Hey, did you know Will ran a VR animation company before we did this podcast? By popular request, this week we talk through the history of Foo VR start to finish, touching on all kinds of topics like leaving behind a steady paycheck to bet on an emerging technology, the overwhelming shininess of venture capitalist offices, the meaning of "bad signal," how rapidly three months can turn into a year, and more. SHOW NOTES The Foo Show: https://store.steampowered.com/app/411820/The_FOO_Show_featuring...
Aug 21, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 148
Together, Matter and Thread are the new software and networking standards that promise to make all of your home automation and IoT gear work together, regardless of manufacturer. After Home Assistant's Paulus Schoutsen piqued our interest on the FOSS Pod, we decided to do a deep dive this week to demystify exactly what the two standards are and how they relate to one another, how they'll (hopefully) make things better, what they mean for your existing smart home equipment, and more. NOTES Our FO...
Aug 14, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 147
A grab bag, a smorgasbord, a potpourri -- whatever you call it, we've assembled another batch of micro-topics to wend our way through. This time around, precision German podcasting plugins, Will's new green screen-free life (and growing array of tiny pixel art screens), a bit of desk efficiency chat, graphite pads versus thermal paste, and the sheer arrogance of putting an AWE64 in a Windows 3.1 machine. Links for this episode! 86Box: https://86box.net/ WinWorldPC's old operating system archive:...
Aug 07, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 146
Look, it's getting harder to think of intro text for a Q&A episode -- but it's ever easier to record one with so many great Qs! This month we tackle our fantasy space missions, a bidet breakdown, dirty dishes on the desktop, the future collectability of current tech, WFH survival strats, filling drives to the brim, the origin of "software," cloud-connected router provisioning, and one intrepid listener's nuclear aspirations. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access ...
Jul 31, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 145
Brad's birthday has come and gone, which gives him the privilege of choosing our next tech year in review. This time, the banner year of 1997, which saw everything from Dolly the cloned sheep to IBM's chess-playing Deep Blue, the nuclear-powered Cassini probe to Saturn (and protests to match), the American launch of DVD, Steve Jobs' return to Apple, the anything-goes brutality of Ultima Online, and a bunch more. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Di...
Jul 24, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 144
With the James Webb telescope in the news and Will convalescing from COVID-19, we're bringing back one of our favorite patron-exclusive eps this week: the first appearance of our friend Doug Ellison from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, in which he regales us with stories about taking photos not of Mars but on it, data throughput from another planet, what it's like to work at JPL, and a whole lot more. Enjoy! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, yo...
Jul 17, 2022•1 hr 18 min
Will and family have made their annual month-long pilgrimage to the desert once again, so this week we ended up having a free-wheeling conversation about portable tech and working on the road. Topics include tech-savvy AirBnb hosts, optimizing your electric car, dealing with Xbox development away from home, the moment that USB-C finally happened, the value of just getting TSA pre-check already, and more. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, y...
Jul 10, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 143
Will's longtime home server Flanders has finally given up the ghost, and now he's streamlined his life by moving to an integrated Synology box. After significant hands-on time, we get into the ins and outs of what it's like running network storage in this sort of turnkey, integrated box, including ease of setup, hardware specs and limitations, Will's possibly controversial feelings about Docker, Brad's slow descent into madness on the extreme other end of the NAS hardware spectrum, and more. Sup...
Jul 03, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 142
It means being bad at researching how to use a spout. Oh, right, this is a Q&A episode! This month we discuss the potential of open smartphones, Fermi's paradox, French toast supremacy, electronics in the bathroom (yea or nay), Brad's dwindling sardine hoard, a bunch of barbecue-related subjects, mispronouncing tech, 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...
Jun 26, 2022•58 min•Ep. 141
Will got his hands on his very own Steam Deck and he's bursting at the seams to talk about it, so we're back with a follow-up to our first Deck ep with an updated trip report. How has compatibility, performance, and system software shaped up in the months since the device first started shipping? What are some of the fun third-party apps you can install for emulation, game management and so forth these days? Did Will dabble with the forbidden emulation fruit? The answers lie within. SHOW NOTES So...
Jun 19, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 140
As summer heats up, we're cooling things down with another (now-semi-annual?) cube of cold opens. Thrill! to the long and sordid tale of Will's Stripe fraud saga. Chill! at the campsite mishap that demolished someone's data plan. Spill! your drink everywhere when you realize that the innocent Roblox scammers of today may become the business leaders of tomorrow. Uh, fill? your ears with all the other bite-size topics that weren't long enough to consume a whole episode! Support the Pod! Contribute...
Jun 12, 2022•52 min•Ep. 139
We've been mulling the idea of donning our game dev hats and attempting to make our own little Playdate game as an educational exercise, and this week we commit ourselves to this task publicly with a consideration of the hardware and controls at our disposal, followed by a bunch of brainstorming different game ideas. Plus, a few interludes about the coming dominance of 40Hz games, Will's shocking ignorance of gorilla.bas, and some other fun stuff! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patr...
Jun 05, 2022•56 min•Ep. 138
It seems like it was only last month that we answered our last batch of questions, and yet here we are with another one. This time we address subjects like getting squashed by an asteroid (or meteorite), who in the world ever used eSATA, the ancient noodle superset, Will's scandalous views on cats, diving into the ol' money bin, coding showcases for kids, Apple's stringent stance on VMs, social Siri engineering, and incendiary devices connected to your smart home. Support the Pod! Contribute to ...
May 29, 2022•55 min•Ep. 137
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
