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 ...
Mar 28, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 80
What 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 supp...
Mar 21, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 79
This 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 boomin...
Mar 14, 2021•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 78
The 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, a...
Mar 07, 2021•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 77
Listener 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...
Feb 28, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 76
This 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...
Feb 21, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 75
Google'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 Graveyard Google's statement on the Stadia pivot The guy who founded his own ISP Support th...
Feb 14, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 74
Will 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 ...
Feb 07, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 73
It'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! ...
Jan 31, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 72
Friend 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...
Jan 24, 2021•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 71
Time 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 Site AMD'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 othe...
Jan 17, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 70
We 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 cr...
Jan 10, 2021•53 min•Ep. 69
We'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 D...
Jan 03, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 68
With 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 boo...
Dec 27, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 67
Our 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! ...
Dec 20, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 66
Product 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 boom...
Dec 13, 2020•59 min•Ep. 65
The 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 boomi...
Dec 06, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 64
While we're nursing our meat hangovers, we took a cue from last week's email about future-proofing your home to chat about 21st-century home ownership, including the thermodynamically efficient passive house, strategies for replacing cables in walls, current solar and battery capacity, novel construction materials, hanging furniture, and more! 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 gr...
Nov 29, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 63
Our 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 sho...
Nov 22, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 62
On 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!): So...
Nov 15, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 61
Big 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...
Nov 08, 2020•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 60
We've both tumbled down the Home Assistant rabbit hole, so this week we recorded an informal trip report on this sprawling open-source home automation system. Why would you want to replace your commercial hub? What sort of crazy scripting and automations can you come up with? Is it really worth editing .yaml files for all this? The answers lie within! 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 ...
Nov 01, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 59
On 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://...
Oct 25, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 58
All 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 Time Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credit...
Oct 18, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 57
This 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/techpod Links! AMD's Zen 3 ...
Oct 11, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 56
Brad 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...
Oct 04, 2020•58 min•Ep. 55
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 t...
Sep 27, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 54
Nvidia 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! ...
Sep 20, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 53
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 b...
Sep 13, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 52
Last 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...
Sep 06, 2020•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 51
