Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex stuff from dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna have a listener mail. Do you
Speaker 1: believe because I've been receiving lots of mail from you guys,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to thank you for that, first of all,
Speaker 1: because I love hearing from my listeners and it gives
Speaker 1: me some direction about where to go. Sometimes you guys
Speaker 1: are asking for stuff that we've covered on previous episodes,
Speaker 1: but that always gives me the chance to update those episodes.
Speaker 1: And sometimes you ask for stuff that I honestly never
Speaker 1: would have thought about on my own, and it really
Speaker 1: helps when I'm putting the show together. Now, in this case,
Speaker 1: we've got a few different listener mail messages, none of
Speaker 1: which really warrant a full length episode all by themselves.
Speaker 1: Some can be answered more quickly than others, so I
Speaker 1: thought I would group them together as another listener male
Speaker 1: grab bag and address them and thank the people who
Speaker 1: wrote in. So first we have Chris I said this
Speaker 1: was all about three D printing, and when they talked
Speaker 1: about the possibility of of stores having three D printers
Speaker 1: to produce on demand as opposed to having warehouses full
Speaker 1: of inventory. Chris says there's a store that opened up
Speaker 1: in my area that the guy wants to be the
Speaker 1: first Kinko's like storefront for three D printing. He doesn't
Speaker 1: plan on this being the primary role of the business
Speaker 1: to start out, because the demand is not there right yet,
Speaker 1: but he wants to work with inventors, designers, and mostly
Speaker 1: work with people in schools to teach people about the technology. Now,
Speaker 1: Chris did not mention, uh, the name of this particular business,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to take a wild guess, and I
Speaker 1: could be wrong. Chris, please right in and tell me
Speaker 1: if I'm completely off track here, But I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: it might be Things Smiths and in Arbor, Michigan, and
Speaker 1: thinks Smith's is a pretty cool organization. I looked into
Speaker 1: it online. I'm also hoping to to at some point
Speaker 1: interview someone from Things Smith's to talk more about what
Speaker 1: they do and how they conduct business, because I think
Speaker 1: it'd be really interesting to look at something that is
Speaker 1: often referred to as an incredibly disruptive technology, disruptive to
Speaker 1: the manufacturing industry in particular. So Thinks Smith's is a
Speaker 1: shop that offers up three D printing to customers for
Speaker 1: a set price per cubic centimeter, And it depends upon
Speaker 1: what type of material and which process you want to use.
Speaker 1: So your choices are a bs P L, a p
Speaker 1: ET nylon or UH and those are all using fused
Speaker 1: deposition modeling or methacry late plastic through stereolithography. All right,
Speaker 1: So now you're like, well, I don't know what that
Speaker 1: means necessarily, so fused deposition modeling is what a typical
Speaker 1: three D printer on the market does. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen one of these, you you're pretty familiar. But
Speaker 1: just in case you haven't, once you have is an
Speaker 1: extruder which ends up heating up some sort of material, uh,
Speaker 1: typically some kind of plastic to a level where it
Speaker 1: is moldible and and you can actually extrude it. It's
Speaker 1: there are extruders that print out tiny, thin layers of
Speaker 1: this stuff, almost like a glue gun. If you've ever
Speaker 1: used a glue gun, it's kind of like that, but
Speaker 1: much smaller and more precise. Um. The level of precision
Speaker 1: depends upon the type of three D printer you're using,
Speaker 1: and what it does is it lays down layer after
Speaker 1: layer of this stuff fusing each new layer to the
Speaker 1: layers below it. And often there's some sort of chemical
Speaker 1: within the plastic itself that allows you to do this fusing. Um.
Speaker 1: Typically you want it to cool down so that it
Speaker 1: really solidifies in the final shape that you had intended
Speaker 1: and uh it you know, it's very important for this
Speaker 1: fusing and hardening process to go smoothly, or else the material,
Speaker 1: the object would collapse in on itself and you just
Speaker 1: end up with a lumpy, gooey mess. Now, we've used
Speaker 1: three D printers here at the office and they used
Speaker 1: this particular method, the fust deposition modeling, and it's pretty
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. I mean, you have to be a little
Speaker 1: you know, depending on the model, you have to be
Speaker 1: a little tricksy with it. We've had somewhere the plastic
Speaker 1: was sticking to the platform, the printing platform, and that
Speaker 1: was a problem because instead of it uh, flowing properly
Speaker 1: when it would get to a point, it would start
Speaker 1: to peel off for slide instead of sticking the right way, uh,
Speaker 1: and you would end up with a deformed plastic monstrosity
Speaker 1: as opposed to that nice whistle you we wanted to
Speaker 1: print out. But that's one method. The other one, stereolithography,
Speaker 1: is entirely print and it's super awesome. It's still additive
Speaker 1: manufacturing additive meaning that you are building this thing piece
Speaker 1: by piece, as opposed to carving away stuff to get
Speaker 1: at what you want. That would be subtractive. So in
Speaker 1: other words, sculpting is subtractive, but this is additive, where
Speaker 1: you're you're adding material until you have built the thing
Speaker 1: you want. Uh. Stereo lithography builds in a layer by
Speaker 1: layer basis that uses a laser to change the nature
Speaker 1: of material to make it hardened. So you have a
Speaker 1: liquid material, some sort of liquid plastic for example, and
Speaker 1: imagine that you've got it in a vat. So you've
Speaker 1: got this vat of liquid material. Uh, you have submerged
Speaker 1: just under the surface of this liquid plastic a porous
Speaker 1: um platform. So I think of it like a like
Speaker 1: a grill almost. It's it's like that, but very narrow
Speaker 1: gaps between the bars and allows the plastic to come
Speaker 1: up through the bars and it's just submerged just under
Speaker 1: the surface of that liquid plastic. On top of this vat,
Speaker 1: you have a device that is able to direct a
Speaker 1: laser an ultra violet laser. Let's say, at this liquid
Speaker 1: material which has this photoreactive nature to it, so that
Speaker 1: when it's hit by this ultra violet laser, the liquid
Speaker 1: plastic hardens into a solid. So by tracing the shape
Speaker 1: that you want to print on this liquid plastic that's
Speaker 1: on top of this platform, it turns that liquid into solid,
Speaker 1: and you have your first layer of whatever it is
Speaker 1: you're playing on. Building to build again, the platform goes
Speaker 1: down just a little bit so that the hardened surface
Speaker 1: is now submerged just under the surface of that liquid plastic,
Speaker 1: and you do it again. The laser traces and the
Speaker 1: liquid plastic on top of the hard plastic hardens and
Speaker 1: fuses together with the layer below it, and you do
Speaker 1: this over and over again, so that platform very slowly
Speaker 1: descends as the laser traces and hardens this liquid plastic,
Speaker 1: and it allows for much greater precision than the fuse
Speaker 1: deposition modeling. You can get to um pretty decent resolution.
Speaker 1: Now resolution and three D printers is will really what
Speaker 1: we talk about when you want to avoid those jagged edges.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty awesome and thinks Smith's uses both methods,
Speaker 1: and depending upon which method you want the price is
Speaker 1: gonna vary also depending on again which material you're using. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's price per cubic centimeter. So uh, that is
Speaker 1: I think pretty awesome. The company also offers three D
Speaker 1: scanning and design services, so you could bring something in
Speaker 1: to scan and have them print a cop be of
Speaker 1: that thing. Theoretically you could scan yourself and have a
Speaker 1: figurine of yourself printed up. Or if you had an
Speaker 1: idea for something but you didn't have anything to scan
Speaker 1: and you didn't have the capability of designing it yourself,
Speaker 1: you can hire them to do that for you, which
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome. Now, Chris, why don't you write me
Speaker 1: back let me know if I have the the same
Speaker 1: business that you had in mind, or if there was
Speaker 1: something else. Remember that address tech Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. I'd love to hear from you either way.
Speaker 1: I really hope I can speak with someone from Things
Speaker 1: Smith's in a future episode, just to kind of talk
Speaker 1: more about the business model and and really what the
Speaker 1: future is for three D printing in this kind of way. Alright,
Speaker 1: our next message comes from Felonious. Now, Felonious says, dear
Speaker 1: Mr Strickland, so formal, I have been a listener to
Speaker 1: tech stuff and forward thinking for many years. I recently
Speaker 1: downloaded an iPod full of back episode of those casts
Speaker 1: to listen to an extended bus trip. But about the
Speaker 1: fourth or fifth day something struck me that I want
Speaker 1: to ask you about. Does it always have to be
Speaker 1: a form factor and not just a form? And did
Speaker 1: the word shape do something nasty to you as a
Speaker 1: small child, just wondering felonious to shape? Felonious? Um, why
Speaker 1: do I use the term form factor so much instead
Speaker 1: of just form or shape. Well, for one thing, form
Speaker 1: factor and computers means a little bit more than just
Speaker 1: the physical form or shape. There's a little bit extra
Speaker 1: implied with that particular term. Form factor refers to how
Speaker 1: these things are shaped, plus how the shape effects and
Speaker 1: are affected by the use of that device. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, the form factor of a desktop is different
Speaker 1: from a laptop, and the use of those two things
Speaker 1: changes as a result. The form factor of a smartphone
Speaker 1: is such that you have to build that in to
Speaker 1: your design of apps for that smartphone. You know that
Speaker 1: you have a limited amount of screen space that you
Speaker 1: can use. You know that the inputs are limited, You
Speaker 1: know that the battery life is limited because of the
Speaker 1: form factor, the the all the things that go into
Speaker 1: making that particular type of device work the way it does.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit more than just form or shape,
Speaker 1: and it's an industry standard. That being said, I probably
Speaker 1: could vary my vocabulary a little bit and not make
Speaker 1: you guys go crazy and create the text stuff drinking
Speaker 1: game where words like convergence and form factor and disruptive
Speaker 1: all become means to you know, take a another shot
Speaker 1: of your favorite frosty beverage um At any rate, thank
Speaker 1: you very much. The loneous but yes, form factor is
Speaker 1: a little more specific than either form or shape in
Speaker 1: the in the text of computers and electronics, which is
Speaker 1: why I use it so frequently. Let's take a quick
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Speaker 1: and I have a digital scale that I can just
Speaker 1: plug into my computer. It tells me exactly how much
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Speaker 1: of the home page and type in tech stuff. Alright.
Speaker 1: Our next one comes from Chase from Washington State, who says, Hello,
Speaker 1: I was listening to your episode recently with listener mail. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's another one of those I haven't listened to the
Speaker 1: most recent episodes, so forgive me if you've already addressed this.
Speaker 1: You were talking about the programming of a car as
Speaker 1: to how it would choose to act in either going
Speaker 1: on a sidewalk or bracing for impact. This is the
Speaker 1: trolley problem we were talking about. If cars are able
Speaker 1: to communicate with each other, wouldn't it be possible for
Speaker 1: your car to basically warn other cars that it was
Speaker 1: going to have to slam on its brakes and also
Speaker 1: allow them to do the same as to avoid either
Speaker 1: a hard impact or a crash altogether. Just a thought
Speaker 1: I had and figured I would pose that idea to
Speaker 1: the problem. Thanks for all the amazing episodes you guys
Speaker 1: really make my long nights at work. More bearable. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Chase. So what Chase proposes here is fantastic.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is kind of a solution to the
Speaker 1: trolley problem. In all but the most extreme cases, this
Speaker 1: sort of communication would very often prevent these accidents from
Speaker 1: ever happening. In fact, we might prevent them to the
Speaker 1: point where you wouldn't even be aware that such an
Speaker 1: accident was even possible. That's the ideal that, however, is
Speaker 1: a few years away. In the meantime, we have a
Speaker 1: world in which we've got a lot of manually driven cars.
Speaker 1: In fact, nearly all of them are manually driven. There
Speaker 1: are very few autonomous cars out there. But we have
Speaker 1: all these manually driven cars, and many of them are different.
Speaker 1: You know, We've got all these different years and models
Speaker 1: and makes out there on the road. Some of them
Speaker 1: predate all the cool systems that have been hitting you know,
Speaker 1: standard ours for the last few years. So stuff that
Speaker 1: you might find standard today, like things like lane assist
Speaker 1: or or even um, you know, parking assists. That kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that's starting to become more and more common
Speaker 1: in cars just a few years ago was completely unheard
Speaker 1: of or was only found in the most high luxury
Speaker 1: vehicles out there. So with that in mind, we get
Speaker 1: to a point where we have this autonomous car that
Speaker 1: is going to encounter an oncoming car. That the scenario,
Speaker 1: in case you forgot, was that, let's say you've got
Speaker 1: an autonomous car. You are sitting in an autonomous car,
Speaker 1: and there's an oncoming car that's veering into your lane,
Speaker 1: and the autonomous car really only has two options. One
Speaker 1: option will result in the autonomous car getting into an
Speaker 1: accident where you could potentially be hurt, you the passenger.
Speaker 1: The other option has the autonomous car behaving in such
Speaker 1: a way that somebody else is going to be put
Speaker 1: into danger, they're going to be injured. And those are
Speaker 1: the only two options. What what do you or what
Speaker 1: does the the designer of the autonomous car, what do
Speaker 1: they build into the car to make that decision knowing
Speaker 1: that one of the two options has to happen, there's
Speaker 1: no third option, and that that's the philosophical problem that's
Speaker 1: still going to be a problem for a while, simply
Speaker 1: because we're not going to reach a point where spontaneously
Speaker 1: everyone has a vehicle capable of communicating with other vehicles.
Speaker 1: One day, hopefully we will reach that, whether the car
Speaker 1: is autonomously controlled or manually controlled, so that there is
Speaker 1: a better understanding on an electronic level of what is
Speaker 1: going on, so that we can have safety features built
Speaker 1: in to prevent these kind of accidents from happening. And
Speaker 1: while this is all kind of a thought exercise in
Speaker 1: the short term, it does have actual real world implications.
Speaker 1: There are real world engineers working on this kind of
Speaker 1: problem and trying to determine and what's the best way
Speaker 1: to cause the least amount of harm in these extreme circumstances,
Speaker 1: knowing that under regular operating and conditions, an autonomous car
Speaker 1: is likely always going to be more safe than a
Speaker 1: manually driven car. Keeping in mind things like the Google
Speaker 1: car story about how uh, in the entire history of
Speaker 1: the autonomous cars that Google has been running, there have
Speaker 1: only been a couple of accidents, and they've all been
Speaker 1: due to human drivers, not the autonomous driver. So maybe
Speaker 1: Chase in the future will get to a point where cars,
Speaker 1: whether they're autonomously controlled or manually controlled, are communicating with
Speaker 1: one another well in advance, so that these kinds of
Speaker 1: situations can be headed off before they become dangerous. That
Speaker 1: would be wonderful. I hope that that's the future that
Speaker 1: we see. I expect that we will get there. I
Speaker 1: just don't know what the timeline is yet, but I'm
Speaker 1: hoping sooner rather than later. And of course it will
Speaker 1: all depend upon the rate at which older cars are
Speaker 1: removed from the roads and newer cars are replacing them.
Speaker 1: Even if that never reaches a point where you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have a mandate. Let's say, let's say that
Speaker 1: we never pass a law that says you have to
Speaker 1: have a car from X year or later, or you
Speaker 1: have to convert your vehicle to have these systems in it,
Speaker 1: or else you can't drive it. Let's say that never happens.
Speaker 1: Even if that never happens, we just have to have
Speaker 1: enough cars with these systems to really make a huge
Speaker 1: difference in in passenger and pedestrian safety. We've seen some
Speaker 1: studies have suggested that as few as twenty of vehicles
Speaker 1: would need these in order to make massive changes to
Speaker 1: everything from traffic jams to again passenger of pedestrian safety.
Speaker 1: So that's really encouraging to know that we don't have
Speaker 1: to have a world where everybody's in one of these vehicles.
Speaker 1: We just have to have enough of them to make
Speaker 1: it different. It's moving on. This next request came from Twitter.
Speaker 1: This is from Jerry who says, uh podcast episode Idea
Speaker 1: was wondering if you could explain what goes on during
Speaker 1: the sound of a dial up modem. Yes, that well, Jerry.
Speaker 1: Just in case our younger listeners have not experienced this
Speaker 1: or have heard it and not known what it is.
Speaker 1: Let's first hear the sound of a dial up modem connecting. Beautiful,
Speaker 1: isn't It Just really brings a tear to your eye.
Speaker 1: So that sound, if you are not familiar with it,
Speaker 1: it probably sounds horrific. But for most of us that
Speaker 1: was the sound. Not for most of us, for the
Speaker 1: older set of us, that was the sound of connecting
Speaker 1: to the Internet specifically, not even just the Internet. That
Speaker 1: was the sound of one computer connecting to another computer
Speaker 1: using dial up modems. So dial up modems use the
Speaker 1: tele own lines in order to make data connections. So
Speaker 1: we were making we were making use of the existing
Speaker 1: infrastructure to do something new. Instead of it being voice communication,
Speaker 1: now it's specifically computer data communication. And that sound is
Speaker 1: essentially a handshake. It's just not the type you would
Speaker 1: do with your hands. It's a modem handshake between two modems,
Speaker 1: and that's what facilitated the communication between one computer and
Speaker 1: another computer. So here's what's going on. If you listen
Speaker 1: to that noise, you're going to hear a series of sounds.
Speaker 1: And this is the order of those sounds and what
Speaker 1: they mean. So the first early tones, once you get
Speaker 1: past the dial tone and the dialing, which is typical
Speaker 1: for any telephone call, not just dial up modems. Uh,
Speaker 1: the earliest tones established the modem speeds of the two
Speaker 1: modems in question. So modems come at different speeds. Um,
Speaker 1: dial up modems come at different speeds, and you can
Speaker 1: only really transmit data as quickly as the slowest modem.
Speaker 1: You can't go any faster than the slowest one. Kind
Speaker 1: of like, uh, if you've got a slow car moving
Speaker 1: down a one lane road, it doesn't matter how fast
Speaker 1: the vehicle is behind it, it's limited by the car
Speaker 1: that's in front of it. So let's say that you're
Speaker 1: using a you know, you're you're you're a bleeding edge
Speaker 1: adopter back in the day, and you've got a nice
Speaker 1: six D BOWD modem and most folks are still using
Speaker 1: BOD modem. You would be stuck at a slower speed.
Speaker 1: Whenever acting, you know, communicating with a slower modem. By
Speaker 1: the way, in case you're wondering, modem would transmit a
Speaker 1: blistering two point four a kilobits per second would be
Speaker 1: nine point six kilobits per second. So that's uh, that's
Speaker 1: incredibly low data transfer speeds compared to what we see today.
Speaker 1: That's why whenever you hear people talk about the old
Speaker 1: dial up modem days, you would, you know, try and
Speaker 1: view a picture that someone had pasted online, and you
Speaker 1: would just start that the process of getting the picture,
Speaker 1: and then you would walk away from your computer for
Speaker 1: like forty five minutes and come back to see if
Speaker 1: it was done yet. It's because we're talking about super
Speaker 1: slow data transmission speeds or data rate transfers. I guess
Speaker 1: you should I should say. Now, the next series of
Speaker 1: tones you would hear represents the sin act handshake, which
Speaker 1: sets up other parameters that guide the interaction, like parody.
Speaker 1: So parody is meant to make sure that communication is
Speaker 1: proceeding without errors. This parity P A R I T
Speaker 1: Y not parody, which is hilarious. So essentially parody helps
Speaker 1: modems guarantee that they are actually sending and receiving the
Speaker 1: information properly. It's it's a means of making certain that
Speaker 1: communication is not being dropped in any way, because otherwise
Speaker 1: you would just be getting lots of corrupt files and
Speaker 1: errors and problems like that. The next series of sounds
Speaker 1: you would hear is when the modems would go through
Speaker 1: what was called rate negotiation, which is the actual speed
Speaker 1: of communication that will take place, as opposed to whatever
Speaker 1: the maximum possible speed is between the two modems. This
Speaker 1: would be the actual communication speed. The next series of
Speaker 1: sounds is a point in which the modems are preparing
Speaker 1: for simultaneous communication with each other, so we're finally getting
Speaker 1: to the point where they can really have this exchange
Speaker 1: of information going on at the same time. After that,
Speaker 1: the sound indicates that there is a connection that has
Speaker 1: been accepted and the two modems are in communication. And
Speaker 1: the final little noise that you hear before the modem
Speaker 1: goes to silent represents data actually moving between those two modems.
Speaker 1: So there you go. There's the demystification of that modem
Speaker 1: dial up sound. It's really just the establishment of a
Speaker 1: connection and the you know, making sure that everything is
Speaker 1: working properly before you start trying to send files or
Speaker 1: or uh ask for files or any other kind of
Speaker 1: computer computer communication through a dial up access point. So
Speaker 1: there you go. I hope that that answers your question.
Speaker 1: It was fun to look at, and that wraps up
Speaker 1: our listener mail Jubilee. I want to thank all the
Speaker 1: listeners who sent in listener mail. There's tons more where
Speaker 1: that came from, so I'm sure I will do more
Speaker 1: episodes like this. If you have any questions or comments
Speaker 1: or suggestions, please send them to me. Whether it's something
Speaker 1: that could be a full episode all in its own,
Speaker 1: or something like this where I take a few different
Speaker 1: questions and then just kind of make a grab bag episode.
Speaker 1: I like doing both, so let me know what you
Speaker 1: want and I will make episodes. Send me that email,
Speaker 1: though I need to know what you think first, so
Speaker 1: it could be a full episode. Maybe it's an interview,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a guest host that you really want to
Speaker 1: have back on the show. Send me that message. The
Speaker 1: email is tech Stuff at how stuffworks dot com, or
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. The
Speaker 1: handle at all three of those is tech Stuff h
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again for more
Speaker 1: on This and thousands of other topics is a how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot Com