I, V, M. My cohost, Naren is not here today actually. We'll get to that a little later. But we do have our producers.
I'd say, I said, hi. Sitan, sitan, sitan, sitan, sitan, sitan, who makes a sound as good as we do. So he's the guy who you should direct your bricks to. I guess, yeah.
I don't do all the sound engineering work. It's all you guys. And our lovely sound engineer, Arvind outside. Say hi, Arvind.
He's saying hi. I can see him saying hi. OK. So listen, I hope all is well with you.
This week has, of course, been quite eventful, with LinkedIn being brought over by Microsoft, being shared by all three people who still use LinkedIn. I can't believe that. You can't believe that. I can't believe that the three people still use LinkedIn.
Yeah, it must be two first of all. OK. And I can't believe they spent that much money. Yeah.
Also, the things I like it to happen right now, because Satya Madhana once a deeper integration with Office products and LinkedIn as you both weren't independently annoying enough. Yeah. So imagine you'll be automatically linked to coordinators of your 300-side presentation while writing it. Oh, no.
If you fudge numbers on your Excel, then financial acumen automatically gets added to your skills. And if you use a piloted version of Windows, users will have this seniors notified about their browsing history. That is horrifying. Solitary completion timings will be added to your profile.
And most importantly, clip it. He's back. He's not back, but he could be back. Yeah.
A lot of weird things have happened, for example, Microsoft buying LinkedIn. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. Clip it to come back.
And just instead of offering advice, he would just say, I would like to add you to my professional network. Oh, that's horrifying. Horrifying. So moving on from that image, I have this as we have two massive pieces of news to give you.
Firstly, you might notice that my usual co-host, Nalindar Shahanwai, is conspicuous by his absence. This is not because he has defected the podcast, because he was unable to listen to my poor jokes anymore. At least as far as I know, we figure out if he's not back next year. We'll see how he's not back next year, or then we'll have a sneaky suspicion.
Correct. This is actually because he's away on some unexpected work. Hence, it's me, with Sid. Alone in the studio by ourselves, sadness, but let us not forget that Paul McCartney had a reasonably successful career after the Severeign time.
He's just turned and found out with wings also. Yeah, that worked out for a while. That reasonably worked out. Something happened.
Secondly, because of the unpredictable nature of our respective professions, I work in advertising, as some of you know. When you join, most professions, they give you some sort of a welcome kit. You know, like a book or a backpack or a pencil or paper clip or a customized minion toy. It's one of the few things to look forward to.
When you join advertising, they give you a sleeping bag and a toothbrush. That sets the tone for what... It's an abusive relationship. Yeah, yeah.
You live here now. You live here now. Now, on the other hand, run through the company and now has a little division in the UAE. I'm not sure whether we are allowed to say that because I'm not sure that the income tax...
Okay, let's just say that he likes to visit the bio. Yeah, yeah. He's found a scammer. He likes camel.
He likes camel. He likes camel. He's like camel racing. He can't get enough of that.
So as a sub-sequencer for work, work schedules writing a weekly 40-minute episode, this is a little cumbersome. I can see how that can be a problem. Yeah. Yeah, if you don't have a script then...
Yeah. So, yes, our passion is still taking... Our passion still remains taking the pressing issues of the week and crunching it down for you guys. But considering there are 400 site presentations and tons of nuts and bolts literally, to be made, it's a little difficult.
Oh, they're shutting down the podcast. I hear you yell in a scream of delight. Sorry, that's not going to happen. I should have got a letter of that.
You see, obviously. No, no. We're still here. Obviously.
Obviously. What we're going to do is, every alternate week, we're going to put out a smaller version of simplified. You can call it what you like. Maybe simplified.
Maybe simplified. Simplified in Chuddy form, if you like. Simplified in the loon-g. We call it simplified.
Shorties. This will be a 10-15 minute episode which answers one question. Yes, just one. This could be topical or just something we randomly thought of or something that maybe one of you asks us and for some reason I'm just too lazy to Google.
Yeah. So, if you have a burning question, an actual burning question, don't send me things like, how do I make or love me? Why does Donald Trump exist? What's the meaning of life and all that?
Do send it in and let's see what we can do to help you guys out. Yeah, that'll be fun. Yeah. Chuck and Dasko go Palace me.
Shenoyen is Narain. IBM podcast is who owns us. Yeah. So, feel free to mail any of us and ask us anything but why does this podcast go on?
Because that's a question we don't have an answer for. And we may never have an answer. And we may never have an answer. So, this week said, I am going to talk about something that I've always pondered and I'm sure you have to given your passion for flying.
Yeah. Yeah. Why do they make you turn off all your electronics during the take-off? I am.
I am. I am. I am. I am.
I am. I am. I am. I am.
I am. I am. You hit. You hit a no.
Immediately after that. I'm stuck. I've been stuck. All the new equipment or new technology got brought on the plane and was affecting the older technology of flight electronics – the communication systems and they were probably dealing with so many cell phones going off all at once and going crazy but it's been a long time since then.
Take a long time since then. So, I assume that I've read out and electrolytes on and off that they've properly enhanced their electronics to make it safer and easier for them to know themselves way tools, communication failures and sickness and electronic problems. So, what were you talking about this? electronic device or PED as AVS or personal or portable.
Same thing I guess. So all of them emit some sort of electromagnetic radiation, which can technically interfere with either the flight GPS or the pilots' headphones while they are communicating. So I'm sure many of you guys at some point of time, when you have your cell phone near you, when you're listening to music or something, you get it, it, it, it, it. That's pretty much what happens.
And I can understand that can throw the pilot a little bit off when he's trying to steer 500 tonne tube through the air, carrying 500 people. And it's very rare to have the head of the land. Yeah. So I can figure out how that would be a problem.
But it's very, very unlikely that a little cell phone could cause that problem. Now theoretically, so proponents of people who are pro shutting down electronics, they say theoretically it's possible, especially when there are 500 people on a flight, each of which I would say maybe two electronics. So theoretically, yes, it can happen. But in practice, it's actually quite difficult.
So let me tell you what I have read. Yeah. Yeah. What happens if you refuse?
What happens when you sneak and keep your electronics on, which everybody has done. Oh, yeah. All the time. Remember when you hide your phone innocently when the air host is checking, like in school, like we used to hide the other desk here.
Hide either your pack of chips or the archy book and like, just like an angel. Pretend like nothing. So theoretically, yes, like we said, you're electronic, especially equipped with Wi-Fi functionality like cell phones or iPads or kindles, which are cellular. They can cause interference when pilots try to communicate with air traffic control, because each of them emit interference.
There are several anecdotes over here, including the compass going haywire, et cetera, et cetera. Like I remember reading a few things where the pilots actually had trouble and then they announced, please, everybody shut off your damn PEs. And then everything went normal. So there are anecdotal evidences of things like this.
But here's the thing. These are all anecdotes. And the number of anecdotes that come out are disproportionately small, given the number of flights that happen on a daily basis. Yeah, but Chuck, you can't answer the problems solution right there.
If something is going screwy, just actually get the cabin to out there and go, look, there's an actual problem. Please shut everything up. And then it goes back to normal. It's fine, right?
It's taken care of. So PD's radiate signals that can hit and disrupt highly sensitive electronics sensors that are hidden in the planes passenger area, including those for an instrument landing system used in bad weather. So I can see why pilots are there. That's the problem.
So you're very much in the cell phone. What can it do? Apparently, the right direction at the very right time, or rather the wrong time, it can actually interfere. So like I said, if you have so many people, two devices per person, you have fairly increased chances.
Boeing, in fact, the guy so make those planes. Boeing has a chamber where they test radiation by various PEDs. Most people just generally say it doesn't make a difference. It's like I said, the anecdotal evidence needs to be a lot more for people to actually start paying attention.
Yeah. And here's the thing. Older aircraft, much more at risk because it's not much shielding. It wasn't built for, they never thought that, oh my goodness, people be carrying so many PEDs on.
Yeah. And the other reason, the other reason why people, why a lot of proponents have asked to switch electronic devices was just for attention. Because they're not taking off and taking on that. I guess, a fairly legit reason they wanted to be attention.
And why is it important announcement of how to use your life vest as you're about to crash into a crash into a float or whatever. Yeah. And you're listening and you're headbanging to. And you might miss some vital information.
You're headbanging. You've missed a lot of motivation in your life. And what's worse is sometimes the staff will be forced to repeat what they said because you had your big. It's called Camino.
Nobody wants air hostesses to repeat them. Yeah. That's crossing a line. Yeah, that's crossing a line.
There's a show called Mythbusters. OK. I love those guys. Yeah.
I love those guys. So these guys actually did an extensive and very interesting test. OK. So you are under the rules.
You are still technically not allowed to take personal electronic. When they tested, they're not allowed to take personal electronic device, not to fly to whatever. So in order to test what they had to do is they actually had to build a mini aircraft of sorts. And they had to launch it themselves.
What? Yeah. OK. But they always do this.
They actually do this. They actually do this. Yeah. So they launched it.
And basically at the end of a big 40 minute episode, they concluded negative. There's nothing. This is absolutely. And you know what?
In fact, in fact, what they said was the cockpit itself has so many electronics that could potentially interfere. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. And these guys are legit, by the way, must go.
I've seen them take the smallest problems and build those elaborate things around them. So you see the Simpsons. But throws the cherry bomb into the toilet and all the toilets explode. So they actually built an entire little three, four, commodes with a plumbing system and dropped the cherry bomb down one to see if it would do that.
It didn't work. It worked only for like one. But yeah, they I believe them when they do go on. Yeah, I mean, they do go on.
And here's the thing. They have technically done more research than the FAA has done. Yeah. The FAA, they've never actually done actual studies.
There exists no actual study, say, answering the question, are personal electronic devices on a flight during takeoff and landing actually dangerous? Yeah. So there has been no study. So there have been various reasons, various theories, others as to why there's never been done.
One theory just says that I've made too many personal electronic devices to keep up. Yeah. I see that being a problem. But you know, they're making these planes better and more sort of state of the art.
I'm sure their electronics are clear grade above consumer electronic, right? I mean, it shouldn't have that. I'm guessing it should not have a problem with it. Most sinister suggestion as to why the FAA, the Federal Aviation Authority of the US, has never done a study like this is back in the day before cell phones and before Wi-Fi came on planes and things like that, there used to be this huge thing called the Airphone, which actually used to make up all your credit card and use your credit card and those things were damn expensive.
Yeah, that's a stupid amount of money. Absolutely crazy amounts of money to make a single call. I mean, I've heard of Bill signing up to $3,000 at that point at times of good for the whole four dollars. I'm not a half an off phone call, but I'm guessing for some businessman that's totally worth it.
That's totally worth it. Or if you're recording a podcast and that is on a flight. I'm sure we can stick the bill to somebody. Somebody.
Yeah. Somebody. Anyway, so the theory was the Federal Aviation Authority was in bed with the guys who made the Airphone and did not want to lose out on that revenue. Hence, they just started banning cell phones or didn't allow people to use cell phones or the people who were forced to use the Airphone and then, but don't sell reception doesn't exist on flights, right?
Yeah, no, but people can Skype with Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi, though. Yeah. Okay, I see that, but it's still quite a long shot. And can't they get out of the Wi-Fi business from the cell phone business?
Well, that's what they're doing right now. Yeah, so they're taking care of that. So that's taken care of as well. Yeah.
Of course, the solution is to use things in airplane mode gate to gate that should just help reduce emission. If emission is the big problem, then just yeah, I'll play more. I get that. Every device has that now.
Yeah, every device has that in any case. Okay. To some are basically the reality is that it's probable that nothing will ever happen if you switch your if you keep your phone switched on. The problem is that nobody has assured us that nothing will happen.
That's true. So that's basically our media episode. I have a bonus. I have a little bonus fact.
You know, some cables, especially laptop cables and stuff has a little cylinder. Yeah. Yeah. What is that?
So that's actually for reducing the electromagnetic radiation. Oh, I did know that. Yeah. I've not locked today in the 15 minutes and 30 seconds that we have been recording.
That's amazing. Yeah. I actually had one more question on this point as well, not the electromagnetic radiation, but do you think that this sort of thing is also security theater? You know, like how they make you empty out your pockets and they do all this kind of weird stuff at the security check.
Yeah. Do you think keeping this is also another way of just making you like behave properly while flying? Oh, very possible. But here's the thing.
If you want people to behave properly, you might as well let them use their cell phones. I guess if you put 500 strangers in a plane together and don't give them access to their electronic devices, a lot worse could happen. That's my theory. Makes sense.
Yeah. Well, that's all we have for you. We'll be back with a much longer episode next week. I'm sure you're looking forward to that.
You can get me at Chuck Undershopeil on Twitter. I'm at Cidant Undershopeil. And Narayan is somewhere in Dubai. So you can catch him over there if you find one of the camera races.
Go to one of the camera races. You'll find him there. Catch us on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Pocket Tasks, wherever you get your podcasts. And we will be back next week.
Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you. Bye-bye.