Solid State Podcast

Episode 46 - Google I/O 2023

Let’s just come right out and admit it… it’s been a weird few years in tech…
Pandemic-driven development cycles, evaporating supply chains, ever-moving targets around remote work… even the industry-wide layoffs of the last few months… It’s been a bumpy ride.
But the more things feel like they go off the rails, the more reassuring it is when something familiar, something “expected” occurs…
The COVID years saw our favorite moments in tech move to glorified infomercials, and with that went some of the magic of a live, on-stage announcement. But just as the world as a whole has been on a slow, steady march back to “the before times”, tech events have been returning to good-old-fashioned demos, glitches, and highly questionable event wifi…
Google I/O this year wasn’t its first back in the Amphitheater, but it sure felt like the first one where Google was “back” with a lineup of announcements across its verticals… hardware, services, emerging categories like AI… this one has it all.
Now, it obviously remains to be seen how many of these announcements translate into products that consumers actual use or, frankly, ever see a physical or virtual store shelf… But on the whole, while faced with a rapidly evolving frontier of AI and the looming specter of Antitrust, Google came out swinging, and if nothing else that just felt right
Pour a drink (because, like the event itself, this is a long one), and let’s see where Google I/O intends to take us one Bard query at a time…

Episode 45 - What’s Next... for Display Tech?

I’m probably about to date myself a little bit… but amongst my fondest early tech memories was shopping for my first computer. No, not the first computer I built or even the first computer in my house, but this one was going to be mine…
While standing in the “computer aisle” at a now-failed big box store, I vividly remember two things… the leap of faith it took to pony-up for a Pentium II processor when I knew full well the Pentium III was going to magically drop the day after the largest purchase of my life, and the advice the sales person gave me that has stuck with me to this day…
See, he saw me pouring over the specs of every single off-white tower they had, considering the RAM, clock speed, port selection, you name it. What he didn't see me do was pay any attention at all to the next aisle over, where they kept the monitors…
He kindly struck up a conversation (mostly because they’d seen me repeat this pattern every Friday after school for at least a month), and the advice he shared amounted to “don’t blow your whole budget on the PC itself… remember all the graphics in the world are useless if you don’t have anything to watch them on…”
From that one interaction, my near-obsession with resolution, refresh rates, and yes, brightness was born. I didn’t just want my programs to load as fast as possible, or my storage to be larger than I could ever use (and that’s never happened), I wanted to see the digital worlds in front of me come alive. 
Fast forward a "couple" decades and that equation has found its way into everything… TVs, smart phones, tablets, and yes… my trusty monitor. Now, let me bump up the brightness a bit and let’s talk some pixels…

Episode 44 - Parts Bin: What Matters for your Smart Home?

We’ve said it many, many times here on Solid State… some things are just supposed to… work…
Chief among them are basic functions like lighting, heating & cooling, or kitchen timers…
So who would have guessed that here in 2023, we’re knee-deep in yet another format war that has drawn battle lines around none other than your light switch? Okay… that’s over-simplifying even for us… but you have to admit it’s not far off!
Bulbs, switches, plugs, cameras… toasters… you name it! They’re all joining the “smart home revolution” and aim to bring the most modern of conveniences to the most antiquated of creature comforts… as long as you buy the “right one”. 
The biggest problem is the “right one” for you varies heavily for you, for me, or your next door neighbor you still haven’t managed to talk to… The space is growing by the minute with new brands, platforms, and approaches and most importantly this is a good thing if the devices can actually communicate with each other… 
A lot to ask for, I know, but this week we’re going to take stock of what’s running in our very own homes and ask the question Parts Bin style… What does Matter for your Smart Home?

Episode 43 - Playstation... a History

It’s kind of funny to me how many people end up in their career because of a childhood love or hobby…
You have the architect that couldn’t get enough Legos, the mechanic that collected way too many matchbox cars, or even the artist sees a star-filled sky and grabs brushes instead of a telescope…
These things become such massive parts of who we are, often at such young and formative ages… they become us…
Well, if that’s the case, and you’ve been listening to this show for any amount of time, then it’s not hard to connect the dots that for your three Solid State presenters one of those early loves was games… and in the case of today’s episode specifically the hardware we used to play them. 
We’re going to take a step back and walk through decades of truly foundational gaming history that started with a alliance that should have changed the landscape… and instead created a fierce rivalry that lives on to this day…
So sit back, log in, and let’s talk Playstation, a History…

Episode 42 - The cost of (no) competition...

Competition is one of those things that, whether you like it or not, makes sense right?
If I make bicycles and you start making a better kind of bicycle, my choices are pretty straightforward: start making a better bicycle, start making a cheaper bicycle, or sooner-or-later stop making bicycles…
Okay, I know I’ve vastly over-simplifying what can feel like very complex games of market share, dominant messaging, outright morals & ethics… but at its minimum and most basic, we’ve long held on this show that competition is a good thing, especially in the world of technology…
So, as we navigate a world of mass consolidation, roll-up strategies, and the outright stifling of startups in virtually any space… it was well past time to ask ourselves the question, what is the long-term cost of only three meaningful cell phone carries, of two dominant smartphone platforms, of one ring to rule them all… Eh yeah I let that one get away from me, but you get the idea… 
In all seriousness, though, was IS the cost… of no competition…

Episode 41 - What’s next... for Over the Air TV

 
Some pieces of technology eventually reach the point of truly becoming ubiquitous… a computer on every desk, a smart phone in every pocket, a drone in every backpack… 
Okay, maybe that last one is just me, but you get what I mean…
What we all probably can agree on, though, is one of the first gadgets to reach this critical mass of scale is everyone’s favorite big-screen rectangle, the television…
What used to be a stand-out possession of one or two households per neighborhood has now become the centerpiece of several rooms in any given house. But the thing about these screens is, they’re not all that useful without anything to actually put on that screen…
Going back through the decades, one of the earliest answers to that problem is by sending content to the viewer over the literal airwaves… one set of silver, telescoping “bunny ears” later and suddenly Johnny Carson was right there in your own living room. 
As with any technology, though, evolutions must continue… those telescoping bunny ears may have long-since been replaced by a more modern antenna, and the black-and-white static we all knew and hated has been upgraded to high definition goodness. 
With additions like HDR quality, true data delivery, and on-the-move access… the next chapter in Over-the-Air TV sounds like a solid upgrade, but as with anything else what are the hidden costs? 
Let’s tune in and find out…

Episode 40 - Hacking the Human

It’s really frustrating when something breaks… this is true of everything from a garage door not opening to a lightbulb burning out… we just want things to work. It seems, though, this is somehow doubly frustrating when what fails is our tech. 
The printer runs out of ink when you need to print a boarding pass, your phone freezes up completely after a bad update, or the Roomba gets stuck on the same rug no matter how many times you tell it not to try and go there… 
Yeah, we’ve all been there, and it sucks. But for all the times the technology seems to fail us, recently we started talking about all the times we the human fail the technology. Was the printer blinking a “low ink” light for weeks before it finally ran out? How many other updates did we knowingly skip before this one bricked the phone? And now that I think about it, did I actually update the Roomba’s cleaning map or did I just yell at the robot expecting it to know what I want? 
All of those examples are frustrating for sure, but thankfully none are what I would call “dangerous”. When it comes to our data, privacy, and digital wellbeing though that story can change in an instant. See for all the firewalls, Multi-factor Authentication, and advanced security software we put up in the name of “staying safe”… all of that goes out the window the moment we fill out a bogus survey or hand over critical access information to “Jeff from the IT department”…
So once again, let’s take a minute, “slow down to speed up” and talk through all the ways we can help stop attackers from Hacking the Human…

Episode 39 - What’s in the box... Razer Blade 16

In just about any product category, ideally you should have options… entry level, mid-range, consumer, pro-sumer, the list is nearly endless…
But every so often, you have an entry into the space the is so outlandish, so devil-may-care over the top that most people see it and wonder who in the world would ever buy it for, frankly, what’s usually an equally over the top price tag. 
Yeah, the topic of this week’s episode firmly falls in line with this theory… compared to virtually every competitor in its space its larger, thicker, heavier, hotter, pricier… just… "more"… than anything we’ve tested before.
When all of that crazy comes together in a single package though something… unexpected happens. The brightness and fidelity of the display makes you almost forget the back crushing weight. The ever-rising warmth under the keyboard deck isn’t as uncomfortable when Ultra High graphics settings in your latest games don’t even making it flinch.
Suddenly, what was so unexpected, may have become special…
Okay, so clear off some space on your desk (because you won't be wanting to run this on your lap) and let’s take a long hard look at Razer’s latest flagship, the Blade 16…

Episode 38 - What’s next... for Movie Theaters

You say the word “Blockbuster” and for most people it conjures the image of blue and yellow signage, cardboard stand-ups, and the never-ending question of what do we watch this weekend… 
The thing was, all the movies in that store had likely already had their spotlight-moment on “the big screen” in move theaters across the country and the globe. With any luck, their creators and producers had long-since already made their money back and then some, so every rental and sale of the movie afterwards went straight to the bottom line. 
Fast forward to the streaming era and really that narrative didn’t change much right away… major films would hit the local 20-screen monstrosity and then weeks or months later would find their way to a streaming service of choice to collect fractional pennies from your $14.99 per month. 
Today though, that tide has turned dramatically the other direction… 
Major productions are hitting streaming services “day of” more and more frequently, and even those that don’t are still finding a viewing public perfectly willing to wait it out for the benefit of watching from the comfort of their own home. 
You still have standouts that will draw a crowd and, most importantly, drive up popcorn sales… but is that enough? The other meaning of blockbuster was the summer tentpoles that literally made the year for studios, producers, and outlets alike. Is there enough steam left to keep that engine plowing forward, or has the Streaming World really, perhaps permanently, changed our movie-going experience? 
Let’s tune in and find out…

Episode 37 - Nintendo... a History

Picture something with me… 
You’re on a long road trip, sitting in the back seat of the car fully engrossed in the screen in front of you… headphones in, buttons being mashed, absolutely sure you’re just one more push away from beating your all-time record…
The miles and hours go by, but none of that matters because the world around you begins and ends with the pixels in front of your face. You’re lost in the game, and the experience. 
The funny part is, most of us today would complete that picture with the screen in question being your smartphone of choice, burning hours in the latest game you downloaded from someone’s app store. But in fact, this story took place decades ago in the back of a 1993 Buick rolling down the Interstate between Pennsylvania and Florida. 
The device: a Nintendo Gameboy. The game: Super Mario Land. The batteries: Double-A and someone always dead or dying…
That exact story is forever part of my personal gaming (and technology) past, and it's ones like it that I’ll remember fondly for life. Nintendo made it possible at a time when other such experiences took place tethered to a TV in the Living Room that had better be turned off by bed time. 
So this week, we’re going to give Nintendo their well-earned moment in the spotlight to talk through their distant beginnings, pivotal contributions to our present, and likely undeniable role in the future.
Found some more batteries, so lets play…