Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.

217: Still a Festering Hellhole

14 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Another Consumer Electronics Show has come and gone, and we've sifted through the highs and lows to bring you a casual discussion about the stuff that...

216: Tactical Baking Method

07 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The seasonal metaphors continue as we weather a blizzard of great questions from you for the monthly Q&A, this time covering everything from Swiss arm...

215: Taking the Temperature of the Market

31 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On the final day of 2023, Will is joined by Adam Patrick Murray from PC World to discuss the year that was. We run down the last twelve months of PC a...

214: David Smith (Hobbyist)

24 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week, Will is joined by Kishore Hari, who takes us on scientific journey through some of the biggest science stories of the year. Topics include ...

213: Therapy Over Teams

17 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We had such a surplus of good questions in October and November that this week we're shattering our own precedent and doing a supplemental mid-month Q...

212: Programmable for the Masses

10 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The temperature outside is plummeting, but the number of cold opens in this episode is skyrocketing! We convene once again this week for our sort-of-s...

211: The Drier, the Burnier

03 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A cornucopia of great questions graced our podcasting table this month, and from it we drew such topics as (not) mixing and matching your RAM, fishing...

210: TWELVE HUNDRED MEGARAYS

26 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Will's been fortunate to spend a chunk of time with the new Steam Deck OLED, and now it's time to talk through both his firsthand impressions and the ...

209: Please Show the Hamster Guy Some Respect

19 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's nearly Turkey Day here in the US once again, so it's time to discuss another round of tech we're thankful for, which includes such topics as the ...

208: Don't Be Mean to Racoons

12 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We've been thinking about troubleshooting lately (because it feels like we've all been doing a lot of it), so in this ep we did a formal rundown of ho...

207: When Magazines Were Phone Books

05 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're firing up the time machine again this week for another visit to the era when computer coverage was "printed" on "paper" in bound volumes called ...

206: A Bunch of Ferrets Is Called a Business

29 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

October's terrifying batch of questions hits us like an airborne jack-o-lantern this month, as we discuss topics like: why it's RGB and not RYB, the o...

205: More Than a Drip, Less Than a Gush

22 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week we're doing some follow-ups on recent episodes to fill in a few blanks. Spurred on by the PS5's Spider-Man 2, we wanted to talk about the re...

204: Science Cookies??

15 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We've got a pleasantly floral potpourri this week, mainly focused on Will's trip report from this weekend's Bay Area Maker Faire, the first time the D...

203: Don't Mess With Big Encyclopedia

08 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Following on from our consideration of Google's many terminated products in episode 74, we turn our attention to another graveyard this week, one with...

202: The Puritanical Wrath of the Universe

01 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A crisp Fall batch of questions has found its way to the show this month, as we attempt to deliver answers about such things as trusting your devices ...

201: Core 1 Ultra Extreme Plus+

24 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Intel held its annual Innovation event this week, and our friend Adam Patrick Murray from PC World was there. Now he's here to fill us in on all the d...

200: Bump to Squirt

17 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes the events are so current we can't help discussing them, and such is the case with this week's act of self-immolation on the part of Unity a...

199: MAKE ROME

10 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Will dons the game developer hat again this week for a deep dive into how a game gets built. No, not the coding and design and art and all that -- we ...

198: Insert ASCII Shrug™ Here

03 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're back this week with another round of hot tips for making your computing life less annoying, including super secret UI settings, methods of bendi...

197: The Pigs Go Ham

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Another piping-hot batch of questions is here straight out of the oven (where "the oven" is Discord and our inbox), and we do our best to deliver answ...

196: HDMI Kablammo

20 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Since Brad just went through the new-TV-buying-and-setup process (for someone else), we decided it was time for us to look past our classic plasmas an...

195: In Our Bendy Phone Era

13 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Our friend Wes Fenlon is back, this time to talk about his experiences daily-carrying Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip series of foldable smartphones. By inter...

194: All I Want Is Simple Determinism!

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're back this week with the mythical three-peat of updates on topics we've discussed either recently or in the distant past. First, following up on ...

193: The Bob Ballard Fan Club

30 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's that Q&A time again, so in between waxing philosophical about meteor showers and shipwrecks, we take a few of your questions this week, about the...

192: Straight Out the Bunn

23 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Will gets to dispense his considerable knowledge of coffee this week as Brad gets into cold brew and consuming way too much caffeine, with a medium-bo...

191: WINNER: NONE

16 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're dusting off the ol' projector this week for a discussion about the 1983 nuclear-warfare classic WarGames (which Brad had never seen!). Did you k...

190: A Mishmash Mismatch

09 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

New competition is springing up in the microblogging space by the week these days, and to one degree or another, all these new services are attempting...

189: A Long Time in a Short Time

02 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There's a lot going on lately (isn't there always?), so we did a roundup of some recent news stories this week. Canada is now requiring Google and Fac...

188: Full-Time Lego Broker

25 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As one social media platform after another lights itself on fire, we spend a good chunk of this month's Q&A thinking about other ways to use (or just ...

Special FOSS Ep: Pine64 With Lukasz Erecinski

18 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Due to travel and other scheduling, we're debuting a brand new episode of the FOSS Pod in the feed this week. Hope you enjoy!Pine64 is one of the most...

187: Certified Volumetric Environment™

11 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Our friend Norman Chan of Tested.com seized the chamfered aluminum ring this week by not only getting invited to the Apple Vision Pro reveal event but...

186: Cutting Matt

04 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week we're rounding up another handful of lifehacks-that-aren't-lifehacks, ranging from unexpected uses for barcode readers to apps that reduce f...

185: That's Nana's Prerogative

28 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The last Sunday of the month heralds questions such as these: What's Amazon going to do with data on the layout of your house? Are the Netflixes of th...

184: Not the Out-of-Box Experience

21 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Now that we're both on new PCs in the last six months, it's time for us to run through some of our experiences and offer a few (hopefully new) tips fo...

183: HiroProtagonist Loves an Inhale

14 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're going to start taking the occasional look at a product that changed everything in its respective field, starting this week with the game console...

182: The Healthy Kind of Nihilism

07 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're delighted to be joined this week by Katie Mack, noted astrophysicist and author of The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), to talk abo...

181: Hatch Watch Is On

30 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Our month-ending Q&A is here again, with a bevy of emails and Discord questions pertaining to subjects such as these: scanning and 3D-printing precisi...

180: Chowder 'n Cookies

23 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Spring is in the air, flowers are blooming, and the potpourri is back. In our latest floral pouch of podcast topics, we get into the IP camera setup W...

179: The World’s Largest Graphics Card

17 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Yes, Brad built a new PC. Seriously! For this momentous occasion, we got together to talk all things PC-building, starting with some early impressions...

Special FOSS Ep: Raspberry Pi With Eben Upton

09 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Each of us are on overlapping mini-vacations this week, so we're debuting a brand new episode of the FOSS Pod in the feed. Enjoy!With tens of millions...

178: Windows on Top of Windows

02 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's been several months since Will needed a laptop and bought an M2 iPad Pro, keyboard, and pencil instead, so we figured enough time has passed to d...

177: Five Thou Tolerances

26 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Another month's worth of questions has accrued, and so this week we dispense answers about being the family tech support, silliness with Imperial meas...

176: Phone Blasters in DOS Land

19 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tech news is getting a little too surreal for us lately, so we're taking a brief trip back to a simpler time. This week we go through the very first i...

175: Short Analog, Long Digital

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 u...

174: Weaponized Smurfing

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 co...

173: Splinter Cell in a Kayak

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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...

172: Orange Ricky & Smashboy

19 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

171: "Gratuitous Stroke"

12 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 ge...

170: The Robots (Hopefully) Aren't Coming

05 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 fee...

169: Don't Trust Alberta's Lies

29 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 rob...

168: It's Cool to Be Cool

22 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

167: We Can't Give Them the Heads

15 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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...

166: Someone Else's Cables

08 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 m...

165: I Don’t Believe in Adverbs

01 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On our first show in 2023, we rejoin our epic task of ranking all of humanity's software. Will we actually start putting things in order this week? Or...

164: Truly Lawless

25 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Here at the tail end of 2022, are we nuts enough to attempt to rank every piece of software ever written? OK, not quite, but we're going to do our bes...

163: JWST (Just Wonderful Science and Technology)

18 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our friend Kishore Hari becomes our first three-time guest by joining us this week to run down some of our favorite science and tech stories of 2022, ...

162: Storage Wars

11 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Will's recent clean-slate PC build and newfound abundance of extremely fast storage got us thinking about all things storage. So this week we had a to...

161: Get Stretchy

04 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Brrr, is it cold in here? It's time to deliver our semi-annual Cube of Cold Opens: Holiday Edition, with short and pithy conversations about cramming ...

160: Gelatinous Soup Tube

27 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We're thankful for the copious bounty of questions sent in by you this month, which got us talking about all kinds of stuff. Stuff like our love of tr...

159: It's Good Brain

20 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Techsgiving is here again, as we wax thankful about some of the stuff we love in our own specific nerdy spheres. Join us for some chill discussion of ...

158: Twitastrophe

13 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Elon Musk's Twitter disaster has been impossible to look away from, and since we probably owe some amount of our careers to everyone's favorite social...

157: Cereal's Dark Legacy

06 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This week we decided to do something radically different and "record" a "podcast" to answer some of your "questions." In the course of doing so we rev...

Special Ep: Don't Pull the Frenulum

30 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Brad is feeling under the weather this week, so we weren't able to turn Qs into As, but we did manage to find a classic Halloween episode of the Patro...

156: The People's Benchmark

23 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's been too long since PC World's hardware expert Gordon Mah Ung dropped by, and what better occasion than the big launch of new CPUs from both AMD ...

155: Cyberplunk

16 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The sizable slab of silicon known as the Geforce 4090 has landed in Will's computer, so this week we did a deep dive on his experiences with it so far...

154: Gas Station Tri-Tip

09 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Will and family just did the Southern California theme-park circuit, so this week we had a casual chat about some of the more technical aspects of vis...

Special FOSS Ep: OctoPrint With Gina Häußge

02 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This week, we're checking back in with the FOSS Pod--now that we're several months (and more than a dozen episodes) into its run--by presenting our re...

153: A Time for Questions

25 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Summer may be over, but we're still here and ready to answer the hot questions from you, the listener. This month we field everything from automating ...

152: Three Pfizers to the Wind

18 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This past Friday EVGA made the shocking and abrupt announcement that it's exiting the GPU market after two decades of making Nvidia cards. We drew on ...

151: A Dynamic Island Getaway

11 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The annual Apple event has come and gone, and we're here to run down the goings on with the latest iPhones, Watches, and AirPods. Learn more about sat...

150: Things You Plug Into Your TV

04 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We're thinking a lot about the ways you receive and watch TV this week, with a look back at the last 20-ish years of set-top boxes beginning with the ...

149: The Rhythm Nation Test Suite

28 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We're doing some navel-gazing on this month's Q&A with a bevy of questions that came in about this very podcast: the business of hosting and advertisi...

148: Neither Fish Nor Fowl: The Foo VR Story

21 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hey, did you know Will ran a VR animation company before we did this podcast? By popular request, this week we talk through the history of Foo VR star...

147: Why Thread Matters

14 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Together, Matter and Thread are the new software and networking standards that promise to make all of your home automation and IoT gear work together,...

146: Nothing Beats Parachute Day

07 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A grab bag, a smorgasbord, a potpourri -- whatever you call it, we've assembled another batch of micro-topics to wend our way through. This time aroun...

145: Fat Stacks of DIMMs

31 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Look, it's getting harder to think of intro text for a Q&A episode -- but it's ever easier to record one with so many great Qs! This month we tackle o...

144: The Anamorphic Squinch

24 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Brad's birthday has come and gone, which gives him the privilege of choosing our next tech year in review. This time, the banner year of 1997, which s...

Special Ep: A Flickr Group for Martian Photographers

17 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

With the James Webb telescope in the news and Will convalescing from COVID-19, we're bringing back one of our favorite patron-exclusive eps this week:...

143: The Ol' Dirty Bastard Adapter

10 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Will and family have made their annual month-long pilgrimage to the desert once again, so this week we ended up having a free-wheeling conversation ab...

142: Flanders Is Dead. Long Live Neddy

03 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Will's longtime home server Flanders has finally given up the ghost, and now he's streamlined his life by moving to an integrated Synology box. After ...

141: Poor Pour Pore Technique

26 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It means being bad at researching how to use a spout. Oh, right, this is a Q&A episode! This month we discuss the potential of open smartphones, Fermi...

140: Wes and Norm Were Right

19 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Will got his hands on his very own Steam Deck and he's bursting at the seams to talk about it, so we're back with a follow-up to our first Deck ep wit...

139: Grill Drama Is Real Drama

12 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As summer heats up, we're cooling things down with another (now-semi-annual?) cube of cold opens. Thrill! to the long and sordid tale of Will's Stripe...

138: Crank: The Unofficial Game of the Movie

05 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We've been mulling the idea of donning our game dev hats and attempting to make our own little Playdate game as an educational exercise, and this week...

137: Emails Qs Are Qs Too

29 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It seems like it was only last month that we answered our last batch of questions, and yet here we are with another one. This time we address subjects...

136: The Hubble-ub

22 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Part two of our 1993 retrospective is here, with our consideration of the following: Power Computing's Macintosh clones, Apple's first Newton, the pro...

135: This Machine Is a Server!!

15 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On the occasion of Will's birth we're back for another year in review, this time taking a look at the year he went off to college, 1993 (or at least a...

134: Another Lane Disaster Waiting to Happen

08 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This week we're putting ourselves to the test by bringing a list of PC and tech peeves, and then passing judgement on our own complaints. Do we have a...

133: The Lady and the Samba Problem

01 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Queeeeeestions and aaaaaaanswers. This month we field Qs from you, the listener, about better electric vehicles versus better mass transit, the myster...

132: The Coldest Open

24 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

With Will briefly trapped in the great frozen north(ern California), we got together for a chilly, scrappy two-fer this week with a couple of short to...

131: Booth by GWAR

17 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's time for another visit with Stewart Cheifet and the Computer Chronicles. This time we're heading back to 1995 for a computer games special that i...

130: The Last Home Button Standing

10 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Well, we're only about *check's Apple Watch* a month late to the most recent Apple event, which we're using as an excuse to talk about a whole range o...

129: Main Character Territory

03 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Will sure had a wild, weird week on Twitter following last week's, uh, historic showdown at the Oscars, and now he's here to decompress. What were the...

128: An Elevator Named Otis

27 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The monthly questions came in, and now the answers go forth, pertaining to such topics as these: weirdly named folders on our desktops, regrettable us...

Special Episode: Return of Manhattanhenge

21 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The United States Senate proved to be full of Tech Pod listeners this week as it passed a measure to make Daylight Savings Time permanent. But wait, d...

127: "fear, sex"

13 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Will just happened to watch a whole bunch of Star Trek: TNG when he was laid up recently, so we got together this week to decidedly NOT talk about Bes...

126: Welcome to the Question Store

06 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Another round of your questions meets another round of our answers this week, with queries about delayed eating habits, the "break-even" point on fixi...

125: A NUC With a Screen

27 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's a little reunion this week as our Steam Deck-equipped friends Norman Chan (of Tested) and Wes Fenlon (of PC Gamer) join us for a deep dive into V...

Special Episode: FOSS NAS Solutions

20 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Building a NAS served as the gateway into free and open source software for both of us, so in this ep we're looping back around and checking in on the...