Okay, perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. But I found some videos on YouTube purporting to show simple homemade tricks for getting power from essentially nothing. The culprit calls himself HouseholdHacker [1] These are very slickly directed and composed, very amateur-looking videos, full of straight-faced monologue and how-to demonstrations, illustrating nothing real.
Sure, the videos seem to show how to power a 25″ TV from a single AAA battery, or an iPod from an onion. But I — as an individual who actually has a clue about how electricity works — am puzzled at the number of responders who actually try these things and wonder why they don’t work. I’m aghast at the apparent shills responding that they did try the techniques, and that they work!
Fume.
There is enough anti-science and anti-sense on the web from well-intentioned individuals. The rising tide of disinformation doesn’t need more heroes!
There is plenty of really bad advice for home chemistry procedures that only might injure someone (as opposed to certainly will). But these might be assumed to be attempts to recruit people for the Darwin Awards [2] (perhaps a bit much for a practical joke). At least the works of HouseholdHacker will only produce annoyance and a few broken cables and small peripherals.
After all the Creation “Science” websites I view (bastions of misleading misquotes, side-stepping logic, and intentional anti-science), why pick on this source of disinformation? Because this guy appears to know what he’s doing, and appears to be showing his techniques working. Seeing is believing!
Point to discuss: Should we even discuss suppressing obviously intentional misinformation that is being widely broadcast? Is is bad that sources like Google might then (mis)inform curious innocent people?
First amendment freedom of expression? After all, if the bomb-designers and hate-provokers have the right to spread their joy, why not this relatively harmless disinformer?
What of the willful incitement to trivial destruction of property presented by HouseholdHacker on YouTube and at HouseholdHacker.com [3]? Does inciting a few hundred gullible people to each ruin less than $100 worth of stuff add up to a $10,000 crime?
Was it a good idea to link to the posts from this miscreant? (My guess is, “no”.)
Speculation: What is this guy’s game? Is there some hacker contest to dupe the maximum number of technical ignorati?
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