Gadgetory

by now most of us are used to the idea of doing stuff without actually having to touch anything and while this sadly doesn't work in all public bathrooms it's become commonplace to do all sorts of stuff like unlocking hotel rooms traveling on subways entering our cars and buying overpriced merchants theme parks just by tapping something or being near it but this is not Harry Potter style magic folks it is all thanks to a technology called RFID little chips that somehow make everything smart at least according to someone's marketing department somewhere but how does RFID even work I mean it's just a tiny chip thing embedded inside a card right where's the battery well most RFID chips called tags not that kind of tags actually don't need a battery mind-blown right because they draw power from whatever happens to be reading them run-of-the-mill RFID tags and credit cards and wristbands are classified as passive and only consist of a tiny antenna and embedded CPU to process radio waves and a small amount of data storage they're small and low-power enough to just grab energy from a powered chip reader making them convenient enough to use just about anywhere wait a second Linus anywhere are we going to start seeing terabyte sized RFID tags that can replace my trusty mechanical hard drive well no to keep power consumption low enough that they can be powered by radio waves and to keep costs down so we can put them everywhere RFID tags hold only a few kilo bytes of data which is fine because in today's connected world you don't need more than a few kilobytes of storage for the RFID chip to be an incredibly useful tool no but really though along with the useful things that can be done with a few kilobytes paperless ticketing for events and Apple pay which use NFC a two-way short-range form of RFID come to mind thanks to many RFID readers like your cell phone for example having their own network connections RFID sar often simply used as pointers to more information or more complex functionality somewhere else cool right entertainment venues offer RFID kiosks to Auto check-in on Facebook or Auto tweet that you're too lazy to take your phone out of your pocket cars have RFID tags that can help you recover them if someone decides to jack your ride casinos have RFID chips in their chips to help people from pulling in Ocean's eleven and you can even have a tag attached to your dog to find him if he decides to run away because you spent all night playing counter-strike and forgot to feed the poor soul and because RFID is such a customizable technology many uses for it have most likely not even been fully realized yet I mean imagine RFID tags replacing barcodes on everything you purchase you can just walk out of the store with all your new stuff and an RFID scanner will read your tags and credit card to automatically bill you know checkout lines required mind-blown again right I mean there's even a number of projects around smart dust RFID transmitters about a cubic millimeter in size that could do everything from analyze traffic patterns after being mixed into asphalt to keeping tabs on your stuff whenever it's taken out of your home so you know if it's been stolen to flowing through your bloodstream to monitor the state of your health I mean whoa hold on a second there Linus let's just back this up what if I don't want to eat RFID pixie dust or have every single thing I buy track that sounds like some kind of 1984 nightmare and yeah I hear that guys we actually have some tough questions to answer as a society about how much privacy we want to trade for automation and convenience which is the downside of RFID technology and where it's heading right now unless of course you're into being watched speaking of watching watch this here's a sponsorship spot with a lynda.com membership you can watch videos and learn from top experts who are passionate about teaching what can you learn Linus great question they've got thousands of video courses on 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for you it's you so band oz pretty much it guys thanks for watching like the video if you liked it dislike it if you thought it sucked leave a comment if you have suggestions for future fast as possible videos and as always don't forget to subscribe and follow if you're looking for something else to watch guys we just did a really cool video over on Linus tech tips with like an ultimate gaming rig with full GTX Titan axis so you can go check that out in the little I in the corner if you're watching on YouTube