Shows
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.251: That 6GHz Really Tied the Spectrum TogetherThe world is steadily moving on to Wi-Fi 7 (or 802.11be, if you like), so we figured it's about time we sit down and attempt to understand what separates this latest standard from all the wireless fidelity that came before. Where in the world did they get a number like 46Gbps? What are the forward- and backward-compatible implications with existing devices? How does "multi-link operation" work? Is it time to run out and upgrade yet? What's haunting Brad's access point? We do our best to answer all this and more.The article referenced in this episode: https://dongknows...
2024-09-081h 03
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.239: Calculator on an iPad?!Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference has come and gone again, and frankly there were enough interesting additions to the company's various OSs that we figured an episode was warranted even before we got to "Apple Intelligence." We do our best in this jumbo episode to round up everything from silly corporate stunts to a (finally, maybe) context-aware Siri, an intelligent way to deal with too many notifications, build-your-own emojis, better vitals on the watch, MacOS's long-overdue window-snapping, and too many other features to list.Show notes for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-239-wwdc-24Watch the...
2024-06-161h 46
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.238: The Dread of Sitting in the Cone ZoneWill just traded in the ol' Chevy Bolt for a 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5, so it's time to run down all the pros and cons of this newer and more robust electric vehicle, and also check in on everything that's changed in the world of EVs in the three (!!) years since we did our Bolt episode. Listen on for our thoughts on everything from plug standards to the rapidly expanding charger network, how many driver assists are too many, the seemingly endless absurdities in automotive UX, and a bunch of other stuff.Show notes for this episode: https://tinyurl...
2024-06-091h 43
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.225: The Goldblum ConjectureWhat makes a great tech demo? Besides killer tech, do you need theatricality? Stage presence? The risk of everything exploding at the seams at any moment? This week we look back on a ton of notable tech demos big and small, from the largest Apple and Microsoft stages to people in their living rooms, to reminisce about some of the most exciting reveals and try to locate the exact intersection where earnestness and carnival barking meet to create a truly memorable presentation.Show notes and YouTube links for this ep: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-225-famous-tech-demos...
2024-03-101h 12
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.124: The Year of the GridThat pleasantly floral scent you're detecting means it's time for another potpourri ep! This time we dive into the nitty gritty of our podcast workflow and Brad's forthcoming adventures with XLR recording chains, a laparoscopic trip report, the collapse of the Nvidia/ARM deal, Will's mad-scientist experiments in RGB synchronization, the perils of running double-digit hard drives at once, and more!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
2022-02-131h 15
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.Special Episode: Enter the FOSS PodHey, we're launching a new spinoff podcast alongside the Tech Pod! It's a biweekly show about free and open source software called The FOSS Pod (which we think is extremely on brand), and this here is the first episode, in which we consider the Open Broadcaster Software--commonly known as OBS--and talk at length to founder and maintainer Jim Bailey about the past, present, and future of the project. Big thanks to Jim for taking the time to chat with us, and we hope you enjoy!Subscribe to the FOSS Pod at https://fosspod.content.town/!...
2022-02-061h 03
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.123: Not a Positive OutcomeYou have questions, we have answers about what we thought was cool in 2021, a couple of our war stories working in media, repairing a classic flip clock (and other old gear), the ins and outs of a hologram group-buy, a short love letter to neofetch, the ideal monitor size, what might come after "FAANG," and more!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
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2022-01-301h 06
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.122: Hashtag OctothorpeMicrosoft's mind-boggling purchase of Activision this week prompted us to look back on other tech acquisitions large and small over the last two decades. Herein, a chat about the big winners, the stinkers, and everything in between. Which company has swallowed up the most smaller fish? Was Compaq seriously worth $25 billion dollars? Who exactly owns those robots that are going to end us all? What should you definitively NOT say in a meeting with Steve Jobs?Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits...
2022-01-231h 04
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.121: Notepad Dark Mode?!?Will just successfully shipped his first game, and Brad has spent years asking questions about shipping games, so this week we met in the middle with a freewheeling chat about some of the technical nitty gritty of making and promoting a game. Listen in for topics from build servers to CNAMEs, working with varying storefront CMSs, running playtests on PCs in another state, some thoughts on collaboration from our time working with other startups and small teams, and more.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name...
2022-01-161h 02
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.120: What Comes AfterThis week we avoided traveling to Las Vegas for CES and instead tried to absorb all the news coming out of the show from the comfort of our desks. Listen on for some loose chatter about goggles-shaped VR headsets, Samsung's entry into the OLED market, the travails of dealing with the latest HDMI standard, the latest from AMD and Nvidia, Will's Vegas survival dos and don'ts, and more.Stories discussed in this episode:CES attendance plummets 70%, E3 in-person canceled:https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ces-gadget-show-turnout-falls-more-than-70-25-thanks-to-covid/ar-AASzFiwhttps...
2022-01-0900 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.119: The Sardine Warlord of the WastelandNew year, new set of listener questions! This month's Q&A has us addressing CES survival strategies, how to lose 77 terabytes of data overnight, the wisdom of dumping irradiated water into the ocean, the baffling continued existence of WinZip, lifelong breakfast meats, and a long overdue consideration of Marty the Stop & Shop robot.Check out Wordle, the word game everyone refuses to stop talking about! https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/Gaze upon Marty and despair: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/stop-shop-marty-robot-funny-tweets_l_5dc9b751e4b00927b237d5beSupport the Pod...
2022-01-021h 06
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.Holiday Special: Abit, Are You Listening?This week we're reaching deep into the vault for the holidays and unlocking one of our favorite Patron-exclusive episodes, featuring dramatic readings of some of our most excruciating old posts from places like Usenet and the Ars Technica forums. Thanks to everyone for supporting us, have a safe and happy holiday, and we'll see you in 2022! Wait, is that actually a real year?Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com...
2021-12-261h 15
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.118: #TidyDeskLifeThe weather is getting frigid (at least some places), and that means one thing: it's time for us to deliver another cube of cold opens. This time around we tackle everything from long-term Christmas tree planning to VPN strategies, the perils of teaching your child to use a can opener, freeing A Charlie Brown Christmas in the public interest, to haircut or not to haircut, the TSA's extreme aversion to coffee, and making enough egg nog to bathe in.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name i...
2021-12-2058 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.117: A Turnip Cures ElvisWe had such a good time talking about Hackers a few weeks ago that we're back with that other seminal '90s computer crime movie, Sneakers! Join us for a deep dive into the movie's stellar and surprisingly august cast, the prescient view of information warfare and government power, the joys of the Rube Goldberg heists, that saxophone, some chatter about San Francisco movies in general, and more.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the...
2021-12-1253 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.116: Nano on Both SidesThe holidays are here again, and with them, the need to gift. This week we offer an informal not-a-gift-guide chat about gift giving and receiving, including topics like how to pick thoughtful gifts, trinkets and doodads our community loves, the ever-expanding (and surprisingly erotic) offerings on Etsy, a quick primer on Harbor Freight, the simple joy of a weighted blanket, and more.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
2021-12-051h 04
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.115: Deals on WheelsThis week we're thankful for our listeners and the many questions they provided to this Q&A ep, which got us talking about topics including how we research a new tech project before diving in, using VR to desensitize yourself to real motion sickness, the ravages of space on the human body, the .png pronunciation, a deep dive on stuffing recipes, and whether we'll ever daily-drive a Linux desktop or not. All that, plus, a real live chronobiologist (!) weighs in on our recent Daylight Savings episode!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get...
2021-11-281h 07
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.114: That's One Spicy PillowThis week Apple announced an effort to begin offering service manuals, replacement parts, and other self-repair services to its customers. Who better to discuss this landmark move than iFixit CEO and right-to-repair advocate Kyle Wiens? Kyle joins us to talk about his DIY repair efforts over the years, what opening up your own iPhone will be like, Microsoft's exploratory moves toward repairability, the legal state of affairs that's driving this sea change, where e-waste actually goes when you dispose of it, and a lot more.Thanks again to Kyle for joining us this week. Here's Kyle's Twitter...
2021-11-2155 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.113: Three Prongs Bad, Two Prongs GoodWe've been holding video game controllers for most of our natural lives, and now we're attempting to put them in a qualitative, ordered list; a sort of "ranking," if you will. In this ep, we go decade by decade, from the NES to today, considering the technical innovations, ergonomics, fit and finish, historical influence, and general usability of our favorite (and not-so-favorite) controllers to arrive at the best of the best.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You...
2021-11-141h 54
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.112: Here Comes Manhattanhenge!By the time you hear this ep, Daylight Savings Time will have departed for another year, so DST is naturally what we're chatting about this week. We clear up some myths and history about DST's origins, talk about the axial tilt of the planet a bunch, swap tips about time changes and home automation, look at DST's relative safety and economic effects, debate whether society should keep doing this whole thing or not, and uncover the ancient myth of... Manhattanhenge.Episode Links!A cartographer makes maps to argue for ending DST altogether: https://www.bloomberg...
2021-11-0759 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.111: Flanders Is Running in a Degraded StateIt's the most horrifying Q&A episode we've ever recorded! This month we field Qs about such topics as: how to teach your kids to view Internet content and influencers with a critical eye, our home electronics protocols for going out of town, essential gadgets we just can't bring ourselves to splurge on, listening to podcasts at super speed, and our favorite historical OS transitions. Plus, Will recounts his longtime experience running BartStorage, and Brad reveals his deepest personal secrets... at least as pertains to network hostnames and the contents of his .zshrc file.Support the Pod...
2021-10-311h 29
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.110: The UPC of the BeastWill's daughter recently had her first encounter with a corded telephone, which got us thinking about other technologies that are on the way out or have already vanished from society. In this ep we touch on a wide range of aspects of the old phone system, what things were like before every product had a barcode on it, whether we're trending toward a cashless society or not, how in the heck they processed credit card transactions before the magnetic strip, and more.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming...
2021-10-241h 14
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.109: A House of LiesIt's been nine years since Will's last big house cleanup, and the time has come once again to discuss... THE PURGE (of all his stuff). In the interest of general decluttering, this ep is a rambling consideration of such topics as: What should you do with all your fancy Lego builds? Is it better to hoard stuff, or data? Can you dig a basement under a house that already exists? How many USB cables does a person need, anyway?Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name...
2021-10-1754 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.108: Deez Network ServersWell, this was one heck of a week. On Monday, Facebook experienced a historic outage of its infrastructure that impacted services used by billions of people. On Tuesday, a new Windows came out. On Wednesday, Twitch disclosed one of the largest data breaches in years, maybe ever. We were duty-bound to talk through our view on all these momentous events, and some of the things we've learned along the way, and that's exactly what we did.If you'd like to jump to any of the individual topics this week, the timecodes are:Facebook: 00:10:19...
2021-10-101h 33
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.107: The Kick-Ass Stamp of ApprovalWill Smith, this is your life! Or at least one month of it, specifically November 2009, when you published an issue of Maximum PC that included a review of Windows 7, speculation about ray tracing in video games, a breathless report about absolutely enormous 160GB SSDs, and other historical curiosities. With Windows 11 looming, we thought it would be fun to reach back into the vault and check out some coverage of a previous Windows launch and all the other fun and/or embarrassing stuff that came along with that particular issue.Here's a PDF version of Maximum PC November 2009...
2021-10-031h 11
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.106: That's So USB!Our monthly Q&A episode is all over the place in September, addressing such wide-ranging subjects as the fastest Internet we've ever used, surviving bear attacks, why they're so stingy with the USB-C ports, when exactly the week begins and ends, and a housewares block including electric kettles, cleaning bathrooms, letting go of boxes, and a debate about that age old matchup, oatmeal versus grits. Thanks to everyone who wrote in!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You...
2021-09-261h 07
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.105: The Hardest LiftHealth science writer and noted swole woman Casey Johnston joins us this week to talk about the convergence of exercise and strength training, food science, mobile tech, and the Internet. What's a healthy way to track your fitness progress without staring at numbers all day? How much commitment does it take to lift weights, really? Is food good? (Hint: probably.) We ponder these questions and more, plus a conversation about the past and present of digital journalism and some thoughts on the independent-newsletter life.You can find Casey's newsletter at She's A Beast: A Swole Woman's Newsletter...
2021-09-191h 09
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.104: Get the Good out of ItBang for the buck! There's no greater feeling than finding that one product that's way, way better than it should be for the price--or modifying it yourself to eke out that extra little bit of worth. In this episode we reminisce about some of the best tech scores we can remember, from venerable overclockers like the Celeron 300A and Duron 600 to huge audio upgrades by Sennheiser, Cambridge Soundworks, and even Radio Shack. From firmware upgrades to Ikea hacks to the Catleap monitor phenomenon, this episode packs a lot of value.Thanks to RoboHobo for this week's episode...
2021-09-121h 20
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.103: A Watershed Moment in Copyright LitigationThis week we're joined by Google's director of open source, Chris DiBona, to talk all things software licensing. Topics include corporate sponsorship of open source developers, how Google maintains license compliance across all its projects, what the ramifications of Oracle's long-running Java lawsuit could have been, why there isn't more open source game development, and more.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
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2021-09-051h 17
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.102: My Little iPad PillowOn this month's Q&A ep, we debut some wild new cold-open technology, and then get on with the business of addressing subjects like the future of movie theaters, putting OnlyFans on the block chain, WinAmp memories, our current thoughts on smart watches, the explosion of new web and mobile tech around 2010 (and our fondness for WebOS), the ease of starting a company on the Internet, the best Star Trek tech that isn't the replicator, and more!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the...
2021-08-291h 18
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.101: Big-Dot-LittleThis week we recorded a grab bag about some disruptive current events going on in various tech spaces. Intel is finally making a real push into the GPU space, and also getting excited about the angstrom. OnlyFans has abruptly shut out the sex workers it built its business on, while placing the blame on moralizing payment processors. And Facebook is attempting to inch toward whatever the hell it thinks the metaverse is with its new VR workplace app. Join us as we attempt to dissect these and other related topics!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech...
2021-08-221h 12
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.100: The Spiteful ForkDrama alert! Our long-promised scene drama episode (vol. 1) is here to explore community kerfuffles new and old, with conversations about Ubiquiti's no-good-very-bad week, pfSense's self-immolation via buggy Wireguard commit, Linksys' ancient violations of the GPL, illicit binaries, warring office-furniture companies, petty domain hijacking, and why so many of these situations seem to spring up around open-source projects.pfSense'sBuffer overruns, license violations, and bad code: FreeBSD 13’s close call | Ars TechnicaThe hijacked OPNSense domain: https://opnsense.org/opnsense-com/Ubiquiti's terrible week:Whistleblower: Ubiquiti Breach “Catastrophic” – Krebs on SecurityUbiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface (x-post from HackerNews) : Ubiquiti (reddit.c...
2021-08-151h 02
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.99: You Wanna Be Elite?We recently found a Hackers-sized hole in Brad's filmgoing history, so we're killing two birds with one stone this week by making him watch the movie, and then recording an ep about it! Join us for a chat about this campy cult classic as we consider chunky laptops, cornball effects shots, teen-movie clichés, a star-studded cast, the presentation of the '90s hacker ethos, all the things the movie got right and wrong, and the idea that there might just be a little Zero Cool in all of us. #hacktheplanetSupport the Pod! Contribute to the T...
2021-08-081h 10
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.98: The Fox Knows What's UpQuestion time is here again, and this month our answers address topics like these: why anyone is still using big ol' ATX, our favorite flea market finds of the past, drop shadows under mouse cursors, extremely frivolous 3D printing projects, the mysteries of random Bluetooth interference, and the puny little billionaires who couldn't even manage to escape low Earth orbit.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
2021-08-011h 05
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.97: How to Survive the ChipocalypseEver wonder what it's like to try your hand at small-batch manufacturing overseas? Keyboardio's Jesse Vincent joins us this week to address that very subject in a broad discussion of his company's history, with a focus on the trials and tribulations of getting a hardware startup off the ground, setting up production-line tooling in China, being on the outs with your factory reps, solving IC shortages with FPGAs, finding loose iPhone processors in Shenzhen electronics stalls, and more.You can check out the Model 100 Kickstarter here!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon...
2021-07-251h 24
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.96: National Ground Beef DayWe enjoyed Will's birth-year episode so much a few weeks ago that we're back with a look at the notable events in tech, science, and culture of 1979 now that it's Brad's turn. Slap this tape in your Walkman and listen to us prattle about CompuServe's origins in the life insurance industry, C++, events in nuclear energy (and weapons), the debut of the compact disc, the founding of Pixar and Sierra On-Line, the first Daytona 500 broadcast, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the rings of Jupiter, and more!NOTESHere's the Vice feature on the fall of...
2021-07-181h 23
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.95: The Pirate Radio of PodcastsThis week we're joined by Will's friend Ben Brown, longtime online software developer, to talk about the Internet old and new. Topics include Ben's grassroots efforts to resurrect the Finger protocol, rooting around in 1977-era Unix source code, why the tech industry keeps reinventing the same features over and over, reading 'zines over Telnet, the never-ending accumulation and corporate consolidation of content, and more.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon...
2021-07-1151 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.94: "Naked Corporate Opportunism"You knew we couldn't resist doing a Windows 11 episode, and indeed we're here to talk about the whole shebang: virtualized security and the controversy around CPU support, the good (better window-snapping!), the bad (bottom-only taskbar!), and the ugly (rounded corners!?) of the new UI, the ol' Trusted Platform Module, Microsoft Store revenue changes, Android apps, and the coming war between Microsoft and Google.NOTESHere's TechRepublic's informative piece on Windows 11 CPU compatibility that we referenced a bunch in this episode: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-11-understanding-the-system-requirements-and-the-security-benefits/Support the Pod! Contribute to the...
2021-07-041h 08
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.93: Missives From the VoidThis month's Q&A episode features Qs (from both email and our Discord) that got us chatting about such topics as: the ARPANET, passive-aggressive email signatures, pre-microprocessor computing history, battery management in devices you never use, corporate-mandated brand pronunciations, why video conferencing is merely "good enough," how we've navigated the sharing of our personal lives online over the years, and more!This week's show art courtesy of UCLASupport the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can...
2021-06-271h 07
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.92: Carmackologyid Software's Quake came out 25 years ago this week, and it also changed both of our lives. In this episode we wax nostalgic about the astonishing legacy of technical innovations Quake brought to game design, the ways it inspired our fascination with everything from client/server networking to NeXT workstations, the communities and studios that sprung up in its wake, all those endless .plan updates, the perfection that is DM3, and a lot more. Happy birthday, Quake.SHOW NOTESHere are the articles referenced in this episode:PC Gamer's early Quake preview featuring...
2021-06-201h 11
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.91: Professor Will’s Magical SensoriumIt's been a big week around these parts--Will helped reveal a new game at E3, and Brad helped launch a new online media property--so we did a potpourri episode touching on a bunch of the technical details of working on these projects, including: Will's embrace of git, how to positively influence Internet behavior, Microsoft's open-source moves, when we might see shipping Unreal Engine 5 games, a search engine that plants trees, and more.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits...
2021-06-131h 01
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.90: CONTROL MY MONITORReinstalling Windows: no one enjoys it, but everyone has to do it eventually. This week, we spend some time chatting about the ways this timeless ritual has gotten better (or worse) over the years, strategies for making the process as painless as possible, some of the unique things we do to customize a fresh install, and a lot more. Also: tune in for a hands-on report on the new GeForce 3080 Ti (and Will's rapid transformation into a '90s industrial vocalist).SHOW NOTES:Find the dates of your Windows install and updates with Powershell: https...
2021-06-061h 22
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.89: Don't Mix the Soaps!If you're looking for our monthly Q&A ep, you've found it! This time around we consider such listener-provided topics as questionable soap-on-soap interactions, discerning frame rate by eye, dot-com-era layoffs, the legacy and contemporary influence of Neuromancer, software broadcast over the radio, and HDMI over, uh, coat hangers?Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and...
2021-05-301h 08
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.88: It Just Makes the Lithium AngrierSpurred by Will's first month with a Chevy Bolt, we present an episode on electric cars and attempt to answer questions such as: How weird is it to drive without braking? Can you check the car's battery health like it's a phone? What's the public charging situation like these days? How many EVs are out there, anyway? Should your car really have the power to text you?SHOW NOTESThat wild mechanical thumb from the cold open: https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1396003181151272963Science Magazine on the EV battery-recycling problem: https://www.sciencemag.org...
2021-05-231h 25
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.87: With a Name Like Deke...In honor of Will's birthday, this week we traveled back to the heady days of 1975 to see what was big in science and tech in the year of his birth. Our impromptu retrospective features everything from the Altair 8800 to Space Mountain, the Homebrew Computer Club, the Apollo/Soyuz handshake in space, Benoit Mandelbrot, Jaws, Betamax, and a little history-making company from Bill Gates and Paul Allen called... wait, does this say Traf-O-Data?Operating an Altair 8800 is not for the faint of heart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh_6DtwmQXsSupport the Pod! Contribute to...
2021-05-161h 07
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.86: 42U or BustVery special guest Vinny Caravella joins us this week for a wide-ranging chat about his years of video production, juggling cameras in the early days of Whiskey Media, a love letter to analog signals, the infamous List of Terminated HDMI Adopters, a consideration of codecs and protocols past and present, and more. From logging tapes to crimping SDI cables, there's a lot in here!These HDMI adopters have been... terminated: https://www.hdmi.org/adopter/terminatedSupport the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in...
2021-05-091h 43
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.85: Hey, They've Got That BaseballSix-ish months since launch, the next-gen consoles are now officially current-gen, so we thought it was time for a check-in on the state of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X platforms. How has the user experience matured so far? What system software issues are still lingering? When will games start shipping at 30Hz? Will they ever be easy to actually buy? These questions and more, discussed!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at...
2021-05-021h 16
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.84: On a Cleaning JagEmail time! In this month's Q&A, we talk about Spring cleaning and strategies for organizing electronics with limited storage space, overusing ellipses and other Internet chat habits, long-lost Usenet posts, the great turn-of-the-century capacitor calamity, a mea culpa and backgrounder on the McDonald's coffee lawsuit, and more.Check out Gretchen McCulloch's linguistics podcast Lingthusiasm, referenced on this episode:https://gretchenmcculloch.com/podcast/Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show...
2021-04-2556 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.83: The Best One Is the One You Can GetKishore Hari--Tested.com correspondent, noted science communicator, and steak-product connoisseur--rejoins us for a check-in on the state of the COVID-19 pandemic one year after his first appearance. Topics include where we're at with vaccination rates and efficacy, outreach efforts to combat vaccine skepticism, the pause on the Johnson & Johnson shot, how IP ownership is hindering vaccination in the Global South, what a new "normal" might look like, and... what's this feeling? Is that... optimism?CDC COVID Data TrackerNYT Article About Kati KarikoSupport the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming...
2021-04-181h 16
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.82: A Hundred Pounds and Razor SharpUltra-wideband support has been making its way into phones for a couple of years now, but... what the heck is it? This week we attempt to demystify this old wireless technology being adapted for modern devices, including its potential for very fine location tracking, why nobody is using it much (yet), whether it could replace Bluetooth, what effect it might have on Minority Report-style advertising, how it may turn your phone into your car keys, and more.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the...
2021-04-1158 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.81: A Cube of Cold OpensWhat is this week's episode about, you might ask? Why, it has a delightfully floral scent, almost like... a potpourri. You could say it's sort of a buffet, offering a little something for everyone. It's a little from column A, a little from columns B through Z. In fact, this episode may be about everything under the sun and also nothing at all.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com...
2021-04-0455 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.80: That's a Sewer Diamond!Like Spring, emails are upon us once again, and this month we talk about such listener-provided topics as the stagnation of flash memory, a Starlink trip report, some of the downsides of PC-building, multithreading video games, TVs that are monitors that are TVs, browser containerization, and the things you find down at the water treatment plant.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
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2021-03-281h 07
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.79: A Subsidiary of Starko IndustriesWhat the heck is going on with modern video game controllers? That's the question we're trying to address this week, with Joy Con and DualSense analog stick drift, unresponsive Xbox face buttons, do-it-yourself repair, advanced soldering techniques, class action lawsuits and other subjects all weighing on our minds. Is there any end in sight?Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodIGN's summary of Joy Con lawsuits...
2021-03-211h 05
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.78: The One With the Racing StripesThis week our quest to find consensus on the best advancements in PC-building reaches its end. From the USB superposition to the class warfare of fancy motherboards, the baffling duality of the M.2 socket, the many flavors of PCI Express, and the questionable inclusion of the headlamp, rest assured that we considered every possible angle in assembling this authoritative list that should be taken extremely seriously.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at...
2021-03-141h 35
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.77: Big Shoutout to ThumbscrewsThe urge to rank is upon us again, and this time we're looking to put together a list of the best advancements in hardware over our 25-year history of building PCs. Can modular power supplies step to the mighty universal serial bus? Is there anything better than a case that doesn't lacerate your hands every time you open it? How serial IS serial ATA, anyway? Listen and find out!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support...
2021-03-071h 29
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.76: Hell or Palo AltoListener emails return after a brief hiatus, and this time they bring chatter about the correct Windows taskbar positioning, the latest PlayStation VR news, where we think AR might be going, "biannual" workarounds, a lament for the closure of Fry's, Freeman Dyson's fast-and-loose orbital mechanics, and the eternal glory of RSS.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod...
2021-02-281h 19
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.75: The Right Right-Stuff StuffThis week we're joined by Adam Rogers, Wired senior correspondent and author of Proof: The Science of Booze, to talk all things alcohol. Topics include millennia-old fermentation practices, the stimulant/depressant dichotomy of drinking, that classically refined sommelier's palate, attempts to speed up the aging process, and modern assembly-line whiskey production. Bottoms up!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the...
2021-02-211h 14
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.74: Mining for ComputroniumGoogle's "pivot" away from first-party Stadia development seemed like a good cue to spend an episode not only pondering the future of the company's game-streaming service--including third-party applications for Stadia's technology stack, and what all those server racks might be good for--and also going through the company's many, many dearly departed products. Anyone remember Google Pie?Links!The Google GraveyardGoogle's statement on the Stadia pivotThe guy who founded his own ISPSupport the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord...
2021-02-141h 02
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.73: Thirteen Issues a YearWill used to work for a tech magazine. Brad always wanted to. We both read more than our fair share back in the day. So let's talk about magazines! In this ep we look back on those mammoth issues of Computer Shopper, our love of the PC Gamer demo CD, embargoes and print deadlines, Will's years in the magazine mines, what the (bumpy) transition from print to online was like, and lots more.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great...
2021-02-071h 06
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.72: The State of the (Virtual) UnionIt's time for a check-in on the health of VR, including the latest in headsets and controllers, standout games and productivity software, the open-sourcing of Tilt Brush, our amazement that Windows Mixed Reality still exists, and the potential for AR to eventually supplant the whole thing anyway. You knew we'd find an excuse to use that photo eventually.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
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2021-01-311h 27
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.71: Curiosity and PerseveranceFriend of the podcast Doug Ellison from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab stops by to give us the lowdown on the newest Mars rover Perseverance, set to land on the red planet in just a few weeks, plus all kinds of fun info about Lagrange transceivers, making oxygen out of thin air, flying helicopters on other planets, and recording home movies at mach 25.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
2021-01-241h 39
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.70: Executed By GoogleTime for some 2021 emails! This month we talked about dearly departed Google products, how to fix a broken USB port (or whether you should even try), how we got started doing this, why your TOSLINK cable is keyed, a lab meat topic we should never have read out loud, and the current whereabouts of Maura Labingi.Intel's ARK CPU Fact Sheet SiteAMD's Product Fact Sheet Site Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great b...
2021-01-171h 06
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.69: The Gravest DayWe were unable to turn our attention to anything but the week's horrifying events in Washington, D.C., so for this episode we had a freewheeling chat about... well, everything, including some perspective from Will's time working on the Hill, the infosec implications of the Capitol breach, how we attempted to keep up with the onslaught of news on Wednesday, and more. Stay safe, everyone.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https...
2021-01-1053 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.68: The Treacherous World of Magnetic FluxWe're kicking off 2021 with a trip back to... 1985? Yes, we sat down with a vintage episode of the Computer Chronicles to reflect on the hard disk's momentous arrival on the personal computing scene. Join us as we take a look back at drives measured in the whopping tens of megabytes, Winchester drives, XTs and ATs, the Mac HyperDrive, the ancient precursor to the Zip drive, beige boxes, and business suits galore.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You...
2021-01-031h 01
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.67: Nog AmbitionsWith 2020 (finally) drawing to a close, we look back on a few of our favorite tech things, big or small, from this challenging year. From advances in medical science to ways to stay social from afar, from new workflows we worked out to new gadgets we, uh, gadgeted, here's an informal list of some of the stuff that kept our spirits up, and a couple of things we're looking forward to, during this strange time in history.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the...
2020-12-271h 23
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.66: That Classic ChonkOur last email ep of 2020 addresses such topics as: how to trust Google search results (or not), bad tech habits we just can't shake, how to get and stay digitally organized, the worth of external GPU enclosures, a life-changing tip about our Gmail workflow, some more home networking tips, and a treatise on the regional naming differences of winter hats.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
2020-12-201h 09
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.65: Visionary or VillainProduct design is on our minds this week, starting with the industry-redefining research that led to the production of modern, psychologically optimized junk food. Have the same sensibilities now overtaken the design of consumer electronics? Do soundbars and Cheetos have more in common than we realize? Is there a bliss point, but for tech? We explore this slightly abstract topic and attempt to arrive at a few answers.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the...
2020-12-1358 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.64: That Cheapskate CumulonimbusThe time has come to discuss 5G and the latest cellular data specs (largely because Will got an iPhone 12). We get into his hands-on experience with 5G speeds, the differences between low, medium, and high-band spectra, how 5G compares to LTE, what millimeter wave is exactly, how 5G may or may not interfere with weather forecasts, and 5G's potential to turn you into a lizard person. (One of these topics may be fake.)Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great...
2020-12-061h 02
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.62: PEMDAS for MonitorsOur Fall cornucopia of emails contains such succulent questions as: How future-proof should your new smart home be? To prebuilt PC or not to prebuilt PC? Where are all the HDMI 2.1 accessories? How do you wrangle a monitor and a TV in Windows? Plus, a whole bunch of tech that we--and you--have been thankful for in this trying year.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
...
2020-11-221h 18
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.61: The Bad Kind of ComplexityOn this busy week we threw together a delightful potpourri of different topics, from gadget repair to drilling through PCBs, lust for 4k TVs (or not), making the lightest mouse in history, the huge potential of handheld lidar, and a quick glimpse at what's coming next in big-budget video game development.Support the show and join the Techpod Discord for as little as $2/month at https://patreon.com/techpod.Bearded Bob's YouTube G Pro switch replacement video (the whole channel is good too!): Solder Sucker That Actually Works: https://amzn.to/2UsEGFZWill's Hakko Soldering S...
2020-11-151h 12
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.60: Forgiveness, Not PermissionBig AMD energy this week. PC World's Gordon Mah Ung has gotten his hands on the new Ryzen 5000 series chips, and now he's here to tell us all about AMD's latest attempt to take the CPU crown (well, that and getting the fire department called). Then we dig into the announcement of the new RDNA 2-based Radeon 6000 cards, perhaps more affectionately known as BIG NAVI.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https...
2020-11-081h 20
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.58: Lil' Doppler RedshiftOn this month's email show we talk about our love of astrophysics, a PC that could last you forever, bad interface design in consumer electronics, why e-ink screens aren't everywhere, Android longevity, the social niceties of Discord, and a bonus segment with Will's thoughts on gaming at THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY HERTZ.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech...
2020-10-251h 23
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.57: Everything's Bigger in TexasAll these new PC hardware announcements have us feeling nostalgic again, so we took another trip down memory lane to talk in-depth about the '90s 3D accelerator boom. The rise and fall of 3dfx! The OpenGL vs. Direct3D wars! All those .plan updates! Join us for some reminiscing about how we got from the earliest cards to the GeForces and Radeons of today.Computer Time vs. Human TimeSupport the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits...
2020-10-181h 11
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.56: TressFX Vs. HairWorksThis week, we couldn't resist talking about the newly announced Zen 3 CPUs from AMD, along with the tease of their upcoming Big Navi-based graphics cards, plus a bonus segment on that PlayStation 5 teardown. We're just a couple of big old hardware nerds at heart, what can we say?Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodLinks!AMD's Zen 3 PresentationPlayStation 5 Teardown
2020-10-111h 06
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.55: Five Altairian Dollars a DayBrad just read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first time (and Will reread it for the eleventy-thousandth), and now we're here to discuss the book's cheeky sci-fi Anglicisms and cavalier relationship with reality and metaphysics, its endless influence on pop culture, the career of Douglas Adams, and more. Thanks to all of our supporters who made this episode possible!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
2020-10-0457 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.54: Lack Rack!The emails cometh, and bringeth with them questions and tips about why nobody can order a 3080 or PS5, the eyeball-saving properties of red nightlights, rounded vs. angular phone design, consumerism in tech and ethics in coding, and, yes, how to make your own Lack rack.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our...
2020-09-271h 08
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.53: The Mass-to-Volume RatioNvidia bought ARM. Nvidia bought ARM! It's one of the biggest semiconductor deals in history, so we dive deep into what it all means, from some basics on CPU architecture to the implications for the mobile, enterprise, and machine-learning markets. One of our nerdiest episodes yet!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to...
2020-09-201h 08
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.52: It's an App Basket!Playing video games remotely has gotten surprisingly good lately, so this week we decided to sit down and figure out the what's what of home game streaming. From older options like Steam Link to the Parsecs and Moonlights of today, not to mention some of the recent high-quality, low-latency backend tech that's making it possible, there's a lot to unpack. Join us!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
2020-09-131h 02
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.51: The Man With the SpatulaLast week Brad and Will got to attend a virtual deep dive on Nvidia's new 30-series GPUs, and in this ep we attempt to break down all the new ray-tracing optimizations, DirectStorage capability, whole-system latency reduction, push-pull cooler designs, V-shaped PCBs, and more. Be warned, it's a lot!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get...
2020-09-061h 40
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.50: Two Is One, One Is NoneOur 50th episode doesn't quite have 50 emails, but it's close: tune in for listener mails about bugout bags, evacuation tips, data over HAM radio, the resilience of municipal fiber, and very, very high-end broadcast video.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodShow art credit: Chechu RiskGemini (a Gopher-like protocol)Camera Clamp Tripod Extender(Use 2x Camera clamps + o...
2020-08-301h 11
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.49: Proto-PreppingWith the latest round of California wildfires heavy on our minds, this week we ended up with a wide-ranging conversation about what to take with you when you evacuate, climate change, PCs as space heaters, crawl space water cooling, and the genius of Douglas Adams.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our...
2020-08-231h 11
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.48: Grip Is GoodFollowing up on our software unitasker ep from a few weeks ago, we're now moving into the physical realm. This week we run down a few of our favorite devices, trinkets, and doodads that make it just a little bit easier to get things done.Here's a quick list of the stuff we mentioned on this ep which should be easy to search for:BradGenki Covert Dock by Human ThingsRetractable cables (Digital Ant's look pretty good)Charging station (bamboo or other)Articulated HDMI extenders (Monoprice is a good...
2020-08-161h 17
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.47: Key-HoardingThis week we very carefully lower ourselves into the unthinkably deep rabbit hole of mechanical keyboards. If you've ever wanted to know your MX reds from your blues, tenkeyless from 65%, keycaps, backlights, and more, this episode is for you.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodSome mech keyboard resources:Drop: https://drop.com/Keyboard Catalog: http://keyboardcatalog.com/Deskthority: https...
2020-08-091h 12
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.46: The Suborbitable CaterpillarEeeeeeeeeeeeeeemails this month address questions like: Where the heck are the color e-ink readers? Can we imagine a world without DNS? What in the world is a sputtering target? Want a quick 'n easy cable-organizing tip that will BLOW YOUR MIND?Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodHere's the magical hanging cable organizer in all its full-size glory: https://imgur.com/a/r4URJ0G
2020-08-0258 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.45: No-Tonsil-Stone ZonePC Gamer's Wes Fenlon stops by to talk about turning an old PC into a new router. Why would you want to roll your own router in the first place? What are your hardware and software options to do so? What kind of fancy new network stuff can you do with it? The answers lie within!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodHere's Wes' article on...
2020-07-261h 08
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.44: alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.dieIn these trying times, we thought a nostalgic little walk down memory lane might be nice. Join us as we look back at the '90s Internet, from PPP connections and .plan files to Gopher, IRC, and Will's part in the Eternal September.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodHere's the microsuction stuff Will mentions in the intro: https://www.amazon.com/Sewell-Direct-AirStick-Microsuction-250mmx300mm/dp...
2020-07-1959 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.43: Sigh OpsThis week we run down a few of the common and not-so-common software tools that make our lives a bit easier. From text-syncing to task-scheduling, audio management and phone automation, we hope there's something in here that can make your life a little easier, too.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our...
2020-07-121h 06
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.42: It’s Only a Mistake if You Don’t LearnThis month's email episode contains some of your own tech horror stories, from melted carpet fibers and shutting down a whole town's Internet to causing seven-figure production stoppages. Also: draconian ISP upstream policies and a chat about the mechanical, pre-silicon days of computing. Enjoy!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming...
2020-07-051h 11
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.41: The Great Simian MathematicianAnother Apple episode already? Yeah, we didn't expect it either until WWDC brought such a bounty of new stuff to talk about. In addition to ARM-based Macs, somehow iOS managed to be the most interesting thing at this year's conference. Home screen widgets! Multitasking! App defaults? After all these years?!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodHere's MKBHD's great iOS 14 hands-on walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com...
2020-06-281h 02
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.40: Gigantic Flaming Luminous OrbOh, the horror! This week we recount some of the tech disasters from our past. From near-miss electrocutions to ruined prototype hardware, PC-building boondoggles, all-night server restores, and extremely lucky data recovery, relive some of our best and worst moments getting hands-on with hardware and software.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to...
2020-06-211h 00
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.39: The Eternal OptimistThings are rough out there, so this week we recorded a free-wheeling episode about tech-ish self-care strategies for things like exercise, meditation, lighting, and so forth. Plus: Will's making his own MiSTer case!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus episode, your name in the credits, and...
2020-06-1454 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.38: Embrace, Extend, ExtinguishIt's time for infosec episode, the sequel! Will recounts the hackery he's dealt with since our initial podcast about online security a few weeks ago, then we grade the big tech companies on their privacy efforts (or lack thereof) and dig into the what, how, and why of modern data collection -- and how to stop it.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the...
2020-06-0755 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.37: Mr. Reginald EditSupport the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodHere's the American Cinematographer deep dive on The Mandalorian's production that we mentioned a couple weeks ago.
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus episode, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
2020-05-3140 min
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.36: The Frankencoder LiiiiiiivesWith everyone trapped indoors, streaming video on the Internet is an especially good way to connect with people right now. This week we did a broad survey of practical streaming tech, from hardware and software setups to codecs and protocols, Brad's latest questionable tech project, and the ever-present danger of streaming Will's inbox live to the world.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the...
2020-05-241h 14
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.35: Every Polygon Is a PixelWith the advent of another generational Unreal Engine tech demo, it's time to have a live watch party and then mull over what the UE5 tech means for asset creation, real-time lighting, and other trends in game development, and then gush over the Unreal-driven virtual sets in TV productions like The Mandalorian. Graphics!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodUnreal Engine 5 tech demoThe...
2020-05-171h 11
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.34: My Other Computer Is a DatacenterFriend of the pod Brian Fitzpatrick of Tock Inc. and ORD Camp stops by to talk about the early days of big data at Google, shipping 1500-pound rack servers, working on widely used open-source software, and how to score a half-ton irradiated electromagnet.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodGoogle TakeoutTockGoogle Corkboard ServerThe Google Server Rack We DiscussedTefi TapeFermilab TevatronTevatron MagnetIomega Pocketzip
Support the Pod! C...
2020-05-101h 03
Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.33: Prudiest Common DenominatorBy all accounts, Apple is moving its laptops to ARM sooner than later. What's this transition going to mean for existing MacOS software? How many days straight will your new MacBook run on battery? Can we envision a big old Mac Pro running on an itsy bitsy ARM chip? These questions and more, pondered herein!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodHow Windows works on ARMHow Microsoft...
2020-05-031h 02Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.32: Bless the DriveTime for another Q&A! This week we discuss listener-submitted emails about the ultra-sandboxed future of Windows 10X, a short mouse retrospective, waiting for the right time to build a new PC, electron beams 'n electromagnets, questionable phone upgrades, and our personal histories of taking stuff apart and putting it back together.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech...
2020-04-261h 23Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.31: Virtuals on Virtuals on VirtualsThis week we reach into our grab bag of homebound projects to chat about the tech stuff we're up to lately, from Will's ray-traced camera obscura and adventures in Behringer mixing to Brad's efforts to bring a FrankenMiSTer to life and get to the bottom of the great shingled hard drive scandal of 2020.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the...
2020-04-191h 05Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.30: The Neighborhood Software PirateSpecial guest time! Digital Eclipse's Mike Mika joins us to talk about the early days of programming video games, how not to get murdered by your arcade machine, reverse engineering classic games without source code, the coming CRT apocalypse, and what the new console hardware means for old games.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and...
2020-04-121h 17Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.29: Have Laser, Will CutIn this grab bag of an episode, we cover topics ranging from ground loop isolators to the MiSTer, fixing holes in air mattresses, modern uses for 3D printing, an in-depth primer on coronavirus testing, reclaiming that precious blue screen of death, and more stories from our quarantined home life.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpodSome links from this week's episode:That 3D-printable NAS...
2020-04-051h 19