Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.

We're putting the time machine back into service again this week with another magazine review, this time of Next Generation issue 36 from December 1997. Notably, this was the issue when the venerable thinking-person's game magazine first declared the PC the best place to play games, along with an in-depth assessment of the N64, PlayStation, and Saturn's places in the market. Plus, we also run through a whole bunch of other interesting material, including an early call for an independent game development scene, a look at some entry-level mid-'90s game dev tools and early Dreamcast development kits, the surprisingly silly origins of Gran Turismo, a review of Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, and a bunch of other stuff. Check the show notes for a link to the issue!Follow along with the magazine here: https://archive.org/details/NextGeneration36Dec1997/mode/2up 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

This week we discuss a three-fer of mini-topics from current events. First we take a look at Boeing's troubled Starliner test flight that's left a pair of astronauts stranded on the International Space Station. Next up, Goldman Sachs has issued a scathingly negative report about the validity and sustainability of the current AI bubble. And last, with Windows 10's end-of-support date looming, we dig into the upgrade requirements that are going to leave millions of PCs stranded, and maybe proclaim the year of the Linux desktop along the way (well, not really (OK, maybe kind of)).Links referenced this episode include:https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/starliner-still-doesnt-have-a-return-date-as-nasa-tests-overheating-thrusters/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/10/openai-board-microsoft-apple-withdraw/https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/gs-research/gen-ai-too-much-spend-too-little-benefit/report.pdf 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

We're back with another hot month's worth of your questions to answer, this time addressing such wide-ranging subjects as easy ways to defeat Blu-ray region locks, tech tips for your fantasy new-home build, the sweet spot for solar panels paying for themselves, whether anyone actually needs a 10-gigabit home Internet connection, the ephemeral nature of knowledge locked up in Discord servers, ways to track subscriptions and to-do items with your partner, 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 great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

This week, Friend of the Show Adam Patrick Murray from PC World joins Will to share the ground truth about Computex. Freshly returned from Taipei, Adam is a Computex veteran, and told us what it's like to attend and cover the most important PC hardware trade show in the world.What Hardware Should You Use for UE5 Development?PC World's YouTube ChannelThe Full Nerd PodcastHow MSI Laptops are Designed VideoMSI's GPUs Through History Video 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

We're taking another close look at a product that broke out and redefined its entire category, this time the venerable IntelliMouse Explorer. These days it's hard to remember that it was Microsoft who banished the infernal ball and introduced the optical mouse to the mainstream, so we head back to 1999 and discuss what mice were like beforehand, how mechanical and optical sensors work, debate PS/2 versus USB, make an argument that the whole PC gaming accessory ecosystem owes its existence to this product, and more.Our last game-changer product deep-dive, about the Xbox 360: https://techpod.content.town/episodes/183-hiroprotagonist-loves-an-inhale-a0zOAKKo 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

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 WWDC keynote here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXeOiIDNNekSupport 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 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

Will 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.com/techpod-238-ioniq-5Here's our episode on the Chevy Bolt and the basics of EVs: https://techpod.content.town/episodes/88-it-just-makes-the-lithium-angrier 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

Microsoft has announced some... controversial new AI-driven features coming to Windows 11, so we thought it was time to dissect the Copilot+ PC spec and particularly its Recall functionality, especially in light of the new Qualcomm ARM chips that are bringing more efficiency and more machine-learning compute power to the portable PC space. Is this stuff something you need? Is it something you should worry about? We do our best to answer these and other questions.Show notes and links for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-237-copilot-plus-ai 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

It's another Q&A episode, and this month we get into a wide range of topics including our haul from the electronics flea market, our growing appreciation for SCART, Micro Center's rapidly expanding operations, the open-source automotive self-driving solution, a farewell to mini-USB, a quick Steam patching explainer, 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 great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

We've got another two-fer of mini-topics this week around projects we've been tinkering with lately. First, Will has been investigating ways to get the SteamOS experience on hardware that's not a SteamDeck, with both the full-on SteamOS rebuild HoloISO and the more general gaming-focused Linux distro Bazzite. Second, we've both had Fallout New Vegas (and its many necessary mods) on the brain a lot lately, and have been looking into the open-source mod manager Wabbajack and some of the other stuff going on around automating mods these days. Lastly, uh, enjoy the podcast!Stuff discussed in this episode includes:HoloISO: https://github.com/HoloISO/releasesBazzite: https://bazzite.gg/Wabbajack: https://www.wabbajack.org/Viva New Vegas: https://vivanewvegas.moddinglinked.com/Tale of Two Wastelands: https://taleoftwowastelands.com/Rounds: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557740/ROUNDS/ 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

Hey, remember RSS? Friend of the show Wes Fenlon joins us for a record fourth (!!) time to reminisce about the glory days of really simple syndication, when you could just aggregate all your favorite news and blogs into one tidy feed. This episode is about more than just waxing nostalgic, though; Wes is here to tell us all about bringing it all back with his self-hosted RSS stack, including his setup for FreshRSS (and some of its alternatives), ways to get RSS out of sites that don't even serve it anymore, the growing "indie web" movement that aims to recapture the spirit of a simpler Internet, and more.Show notes for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-234-self-hosted-rssCheck out Wes' newsletter on emulation and retro games: https://www.readonlymemo.com/Episode art courtesy of Sandwich Tribunal: https://www.sandwichtribunal.com/2024/02/south-australias-fritz-and-sauce/ 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

We're embarking on a two-part rundown of home video formats this week, with part one focusing on analog video up through the mid-1990s and covering biggies like VHS and LaserDisc, plus also-rans like Betamax, Video8, and the truly strange CED. Tune in for plenty of fun trivia, like myths and misconceptions about the first major format war, Sony's ahead-of-its-time analog HD video system, why a video format patterned after a record player isn't a great idea, and a bunch more!(There are some drops in Brad's recording this week due to an infestation of audio gremlins which we're working to exterminate. Apologies for any inconvenience.) The MiSTer clone video from the cold open: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RSrzM7dM-YShow notes for this ep, with links to a lot of the videos and images discussed: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-233-analog-home-video 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

April concludes with another round of questions, during which we entertain the idea of inviting Q to assist us with Qs, Will teases a historic search engine switch, and we field a wide array of topics including breakaway USB-C cables, how to wade through the sea of search-engine slop, why you don't need "www." much anymore, our approach to episode research and accuracy, the best sandwich salads, fermented coffee and bonded whiskey, and a bunch 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 great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

The time has come for our deep dive into Pirates of Silicon Valley, the 1999 made-for-TNT movie that chronicles the parallel rises of Apple and Microsoft. Join us for a bunch of chatter about the historic business deals and betrayals, the portrayals of Gates, Jobs, Ballmer, Wozniak and others, what the actual people depicted thought about the movie, how Shakespeare informed the production, the delightful '90s blue screen effects, and plenty more. (And check the show notes if you haven't seen the movie yet!)Watch Pirates of Silicon Valley before listening to the ep: https://archive.org/details/piratesofsiliconvalley_201908Read Fire in the Valley, the book the movie is based on: https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Valley-Birth-Personal-Computer-dp-1937785769/dp/1937785769/Check out Folklore.org's sprawling history of the Macintosh's development that Brad mentioned (linked here to a story about who actually created the Mac project): https://folklore.org/The_Father_of_The_Macintosh.html 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

This week we attempt to unpack the recent, historic security breach in the open source world, after the discovery of a secret backdoor that was inserted by a malicious actor into the the xz-utils package, with a focus on which specific Linux distros were targeted and why, how the attacker socially engineered their way into the position of authority that made this possible, and what ought to be done to support developers of critical infrastructure to (hopefully) prevent this from happening again.Show notes for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-230-xz-backdoorGo watch Pirates of Silicon Valley for an upcoming episode where we'll discuss it: https://archive.org/details/piratesofsiliconvalley_201908 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

We're doing a follow-up Q&A this week while we sort out some scheduling hurdles on the backend, and taking a bunch more of your questions from the last six months about ideal pixel density on monitors, what the heck Salesforce does, a portable gaming-focused Windows, when in the product cycle to buy, how the Clapper might integrate into your home automation setup, and lastly, you know, the slow and steady decline of everything around us.Go watch Pirates of Silicon Valley for an upcoming episode where we'll discuss it: https://archive.org/details/piratesofsiliconvalley_201908 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

March's Q&A features a wide array of questions that inspired discussions about such wide-ranging topics as our love of screensavers, a world without Gmail, Will's strong opinions on Ethernet termination standards, wearing shoes inside the house (or not), the lack of 9s in product naming, Proton-like cross-platform game support on MacOS, and a bunch more.Make sure to watch Pirates of Silicon Valley for an upcoming episode we'll be recording in two or three weeks: https://archive.org/details/piratesofsiliconvalley_201908The SGI Onyx $250,000 supercomputer video Brad mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3lUw9GUJAAnd in case you're curious, the two Ethernet termination standards we talked about.  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

Inspired by what's probably the most common subject we see questions about on our Discord, this week we're doing an updated primer on home networking, with a refresher on some basic terms and concepts and our thoughts on a wide array of topics from modern mesh networks to fiber in the home, ISP-provided equipment, whether you should separate your wi-fi from your gateway, rolling your own router, the rapidly decreasing cost of high-end network speeds, 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 great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

We've got a two-fer this week, with a pair of topics that might not have filled a whole ep on their own but turn out to be two great podcast tastes that, uh, taste great together... anyway, first we talk about the benchmark Will is currently creating in Unreal Engine to push CPUs and GPUs in a game development context, and then we check in on how the grand unification of smart home devices is coming along with the new Matter and Thread standards, now that products have been on the market for a year or so. There's definitely just one standard now, right? ...Right?Articles referenced in this ep:The Verge on a year with Matter & Thread: https://www.theverge.com/23997548/matter-smart-home-2023-platformsArs Technica on the continued value of Zigbee and Z-Wave: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/i-was-wrong-to-ignore-zigbee-and-z-wave-theyre-the-best-part-of-my-smart-home/ 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

What 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-demosOur Xbox 360 deep dive episode: https://techpod.content.town/episodes/183-hiroprotagonist-loves-an-inhale  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