Improbable Insights

David Bryant and Eric Klein traveled to the 2018 CES show and came back excited, disappointed, weary, and overstimulated. We discuss what they liked, the disappointments, and the cool experiences. Plus we give them a little time to rant. Check out their thoughts on what transpired at this year's CES and what it really means. Download MP3

Download MP3 We're back! As we enter 2018, the Improbable Insights podcast gang regroup to discuss the gear and media they've acquired in the past several months. Given our disparate interests, we discuss a range of things from a large format Epson printer (Loyd), the GlowForge laser cutter (Eric), to Sous Vide cookers (David). Along the way, we touch on 4K HDR televisions, iPhone X, AMD's Ryzen processors, and better ways to build custom LEGO add-ons. But it's not all high tech gear. We include more mundane items, like ultra-soft socks, a flexible new glue, and watchband repair tools. As always, we also get into media we've been reading and watching: books, movies, TV, and games. Come along for the ride, stay for the opinions!

Download MP3 We're back! I've been experimenting with formats. Let me know what you think, either in the comment section of uncertainty.com or by email at improbablepodcast@gmail.com. The IoT Invasion It's been a year since David, Eric, and I talked about IoT. Since then, the Internet of Things has been growing by leaps and bounds, particularly in the consumer space. As mainstream companies jump on the IoT bandwagon, we've seen some really cool stuff come along as well as the usual round of headaches. We talk about the teething problems as well as the promise of IoT to make our lives better. Tools and Fun I just wrapped up reading We Have No Idea by Jorge Cham of Ph.D. Comics and particle physicist Danial Whiteson, among other reading. The book is an excellent overview of the state of physics and cosmology for lay people. It's funny, insightful, and makes you want to learn more. I also recently rewatched seasons one and two of SyFy's The Expanse on Blu-Ray. The show seems much better on

Welcome to the Improbable Insights Podcast Summer Tech Cornucopia! Tech cornucopias are podcasts in which we catch up on some tech news and gear of interest. These are delicious, bite-sized chunks of information, rather than the single-topic focus of most of our episodes. We talk about AMD's Threadripper CPUs and Vega GPUs. We also cover cordless mice, Nvidia's Volta, the end of Flash, and Apple. Tools and Fun I recently tripled my Internet speeds and dropped the monthly cost simply be talking to a Comcast rep on the phone. I also experimented with shooting video with the Nikon D500 and wrapped up XCOM2: The Long War 2 mod and discuss how it could have been improved.  I've also been playing Pyre, a weird fantasy RPG by the creators of Bastion, in which combat is handled via a basketball-like game. I also give a shoutout to a cool history podcast, TV, and books I'm reading. David goes into what he uncovered at the Disney D23 expo, saw Atomic Blonde, and more about how he's prepping for the

Meaning: Disappointment It's happened to all of us. Something seemingly very cool gets announced. It might be a movie, a game, a new gadget, or just about anything that sets our geek and nerd mouths watering. So we preorder or crowdfund it. When the object of our heart's desire gets released, we're crushed with disappointment. If it's media, it's just not good, with shoddy writing, mediocre acting, and impenetrable directing. A game promising hours of immersion instead delivers hours of frustration. A tech gizmo ships with missing features, loads of bugs, and fails to achieve its stated goals. How do you handle the disappointment? David Bryant and I discuss how we handle geek disappointments and how we try to prevent future soul-crushing events. Download MP3 Tools & Fun One of the photographic tools I've used for years is the Nik Filter Collection. Google bought Nik a few years back, released the entire filter collection for free, but also announced it was being deprecated. The lack of attention has f

The biggest forward facing video game show in the US has run its course. E3 happened several weeks ago, giving us a little time to reflect on the games and hardware on parade at the annual video game industry show. What does the Xbox One X announcement really reveal about Microsoft's intent and its strategies? Now that all the hype and tears have run its course, we take a look back in a little more serious vein. Why do all AAA games show stuff blowing up? Where are all the cool indie titles? We ponder these questions on this week's Improbabls Insights Podast, and more, including which games interest us the most and which ones left us cold. Tools and Fun I've finally discovered Legends of Korra, the animated steampunk / anime series which ran on Nickelodeon several years back. Don't let the Nickelodeon heritage fool you, Legends of Korra is well-written with competent voice acting. I've also started reading Neal Stephenson's The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Co-authored with Nicole Ga

It's easier than ever to become a maker. In today's commoditized world, building something unique just for yourself has become a way to express yourself. Whether it's a unique clock, your own personal weather station, the right costume for the next convention season, making your own offers greater satisfaction than buying. But how do you get started? My regular co-hosts Eric Klein and David Bryant are veteran makers in their own right. Their advice and insight into getting started, finding the right gear, sources for learning, and tools should get you going. Eric and David mention some sources for learning, so I've added some links: Instructables -- Tutorials from people who make stuff. Since the site is user-driven, the quality of the tutorials vary, but you can find some real gems. Adafruit -- Adafruit will happily sell you stuff to get you going, but they also offer a great set of tutorials. Make Magazine, one of the oldest publications catering to the maker movement. Other Resources: Sparkfun Starter

Welcome to the Improbable Insights Podcast. You can almost smell it, feel it, taste it. The tech press and Twitter have been all abuzz about it. The longing to whip out your credit card and preorder seems almost too much to bear.  You know you want it, but a small, niggling voice in the back of your head tells you to wait. Wait for the inevitable bugs to be swatted and the promised features to be implemented. Should you wait? Or should you pull the trigger? This is the eternal conundrum of early adopters. We so much want to be in on the latest new thing. But we've all been burned before. Eric, David, and I talk about whether to wait or not when thinking about buying shiny new tech. And boy, do we have opinions. Lots of opinions. Tools and Fun I'm prepping for my annual pilgrimage to Kublacon, the largest local tabletop gaming con in the Bay Area. I'm also reading City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett and find the characters engaging and the fantasy world unusual and well-drawn.  On the gami

Welcome to a new Improbable Insights Podcast. Since we've been away a bit, David Bryant and I talk about some recent bits in the news, including Nvidia's GTC, net neutrality, more Amazon Echo, and Microsoft late to the party once again. Tools & Fun David and I talk about the games we've been playing: Ghost Recon Wildlands, Mass Effect Andromeda, and Prey. We also discuss recent movies and TV, including Into the Badlands, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Game consoles once ruled the roost when it came to AAA game titles. The major console companies vied for exclusive titles and had unparalleled ease of use.  Consoles even offered performance superior to the best PCs of the day. The PC looked like it would be relegated to more complex strategy games, with the big action games and RPGs taken over by consoles. Economic factors, Moore's Law, and the incredible gains in PC graphics allowed the PC to catch up. Eric, David, and I debate the merits and pitfalls of owning a game console today, and a spirited debate it is. Eric's always owned a console, David came to PC gaming from the console space, while I just recently acquired a Playstation 4 Pro after a hiatus away from consoles. Do you own a game console? If so, why? If not, should you? Tools and Fun I discuss what may be the biggest damned lens I've ever owned -- not its reach, but sheer bulk and size. I also mention a great budget PC case, Windows 10 Creator Edition gotchas,  and why I bought my wife

Scott Gardner, former industry analyst and tech company executive, joins David Bryant and me on the Improbable Insights podcast to discuss the impact of AMD's Ryzen CPU release will have on the industry. AMD just began shipping the Ryzen 5 CPUs, which sport four or six cores, with two threads per core. More importantly, AMD has priced Ryzen 5 directly against Intel midrange processors.  Can lilliputian AMD compete with the Intel juggernaut? Can the Ryzen processor deliver the goods for end users? Will the PC industry step up and adopt the new processor? We ponder all these questions as we dive into the implications of resurging competition in the PC processor business. Fun and Tools While I'm liking this Razer Black Widow X Chroma keyboard, I do miss my media controls -- particularly the ability to adjust audio volume or silence audio on the fly, something that came built into the Logitech G810 I used previously. So I picked up the Drok Volume Control knob. The Drok connects via USB and requires no

Mass Effect Andromeda Updates the Formula Eric and I bring on a guest host, Ron Talbot, to discuss Mass Effect Andromeda. We all took an afternoon on release day to play single player and multiplayer in the same room. We all came away impressed at the overall mechanics but less impressed with the user interface and numerous bugs. And while the character generation system seemed to need more cooking, we still managed to create some interesting characters. We also have thoughts about the idea of early release schemes, and how they might adversely affect the overall impression of the game for potential players. We also spent a little time on multiplayer, and discover Bioware avoided screwing up a good thing. Multiplayer in Andromeda feels like Mass Effect 3 multiplayer with just a few twists. And that's a good thing. Tools and Fun So Eric buys a pair of Apple Airpods and has fallen totally in love with them. He thinks that the Airpod team somehow epitomizes the old Apple magic that seems to be gone from the re

Welcome to the revised Improbable Insights podcast. I've streamlined it a bit, taking it from three sections to two. David, Eric, and I will try to keep the meaning section a little more tightly focused than in the past, drawing on our personal experiences to give insight and advice on tech and geek related matters. Also, if you've been wondering how to subscribe to the podcast, here's the RSS. Now let's check out episode 101, where we talk about making the most of the limited time we have for gaming. The three of us have active careers and family lives, so finding time to fire up a video game or sit down with a tabletop game becomes an exercise in juggling schedules, squeezing in a mission or two, and getting out. We share our strategies and ideas for making the most of limited gaming time. Tools and Fun We combined Tools and Fun into a single section, which makes a lot of sense given that we often overlapped the sections anyway. I talk about the recently released GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. The new, $699 card came

Where is the web going? What technical features coming down the pipe will enhance the experience? What changes in the way we interact with the web (eg, social media), will shape future experiences? Will 3D & VR make significant impacts (it's been the year of "3D on the web" forever in my memory)? What lies beyond HTML5? This week we have special guest Martin Best from Mozilla's platform group, in addition to David Bryant (also with Mozilla), and Eric Klein. We talk about a variety of technologies emerging which will shape the future of the web, including WebGL 2, Web Assembly, WebVR, and more. Tools I finally find a game which presents a great platform to become a better controller user: Ubisoft's For Honor. So I dug out by Xbox One controller for the PC and dove in. On the more normal PC input side, I give up on the Logitech G900 mouse and return to... something older and more familar. Also, AMD's Ryzen processor is almost here. An interesting blend of high end CPU features -- lots of cores --

I've been watching The Expanse. Beyond its kinetic story lies an assumption that mankind will someday build colonies on Mars, the asteroids, and the outer planet moons. Will we really? What trends do we see today that suggests we'll be successful? And what headwinds are we encountering? Eric, David, and I discuss current advances towards moving people to space, problems humans will encounter living and working in space, and whether or not the future lies with AIs rather than meatbags like us. Tools I needed to buy business clothing, but I can't just walk into a store and buy stuff at random. Nope, I have to approach buying suits, jackets, and ties as a real geek would -- understanding what goes into quality, classic men's business attire and buying the right stuff. I learned what I know about clothing from a classic book by Alan Flusser, Clothes and the Man. Out of print and stylistically obsolete, the book's discussion of how good quality clothing gets made is still pertinent today. I also mention possibly t

The personal computer evolution seems to be slowing. Apple seems to be ignoring high-end customers, 2-in-1 designs are proliferating, and the desktop PC stagnates. On the OS side, MacOS seems to be stagnating and Windows continues to be overly intrusive. What's going to happen to the PC going forward? Eric, David, and I discuss happenings in the Mac arena, what's going on with Windows, the slowdown in CPU progress, how displays have been evolving, and how storage has become the real beacon of progress in PCs. Tools I now have this teeny Maratec Extreme titanium flashlight I obtained from Massdrop. For a flashlight that uses a single AAA battery, it's hella bright, and no bigger than a lip balm stick. I also pick up a white vinyl backdrop to help improve my studio photography. Oh, and I drop a Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake processor into my PC and notice... well, not much. It runs. It's supposedly faster. I can't tell. Dave plays around with STEMTera, an Arduino breadboard that also works with Arduino Shields a

This weeks podcast delves into a variety of interesting and curious recent tech news, including Ultra Blu-ray drives for the PC, the Windows game bar, Windows game mode, AMD Vega, Qualcomm's lawsuit woes, Google cutting off ads to fake news sites and more. It turned out to be a pretty lively discussion; I hope you have as much fun listening as we had recording it. Tools I trade in my basic black, sound-dampened case, for something a bit more colorful, and only give up a little noise generation in the process. I also talk about the experience of riding the CycleOps Magnus and virtual cycling apps. I also mention the most compact USB flash memory key I've ever seen. I take a stab at shooting my first "knolling" photo, too, which you can see here. The photo contains all the bits that shipped with the Magnus, except the frame itself. David's really digging his Google Pixel phone, but Eric and I have some concerns about the stated data cost of $10 per gigabyte, which seems a tad high. But the Pixel does have a gre

The annual CES (don't call it the Consumer Electronics Show!) just wrapped up in Las Vegas. Eric Klein and I talk about what looked cool, what looked lame, and whether or not a massive, unfocused show like CES really has any meaning. What was geek-worthy? What stuff was ridiculous? What's Alexa up to these days? Will we ever get untethered VR? What are we looking forward to? Maybe this year's CES trend was no trend at all? Tools I go into a little more detail about the CycleOps Magnus indoor bike trainer, in which you can ride your own bike. The Magnus connects via Bluetooth or ANT+ to virtual cycling apps, changing resistance on the fly as you ride. I also give a thumbs up to the D-Fuse softbox for LED lighting panels. Eric talks about the joys and problems with taking his brand-spanking-new Razer Blade on the road. As with any new tech, he encountered some teething problems. But the glory of high detail gaming is ever-seductive. Fun The Long War team, now renamed Pavonis Interactive, released the Long War 2

Graphics technology seeks to emulate the real world. Approaches like VR and 3D rendering emulate how we see in all dimensions. High Dynamic Range (HDR) tries to emulate the range of luminance our eyes handle every day in real life. True HDR may be the most significant display advancement in the last decade -- certainly more significant than the ill-fated attempts at 3D TV and curved sets. David and I dive into some definitions, discuss emerging HDR standards, and give recommendations on what you should look for when checking out HDR TVs or desktop monitors. Tools Let there be light... in my garage. My ancient fluorescent fixtures, with their 40-inch tubes and noisy ballasts, finally went the way of the dodo. I talk about my efforts to install more modern replacements and marvel at how inexpensive LED lighting has become. I also talk about taking a step back from FireFox usage and an encrypted messaging tool which seems to have become all the rage today. Oh, yeah, and I ride bicycles. Virtually. David tal

Elizabeth Case joins me this week as we talk about ideas from science fiction that have inspired us in our daily lives. Science fiction has been about "what happens if…" -- but what we often forget is that it's also about "what happens to people if…" We'd like to share some ideas from science fiction that inspired us in different ways -- not always positive inspirations, to be sure, but inspirations that sent us in a (we hope) positive direction.  We cover a wide range of media, including literature, graphic novels, television, games, and film. Titles discussed range include Neuromancer, Low, Nimona, Global Frequency, and Eclipse Phase.  Tools I've discovered the joys of tethered shooting with DSLRs, but didn't want to spend a bunch of money. The sweet spot for me: Control My Nikon, a $29 application that allows me to preview and set up my D500 using a PC and shoot to my heart's content. I also pick up a new headphone amplifier for the podcast. Fun Mass Effect Andromeda gets