Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.

01:04:33

359: Potatoes From the Sky

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/10/04

This week we round up some news items that have caught our interest in the last few weeks. Google and Walmart have rolled out a backyard drone-delivery program for small orders. Valve is beta testing a unique ultra-low-latency video codec for Steam Remote Play. A recent circuit court decision may have wide-ranging precedent for copyright penalties around AI training data. And the Dutch government is the latest in Europe to pursue its digital sovereignty by moving from Windows to... NixOS? Seems like

en

01:12:28

358: It's a DE-rail, Not a DB-rail

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/09/27

It turns out we haven't answered all the questions that have ever been asked yet, so we figured we'd take a few more from you, the listener, this week, covering topics like cell phone signal strength and the way your carrier prioritizes your traffic, ARM vs. x86 in the context of efficiency, how much vibe-coding is going on in OSs and drivers right now, open source wearable devices, how to store a Nintendo Switch for the very long term, the long and mysterious legacy of the D-subminiature standard,

en

01:10:49

357: Drag Your PC Into the Back Yard

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/09/20

Following up on our bonus Steam Frame episode earlier this week, Tested's Norman Chan stops by to go much deeper on Valve's new standalone headset, unpacking topics like the pros and cons of pancake optics, local Alyx versus streamed Alyx, a headset with hot-swappable batteries, prescription lens inserts, FEX x86-to-ARM translation, and more. We also wrap up with a holistic look at the entire Valve hardware ecosystem now that all the pieces are in place, pondering what it might all mean for the next

en

00:25:11

356 Extra! - Steam Frame Edition

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/09/14

Valve sent us a review unit of their new standalone VR headset, the Steam Frame and we're here with first impressions, after testing it for about 40 hours over the course of a week. We talk about the FEX x86 to ARM emulator, how well it works with local and streaming VR as well as playing 2D games on a big, giant virtual monitor.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

en

00:58:56

356: Small Team, Big Thinking

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/09/13

This week we sat down with the 2018 documentary General Magic, about the early '90s startup of the same name that was full of Macintosh veterans who were way ahead of their time about mobile computing, online communications, and a lot of other stuff. Were they really trying to make the iPhone more than a decade before the iPhone? Did they seriously invent early precursors to USB, Java, and emoji long before those things became commonplace? Why did they fail so catastrophically? Join us as we discuss

en

01:15:44

355: Spindly, Greebly

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/09/06

We're back with another hodgepodge of user-submitted topics this week to clear out some of our backlog from the summer, leading us to talk about everything from uses for a PC's real-time-clock wake feature to domain hijacking and protecting your custom email address, the origins of the octothorpe, a very cool virtual operating system museum, and lots of stuff in between.The Virtual OS Museum: https://virtualosmuseum.org/Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our

en

01:09:44

354: The Dog Nose Knows

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/08/30

The Q&A returns for August with a variety of topics including pet-related tech mishaps, the contentious multimeter pronunciation debate, arcade boards and Super NES expansion chips, the return of physical keyboard phones, and an accidental grip of AI-related questions about web-scraping statistics, podcasters putting on new vocal identities, cyberattacks on infrastructure, and the growing societal backlash that might (maybe) blunt all this at some point.Arcade board cases discussed in this

en

01:18:21

353: Notes About Notes

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/08/23

It's been a while since we checked in on note-taking apps and ways to wrangle their data, and a lot has changed with our personal use cases on that front. Will has gone deep on Notion's relational capabilities and seen how well they can support a shared knowledge base for a team of a couple dozen people. Meanwhile, Brad has done a survey of apps targeted at the individual end user, with the goal of fully owning the data and controlling how and where it's synced. We round up everything we've

en

01:11:59

352: Tell the Robots to Eff Off

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/08/16

We reach into the grab bag again this week for a selection of topics we hope will delight and/or inform. On the AI front, Twitch stepped in it this week with a belated ability to opt your streams out of use in Amazon's AI training, raising questions about just how long this practice has been going on, and we also look at some emerging novel techniques for defeating web scrapers taking fresh training data. We also touch on the California Extreme arcade and pinball show, including obscure prototype

en

01:28:51

351: if Name == "Will Smith" { Grade = "A" }

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/08/09

Brad and Will reconvene this week to talk about their recent adventures in the real world. Brad returns from the Vintage Computer Festival West once again with a recap of this year's highlights, including projects to resurrect everything from classic America Online to obscure software distribution kiosks from 1980s Japan, panels with some fun details about things like the creation of Ethernet and programming heroics on the Atari 2600, plus some Quake deathmatch against today's youth. And Will

en

01:19:16

350: Mice Make Bad Decisions

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/08/02

Our friend Steve Lin joins Will this week for a broad discussion about hobbies, learning new skills, and preserving the past. Topics include everything from the multidisciplinary practice of maintaining arcade cabinets and pinball tables, the Video Game History Foundation's new archive of E3 materials, watch repair, model trains, preserving the institutional knowledge of diehard hobbyist communities, how to get started picking up new skills and knowing when to call it quits on a project, and plenty

en

01:02:58

349: We're Gonna Do Some Popcorn Science Here

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/07/26

It's our first-ever solo Q&A episode, and Will takes on a backlog of awesome questions from the audience. Topics include Will's favorite way to make popcorn, under-volting for fun and profit, good books about the history of modern computing, the problem with Peltier/thermo-electric coolers, and what's going on with the Internet of Shit? Content Warning: I discuss self-harm in the context of taking health advice from LLMs from 55-58 minutes. Links: Intel SR-IOV driver note on Github The Idea

en

01:42:40

348: Vincent Caravella, Back Alley Electrician

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/07/19

In a wide-ranging conversation, Nextlander's Vinny Caravella sits down with Will to ask a cavalcade of questions. Topics include whether paid search engines are worth the cash, what happens when your NAS needs new hard drives in 2026, why Fastmail rules, when you do (and do not) need to hire an electrician, and what can only be described as group therapy session about the horrors plumbers face every day. If you want to try Fastmail, consider using Will's Fastmail affiliate link to get a 10% discount

en

01:15:28

347: Is That The Monster from Godzilla?

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/07/12

PC Gamer and Read Only Memo's Wes Fenlon joins us on the pod this week to talk about the latest retro game recompilations for N64, PSX, and Xbox 360 games, with a big bonus helping on the latest MiSTer UI and maintenance updates. Sign up for Wes's Read Only Memo newsletter, it's awesome and free! We talked about: Wes's Decomp and Recomp List MiSTer Companion Juaniwck's Mister Retroarch Save Sync Github PC Ports of Old Console Games Are the New AI Vibe Coding Battleground Support the Pod

en

01:23:55

346: Are Steam Sales Even That Good?

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/07/05

This week, Will is joined by Tested's Norman Chan to dig deep into their extensive hands on testing with the Steam Machine, including how it fits into Valve's burgeoning hardware ecosystem, performance testing, how console-y it actually is, whether you could use it as a more traditional desktop, pricing in the rampocalypse, and even answer some questions from the audience. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus episode, your name

en

01:12:50

345: I Covered This On My Livejournal

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/06/28

This week, Will is joined by tech journalist Florence Ion, of PC Mag, Material Podcast, and Android Faithful to talk about what Google's been up to, the inevitable encroachment of Gemini into Android, and the shocking revelation that she uploaded her Livejournal archive to Gemini. It's a wide-ranging conversation about the state of tech, good and bad uses of AI, what it's like working for a long time in tech journalism, and a whole lot more. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and

en

01:05:47

344: A Fistful of Videogames

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/06/21

Brad's out of town this week, so Will welcomes Expedition: Handheld and The Full Nerd's Adam Patrick Murray to run down the current state of the handheld gaming console market. We talk about Intel's new GPU-first handheld processor, the current state of x86 emulation on ARM handhelds, the pros and cons of the Analog Pocket, and a bunch more! Make sure you check out Adam's work on Expedition: Handheld and The Full Nerd! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our

en

01:13:09

343: Siri Lives on Dynamic Island

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/06/14

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference happened this week, and there was enough going on that we wanted to unpack the whole thing, primarily due to the company's uncharacteristic backpedaling on its... controversial Liquid Glass UI language, not to mention the unusual focus on CPU scheduling and numerous other performance refinements across the board in this year's OS updates, rather than the more typical long list of new features. It was enough to get us saying the words "Snow Leopard," which is

en

01:18:40

342: Faster Thinner Quieter Cooler Cheaper

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/06/07

Computex happened this week, and there was enough to talk about to devote this week's episode to rounding up the high points, including Nvidia's attempt to dominate the consumer Windows market with RTX Spark, the first RGB mini-LED monitors, 8GB laptops becoming common again, PC hardware production shifting back to DDR4 and old CPU sockets, Intel's entry into the handheld gaming market, the (unsurprising) absence of any news about Zen 6 and Nova Lake, and other stuff!Show notes and links:

en

01:20:23

341: F2 Is My Most Used F

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod. ·

2026/05/31

Question time again! This month we discuss quite a wide range of topics, such as tracking down printer dots with a USB microscope, the dream of going to SIGGRAPH, the legality of scanning and uploading "lost" old magazines, how to stay objective about new stuff as you get older, steady fan curve strategies for CPU air cooling, how to cope when you find out that cool new open source project was made by AI, renaming files like a pro, and the enduring mystery of ICQ's event sounds. Support the Pod

en

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

Lead With AI

Tamara Nall

The Tech Trek

Elevano

Engineering the Intelligent Enterprise

PRASAD BHONDE

The Vergecast

The Verge

Double Tap

Steven Scott, Shaun Preece, Steven...