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PODCAST

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.

Brad Shoemaker, Will Smith

Each 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. Support the pod on Patreon: http://patreon.com/techpod

technology

All Episodes

01:08:35

268: We're Pro-Thunk Around Here

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2025/01/05

We note the tragic passing this week of our good friend and tech reporting legend Gordon Mah Ung, with a short tribute and a bit of reminiscing about Gordon's illustrious career and the impact he made on everyone he came into contact with. Then we return to the very serious work of ranking every cable and connector in existence, with a pivot this week from numbered rankings to one of those newfangled tier lists, plus considerations of quarter-inch stereo, TOSLINK, DisplayPort, the legendary SCART,

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01:24:05

267: Cold Boot, Fresh Browser

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/12/29

It's our last pod of 2024, and thus, another batch of year-ending questions meets our entirely professional and learned answers. This month we talk about improving your Bluetooth quality in Windows, our personal mouse grip, tech-related anime we've seen, when to throw in the towel on learning new skills, weird freebies with your tech purchases, questionable Black Friday purchases, how many browser tabs is too many, and the oppression of the Elf-on-the-Shelf surveillance state.Support the Pod

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01:08:51

266: Connector Mouthfeel

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/12/22

As the end of the year is here again, we're finally doing it: we're ranking every plug and connector in existence, or at least all the ones we can think of. Join us as we evaluate the relative merits in multiple categories -- like ease of use, reliability, versatility, and that satisfying tactile X factor -- of everything from BNC to XLR, Apple's Lightning and old 30-pin dock connector, DB-15 (you know, VGA), the enormous pile of USB types, and more. Will we get through the whole list in one week

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01:03:23

265: Shuck 'Em If You Got 'Em

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/12/15

Will and family just got back from the final show of Taylor Swift's Eras tour, so this week we dig into some of the technical aspects of a modern arena mega-concert, from turning the audience into a human light show to innovations in ticket-sharing QR code technology and metrics on the mobile data being used in the vicinity. Meanwhile, Brad's been harvesting some extra cheap hard drives in the wake of Black Friday, so we also lay out a primer on what exactly hard drive shucking is, including

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01:04:13

264: Will's Congressman's Enormous Wang

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/12/08

Two momentous events have recently rocked the computing world: First, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger abruptly stepped down this week, less than four years after taking the company's helm, and before completing the ongoing transition to its next-generation chip fabrication, and second, Microsoft has removed the venerable WordPad from current and future versions of Windows. We convene to try to make sense of both of these unexpected happenings (and talk a lot about word processors along the way).Cling to

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01:18:57

263: The Smith Chart Is S-Tier

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/12/01

The monthly Q&A commenceth again, with emails and Discord Qs positively pouring in about the origin of the flange effect, why all the electrical outlets are upside down, gaming on an M4 Mac Mini and how Apple's move to a 16GB minimum affects their status as a family recommendation, the value of moving to the Bay Area for a computer science degree, the race to the bottom in electronics parts and accessories, Will's holiday board game recommendations, an impromptu ranking of charts, and more.Support

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01:27:42

262: Mrs. Collier Was a Real One

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/11/24

American Thanksgiving draws near, so it's time again for our annual recitation of techie stuff that we're thankful for. From tangible products on your desk, around the house, and on the road, to more abstract things like moderating your social media intake, finding alternatives to Amazon, and the ease of fixing your foolish eyewear mistakes, we find more than a few things to fill out our lists.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus

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01:14:40

261: A Big Black Slab of Shame

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/11/17

We're back again with that floral favorite, the potpourri episode. This time it's a project potpourri, touching on some tech-related projects we've either tackled recently or are planning to get to soon. Learn the full story of how Will more or less Frankensteined his ultrawide monitor back from the dead, listen to Brad's plans for a virtual private cloud server and why Black Friday might be the time to jump in, scorn him for the utterly shameful state of his NAS backups, and more. Support the Pod

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01:27:57

260: CPUs Have Been Juicing for Too Long

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/11/10

It's been a wild few months in CPUs, with next-generation releases from both AMD and Intel in their respective Zen 5 and Arrow Lake categories. Now that most all the big parts are out, we break down what's what, including why everyone is finally going disaggregated (and what that means), what's going on with OS updates to make your processor run faster, which one to get if you just want to play games, what the new CU-DIMM standard means for RAM, and more. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod

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01:19:39

259: Hey Google, It's Time for Bed!

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/11/03

We're here at the end of the spookiest month and ready to field your questions once again, this time addressing subjects such as alternative file managers, how often (and why) to replace your surge protectors, why some electrical plugs have that sideways prong, our ability to suss out regional accents, the state of modern instant coffee, and why certain letters just sound cooler than others. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus

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01:30:31

258: Some Real MacGyver #$@!%

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/10/27

Brad's back from Western North Carolina, so it's time for a casual debriefing on being out there for two and a half weeks dealing with the Hurricane Helene aftermath, with a focus on all sorts of technical subjects like portable lighting strategies, acquiring and hooking up a generator in a hurry, making sense of the wiring layouts in older houses, remote work with almost no connectivity, dehumidifying and remediating a flooded basement, and, yes, some of the sillier computing artifacts that emerged

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01:42:28

257: Fire Copilot Down the Cortana Hole

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/10/20

Wes Fenlon stops by this week to help Will run down all the new features and changes in the 24H2 update to Windows 11, from better quick settings to Wi-Fi 7 support and the long-awaited (or perhaps dreaded) addition of Microsoft's Copilot AI features. Then Will also delivers a trip report from this year's Maker Faire, detailing all the best projects he saw at the Bay Area's preeminent DIY event. It's like two podcasts in one!Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our

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01:00:33

256: Gotta Get That Smooth 40

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/10/13

Adam Patrick Murray, PC World's handheld PC gaming expert, drops by to talk about the current state of the handheld union. We discuss what's going on with hardware for the Valve Steam Deck, the ASUS Rog Ally X, and a whole lot more, plus dig deep into the pros and cons of Windows vs. Linux on handhelds, talk about what's going on with Valve's version of Steam Deck OS and homebrew options like Bazzite, and touch on what we'd like to see next from the ecosystem next year and beyond.Stuff discussed in

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01:17:19

255: Don't Ask the AI For a Recipe

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/10/06

Norman Chan has seen the future of eyewear and it is... well, not something you can buy, or even try. But he's donned Meta's Orion AR glasses and has seen (and touched) the augmented reality future. We also talk about the Harvard students who turned their Meta Ray Bans into the ultimate privacy violating machine and Meta's new cheaper Quest 3S. Best of all, very special guest Jeremy Williams joins us to ask the toughest questions in this This Is Only a Test throwback episode!Support the Pod

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01:05:05

254: How to Hide Your Sardine Bricks

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/09/29

Questions! You ask 'em, we answer 'em. This month, we field Qs about such subjects as migrating search engines to Kagi (or at least just away from Google), wi-fi etiquette as the in-home sysadmin, novel uses for power over Ethernet, where the speed holes on the new Ryzens come from, what the forthcoming landscape of over-the-counter hearing aids might look like, matching the PS5 Pro's performance in a PC build, and more. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our

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01:40:55

253: My Three DACs

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/09/22

Will's out this week, so Nextlander's Vinny Caravella stops by for a freewheeling gab session about what he's been up to in tech lately, including the professional and personal roles for the eight (!) computers that live in his house, adventures in exposing his (son's) web services to the Internet, the need for a good audio processor in your recording chain, 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

en

01:29:30

252: Frames Win Games

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/09/15

It was a really big week for hardware announcements, with Sony finally filling in the details on the PlayStation 5 Pro, and Apple announcing new phones, watches, headphones and more. We dive into both subjects, including the PS5 Pro's promising AI upscaling and less promising whopper of a price, the slightly strange AirPod roadmap, the still-ongoing patent dispute over the Apple Watch, and plenty more.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a

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01:03:10

251: That 6GHz Really Tied the Spectrum Together

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/09/08

The world is steadily moving on to Wi-Fi 7 (or 802.11be, if you like), so we figured it's about time we sit down and attempt to understand what separates this latest standard from all the wireless fidelity that came before. Where in the world did they get a number like 46Gbps? What are the forward- and backward-compatible implications with existing devices? How does "multi-link operation" work? Is it time to run out and upgrade yet? What's haunting Brad's access point? We do our best to answer all

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01:04:25

250: The Arbiters of Authentication

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/09/01

This week we put our security expert* hats back on to talk about the latest hotness in login technology, passkeys. Find out how passkeys work, how they enable you to login without a password, which major platforms are supporting them, and where and how you should manage them. We also do a quick update on more traditional time-based authenticator apps, including the recent Authy data breach, and then -- whaddaya know, it's our 250th episode! -- we also reflect a little on a momentous five years of

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01:15:21

249: Good Enough Is Good Enough

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2024/08/25

The Qs that we attempt to A in this month's question-fest include: What are some less obvious benefits of portable apps? How trustworthy is a package manager? Is a Windows Pro license really worth it? What's your microwave technique for even, efficient heating? How do you stop analyzing products and just buy something already? Is a MagSafe connector like a cloaca? Fair warning, like half of this episode ended up being about food.Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to

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318 results

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