Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.

Hosted by Brad Shoemaker, Will Smith

Technology ScienceInterviews guestsExplicit

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361

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Aug 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

August 16, 20261 hr 11 min

352: Tell the Robots to Eff Off

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 cocktail cabinets and some updates on the open source CRT chassis we talked about a couple of years ago. Finally, we briefly look at the state of refurbished MacBook Pros now that un-refurbished (that is, new) machines have gotten so pricey. Brad's video of the td-crt demo cabinet: https://imgur.com/a/california-extreme-26-td-crt-demo-cabinet-5s2gB1k 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

August 9, 20261 hr 28 min

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

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 returns from Los Angeles to talk about object show meetups and the latest from Disneyland, such as high-tech face projection mapping, why the Lightning Lane isn't so Lightning anymore, the joy of trackless dark rides, and more. Notes and links for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-351-vcfw-disney 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

August 2, 20261 hr 19 min

350: Mice Make Bad Decisions

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 more. The VGHF's E3 materials archive: https://gamehistory.org/e3-history/ 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

July 26, 20261 hr 2 min

349: We're Gonna Do Some Popcorn Science Here

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 Factory Soul of a New Machine In the Beginning.... Was the Command Line Fire in the Valley Hackers Reddit List of Computer History Books Whirley-Pop Links contain affiliate codes. Buying stuff using them helps support the pod! 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

July 19, 20261 hr 42 min

348: Vincent Caravella, Back Alley Electrician

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 on your first year and Fastmail throws a few bucks Will's way. 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

July 12, 20261 hr 15 min

347: Is That The Monster from Godzilla?

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! 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

July 5, 20261 hr 23 min

346: Are Steam Sales Even That Good?

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 in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

June 28, 20261 hr 12 min

345: I Covered This On My Livejournal

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 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 21, 20261 hr 5 min

344: A Fistful of Videogames

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 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 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