We have video this week! Adam and Will dial in to the cave as we get an update on the Brain Candy Live tour performances so far and discuss Right to Repair legislation, the Alien: Covenant prologue, and escape rooms!
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First I’m downloading this in engineering solids it looks like a good one
Saw Brain Candy in Schenectady – loved it! Michael plays an awesome Beaker to your Gonzo.
Check out Race to Escape on the Science Channel. Only had one season so far. It’s good, not great.
Over here in the Uk, The crystal Maze was very much like a televised escape room. Lots of different puzzles where the contestants had to figure out exactly what to do in a short amount of time. Well worth checking out.
Hey Adam..didn’t you sort of do an escape room on Mythbusters on one of the MacGyver specials..**edit** you remembered..I should have waited til the end of the podcast
I’m not familiar with all the “escape” shows you mentioned. I wonder if a 1964 episode of “The Twilight Zone” is an early precursor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jeopardy_Room
I’m a Video Engineer and have been trained by MFGs to repair some of their equipment , mainly large venue video projectors. However a few years ago I wanted to leave the company I worked for and start my own business repairing Bar** and Chris** Digi*** projectors. I could do it all day long but I was not allowed to buy the parts from the MFGs because I would be taking money out of their pocket because out of warranty repairs makes them a ton of money.
A common complaint with your podcasts is that the big microphones you use mask/cover your faces.
It seems that without trying to solve that problem , you might have come up with a solution in this video using headsets or lapel microphones.
, do you have the right to repair the hovercraft? Grace probably had more fun being carried around anyway.
-Adam Smith (A Baltimore show attendee)
(actually the kid who asked you the failure question was sitting next to me and my cousin, but I already knew that story because I have watched your DefCon talk on failure.)
Will is right. Escape Rooms trace their origins back to point-and-click games like Myst but more directly the most popular escape the room game was The Crimson Room made by Toshimitsu Takagi and its sequel The Viridian Room. you can play both of those games here:
http://escapefan.com/play-crimson-room/
http://escapefan.com/play-viridian-room/
I had an amazing escape room experience at obsidem in Montreal; it was a two player experience where you have been “kidnapped” and blindfolded and then taken into a room and handcuffed and you need to get out in 20 min or else your kidnappers will be back and you’ll be facing “enhanced interrogation”.
Why not bring in Michael Stevens on the pod cast sometime during your tour?
As a consumer I am 100% behind right to repair, however my day job is a product development engineer and the concept of right to repair terrifies me. In many consumer products there is the potential for a dangerous failure. A common development practice is to carefully study how many cycles it takes for a failure to occur and then intentionally design a different, safer, component to fail at a lower cycle count. In this way the “safe” component acts as a mechanical fuse.
With right to repair enabling an end user to swap out this fuse with no input from the manufacturer suddenly a lot of dangerous failures are back on the table. Having to design a device that will always fail safely no matter which component fails would be developmentally prohibitive.
First off I’m at work listening and I hear an email ping from the podcast thinking it’s mine and spend the next 5 min. refreshing my emails. Second, there is a family that opened a handful of escape rooms in Murfreesboro, TN that are amazing. They have a room set up for only 2 people for date night, a 5 person max one, and the largest goes up to 10 people. Great for going and not having to book your room with other people.
Thinking of starting a betting pool on how many minutes into Covenant before James Franco’s character dies….my guess is: within the first 15 minutes.
Hey Guys,
First of all, I love the podcast. I worked as an Apple Genius from 2008-2012. When I heard Norm say “The Genius Bar is where they make all their money.”, half my body started to go numb. In my experience, the vast majority of the repairs I and my team did were under warranty. The majority of the out-of-warranty repairs were hard drive replacements which do not have a large markup. I hear stories all the time about the Genius Bar quoting some outrageous price for a repair, but please believe me that these are a very small, very loud minority.
When I was at training in Cupertino, it was made very clear to us all that our job was not to make money for Apple. It was to buy customer loyalty. The money I lost for Apple at the bar would be made up when those loyal customers would continue to buy Apple products throughout their life. From all the repairs I did, I don’t even see how they could pay my salary let alone pull a profit from the Genius Bar. I did however, have many customers tell me that our service is why they will always buy Apple.
I fully support everybody’s right to take apart and repair their own property. I do not think the manufacturer should be forced to honor the warranty if the customer breaks something trying to fix it themselves. I also want to say that Apple does provide repair manuals and support to 3rd party repair shops. Apple Geniuses get their repair manuals from the same web portal as 3rd party repair shops.
I really like the podcast and I say this with all the love in the world.
When they talked about the Amy Adams thing all I could think was…..If you only knew what would go wrong….
“Having to design a device that will always fail safely no matter which component fails would be developmentally prohibitive.” – the answer to this seems clear to me : provide careful documentation which clearly indicates that if you replace this part then you will also need to replace that other part being protected. Car repair, for example, already has some of this – the water pump is commonly replaced along with the timing belt whether it’s failed or not because of access to it. If you have something protecting something else, sell a replacement “kit” which includes both parts. If Manufacturers and designers develop with openness in mind then all of society benefits. As a manufacturer, including a feedback loop would be very beneficial I would think.
Yes! Fond memories from when I was a kid watching Richard O’Brien rock that show. 🙂
As long as a new ‘toy’ is under warranty I try to resist opening up things to ‘improve’ them.
And then there was the slide scanner that had those ‘do not remove or you’ll pay for all repairs’ stickers. But when slides kept jamming inside, it was take off the case or destroy the slides. Poor design! Next time, Goo-Gone should peel off the stickers in one piece!
As far as right to repair goes, yes! If I screw it up, I get to pay for to fix the original problem -and- whatever I added to the pile! But it’s my choice!
Of course, there are those jobs that really need to be farmed out to people who have the tools to do the job in an hour while I’m still planning a trip to buy the (hopefully) right tools!
–Paul E Musselman
I repair Iphone screens all the time. You can get a 3rd party screen for like $30, and the installation is childsplay.
One more vote for you guys to check out The Crystal Maze for some amazing late 80s/early 90s escape room tv. The haircuts and constant inability of the contestants to solve the puzzles make it well worth the effort. Plus it’s presented by Richard O’Brian for the first few seasons.
A revival season’s in production now, with a new football-field sized set built in Bristol!
Tested Team, I can make your dream of firing the tennis ball cannon from American Gladiator happen. Plus other movie FX guns. We are located in North Hollywood CA. We built the guns for the show along with all the machinery from Wipe Out.
I cannot watch this without thinking about the Futurama Jarheads 🙂