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:...
May 16, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 87
Very 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/terminated Support the Pod! Contribute to th...
May 09, 2021•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 86
Six-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...
May 02, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 85
Email 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 th...
Apr 25, 2021•56 min•Ep. 84
Kishore 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... op...
Apr 18, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 83
Ultra-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 ...
Apr 11, 2021•59 min•Ep. 82
What 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 su...
Apr 04, 2021•55 min•Ep. 81
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 gre...
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 o...
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
