Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. Come with me and you'll
Speaker 1: be in a world of pure imagination and tech. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer here at hell Stuff Works. I love
Speaker 1: all things tech, and typically I would cover a specific
Speaker 1: topic at this point, but instead I'm going to look
Speaker 1: at a bunch of different topics have been sent to
Speaker 1: me over the past several months that perhaps don't merit
Speaker 1: a full episode, but I could group them together and
Speaker 1: actually address them instead of just leaving them to hang
Speaker 1: in the air or in the ether. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take a several handful of requests from various listeners to
Speaker 1: chat about very different topics and kind of give you
Speaker 1: a quick overview of each one some of them. One
Speaker 1: of them in particular, I will do a full episode
Speaker 1: on later, but we'll mention that when we get there.
Speaker 1: First listener Marcus wrote in and asked if I could
Speaker 1: cover fido net. So, for those of you who have
Speaker 1: been around for a while, you may be familiar with
Speaker 1: this term, and so Marcus said, this is for you,
Speaker 1: what the heck is fido net? Well, from the name,
Speaker 1: you might think it's a computer network for dogs, and
Speaker 1: in fact the logo is an as key art image
Speaker 1: of a dog, but that's not what the network actually is. First,
Speaker 1: fido net is closely related to bulletin board systems or
Speaker 1: bbs is. I've talked about these in the past, but
Speaker 1: let me give a quick summary of what those are,
Speaker 1: and then we'll get back to phido net. Bolton board
Speaker 1: Systems developed not long after the home computer market got established.
Speaker 1: If you've listened to my episodes about the early computer days,
Speaker 1: the home computer days, you know that hobbyists made up
Speaker 1: a large chunk of the computer owning population. Many of
Speaker 1: those hobbyists weren't just interested in getting a new toy
Speaker 1: or a fancy calculating machine. They wanted to experiment with
Speaker 1: what they could do with these machines, and they wanted
Speaker 1: their computer to be able to communicate with other computers.
Speaker 1: In places like California, there were hobby clubs like the
Speaker 1: Homebrew Computer Club, but in other places it could be
Speaker 1: hard to find someone who shared your interests. It was
Speaker 1: just difficult to track anyone else down. So what was
Speaker 1: needed was a means of communication between different machines, even
Speaker 1: if they were separated by hundreds of miles from each other.
Speaker 1: These days, we use the Internet to send and retrieve
Speaker 1: information all across the world through millions of interconnected machines.
Speaker 1: But back in the late seventies and early eighties, the
Speaker 1: Internet was still kind of taking shape. It was really young,
Speaker 1: and it was not accessible to most people. It's pretty
Speaker 1: much a network connecting some government and academic institutions, and
Speaker 1: slowly a few other machines were growing and joining the network,
Speaker 1: and that was about it. The average person didn't have
Speaker 1: Internet access. Heck, at that time, the average person had
Speaker 1: no idea that the Internet was even a thing at all.
Speaker 1: In nine, a couple of members of the Chicago area
Speaker 1: Computer Hobbyists Exchange also known as CASH, began to experiment
Speaker 1: with their newsletter archives. Then this crazy idea, why not
Speaker 1: use a microcomputer, you know, a personal computer or home
Speaker 1: computer to host the newsletter. The computer would have a modem,
Speaker 1: a dial up modem that hooks into the telephone line,
Speaker 1: and members could use their own computers that had dial
Speaker 1: up modems to call into the host machine and read
Speaker 1: the newsletter archives. If this sounds a bit like a
Speaker 1: rudimentary Internet, You're not far off. The Internet uses a
Speaker 1: similar structure, with machines acting as servers serving data to
Speaker 1: other machines that are acting as clients. With a BBS,
Speaker 1: the host computer is a server and the users computer
Speaker 1: is the client, except this was a one to one
Speaker 1: connection in most cases, not a persistent Internet. A cash
Speaker 1: club called their hosted system Ward and Randy's Computerized bulletin
Speaker 1: Board System, which was frequently shortened to c b b
Speaker 1: S that would later become BBS. This was named Afterward
Speaker 1: Christensen and Randy Seuss. Those were the two who created
Speaker 1: this software. They wrote up a report about their idea
Speaker 1: and how they did it, and a magazine called byte
Speaker 1: b y t E ran the story. More hobbyists began
Speaker 1: to create similar systems on their home machines. Now over time,
Speaker 1: these systems became more sophisticated. Programmers began to make hosting
Speaker 1: software that would allow for more complicated features and operations.
Speaker 1: By the mid nineteen eighties, typical bbs could host messages,
Speaker 1: including a simple version of email. You could log into
Speaker 1: the host machine, You could look for other members who
Speaker 1: also used that service, and you can leave them messages.
Speaker 1: But it was all limited to that host machine. You
Speaker 1: couldn't leave messages for someone on a front BBS because
Speaker 1: there was no connection at that point between the two.
Speaker 1: So a BBS was limited by the host computer, and
Speaker 1: the users were often limited by which bbs is were
Speaker 1: within their dialing network. So if you wanted to log
Speaker 1: into a local BBS, it wasn't a big deal. You
Speaker 1: could do that. You could look at the user list
Speaker 1: and you'd say, Oh, that's my buddy Bill. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: leave Bill a message and use the hosting service to
Speaker 1: leave a message for your buddy Bill. Bill. When Bill
Speaker 1: logs in can see that he's got a message, he
Speaker 1: sees into Oh, Sally sent me a message, and sends
Speaker 1: a message back to Sally, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: If you want to log into a different BBS, you
Speaker 1: had to call a totally different number, the number for
Speaker 1: that particular machine, and then you would connect into it
Speaker 1: and you could navigate and leave messages to those users.
Speaker 1: Some of these bbs is might be in other area codes,
Speaker 1: as in telephone area codes, and back in those days,
Speaker 1: you had to pay for a long distance and the
Speaker 1: rates were depending and upon lots of different things, but
Speaker 1: it boiled down to the fact that most people weren't
Speaker 1: willing to spend lots of money to connect to other
Speaker 1: bbs is, so you were kind of limited in your options.
Speaker 1: This created an opportunity for programmers and BBS operators. Users
Speaker 1: loved getting access to files, systems, and games that were
Speaker 1: on other machines, but they didn't necessarily have the money
Speaker 1: to dial up for a long distance call to connect
Speaker 1: their computer to another one that was across the country.
Speaker 1: Kristensen and Seuss had proposed a way to network bbs
Speaker 1: is to allow for information exchange, but it was another
Speaker 1: enthusiast named Tom Jennings who actually made it happen. In
Speaker 1: four Jennings created a BBS hosting program he called fidoh.
Speaker 1: This was for computers running on MS DOSS. As MS
Speaker 1: DOSS was establishing itself as a power player in the
Speaker 1: home computer space, more BBS operators began to adopt Fido,
Speaker 1: and so Jennings added in a little feature in his
Speaker 1: BBS hosting program m. It would let to Phido bbs
Speaker 1: is call each other, so as long as they were
Speaker 1: both running the phyto software, they could communicate. The call
Speaker 1: would be automatic, and upon making a connection, the two
Speaker 1: separate bbs is could exchange data, meaning messages in this case,
Speaker 1: so messages from one user to another. This would effectively
Speaker 1: allow users from one BBS to send mail to people
Speaker 1: connecting to the other bbs. So if you, Sally wanted
Speaker 1: to send a message to Bill, but Bill was using
Speaker 1: a different BBS, and your BBS and Bills BBS, we're
Speaker 1: able to talk to each other. Suddenly you could do that,
Speaker 1: when as before, you could only leave messages for the
Speaker 1: people who logged into your specific BBS. This was revolutionary.
Speaker 1: You were no longer restricted to chatting with people that
Speaker 1: were only in your own community. It was kind of
Speaker 1: like opening up a highway between two previously isolated cities.
Speaker 1: People could come and go and make new connections. And
Speaker 1: by adding more bbs is to the system, you could
Speaker 1: increase this even greater. Right, you could suddenly leave messages
Speaker 1: for people at all sorts of different places. Administrators had
Speaker 1: to figure out a few ways to make the system
Speaker 1: efficient and reduce costs as much as they could. That
Speaker 1: included coming up with ways to compress data so it
Speaker 1: could be sent quickly across dial up modems, and since
Speaker 1: exchanges frequently happened between systems that had to call one
Speaker 1: another over long distance. Time was money, so you wanted
Speaker 1: to cut that time down as much as possible, thus
Speaker 1: the need for compression strategies, because the smaller the file,
Speaker 1: the less time it takes to transmit it across the
Speaker 1: telephone lines. Phone companies also would charge different rates for
Speaker 1: a long distance at different times of the day, which
Speaker 1: would lead administrators to try and tweak their systems to
Speaker 1: connect to one another at the low points of the day,
Speaker 1: typically in the middle of the night, although the middle
Speaker 1: of the night in one place is not the middle
Speaker 1: of the night in other places, so even that required
Speaker 1: some tricky work. This meant that you could have technically
Speaker 1: received a new message, but you weren't able to see
Speaker 1: it yet. So let's say you've got a friend named Julie.
Speaker 1: Julie lives across the country, and she writes you a
Speaker 1: really nice letter on her BBS. You log into your
Speaker 1: local BBS, but because your system and julie system have
Speaker 1: not yet called each other that day to exchange information,
Speaker 1: you don't yet see Julie's message. It lives on her
Speaker 1: native BBS but has not yet made the transition over
Speaker 1: to yours, so it would look as if Julie hadn't
Speaker 1: written you yet, when in fact she had. It's just
Speaker 1: that the two systems have not sinked up yet at
Speaker 1: that point. Once they did sink you would see her
Speaker 1: letter once you checked your mail. So it wasn't quite
Speaker 1: as seamless as web mail would be later on, but
Speaker 1: it was still far faster than using something like snail mail.
Speaker 1: By the early ninety nineties, fido net had twenty thousand
Speaker 1: bbs s or nodes connected to it. By this time,
Speaker 1: phido net could support many different inter networked features. Websites
Speaker 1: could end up adopting some of the popular features later on,
Speaker 1: such as message forums. Jeff Brush cre aided a system
Speaker 1: called Echo Mail in nineteen six that was essentially a
Speaker 1: message board where people could post a message and anyone
Speaker 1: connected to one of the bbs is on that network
Speaker 1: could respond to that message, so it could become all
Speaker 1: sorts of discussions, just like you see on forums and
Speaker 1: message boards today on the web. Fido neet kept going
Speaker 1: strong as online service providers like a O L Online
Speaker 1: showed up later, but once internet access became more common
Speaker 1: and broadband access became a thing, the BBSs saw a
Speaker 1: steady drop in activity many node administrators chose to take
Speaker 1: their machines offline or they didn't bother to fix them
Speaker 1: once a machine broke down. Phido neet still exists to
Speaker 1: this day, however, with computers still sending information back and
Speaker 1: forth to each other. It interconnects with the Internet, meaning
Speaker 1: it's not entirely separate from the network of networks. And
Speaker 1: that's the general skinny on fido NEETs. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: now move on to the next topic, and this one
Speaker 1: is about agile work environments in general and Scrum in particular,
Speaker 1: and it's a request from listener Lucien. So if you're
Speaker 1: a software developer, if you're in that business, you're you've
Speaker 1: likely at least heard about agile methodology and agile processes,
Speaker 1: or maybe you've gone through the actual process of adopting
Speaker 1: agile methodology. But for the rest of us the term
Speaker 1: might sound a little mystical. So what is agile methodology? Basically,
Speaker 1: it's just a framework for getting work done. It's a process,
Speaker 1: if you will, to follow when you're working on developing software.
Speaker 1: There have been many proposed methods of streamlining the development
Speaker 1: process so that a development team is making the best
Speaker 1: use of its time and talent. Scrum technically predates the
Speaker 1: current versions of Agile, but many of the concepts from
Speaker 1: scrum have been adopted by the Agile framework. Ikuhiro No
Speaker 1: Naka and hiro Taka Takuchi proposed the process in an
Speaker 1: article in Harvard Business Review back in nineteen six. They
Speaker 1: elaborated on the idea over time, likening software development to
Speaker 1: a game of rugby. Now, in rugby, players try to
Speaker 1: move a ball down a field into an opponent's end zone,
Speaker 1: and they can pass the ball back and forth to
Speaker 1: one another. Not not in a forward line, but they
Speaker 1: can pass it back and forth to one another in
Speaker 1: an effort to try and get the ball to that
Speaker 1: end zone. That basic concept plays over to software development,
Speaker 1: in which part of a team, or a small team
Speaker 1: within a team, might have control of the project the ball,
Speaker 1: in other words, for one part of the process before
Speaker 1: passing it over to another mini team to keep the
Speaker 1: development moving forward. By the ninet nineties, this method had
Speaker 1: taken on the name scrum, which is also the word
Speaker 1: for a massive rugby players trying to gain possession of
Speaker 1: a ball during a rugby game. If you've ever seen
Speaker 1: anything that looks like a big huddle in rugby, and
Speaker 1: it involves both teams and they're all kind of pushing
Speaker 1: against each other's shoulder to shoulder. That's a scrum. The
Speaker 1: development moves forward in phases called sprints, and each sprint
Speaker 1: can take anywhere between a week to a month or more.
Speaker 1: There are three big roles within the scrum methodology, and
Speaker 1: everyone falls into one of those categories. First, you have
Speaker 1: the product owner. Now, this is the person who defines
Speaker 1: what the software is supposed to be, what it can do,
Speaker 1: what it looks like once it's all finished. The product
Speaker 1: owner is supposed to think of the software in terms
Speaker 1: of how the final customer is going to experience that software.
Speaker 1: Now that customer might be an average person, or it
Speaker 1: might be another company, but whatever it is, the product
Speaker 1: owner is the one who defines what the software is
Speaker 1: supposed to be able to do. So let's just say
Speaker 1: that it's a spreadsheet program. The product owner would be
Speaker 1: the one who has to say, all right, this program
Speaker 1: has to be able to record and tally long lists
Speaker 1: of figures and run various operations on those figures. But
Speaker 1: the product owner probably and say also it should play
Speaker 1: music and display headlines of breaking news. The product owner
Speaker 1: sets the expectations for the rest of the team as
Speaker 1: to what the software should ultimately do at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, and a good product owner won't make
Speaker 1: lots of changes to that expectation as the project moves forward,
Speaker 1: Otherwise the team will have to deal with the dreaded
Speaker 1: feature creep. If you listen to the Apple episodes, you
Speaker 1: heard me talk a lot about feature creep. That's when
Speaker 1: typically well meaning but perhaps naive stakeholders add more requirements
Speaker 1: to an increasingly bloated and complicated project. It also makes
Speaker 1: it harder to actually make the project work. The more
Speaker 1: stuff you add to it, the more opportunities there are
Speaker 1: for stuff to go wrong. Next, you've got your scrum master. Now,
Speaker 1: this should be a totally different person from the product owner.
Speaker 1: The scrum master's job is to run interference for the
Speaker 1: rest of the team to smooth out potential obstacles, to
Speaker 1: make sure the team has the assets they need to
Speaker 1: get their work done on. They're kind of a facilitator.
Speaker 1: They're also in charge of making sure the team is
Speaker 1: able to follow the scrum philosophy, which relies very heavily
Speaker 1: on self organization. Now, if you've ever been a work
Speaker 1: environment in which self organization played a big part and
Speaker 1: you were new to it, you might have experienced some
Speaker 1: difficulty in adjusting at first. It is something that some
Speaker 1: people find really challenging. The scrum master is supposed to
Speaker 1: help team members who are feeling a bit lost. The
Speaker 1: final role is what the majority of the people on
Speaker 1: any given project fall into, which is the development team.
Speaker 1: These are the people responsible for creating the product according
Speaker 1: to the expectations of the product owner. Typically, the team
Speaker 1: works on incremental segments of the development process. Each increment
Speaker 1: represents a sprint, and they might be implementing a new
Speaker 1: feature or developing something totally different that's supposed to integrate
Speaker 1: with the rest of the software later on. It can
Speaker 1: really depend upon whatever the software development project is. Most
Speaker 1: projects require several sprints, and each sprint has a predetermined deadline.
Speaker 1: So when I say sprints take maybe a week to
Speaker 1: more than a month, that deadline is set ahead of
Speaker 1: time based upon the assessments of the product owner and
Speaker 1: the scrum master. They take a look and they say, well,
Speaker 1: based upon what we need and based upon what our
Speaker 1: team is able to do, we expect that this part
Speaker 1: of the project is going to take two weeks, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna set that sprint time for two weeks. Ideally,
Speaker 1: each sprint ends with a fully developed increment in the
Speaker 1: product that would be ready to go if it were
Speaker 1: fully realized piece of software. So, in other words, if
Speaker 1: you are developing a specific feature for a software program,
Speaker 1: at the end of that sprint, that feature should be
Speaker 1: completely done, and if everything else were ready to go,
Speaker 1: you would say, let's ship today. You're not supposed to
Speaker 1: have something that's partly finished or it's dependent upon something else.
Speaker 1: Ideally it's all self contained. Each sprint begins with a
Speaker 1: meeting to define requirements and expectations, and it ends with
Speaker 1: another meeting to review how the process worked. In addition
Speaker 1: to those bookend meetings, the development team has a daily scrum,
Speaker 1: which is a short fifteen minute meeting that's meant to
Speaker 1: review what work has been done already, what work still
Speaker 1: needs to be done, and what could possibly cause problems
Speaker 1: in getting work done for that day. So if you say, hey,
Speaker 1: I need to do X, Y and Z by the
Speaker 1: end of today, but I can't or it's gonna be
Speaker 1: hard because of this other thing, the scrum master can
Speaker 1: try and take care of that other thing and remove
Speaker 1: that obstacle from your path. Then you rinse and repeat
Speaker 1: until the full project is finished and ready to go.
Speaker 1: And that's scrum in a nutshell. There's a lot more
Speaker 1: that has been said and written about it extensively, and
Speaker 1: it's not a one size fits all solution to software development.
Speaker 1: For example, if you've got a team that has a
Speaker 1: lot of ultra specialized workers, people who really focus in
Speaker 1: on a narrow but deep set of software development skills,
Speaker 1: scrum probably won't work so well because it's really meant
Speaker 1: for people who are more general purpose programmers. Uh. They
Speaker 1: have to be really flexible and be able to move
Speaker 1: from one thing to another. If you've got someone who's
Speaker 1: got a kind of a razor sharp focus on a
Speaker 1: very deep subject, they probably can't be as flexible as
Speaker 1: other people. And it's not to say that one type
Speaker 1: of developer is better than another. They both have their
Speaker 1: uses dependent upon what it is you need to create. Uh.
Speaker 1: So this particular methodology, while it might be ideal for
Speaker 1: certain organizations and the types of software they develop, may
Speaker 1: not work at all for others. And I can tell
Speaker 1: you having observed it at firsthand. Anytime you implement a
Speaker 1: new methodology, a new process. There are so many growing
Speaker 1: pains and so much a smith It has to happen,
Speaker 1: and typically the people who are going through it hate
Speaker 1: it when it first starts because change is scary and
Speaker 1: no one likes to have to do it. Uh So
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things where is it an
Speaker 1: effective tool. It's completely dependent upon your circumstance. Also, I
Speaker 1: should add that while there's anecdotal reports about scrum and
Speaker 1: agile methodologies improving workflow, there's no empirical evidence necessarily that
Speaker 1: actually states that these approaches to work are inherently better
Speaker 1: than others. It may just be that it is a
Speaker 1: way for you to write down how projects get done
Speaker 1: so that you have a better way of keeping track
Speaker 1: of it, which has its own value, But it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that this particular approach is going to get
Speaker 1: things done in a more efficient and uh cost effective manner.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot more to say in this listener
Speaker 1: grab bag episode, some more subjects to cover, but before
Speaker 1: I do that, let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. One of the other requests I received recently
Speaker 1: was in response to the show I did about the
Speaker 1: history of clocks. The request was to talk about atmospheric clocks,
Speaker 1: a particular type of clock that harnesses physics to keep
Speaker 1: the clock wound and keeping time properly. And it's pretty
Speaker 1: cool stuff. So here's to you, climber z z z
Speaker 1: whomever you may be. First, a quick review. For a
Speaker 1: mechanical clock. To keep time, you need a few elements
Speaker 1: in place. You need some sort of way to generate
Speaker 1: the force necessary to turn the hands on the clock's dial.
Speaker 1: This force should be steady, but it also cannot be
Speaker 1: constant if we want it to be easy to read
Speaker 1: the time on the clock. If the hands are constantly
Speaker 1: in motion, even if they're moving slowly, it's harder to
Speaker 1: read the time. So there needs to be a method
Speaker 1: of regulating the movement of the clock pieces to make
Speaker 1: it simpler and more regular to tell time, and to
Speaker 1: make sure you're you're telling time accurately. Enter the escapement.
Speaker 1: Now it sounds like a trap door or something, but
Speaker 1: an escapement is actually a device that helps regulate the
Speaker 1: motion of a clock's innards. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different types of escapements, but they all basically do
Speaker 1: the same thing. They act as a break for the
Speaker 1: other parts of a clock, and they released that break
Speaker 1: at regular intervals to allow the parts to move and
Speaker 1: for the hands to progress around the clock dial. So
Speaker 1: let me explain with an example, and this is when
Speaker 1: I talked about in that previous episode about the history
Speaker 1: of clocks. I mentioned that there was a famous water
Speaker 1: clock tower built in China around the year ten ninety four,
Speaker 1: which was eight years after they had started building the thing.
Speaker 1: It took eight years to build it. The inventor of
Speaker 1: this tower was a genius named Sue Song. He used
Speaker 1: a water wheel to transmit force from flowing water to
Speaker 1: the clock's mechanisms. Now, imagine that you've got a vertically
Speaker 1: aligned water wheel, and around the rim of the water
Speaker 1: wheel are buckets. As water falls from above, it fills
Speaker 1: the bucket on the furthest edge of the water wheel,
Speaker 1: and the weight of the filled bucket causes the wheel
Speaker 1: to rotate. Now, if you didn't have a break, the
Speaker 1: wheel would rotate rather haphazardly. Su Song knew this, so
Speaker 1: he built in a simple but effective system on the
Speaker 1: opposite side where the water was flowing. He created a
Speaker 1: weighted lever. On one end of this lever, you would
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a weight, and on the
Speaker 1: other end, it would actually rest against the backside of
Speaker 1: the bucket opposite the one being filled. If you're having
Speaker 1: trouble imagining this, draw a circle. Then draw some simple buckets,
Speaker 1: all facing along the same direction. So let's say we're
Speaker 1: making the buckets face counter clockwise. So the bucket on
Speaker 1: the rightmost side of your wheel should be facing upwards,
Speaker 1: open style. The bucket on the leftmost side of the
Speaker 1: wheel should be faced down, so it's the bottom of
Speaker 1: the bucket that's toward the top of the circle. The
Speaker 1: lever would rest against that downward facing buckets bottom. It
Speaker 1: would stop the water wheel from rotating freely. The lever
Speaker 1: was weighted so that would only hold back the wheel
Speaker 1: until the bucket on the other side had a sufficient
Speaker 1: amount of water in it. At that point, the bucket
Speaker 1: with water would weigh enough to turn the wheel, lifting
Speaker 1: the lever up, and the wheel would rotate one position.
Speaker 1: And as the bucket cleared that lever, after it's lifted
Speaker 1: it up, because it's on a little pivot, the lever
Speaker 1: would fall back down and stop the next downward facing bucket,
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, some of the water would slash out of
Speaker 1: the bucket that just moved downward the filled bucket, and
Speaker 1: there'd be a new bucket in the place of the
Speaker 1: old one that would be filling up with water, and
Speaker 1: the whole system would start again. Now, that was the
Speaker 1: escapement that lever because it controlled the rotation of the
Speaker 1: water wheel. As clockmakers created more sophisticated clocks, the escapement
Speaker 1: took on other forms, but its purpose remained the same,
Speaker 1: to create a means to keep the rotation of a
Speaker 1: clock's inner works regular according to the divisions of time
Speaker 1: we humans have arbitrarily set as being meaningful. One other
Speaker 1: thing that did change was how clockmakers would provide the
Speaker 1: force necessary to operate the clock. Sue Song was using
Speaker 1: falling water and a water wheel, but most clocks use
Speaker 1: some other methods, such as a wound spring. Winding such
Speaker 1: a time piece means you are curling metal ribbon, creating
Speaker 1: stored energy. So take a piece of metal, cut it
Speaker 1: into a ribbon, usually use steel, and then you curl
Speaker 1: that into a coil, and you keep curling the coil
Speaker 1: tighter and tighter and tighter. The metal ribbon quote unquote
Speaker 1: wants to return to its natural state of being a
Speaker 1: straight piece of metal the spring under tension creates the
Speaker 1: force that drives the rest of the clock's gears. As
Speaker 1: it starts to unwind, it provides the energy needed to
Speaker 1: turn the other gears of the clock. But eventually this spring,
Speaker 1: often called a main spring, well unwind to a point
Speaker 1: where it no longer can provide the force needed to
Speaker 1: keep accurate time, which is when you have to wind
Speaker 1: the clock back up again. If you've ever had a
Speaker 1: watch that did this, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: once a day, you'd wind your watch, which would actually
Speaker 1: coil this spring tighter so that it would continue to
Speaker 1: unwind and provide the energy necessary to make everything else move.
Speaker 1: But what if you came up with a way that
Speaker 1: didn't require you to wind the clock on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: What if the clock was somehow able to wind itself
Speaker 1: using physics. Enter the atmosphere clock, also known as the utmost.
Speaker 1: There was a man named Jean Leon Reuter, who was
Speaker 1: a Swiss engineer who was living in Paris at the time,
Speaker 1: who invented the device in nineteen twenty eight. He wanted
Speaker 1: to create a clock that was self winding, and to
Speaker 1: do so he looked to the weather. Specifically, he figured
Speaker 1: if he could create a device that depended upon variations
Speaker 1: in air pressure due to changes in temperature, he could
Speaker 1: provide the winding motion necessary to keep a clock in
Speaker 1: good working order. The heart of the ATMOS clock is
Speaker 1: a sealed chamber filled with an expandable fluid or gas.
Speaker 1: The original patent suggests mercury, but more recent ATMOS clocks
Speaker 1: use gases like ethel chloride, which boils at fifty four
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit or a little more than twelve degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: It's this gas that provides the force needed to wind
Speaker 1: the clock. The gas will expand or contract with changes
Speaker 1: in temperature. Higher temperatures make the gas expand, and lower
Speaker 1: ones will make it contract to the point where it
Speaker 1: will condense. If you get the gas cold enough, it'll
Speaker 1: condense into a liquid. The gas will respond to small
Speaker 1: variations in temperature, which is good because these clocks were
Speaker 1: meant to be stored indoors, where temperature variations are less
Speaker 1: extreme than they are outside, so little changes in temperature
Speaker 1: can provide enough energy to keep the clock wound for
Speaker 1: a couple of days. In some cases, expanding gas can
Speaker 1: do a lot of work, like pushing against stuff, so
Speaker 1: if you either put something in that sealed chamber to
Speaker 1: push against, or you make the chamber itself part of
Speaker 1: a mechanism. So it's kind of like bellows that expand
Speaker 1: and contract. You can leverage that to do useful work.
Speaker 1: In the case of an atmos clock, that work involves
Speaker 1: providing the force necessary to wind the clock's mainspring. So
Speaker 1: the big trick there is translating this expanding and contracting
Speaker 1: motion into a winding motion. Now, a typical approach is
Speaker 1: using a chain attached to a bellows that contains the gas.
Speaker 1: The other end of the chain is wrapped around a
Speaker 1: ratcheted opponent that can wind the spring. If you replace
Speaker 1: the chain with a knob, you could physically turn the
Speaker 1: knob and wind the spring that way. Turning one way
Speaker 1: winds the spring. Turning the opposite way would allow the
Speaker 1: ratcheted component to keep the existing tension on the spring,
Speaker 1: but allow the free rotation of the knobs. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, you can't unwind the spring by turning the
Speaker 1: knob because the ratchet allows you to turn it freely
Speaker 1: without actually losing any of that tension. Turning it the
Speaker 1: other way would allow you to actually wind the spring.
Speaker 1: So you can only turn it one way to affect
Speaker 1: the spring. So this chain is under tension. On this
Speaker 1: ratcheted component, you might use a spring attached to the
Speaker 1: chain that keeps it under this tension, so it's always
Speaker 1: pulled tight. No matter if the bellows is fully expanded
Speaker 1: or completely contracted. This pushes. So let's say that the
Speaker 1: temperature increases. When the temperature increases, the gas inside the
Speaker 1: bellows will expand end, so the bellows moves outward. That
Speaker 1: would mean that the bellows is quote unquote pushing the chain. Now,
Speaker 1: you can't really push chain or rope, right. If you
Speaker 1: have a length of rope in front of you and
Speaker 1: you try and push it, it doesn't really do anything.
Speaker 1: But if the rope is under tension as then if
Speaker 1: there's a weight on the other end of the rope
Speaker 1: and then you quote unquote push it, what you're really
Speaker 1: doing is letting out the rope a little bit, right,
Speaker 1: same thing works with this particular approach. The chain gets
Speaker 1: pulled a bit from this tension, and the bellows expanding
Speaker 1: allows the chain to move in that way. This would
Speaker 1: end up turning the ratcheted portion in a way where
Speaker 1: it was freely rotating so it's not it's not winding
Speaker 1: the spring, it's just rotating so it doesn't unwind. Then
Speaker 1: when it gets colder, the bellows contract and pull the
Speaker 1: chain inward. This ends up turning the ratcheted component so
Speaker 1: that you are winding the main spring. So every time
Speaker 1: the temperature goes down, the main spring gets wound a
Speaker 1: little bit more, and as it unwinds, it's winding back
Speaker 1: whenever the temperature drops. It does this over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, so it keeps that mainspring pretty much
Speaker 1: under tension consistently, so you don't ever have to wind
Speaker 1: it by hand. As being wound by actual physical changes
Speaker 1: in the environment, it's being wound by changes in air pressure,
Speaker 1: which in turn is being affected by changes in temperature.
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. The interesting thing to me is that
Speaker 1: the in the end result, it looks like the whole
Speaker 1: thing is winding itself, and at a very casual glance,
Speaker 1: it almost sounds like it's a perpetual motion device. But
Speaker 1: that's not the case. Let me explain why, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of confusion about the concept of perpetual motion machines.
Speaker 1: A true perpetual motion device if such a thing were possible,
Speaker 1: and spoiler alert, it's not. Would continue to work once
Speaker 1: you set it in motion, with no need for any
Speaker 1: external power source. So imagine a pendulum and you started swinging,
Speaker 1: and it continues to swing indefinitely. It will swing until
Speaker 1: the heat death of the universe or the surfaces on
Speaker 1: is destroyed, but it will continue swinging until something forces
Speaker 1: it to stop. That would be a perpetual motion machine,
Speaker 1: but it's also impossible in our world. It would counteract
Speaker 1: all limitations on the system. So the laws of physics
Speaker 1: as we understand them, states such a thing is impossible.
Speaker 1: If it is in fact possible to create a true
Speaker 1: perpetual motion machine, it would mean that our laws of
Speaker 1: physics are wrong, that we are incorrect in the way
Speaker 1: we have formed the laws of physics. But that would
Speaker 1: also mean that all the observations we have made based
Speaker 1: upon those laws would need to be readjusted. And we've
Speaker 1: made a lot of technology that depends upon those laws
Speaker 1: being true and the technology works, which seems to be
Speaker 1: pretty strong evidence to support that those laws, while they
Speaker 1: may not be comprehensive, are on the right track, Because
Speaker 1: if science didn't work, we wouldn't have stuff like computers,
Speaker 1: technology is essentially science made physical. So why is perpetual
Speaker 1: motion impossible? Like, what was about our laws of physics
Speaker 1: that state that this is an impossibility. Well, let's look
Speaker 1: at thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics is about the
Speaker 1: conservation of energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but
Speaker 1: it can be converted from one type of energy into another. So,
Speaker 1: for example, potential energy stored in a wound spring can
Speaker 1: convert into kinetic energy as it unwinds, but no energy
Speaker 1: was actually created in that system and just changed from
Speaker 1: potential to kinetic, So you didn't create energy, you just
Speaker 1: kind of translated it. A mechanical object is always going
Speaker 1: to have to deal with friction. It's always going to
Speaker 1: have parts that rub against other parts, and friction is
Speaker 1: this resistance that matter encounters when it moves against other matter.
Speaker 1: A mechanical system with enough power can overcome friction, but
Speaker 1: it loses some energy in the form of heat. Now, again,
Speaker 1: it's not having energy destroyed. Instead, is that some of
Speaker 1: the energy that would be used to do mechanical work
Speaker 1: gets converted over into heat, which can dissipate into the environment.
Speaker 1: That means that the overall system has lost energy. We
Speaker 1: just lost it, and that means we can no longer
Speaker 1: use that energy to continue to do work. So any
Speaker 1: mechanical system, however well engineered, will eventually lose enough energy
Speaker 1: from heat so it will stop working without external energy
Speaker 1: being poured back into it. That is, so that's the
Speaker 1: only way you can counteract that is to add more
Speaker 1: energy into the system. And that's what our modern technology does.
Speaker 1: It draws power from various sources. Some of those sources
Speaker 1: are physical, like water wheels or windmills. Some of them
Speaker 1: rely upon electrical sources like batteries, but all of them
Speaker 1: require a source of energy to keep things moving because
Speaker 1: they cannot go perpetually. They have to have that extra
Speaker 1: boost of juice. There are a lot of free energy
Speaker 1: machines out there. Such a thing is completely impossible based
Speaker 1: upon our understanding of the laws of physics. Most of
Speaker 1: these free energy machines, on closer inspection, either don't work
Speaker 1: at all. Actually, when I say most, I should say
Speaker 1: all the other don't work at all, or it turns
Speaker 1: out that they were using some other external power source
Speaker 1: in order to keep going, and either the person who
Speaker 1: created it did not understand what was actually happening, or
Speaker 1: their purposefully trying to cover it up in an effort
Speaker 1: to market something that simply cannot exist. In an Atmos clock,
Speaker 1: while it might seem like the spring is magically wound
Speaker 1: over time, the added energy is actually coming from the
Speaker 1: external environment. Changes in temperature and then air pressure are
Speaker 1: the key because they create the work necessary to wind
Speaker 1: the clock. That's your external source of energy. So while
Speaker 1: it might look like it's all doing this on its own,
Speaker 1: it's actually reacting to its environment. The environment is the
Speaker 1: thing that's providing the extra oomph needed to wind the clock.
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. By the way. These Atmos clocks are
Speaker 1: sought after by clock enthusiasts around the world, and you
Speaker 1: can get new ones if you've got about six or
Speaker 1: seven grand on you. You can find them on eBay
Speaker 1: for a few hundred dollars, depending on the make and model,
Speaker 1: and it's uh and what shape it's in. They're incredibly delicate,
Speaker 1: these clocks. They need to be on level surfaces. You're
Speaker 1: not supposed to handle them too much. You're not supposed
Speaker 1: to move them around while they're actually working because it
Speaker 1: can disrupt the workings of the clock. So they're beautiful.
Speaker 1: They'll keep accurate time for ages because you don't have
Speaker 1: to wind them, but they are incredibly persnickety. So if
Speaker 1: you are a clock enthusiast and you want to find
Speaker 1: something truly special, start looking around for atmos clocks. If
Speaker 1: you got you know, a few hundred, a few Hondo
Speaker 1: says that, or if you're like really rolling in at
Speaker 1: a few thousand, if you want a new one. Um
Speaker 1: also if you are rolling in it and you want
Speaker 1: to spend a few thousand on o'clock. Uh hey, my
Speaker 1: birthdays in June. I'm just saying alright. One more listener
Speaker 1: requests to go before we take another break. This one
Speaker 1: comes from Sam, who wanted to learn more about tests iracts.
Speaker 1: So I just talked about physics. Let's talk about super
Speaker 1: duper crazy physics. Now. You may have heard of the
Speaker 1: term tests iract if you're a fan of the Marvel
Speaker 1: films that have come out over the last few years,
Speaker 1: or if you read The Wrinkle in Time or A
Speaker 1: Wrinkle in Time, because the characters travel through time and
Speaker 1: space using tests iracts, although the ones in that book
Speaker 1: are different from your typical tests iact. One of the
Speaker 1: Infinity Stones in the Marvel universe, which will play a
Speaker 1: pretty important part in the next couple of Avengers movies,
Speaker 1: is in a form that they called the tests Are Act.
Speaker 1: So what the heck is it? Well, first, it's not
Speaker 1: what Marvel depicts. A tests Are Act is technically a
Speaker 1: four dimensional object, or at least the three dimensional representation
Speaker 1: of a four dimensional object, and really is a three
Speaker 1: dimensional representation on the two dimensional medium of a four
Speaker 1: dimensional object. But let's explain that in a second. Let's
Speaker 1: just wrap our heads around this whole idea and review
Speaker 1: our concept of what a dimension is. So a point,
Speaker 1: as an a DoPT a single point in space is
Speaker 1: a zero dimensional object. There's no dimension to It has
Speaker 1: no height, and has no length, and has no depth. Now,
Speaker 1: if you take two points and you draw a line
Speaker 1: between the two points, you now have a one dimensional object.
Speaker 1: A line has width or length, depending upon your perspective
Speaker 1: and frame of reference, but it cannot have both. It
Speaker 1: has one or the other. It's just got the one dimension,
Speaker 1: which you can express in units that measure length, such
Speaker 1: as centimeters or inches or miles or yards or meters
Speaker 1: or whatever. But that's the measurement we use for length.
Speaker 1: That is one dimension. It has no area, It has
Speaker 1: no volume. Next we get our two dimensional up images.
Speaker 1: These are your basic geometric figures like squares and circles
Speaker 1: and triangles. They have height, they have width, but they
Speaker 1: do not have depth. We can measure these objects not
Speaker 1: only by how long their individual sides are or single side,
Speaker 1: as is the case of a circle, but also how
Speaker 1: much area they cover. If we take a square and
Speaker 1: we extend the corners back a bit and draw a
Speaker 1: second square, and we connect things up, we we now
Speaker 1: have a cube. This is a three dimensional object or
Speaker 1: representation of a three dimensional objects. It has height, width,
Speaker 1: and depth, which means it not just has the width
Speaker 1: and length and depth. The depth creates the concept of volume.
Speaker 1: A three dimensional object can hold stuff in the real
Speaker 1: world and it's it's got volume to it. This is
Speaker 1: the world in which we live, or at least the
Speaker 1: world that we can perceive. Our senses allow us to
Speaker 1: understand three dimensions. Pretty much everything we encounter, with the
Speaker 1: possible exception of some politicians and celebrities are happens to
Speaker 1: be three dimensional. And that was just a snarky joke,
Speaker 1: because even politicians and celebrities have three dimensions, unless they
Speaker 1: are traditional cartoon characters. In which case two dimensions. A
Speaker 1: test erect is the three dimensional representation of a four
Speaker 1: dimensional object on a two dimensional medium. We sometimes call
Speaker 1: these hypercubes. You can actually draw a representation of this. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it has to obey the rules of our three dimensional perception,
Speaker 1: so it's a little tricky. The accepted octacorn figure is
Speaker 1: made up of eight cubes joined together, which isn't that
Speaker 1: crazy when you first think about it. After all, regular
Speaker 1: cube is bound by six squares. So you take with
Speaker 1: six squares, you bind them together, you've got a cube.
Speaker 1: Take eight cubes, you bind them together. You get a tessaract.
Speaker 1: There are three cubes to each edge, which means in
Speaker 1: total you have thirty two edges and twenty four squares
Speaker 1: in one tests or act A rotating tests. I act
Speaker 1: defies easy explanation. Let's just say it doesn't move the
Speaker 1: way you think it would based off our understanding of
Speaker 1: three dimensional objects. You can actually rotate it along two
Speaker 1: planes simultaneously. There are animations that simulate this. They show
Speaker 1: testaracts rotating along these two planes at the same time,
Speaker 1: and I suggest you look them up to see them,
Speaker 1: because there is no way I can describe what it
Speaker 1: looks like in words, you kind of have to view it.
Speaker 1: If you go to even a Wikipedia article on the tessaract,
Speaker 1: you can see these things in this kind of animation. Also,
Speaker 1: these animations of rotation aren't a real representation of four
Speaker 1: dimensional rotation because we cannot do that in this particular medium.
Speaker 1: This isn't that big a deal either when you think
Speaker 1: about it, because you can draw a cube on a
Speaker 1: two dimensional sheet of paper, and the cube you draw
Speaker 1: isn't really three dimensional. It's a series of lines on
Speaker 1: the two dimensional sheet of paper, so it's impossible to
Speaker 1: be three dimensional, but it represents a three dimensional object. Now,
Speaker 1: Einstein got all relative on us and proposed that the
Speaker 1: fourth dimension in our universe is time. There are various
Speaker 1: mathematical models of the universe that follow things like string
Speaker 1: theory that suggests there may be eleven or twenty six
Speaker 1: dimensions out there, or maybe more. But because of the
Speaker 1: way we've evolved, we can only directly perceive and understand
Speaker 1: three spatial dimensions, and we can recognize the passing of time.
Speaker 1: So I hope that that is an interesting discussion on
Speaker 1: the tests or act. It is a fascinating, uh hypercube
Speaker 1: of a subject, but again, really tricky to describe in
Speaker 1: an audio podcast, So I do wreck when you go
Speaker 1: and look at those animations, because they'll break your brain
Speaker 1: a little bit. All right, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. MICHAELA wrote me and asked if
Speaker 1: I might do an episode on speakers and headphones, and
Speaker 1: I might. In fact, I will. I'm gonna do a
Speaker 1: full episode on speakers and headphones and talk about the
Speaker 1: evolution and development of the technology. It will warrant a
Speaker 1: full episode, but for now, I'd like to give a
Speaker 1: brief explanation of how speakers work, and then when I
Speaker 1: get to the full episode about speakers and headphones, you
Speaker 1: can listen to me do it again, or at least
Speaker 1: give a summary. I probably won't go into full detail
Speaker 1: right here, but I want to give you kind of
Speaker 1: an overview because it is interesting and it will be
Speaker 1: a nice lead into the episode they'll be coming up
Speaker 1: in the near future. So it helps if we look
Speaker 1: at the process of recording sound first, since playing soundback
Speaker 1: is essentially the same process, but reversed sound is a
Speaker 1: physical phenomenon. Sound waves pass through physical media like the air.
Speaker 1: The air is a is a physical medium. It's got
Speaker 1: molecules in there, so when you make a sound, molecules
Speaker 1: in the air vibrate, and this vibration gets passed from
Speaker 1: some air molecules to the next, to the next, to
Speaker 1: the next, and it propagates outward. And we often draw
Speaker 1: a sound as moving out in a wave. It kind
Speaker 1: of moves out, almost more like a bubble, but it's
Speaker 1: in a wave in all directions that it can move
Speaker 1: through until it loses enough energy where it's no longer
Speaker 1: really moving anymore. Molecules will vibrate through the medium and
Speaker 1: pass that vibration along, and if you're close enough to
Speaker 1: the source of the vibration of the source of the
Speaker 1: vibration was strong enough, your ears will pick it up.
Speaker 1: That's because the air is moving in and out of
Speaker 1: your ear canals, changing the air pressure slightly due to
Speaker 1: those vibrations, which in turn essentially pushes and pulls against
Speaker 1: your tim panic membrane. It's more fair to say it
Speaker 1: pushes the tim tympanic membrane in, and then when the
Speaker 1: pressure is lower than inside the inner ear, the tympanic
Speaker 1: membrane pushes back out again, rather than to say push
Speaker 1: and pull. But that that's getting kind of into semantics
Speaker 1: at that point, I think anyway, the timpanic membrane is
Speaker 1: better known as your ear drum. Now, that causes some
Speaker 1: fluid in your inner ear to slash around a bit.
Speaker 1: I'm skipping over some stuff like the tiny little bones
Speaker 1: connected to ear drum. But ultimately it makes some fluid
Speaker 1: slash around, and it activates some nerve cells that pick
Speaker 1: up this slashing of fluid. It sends electrical impulses to
Speaker 1: your brain, and the gray matter in your skull interprets
Speaker 1: these electrical impulses as sound. Higher frequency sounds cause the
Speaker 1: air pressure to fluctuate faster, and we perceive these sounds
Speaker 1: as having a higher pitch. The air pressure level is
Speaker 1: a sound waves amplitude, which we register as volumes. So
Speaker 1: the greater the amplitude, the louder the sound. When we
Speaker 1: record sound, we use a microphone incited to tpical microphone
Speaker 1: is a diaphragm. It's a thin layer that's made out
Speaker 1: of a very flexible material, like very thin plastic. The
Speaker 1: diaphragm responds to sound waves in a way that's similar
Speaker 1: to our own tympanic membranes. High pressure pushes the diaphragm
Speaker 1: in lower pressure allows the diaphragm to extend outward. Components
Speaker 1: in the microphone detect this vibration and convert the physical
Speaker 1: vibrations into electrical signals. This is a transducer. A transducer
Speaker 1: takes uh these kind of energies from one form and
Speaker 1: turns into an energy of another form, in this case
Speaker 1: physical vibration to electric signals. I'll go into more detail
Speaker 1: about that in the full episode. And then this electrical
Speaker 1: signal would go on to amplifiers and other components to
Speaker 1: ultimately head towards either a speaker so you're broadcasting live
Speaker 1: straight out, or a recording device, or some combination of
Speaker 1: the two. So a speaker takes this process and effectively
Speaker 1: reverses it. Basically, it takes an incoming electrical signal and
Speaker 1: translates that into physical vibrations, using a flexible cone called
Speaker 1: a diaphragm to do it. The diaphragm is attached to
Speaker 1: a suspension inside the speaker. The suspension, in turn is
Speaker 1: connected to a frame inside the speaker. The whole apparatus
Speaker 1: of this one part of a component is called a driver,
Speaker 1: and a speaker can actually have multiple drivers in it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to have just the one. A lot
Speaker 1: of them do have one or two. And these are
Speaker 1: the big circular things you're looking at when you're looking
Speaker 1: at speakers, So the speaker is kind of like the
Speaker 1: overall structure. The drivers are the individual noise making devices
Speaker 1: inside of them, and the vibrations that these these uh
Speaker 1: diaphragms make these cones, these drivers inside the speakers, that's
Speaker 1: what's making all the sound. It's just those components vibrating.
Speaker 1: I have a lot more to say about that process,
Speaker 1: including the actual mechanisms that cause the drivers to move
Speaker 1: within a speaker, and spoiler alert that has to do
Speaker 1: with magnets in an upcoming episode, but I wanted at
Speaker 1: least to give the basics now to kind of be
Speaker 1: a teaser for it, and also because I wanted to
Speaker 1: thank MICHAELA for writing in and and suggesting it. I
Speaker 1: didn't want a chance to forget it. Our last request
Speaker 1: comes from Nathan, who wanted to know more about the
Speaker 1: site I Fix It I F I X I T.
Speaker 1: This site helps both repair professionals and d I Y
Speaker 1: hobbyists understand the components of various pieces of hardware on
Speaker 1: the market, including stuff like smartphones and game consoles and
Speaker 1: all sorts of electronics. Typically, it can be really hard
Speaker 1: to find information on those devices unless you happen to
Speaker 1: be a licensed professional who essentially gets permission from the
Speaker 1: respective companies to work and repair their products. I fix
Speaker 1: It helps reverse this trend of technology becoming progressively more
Speaker 1: like a black box. A black box piece of technology
Speaker 1: is one where the hardware is locked away so that
Speaker 1: you can't really observe how it works. A lot of
Speaker 1: companies make hardware hard to act access. Apple is infamous
Speaker 1: for this, so that it's very difficult for you to
Speaker 1: get under the hood and make it do what you
Speaker 1: wanted to do. When you might want to hack it
Speaker 1: so it's doing something it wasn't intended to do. You
Speaker 1: might just want to repair it, but a lot of
Speaker 1: companies make it very difficult to do and they guard
Speaker 1: the secrets about how these devices work, and I fix
Speaker 1: It is philosophically opposed to that. It's a crowdsourced approach
Speaker 1: to tear downs and repairs. The community of users can
Speaker 1: contribute guides, photo albums, and more to help others work
Speaker 1: on their gear or someone else's gear if they need to.
Speaker 1: The site got its start back in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: there were a couple of college students who were attending
Speaker 1: California Polytechnic University and the two roommates started off by
Speaker 1: trying to fix an Eyebook device. There was no reference
Speaker 1: guide available for the actual computer they were working on,
Speaker 1: so they rolled up their sleeves, they unscrewed the case,
Speaker 1: and they started poking around. Eventually they identified what the
Speaker 1: problem was and they were will to fix it. And
Speaker 1: then they thought, huh, I bet other people are having
Speaker 1: a similar problem with their devices. What if there were
Speaker 1: a centralized database of repair information that people could use
Speaker 1: that they don't have to either rely on an expensive
Speaker 1: licensed repair man, or even worse, that they might just
Speaker 1: throw away a salvageable piece of technology in order to
Speaker 1: go out and buy a new one. Eventually, their help
Speaker 1: site evolved into a user powered community. Again. The people
Speaker 1: are the ones who submit repair guides and photo albums,
Speaker 1: and they explain step by step what every piece inside
Speaker 1: various technologies is, what it does, how to fix or
Speaker 1: replace it, and more. On a personal note, I have
Speaker 1: found I fix its site to be incredibly helpful whenever
Speaker 1: I needed to research a particular device to learn about
Speaker 1: the components inside it. I did it all the time
Speaker 1: for how Stuff Works articles. If you read some of
Speaker 1: my old How Stuff Works articles, you'll often see I
Speaker 1: fix It as one of the sites I source as
Speaker 1: one of the ones that I used while I was
Speaker 1: researching the material. Some companies, it turns out, are not
Speaker 1: very forthcoming about the tech that's inside their products. They
Speaker 1: might not tell you what kind of graphics processing unit
Speaker 1: is in their computer, or the type of processor that
Speaker 1: you might find inside a hand set, and so the
Speaker 1: only way to really know for sure if you don't
Speaker 1: have access to internal company documents is to break one
Speaker 1: of them open and take a look yourself. Fortunately, that's
Speaker 1: what the people and I fix It do for you,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to do it yourself unless you
Speaker 1: need to in order to fix it, in which case
Speaker 1: you go to I fix It and you'll learn how
Speaker 1: I fix it. Teardowns have a ton of different popular
Speaker 1: gadgets that remove all this mystery, and it also removes
Speaker 1: the need for me to do it myself, which I
Speaker 1: greatly appreciate, although I did once do it for the
Speaker 1: Nintendo three D S. We had it for about three
Speaker 1: days and then I took it apart and I took
Speaker 1: it apart in away where I can guarantee it will
Speaker 1: never work again. It was in a bucket on my
Speaker 1: desk for a long time though. Anyway. The philosophy of
Speaker 1: the founders is that anyone with a desire to learn
Speaker 1: should be able to maintain his or her technology. It
Speaker 1: should not be kept apart from us as an almost
Speaker 1: mystical object that we never fully understand. They want to
Speaker 1: put the power back in the hands of the users
Speaker 1: and to help consumers avoid what could become predatory policies.
Speaker 1: After all, if a company is using proprietary hardware, even
Speaker 1: down to the types of screws it uses to hold
Speaker 1: everything together, it is locking the users into an ecosystem,
Speaker 1: whether that's best for the consumer or not. And news flash,
Speaker 1: it is rarely best for the consumer. It is almost
Speaker 1: always best for the company. From a business standpoint, you
Speaker 1: can't really blame companies for doing this, But from that
Speaker 1: practical standpoint as a consumer, it kind of bites if
Speaker 1: you've not checked out, I fix it. You should fix that.
Speaker 1: It gets pretty technical, but it also will help you
Speaker 1: understand your technology better, and who knows, you might see
Speaker 1: the opportunity to write a guide all of your own. Well,
Speaker 1: that does it for this grab bag. I want to
Speaker 1: thank all of you for sending in requests. I've got
Speaker 1: tons of requests for full length episodes that I've started
Speaker 1: to schedule out try and I looked at the schedule
Speaker 1: earlier today and it looks like listen, I'm pretty much
Speaker 1: set until mid June. I'm recording this at the beginning
Speaker 1: of April and now I've got through mid June. Of course,
Speaker 1: one of those episodes is the upcoming tenth anniversary of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. If you guys have suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover on any episode, but in particular, if you
Speaker 1: have requests for the tenth anniversary, please send them my way.
Speaker 1: You can send them to my email address that is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can
Speaker 1: send them to me on Facebook or Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: of both of those is text stuff hs W. I
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. Don't ask how tech
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I have done that episode at least three
Speaker 1: times now, so I'm not going to do it for
Speaker 1: the tand anniversary. But if you have a suggestion for
Speaker 1: what should be the tenth anniversary episode of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: I want to hear it. Also, remember we have an
Speaker 1: Instagram account. You can follow that and see all sorts
Speaker 1: of interesting pictures and behind the scenes photos and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Also, on Wednesdays and Fridays, I record this
Speaker 1: show and if you ever want to watch me record
Speaker 1: it live, you can go to twitch dot tv slash
Speaker 1: tech stuff and you'll be able to watch me mess
Speaker 1: things up right in front of your face. You can
Speaker 1: also chat with me and point out when I mess
Speaker 1: things up and hopefully do it in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't make me want to cry because Tari is getting
Speaker 1: tired of having to hug me after every show. It's exhausting.
Speaker 1: I'm a very high maintenance podcaster. You guys, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. I really look forward to chatting
Speaker 1: with you again really soon. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because it has to works, dot
Speaker 1: com one