Stay ConnectedEach Sunday, Brad Shoemaker and Will Smith discuss a new technology topic. Come for the long-form conversations about virtual reality, space travel, electric cars, refresh rates, and a whole lot more.
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Copyright: © 2019 Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.
Our desks have evolved since the last time we talked about our personal workspaces (Brad has even achieved the elusive Cord Zero), so we're doing an updated check-in to talk about the current gear we're working with, aspirational cable-routing, portable camera setups, gaming on ultra-wide monitors, custom corkboard cutouts, and a bunch of other related topics.
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
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
Remember when pop-up ads looked like they were part of Windows XP? Dark patterns are all around us, even when we don't realize it, and this week we cover a wide range of these insidious methods of manipulating our online behavior, touching on everything from tricks to make you play games longer than you want to subtly enticing you to rope in your friends, succumb to sunk cost fallacy, and more. Editor's note: Brad played Clash Royale for three hours after recording this episode.
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
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
Brad spent a whole bunch of time in the PlayStation VR 2 this past week, and given Will's previous life as the proprietor of a VR-related business, we're pairing hands-on (or maybe face-on) experience with institutional knowledge this week to dissect the ins and outs of the new headset, comparing it to the current PC fare, speculating about its potential to become a PC headset itself, musing about the use of SLAM tracking in robot vacuums, 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://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
Some scheduling switcharoos mean we're doing February's Q&A episode one (1) whole week early! This month we field Qs about public Unix servers, noisy hard drives, the desirability of your own phone booth, an update on that attempt at roasting weed coffee, our experiences with house plants, a goblin who handcuffs people to chairs, 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://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
This week we're thrilled to be joined by Marcin Wichary, author of the upcoming and extensively detailed history of the keyboard, Shift Happens. We get into all kinds of typing-related subjects like QWERTY dominance, the shift wars of the late 1800s, and 150-year-old designs that have trickled down to software keyboards, plus a fascinating discussion about what it's like to spend seven years traveling the world to write a book of this scope and depth.
Find out more about (and snag a copy of) Marcin's book: https://shifthappens.site/
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
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
Artificial intelligence, machine learning--whatever we're calling it, it sure is in the news a lot all of a sudden. Everything about the use of AI feels uncanny enough lately that we sat down and had a free-wheeling conversation about the subject, from some basic (fuzzy) terms and definitions to Will's use of machine learning at Foo, the endless ethical dilemmas about the use of the technology, and some loose speculation about where AI will be used going forward and how long it'll take someone to unironically name their startup Skynet.
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
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
You sent some serious Qs for this month's Q&A, which got us talking about the intermingling of control schemes in online shooters, the best sci-fi robots, the absurdity of discount medical care, pronounceable file extensions, AI-driven customer service, putting Airtags in other devices, and the northern plight of the humble brown rat.
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
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 was a pretty heavy week for a variety of reasons, so we decided to discuss a variety of shorter topics this week to try to take it in, starting by touching on the mass layoffs sweeping the tech industry and elsewhere. Then we make a... Musk sandwich, first by covering the New York Times Magazine's extensive article on Tesla's Full Self-Driving issues, then by examining the Orwellian goings-on with Twitter third-party clients. Finally, we go to our happy place with a quick check-in on Will's new Beelink NUC-like and the server stuff he's done with it so far.
The New York Times Magazine piece we discussed: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/magazine/tesla-autopilot-self-driving-elon-musk.html
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
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 does the unthinkable this week and PODCASTS WITH HIS BOSS, as Stray Bombay head Chet Faliszek joins us on the one-year anniversary of the release of The Anacrusis to talk all things running a small video game studio. From Steam and Xbox backend tools to current engine tech, the difficulty of getting noticed in today's ultra-crowded market, management and decision-making on a small team, whether launching on Game Pass was worth it, and more, there's a lot to cover in this ep.
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
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 (belatedly) time to answer more of your questions, and this time you posed Qs that resulted in As about an iPhone without charging ports, cured meats, hyphy dark roast, favorite classic screensavers, favorite console boot-up animations, the rise of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, and social acceptance of CRT filters. Last month's questions, today!
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
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
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