Technology Blows

The cash register: a machine invented because your boss doesn't trust you to count. Join me and my guest Daniel Ryan to learn: Why we can thank the father of cash registers for B2B sales, office cafeterias, and maybe even the Buzzfeed listicle How one man's fall from a horse led to the entire world being poisoned with leaded gasoline How many baked potatoes is too many baked potatoes References: C...

The cash register: a machine invented because your boss doesn't trust you to count. Join me and my guest Daniel Ryan to learn: Why we can thank the father of cash registers for B2B sales, office cafeterias, and maybe even the Buzzfeed listicle How one man's fall from a horse led to the entire world being poisoned with leaded gasoline How many baked potatoes is too many baked potatoes References: C...

On this week's episode, Meg Sinick joins me for the saga of Ticketmaster: the company that swallowed up and digested the live music industry by making a product that literally no one wants. Find out: How service fees and exclusive contracts turned the thriving music scene into a $300 Lil Jon meet-and-greet atop a pyramid of bleached skulls Why the concentrated hate of millions of concertgoers only...

On this week's episode, Meg Sinick joins me for the saga of Ticketmaster: the company that swallowed up and digested the live music industry by making a product that literally no one wants. Find out: How service fees and exclusive contracts turned the thriving music scene into a $300 Lil Jon meet-and-greet atop a pyramid of bleached skulls Why the concentrated hate of millions of concertgoers only...

Grok is here to seek truth and tell lies… and we're all out of truth. Join me and my guest Matt Johnson to find out: What Grok has in common with turn-of-the-20th-century tsarist propaganda The 3 Jewish-adjacent facts that make it okay for Elon Musk to joke about Jews Why LLMs sometimes become MechaHitler, but never CyberMao References: Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism . Penguin Clas...

Grok is here to seek truth and tell lies… and we're all out of truth. Join me and my guest Matt Johnson to find out: What Grok has in common with turn-of-the-20th-century tsarist propaganda The 3 Jewish-adjacent facts that make it okay for Elon Musk to joke about Jews Why LLMs sometimes become MechaHitler, but never CyberMao References: Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism . Penguin Clas...

Marty is a fully automated dipshit that wanders around the Stop & Shop getting in everyone's way and posing for selfies. Sometimes it hugs a cancer kid. References: https://bjsantiago.focalpointcoaching.com/about-me https://books.google.com/books?id=aTHFDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA95#v=onepage&q&f=false https://doi.org/10.1108/09590550310507731 https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2022-...

Suit up, jack in, and Zuck out. I'm joined by guest Anderson Gronvold as we abandon meatspace for metaspace. Find out why you can't afford to miss out on Meta's flagship VR experience. Legs optional! 🦵 References: Harris, Blake J. (2019). The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality. Dey Street Books. https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/creating-jobs-eu...

Suit up, jack in, and Zuck out. I'm joined by guest Anderson Gronvold as we abandon meatspace for metaspace. Find out why you can't afford to miss out on Meta's flagship VR experience. Legs optional! 🦵 References: Harris, Blake J. (2019). The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality. Dey Street Books. https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/creating-jobs-eu...

Suit up, jack in, and Zuck out. I'm joined by guest Anderson Gronvold as we abandon meatspace for metaspace. Find out why you can't afford to miss out on Meta's flagship VR experience. Legs optional! 🦵 References: Harris, Blake J. (2019). The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality. Dey Street Books. https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/creating-jobs-eu...

Give the gift of convenient garbage, with Keurig. This week, Xiao Yu joins us as we explore: How Keurig was born out of antisocial office culture and a deep ambivalence for quality The fascinating career of hippie-turned-billionaire-asshole-turned-has-been Bob Stiller How digital rights management disrupted the beverage industry References: Campbell's soup in a Keurig: https://youtu.be/N46K2CDoD0M...

The web didn't have to be this way. Friend-of-the-pod CJ Horton joins us for a look at cookies: the completely reasonable web protocol that became host to the parasitic ad industry. References: "Lou Montulli: Sexiest Internet Mogul." People . 15 November 1999. https://adtech.org/best-demand-side-platforms/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-agencies-use-cellphone-location-data-for-immigration-en...

The web didn't have to be this way. Friend-of-the-pod CJ Horton joins us for a look at cookies: the completely reasonable web protocol that became host to the parasitic ad industry. References: "Lou Montulli: Sexiest Internet Mogul." People . 15 November 1999. https://adtech.org/best-demand-side-platforms/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-agencies-use-cellphone-location-data-for-immigration-en...

Kalshi: is it "the first federally regulated prediction market," or just a shittier FanDuel? Join me and friend-of-the-pod Jeff Bonhag to learn: What modern science has in common with rolling fox knuckles How Kalshi DOSed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Why Donald Trump Jr is so interested in making prediction markets a thing References: https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/fbd446de-a7e3-...

This week we're joined by Brandon Romano to learn about Scantron: the company that made ubiquitous standardized testing possible. Find out: How standardized tests were graded in the 1500s (hint: it involved throwing corpses over walls) Why the hideous pseudoscience of eugenics is weirdly load-bearing for the SAT How Scantron uses infrared light to transmute those little number-2 pencil marks into...

This week and last, I'm joined by singer-songwriter Rachel Kiel to talk about Shazam: the massive data analytics platform that occasionally tells you the names of songs. Find out: How they use computers to turn all your favorite songs into constellations What other things you can Shazam, if you're not a music person What Shazam likes to do in its spare time, when you think it's not listening anymo...

This week and next, I'm joined by singer-songwriter Rachel Kiel to talk about Shazam: the massive data analytics platform that occasionally tells you the names of songs. Find out: How they use computers to turn all your favorite songs into constellations What other things you can Shazam, if you're not a music person What Shazam likes to do in its spare time, when you think it's not listening anymo...

It looks like you're trying to listen to a podcast. Would you like some help with that? Join me and my guest Dana Vannen Anderson for the bizarre and frequently cringe story of Clippy, the paperclip that us helped write a thousand letters. Find out: Where we got the notion that your computer should act like a person Why Microsoft ditched the idea of Clippy ever shutting the fuck up What celebrated...

Come with me, and you'll be, in a world of squeezing/agitation! This week, Rit Breisler and I discuss washing machines. Learn: What fluid the ancient Romans used instead of detergent (hint: you're not gonna like it) What your washing machine's onboard computer is for (hint: computers don't wash clothes) Why washing machines have gotten so much more efficient in the last half century (hint: it's no...

Jira: the bloated tick gorging itself on the software industry. Join me and CJ Horton to learn about: Henry Gantt, the absolute chart simp who gave your boss the idea to ask you about your progress every half hour Infinite backlogs: where hope goes to quietly die The heartbreaking story of a billionaire's impostor syndrome References: https://www.seangoedecke.com/seeing-like-a-software-company/ ht...

Jira: the bloated tick gorging itself on the software industry. Join me and CJ Horton to learn about: Henry Gantt, the absolute chart simp who gave your boss the idea to ask you about your progress every half hour Infinite backlogs: where hope goes to quietly die The heartbreaking story of a billionaire's impostor syndrome References: https://www.seangoedecke.com/seeing-like-a-software-company/ ht...

Is the world ready for a mattress that snaps shut like a Venus fly trap whenever Amazon AWS is down? Jeff Bonhag and I decide! - The Bourbons: France's sleepiest monarchs - What kind of animal Peter Thiel sleeps inside - The $5000 AI-powered bed that saved DOGE, and also sometimes pisses itself References: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140416-chimpanzees-trees-sleep-beds-animals...

Remember those little strips that used to be on batteries, where you'd pinch it with your fingers and it'd say how much power it had left? This episode is about those! Join me and my buddy Manuel Wudka-Robles as we talk about: Why rivals Duracell and Energizer both announced versions of this feature on the same exact day How it worked Why they're not around anymore References: https://tedium.co/20...

I sit down with my good friend Stephen Lauck to talk about wireless headphones – or, as we like to think of them, headphones with invisible wires. We cover: Mark Zuckerberg's stupid glasses Nathan Baldwin, the theoretical polygamist who invented headphones The first stereo headphones, made by Koss The 1/8" audio jack The Walkman The regulation of the radio spectrum ( chart ) Ether landlords Blueto...

I sit down with my good friend Stephen Lauck to talk about wireless headphones – or, as we like to think of them, headphones with invisible wires. We cover: Mark Zuckerberg's stupid glasses Nathan Baldwin, the theoretical polygamist who invented headphones The first stereo headphones, made by Koss The 1/8" audio jack The Walkman The regulation of the radio spectrum ( chart ) Ether landlords Blueto...