The Chaser Report - A Device Slightly More Evil Than Bluetooth | Welcome To The Future

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Dom Knight and Charles Firth dive into their first ever WELCOME TO THE PAST as Dom looks back at a device that was potentially more evil than bluetooth. Plus Charles has an update on his story about the breakthrough in room-temp superconductors! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Oh, Charles. We could do a topical podcast today. No. Or we could do an episode of our beloved spin-off podcast, which does have some news in it. We've got an update on the room temperature superconductor, which is either exciting or total bullshit, one of the two things.

Yes. And so let's go straight to another episode of, Welcome to the future. He's about to do that about six more times, by the way. We've recorded it already. Hello and welcome to another episode of Welcome to the Future. Oh, it's so good to be back in the future, Charles. And this week, I have some great news about a very, very old device.

And I know we spend a lot of time hanging shit on Bluetooth, and appropriately so. But before Bluetooth was even invented, there were terrible devices. arguably more terrible even than Bluetooth. And I'm not making it up. So this is not so much an episode of Welcome to the Future, but instead an episode of Welcome to the past. You enjoyed that, didn't you? I also have an amazingly over-designed light.

Oh, good. And some garage doors that have a fairly major floor. Plus, I've got a quick update on the room temperature superconductor that everyone thinks it's a complete hoax. How exciting. All right. Let's get into it after this. Where shall we start, Charles, in this tech smorgasbord about?

Well, I think we should start from the beginning, which is the past. All right, all right. So there's been a lot of unsatisfactory tech devices in recent years. A lot of Bluetooth gadgets that don't work. That's basically the organizing principle of this podcast. But there was a device once designed that worked very, very well in doing something utterly terrible. Is this going to be the guillotine? Not the guillotine, much worse than the guillotine.

Oh, right. Worse than the guillotine. The Brazen Bull. Have you ever heard of this? No. So it answers a question, what is a truly horrifyingly cruel way of executing criminals? Oh, at least I was in the right bull park. Yeah, you were. It's an execution device. And there was a tyrant.

What's it called? It's called the Brazen Bull or the Bronze Bull, Sicilian Bull, or the Bull of Filaras. Now, Filaras was a tyrant of a place called Akragus in Sicily. He was looking for a new way to execute criminals. And in what era are we talking about here? Is this sort of like 3,000 years ago or is this like under Mussolini? Like what are we talking here? No, no, we're talking basically kind of first century BC as far as I could.

Or possibly, but earlier. This was used to kill Christians. So it was hanging around when Jesus was around. So it was invented by someone called Perilowus of Athens, whose name may well have given right to the word peril. What it is is the brazen bull It's a metal bull made out of bronze It looks exactly like a bull

And there's a door Is it a full size? Yeah, it's very large It's big enough to open the door on the side And put a criminal inside it What you then do is you lock the door And you apply fire to the bottom of the bull And you cook the person inside A hot bronze bull

And the trick the kind of technological innovation of this device is that the acoustic chamber and the bull's mouth was designed such that the screams of the victim were amplified to sound like the roaring of a bull. Oh, so it's a bull, it's a ball's roar. It's sort of genius. It's genius. Now, Perilas invented this and proposed it to Philharis and built it. What happened straight away, as soon as he presented it to this person,

was he expected to get a reward from Filaris. Instead, he was disgusted. So he put the inventor inside the bronze bull immediately and tested it out. He wanted to test out the horn sound system. He was disgusted that the guy would come up with such a hideous device. Yeah, device. And so his immediate thought was, Well, I'm going to use that device.

Yes. Yes. Let's see exactly how horrible and cruel it is. In you go. Apparently tricked him to get inside. Oh, yes. Interesting bull you've got there. Can a human really have been inside?

I don't think a human could really inside this bull. So, yes. So there you go. Tricked him. He went inside. Was it like a Trojan bull? And they lit the fire underneath. And it worked as described the screams.

Paralyas were apparently Truly horrified And did the person who tricked the guy Into getting in Therefore regret it Going, oh, okay, it does work I don't think he had He did have regretted it

He must have regretted it This is actually wonderful And this guy is literally His title is the tyrant His job was tyrant Right It was a political position back then Yes

So but the good news is He let him out He didn't kill him Oh So he started roasting him Heard the screams Right I thought, this could be useful.

So he took him out of the bull. He opened the door and took him away. Oh, thank God it worked. And took him away. For the poor inventor guy, you know, he must be thanking his lucky stars. Oh, he was very relieved, I'm sure. He'd come up with such a hideously effective and, you know, like, device that would impress such a horrible person. Yeah, he did.

And then what happened immediately after that is that Filaras took the inventor, Paralyarish, the top of the hill and threw him off. Tuss, killing him. So he didn't avoid getting killed. He just was killed in a slightly more humane way. But what a surprise that would be. Oh, thank you so much for saving me from being cooked in the bull. Oh, you throw me off a hill. Okay, then.

Well, whatever. Well, it's more traditional and this. I mean, I don't know how accurate this is. It's in Wikipedia, so that's probably true. But ironically enough, Filaras was then killing the present bull. When he was overthrown by someone called Telemich. What goes around, comes around? It's a bull in a China shop is ordered.

He never quite know what's going to happen. It was, you're still in years centuries later. The last one was 287. The Romans took it. Did he milk it for all its worth? Oh no, he couldn't. It was a bull. Yeah, no, many early Christians were killed, including St.

New Star who apparently was roasted by the Emperor Hadrian with his wife and children. That also happened to St. And the same time? Oh, presumably consecutively. I don't know. I'd have to check that out. Yeah, they did it with all. a lot of early Christians.

So it was popular. It lasted for centuries. So that makes Bluetooth. I think it puts Bluetooth into perspective. Yes. Well, you know what would have improved it, though? What? Bluetooth.

Oh, Bluetooth locking system. Yeah. The thing is as well, we have to be fair. Okay, this is a much worse device than Bluetooth. But it's more effective. It doesn't have any, it doesn't have major design. At no point, did it simply stop killing the person of making them scream?

Yeah, the inventor, most. have been cursing himself that he didn't install Bluetooth when he got tricked being put in. Okay. A couple more little gadgets as we continue to survive the future here. So imagine that you're a piano studio. So is this the past or the future? This is current.

This is something that it's being crowdfunded for apparently at the moment. This is brand new. Okay, so welcome to the presence. Welcome to the presence. Let's talk about Xiaomi. You know Xiaomi, the mobile phone company. They're quite a large company in China. They are crowdfunding.

Or an amazing device, a light, which you can use when you play piano. So, Charles, you have a piano student in your house. I've seen the piano. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what feature would you most like from a light that might sit above the piano? Well, to illuminate the music. Yeah, yeah, so you can see the music. Well, what feature would you love it to have that your current light that you might have doesn't have?

Well, I'll tell you what, he would love it if, as the music played, it's sort of, with different colors or something like that, like flashed different colors. That would be very cool. Is that what it is? Its modes are warm color and cool color. It's only got different shades of white. No, the amazing feature,

and they're crowdfunding for this. So if you want, apparently it's already raised all the money. It illuminates all 88 keys. So it's got even lighting over the piano keys. But the killer feature, which has never previously been in a light as far as I know, it's got a radar so that when you know it knows when you come and sit down.

Because apparently, if you want to play a piano, pressing the button to turn the light on, is too onerous. What you need is a radar that constantly scans the room, and then when someone walks up to it, it goes, oh, there's someone here, better turn the piano light on. What, 24 hours a day, it's just on-garde, scanning, waiting for... It's a smart piano light, Charles. Is that to mimic, you know how when you go to classical music concert and there's a grand piano out on the stage, and the person walks out, And they just sort of, the lights come up just at the right time as they're sitting down. I guess that's what it's. It's sort of, somebody's gone, I want that, but with Bluetooth.

Maybe it's beneath the person. The piano's coming out and getting ready to play the concerto. You wouldn't want to press the light switch. Why would you use radar to do that rather than a motion sensor or something like that? It's a radar motion sensor, I guess. So there's that, go and buy that if you want to pay far too much for a piano light. Yeah. And my final gadget, before we get onto your general.

genuinely, potentially exciting best technology, which most of the world of physics is very dubious about, is it's a smart garage door. You've got a garage door. Would you like a smart garage door? Well, I would like one which requires less than 20 presses of the button to open. That would be very revolutionary. Oh, that's a good idea. Well, this is a company called NECS.

They sell IoT Internet of Things products. Internet connected garage doors, alarms and wall plugs. Can I guess what the killer app feature is? What's that? That as you approach, it just automatically opens. I'm not sure if that is the feature. I'll check that out while I, well, because that would be good. If you, your Bluetooth device connected to it and suddenly boom.

That would be really cool, yeah. Like if you're driving up, instead of having to press the button 15 billion, wind down the window and be pressing the button trying to get it to work. Is that, does that happen for your car? No. Garage tool? I've got a pretty sensitive one. Well, the first review here of the next smart Wi-Fi garage door controller,

the first one says terrible product. I bought two of these. First one lasted a year, second one lasted six months. Customer support couldn't fix problems. Stay away. So what does it do? Like, you haven't told us what it does. It lets you take out your phone and open the door.

You tap the button to open. It doesn't look like it smart enough to just do it automatically. You've got to press the button. But there's a slight problem. Can you guess what the slight problem is with the smart garage door? Well, presumably, well, I don't know about you, but I don't have Wi-Fi in my fucking car park. That's one issue. Yeah.

They have a lot of, it's not just a garage door. They've got, like, regular door locks. No, okay. Apparently they're all extremely easy to hack. So you've got your garage door sitting there. Yeah. It's smart, but not smart enough not to be hacked. But that's probably good because it means that when you inevitably get locked out,

because you can't connect your Wi-Fi, somebody, you can get a, you know, hacker to come and help you out. That would work. So essentially, you're unable to secure your home with this device. But it's very easy to open. But I think that's very metaphorical. But that is how we all live. We live in the cloud.

The cloud gives us this sort of sense that, you know, our information is private, that there's something behind a locked door. Yeah. But in actual fact, no, it's not like that at all. Well, I mean, I feel sorry for them. This company specialises in security products, smart security products. Yes. It just didn't occur to them that they might need to encrypt the password at any point that is used.

So that's, but it's easy to get in, as you say. You just need to hack into your own garage. And also, I mean, who he really gets burgled by professional burglars. You know what I mean? It's only happened to me two or three times in my moment. life, yeah. Well, no, but like, it's usually just sort of smash and grab, isn't it? Like, it's not junkies. It's not people who, well, I didn't want to use the term, but yeah, like, it's not, tech junkies, who, who would know how to use this. But it's not people who are going, like, there's

nothing in my house where it'd be like, okay, let's spend the next five days, you know, hacking into the systems to try and work out. No, I'm going to break into your house. Yeah. Oh, I see, but you're saying, like, but then who is going to, like, anyone, Who buys a van go or something like that. He's not going to buy a smart lock from this firm. Or are they? Well, you know what? You know what's good.

Oh, we could find out. We could just hack into their systems and go and have a look at what people who buy these locks have. Presumably, there's a database of where they're located as well. That's a great idea. You know what's a really good invention? A key. Oh, yes. The key that doesn't involve any internet.

Yes. It's a metal key. It's quite hard to break in. You should patent that. Yeah. It's almost as though the smarter option is to not use the smart lock. Yes. All right.

So, Charles, that's some. You'd have to work out a way to put Bluetooth on your physical key, though. That's true. It's so small and elegant and easily portable. I really needed some sort of battery added to that thing. Okay, so now it's time for the news that you've been hanging on for the whole episode. The reason you're still here. Yeah.

which is a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the, you know, just incredible breakthrough in humankind. Essentially, the breakthrough of our generation is that these material physicists had worked out how to create a substance that was superconductive at room temperature. It's very exciting. I mean, if we cracked this, you know, you went into detail last time, things like power transmission could be radically different. You could have batteries for everything that would just store the charge indefinitely. Yes. So I assume there's no way this could possibly be real.

So over the weekend, several physicists from an American university posted on TikTok, actually, and then Twitter and Reddit, video of them trying to make the recipe of the superconductive material. Now, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, This material, one of the fascinating things about it is it can be made with readily available materials. So it's things like beryllium. Oh, I've got so much that shit lying away at home. If you're a self-respecting lab, you've always got some lying around waiting to make into a superconductor.

And they tried the recipe out. And the first try that they did in making this material, then they've posted a video and it's absolutely tiny. And most of the video is actually them talking about, how do we get into focus? It's really small. I can't focus. Hold on.

Let me try this lens, right? Like, it's sort of, they're not, let's just say, they're not social media experts. So they're good at making superconductors. It's not good at filming themselves making supercondectors. But eventually, after the first couple of, because they did it in the sort of series of tweets and threads and things like that, they eventually post a fairly well-focused.

zoomed-up version of it, and it does exactly what it's supposed to do as a superconductor, which is every time they bring a piece of, like a magnet close by, it goes up and perpendicular, and it shows that it has superconductive properties at room temperature, which is the whole deal, that's the whole deal. And it's not the whole bit, like, so this is a micrometer big, like, it is tiny, Like literally a millionth of a meter. Oh, okay. But, and it's only about half of the little, it's like a little, it's like a little, it's like a little squiggly light.

It's like a little flea or something on this, you know, in this test tube style container. And it sort of squiggles around, but it comes to life. And you go, that's a superconductor right there. It's definitely true. We're all going to, it's going to be fine. I just wish I could believe you. I want this to be real so much. I want us to have these amazing batteries.

I mean, imagine what it would do for climate if you could actually just basically store rooftop solo forever without losing any of it, et cetera, et cetera. I just want to believe you, Charles. It's just that it's you. And I don't want to shoot the messenger because you've had some great episodes recently. It's just a bit too good to be true, isn't it?

Or is the catch that it's just so tiny? Well, one catch that was posted directly under the discovery, which I thought very much sort of, you know, The science nerds being fuckwit type thing is somebody did point out, yeah, yeah, okay, but according to the recipe, if you did actually build a energy reactor, you know, using these materials, using that method, then you'd run out of the Earth's entire supply of beryllium as you're building the first reactor with it. So, you know, like, so there are a few sort of minor flaws, but that means you just don't

build the whole reactors out of it. You just build, you know, little batteries and it'll be fine. It'll work out. It'll be brilliant. Here's an article in the new scientist that might encourage you, Charles. Yes. New superconductor claims, they say, could lead to progress even if they're wrong. So there you go, every little bit helps.

Yes. Even if it's complete bullshit. Which is, that's how I talk to my wife at home. Even if I'm wrong, I'm still, you know, helping in a way. By eliminating possibilities. Yeah, that's right. We will know next time that. that claims made about brilliant-based ruin-temperature superconductors

from South Korea are definitely not true. That's good to know. No, no, no. No, I don't think it's not true. It's not true. No. To be fair to Charles, it's clear just from a little search of Google News, which is, as we know, very thorough.

We just don't know yet. The science world is... I'm going to get a physicist on here for next week, and we're going to do a deep dive, and we're going to lose all our listeners. As we talk about particle physics. There will be no friction as people unsubscribe from the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Our Gears from Road with part of the Iconiclass Network. And we'll catch you next time in the future. Or the past if I bring in more torture devices. Yeah, that was good.