Part two of our 1993 retrospective is here, with our consideration of the following: Power Computing's Macintosh clones, Apple's first Newton, the proving of Fermat's last theorem, happenings in SPAAAAACE including the Hubble mirror kerfuffle, the loss of Mars Observer, and the discovery of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, computing miscellany from Lua to UTF-8 to the SGI Onyx to the creation of the .rar, the sheer spectacle that was Biosphere 2, and more! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patr...
May 22, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 136
On the occasion of Will's birth we're back for another year in review, this time taking a look at the year he went off to college, 1993 (or at least as much of it as we can fit into one episode). Join us as we gab about everything from NCSA Mosaic and the creation of the World Wide Web at CERN to the founding of Nvidia, the Pentium FDIV bug, the CG-free Jurassic Park that almost was, the inexplicable longevity of the .mp3, and more! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get acc...
May 15, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 135
This week we're putting ourselves to the test by bringing a list of PC and tech peeves, and then passing judgement on our own complaints. Do we have a legitimate grievance, or are we just being crotchety about things like monitors that don't behave themselves, the disappearance of PCIe slots, Internet of Things things going off the grid, useless motherboard shrouds, rattling hard drive cages, and the algorithmic destruction of useful search results? We decide! Then you also decide! SHOW NOTES He...
May 08, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 134
Queeeeeestions and aaaaaaanswers. This month we field Qs from you, the listener, about better electric vehicles versus better mass transit, the mysteries of the L-shaped desk, extreme climate-change preparedness, throwing bread like a frisbee (??), monitors that double as modems, (mostly) useless domain names, how many Discord servers is too many, the last San Francisco eatery you'll ever need, and more. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, y...
May 01, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 133
With Will briefly trapped in the great frozen north(ern California), we got together for a chilly, scrappy two-fer this week with a couple of short topics. First we chat about Panic's Playdate, with an emphasis on our time spent compiling sample games and otherwise fiddling around with the new handheld's SDK and web-based Pulp game creation tool. Then we get into some home network spring cleaning, from unidentified and forgotten devices to lazy Raspberry Pi update strategies. It's like two short...
Apr 24, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 132
It's time for another visit with Stewart Cheifet and the Computer Chronicles. This time we're heading back to 1995 for a computer games special that includes Microsoft's ill-fated DirectX event Judgment Day, a very silly Bill Gates promo video, demos of MechWarrior 2 and Phantasmagoria (with Roberta Williams!), a random PlayStation-versus-Saturn head to head from Stewart, and more. SHOW NOTES The relevant Computer Chronicles episode, season 13 episode 8: https://archive.org/details/CC1308_greate...
Apr 17, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 131
Well, we're only about *check's Apple Watch* a month late to the most recent Apple event, which we're using as an excuse to talk about a whole range of topics like: the (potential) death of millimeter-wave 5G, whether the Mac Pro line has truly left us or not, Brad's time so far with an M1 MacBook Pro, the weirdness of spatial audio in your ears, the many ways Will's wrist is now controlling his life, and more! SHOW NOTES The Verge story on 5G and the iPhone SE: https://www.theverge.com/22968066...
Apr 10, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 130
Will sure had a wild, weird week on Twitter following last week's, uh, historic showdown at the Oscars, and now he's here to decompress. What were the first 24 hours like? How close did he get to being on cable news? Have Twitter's tools improved for managing torrents of incoming tweets? What kinds of questionable business offers came in? C'mon, you knew we weren't going to talk about anything else. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your n...
Apr 03, 2022•51 min•Ep. 129
The monthly questions came in, and now the answers go forth, pertaining to such topics as these: weirdly named folders on our desktops, regrettable usernames, paltry American downstream speeds, Brad's delusions of cross-coastal VPN grandeur, an unprecedented round of answers seeking questions (??), a spirited debate about showering protocols, some shocking stats on streaming service penetration, and a shocking reveal about elevator open and close buttons that you won't see coming! Support the Po...
Mar 27, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 128
The United States Senate proved to be full of Tech Pod listeners this week as it passed a measure to make Daylight Savings Time permanent. But wait, did they pick the right time? This week we're reissuing our in-depth DST explainer from last Fall, complete with a new intro looking at what's going on in Congress, musings on overnight-flight and time-zone nonsense from our past and present, some feedback from a chronobiologist we received about our original episode, and more. SHOW NOTES The two Wa...
Mar 21, 2022•1 hr 20 min
Will just happened to watch a whole bunch of Star Trek: TNG when he was laid up recently, so we got together this week to decidedly NOT talk about Best of Both Worlds, Measure of a Man, Darmok, or The Inner Light, but instead to run down some of our favorite sleeper eps, genre work, and picks for some of the most under-appreciated gems from one of our favorite TV series ever. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and ...
Mar 13, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 127
Another round of your questions meets another round of our answers this week, with queries about delayed eating habits, the "break-even" point on fixing or replacing old appliances, the mystery of cryptic crosswords, a theoretical number of monitors that's too many, the criminal bottom-charging Apple mouse, and a SHOCKING revelation about Windows Notepad's deepest, darkest secret. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits,...
Mar 06, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 126
It's a little reunion this week as our Steam Deck-equipped friends Norman Chan (of Tested) and Wes Fenlon (of PC Gamer) join us for a deep dive into Valve's new handheld after a couple of rigorous weeks of trying it out. Topics covered include the performance you can expect from games of various eras, a thorough breakdown of the controls, battery life and suspend mode, flinging your current game right to your PC, what it's like digging into the machine's Linux underpinnings, and much more. Check...
Feb 27, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 125
Building a NAS served as the gateway into free and open source software for both of us, so in this ep we're looping back around and checking in on the current state of FOSS-y network attached storage options like OpenMediaVault, TrueNAS, and Proxmox, plus dishing out some practical tips about why you'd want a NAS in the first place, some advice on hardware requirements, best practices for backups, and more. FOSS projects for running your own NAS that we mentioned in this episode include: OpenMed...
Feb 20, 2022•1 hr 3 min
That 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 nam...
Feb 13, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 124
Hey, 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 FO...
Feb 06, 2022•1 hr 3 min
You 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://patre...
Jan 30, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 123
Microsoft'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 Tec...
Jan 23, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 122
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! Contribu...
Jan 16, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 121
This 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/...
Jan 09, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 120
New 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.huff...
Jan 02, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 119
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 ...
Dec 26, 2021•1 hr 16 min
The 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 Patr...
Dec 20, 2021•58 min•Ep. 118
We 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 i...
Dec 12, 2021•53 min•Ep. 117
The 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 cred...
Dec 05, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 116
This 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 ...
Nov 28, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 115
This 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 di...
Nov 21, 2021•56 min•Ep. 114
We'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...
Nov 14, 2021•1 hr 54 min•Ep. 113
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 ...
Nov 07, 2021•59 min•Ep. 112
It'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 secret...
Oct 31, 2021•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 111
