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Frame from Penn and Teller's Lab Scam Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Penn and Teller's Lab Scam

catvorg
Comedy
YouTube
Cited on HN 3 times, 2017–2024, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

It is passed around as a favorite bit of computing folklore, and resurfaces in threads about Penzias, Ritchie and Pike.

Penn and Teller help Rob Pike and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs play a prank on Nobel-winning physicist Arno Penzias. The clip shows the gag and its setup.

“Here's the video and write up of the gag Dennis Ritchie and Rob Pike pulled on him” (HN, 2024)

3 citations · Comedy

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@js2 Apr 2017 Cites it
on HN thread Teller Reveals His Secrets (2012)
Perhaps not known by the younger audience, but Penn & Teller helped Dennis Ritchie and Rob Pike perform a practical joke at Bell Labs: [link] [this video]
Penn and Teller join Ritchie and Pike's prank at Bell Labs.
@EvanAnderson Mar 2020 Cites it
on HN thread A Tale of Two Ships [pdf]
I was around 3 y/o when Abscam went down. Now, however, I have a pretty good idea why Penn and Teller called their Bell Labs prank "lab scam". Thanks for that. [link] [this video]

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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