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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

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32 episodes
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Avg 1 hr 13 min
English

Episodes 32

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#343
June 14 · 1 hr 13 min
343: Siri Lives on Dynamic Island
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
#342
June 7 · 1 hr 18 min
342: Faster Thinner Quieter Cooler Cheaper
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!
#341
May 31 · 1 hr 20 min
341: F2 Is My Most Used F
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.
#340
May 24 · 1 hr 10 min
340: Like a Bong for Your CPU
Brad's tired of throttling his CPU due to an inadequate heatsink. Will's been spending a lot more time testing PC hardware of late. Between those two things, we thought it was a good time to do a check-in on CPU cooling, and primarily liquid cooling, so we can establish the facts on the ground about modern AIOs and custom loops with an eye toward helping Brad decide what to get. Turns out, there's more to know than ever, and yet it's also never been simpler. We also talk a little about modern ai
#339
May 17 · 1 hr 22 min
339: Billionaires Versus Dinosaurs
After a couple years off, we're returning to our annual tradition of each picking a year for our birthdays that we want to review in-depth from a tech and science perspective. This time Will picked 2002 because... well, you'll see, but it gave us the opportunity to reflect on a bunch of just-post-turn-of-the-century tech trends, like weird pre-smartphone mobile devices, the venerable WRT54G, all the Y2K techno-optimistic design trends, digital filmmaking going mainstream, a truly momentous March
#338
May 10 · 58 min
338: Everything for Everything
Somehow the news just keeps happening, so we're here to round up and chew over another handful of headlines this week. Discussed on this episode are stories about canary traps in political databases, AMD bringing true HDMI 2.1 support to Linux, Microsoft's latest efforts to open-source its history, the trend of small hardware makers releasing source assets for their devices, the long-awaited arrival of Wildcat Lake, and more, plus fun digressions into printer tracking dots, the era of DOS before
#337
May 3 · 1 hr 15 min
337: They're 3D-Printing Shoes Now
We've got a project potpourri this week of things we've been getting our hands on, literally in the case of Will and his brand new Steam Controller. We talk through the ins and outs of Valve's first new hardware in a while, including button feel, a variety of use cases, what you can do with it if Steam isn't present, and more. Will's also been in the mouse labs, testing an 8000Hz polling rate and glass feet, and finally, he reports on what he's gotten out of his first month with a new 3D printer
#336
April 26 · 1 hr 27 min
336: When Triple Redundancy Isn't Enough
After all these monthly Q&A episodes, you folks continue to send us great Qs every month, and this time around we dig into such topics as the MacBook Neo's target audience, Windows running on Linux, technical and corporate work jargon bleeding into your personal life, Apple's relatively quiet 50th anniversary, ultrawide monitors versus lots of monitors, using Home Assistant for everything (or not), the likelihood that every home will one day have a 3D printer, and the marvel of redundant, determ
#335
April 19 · 1 hr 16 min
335: With Craft and Focus
It's time to fix Windows 11. OK, that might be a little ambitious for one podcast episode, but it's at least time to step through the plan Microsoft unveiled recently for improving Windows 11 and addressing some of its shortcomings (and perhaps salvaging its brand a bit in the process). We go over forthcoming changes around the taskbar and Start Menu, File Explorer, notifications, native WinUI interface components, WSL2, device drivers, and a bunch of other stuff, plus bring plenty of our own la
#334
April 12 · 1 hr 11 min
334: We Nailed the Math!
Friend of the show and all-around science guy Kishore Hari joins us once again, this time to dig into humanity's return to the Moon in NASA's Artemis program. We explore everything from the astronauts' wakeup playlists and diets to the wireless and camera tech onboard, how observing this kind of mission from Earth has changed since 1972, the history of and political context around the program, our favorite uplifting moments from Artemis II, astronomy opportunities that might be enabled by a cont
#333
April 5 · 1 hr 4 min
333: I Used To Do a Podcast
Brad's out this week, so Norman Chan takes the guest chair to talk us through the current state of the art in 3D printing. We cover the latest in FDM printers, whether resin printers are right for you, the best places to find 3D models to print, how you can edit and adjust the models you want to print, and a whole lot more!
#332
March 29 · 1 hr 20 min
332: Shout Out to the 1979 Lady Kenmore
Is it time for another Q&A again already? How the months just fly by. This month we address everything from auto-generated podcast chapters and episode links to computer class-action lawsuits, corporate remote administration of your personal devices, how to move a PC across the ocean, the dream of permanent standard time, why you probably still shouldn't clean your computer with a vacuum cleaner, and a bunch more.

Showing 21–32 of 32 episodes