Security expert Josh Vanhoose joins the podcast to discuss his journey into cybersecurity, the importance of real-world experience, and how to humanize security, with hosts Chrystal Taylor and Sean Sebring. They explore how to transition into cybersecurity, the significance of entry-level certifications, and the tools available for learning. © 2024…

American Thanksgiving draws near, so it's time again for our annual recitation of techie stuff that we're thankful for. From tangible products on your desk, around the house, and on the road, to more abstract things like moderating your social media intake, finding alternatives to Amazon, and the ease of fixing your foolish eyewear mistakes, we fin…

We're back again with that floral favorite, the potpourri episode. This time it's a project potpourri, touching on some tech-related projects we've either tackled recently or are planning to get to soon. Learn the full story of how Will more or less Frankensteined his ultrawide monitor back from the dead, listen to Brad's plans for a virtual privat…

It's been a wild few months in CPUs, with next-generation releases from both AMD and Intel in their respective Zen 5 and Arrow Lake categories. Now that most all the big parts are out, we break down what's what, including why everyone is finally going disaggregated (and what that means), what's going on with OS updates to make your processor run fa…

We're here at the end of the spookiest month and ready to field your questions once again, this time addressing subjects such as alternative file managers, how often (and why) to replace your surge protectors, why some electrical plugs have that sideways prong, our ability to suss out regional accents, the state of modern instant coffee, and why ce…

Brad's back from Western North Carolina, so it's time for a casual debriefing on being out there for two and a half weeks dealing with the Hurricane Helene aftermath, with a focus on all sorts of technical subjects like portable lighting strategies, acquiring and hooking up a generator in a hurry, making sense of the wiring layouts in older houses,…

Wes Fenlon stops by this week to help Will run down all the new features and changes in the 24H2 update to Windows 11, from better quick settings to Wi-Fi 7 support and the long-awaited (or perhaps dreaded) addition of Microsoft's Copilot AI features. Then Will also delivers a trip report from this year's Maker Faire, detailing all the best project…

Adam Patrick Murray, PC World's handheld PC gaming expert, drops by to talk about the current state of the handheld union. We discuss what's going on with hardware for the Valve Steam Deck, the ASUS Rog Ally X, and a whole lot more, plus dig deep into the pros and cons of Windows vs. Linux on handhelds, talk about what's going on with Valve's versi…

In this episode of SolarWinds TechPod, hosts Sean Sebring and Chrystal Taylor discuss sustainability in technology with SolarWinds Evangelist Sascha Giese. They explore the energy consumption of data centers, innovative green initiatives, and the importance of circular IT practices. The conversation also touches on the concept of greenwashing and t…

Norman Chan has seen the future of eyewear and it is... well, not something you can buy, or even try. But he's donned Meta's Orion AR glasses and has seen (and touched) the augmented reality future. We also talk about the Harvard students who turned their Meta Ray Bans into the ultimate privacy violating machine and Meta's new cheaper Quest 3S. Bes…

Questions! You ask 'em, we answer 'em. This month, we field Qs about such subjects as migrating search engines to Kagi (or at least just away from Google), wi-fi etiquette as the in-home sysadmin, novel uses for power over Ethernet, where the speed holes on the new Ryzens come from, what the forthcoming landscape of over-the-counter hearing aids mi…

Will's out this week, so Nextlander's Vinny Caravella stops by for a freewheeling gab session about what he's been up to in tech lately, including the professional and personal roles for the eight (!) computers that live in his house, adventures in exposing his (son's) web services to the Internet, the need for a good audio processor in your record…

It was a really big week for hardware announcements, with Sony finally filling in the details on the PlayStation 5 Pro, and Apple announcing new phones, watches, headphones and more. We dive into both subjects, including the PS5 Pro's promising AI upscaling and less promising whopper of a price, the slightly strange AirPod roadmap, the still-ongoin…

Mark Roberts, Technical Director of Prosperon Networks, joins hosts Sean Sebring and Chrystal Taylor to salute the unique challenges of IT project management. From the joys of scope creep to the intricacies of wrangling leadership buy-in, they cover the life of a project from initial discovery process all the way through to project handover. © 2024…

The world is steadily moving on to Wi-Fi 7 (or 802.11be, if you like), so we figured it's about time we sit down and attempt to understand what separates this latest standard from all the wireless fidelity that came before. Where in the world did they get a number like 46Gbps? What are the forward- and backward-compatible implications with existing…

This week we put our security expert* hats back on to talk about the latest hotness in login technology, passkeys. Find out how passkeys work, how they enable you to login without a password, which major platforms are supporting them, and where and how you should manage them. We also do a quick update on more traditional time-based authenticator ap…

The Qs that we attempt to A in this month's question-fest include: What are some less obvious benefits of portable apps? How trustworthy is a package manager? Is a Windows Pro license really worth it? What's your microwave technique for even, efficient heating? How do you stop analyzing products and just buy something already? Is a MagSafe connecto…

Our good friend Steve Lin joins us to run down the trip he and Brad recently took to the Vintage Computer Festival: West Coast Edition, hosted in Mountain View, CA's wonderful Computer History Museum. Did you ever wonder about the strange arrow-key layout of early Soviet computers? Or how to build your own CRT out of a tube you found on the sidewal…

SolarWinds Director of Corporate Communications Dillon Townsel joins hosts Sean Sebring and Chrystal Taylor to talk about his journey from the military to civilian life. He provides insights on how to navigate the transition process and offers advice for those looking to transition into the technology field. © 2024 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All ri…

We got a listener request to talk about our ride-or-die software, the apps we just can't live without, and we thought a good way to focus that subject was to step through everything we've got on our taskbar, running in the system tray, and pinned to the Start menu. Listen in as we talk through our workflows that feature all sorts of both well known…

Matchmaking: it's hard. Wait, not the online dating kind (well, maybe that too) but the kind where you have to match a bunch of different players with different hardware and different geographic locations together over high-speed Internet and let them have fun in a game together. Prompted by Activision's release of a white paper about Call of Duty'…

Q&A time! The last episode of July sees us discussing topics such as turning a childhood computer into a VM, mandatory open source software in government institutions, the strange and continuing ubiquity of 3.5" card readers, building your own private television channel, the death of corporate email, how we fed our early tech obsessions growing up …

We're putting the time machine back into service again this week with another magazine review, this time of Next Generation issue 36 from December 1997. Notably, this was the issue when the venerable thinking-person's game magazine first declared the PC the best place to play games, along with an in-depth assessment of the N64, PlayStation, and Sat…

This week we discuss a three-fer of mini-topics from current events. First we take a look at Boeing's troubled Starliner test flight that's left a pair of astronauts stranded on the International Space Station. Next up, Goldman Sachs has issued a scathingly negative report about the validity and sustainability of the current AI bubble. And last, wi…

MOVE! Just kidding. Interpersonal skills can be just as vital to your IT role as technical skills, and there’s far less training. SolarWinds IT Manager Tara Bourke joins hosts Chrystal Taylor and Sean Sebring to share what she’s learned about conflict resolution, problem-solving, and effective communication with the whole spectrum of end users. Get…

We're back with another hot month's worth of your questions to answer, this time addressing such wide-ranging subjects as easy ways to defeat Blu-ray region locks, tech tips for your fantasy new-home build, the sweet spot for solar panels paying for themselves, whether anyone actually needs a 10-gigabit home Internet connection, the ephemeral natur…

This week, Friend of the Show Adam Patrick Murray from PC World joins Will to share the ground truth about Computex. Freshly returned from Taipei, Adam is a Computex veteran, and told us what it's like to attend and cover the most important PC hardware trade show in the world. What Hardware Should You Use for UE5 Development? PC World's YouTube Cha…

We're taking another close look at a product that broke out and redefined its entire category, this time the venerable IntelliMouse Explorer. These days it's hard to remember that it was Microsoft who banished the infernal ball and introduced the optical mouse to the mainstream, so we head back to 1999 and discuss what mice were like beforehand, ho…

Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference has come and gone again, and frankly there were enough interesting additions to the company's various OSs that we figured an episode was warranted even before we got to "Apple Intelligence." We do our best in this jumbo episode to round up everything from silly corporate stunts to a (finally, maybe) context-…

Have you ever tried to scroll up a piece of paper? Have you described a GIF during an actual conversation? To save you from these embarrassing situations, hosts Chrystal Taylor and Sean Sebring identify some telltale signs that it’s time to Log Off (trumpets blaring) and suggest some new ways to spend your time as you wean from the screen. Touch gr…

Will just traded in the ol' Chevy Bolt for a 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5, so it's time to run down all the pros and cons of this newer and more robust electric vehicle, and also check in on everything that's changed in the world of EVs in the three (!!) years since we did our Bolt episode. Listen on for our thoughts on everything from plug standards to th…

Microsoft has announced some... controversial new AI-driven features coming to Windows 11, so we thought it was time to dissect the Copilot+ PC spec and particularly its Recall functionality, especially in light of the new Qualcomm ARM chips that are bringing more efficiency and more machine-learning compute power to the portable PC space. Is this …

It's another Q&A episode, and this month we get into a wide range of topics including our haul from the electronics flea market, our growing appreciation for SCART, Micro Center's rapidly expanding operations, the open-source automotive self-driving solution, a farewell to mini-USB, a quick Steam patching explainer, and more! Support the Pod! Contr…

We've got another two-fer of mini-topics this week around projects we've been tinkering with lately. First, Will has been investigating ways to get the SteamOS experience on hardware that's not a SteamDeck, with both the full-on SteamOS rebuild HoloISO and the more general gaming-focused Linux distro Bazzite. Second, we've both had Fallout New Vega…

Terms like marketing* are often associated with a long list of negative connotations and an image of a cartoon thief sneaking around a corner with a huge bag of cash over his shoulder. Why does the word marketing make people want to delete their banking apps and bury their wallets? How has the perception of this simple concept changed over time? In…

Hey, remember RSS? Friend of the show Wes Fenlon joins us for a record fourth (!!) time to reminisce about the glory days of really simple syndication, when you could just aggregate all your favorite news and blogs into one tidy feed. This episode is about more than just waxing nostalgic, though; Wes is here to tell us all about bringing it all bac…

We're embarking on a two-part rundown of home video formats this week, with part one focusing on analog video up through the mid-1990s and covering biggies like VHS and LaserDisc, plus also-rans like Betamax, Video8, and the truly strange CED. Tune in for plenty of fun trivia, like myths and misconceptions about the first major format war, Sony's a…

April concludes with another round of questions, during which we entertain the idea of inviting Q to assist us with Qs, Will teases a historic search engine switch, and we field a wide array of topics including breakaway USB-C cables, how to wade through the sea of search-engine slop, why you don't need "www." much anymore, our approach to episode …

The time has come for our deep dive into Pirates of Silicon Valley, the 1999 made-for-TNT movie that chronicles the parallel rises of Apple and Microsoft. Join us for a bunch of chatter about the historic business deals and betrayals, the portrayals of Gates, Jobs, Ballmer, Wozniak and others, what the actual people depicted thought about the movie…

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…

Get a peek behind the scenes of THWACKcamp, the free virtual learning event for SolarWinds customers. Hosts Chrystal Taylor and Sean Sebring talk to THWACKcamp Executive Producer Matt Murray about the extensive preparation, creativity, and deep knowledge that goes into this year’s “love letter” to the THWACK community. © 2024 SolarWinds Worldwide, …

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 a…

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…

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 w…

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 t…

In this conversation, hosts Sean Sebring and Chrystal Taylor talk with Derek Daly, Principal AIOps Product Manager at SolarWinds. He discusses his career journey and the role of AI and machine learning in the company's products. He shares insights into the process of introducing AI and machine learning into product features, the impact of AI on job…

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 reve…

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…

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-awa…

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 …