that's inside my watch, when it vibrates on my wrist,
Speaker 1: I absolutely noticed that. And uh, it gives me the
Speaker 1: notifications of who is calling or if I've received a
Speaker 1: text message or some other notification. And I love that.
Speaker 1: That to me is perfect, And uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not super high tech as far as smart watches go.
Speaker 1: It's not like there's a whole bunch of other usefulness
Speaker 1: with it, apart from some of the cool apps you
Speaker 1: can have, and you can do some controls with your smartphone,
Speaker 1: like advancing through tracks in an audio list, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. That stuff is interesting and neat, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't have a whole lot of utility beyond that. The
Speaker 1: Apple Watch obviously is supposed to be more robust, and
Speaker 1: I hope it does well because I want to see
Speaker 1: this kind of technology. This, this whole branch of technology
Speaker 1: continue and advance and evolve. And my worry is that
Speaker 1: if the Apple Watch ultimately does not do well, because
Speaker 1: it's such a high profile product, it could sink the
Speaker 1: entire branch of technology or set it back by a
Speaker 1: couple of years. It kind of reminds me of the
Speaker 1: days when virtual reality things were coming out and people
Speaker 1: were first getting a chance to actually use them, and
Speaker 1: they became disappointed, disenchanted with the technology that they thought
Speaker 1: was going to be amazing and turned out not to
Speaker 1: be as amazing as they had hoped, and it's set
Speaker 1: the entire field back by at least five years because
Speaker 1: no one wanted to fund something that people no longer
Speaker 1: had any interest or faith in. So my hope is
Speaker 1: that the Apple Watch does well. I do not plan
Speaker 1: to get one again, because I don't have an iPhone.
Speaker 1: I may end up picking up a different smart watch.
Speaker 1: There were a few that I supported on various crowdsourcing campaigns.
Speaker 1: I'm still waiting on all three of the one that
Speaker 1: I supported, one of which is not even a smart watch.
Speaker 1: It's it's a just a cool concept watch. And so
Speaker 1: I don't think i'd be eager to jump on the
Speaker 1: smart watch train even if I did have an iPhone,
Speaker 1: simply because I've already spent money on watches that I
Speaker 1: don't have. Um and that's another discussion for another day.
Speaker 1: The entire idea of crowdsourcing, you know, crowdfunding a technology project.
Speaker 1: Is that a good idea? What are the dangers? I
Speaker 1: should probably do a full episode about that. I know
Speaker 1: I've talked about once or twice in previous episodes, but
Speaker 1: we should probably go into an in depth discussion about
Speaker 1: what is What should your expectations be if you participate
Speaker 1: in that sort of thing. So there's your long answer
Speaker 1: to your simple question. Uh no, And because all right,
Speaker 1: we'll move on to the next one. Luke on Twitter
Speaker 1: asks how soon I expect we'll see stores like Kinko's
Speaker 1: get three D printers for customers to us. I think
Speaker 1: that's actually gonna be probably at least a couple of
Speaker 1: years further down the line from the thing I think
Speaker 1: three D pryers are really going to be useful for
Speaker 1: is gonna be on demand fabrication for small businesses, meaning
Speaker 1: that instead of having a giant furniture store with an
Speaker 1: enormous warehouse, like Ikea, where you've got, you know, tons
Speaker 1: of inventory, and you have no way of knowing how
Speaker 1: how well one is going to sell versus other versions
Speaker 1: of the same sort of stuff, Like how how well
Speaker 1: is this one cabinet gonna sell compared to this other cabinet,
Speaker 1: both of which have Norwegian or Danish or Swedish or
Speaker 1: Swiss or some Scandinavian name that has far more oom
Speaker 1: louds than is remotely necessary. Um, how well is that
Speaker 1: going to sell versus any other one? You have to
Speaker 1: keep enough in stock so that you meet whatever demands
Speaker 1: you expect there to be, but there's no way of
Speaker 1: knowing from one day to the next how popular an
Speaker 1: item is going to be, even if you put one
Speaker 1: on sale and one's not on sale. Three D printers, however,
Speaker 1: can let you get around that. You don't have to
Speaker 1: have a huge warehouse to store all of your inventory.
Speaker 1: You can have essentially a storage space for the raw
Speaker 1: material for your printer, and then you create the items
Speaker 1: on demand when you get in order. So if someone
Speaker 1: wants a particular cabinet, you print out the parts and
Speaker 1: then sell the kit to the customer. You don't have
Speaker 1: to keep eight different types of cabinets and storage. You
Speaker 1: just keep the digital plans and you print them as needed.
Speaker 1: I think that's gonna be a very popular business model
Speaker 1: once we get to a point where these printers that
Speaker 1: are are ready for commercial use like that fall into
Speaker 1: the range that a small business can can actually make
Speaker 1: that a workable business model. It's pretty expensive if you
Speaker 1: want a really high quality three D printer, especially one
Speaker 1: that can produced on an industrial level, even a small
Speaker 1: industrial level, asked for things like Kinko's. I think that's
Speaker 1: gonna take more time. Uh. And I think there's gonna
Speaker 1: be some barriers as well, because obviously, you if you
Speaker 1: are a business like Kinkos, you want to be able
Speaker 1: to have at least some control over what is getting
Speaker 1: sent to that three D printer. Uh. If it's something
Speaker 1: that is illegal, for example, or the legality is questionable,
Speaker 1: for example, a three D printed gun. That's that could
Speaker 1: be a concern, especially if there were any crime associated
Speaker 1: with that weapon down the line, and it gets brought
Speaker 1: in that your establishment was the one that allowed it
Speaker 1: to be printed. There could be some legal complications that.
Speaker 1: I bet a lot of the big companies don't want
Speaker 1: to get bogged down in and it may be that
Speaker 1: eventually things work out where the accountability lies with other
Speaker 1: other players and not the company that act is housing
Speaker 1: the three D printer, in which case you know it
Speaker 1: may be open season. No pun intended with the gun
Speaker 1: thing to allow everyone to send whatever they want to
Speaker 1: the printer, and as long as they're paying the rate
Speaker 1: for however much plastic is going through the extruder, they're fine.
Speaker 1: So I think we'll see the fabrication on demand model first.
Speaker 1: Of course, three D printers are already being used in
Speaker 1: research and development as well as in manufacturing for other reasons.
Speaker 1: But but the as far as customers getting access to
Speaker 1: three D printers, I think it will be fabrication on demand,
Speaker 1: where the company will be the one responsible for sending
Speaker 1: the specific plan to the specific printer, and the customer
Speaker 1: only says okay, I want this item, so they don't
Speaker 1: get to say exactly what gets printed. And then maybe
Speaker 1: a couple of years later we'll see models where people
Speaker 1: can send their their digital file to a printer directly
Speaker 1: without having to just choose from a catalog of files.
Speaker 1: Um In the meantime, you know there will be plenty
Speaker 1: of people who will just go out and buy their
Speaker 1: own three D printer. Depending upon how much money they spend,
Speaker 1: the stuff they print may or may not look really great,
Speaker 1: or it may look kind of clunky. I've seen some
Speaker 1: three D printers where the the fidelity, the resolution is
Speaker 1: incredible and you you can feel the edges of each layer,
Speaker 1: but you can't really see them easily. And then I've
Speaker 1: seen other ones where it's very apparent where each layer
Speaker 1: is kind of overhanging the next layer by you know,
Speaker 1: a millimeter or whatever, and it's very noticeable. Uh So
Speaker 1: we'll see. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I suspect not.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll go to the next question. Nathaniel from
Speaker 1: Twitter asked how track pads register input. How does a
Speaker 1: track pad know where your finger is? There are two
Speaker 1: main ways that track pads are manufactured. There are resistive
Speaker 1: track pads and capacitive track pads or touch pads. And
Speaker 1: I know I've talked about this on the show before,
Speaker 1: but it you know, I'll go ahead and explain how
Speaker 1: these work because I think it is interesting. So the
Speaker 1: resist of touch pads or track pads are the easiest
Speaker 1: to understand. Um they're also not as not necessarily as
Speaker 1: resilient as capacity, but we'll get there. So resistive touch
Speaker 1: pads use a couple of different films with kind of
Speaker 1: a uh electrodes. Well, one film will have an electrode
Speaker 1: on it, uh, the next film like a sandwich filling
Speaker 1: that one would be uh somewhat resistive, and then you
Speaker 1: would have a bottom plate that would also have an
Speaker 1: electrode on it. So you've got electrodes separated by a
Speaker 1: resistive film. When you press down on the surface of
Speaker 1: the top layer, it presses that electrode closer to the
Speaker 1: other electrode on the bottom and you end up creating
Speaker 1: essentially a circuit. There is a connection there. And if
Speaker 1: you think about the two films as as sort of wires,
Speaker 1: right like, you have a series of horizontal wires along
Speaker 1: one film and vertical wires along the other electrode. Then
Speaker 1: you've got a grid. So imagine you've got this grid there.
Speaker 1: When you put pressure on the touch pad, it acts
Speaker 1: like these It pushes these these two wires together at
Speaker 1: some point on that grid, and by locating the the
Speaker 1: area of connection along that grid, a computer knows, oh,
Speaker 1: there has been a touch registered at this point on
Speaker 1: the touch pad. So um, you know, it's almost like
Speaker 1: a spider web, right, So you've got this this grid
Speaker 1: of connections and when you press down, it sends the signal,
Speaker 1: and by measuring that signal, the computer can tell where
Speaker 1: along the touchpad you are touching. Capacity is a little different,
Speaker 1: so instead of instead of it being the series of
Speaker 1: wires and the physical connection is what indicates where there's
Speaker 1: a touch, Capacity creates an electric field when your finger
Speaker 1: encounters that electric field. Really, any capacitive or conductive surface
Speaker 1: I should say, not capacity, but a conductive surface, it
Speaker 1: alters that electric field, and sensors inside the device can
Speaker 1: detect where that that point of contact is based upon
Speaker 1: the change of the electric field itself. Now, this is
Speaker 1: why if you use gloves that don't have a conductive
Speaker 1: surface on them, so they don't have like conductive thread
Speaker 1: woven into them or anything, it's very difficult to get
Speaker 1: a capacitive touchscreen to work because you're you don't have
Speaker 1: a conductive urface interfering with that electric field. Generally speaking,
Speaker 1: gloves don't tend to be conductive unless again, you have
Speaker 1: that conductive thread woven into them. It's also why I
Speaker 1: remember a story from several years ago that people. I
Speaker 1: want to say it was in Japan, we're starting to
Speaker 1: use hot dogs as a stylus for their smartphones when
Speaker 1: it would get cold, so they would have gloves and
Speaker 1: use a hot dog, which would be conductive if they
Speaker 1: would use that to make selections and commands on their phones. Um.
Speaker 1: So with the resistive approach, it's all dependent upon pressure
Speaker 1: you have to press, and if you're not pressing hard
Speaker 1: enough to make the contact with those wires, then it
Speaker 1: won't be registered. With the capacity of it's not dependent
Speaker 1: upon pressure. You don't need to push harder to make
Speaker 1: a stronger electric field, although it may by pressing harder
Speaker 1: indicate a larger surface area coming into contact with the screen,
Speaker 1: which you know, you could design a program that would
Speaker 1: react differently depending upon how much pressure was applied, simply
Speaker 1: by many sharing how much surface areas being affected. Ah.
Speaker 1: The problem with the resilience that was talking about earlier
Speaker 1: is that, at least with earlier resistive touch pads, the
Speaker 1: more you would move around, the more you would use it,
Speaker 1: the more it would start to wear down, and over
Speaker 1: time your touch pad would become less responsive because it
Speaker 1: was starting to just wear away from use. Whereas capacitive ones.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to have this hard contact
Speaker 1: to make sure that it's registering a touch, and they
Speaker 1: could last longer for a while. Capacity of touch pads
Speaker 1: were much more expensive than resistive, so resistive we're very popular,
Speaker 1: particularly in industrial uses where you might have like a
Speaker 1: tablet that has a resistive screen and it's meant for
Speaker 1: heavy duty use. There's no point in making it delicate
Speaker 1: because it was going to be in a tough environment anyway,
Speaker 1: and resistive was really popular. These days, the difference in
Speaker 1: price is not as great, so we mostly see capacity
Speaker 1: of screens but reicularly in things like smartphones and tablets.
Speaker 1: So I hope that answers that question. All right, let's
Speaker 1: move on to the next email. This one comes from
Speaker 1: Greg and says, Hey, Jonathan, I enjoy your show Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff and forward Thinking a lot. Y'all are some real
Speaker 1: gangster's thanks. I don't really think of myself as gangster.
Speaker 1: That's that's a new one for me. So you did
Speaker 1: an episode on TV Connectors recently and mentioned impedance gain
Speaker 1: and attenuation and then said that could be its own podcast.
Speaker 1: So I'd love to hear a podcast about those topics.
Speaker 1: Maybe also explain decibels as well. All right, Greg, here goes.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be an attempt on my part to
Speaker 1: explain these concepts. First of all, I gotta come clean,
Speaker 1: because you know, have you ever had that experience where
Speaker 1: you encounter a word and you have to say the
Speaker 1: word out loud, and then you realize as you're about
Speaker 1: to say the word out loud that you have never
Speaker 1: really heard that word spoken before, or if you had,
Speaker 1: you hadn't really paid attention, and so you just have
Speaker 1: to give a wild guess as to how it's pronounced,
Speaker 1: and then you guess wrong. Because that is exactly what
Speaker 1: happened to me the last time I talked about impedance.
Speaker 1: I believe I meant I pronounced it impedence, which, while hilarious,
Speaker 1: is not correct. So if any of my listeners out
Speaker 1: there tried to follow my lead and found themselves in
Speaker 1: socially awkward situations because of their pronunciation, I humbly apologize, Um,
Speaker 1: but no, that was definitely one of those cases where
Speaker 1: in my brain I'm like, oh, it has to be
Speaker 1: spelled like are pronounced like this because the way it's spelled,
Speaker 1: and I was absolutely wrong. And in fact, if I
Speaker 1: had thought about it for a second, I would have
Speaker 1: realized how wrong I was, because it's about impeding. It's
Speaker 1: impedence because it impedes the flow of electricity. But I'm
Speaker 1: getting ahead of myself. So when when we talk about impedance,
Speaker 1: we need to first talk about voltage. And for those
Speaker 1: of you who have taken physics and you know all
Speaker 1: about circuitry and voltage and current uh and resistance, I apologize,
Speaker 1: But in order to explain impedance, I kind of have
Speaker 1: to lay some groundwork, So just stick with me here.
Speaker 1: Voltage is the difference in electrical energy charge of electrical
Speaker 1: potential energy between two points. Uh. And that sounds weird,
Speaker 1: but another way to look at is that voltage is
Speaker 1: how we describe an electric field. We measure electric fields
Speaker 1: and volts over a distance, so you have to have
Speaker 1: a difference in voltage in order for current to flow.
Speaker 1: Another way of thinking that is you need to have
Speaker 1: an excess of electrons on one side of your circuit
Speaker 1: and a place for electrons to go on the other
Speaker 1: side of your circuit, and that is a difference in voltage.
Speaker 1: You have a positive charge on one side and a
Speaker 1: negative charge on the other. And that allows the electrons
Speaker 1: to move from negative to positive. We won't go into
Speaker 1: the difference between the flow of electrons and the flow
Speaker 1: of current here. I know I've talked about that in
Speaker 1: previous episodes of tech Stuff, and it's not really relevant
Speaker 1: in this case. You just need to know that voltage
Speaker 1: is this difference in electric charge and electric potential energy
Speaker 1: between two points across some distance. When you apply voltage
Speaker 1: to a circuit, that's when you induce electricity to flow
Speaker 1: through that circuit. Now, the circuit is made of some
Speaker 1: sort of conductive material. Now, conductive material doesn't allow electricity
Speaker 1: to flow through effortlessly. There's an opposition to the flow
Speaker 1: of electricity, and it's called resistance. And resistance depends upon
Speaker 1: a couple of different factors um well several. Actually, it
Speaker 1: depends upon the material. It depends upon how much the
Speaker 1: material is there. In other words, if you have a
Speaker 1: very small copper wire that actually has a much higher
Speaker 1: resistance than say, very thick copper cable. It also depends
Speaker 1: upon temperature. You know, super cooling semiconductors can reduce the
Speaker 1: resistance to near zero or effectively zero, and you get
Speaker 1: you know, free and clear electricity. Flowing through without any resistance,
Speaker 1: and you know, otherwise what happens is the opposition to
Speaker 1: that electrical flow will end up having you uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the component will actually start to generate heat. And this
Speaker 1: is where we talk about how efficient and electronic devices.
Speaker 1: If it's generating a lot of heat, you're losing a
Speaker 1: lot of energy to heat. That electricity is being converted
Speaker 1: into heat energy and not doing whatever it was you
Speaker 1: were hoping for it to do, unless, of course, it
Speaker 1: was a heating component, in which case it's doing exactly
Speaker 1: what you wanted it to do. So that's resistance. Now.
Speaker 1: In direct current circuits, resistance suffices as the term we
Speaker 1: use for this phenomenon. But with alternating current a C applications,
Speaker 1: these are different because the current alternates. It flows in
Speaker 1: one direction the circuit and then flows in the opposite direction. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it does this in cycles different frequencies that will
Speaker 1: usually it's in a single frequency, but the frequencies can
Speaker 1: vary depending upon the technology we're talking about. So in
Speaker 1: this case we don't use the term resistance. We actually
Speaker 1: use a different term, and that is impedance because uh,
Speaker 1: impedance relies on two factors, not just the magnitude, which
Speaker 1: is pretty much what resistance is considered concerned with, but
Speaker 1: the phase of the of the system as well. UH
Speaker 1: So impedance impedes the flow of electricity, but it consists
Speaker 1: of reactants as well as resistance, and reactance is the
Speaker 1: extent to which a circuit stores and releases energy as
Speaker 1: the current and voltage fluctuate with each alternating current cycle.
Speaker 1: So we describe reactance in terms terms of ohms, and
Speaker 1: it really only applies to a C circuits. Reactance allows
Speaker 1: us to use circuit components such as capacitors and inductors.
Speaker 1: Capacitors store energy in an electric field and inductor's store
Speaker 1: energy in a magnetic field, and both can operate as
Speaker 1: resistors and they don't generate heat the same way that
Speaker 1: resistors do, so they're very useful in a C circuitry.
Speaker 1: So that's impedance. Uh it's an important factor whenever you're
Speaker 1: designing any kind of electronic component that has that's working
Speaker 1: on a C. Next, we have gain, which is the
Speaker 1: next thing that that Greg asked us about. This is
Speaker 1: also known as the amplification factor, and it gives you
Speaker 1: some clue as to what's going on with gain. It's
Speaker 1: all about amplifying a signal to boost its strength from
Speaker 1: input to output. So you've got an incoming signal, then
Speaker 1: you use a means of amplification to increase the strength
Speaker 1: of that signal, so it's the same frequency but greater amplitude,
Speaker 1: and then you put it through the output. This is
Speaker 1: used in all sorts of applications. The easiest one to
Speaker 1: imagine happens to be sound, where a microphone will convert
Speaker 1: acoustic waves into electrical impulses that then will go to
Speaker 1: a an amplifier before going to a speaker in order
Speaker 1: to strengthen the signals so that you can get an
Speaker 1: audible acoustic wave on the other end once you get
Speaker 1: through the stereo. But amplifiers are used for all sorts
Speaker 1: of technology, not just acoustic technology. At any rate, we
Speaker 1: express gain in terms of decibels, and this is where
Speaker 1: things get a little confusing for people often because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are familiar with decibels as
Speaker 1: a means of measuring the volume of sound. But it's
Speaker 1: be It's not just the volume of sound, it's the
Speaker 1: strength of signals. And the decibel is a logarithmic unit,
Speaker 1: which makes it a little tricky to understand, particularly you're
Speaker 1: mostly familiar with them. In terms of that sound magnitude
Speaker 1: gains more about um in electronics anyway, it's about electric
Speaker 1: signal strength, not about sound volume. Uh. And decibels are
Speaker 1: really a way of describing two different levels of signal strength,
Speaker 1: you you know, instead of just saying this one stronger
Speaker 1: than that one, it's a way of giving a unit
Speaker 1: to it and saying this is how much stronger the
Speaker 1: signal is going out than it was coming in. You know,
Speaker 1: we were talking about amplifying, So the incoming signal is
Speaker 1: at a certain strength. How do you describe the outgoing
Speaker 1: strength compared to the incoming strength. Let's talk about sound
Speaker 1: first though. So when we're considering sound, near total silence
Speaker 1: is zero decibels, and it acts as our starting point.
Speaker 1: So this isn't completely silent. It's not like what you
Speaker 1: would experience if you were somehow able to live out
Speaker 1: in space where there's no sound. Uh. This it's a
Speaker 1: ventially the strength of the smallest audible sound. Now, a
Speaker 1: sound that's ten times louder than that than zero decibels
Speaker 1: would be at ten decibels, but a sound one hundred
Speaker 1: times more powerful than zero isn't one hundred decibels, it's
Speaker 1: twenty decibels. And a sound one thousand times stronger than
Speaker 1: zero decibles isn't one thousand dB or decibels, it's thirty decibels. Now,
Speaker 1: normal conversation is in the range of sixty decibles. A
Speaker 1: car horn is around a hundred ten decibles, a jet
Speaker 1: engine is around one twenty decibles. A gunshot right at
Speaker 1: the sources about a hundred forty decibels. So in this case,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the difference in intensity on a logarithmic
Speaker 1: scale from being practically silent now amplic amplification factors are
Speaker 1: a little different because you can actually have negative decibels
Speaker 1: and sound. That doesn't make any sense. It's not like
Speaker 1: you could be quieter than silent or get somehow more
Speaker 1: quiet than no noise at all. That's not what negative
Speaker 1: decibels means. Instead, what it means is that you have
Speaker 1: an incoming signal and then you step down the power
Speaker 1: of that signal before you put it through output, So
Speaker 1: you can have negative decibels the incoming signal is stronger
Speaker 1: than the outgoing signal. Is This is also really important
Speaker 1: for um sound engineers as well. So UH, that is
Speaker 1: an amplification that is attenuation, but more on that in
Speaker 1: a second. So with gain, we're talking about boosting signal
Speaker 1: power and not stepping it down. Game can boost a
Speaker 1: signal's power a few decipls two around thirty deciples and
Speaker 1: strength depending upon the application, and you can also cascade
Speaker 1: amplification to boost it further. But there is a problem
Speaker 1: in that amplification can introduce noise into the signal, and
Speaker 1: each time you amplify that signal again, it's going to
Speaker 1: also amplify the noise, So you can't continuously amplify a signal.
Speaker 1: Eventually you're going to have so much noise that there
Speaker 1: won't be any signal anymore. It ends up creating distortion,
Speaker 1: so you have a limitation of practical limitation on how
Speaker 1: much you can amplify a signal. Attenuation going back to
Speaker 1: that is the reduction of a signal strength. So this
Speaker 1: can be any signal, doesn't have to be an electric signal. UH.
Speaker 1: Sunglasses attenuate the light that comes from the sun that
Speaker 1: hits your eyeballs, for example. UH. This is also called loss.
Speaker 1: Often in the UH, the the engineering electrical engineering BIZ
Speaker 1: and signals attenuate over distance. It's just something that happens.
Speaker 1: So radio waves will attenuate over a distance, UM light
Speaker 1: will attenuate over distance across things like fiber optic cables.
Speaker 1: Electricity will attenuate over great distances. And it's one of
Speaker 1: those problems that engineers had to get around using various means,
Speaker 1: one of the big ones being repeaters. So let's say
Speaker 1: you've got a cable and you've got a signal going
Speaker 1: through the cable. It's going to attenuate as it travels
Speaker 1: down this cable. You may have to have a repeater
Speaker 1: that would take in the incoming signal and generate a
Speaker 1: new one to continue down the line to keep on
Speaker 1: going toward its destination. And you might have multiple repeaters
Speaker 1: across an entire network in order to get signals to
Speaker 1: go from point A to point B. So attenuation is
Speaker 1: just a fact of physics. You know, you can't you
Speaker 1: can't engineer your way around it entirely. You can find
Speaker 1: better and better ways of preserving signals so that they
Speaker 1: attenuate more slowly. And in fact, if you look at
Speaker 1: uh the attenuation in cables, the less attenuation per distance
Speaker 1: you have, the more efficient that cable is there's some
Speaker 1: cable manufacturers that really rely on this as a way
Speaker 1: of saying, hey, our cables are way better than our
Speaker 1: competitor is because we have very little loss. We have
Speaker 1: engineered our cables so that they are superior in most cases,
Speaker 1: at least for consumers. I would argue that the difference
Speaker 1: is negligible. The signal loss is so small and the
Speaker 1: error correction and most electronics is so good that it
Speaker 1: would be difficult to notice as a consumer, if not
Speaker 1: impossible to notice. Um However, depending upon what you're using
Speaker 1: it for, if it's something super high end and you're
Speaker 1: having to have truly very long cables, attenuation can be
Speaker 1: a problem. This is particularly an issue with like quantum computing.
Speaker 1: In fact, with quantum computing right now, we expect that
Speaker 1: there is a hard limit to how far away you
Speaker 1: could have nodes be from one another in order to
Speaker 1: communicate effectively. I believe I don't have this figure in
Speaker 1: front of me, but I believe that the theoretical upper
Speaker 1: limit is somewhere around five kilometers, and beyond that you
Speaker 1: would not be able to have a quantum computer network
Speaker 1: be able to communicate with a node to node. So
Speaker 1: that's an issue um. It's one of the limiting factors.
Speaker 1: It maybe that that means we'll have quantum computing networks,
Speaker 1: but never a quantum Internet, not a true one anyway,
Speaker 1: that's a possibility. Anyway. I hope that ends up explaining
Speaker 1: the concepts of impedance, gain and attenuation. Uh. It's pretty
Speaker 1: interesting stuff and uh, I feel like I could go
Speaker 1: on a lot more about that, probably bring in a
Speaker 1: couple of engineers and really talk about it. But I
Speaker 1: hope that serves as a good introduction into the concepts.
Speaker 1: Let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. You know,
Speaker 1: mailing and shipping can really be a big pain. If
Speaker 1: you go to the post office, you have to stand
Speaker 1: in line, and if you don't go to the post office,
Speaker 1: then your only other choice seems to be a postage meter,
Speaker 1: which is really expensive. But in fact, there is another way,
Speaker 1: a better way, stamps dot com. With stamps dot com,
Speaker 1: you can buy and print official United States postage for
Speaker 1: any letter or package using your own computer and your
Speaker 1: own printer. And I've used this. I've used the there's
Speaker 1: a scale you can get and it's fantastic. It plugs
Speaker 1: in via USB to your laptop. It makes it figuring
Speaker 1: out postage incredibly simple. You just send it to the
Speaker 1: printer you're ready to go. Incredibly useful if you have
Speaker 1: a Kickstarter campaign and you're going to be mailing out
Speaker 1: a lot of rewards you have a small business. I
Speaker 1: can't recommend it highly enough and in fact, right now
Speaker 1: use the promo code text stuff for this special offer.
Speaker 1: There is a no risk trial and you will get
Speaker 1: a hundred and ten dollars and bonuses that includes fifty
Speaker 1: five dollars free postage. Go to stamps dot com, click
Speaker 1: on the microphone at the top of the homepage and
Speaker 1: enter text stuff that stamps dot com and enter text
Speaker 1: stuff all right. Our next piece of listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from listener Keegan McDougall, who had a really cool question. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Kegan was asking about a philosophical question and ethical
Speaker 1: question that is called the trolley problem and wanted to
Speaker 1: know how it relates to autonomous cars. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is a point where I could kind
Speaker 1: of give my own answer and that would be fine,
Speaker 1: but I think it would really benefit from an actual discussion,
Speaker 1: which is why I have invited my super secret guest star,
Speaker 1: whom I alluded to earlier in the show, and it
Speaker 1: turns out to be Ben bowling of car stuff and
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. I think both
Speaker 1: of those shows relate to the topic we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about. Yeah, hey, thanks for having me on. And
Speaker 1: I gotta say I love the Listener Male episodes. So
Speaker 1: this is a really great question that ke Getting has asked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think first obviously we should probably talk
Speaker 1: about what the trolley problem is, what the trolley question is,
Speaker 1: and this is really kind of a cognitive science slash
Speaker 1: um ethical slash moral quandary kind of question, and it's
Speaker 1: a hypothetical situation, thankfully not not a practical exam So
Speaker 1: the the hypothetical question that the most basic version of
Speaker 1: this is that there is a track and a trolley
Speaker 1: is out of control running down this track, and the
Speaker 1: there is a person on the track, and if the
Speaker 1: trolley are actually there's five people on on the track,
Speaker 1: and if the trolley continues it will collide with and
Speaker 1: presumably kill all five of these people. You are next
Speaker 1: to a switch that will switch the track to a
Speaker 1: separate run of track, and there's one person on that
Speaker 1: separate one. So if you pull the switch. You will
Speaker 1: save the five people from certain death, but you will
Speaker 1: condemn the person who's on the separate track to death.
Speaker 1: And the question is do you pull the trick the
Speaker 1: lever or not do you actually make that move? Uh?
Speaker 1: And it's not like there's a a right or wrong
Speaker 1: answer to this. There there are answers that more people
Speaker 1: are that freque will frequently give um And most people
Speaker 1: would say that to save one to you know, to
Speaker 1: sacrifice one person, to say five people makes the most sense.
Speaker 1: We're doing the vulcan response, right, Right, the needs of
Speaker 1: the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: also known as the utilitarian response. Right. That's a very
Speaker 1: common way of looking at it. And then there are
Speaker 1: variations on this this question, like what if instead of
Speaker 1: pulling a lever, you are on the trolley and the
Speaker 1: trolley is out of control and it's heading towards five
Speaker 1: people on the track, and you can stop the trolley
Speaker 1: if you push a fat person who's on the trolley
Speaker 1: with you out in front. The trolley will hit the
Speaker 1: fat person and come to a stop before hitting anyone else.
Speaker 1: That means you actively have to kill a person. It's
Speaker 1: not so much you pull a switch and someone else
Speaker 1: dies instead of five people, you are actively killing them.
Speaker 1: And now we start seeing people say I don't know
Speaker 1: that I could do that. Taking no action and allowing
Speaker 1: people to die feels differently than taking an active role
Speaker 1: and killing someone to prevent five other people from dying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And other people would argue, well, you're still committing a
Speaker 1: murder by pulling the switch, just a more comfortable thing,
Speaker 1: sort of similar to uh, sort of similar to buying
Speaker 1: prepared food versus going into the forest and killing your
Speaker 1: own thing, right, or or if you want to think
Speaker 1: of a in a in a kind of a military way,
Speaker 1: it could be the general calling for the order of
Speaker 1: the big push as opposed to someone who's actually on
Speaker 1: the front lines who would make that same call. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really good point, which that actually comes up
Speaker 1: in a lot of war crime trial. Oh yeah, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: if you look at the history of World War One,
Speaker 1: that was the history of World War One, right, there
Speaker 1: were lots of criticisms leveled against generals who were who
Speaker 1: seemed far too eager to commit huge numbers of soldiers
Speaker 1: to potential death and destruction for what we're often seen
Speaker 1: as arbitrary gains. But getting back to the trolley problem
Speaker 1: and the question Kegan had. The reason this relates back
Speaker 1: to autonomous cars is you could imagine scenarios in which
Speaker 1: an autonomous car would have to make a split decision,
Speaker 1: and how do you program in that decision. So here's
Speaker 1: an example i'm I would give. Let's say that you
Speaker 1: are in your autonomous car. The cars driving for you.
Speaker 1: You are not in control. The car is going down
Speaker 1: a street and there are pedestrians all along the sidewalk
Speaker 1: to your right. All right, an oncoming car under manual
Speaker 1: control uh loses control. So the driver loses control of
Speaker 1: that vehicle and it begins to swerve into your lane.
Speaker 1: Your car is unable to move off to the left
Speaker 1: because of the trajectory of the incoming car. So what
Speaker 1: does your car do. Your car, having traffic behind you,
Speaker 1: can't back up, So your options are essentially to hit
Speaker 1: the brakes and you're going to have a collision with
Speaker 1: an oncoming car, which could potentially put you the passenger
Speaker 1: at risk, or the car could swerve to the right
Speaker 1: avoid a collision but potentially collide with pedestrians. In either case,
Speaker 1: you're talking about people potentially being hurt or killed. How
Speaker 1: do you, as a programmer who's designing the autonomous car
Speaker 1: are make that call? And is it right for an
Speaker 1: engineer to make that call knowing that the person who
Speaker 1: is inside the car might have had a different reaction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these these are great questions and they tie into some
Speaker 1: topical things that are going to become an increasingly big
Speaker 1: issue for car owners and car manufacturers. As abstract and
Speaker 1: philosophical as this might sound, in some degree, this is
Speaker 1: a real life problem. So a brief explanation here. One
Speaker 1: one of the things that we should mention when we
Speaker 1: get to real world applications is if there is a
Speaker 1: real person driving and trolley. Unfortunately, we do have to
Speaker 1: allow for uh, their preformed opinions of the kind of
Speaker 1: people they're saving to come into play. So five people
Speaker 1: that they consider unsavory or you know, five elderly people
Speaker 1: versus one child. Right. Usually the way we present this
Speaker 1: problem is that you have no information about the potential victims,
Speaker 1: because otherwise, I mean there are variations like there's one
Speaker 1: there's one where you're on the trolley, there are five
Speaker 1: people on the tracks, and the person who's responsible for
Speaker 1: the trolley being out of control is also on the trolley.
Speaker 1: You can push that person out, and most people would
Speaker 1: say yes, because this person has committed the act that
Speaker 1: has put everyone in danger in the first place, and
Speaker 1: it is ethically all right to have that person be
Speaker 1: held responsible by way of killing them to prevent the
Speaker 1: deaths of their otherwise potential victims. Right, Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: and I think it's correct for at least the hypothetical
Speaker 1: nature of it to keep to keep the emphasis on
Speaker 1: the problem, which is the problematic decision, that dilemma. But
Speaker 1: when we talk about programming UM programming, we could potentially
Speaker 1: be a death machine. You know what we what we
Speaker 1: find quickly is that we might run into um problems
Speaker 1: of profiling through code. Could we teach uh? Could we
Speaker 1: teach a computer that level of fidelity? And could we
Speaker 1: teach it to be something that people agree with directly? Furthermore,
Speaker 1: I've got to say, Man, I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: since we were talking about it briefly off air. The
Speaker 1: one of the first answers that a lot of people
Speaker 1: go to with an AI problem is, well, the three
Speaker 1: laws of robotics, right are perfect, but they don't work
Speaker 1: in this occasion because they're asking the robot quote unquote
Speaker 1: to uh differentiate between values of human life, which the
Speaker 1: first law doesn't allow for it. Right. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a no win scenario for the robot, right because no
Speaker 1: matter what choice is made, there's going to be some
Speaker 1: form of injury as a result. So there's no way
Speaker 1: that the robot can make a decision that is going
Speaker 1: to result and no one getting hurt. That's just not
Speaker 1: even an option. It's it's you know, you've got the
Speaker 1: traffic behind you, so you can't magically say, oh, well
Speaker 1: just PLoP it into reverse so that way you avoid
Speaker 1: the collision. Uh, And you can't you know, you can't say, oh,
Speaker 1: we'll find a gap in the people like there's going
Speaker 1: they're going to be situations where this hypothetical question can
Speaker 1: and will arise. Now, you could argue that when we
Speaker 1: get closer and closer to more autonomous cars being on
Speaker 1: the road, the likelihood of the situation decreases dramatically, um
Speaker 1: particularly if you have vehicles that are capable of communicating
Speaker 1: with one another, because then they're going to know each
Speaker 1: other's positions well before you're in range of each other.
Speaker 1: Then you just have to worry about the things that
Speaker 1: are not part of the system, like pedestrians crossing the street,
Speaker 1: jay walker's dogs, you know, that sort of stuff, which
Speaker 1: could still be a factor. Also, we keep in mind
Speaker 1: that the autonomous cars are able to react in a
Speaker 1: fraction of the time that humans are, and they're able
Speaker 1: to detect everything that's going on. See, we humans, we're
Speaker 1: limited by what we can focus on at any given time,
Speaker 1: So even our field of view is a limitation, right,
Speaker 1: so a car doesn't have that. A car can have
Speaker 1: a three and sixty degree area of awareness and a
Speaker 1: fraction of the amount of time it takes a human
Speaker 1: to react to be able to make these decisions. That
Speaker 1: being said, you still have this problem of there are
Speaker 1: scenarios that are possible where ultimately someone has to figure
Speaker 1: out how do they program this in do they have
Speaker 1: do they build it in to the cars programming where
Speaker 1: if it detects pedestrians, those have the top priority of
Speaker 1: safety because they are the ones who are least likely
Speaker 1: to be able to survive and impact. And therefore, let's
Speaker 1: let's uh, you know, you'd never want to have a crash,
Speaker 1: but if the choices between crash or plowing into pedestrians,
Speaker 1: you'd pick the crash. That's what I would suspect, because
Speaker 1: I would imagine also that anyone making these cars would
Speaker 1: test to make sure that they withstood the same crash
Speaker 1: test parameters that other vehicles do. So in that case,
Speaker 1: I would say that the autonomous car is more likely
Speaker 1: to be designed. And I think that's from a manufacturer's
Speaker 1: point of view, two to withstand the crash. That not
Speaker 1: that not that that's necessarily always going to be the
Speaker 1: quote unquote right choice from an ethics point of view,
Speaker 1: But if I'm a car manufacturer, I definitely would rather
Speaker 1: have the message be in this very unlikely scenario, uh,
Speaker 1: the car would prepare for impact essentially rather than run
Speaker 1: a muck on the sidewalk exactly, And that that's the
Speaker 1: primary concern as um. As cold as it may sound,
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is that if you are
Speaker 1: a car manufacturer, part of what you're selling to car
Speaker 1: buyers is a sense of safety. So I I think
Speaker 1: that the priorities would be a little bit different. The
Speaker 1: number one priority probably be the passengers within the vehicle.
Speaker 1: To the point that with this preparation for impact, which
Speaker 1: I love what you're saying, than than it may be
Speaker 1: a case where the car simply stops, uh like proactively
Speaker 1: deploys its air bags. Uh and perhaps I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe has some brake system that braces for impact. It
Speaker 1: might even orient itself so that the most the crumpled
Speaker 1: zones are at their the best angle for preparing for
Speaker 1: an impact. Which, you know, it sounds kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: You're thinking, Oh, it's a car that would actually maneuver
Speaker 1: itself so it would suffer more damage. But it may
Speaker 1: be that that's the ideal way to deal with this
Speaker 1: kind of situation, to make sure that everyone involved has
Speaker 1: the best chance of uh of suffering the least amount
Speaker 1: of injury. Yes, and this brings us to something that
Speaker 1: we probably don't have time for today, but it's an
Speaker 1: interesting question. I'd love to hear um your thoughts on this, two, Keegan. Uh.
Speaker 1: If we have that kind of programming, which is really
Speaker 1: really the definition of live fire, just the inherent danger here,
Speaker 1: then what happens when people modify that programming, Because I mean,
Speaker 1: you know this, Jonathan, there's this big there's this increasingly
Speaker 1: big stink over the computerization of cars and the degree
Speaker 1: of control over that that programming is still held by manufacturers. Sure,
Speaker 1: and people are buying cars and saying, why can't I
Speaker 1: work on my car? Right? And then there's the hacker
Speaker 1: community that have uh said that they would be able
Speaker 1: to get control of various car systems, and that's been
Speaker 1: demons demonstrated in the past. Now until very recently, it's
Speaker 1: all been limited to people who are able to hook
Speaker 1: a laptop directly into the wiring of a vehicle. So
Speaker 1: it meant that you had to have physical access to
Speaker 1: the car in order to have that happened. Uh. However,
Speaker 1: that being said, I know there's a conference coming up
Speaker 1: this summer in which a pair of presenters are going
Speaker 1: to say that they have found a way of remotely
Speaker 1: accessing a vehicle and hacking it. Um. I'm very curious
Speaker 1: to hear how they did that. I imagine the only
Speaker 1: way I can imagine it working is if I mean,
Speaker 1: you would obviously have to have some sort of of
Speaker 1: transceiver on the car that could communicate out and receive
Speaker 1: communication back. Uh. And typically I would imagine that would
Speaker 1: be limited to a car's entertainment system. Um. But if
Speaker 1: that entertainment system is also hooked into the other various
Speaker 1: computer systems on a car, then that is a potential
Speaker 1: point of vulnerability. Uh. Now, if you've designed a car
Speaker 1: where it can wirelessly communicate with a mechanic to allow
Speaker 1: a mechanic to get more information about the vehicle and
Speaker 1: it's its current state. Uh, then that would also be
Speaker 1: a potential point of vulnerability. I just don't imagine that
Speaker 1: happening because it's I don't think that it would be
Speaker 1: I don't think the convenience of that particular system would
Speaker 1: warrant the investment in it because it's not that much
Speaker 1: more difficult for a mechanic to just hook their computer
Speaker 1: up to your cars computer system. It's it's not like
Speaker 1: it's so hard to do that. You know, we needed
Speaker 1: to find an alternative to that. But that being said,
Speaker 1: knowing that this is a possibility that the ability to
Speaker 1: to hack into a car could become a thing, and
Speaker 1: knowing that autonomous cars are you know, they're they're growing reality.
Speaker 1: It's something that you know, the roboticist Henrik Christensen said
Speaker 1: the kids born today will never have to drive a
Speaker 1: car because the cars that they'll have when they reach
Speaker 1: driving age will all be autonomous. Uh. You know, I
Speaker 1: I think that's fairly accurate. I mean, some people say
Speaker 1: it won't be till I don't think that's true. I
Speaker 1: think that we're much closer to seeing it become a
Speaker 1: commercial possibility within within a decade. That all of that
Speaker 1: is to say that because of that that reality of
Speaker 1: the autonomous cars, something like the possibility of hacking is
Speaker 1: certainly a concern. If you are a hacker who owns
Speaker 1: your own car and you wanted to remove things like
Speaker 1: the cap on speed limits so that your car could
Speaker 1: drive much faster, even if you're not the one physically
Speaker 1: controlling it, that you just enjoy the experience of writing
Speaker 1: in a really fast car. That's a concern if you
Speaker 1: are able to do things like, for whatever reason, remove
Speaker 1: the safety features that would prevent your car from uh
Speaker 1: breaking too late or accelerating too early, or position itself
Speaker 1: correctly for a crash. Because you don't want to lose
Speaker 1: a big investment. Yeah, any of those things would be
Speaker 1: you know, a concern. So uh, I mean, these are
Speaker 1: questions that we don't have real answers to yet because
Speaker 1: we're not we're not technologically there yet, but they are
Speaker 1: definitely questions that need to be thought of on the
Speaker 1: engineering and manufacturer side of things, because these are things
Speaker 1: that are gonna come up, and you know, you might argue, well,
Speaker 1: this is a now, it's a niche thing. It's only
Speaker 1: gonna happen like a few times, but potentially that could
Speaker 1: be devastating if you don't actually address it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and also you know, it's a tough spot for carmakers
Speaker 1: because as as reasonable as it is for you and I,
Speaker 1: um and probably a lot of you guys listening out
Speaker 1: there too, as reasonable as is for all of us
Speaker 1: as individuals to say, well, the utilitarian answer is correct,
Speaker 1: Spock is correct. If GM or someone came out and said, well, guys,
Speaker 1: autonomous cars are still in the early days, so here's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do if someone has to die, if
Speaker 1: this situation comes up, that it's going to make sure
Speaker 1: it only kills one person, set of five. Then immediately
Speaker 1: you've got everyone say, all right, we have it on
Speaker 1: record that this this car company has said it's okay
Speaker 1: to kill people. Right, so when it when it happened,
Speaker 1: as we can totally go and say no, you have
Speaker 1: it on record that this is what you've decided to do. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely Again, that's why I would think that
Speaker 1: car manufacturers would try to limit the liability. They would
Speaker 1: be there and and say like, well, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it ends up being common practice that when
Speaker 1: you buy a car that has an autonomous control feature
Speaker 1: on it, that you also end up signing waivers that
Speaker 1: wave your legal rights to go after a company should
Speaker 1: one of these crazy scenarios come along. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that would actually hold water, because I would say,
Speaker 1: imagine there'd be a lot of pushback on that, saying, well,
Speaker 1: how can you hold a a customer culpable when they
Speaker 1: have literally no control over the vehicle. They didn't build
Speaker 1: the vehicle, they didn't design the software, they didn't decide
Speaker 1: how it navigates. They just told it a destination. How
Speaker 1: can you hold them responsible for that just because they
Speaker 1: own the machine. They didn't make it do the thing
Speaker 1: it did. Um, these are great questions. I love, I
Speaker 1: love thinking about it. I wish I had more answers,
Speaker 1: But honestly, it's one of those deals that I think
Speaker 1: is going to shake out as the technology matures, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in the best case scenario, they will largely
Speaker 1: be moot questions because the implementation of the technology will
Speaker 1: be sophisticated. Enough where these these problems will rarely, if
Speaker 1: ever pop up. That's that's a dream, that's very optimistic.
Speaker 1: But but you know, shoot for the stars, right, I
Speaker 1: want myself driving car. I want to make that clear.
Speaker 1: I am not against the idea of autonomous cars. I
Speaker 1: eagerly await the day when I can have an autonomous
Speaker 1: car take me to work. Yeah, it was sure would
Speaker 1: be nice to get here in twelve minutes in seven hour,
Speaker 1: you know, And I don't drive, so for me, I
Speaker 1: would need an autonomous car because I'm not a Driver's
Speaker 1: not into it. I know. I've had him on the
Speaker 1: show a couple of times to talk about In fact,
Speaker 1: we had a discussion about hacking cars, and we also
Speaker 1: did a discussion about autonomous cars. And I can see,
Speaker 1: you know, every time I started talking about autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: he started to squirm in his seat a little. You know,
Speaker 1: not all of us are like you know, race car
Speaker 1: drivers in our heads with lead feet, lightning like reflections.
Speaker 1: Some of us just want to get to where we
Speaker 1: need to go and and not have to deal with
Speaker 1: the navigating through traffic on our own. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: seen what it does to the same people. I cannot
Speaker 1: take that Ben would not work. H Yeah. Well, well, luckily,
Speaker 1: it looks like every everything that we have seen tells
Speaker 1: us that there is a rise in autonomous vehicles, and
Speaker 1: they are at some point wherever you are listening right now,
Speaker 1: they are at some point coming to your town. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of them may be driving around right now, depending
Speaker 1: on where you're at. Um. Yeah, I've seen uh, I
Speaker 1: got to see a few when I went out to
Speaker 1: San Francisco. It's pretty cool. All right, Well, Ben, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining me for that segment, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure Kegan appreciates it too. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys,
Speaker 1: And remember you can check out Ben's shows. He's on
Speaker 1: car stuff, He's on stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: He's also a writer and appears for shows like brain
Speaker 1: Stuff and What the Stuff. Uh So Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: guys are are big into video, you should definitely check
Speaker 1: those out. You should check out the other podcast as well.
Speaker 1: And of course it's always a pleasure having you on
Speaker 1: and I will be asking you to be a guest
Speaker 1: probably again really soon. Hey, thank you. Also, just to
Speaker 1: point out to everybody, uh, Jonathan, in full disclosure, you're
Speaker 1: on like half of those shows as well. That's true.
Speaker 1: I also appear on those shows. So yeah, if you
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen What the Stuff like, go ahead
Speaker 1: and give a quick description. So What the Stuff is
Speaker 1: kind of a show where we pick interesting topics and
Speaker 1: give really cool examples of whatever that topic happens to be. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got one coming up about honest sports
Speaker 1: in the world, and I talk about some really crazy ones. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then brain Stuff kind of a dive into really
Speaker 1: cool questions about how stuff works or interesting science questions
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um, and those are always a
Speaker 1: lot of fun to do to. Yeah, you've got uh,
Speaker 1: let's see you guys know, Jonathan's a little bit of
Speaker 1: an actor in a different light, right, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Can I say that on the air? Absolutely? And uh
Speaker 1: did this did this great piece on brain Stuff about
Speaker 1: why people in old movies the Transatlantic accent? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we've made the title why do people talk funny
Speaker 1: in Old Movies? I think it was that ended up
Speaker 1: being a really popular one. Check that out if you
Speaker 1: want to see some of the guy's chops, right and um,
Speaker 1: and and you know, obviously we've got tons of other
Speaker 1: shows here and how Stuff works not to mention crazy
Speaker 1: amazing articles. I don't know how many of you have
Speaker 1: been to the house stuff works dot com website, but
Speaker 1: you should definitely check it out. Check out. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have some great things to announce in the near future.
Speaker 1: Um really excited. I mean it's been it's always been
Speaker 1: a great place to work, but it's really becoming like
Speaker 1: crazy exciting over the last year. So check that out, guys.
Speaker 1: I know that I haven't really talked about the website
Speaker 1: in a long time, but you definitely need to check
Speaker 1: that out. All right, That wraps up this discussion. If
Speaker 1: you guys have any questions, if you want to have
Speaker 1: your listener mail, be part of the next grab bag.
Speaker 1: I want to do a lot more of these in
Speaker 1: the future. It's always fun to kind of respond to
Speaker 1: what you guys have to say and think. Send me
Speaker 1: a message that email address is tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or draw me a line on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Facebook or Tumbler at all three. I use the handle
Speaker 1: of text stuff h s W and we'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics Works dot Com