This week we attempt to unpack the recent, historic security breach in the open source world, after the discovery of a secret backdoor that was inserted by a malicious actor into the the xz-utils package, with a focus on which specific Linux distros were targeted and why, how the attacker socially engineered their way into the position of authority that made this possible, and what ought to be done to support developers of critical infrastructure to (hopefully) prevent this from happening again. 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

We're doing a follow-up Q&A this week while we sort out some scheduling hurdles on the backend, and taking a bunch more of your questions from the last six months about ideal pixel density on monitors, what the heck Salesforce does, a portable gaming-focused Windows, when in the product cycle to buy, how the Clapper might integrate into your home automation setup, and lastly, you know, the slow and steady decline of everything around us.

March's Q&A features a wide array of questions that inspired discussions about such wide-ranging topics as our love of screensavers, a world without Gmail, Will's strong opinions on Ethernet termination standards, wearing shoes inside the house (or not), the lack of 9s in product naming, Proton-like cross-platform game support on MacOS, and a bunch 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

Inspired by what's probably the most common subject we see questions about on our Discord, this week we're doing an updated primer on home networking, with a refresher on some basic terms and concepts and our thoughts on a wide array of topics from modern mesh networks to fiber in the home, ISP-provided equipment, whether you should separate your wi-fi from your gateway, rolling your own router, the rapidly decreasing cost of high-end network speeds, 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

We've got a two-fer this week, with a pair of topics that might not have filled a whole ep on their own but turn out to be two great podcast tastes that, uh, taste great together... anyway, first we talk about the benchmark Will is currently creating in Unreal Engine to push CPUs and GPUs in a game development context, and then we check in on how the grand unification of smart home devices is coming along with the new Matter and Thread standards, now that products have been on the market for a year or so. There's definitely just one standard now, right? ...Right? 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

What makes a great tech demo? Besides killer tech, do you need theatricality? Stage presence? The risk of everything exploding at the seams at any moment? This week we look back on a ton of notable tech demos big and small, from the largest Apple and Microsoft stages to people in their living rooms, to reminisce about some of the most exciting reveals and try to locate the exact intersection where earnestness and carnival barking meet to create a truly memorable presentation. 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

Book club returns this week, now that we've both read id Software founder John Romero's memoir, Doom Guy: Life in First Person. Join us for an extremely nerdy chat about Romero's early days as a teenage Apple II developer learning 6502 assembly, the pre-id team's blistering one-game-a-month output at Softdisk, technical innovations that led to id's most groundbreaking games, the internal strife that ultimately split the company, retrospective thoughts on a very different mid-'90s Doom 3 than the one we got later, and a bunch 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

This month's Q&A features another bumper crop of great topics, including installing in-wall speakers and hidden audio systems, the final word on the origins of WASD, doing A/V production on Linux (really), the relative value of the Raspberry Pi in 2024, how we use bookmarks these days, our feelings on mechanical versus smart watches, and a long-awaited update on the wi-fi sheep shed.

News has been happening (when hasn't it?) and this week we're rounding up some of the stories that caught our attention in recent days. First, the launch of OpenAI's generative-video product Sora, as we consider what this thing is actually going to be used for, and what sorts of havoc it may wreak. Next, the effects of the EU's Digital Markets Act and the stringent ways that some large platform holders are starting to respond to it (looking at you, Apple). Lastly, the talk out of DICE about the state of the video game business and the likelihood of getting new projects off the ground. 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

We're pleased to welcome Tested's Norman Chan back to the show, fresh off of his first week with the Apple Vision Pro and ready to fill us in on everything from the fitting process at the store to UI shortcuts with your mouth, connecting to an external Mac, the ins and outs of the video passthrough (and your loved ones appearing as ghosts atop Mount Hood), and everything in between. 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