Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.

Hosted by Brad Shoemaker, Will Smith

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353

Latest episode

Jun 2026

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About the show

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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60 recent

June 14, 20261 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 is always a good feeling. We also consider new broader parental controls, the apparently final state of Apple Intelligence and Siri AI features, 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

June 7, 20261 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! Show notes and links: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-342-computex-26 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

May 31, 20261 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. 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

May 24, 20261 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 air cooling, CPU spikes in Windows, and other stuff! The GamersNexus video on AIO placement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbGomv195sk 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

May 17, 20261 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 in the Linux world, the state of file sharing and music piracy, and plenty of other stuff. How Dinosaurs May Have Cursed Us With Aging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWOErbTL9N4 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

May 10, 202658 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 MS-DOS, and more! Notes and links: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-338-news 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

May 3, 20261 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. Brad's also been down a rabbit hole on 2D printing (and has the battle scars to prove it) with some news and revelations about paper printers new and old. Projects! 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

April 26, 20261 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, deterministic computing that is the Artemis flight control system. Links for Artemis and shuttle program flight computers: https://cacm.acm.org/news/how-nasa-built-artemis-iis-fault-tolerant-computer/ https://www.ghs.com/news/20260423_int-178_orion_lockheed.html https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19900015844/downloads/19900015844.pdf 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

April 19, 20261 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 large and small, realistic and far-fetched ideas for making Windows tolerable again. "Our Commitment to Windows Quality:" https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2026/03/20/our-commitment-to-windows-quality/ 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

April 12, 20261 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 continued presence on the Moon, and a bunch more. Show notes and links: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-334-artemis-ii 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