StarTalk Radio - StarTalk and Baba Booey Rock Comic-Con (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 28, 2013

Join us from San Diego Comic-Con 2012 for a gadget geek-out when Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Baba Booey, Nerdist Chris Hardwick, and the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and we are here live at Comic-Con San Diego 2012. And I've got Chris Hardwick. Hello. The nerdist. Yes, sir. The one and only.

Yes, sir. And, of course, the one, the only, the inimitable Gary Della Batti. Baba Booey. Baba Booey. Baba Booey. Baba Booey. Baba Booey. Baba Booey. This is your first Comic-Con, too. It is my first Comic-Con.

Me, too. I'm a Comic-Con virgin. How is it so far? I'm feeling it. I'm feeling the love. I'm feeling the craziness. There's a lot of love out there for Neil deGrasse Tyson. And, you know, we were out there in the street, and, like, walk by and Klingons walk by and you don't even look twice.

Where else can you not look twice? I know. At creatures. And it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. I'm sure people come up to you going, that's a really good Neil deGrasse Tyson cosplay. That's what I tell them.

This is my Tyson outfit. Somebody interviewed me last night and they said, what's the weirdest thing you saw at Comic-Con? And I go, nothing's weird. There's nothing weird here. Everything's normal. That's right. I'm the weird guy. It's a safe zone.

Now, I got you on StarTalk because I have good information that tells me that you're like tech gadget geeky dude. I'm an enthusiast. I love the tech stuff. Love the gadgets. You own everything. I have a lot of stuff. I mean, you can't own everything, but I write a column for a magazine, so I do get enough stuff. You gotta stay on top of it.

And I get to test stuff out, and it's great, because I say- And you write a column, that means they send you the stuff for free. But you gotta send it back. Okay. That's the thing with gadgets, when you're working with gadgets,

they send it to you for a minute, and some companies are like, you'll get calls, when are we gonna get our thing back? Well, you know they're serious when they give you the bubble wrap and the sticker to send it back. Yeah. The return of the envelope.

Exactly. So what's your favorite gadget right now? Oh, my gosh. There's so many. I'm a big fan of Sonos. You know what Sonos is? Yeah, the system. S-O-N-O-S.

Sonos. So many people want to do all-room audio in their home. Yeah. But they don't want to be chipping away at walls. So this is a way to do all-room audio through a wireless system. And they've really perfected it. So now your surrounding neighbors can't hide from you. Yes. Because every room is vibrating. Apple has a version of it called AirPlay where you can get music from your device on to other devices in your home, but

Sonos, they bridged all of that. And Sonos has done a better job because they partnered with Sirius XM, Rhapsody, they partnered with all this stuff. So whatever device you have that makes noise, it can now be in every room of your house? Well, you buy a Sonos and you hook it to a pair of speakers, and through your computer or through Wi-Fi, you can feed it what's on your computer, also your library of music. But they've really done a great job of keeping going with it, because they started like three or four years ago. So there's a docking station for your iPel. So if somebody comes over, say, hey, put your iPod in, let's listen to what you're playing tonight. And you can send music out to your back patio. Well, I'm not

running wires from the basement. Now you don't have to. Okay, so that's a gadget that just improves on our previous capacity to want to just share music. Give me a gadget that I didn't know I needed. I didn't even know... There's a sonic screwdriver that someone has just released that is actually a remote control. And using a series of hand gestures, it will control your iPad or devices. And for Doctor Who fans in particular,

it's like having a sonic screwdriver. Because it does stuff. Yeah, you point at stuff and it controls... And you jiggle it. Yeah. So did you get one of those? I did not get one of those. Yeah. What do I have you for? I'm the guy. Yeah. So did you get one of those? I did not get one of those.

Yeah. What do I have you for? I'm the guy that will try to help you get one of those. But I mean, when you say what's a gadget you didn't know you needed, that's a great thing is you don't need any of them. They're just awesome to have. No, but then when you have them, you can't imagine life without it, like the remote control. I'm old enough, maybe you're old enough.

No, I am. You remember, you actually had to get out of the couch and walk to the TV to change the channel. No, you just watched one channel all day because it was easier. You wouldn't get out of the couch and walk to the TV to change the channel. No, you just watched one channel all day because it was easier. You wouldn't get out of the couch. I went to a place last week. It was like an antique place where they have old Coke machines and old jukeboxes. It had old TVs. Do you know what a predicted TV is?

It isn't a science fiction. It's got sort of that, oh, yeah, that funky front on it. It's sort of like on an angle. And I didn't even know this because I sort of collected it. Is that a mod TV in its day? In its day. So what they did is, there was the TV, the head, right? And then the main box came with this 50 foot

ridiculous looking cable, and what you would do is you would take the box with you so you could change the channel from the box. They probably were like, oh my gosh, we're living in the future. But it's technically a remote control. In some ways. I'm really interested in, they're making a lot

of advancement in like inductive charging. It's really just the move to wireless everything so i i see a lot of this untethering ourselves from our devices so i wanted to pose the question then what of the title wired magazine oh no oh i'm saying that it becomes retro because that is retro that would pass wire well it is i was out at the consumer electronics show last. There's a company that's working on that. So they had a demo area. So they had a kitchen island, right? Yeah. And in the bottom of your kitchen aid is this magnetic thing that just gets power.

So you don't plug it in anywhere. So you can move it all over the kitchen. But the thing that got me is because they make it in drywall now. So when you put your drywall up, you can put these lights on, right? Yeah. That just are magnets that go on the wall. and they're getting electricity from what's in the drywall. So for me, the way I say it is like, okay, I got a 50 inch TV, now I got a 100 inch TV. You know what I mean? You can just move the lights on.

Oh, that's really incredible. Yeah. So all of these are things for the consumer home electronics marketplace. Right. There's got to be some gadgets that are outdoor gadgets or stuff that's not just for the home. Well, there's an outdoor TV, which I love that you can put on your patio that's waterproof.

Waterproof? Are you watching TV in a rainstorm? You could be. What do you need a waterproof TV for? But that's the whole point because it's out there all the time. Oh, okay. It's like underwater other stuff

that I would never need to be doing underwater. I got an underwater camera and I went scuba diving with my kids and it was awesome. I took great movies and great pictures and then I put it away for 364 days. Right, that's how that works. It was also when I needed it. Getting back to your sonic screwdriver, do you have one that actually can unlock a safe? Not yet.

That's the good one. Someday. Someday. So it could go up to the cash machine. Yeah, exactly. This's the good one. But someday, someday. So it could go up to the cash machine. Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is the real need. Well, you really could, like, you know, especially with a lot of advancements in NFC, the near-field communication, where you basically just need something on you that activates... So near-field communication would be like Bluetooth?

Well, it's a form of near-field communication, but not the near-field communication that, like, Apple was rumored to have put in their iPhones, that you could just walk through a store and not even need a cashier. They would take everything you bought and just pay for it. It's sort of like an easy pass, but how does it know? How does it know that you're buying something? Everything would have a chip in it of some type that would emit a signal and then, you know, if you remove something it would be... So there's like smart chips.

Smart chips. Yeah. But I guess there's no more shoplifting because you pick something up and you have that and since you walk out the door it registers. Yeah, it just makes shoplifting way less fun. Well, unless you don't have one of those phones. Unless you don't have one of those phones, yeah. So what does this cost?

If they just send it to you, you don't have no clue what it would set you back. No, they tell you what it costs. I mean, they give you the price and everything. One of the things about the gadgets that I love is there's a thing called unboxing. And unboxing is when you get it, there's this moment like, okay, I got my... You're got my little kid so the day the iPad comes out the smell of a new Apple product exactly is the best I'm going to slowly I'm gonna I'm gonna take the plastic off I'm gonna slowly take the box off I'm gonna take all the pieces of pleasure and it's a striptease it really is the other stores my like bath and

body works where people go in there like go like, oh, smell all these fragrance. Like just smelling new electronics to me is the greatest thing in the world. There's a big excitement. When we come back to StarTalk, we will get more into the psychology of unwrapping. Unboxing. Unboxing tech gadgets. We'll be back in a moment. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. Joining me over the break is the bad astronomer himself, Phil Plait,

longtime friend and colleague. I love this man. Where do I? Bro hug. Bro hug. We'll just watch. Phil, meet Gary. Howdy. Nice to meet you, Phil.

Tech dude, extraordinaire, and of course, the nerdist himself. Wi-Fi. You look familiar. Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi, my life's good. Yeah, we can't touch that. Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi.

Before we left for the break, Gary was telling us, because he gets tech gadgets to write about, which is very cool. He doesn't even have to buy them. They show up on his doorstep. And he was talking about the emotional high he gets in the striptease of removing the gadget from the box. MALE SPEAKER 1:"Well, it's called unboxing. And if it's something you've wanted for a long time or something you've been waiting for for a long time--"

MALE SPEAKER 2:"It's an actual psychological term." MALE SPEAKER 1:"Video gamers have it too, by the way. Video gamers, like the actual unboxing of the video game, is very ritualistic for a lot of people. Same with gadgets." MALE SPEAKER 2:"And I've got to tell you, with a gadget, there really is something to be said for how it's packaged. Apple really has it down to a science.

You take it out of the wrapper. No, no, Apple doesn't have it down to a science. They have raised it to an art. They really have. Ooh, well done, well done. Well done, well done, well played. It's something you've either been waiting a long time for to come out, or something you've waited

and saved a lot of money to get. The anticipation adds to the moment. It's Christmas. When you get an item that you want or a gadget that you want, it's Christmas morning. It really is that feeling. Every time you open it. Absolutely. So what else you got?

What else have you been coming your way? Well, you know, it's funny. I haven't been able to try this out yet because they're really not sending many of them out, but I went to the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Where was that? In Vegas. Vegas. Vegas?

It's there every year, right? It's there every year, yeah. And they have this thing, it's called, have you heard of a camera called Lytro? No. It's a... Lytro? L-Y-T-R-O. It's a light field camera.

Now, I don't understand exactly how it works, but it's supposedly taking light from everywhere, and I know that it's a little, it doesn't look like a regular camera, it looks like a square kaleidoscope, right? And you look through it, you take the picture, and no matter what the picture looks like, you can always put it in focus because it's gathering light from all different areas. Do you know about this?

I thought it was a joke when it came out. It's not. And what you do is you take a picture. So what's the optics of it? I don't know. Well, I'm not curious to know. This is what's killing me. I can point it this way.

It's what's killing me because I think about it, it's like, how would you do this? You take a picture, and it maps every photon that comes in. And then after the fact, you can change the focus. So you've got this data cube, I guess. And you can say, where do I want it focused at? At 5 feet, 10 feet, 20 feet? And you can do that.

After the fact. After the fact. So if somebody were taking a picture of us, right, we were all in focus, and the background was out of focus, that's probably what we want. But if for whatever reason we wanted the back to be in focus as well, we can change that. And if for whatever crazy reason we want to be out of focus and we want the back only in focus, we can change that after the fact. So what that means is everything is in focus to begin with and it's defocusing what you

don't want. It's got to be. Because you can't start out out of focus as data and then get focused. But that's what this thing does. It does start out out of focus. No, no, I'm asserting. I don't believe that. I think it has to take everything in as a focused cube, as he said. But there is no camera that can focus on everything. Well, there is, but you know what that is?

What? It's a pinhole camera. A pinhole camera has infinite depth? It's a pinhole camera. A pinhole camera has infinite depth of field. A pinhole camera. Everything is in focus. The problem is the pinhole is so small, you need flooded lights to get everything there. And so it becomes a challenge.

Otherwise everything would be a pinhole camera. Well I've not been able to get my hands on this camera to try. Right. Because it's so, and that's sometimes you know you know, they- That's the future of cameras. Yeah, but that makes me a little nervous because they announced it in January. If I'm not seeing it, I always wonder, sometimes they come out with these big- Vaporware.

What's that? Vaporware. Vaporware. Yeah, vaporware is basically when a company or someone talks about something that's coming out, but then it's like vapor, it never solidifies it. They never got it to match what they said. It just doesn't work and then it never comes out and you hear about it for years. It happens at CES all the time.

Right, because what I think what happens is some of these people show up to CES with these grand ideas, a prototype, and then what they're hoping is someone will see it and go, oh, I wonder if there's money in that. Oh, okay. That's the game. That's the game. Okay. So I don't know, but it's called Lytro and I want to try it.

That's a very cool concept. And this is why I haven't been able to figure out how it works. Maybe there's information on it on the web, but when it was first announced, I went online and I was thinking, how would you do that? Something like what you're saying. You're creating this map of where all the light's coming in. There's a series of planes of detectors. A couple of ways, yeah.

And then you choose what combination of those detected planes are. And there are problems with light coming in from different angles, and it's really interesting. And maybe by now somebody's put up an explanation of this, but at the time when it was announced, I did not know. I'm very disappointed in you, I just want to say. I just want a Photoshop filter. You know, it's like, if you know in Photoshop, you can go in, if an area is dark, the information's still there, so you can go in and lighten it up. I would just, it would be great if there was just a focus filter. Photoshop, you can go in, if an area is dark, the information is still there, so you can go in and lighten it up. Yeah. I would just, it would be great if there was just a focus filter.

In one way there is, and that is if you know what a point source looks like, in other words, I have a point of light. Sure. And it gets defocused somehow by a telescope or a camera or whatever. But you know it's a point of light, and it's like, well, it starts a point of light, but later on it's blurred. If you could collect that light back into a point, it's like you're focusing it after the fact. But how would you collect that light?

You have to take all that light off of the detector itself and then put it back in the point that you know started out as a point. It's magic. It's called deconvolution. And we had to do that when Hubble was first built because Hubble was out of focus. And I spent two years doing that. It was dec built because Hubble was out of focus. The Hubble Space Telescope. Yeah. And I spent two years doing that. It was deconvoluted from two years. Are you going dot by dot and defocusing each? Yes. Essentially. Pixel by pixel.

Oh, that is amazing. You're removing the light from each pixel and putting it back in the... That is the scientific version of like going in and cleaning up old art. Where you're just kind of going in and saying, yes. Except, the problem with that you can if you have a crack you can kind of just say well it was brown on this side and brown on this side I can just make that gap with light brown and dark brown it sort of interpolate exactly yeah the problem here is that if I'm taking light from one part putting it into another because it was it started here and focused it defocused over here but if

there was something here I'm taking light away from that and putting it over here but now there's light over here I have to put back over into here and focused, it defocused over here. But if there was something here, I'm taking light away from that and putting it over here. But now there's light over here I have to put back over into here. And it's all, it's what's called nonlinear. You have to do everything all at once. And it's very complicated. And there are issues with it mathematically. It makes it really hard to do. Does complicated mean it also takes a lot of time?

Or is it just the notion is complicated? It's computationally intensive. takes a lot of time or is it just the notion is complicated? It's computationally intensive, but now with Moore's Law just handing us computational capacity, I don't see why that can't just happen on the fly. I used to run programs overnight that three years later I was doing over a snack break. Over a snack break? Isn't Moore's Law slowing down? I don't see processors really getting that much faster than they were.

Actually, they've been cheating because now it's all done in parallel. Right. I want to be twice as fast, get twice as many processors. Quad core, eight core. But you have to program it in a way that all the processors can share the calculation. Sure. If you have to wait for one to finish after another, four processors don't help you. So programmers have to know in advance how to distribute what is being calculated.

I mean, have we achieved all we can achieve with current technology? I mean, do you know anything about quantum computing? I'm waiting for that. Quantum computing. A little overdue, I think. I remember the video game, Qubit, but not. Did you say Qbert? Yeah, Qubit, I know.

Oh, Qubit, you said Qubit. So what else you got? What else you got on your list? That's what programming's gonna do, yeah. Hold on, let me look at my, I do have a list. There's a crib sheet. I do, hold on, I have a list on here. On your pocket computer that you can carry around with you.

So Kingston is a company that makes thumbnail drives and memory and all that. So they just came out with an item. I'm literally testing it out on this trip. So it's 160 gigabyte Bluetooth little memory drive. So what do I need that for? So I've got my iPad. It's now filled with everything. It's overloaded with movies.

It's overloaded with music. I've been on the road for a week now. And you can't put it back on your desktop, right, where your big discs are. Well, what happens is whatever's on your iPad, it's full. You can't put any more stuff on it. And you can't delete movies while you're on the road or anything. Even if you do, you don't have any more room to put it on. So as a for instance, I have this little hard drive.

And I put, like, the entire second and third season of Breaking Bad, because I'm catching up on it, on there. Am I going to get to it and I put like the entire second and third season of Breaking Bad because I'm catching up on it right there. Am I gonna get to it? I don't know Well, it turns out I am getting to it So without looking at the computer because you can't look into an iPad I turn it on Bluetooth and now I have access to a secondary hard drive, which is little It's like it's a credit card and what's great about that about that is it's not only good for movies and stuff like that, but it's also good if you're on the road, if you're doing a PowerPoint presentation, and you want everybody to get Bluetooth into you.

You can put it on the desk in front of you. So I like that gadget a lot. Does the Bluetooth have a USB port to go in? Well, the iPad doesn't have. No, that's my point. It's got a USB port. It's got a firewire to USB for putting it into your computer. Oh, but it also works with...

Right, because that's where the data started. That's loaded. So, in other words, I USB'd it into my computer to put the data on it, but now I can Bluetooth it to any device I want. How fast is it? It's pretty fast. Well, it'd be Bluetooth fast, so that's what it'd be. When I was packing for this trip, I'm thinking, well, I got my video camera, I got my still

camera, but I don't want to bring my laptop. But if I'm taking a video, if I'm going to interview somebody like, say, Nerdist's sir, Chris Hardwick, right? Now I've got it on my flip camera. What am I going to do with this? I've got my iPad. You're saying I could take my flip, plug it into this Bluetooth, get it there, and then it'll go into the iPad. I don't know if you could plug it. I don't know if it's got to be.

It might need a file system to feed it. Right. But if they had that, I'd be golden. Because the iPad only has that stupid connection. When we come back to StarTalk, more with Gary the Gadget Man talking about his stuff. You've just begun to tell us. I've got more stuff. Okay. We'll be right back.

We're back on StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Gary Delamonte. Delabonte. Delabonte. Delamonte. I got it all when I was a kid. Don't worry.

Baba Booey. Baba Booey. The one and the only Baba Booey. I got him right here. We're talking about tech gadgets. I got the nerdist, Chris Hardwick. My colleague and friend, the Bad Astronomer. Welcome to StarCook. Not your first time.

So we were going down this list of these gadgets you get that you write about and where does it appear? Where's your... I write a column in Sound and Vision magazine. Sound and Vision magazine. I go into the name Gadget Gary. All right Gadget Gary, what else you got for us? Okay, so now they make a Bluetooth camera that looks like a little bullet, and it goes over your ear, okay? So there's a couple of things that you can do with it. You're like, why do I need that? So I can be low-key to support. Hello.

I do have to say it's a little weird-looking, and you would be the weird guy at your kid's recital with it on. But there's a couple of uses for it. First of all, you can Bluetooth it right through your phone and right to anybody. So if Grandma's sitting at home in Milwaukee and your daughter's doing a recital, you can have this camera going through your phone, Bluetoothing live into your phone and going right to the grandma. That doesn't say why it has to be stuck in your ear. Well, that's one of the things they had because the feeling was they wanted it to be small,

they wanted it to be portable, and they wanted it to be your point of view. So the premise is if it's on your ears, wherever you're looking. That's very similar to the Sergey Brin at Google is they're developing the glass. The Google goggles. Yeah, which I spoke at Google and he was there. And it's weird, he looks at you with the glasses on and they just look like little sport glasses. But you see a little flickering light in the middle and you feel like you're being targeted. Yeah, well, just like you don't know what information he's seeing.

He's gathering and telling them all this stuff about you. Did you see the thing that they did where they jumped out of the plane? Yeah, yeah. It was crazy. They did a thing where they wore the goggles and there were guys in a plane over where they were. They were talking about what they were going to do. They jumped out of the plane.

They landed on the roof where the event was. And then they got on bicycles and they rode into the event. And everybody could see the whole thing via these glasses being transmitted. It was very cool. So point of view is interesting, right? Yeah, but the other interesting thing about it that I love is it's constantly recording, almost like a TiVo, so it's going 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds, or maybe it's like a two minute buffer.

So if you have this thing on all day and something really cool happens, because you don't know what's cool. You don't know, right, when what you decided was cool, it's too late to catch it from the beginning. Or if you saw it and you go oh my god I want to take a picture of that and it's way too late you hit the button on top and it immediately saves the previous 30 seconds. So like I was at an event last night where I saw this guy holding up a sword to this electron thing and it was like blowing sparks out and I went to get my camera and I missed it. If I was walking around with this very goofy ear thing on, I would have pushed the button

and I would have saved the file. Alright, what else you got? There's a lot of stuff going on with Bluetooth speakers. So I talked about Sonos, but even if you don't want to go that route, you want to go a smaller route, the people that make Jawbone, who are the guys that make us-

Jambox. Jambox. Jawbone is the company, Jambox is about this big. They just made a bigger one. So what it is, is it's a speaker with- Bigger isn't always better in this business. But it's about this big they just made a bigger one so what it is it's a speaker with bigger isn't always better in this business but it's got really really good sound like shockingly good sound like you're looking at the little jam box had great sound it does and it's kind of rubbery so you can drop it so this one's got a rubbery it is no it is so you can just i

mean it doesn't bounce just don't drop it i mean that's the other that's the other approach okay so again like i built the house, I wired it to the hilt and I forgot to wire the porch. It just didn't dawn on me that I'd want to sit on the porch and listen to music. So again, I could go drilling and putting wires in and putting speakers in or bring the jam box out. I take my iPhone. I usually do either Sonos over that or I can do Sirius XM. So sit on the porch and I will stream it to the Bluetooth speaker, and it's got great sound, and it's a great way to get that sound without tearing your house apart.

All right, so now, are there any gadgets that put you into a profound state of silence? You mean I'm so blown away by them? No, no. A cone of silence, I think is what it is. A cone of silence. Everything you've described is to distribute sound and music. Is there anything that creates a meditative state? No, I don't want that. I want the ultimate visual or audio experience.

That's what I'm about. That's a cool idea, though, particularly thinking about we're at Comic-Con right now. So not just noise-canceling headphones, but is there any kind of a device that creates a feel that cancels out? There is an acoustic deadening force field. Yeah, what is it? Michael Jackson had one. It was, what was that tank? It was the hyperbaric chamber.

The hyperbaric chamber. It was the one that William Hurt gets in and comes out an alien in that movie. You know what movie I'm talking about? Yeah, where he goes into suspended animation. Yes, but see that would make me very claustrophobic. I would be freaked out by that. Could you get one of those?

Could you close the lid? Like the deprivation chambers. Yeah, yeah, complete darkness, complete silence. I couldn't handle that. I could out by that. Could you get one of those? Could you close the lid? Like the deprivation chambers. Yeah, yeah. Complete darkness, complete silence. I couldn't handle that. I could not do that. I'd go crazy. But it was just kind of cool if that were just an area you

could walk into in your room. For example, the baby's crying, there's traffic noise, there's whatever. Just walk into the zone, total silence. I think they call that the wife chamber. Have you ever been in one like that? For example, at NASA NASA when they test satellites, they do all these different shake and bake tests where they'll heat it and they'll shake

it and everything. What they'll do is they'll also put them into these rooms, which completely deadens sound. And they can do all kinds of tests. And that's an anechoic chamber. And they have those weird triangle foamy things come in. In fact, it's what set the standard for the foam wall insulation in sound studios. Yeah, but when you go into one of these high-falutin ones and you stick your head in between these cones, sound is gone. And it is freaking weird. All of a sudden we start hearing blood course past your eardrum. I wouldn't like that. It's really distressing. You probably get used to it. But I guess they do it because you don't want to send a guy up to find out he's claustrophobic.

That's right, yeah. We're going to lock you in the stroom. Hopefully they test for that before they're like, you don't want to send a guy up to find out he's claustrophobic. That's right, yeah. We're going to lock you in the classroom. Hopefully they test for that before they're like, you're an astronaut. That's what this is. Yeah, I've been in one at Bell Labs out in Jersey, and it's the quietest place on earth in the Guinness Book for just this reason. We are live at Comic-Con 2012 San Diego. We're talking about gadgets, past, present, and future. We'll be about gadgets. Ask President's YouTube channel.

We're back at Star Call live from San Diego. Comic-Con 2012. Got the bad astronomer. I got Gary the Gadget Man. And I got the Nerdist. So you're going down your list of gadgets. So give me, you got a couple more for me? Yeah, I got Gary the Gadget Man, and I got the Nerdist. So you're going down your list of gadgets. So give me, you got a couple more for me? Yeah, I got one. This is, you know, a lot of the gadgets are about, you know, making me feel better.

Wait, wait, someone pays you to test their gadgets and write about it? Yeah. And you're okay with that? I would be doing it for free, so sure. Okay, so what do you got? But there's things that are practical, too. So I'm very big on backing up the computer because I have so much music. I have so much video now.

I have so much audio and so many important files. So I have a RAID drive system, and I use this company called Drobo, and it's for RAID. Yeah. RAID is acronym for? Really Awesome Interface Device. I think you're all done. I'm here all day. I knew it was good for that. But it's a backup system. So, what you do is you put in four one terabyte drives.

If one of those drives dies, the other three pick up the slack. So, theoretically you can never lose any of your stuff. It's redundant. It's redundant. Yes. However, as great as that is, I still, this is how nutty I am.

I still have a drive that once every four, five, six months, I back it up, right? A regular drive, not a raid drive, I back it up, and I take it to my bank, and I put it in the safety deposit box. And your bank is in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, with NORAD. Here's the one thing a raid drive won't save you from, a fire. Right, because that drive gets lost. Well, there was one company I lookedID drive won't save you from. A fire. Right. Because that drive gets lost. Well, there was one company I looked at that had a RAID drive that survives a fire. You can throw it in a fire.

So I thought I almost lost a lot of my photographs once, and it is the most horrible feeling in the world. I ended up getting an expert. He went way deep into the drive and he found that they weren't lost. By the way, I'm pulling your leg, but I'm equally as manic about my backups. And there's a backup that I put 100 miles away from the other backups. So I calculated what nuclear device would take both out. And then I figured that's a large enough nuclear device that I'm not really worrying about my iTunes music.

So your drive to the bank isn't so crazy anymore. Did you account for the EMP that's going to wipe out everything? No, the EMP I don't think would affect a non-running drive. No. Unless it creates a current that goes through the drive. It could have, you know, an induced current. I've got to think about that. But I do have a question for you guys.

This is where I feel like I'm being really old school. Does everybody trust the cloud? Because the cloud is another way to back up. So do you trust putting your most important stuff on the cloud that's backed up in Kansas City? I mean, I use it. I have issues with the cloud. I do. I use it for accessibility.

I use the cloud. Like I have a Dropbox and I have access to all the files. But would you take your most important stuff and just rely on the cloud? No, no, no. I see what you're getting at. People put their stuff on the cloud and that's where it lives. Right. Because for me the cloud, and that's where it lives. And for me, the cloud is just the superhighway to get it from the iPad to the iPhone to the desktop.

But you are of a certain age. I am. I have a daughter who is in her teens and has grown up with the Internet. And so for her, that's just the stuff that happens. For me, I wouldn't trust the cloud because maybe corporate interests running all of my data is not something I want. There's two things going on. The kids don't know that.

There's two things going on. Right, they don't have the mentality. And yet we go to banks, we put our money in banks which are like financial clouds. I'm not happy. I like that. It's a financial cloud. It's a financial cloud. I put it in.

Where did that dollar go? It's a famous speech. Oh, yeah, your money's in Ben Milley's house and Eddie's house from Where to Wonderful Life. Merry Christmas, you old Chris Hardwick. I have a Lego bank at home, you know. I keep my money under my mattress. But there's two things in the cloud that are weird.

The first is, you're exactly right, how do I know that somebody's not looking in my cloud or where it is? And the other thing is, so I've now got this wonderful company who stores it in this temperature-controlled room in Kansas City. What do I do when they go out of business? Close. It's close to in Kansas City What do I do when they go out of business close close to Colorado Springs? What are doing they go out of business? Well, Kansas is in the middle of the country so that we're invaded you still have time to sort of get ahead of the line And then save your music. I'm talking about a nuclear disaster I'm talking about a a business disaster like they ran the company so bad that they go out of business So what happens to the hardware?

Right and they got no money to go dig it out because they're broke. So I think Chris is onto it. You use the cloud for convenience, but I keep everything on my hard drive at home. Yeah, me too, that's why. Don't trust the cloud. Right, use it for convenience, I don't trust it.

Yeah, and also when I leave town, I take all my backup drives and I put them away, hide them just in case someone breaks in, then my drives are protected. Take my jewels, take my... But don't take my data, please! But what's your backup system for if your house catches on fire? Well, then it's like worst case scenario is the cloud right now.

The cloud, alright. So hopefully if my house doesn't catch on the fire at the same time as the cloud does. We've got to wind down this segment of StarTalk. So we're going to lose you. Yes, I have to take leave of you. I'm going to doing my live Nerdist podcast at the Bob Boat Theater in San Diego. So we're going to lose you for the next segment.

You're going to lose me for the next segment, but it's been such an honor to be here. But thanks for sharing your Nerdist time with us. It's so great. This is such a fun collection of dudes. But you've got to spread your Nerdist love. I know we only get you for a piece of it. Yeah, I've got to go do my show now.

But it was wonderful to guest on your show. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for coming. Good to see you, Greg. Good to see you, Gary. Thanks for happening here. Thank you so much for coming. Good to see you, Chris. Good to see you, Gary. All right. When we come back to StarTalk Radio, we're going to launch this into the future and find

out what gadgets we always wanted to have and have yet to be invented. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. See you tomorrow. We're back. StarTalk. San Diego. Comic Con 2012. I've got the bad astronomer. And I've got Gary the Gadget Man. Otherwise known as Baba... Bowie. Baba Bowie.

Baba Bowie. Baba Bowie. I have to say, when they told me that I was doing a show with an astrophysicist and his astronomer friend. Astronomer friend. I'm both, actually. I thought there was going to be two nerdy guys, but you guys are very... Do you get that a lot?

Do people expect you to be socially awkward? Because you're not. Well, you don't see us in other settings. Yeah, well, that's true. I think we're, you know, yes. We're socialized yes you think you think smart guys get a bad rap yes yes yeah but not only that in astrophysics there's no reward for being socialized so even if people have the capacity it

goes untrained in many in many circles do you watch a big bang theory of course okay so cameo on the Big Bang Theory. Did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah! You have to tell me when because I never missed it anyway. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But so a guy like Sheldon is not that uncommon? No, no. We see all that cast of characters, they're a bit of a caricature, but still.

It's really true and in fact, especially with scientists, we see ourselves. You know, I think I have, not only have I known Sheldon and Raj and you know, and how are all those guys, they're me. In different situations, I've seen myself in all of those. So accurately captured. Have you ever been at a party, gotten a little drunk, and realized that you're over-explaining something to somebody who can't comprehend it? You know, it's funny you'd say that. When I first met my wife at a party, I was in graduate school.

She was an undergraduate. She was at a party, I was in graduate school. She was an undergraduate. She was at a party. I was actually looking through some math books that were in the host's house because I was looking for something I needed for my work. And she came up to me and said, so what are you doing? And I told her, oh, epicycloids. And I went through this whole thing in her eyes, and she was gone. Married that woman eventually. That sounds creepy creepy now he has to chase her down yeah

caveman style before the expression stalking have been invented that's right but it worked out you know we've been married a long time so we need a device that they can make that can make that happen so how long you've been writing about gadgets probably about five years now five years like said, they actually pay you to do that? They do. Not a lot. Okay, now what's the clumsiest, stupidest gadget you ever looked at? Oh. You said this is stupid.

Save the iPad. Save the iPad. Think about how much traffic you'll get. Are you an Apple hater? No, I think Apple is just as sucky as every other kind of computer. So, I'm interviewing... There are no computers? I'll pull him in in a minute. I have a PC with an iPad.

I have an iPhone and a... You have a PC? Yeah, I had a Mac for a long time and it died. I got a PC because it was a lot cheaper. What did you use that in your DeLorean? I'm really wishing I had gotten an iMac. I know, I know, I know.

I'll get a Mac again, but you know. Are you one of those people who thinks Mac is taking over the world and you just don't want to be like everyone's lemmings? No. I take things as they come. I make my decisions based on what's going on.

There are things I like about the iPad and things I think are really dumb. That's why in a minute we're going to talk to you about future gadgets, not current gadgets. Don't ask me questions. I'll start talking. What's your suckiest gadget that you know? Oh, gosh. Some of them are just so stupid. When I was at CES, there was one that was supposed to be like, some of them are just so stupid. There was one,

when I was at a CES, there was one that was supposed to be like, it looked like Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons. Oh yeah? And it was like a... Was her name Rosie? Rosie the Robot. I didn't remember that. There's somebody cosplaying as her. Oh, but she had a little apron. But it was like a mini version of her, and it was supposed to help you lose weight, and you were supposed to go talk to it every morning, and tell it what you and it was gonna tell you calories back and it was like I could not use in your brain like you know I may come up with all these different things for weight loss and this was like a you know a very expensive item it was like a mini computer and I just thought it was so dominant I haven't seen it since so it

was overkill for the for the need there's a thousand apps on your droid or your iPhone that will do the same thing for you with a little bit of input. It was just, you know. Like Lose It, for example. I use Lose It. And it just keeps track of your weight. I prefer to lose 30 pounds on Lose It.

It reminds you what you're doing. Right. And it plots it. That's all losing weight really is. That's all it is. So that's a $399 app versus a $500 robot. Right. Anything that you felt was too hard to figure out?

Because that's the big thing. You know, Apple, you just walk up to it and it runs itself, right? I will tell you this. No Apple user uses a construction manual. Well, the story I'm about to tell you, I'm very ashamed to talk about because I'm not very handy, mechanically inclined. Yet you just said you built your house. No, I had somebody build it for me.

Was that like a Quaker? I know, I was about to be impressed. Okay, you had enough money to pay somebody else to build your house. Me and the Amish were out there. Yeah, right, right. We did a barn raising. No, there's a couple of companies.

One of them, Schlage Locks. Yeah, yeah, of course, uh-huh. So they came up with this really cool lock that, again, works off an app via a wireless thing. So, you know, you put the door lock on and you can key code it. That's easy, that's pretty common. Or I could be in traffic an hour away and my buddy calls and says,

hey I'm at your house, where are you? Oh, I'm stuck in traffic. I can hit the app and open the door for him. Whoa. So that's awesome. A remote door opener. A remote door opener or I can remotely set codes for the cleaning lady, a delivery guy,

people that you don't want to have the same code over and over again. It's great. Awesome. I've had it for four months. I haven't been able to test it out because I don't know how to put the doorknob in. The mechanical part of taking out a doorknob, I can't do. Okay. Yeah, there's some stuff you got to pull in and go.

It's two dimensions, right? Exactly. Have you ever installed a doorknob? No, no, no. It's a nightmare. I got an A in shop when is it two dimensions, right? Exactly. Have you ever installed a door knob? It's a nightmare. I got an A in shop when I was a kid, guys. OK. And they keep calling me. They go, when are you going to review it?

I'm like, I'm getting there. I'm waiting for somebody to come over who says, oh, I got a friend who's like, oh, give me that. And can put it in in two minutes. We got to wind down this first half. You've been listening to StarTalk live from San Diego, Comic-Con 2012. When we come back in our second hour, we're going to talk about gadgets we wish existed,

gadgets we want to be invented, and we're going to talk about gadgets we've seen in the movies that we wish we had now.