There's... a lot going on lately, so we're rounding up some of that news this week, starting with Discord's forthcoming age verification policy rolling out globally, with cursory discussion of some of the alternative platforms starting to assert themselves out there. We also touch on the targeting and compromise of Notepad++ by state-level actors, and the latest effects of the computing supply crisis on hard drives, the Steam Machine, and the PlayStation 6. Lastly, we talk about the bizarre case of the autonomous AI agent that started a flame war against an open source maintainer that... well, you really need to just hear/read about that one yourself.

Discord's age verification announcement: https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-default-settings-globally

Notepad++ compromised: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-update/

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me: https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/

(Much more has emerged about the AI agent story since we recorded, including contact with the agent's operator, all described at the link above.)

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Magnets have been replacing potentiometers in a variety of places for a while now, especially as Hall effect and TMR joysticks have started popping up in fancy game controllers. Now magnetic switches are becoming more common in mice and mechanical keyboards, and Will has spent some time with new products in both of those categories, so we figured it was a good time to lay out how these kinds of switches work, how resistant to wear and electrical "bouncing" they are, what the heck a transducer is, whether there's quantum mechanics involved or not, and what effect these new switches are going to have on the input devices of the future.

Show notes for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-326-mag-switches

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It's been a while since we did a deep dive on our home networking and server infrastructure (what some might call a "homelab"), so it's time for the 2026 check-in to run down what we're working with these days. By request, we spend a big chunk of the episode on Brad's plain Linux NAS/server, detailing components like Samba, Docker (or Podman), and Sanoid that you'd need to set up yourself to replicate the functionality of something like TrueNAS or Unraid. We also survey Will's more granular approach, once again pine longingly after Wildcat Lake, and more.

Show notes with all the hardware and software we mentioned: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-325-homelab-update

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After two months of accumulated Qs, we felt we still had plenty of As to dispense, so we're wheeling back around to a supplemental questions episode this week, touching on such topics as generating negative mileage in an EV, what the iOS low battery mode actually does, tiny network racks for your desk, a shocking amount of discussion about shells like zsh, fish, PowerShell and Nushell, the whereabouts of Intel's successor to the Alder Lake-N... and, for that matter, why (nearly) everything at Intel is a Lake.

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The questions piled up over the holidays and now it's time to answer them in this, the first Q&A of 2026. This month we touch on topics like the splendor Gateway 2000's cow boxes, the mystery of the ENIAC, whether a shed qualifies as off-site backup, what the heck volt-amps are (and how calculus is involved), the glory days of multi-user computing, what tech today's kids will be nostalgic for in 20 years, using LLMs for troubleshooting and command line assistance, and more.

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We get into the nitty gritty this week with a grab bag of home computing projects that's really more like a set of cautionary tales. Will discovers the perils of hanging your entire household's Internet access on a couple of older, neglected Raspberry Pis. Brad learns some harsh lessons about the power draw of a space heater and not maintaining the automation settings on your UPS. And, well, our third topic is about using an Xbox Series X or S as a Moonlight client, which is actually pretty great so far. We suppose one out of three isn't bad?

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Another new year means another CES means another roundup of CES news. This year we cover all the announcements from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia (or at least one of those), plus some legitimately exciting stuff like smart Legos, the first vehicle shipping with a solid state battery, computers in keyboards, Stream Decks in keyboards, big-name repairable laptops, what appears to be a real-life Star Wars vibroblade, all the things like memory inflation and tariffs that nobody was talking about at the show, and more.

Notes and links for this episode: https://tinyurl.com/techpod-321-ces-2025

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We're back to start the new year with the second and final installment of our ranking of startup sounds. To close out the tier list we consider later consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, more recent Windowses that we didn't even realize had startup sounds, most of the handhelds from Nintendo and Sony, and even some offbeat entries like Analogue's FPGA consoles and older operating systems like BeOS and OS/2. It's an aural extravaganza!

The final tier list: https://tiny.cc/tp320-sounds

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