Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.

Brad just read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first time (and Will reread it for the eleventy-thousandth), and now we're here to discuss the book's cheeky sci-fi Anglicisms and cavalier relationship with reality and metaphysics, its endless influence on pop culture, the career of Douglas Adams, and more. Thanks to all of our supporters who made this episode possible! Support the Pod! Con...

The emails cometh, and bringeth with them questions and tips about why nobody can order a 3080 or PS5, the eyeball-saving properties of red nightlights, rounded vs. angular phone design, consumerism in tech and ethics in coding, and, yes, how to make your own Lack rack. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other gr...

Nvidia bought ARM. Nvidia bought ARM! It's one of the biggest semiconductor deals in history, so we dive deep into what it all means, from some basics on CPU architecture to the implications for the mobile, enterprise, and machine-learning markets. One of our nerdiest episodes yet! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits,...

Playing video games remotely has gotten surprisingly good lately, so this week we decided to sit down and figure out the what's what of home game streaming. From older options like Steam Link to the Parsecs and Moonlights of today, not to mention some of the recent high-quality, low-latency backend tech that's making it possible, there's a lot to unpack. Join us! Support the Pod! Contribute to the...

Last week Brad and Will got to attend a virtual deep dive on Nvidia's new 30-series GPUs, and in this ep we attempt to break down all the new ray-tracing optimizations, DirectStorage capability, whole-system latency reduction, push-pull cooler designs, V-shaped PCBs, and more. Be warned, it's a lot! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your nam...

Our 50th episode doesn't quite have 50 emails, but it's close: tune in for listener mails about bugout bags, evacuation tips, data over HAM radio, the resilience of municipal fiber, and very, very high-end broadcast video. 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...

With the latest round of California wildfires heavy on our minds, this week we ended up with a wide-ranging conversation about what to take with you when you evacuate, climate change, PCs as space heaters, crawl space water cooling, and the genius of Douglas Adams. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great b...

Following up on our software unitasker ep from a few weeks ago, we're now moving into the physical realm. This week we run down a few of our favorite devices, trinkets, and doodads that make it just a little bit easier to get things done. Here's a quick list of the stuff we mentioned on this ep which should be easy to search for: Brad Genki Covert Dock by Human Things Retractable cables (Digital A...

This week we very carefully lower ourselves into the unthinkably deep rabbit hole of mechanical keyboards. If you've ever wanted to know your MX reds from your blues, tenkeyless from 65%, keycaps, backlights, and more, this episode is for you. 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 suppo...

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeemails this month address questions like: Where the heck are the color e-ink readers? Can we imagine a world without DNS? What in the world is a sputtering target? Want a quick 'n easy cable-organizing tip that will BLOW YOUR MIND? 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 sup...

PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon stops by to talk about turning an old PC into a new router. Why would you want to roll your own router in the first place? What are your hardware and software options to do so? What kind of fancy new network stuff can you do with it? The answers lie within! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and...

In these trying times, we thought a nostalgic little walk down memory lane might be nice. Join us as we look back at the '90s Internet, from PPP connections and .plan files to Gopher, IRC, and Will's part in the Eternal September. 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 a...

This week we run down a few of the common and not-so-common software tools that make our lives a bit easier. From text-syncing to task-scheduling, audio management and phone automation, we hope there's something in here that can make your life a little easier, too. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great b...

This month's email episode contains some of your own tech horror stories, from melted carpet fibers and shutting down a whole town's Internet to causing seven-figure production stoppages. Also: draconian ISP upstream policies and a chat about the mechanical, pre-silicon days of computing. Enjoy! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in...

Another Apple episode already? Yeah, we didn't expect it either until WWDC brought such a bounty of new stuff to talk about. In addition to ARM-based Macs, somehow iOS managed to be the most interesting thing at this year's conference. Home screen widgets! Multitasking! App defaults? After all these years?! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord,...

Oh, the horror! This week we recount some of the tech disasters from our past. From near-miss electrocutions to ruined prototype hardware, PC-building boondoggles, all-night server restores, and extremely lucky data recovery, relive some of our best and worst moments getting hands-on with hardware and software. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Disco...

Things are rough out there, so this week we recorded a free-wheeling episode about tech-ish self-care strategies for things like exercise, meditation, lighting, and so forth. Plus: Will's making his own MiSTer case! 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://patr...

It's time for infosec episode, the sequel! Will recounts the hackery he's dealt with since our initial podcast about online security a few weeks ago, then we grade the big tech companies on their privacy efforts (or lack thereof) and dig into the what, how, and why of modern data collection -- and how to stop it. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Dis...

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://patreon.com/techpod Here's the American Cinematographer deep dive on The Mandalorian's production that we mentioned a couple weeks ago. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Di...

With everyone trapped indoors, streaming video on the Internet is an especially good way to connect with people right now. This week we did a broad survey of practical streaming tech, from hardware and software setups to codecs and protocols, Brad's latest questionable tech project, and the ever-present danger of streaming Will's inbox live to the world. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod...

With the advent of another generational Unreal Engine tech demo, it's time to have a live watch party and then mull over what the UE5 tech means for asset creation, real-time lighting, and other trends in game development, and then gush over the Unreal-driven virtual sets in TV productions like The Mandalorian. Graphics! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our boo...

Friend of the pod Brian Fitzpatrick of Tock Inc. and ORD Camp stops by to talk about the early days of big data at Google, shipping 1500-pound rack servers, working on widely used open-source software, and how to score a half-ton irradiated electromagnet. 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! Y...

By all accounts, Apple is moving its laptops to ARM sooner than later. What's this transition going to mean for existing MacOS software? How many days straight will your new MacBook run on battery? Can we envision a big old Mac Pro running on an itsy bitsy ARM chip? These questions and more, pondered herein! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord,...

Time for another Q&A! This week we discuss listener-submitted emails about the ultra-sandboxed future of Windows 10X, a short mouse retrospective, waiting for the right time to build a new PC, electron beams 'n electromagnets, questionable phone upgrades, and our personal histories of taking stuff apart and putting it back together. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get acces...

This week we reach into our grab bag of homebound projects to chat about the tech stuff we're up to lately, from Will's ray-traced camera obscura and adventures in Behringer mixing to Brad's efforts to bring a FrankenMiSTer to life and get to the bottom of the great shingled hard drive scandal of 2020. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your...