• 241: The Computruth About Computex
    Jun 30 2024

    This week, Friend of the Show Adam Patrick Murray from PC World joins Will to share the ground truth about Computex. Freshly returned from Taipei, Adam is a Computex veteran, and told us what it's like to attend and cover the most important PC hardware trade show in the world.

    What Hardware Should You Use for UE5 Development?
    PC World's YouTube Channel
    The Full Nerd Podcast
    How MSI Laptops are Designed Video
    MSI's GPUs Through History Video

    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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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • 240: The Mouse That Changed Everything
    Jun 23 2024

    We're taking another close look at a product that broke out and redefined its entire category, this time the venerable IntelliMouse Explorer. These days it's hard to remember that it was Microsoft who banished the infernal ball and introduced the optical mouse to the mainstream, so we head back to 1999 and discuss what mice were like beforehand, how mechanical and optical sensors work, debate PS/2 versus USB, make an argument that the whole PC gaming accessory ecosystem owes its existence to this product, and more.

    Our last game-changer product deep-dive, about the Xbox 360: https://techpod.content.town/episodes/183-hiroprotagonist-loves-an-inhale-a0zOAKKo

    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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    54 mins
  • 239: Calculator on an iPad?!
    Jun 16 2024

    Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference has come and gone again, and frankly there were enough interesting additions to the company's various OSs that we figured an episode was warranted even before we got to "Apple Intelligence." We do our best in this jumbo episode to round up everything from silly corporate stunts to a (finally, maybe) context-aware Siri, an intelligent way to deal with too many notifications, build-your-own emojis, better vitals on the watch, MacOS's long-overdue window-snapping, and too many other features to list.

    Show notes for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-239-wwdc-24

    Watch the WWDC keynote here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXeOiIDNNek

    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

    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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    1 hr and 47 mins
  • 238: The Dread of Sitting in the Cone Zone
    Jun 9 2024

    Will just traded in the ol' Chevy Bolt for a 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5, so it's time to run down all the pros and cons of this newer and more robust electric vehicle, and also check in on everything that's changed in the world of EVs in the three (!!) years since we did our Bolt episode. Listen on for our thoughts on everything from plug standards to the rapidly expanding charger network, how many driver assists are too many, the seemingly endless absurdities in automotive UX, and a bunch of other stuff.

    Show notes for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-238-ioniq-5

    Here's our episode on the Chevy Bolt and the basics of EVs: https://techpod.content.town/episodes/88-it-just-makes-the-lithium-angrier

    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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    1 hr and 43 mins
  • 237: Should We Really Be Teaching Machines to Lie?
    Jun 2 2024

    Microsoft has announced some... controversial new AI-driven features coming to Windows 11, so we thought it was time to dissect the Copilot+ PC spec and particularly its Recall functionality, especially in light of the new Qualcomm ARM chips that are bringing more efficiency and more machine-learning compute power to the portable PC space. Is this stuff something you need? Is it something you should worry about? We do our best to answer these and other questions.

    Show notes and links for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-237-copilot-plus-ai

    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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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • 236: Not an Egg, Not Yet a Chicken
    May 26 2024

    It's another Q&A episode, and this month we get into a wide range of topics including our haul from the electronics flea market, our growing appreciation for SCART, Micro Center's rapidly expanding operations, the open-source automotive self-driving solution, a farewell to mini-USB, a quick Steam patching explainer, 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 credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • 235: The Diabolical Nature of Ear Bones
    May 19 2024

    We've got another two-fer of mini-topics this week around projects we've been tinkering with lately. First, Will has been investigating ways to get the SteamOS experience on hardware that's not a SteamDeck, with both the full-on SteamOS rebuild HoloISO and the more general gaming-focused Linux distro Bazzite. Second, we've both had Fallout New Vegas (and its many necessary mods) on the brain a lot lately, and have been looking into the open-source mod manager Wabbajack and some of the other stuff going on around automating mods these days. Lastly, uh, enjoy the podcast!

    Stuff discussed in this episode includes:

    HoloISO: https://github.com/HoloISO/releases

    Bazzite: https://bazzite.gg/

    Wabbajack: https://www.wabbajack.org/

    Viva New Vegas: https://vivanewvegas.moddinglinked.com/

    Tale of Two Wastelands: https://taleoftwowastelands.com/

    Rounds: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557740/ROUNDS/

    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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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • 234: One Step Closer to Bringing Back Webrings
    May 12 2024

    Hey, remember RSS? Friend of the show Wes Fenlon joins us for a record fourth (!!) time to reminisce about the glory days of really simple syndication, when you could just aggregate all your favorite news and blogs into one tidy feed. This episode is about more than just waxing nostalgic, though; Wes is here to tell us all about bringing it all back with his self-hosted RSS stack, including his setup for FreshRSS (and some of its alternatives), ways to get RSS out of sites that don't even serve it anymore, the growing "indie web" movement that aims to recapture the spirit of a simpler Internet, and more.

    Show notes for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-234-self-hosted-rss

    Check out Wes' newsletter on emulation and retro games: https://www.readonlymemo.com/

    Episode art courtesy of Sandwich Tribunal: https://www.sandwichtribunal.com/2024/02/south-australias-fritz-and-sauce/

    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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    1 hr and 19 mins