Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? So? April first, April Fools Day fell on
Speaker 1: this past Saturday. So falling on a Saturday, I didn't
Speaker 1: see quite the same amount of shenanigan's within the tech
Speaker 1: sector that usually pop up that time of year. And
Speaker 1: of course, since the pandemic, things have been relatively calm
Speaker 1: as far as April Fools gags go. It seemed like
Speaker 1: it was in bad taste to do it when the
Speaker 1: pandemic first began back in twenty twenty, and generally speaking,
Speaker 1: I think companies have sort of cooled off a bit
Speaker 1: on going hard on April Fools. But I figured we
Speaker 1: could take a look at a few jests, japes and
Speaker 1: outright lies that various brands and cities and whatnot presented
Speaker 1: this year. But keep in mind, it was pretty quiet.
Speaker 1: I mean, I looked around a lot, and I saw
Speaker 1: some stuff that was probably not even worth talking about,
Speaker 1: like jokes that we're so lame that even I couldn't
Speaker 1: get behind them. That's saying something because I am like
Speaker 1: a dad joke connoisseur type person. But I think a
Speaker 1: lot of companies in general have decided to back off
Speaker 1: on foolishness for the time being, maybe due to the
Speaker 1: fact that, you know, economic uncertain DA has created a
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety in the public and we're also seeing
Speaker 1: companies holding wide layoffs in the tech sector. Doesn't quite
Speaker 1: come across as the perfect time to be josh and around,
Speaker 1: but we still saw some and you know, as a rule,
Speaker 1: tech journalists hate April Fools. Some of them look at
Speaker 1: it as its amateur hour, you know, when various PR
Speaker 1: departments and tech companies are doing their best to appear
Speaker 1: to be spontaneous and original and you know, wacky and buzzworthy,
Speaker 1: but frequently they fall well short of those goals and
Speaker 1: it becomes you know, what the kids like to call cringe.
Speaker 1: Other folks say, it's just irritating to have to cover
Speaker 1: news when the stories you're coming across are likely to
Speaker 1: be fake. You know, as much as we talk about
Speaker 1: fake news, journalists don't typically like covering a story that
Speaker 1: turns out not to be real because you put in
Speaker 1: real work when you're a journalist, right, real research, real effort.
Speaker 1: You're putting words to paper or words to a screen,
Speaker 1: as the case may be, and it is not much
Speaker 1: fun to go through all of that and then find
Speaker 1: out that the story you just filed turned out to
Speaker 1: be a joke and not an actual story, and then
Speaker 1: you have to go back and write a whole new
Speaker 1: take or just scrap it and get rid of the
Speaker 1: work you've just done. That is frustrating. It stinks, and
Speaker 1: I get it, and it can be hard. Like sometimes
Speaker 1: it's very clear that it's a joke and everyone's in
Speaker 1: on it, it's fine. You know. You could argue that
Speaker 1: it's a waste of time and that the company could
Speaker 1: be spending its time doing something else, but otherwise, no harm,
Speaker 1: no foul. In other cases, the quote unquote joke might
Speaker 1: be structured so poorly that it comes across as a legitimate,
Speaker 1: you know, pr announcement. And while you would think that
Speaker 1: people would be able to tell a joke from reality,
Speaker 1: the truth is companies do such crazy stuff occasionally that
Speaker 1: you can't be sure about that. So yeah, it's hard
Speaker 1: to craft a really good April Fools prank. Ideally, you
Speaker 1: want something fun and cheeky, but not too misleading. You know,
Speaker 1: you would like your audience to say, wait, is this
Speaker 1: real and then say no, it can't be. And you
Speaker 1: don't want to cause genuine confusion or upset folks ideally,
Speaker 1: and hitting that ideal is challenging personally. I actually like
Speaker 1: at least some April Fools gags. I've found some of
Speaker 1: them to be funny, not all of them, but some.
Speaker 1: Google has done a lot that I actually enjoyed where
Speaker 1: they had some April Fools gags that I thought were
Speaker 1: just fun or distracting. Google did one where you could
Speaker 1: find Pokemon on Google Maps. There was another one that
Speaker 1: turned Google Maps into Pacman, like you could play pac
Speaker 1: Man on the streets of downtown Atlanta, for example. Those
Speaker 1: I thought were really cool. I even liked stuff like
Speaker 1: Google Knows in osc where Google was claiming that you
Speaker 1: could use like an Android phone to identify Sense, kind
Speaker 1: of like how other other apps can identify a song
Speaker 1: by just listening in for a few seconds. This app
Speaker 1: would supposedly identify a smell that you encountered, or it
Speaker 1: could actually generate smells. So if you were doing a
Speaker 1: search on something, you could hit a little button and
Speaker 1: it would generate a smell from whatever that thing is,
Speaker 1: so search carefully. Obviously, that was a joke too, and
Speaker 1: I think most people got it. I just thought, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's just people being creative and being silly, and I
Speaker 1: think that sort of thing should be celebrated, not condemned. However,
Speaker 1: if I were covering the news and I was getting
Speaker 1: just total junk on April first, I guess I would
Speaker 1: find it a little frustrating as well. Anyway, let's start
Speaker 1: off with what was my favorite April Fool's joke this year.
Speaker 1: It's not that tech related. It does call out artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: but that is literally just a gag. There's no actual
Speaker 1: AI involved at all. So NPR had a little radio
Speaker 1: piece that reported that archaeology students had uncovered an ancient
Speaker 1: Roman scroll that was filled with dad jokes or potter iokus,
Speaker 1: as the piece claims. And the piece claimed that during
Speaker 1: gladiatorial displays, a comedian would have to come out, you know,
Speaker 1: after one gladiator strikes down another, the comedian would be
Speaker 1: sent out to keep the crowd entertained, while custodians would
Speaker 1: come out and you know, dispose of the body or
Speaker 1: body parts or what have you and cart them out
Speaker 1: of the way for the next clash to begin. And
Speaker 1: I just love that image. I just this idea of
Speaker 1: like a toga clad character coming out right after Russell
Speaker 1: Crowe has struck down an enemy and thesays, how about that,
Speaker 1: folks give him a hand, but not the one on
Speaker 1: the ground. We gotta throw that one away. Say you
Speaker 1: ever noticed how galls walk like this while Romans walk
Speaker 1: like this? You know, I like, you'd really get behind that.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised if that's not in History the World Part
Speaker 1: two it should be. I wouldn't know. I haven't watched
Speaker 1: it yet. Anyway, there is one little bit of fake
Speaker 1: tech involved in this NPR joke, and the piece claims
Speaker 1: that the research students were somehow able to identify the
Speaker 1: author of the jokes as a Roman named Clownius Bozolius,
Speaker 1: so Bozo the Clown, and further that they were able
Speaker 1: to somehow create an AI recreation of this otherwise forgotten
Speaker 1: giant of history. Of course, it's all a gag. There
Speaker 1: is no AI generated comedian based off an ancient Roman,
Speaker 1: and the supposed AI generated Clownius is just as goofy
Speaker 1: or cringey as you would imagine him to be. He
Speaker 1: actually did sound a little bit modern day comedian Lewis Black.
Speaker 1: I don't know who they got to do the voice
Speaker 1: for Clounius Bozolius. It was not Ai though. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: NPR bit was obviously a joke, and it was very
Speaker 1: silly and harmless and had some truly truly atrocious puns
Speaker 1: in it, So I give it a thumbs up. You
Speaker 1: can actually find that audio online if you want to
Speaker 1: hear it. It's called archaeology Students found Dad Jokes from
Speaker 1: Ancient Rome, And yeah, I mean it's short, it's like
Speaker 1: six minutes. It's a cute, little fluffy joke piece, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with that. All right. Now, let's turn
Speaker 1: our attention to the tech world for real zs. So
Speaker 1: first up, it's Tender, the dating slash hook up app
Speaker 1: that I am really glad did not exist back when
Speaker 1: I was single. Now that's not me throwing shade at Tender.
Speaker 1: It's not throwing shade at the folks who use Tender.
Speaker 1: It's more that I think I would have been thoroughly
Speaker 1: unsuited or that app it would have I would have
Speaker 1: had the worst time in the world in an environment
Speaker 1: where Tinder was like a major way for people to
Speaker 1: meet one another and get to know each other. So
Speaker 1: I'm glad that my dating life predates Tender. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Tender had its own April Fools gag this year, and
Speaker 1: it had to do with photos. Photos that featured something that,
Speaker 1: as of April first, would be against Tender's policies. I am,
Speaker 1: of course talking about fish picks. Yeah, Tender announced it
Speaker 1: was actively flagging and deleting fish picks. Tender posted on
Speaker 1: Instagram that the app would be fish free within twenty
Speaker 1: four hours. No, obviously, this is both a joke and
Speaker 1: a sly reference to the fact that some prospective mates
Speaker 1: have used Tender to send pictures of you know, their
Speaker 1: nude forms or their downstairs business. You might say to people, which, y'all,
Speaker 1: if no one asked for that, then, for goodness sakes,
Speaker 1: just don't do it. It's terrible. Anyway, it was a
Speaker 1: goofy little joke that is delicately perched on top of
Speaker 1: an actual serious problem. In fact, reportedly, guys at one
Speaker 1: point were so eager to send unsolicited nude photos to
Speaker 1: Tender matches the Tender actually saw a decline in women
Speaker 1: users because, honestly, I mean, who wants that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: So yeah, fun to joke about it again. If someone
Speaker 1: asks and you are amenable to sending it, that's one thing,
Speaker 1: But unsolicited sending of nude photos is just that's a
Speaker 1: bad idea. All around the city of Miami, or more specifically,
Speaker 1: Mayor Francis Suarez, joke that Twitter would be relocating its
Speaker 1: headquarters to Miami, Florida. I'm not really sure what prompted
Speaker 1: the joke. This seemed like one of those jokes that
Speaker 1: just was kind of random, and maybe there's some local
Speaker 1: news and local politics type stuff going on that I'm
Speaker 1: just not familiar with because I don't live in Miami.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was a joke that happened this past weekend,
Speaker 1: and no, Twitter is not relocating to Miami. Tesla, another
Speaker 1: Elon Musk related company, was tweeting out a video that
Speaker 1: was supposed to show the Cybertruck, the long delayed cyber
Speaker 1: truck product from Tesla, and show its crash test results.
Speaker 1: Only if you play the video, the cybertruck never actually
Speaker 1: gets to the point where it hits the crash barrier.
Speaker 1: The video is edited in such a way that has
Speaker 1: lots of cuts and loops, and it'll go into slow
Speaker 1: motion and reaction shots and use other tricks to feel
Speaker 1: like it's leading up to the collision that you are
Speaker 1: going to see this cybertruck collide with a barrier wall,
Speaker 1: but the collision never actually happens. It's kind of like saying,
Speaker 1: if you were to start walking towards your front door,
Speaker 1: but with every step you are going at half the
Speaker 1: distance you did with the step before, you would never
Speaker 1: actually reach your door, because you'd always just be approaching it,
Speaker 1: but you would never actually reach it. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what this video feels like. And I don't know, I
Speaker 1: just found it frustrating. It's kind of like those videos
Speaker 1: where people do things wrong on purpose to just get
Speaker 1: to have a reaction. It felt like that, and maybe
Speaker 1: that was That's probably the point. But I also noticed
Speaker 1: that because Tesla posted this on Twitter, they had a
Speaker 1: gold checked verification mark on their account, and I am
Speaker 1: curious if Tesla had to pay the same fee that
Speaker 1: Musk is demanding other businesses cough up if they want
Speaker 1: to stay verified. I suspect Tesla is an exception to
Speaker 1: that rule. Okay, we've got some more tech based jokes.
Speaker 1: We'll put those in air quotes. But first, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. We're back. So there were a couple
Speaker 1: of jokes that I saw in the tech space that
Speaker 1: I actually thought were kind of cute and clever. Our
Speaker 1: roast Benelux, and I have no idea if I'm saying
Speaker 1: that company's name correctly. Anyway, this company posted a joke
Speaker 1: for serious PC desktop owners, like you know, your power
Speaker 1: gamers who buy those high end desktop gaming rigs, who
Speaker 1: also happen to have one or more housecats. Because we
Speaker 1: know kitty cats like to perch on elevated surfaces, particularly
Speaker 1: if that surface is a warm one. So you think, oh,
Speaker 1: if you have a desktop, like it's a wide desktop
Speaker 1: computer and it's getting nice and toasty, then obviously a
Speaker 1: cat's gonna want to perch on top of it. But
Speaker 1: that's a problem, right because, like you've got a device
Speaker 1: that doesn't really react well if dust and fur and
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff gets into it. Plus, if you
Speaker 1: got a cat laying across the top of your desktop computer,
Speaker 1: it might be on top of some vents which will
Speaker 1: have a serious impact on airflow. So this company introduced
Speaker 1: the cat Master. It's meant to fit on top of
Speaker 1: a desktop tower. PC, and it's essentially a cat hammock,
Speaker 1: and it gives the cat the ability to lounge in
Speaker 1: a hammock perched above the computer itself, still enjoying the
Speaker 1: warmth being given off by the gaming rig. Plus the
Speaker 1: cat master itself has integrated r GB LEDs. This is
Speaker 1: obviously just a joke, but I do know a few
Speaker 1: gamers who are also cat owners, and I suspect they
Speaker 1: would really PLoP down some cash for a cat bed
Speaker 1: with RGB lighting, particularly if they could synchronize the lighting
Speaker 1: of the cat bed with their PCs fan lights and
Speaker 1: internal lights so that you know, if it's going from
Speaker 1: red to green to blue, then so would the cat bed.
Speaker 1: So maybe one day this will actually become a thing,
Speaker 1: because that's actually a long tradition in tech. April fools
Speaker 1: gags as well. Sometimes a company will float an idea
Speaker 1: as a joke, but they're also keeping an eye out
Speaker 1: to see if there's enough interest to actually make the
Speaker 1: thing and go from joke to real product. See also
Speaker 1: the ton Ton sleeping bag that Think Geek teased many
Speaker 1: many years ago and then turned into a real product.
Speaker 1: Also rip Think Geek, I still miss you. Speaking of
Speaker 1: computer accessories, I got a couple more jokes that are
Speaker 1: in that line. So Razor a company that's known for
Speaker 1: creating various tech equipment, including stuff like like gaming laptops,
Speaker 1: gaming desktops, keyboards, mice, that sort of stuff. They announced
Speaker 1: their own April Fools product this past April Fools. It
Speaker 1: is the Razor Razor, a computer gaming mouse that doubles
Speaker 1: as an electric razor. Now. Razor published a video showing
Speaker 1: this supposed new product in use as a scruffy nerve
Speaker 1: herder of a gamer use the mouse to trim and
Speaker 1: shape facial hair, including some truly outrageous eyebrows. The company
Speaker 1: said that beta testers were wanted and included a sign
Speaker 1: up form which I think actually puts you in the
Speaker 1: running for like a little sweepstakes giveaway of Razor products.
Speaker 1: But Razor said the shaving mouse works at three hundred
Speaker 1: sixty fps. FPS in this case refers to follicles per second,
Speaker 1: And yeah, very silly joke. Obviously a gag. This is
Speaker 1: the kind where I feel like the joke is obvious
Speaker 1: from the get go, and it's still pretty entertaining, particularly
Speaker 1: when you know that Razor is a company that has
Speaker 1: made all sorts of gear ranging from pretty cool stuff
Speaker 1: to why would I ever need that kind of stuff?
Speaker 1: And I think this one was just outside of being
Speaker 1: credible based on the kinds of products we've seen from Razor.
Speaker 1: This includes stuff like vaporware products that were shown off
Speaker 1: at CES but they never actually made it into production.
Speaker 1: I've had that happened a few times, where I saw
Speaker 1: a really cool Razor concept that never became reality. Then
Speaker 1: there was a new product from be Quiet, which is
Speaker 1: a company known for producing computer gear that is no
Speaker 1: big surprise here, meant to minimize superfluous noise. You'll often
Speaker 1: hear gamers talk about how they'll build this crazy computer
Speaker 1: rig and in an effort to keep it operating at
Speaker 1: the right temperature, they'll have these fans that are going
Speaker 1: on full blast and they create a lot of noise.
Speaker 1: So it ends up being kind of a downside to
Speaker 1: those sorts of rigs. Be Quiet makes cases and fans
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff meant to create the minimum
Speaker 1: amount of noise while still being effective. Well, the company
Speaker 1: claimed to be launching a bladeless computer fan, and in
Speaker 1: the video these fans look like just a little white
Speaker 1: square frame made out of plastic and there's a round
Speaker 1: opening where a fan would normally go. You know, it's
Speaker 1: essentially the housing for a fan, but there's nothing in
Speaker 1: the middle. It's just a hole, right, there's no fan
Speaker 1: sitting there, And I said, well, this is the bladeless
Speaker 1: fan that'll move air through your computer case. Be Quiet
Speaker 1: also said that these fanless fans would use a purpose
Speaker 1: built artificial inteligence to control airflow, which would be super
Speaker 1: interesting if that were true. The name of the AI
Speaker 1: was Fanos, of course, which makes it sort of a
Speaker 1: gladdose kind of reference from the Portal Games. And while
Speaker 1: the thought of an AI directed ventilation system is really neat,
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine you've got a computer system that could
Speaker 1: actually identify hot spots in the case and then direct
Speaker 1: airflow to try and pull some of that heat away
Speaker 1: and do that dynamically, so instead of just having an
Speaker 1: overall cooling system, you would have a reactive one that
Speaker 1: would be able to optimize performance. That would be really
Speaker 1: awesome if it were true. The video is actually a
Speaker 1: very fun one to watch. You can check it out.
Speaker 1: The spokesperson demonstrates the fan at one point holding it
Speaker 1: in front of his face, and it subsequently is powerful
Speaker 1: enough to blow his hat off. Sure, the top of
Speaker 1: his hat is suspiciously out of frame, so you can't
Speaker 1: see that. Something is probably attached to it to pull
Speaker 1: the hat off at on Q. But if you can't
Speaker 1: trust a video, whom can you trust. And of course
Speaker 1: the circumference of the fanless fan is a ring of
Speaker 1: RGB lights, because let's not be silly about these things.
Speaker 1: You still have to have it light up, because that's
Speaker 1: like part of the big deal with these gaming rigs.
Speaker 1: When I was last thinking about building a gaming rig
Speaker 1: for myself, I was the crazy person looking at just
Speaker 1: regular fans. I didn't care about the RGB stuff because
Speaker 1: in my mind, the cool thing is what is going
Speaker 1: on on the screen, not the lights emanating from my
Speaker 1: computer case. Now, blameless fans really are a thing. I'm
Speaker 1: sure most of you have seen them. You've probably seen
Speaker 1: Dyson's example. That's sort of the flagship of that particular
Speaker 1: type of product. Dyson, as far as I know, was
Speaker 1: the company that really made that design popular since and
Speaker 1: I've seen other companies kind of jump on that bandwagon.
Speaker 1: But I thought maybe I'd take a quick moment to
Speaker 1: explain how bladeless fans actually work. Because the way they
Speaker 1: work means it would be impossible for the computer fan
Speaker 1: version to work. So, first off, a bladeless fan isn't
Speaker 1: really bladeless. It actually does have blades mounted on a rotor.
Speaker 1: It's just these blades aren't visible because they are inside
Speaker 1: the pedestal for the fan. Like if you look at
Speaker 1: these bladeless fans, you'll see that they are standing fans
Speaker 1: and they have a pedestal underneath them. You would not
Speaker 1: really be able to design an effective computer fan that
Speaker 1: was bladeless because you would have nowhere to house the
Speaker 1: actual blade components. Right, the frame is too thin to
Speaker 1: have an effective way of pulling air through. So in
Speaker 1: a bladeless fan, the pedestal houses this blade device, this
Speaker 1: rotor of blades, and it has vents inside the pedestal
Speaker 1: so that an electric motor starts to rotate the rotor
Speaker 1: with the blades on it, the blades start to pull
Speaker 1: air into the pedestal that then gets pushed out the
Speaker 1: front of the face of the fan. Now, if that
Speaker 1: were all it were, then you would just have like
Speaker 1: a light fan blowing you. But because of physics and
Speaker 1: fluid dynamics, there's a little bit more going on. That
Speaker 1: the bladeless fans able to take advantage of. There's inducement.
Speaker 1: This is when air behind the fan starts to get
Speaker 1: pulled along with the air that's being pushed forward through
Speaker 1: the front of the fan. So if you think of
Speaker 1: the fan as just a circle with no blades in it,
Speaker 1: the motor inside the pedestal is turning a bladed fan
Speaker 1: inside the pedestal that's pushing air through the front of
Speaker 1: that circle. The air that's actually behind the circle gets
Speaker 1: pulled along with it. That's inducement, and then the air
Speaker 1: that's around the edge of the fan also gets pulled along,
Speaker 1: but that's called entrainment. These are two similar concepts and
Speaker 1: fluid dynamics, they're just slightly slightly different. So through inducement
Speaker 1: and entrainment, you get a lot more air, or at
Speaker 1: least a little more air push towards you than you
Speaker 1: would if it were just from the little bladed fans
Speaker 1: inside the pestle by itself. So Dyson calls that air
Speaker 1: multiplication that you're getting way more air than you would
Speaker 1: just through the blades because of the physics involved. Anyway,
Speaker 1: for these bladeless fans to work, you still need somewhere
Speaker 1: to house the electric motor and the bladed rotor to
Speaker 1: get things going in the first place. And without that,
Speaker 1: there's just no mechanism that would force air through the
Speaker 1: hole either in or out of this computer case. And
Speaker 1: since be quiet claimed there bladeless fans have no moving
Speaker 1: parts at all, there's really just no way it would
Speaker 1: be possible to do. But it was still a fun
Speaker 1: little goofy video. I imagine if you did have bladeless
Speaker 1: fans attached to your computer, you would have a dickens
Speaker 1: of a time keeping debris out of your computer, particularly
Speaker 1: if you installed one of those cat hammocks that were
Speaker 1: sitting on top of it. You would just be sucking
Speaker 1: that stuff into the computer case because there'd be like
Speaker 1: no mesh or anything blocking it. So while it was
Speaker 1: a neat concept and and a fun little joke, once
Speaker 1: you start applying critical thinking to it, you realize, oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of problems with that particular design.
Speaker 1: Though the AI component is really interesting. If there were
Speaker 1: a way to do such a thing where you could
Speaker 1: have more directed air so it's not just just a
Speaker 1: standard airflow through the computer, then that would be really cool. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there are water cooling systems that use more specific targeting
Speaker 1: for cooling for stuf of like you know, really high
Speaker 1: powered CPUs or GPUs. But it would be neat if
Speaker 1: you could do that. It's just we're not not at
Speaker 1: that point. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break. When
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll wrap up some of the jokes
Speaker 1: that the tech sector, you know, try to pull on
Speaker 1: us this past weekend. I think some of my favorite
Speaker 1: April Fools gags come from companies that are otherwise known
Speaker 1: for creating stuff that's undeniably useful, but not exactly fun
Speaker 1: or whimsical. Maybe it's utilitarian. I think that's the case
Speaker 1: with Obsidian. Obsidian the software company. So this is a
Speaker 1: company that makes productivity tools that help you do things
Speaker 1: like create links between ideas, similar to the way how
Speaker 1: web pages use links to connect different documents to one another.
Speaker 1: So it's a neat way to go about working with concepts,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's more lateral thinking rather than linear thinking,
Speaker 1: and for some people that approach is incredibly useful, especially
Speaker 1: for specific types of projects. So it's a really neat
Speaker 1: approach to productivity. Anyway, Obsidian announced an AI assistant that
Speaker 1: It was calling Jemmy Gemmy on April Fools and said, quote,
Speaker 1: not sure if an AI assistant is going to be
Speaker 1: helpful in your workflow, don't worry. We've eliminated the guesswork
Speaker 1: for you because Jimmy is one going to be unhelpful
Speaker 1: end quote. So I would say this is the folks
Speaker 1: at Obsidian poking fun at the current AI craze that
Speaker 1: we're seeing other companies go through right now, companies like
Speaker 1: Microsoft and Google that are rushing to incorporate AI into
Speaker 1: their productivity products, even while concerned folks like critics are saying,
Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't be going so hard and fast on AI,
Speaker 1: because we've already seen instances where AI creates incorrect responses
Speaker 1: and is unreliable for accuracy and reliability, and that should
Speaker 1: give us cause for concern that if we start to
Speaker 1: lean too heavily on these tools, that we could end
Speaker 1: up having lots of problems or at least really shoddy work.
Speaker 1: In other words, you might be making more work for
Speaker 1: yourself by trying to voice some of that labor onto AI.
Speaker 1: At this stage, Obsidian was kind of making fun of
Speaker 1: these other companies and saying, yeah, you know We've put
Speaker 1: this in just so that we could have it in there,
Speaker 1: and we're telling you right off the bat it is
Speaker 1: not going to help you. It will make things harder.
Speaker 1: And really, Jimmy's design just made me think of Clippy
Speaker 1: Microsoft Clippy. If you don't remember or know what Clippy was,
Speaker 1: It's a little paper clip character that would pop up
Speaker 1: in Microsoft software like like word and it would say
Speaker 1: things like I see are trying to draft a resume?
Speaker 1: Can I help? And people started to despise Clippy, even
Speaker 1: though like the thought behind Clippy was good. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, this tool that could detect if you were
Speaker 1: trying to make something that could be potentially standardized, but
Speaker 1: people found it very intrusive, so obsidian kind of pointing out,
Speaker 1: like people hate this stuff, stop putting it into your
Speaker 1: productivity products, especially when it's not a mature science. That
Speaker 1: really resonated with me. Moving onto video games, which are
Speaker 1: you know, supposed to be fun all by themselves, those
Speaker 1: can get more fun on special days like April Fools
Speaker 1: if things are handled correctly. I think for me, the
Speaker 1: one that surprised me the most was that Sega dropped
Speaker 1: a big bombshell with the murder of Sonic the Hedgehog,
Speaker 1: So yeah, kind of out of nowhere, Sega released a
Speaker 1: point and click adventure slash visual novel style game for
Speaker 1: PCs and Matt computers in which players try to take
Speaker 1: on the challenge of solving Sonic the Hedgehog's murder on
Speaker 1: the Mirage Express. Now, I've not played this game. It
Speaker 1: is a real thing. It does exist, you can get it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this really surprised me because you don't often
Speaker 1: see companies take such big risks with a really iconic
Speaker 1: brand mascot character, you know, unless it's mister Peanut, which
Speaker 1: was kind of the long game play that started off
Speaker 1: in a big game football game. Back in the day.
Speaker 1: IGN released a video reporting to be from Nintendo. It
Speaker 1: was not from Nintendo. It was taking video clips from
Speaker 1: actual Nintendo Direct videos, but it was made by IGN.
Speaker 1: But the video was supposed to be promoting the Super
Speaker 1: Mario Brothers movie, and this fake video supposedly revealed that
Speaker 1: Nintendo Switch owners would be able to choose to play
Speaker 1: classic Mario Universe games and swap out the original soundtrack
Speaker 1: with voices from the film's cast. You could actually go
Speaker 1: into options and change this, so that would mean you
Speaker 1: would suddenly have you Chris Pratt voicing Mario in Super
Speaker 1: Mario Brothers, a game that didn't actually have Mario say anything.
Speaker 1: It's from the old nes Days. But my favorite bit
Speaker 1: of the gag like, as the video goes on, the
Speaker 1: various characters they're referencing are pulling from other sources that
Speaker 1: the actors who voice those characters in the movie, other
Speaker 1: projects that they've been in. So as you go on
Speaker 1: and on, you're like, wait a minute, I recognize that line.
Speaker 1: That line came from something else. My favorite of those
Speaker 1: moments was a bit about Toad featuring new voice lines
Speaker 1: from Keegan Michael Key. I'm not going to spoil it
Speaker 1: because honestly, this IGN video is really worth watching. It
Speaker 1: is amusing, and of course the video plays into the
Speaker 1: reaction that the Internet had to the announcement that Chris
Speaker 1: Pratt was going to voice Mario, a decision that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people were not exactly thrilled about.
Speaker 1: Blizzard through in some jokes for Overwatch two this year,
Speaker 1: I feel like I should almost do a full episode
Speaker 1: about Overwatch because that's a game. You know, Overwatch and
Speaker 1: Overwatch two have really had their ups and downs, like
Speaker 1: it's tightly tied with Blizzard and the public perception of Blizzard,
Speaker 1: both in front of and behind the scenes. There are
Speaker 1: there's a lot of controversy in the background of that game,
Speaker 1: so it was interesting to me that they were kind
Speaker 1: of incorporating some April Fools gags into Overwatch too. But
Speaker 1: among those gags were some new voice lines for when
Speaker 1: characters engage their special ability. So in Overwatch, it's a
Speaker 1: team based shooter game, and each character in the game
Speaker 1: has their own special ability. You work out to the
Speaker 1: point where your character builds up their meter, and then
Speaker 1: you can unleash this ability at a strategic moment. Some
Speaker 1: of the new voice lines are kind of cute. A
Speaker 1: lot of them I think have references to stuff in
Speaker 1: the game that I'm not familiar with because I bounced
Speaker 1: off Overwatch a few years back before they had added
Speaker 1: more and more characters, So there's some references where I'm like,
Speaker 1: I bet that's funny if I'd been playing the game
Speaker 1: the whole time, but I don't really get the joke
Speaker 1: right now. Blizzard also published patch notes that included the
Speaker 1: phrase do not publish the idea, being like, it's patch notes,
Speaker 1: but you're not supposed to make them public. Those notes
Speaker 1: had more jokes in them, like yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: description about changes to character abilities and stuff. One of
Speaker 1: the notes said that doom Fist, when using his ability,
Speaker 1: can quote open a glass jar and a single attempt
Speaker 1: end quote. Truly a mighty character. Also, apparently they were
Speaker 1: given googly eyes on April first, something the Blizzard has
Speaker 1: actually done before with Overwatch. Again, I didn't play it,
Speaker 1: so I didn't see these things, but I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's cute. I mean, if you were a regular player
Speaker 1: and you've logged in to see that, that would be fun.
Speaker 1: Sticking with games among Us, developer inner Sloth brought back
Speaker 1: an old gag to among Us and then added to it. So,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with among Us, it is a
Speaker 1: group video game. It's a social discovery game. And when
Speaker 1: you're playing, you're playing with a group of other people,
Speaker 1: and most of the players are innocent crew members on
Speaker 1: a space shop and they're supposed to do their tasks
Speaker 1: and that's it. But at least one of them, or
Speaker 1: more than one if the group is large enough, is
Speaker 1: a trader, and the trader is out to kill everyone
Speaker 1: else and avoid suspicion as best as they can, so
Speaker 1: the innocence they have to finish their tasks, and if
Speaker 1: they complete all of them before the killers can outnumber
Speaker 1: the innocence, then the innocence win, because otherwise, if the
Speaker 1: killers out number them, then the killers can just vote
Speaker 1: off all the innocence until it's just the killers that
Speaker 1: are left. Alternatively, the innocence can also vote to eject
Speaker 1: the killer into space if they figure out who the
Speaker 1: killer is. Otherwise they might eject someone who's innocent. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's all to say that this year, among Us got
Speaker 1: back into Horse mode, in which all the little cartoon
Speaker 1: characters are vaguely horse shaped. They are very weird to
Speaker 1: look at. But the company had done horse mode before.
Speaker 1: What they had not done was introduced a brand new
Speaker 1: mode called horse Wrangling Mode. So in this mode, most
Speaker 1: of the players appear as horses, and one or more
Speaker 1: of them is a horse wrangler, and it's the wrangler's
Speaker 1: job to track down and capture all the horses. So
Speaker 1: it becomes kind of a hide and seek game rather
Speaker 1: than social discovery. So just different gameplay approach for that
Speaker 1: particular mode, and it's just cute. It's a cute little
Speaker 1: addition to the game. Then there was Rainbow six Siege,
Speaker 1: which pits teams of players against each other in tactical
Speaker 1: shooter based confrontations. They introduced a new mode called Rainbow
Speaker 1: is Magic, which is I guess a thinly veiled reference
Speaker 1: to my Little Pony Friendship is Magic. If you were
Speaker 1: to engage in this mode, everything gets a lot more colorful,
Speaker 1: very vibrant colors, which is not sought what you typically
Speaker 1: see in Rainbow six Siege. And there's a teddy bear
Speaker 1: based crisis inventually, instead of a bomb, the team has
Speaker 1: a teddy bear that they have to protect or the
Speaker 1: other team has to seek out and destroy the enemy's
Speaker 1: teddy bear. It's just as ridiculous as it sounds. The
Speaker 1: video is cute. Again, I'm not a Rainbow six player either,
Speaker 1: so I don't know how well the game play holds
Speaker 1: up for this particular mode, but I mean it's something different.
Speaker 1: I'm very curious which ones of these actually resonated with players.
Speaker 1: There's sometimes where game companies will come up with these
Speaker 1: special modes for a limited time and they go off
Speaker 1: like gangbusters, like it's just it's it's a breath of
Speaker 1: fresh air. It's silly and fun and people really enjoy
Speaker 1: engaging with it. And in other cases it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I see what you tried to do. Like I'm not mad,
Speaker 1: I'm just disappointed. So I don't know how these stack up.
Speaker 1: None of the games I play seem to incorporate any
Speaker 1: April Fools jokes in them, but I don't play that
Speaker 1: many games these days. I just don't have the time typically,
Speaker 1: and the game that I'm playing right now obsessively is Dredge,
Speaker 1: and that one probably doesn't need to have any April
Speaker 1: Fools jokes in it. It's already kind of absurd. It's
Speaker 1: a fishing game that has some lovecrafty and horror elements
Speaker 1: to it. I recommend it. It's kind of a fun game.
Speaker 1: All right. That's all I've got for April Fools for
Speaker 1: this year. I'm sure. Like I said, there were other
Speaker 1: gags that I saw and came across, but most of
Speaker 1: them weren't very inspiring. It hasn't been the same since
Speaker 1: before the pandemic. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing,
Speaker 1: because as I said in the beginning, sometimes companies go
Speaker 1: overboard and the quote unquote jokes they push out are
Speaker 1: both not funny and not effective, and they just end
Speaker 1: up being frustrating. So fewer does not necessarily mean worse,
Speaker 1: and more does not necessarily mean better. Companies can come
Speaker 1: up with really creative ways of kind of being silly
Speaker 1: and lighthearted, but there's an art to it. So I've
Speaker 1: done episodes in the past about some of the greatest
Speaker 1: April Fools gags in tech, and you know, maybe I'll
Speaker 1: point back to one of those in a future episode,
Speaker 1: But like I said, there haven't been that many in
Speaker 1: the past few years, so it's hard to kind of
Speaker 1: update that list. If I were to do it again,
Speaker 1: it would probably just be repeating a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: I've already said. But I hope all of you are well.
Speaker 1: I hope none of you were fooled this weekend, or
Speaker 1: if you were, that it was a joyous and fun
Speaker 1: loving and kind hearted approach to being fooled, as opposed
Speaker 1: to mean spirited and nasty, because gosh, who needs that.
Speaker 1: And if you would like to get in touch with
Speaker 1: me about something I should talk about in a future
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff episode, please do so on Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for the show is tech Stuff HSW or you can
Speaker 1: download the iHeartRadio app. It's free to download. It's free
Speaker 1: to use. You can navigate over to tech Stuff by
Speaker 1: putting it into the little search field. It'll pull up
Speaker 1: the tech Stuff page. You click on that, you'll see
Speaker 1: there's a little microphone icon. That icon means you can
Speaker 1: leave a voice message for me up to thirty seconds
Speaker 1: in length and let me know what you would like
Speaker 1: to hear in a future episode, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.