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