Improbable Insights

The 30th Game Developer Conference wrapped up this week. As expected, we saw a strong emphasis on VR. But there's a lot of other things happening in game development as well. Meaning Games have become a big business, but gaming has also become a cultural touchstone. The business of creating, designing, writing, and producing games dwarfs Hollywood's output. Moreover, designers now create games which resonate emotionally. What's the meaning and role of game development in this increasingly influential new medium? VR seemed to be the touchstone of the show.  The tech industry has been captivated by the potential of VR. Surprisingly, though, VR doesn't seem to be following the same adoption curve as previous tech. Oculus made a big push, but Valve seemed absent, though present in off-floor conversations.   The PC component makers see VR as a huge growth opportunity. AMD helped fund Sulon, a completely untethered VR headset based on AMD APUs and running Windows 10. Sony gets into the game, launching Playstation

Sometimes revolutions happen in small steps. As more people discover uses for the public cloud, those use cases are steadily redefining the computing landscape. What are some of the long-term implications of the public cloud? Mozilla hardware chief David Bryant and I discuss the public cloud and its impact on the computing landscape. Meaning Dropbox, OneDrive, and similar cloud storage systems gradually convinced users that cloud storage could be almost as seamless as local storage. The operative word is "almost". David suggests cloud storage needs to be standardized and incorporated into the OS to be truly universal. What's the long-term implication of reliable cloud storage (which also assumes a reliable broadband infrastructure)? Will we no longer need high capacity local storage? What about cloud computing assist? These may have impacts outside of end-user compute tasks. For example, offloading compute to cloud services may reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions. As users become comfortable with softwa

Meaning We're witnessing a sea change in PC games pricing. Steam sales utterly crushing retail pricing or sites like Green Man Gaming offering steep discounts on pre-release AAA titles seeminlgy reverse the historical trend towards higher pricing. As the cost of making big titles rises, publishers look for ways to eke out more dollars out of buyers through DLC, episodic releases, and "season passes". Gamers now have options instead of needing to give in to the classic, full-price pre-sale. While discount sites are great, waiting has its merits -- all three Mass Effect games can now be bought for just $30. Steam sales are legendary, bringing gamers to a veritable feeding trough of low-cost, excellent games. Can publishers survive -- and even thrive -- in today's highly variable pricing world? Eric and I discuss the changing face of game pricing, selling games, and what the future holds in store. And, as is almost always true these days, Microsoft is late to the party. [caption id="attachment_674" align="al

Meaning The 2016 Mobile World Congress just completed its 29th year. The largest show focusing on mobile technology, MWC used to be all about cell phones and related technologies. In fact, the show began life as "GSM World Congress" after its founding body, the GSM Association, traditionally made up of cellular carriers worldwide. But what does mobile actually mean? This year's MWC featured virtual reality gear, IoT products, including home automation products, gaming, and a host of other technologies. The definition of mobile has become pretty diluted, much like "consumer electronics" and "personal computer". Eric and I discuss how MWC has become a catch-all show, like CES and Computex. We also talk about some of the nifty stuff coming out of this year's MWC, including Sony's Echo killer, HTC's Vive VR headset, and HP jumping into the high end phone business. Again. So is mobile the source of innovation in tech today, or has it become just another example of commoditization on technology road? Tools On th

As Game Developer Conference approaches, I began thinking about how games are made, and how players approach games differently. For example, I came across this description of a game being played: Imagine exploring space, colonizing planets, setting up trade routes. This game is so immersive, you feel like you really are setting up your own empire -- unnamed commentator He's talking about this: [caption id="attachment_470" align="alignleft" width="500"] Roll for the Galaxy[/caption] The game is Roll for the Galaxy. It's actually a pretty good game, but the main mechanics involve laying out tiles, figuring out victory point, and rolling dice. I have a great time with this game, but I can't say I've ever envisioned myself building a massive star empire. We've discussed theme versus mechanics in a previous podcast. Let's talk about abstractions: how they enable games to exist, and why some people find certain abstractions immersive and others don't. Meaning "Grognard" hearkens back to the French term for vet

It began with a Tweet from Leslie Carhart about buying Windows 2.0. In that tweet, she included an image of a receipt ca. 1988: [caption id="attachment_402" align="alignleft" width="300"] Note the first item: 40MB IDE hard drive... for $699.[/caption] Back in 1988, a 40MB hard drive costs a cool $699. Today, you can buy a 2TB SSD for $699 -- 50,000x the capacity, and vastly better performance. Meaning That got me thinking about how we perceive technology advances. We tend to think of tech advances as both inexorable and linear; think Moore's Law. In fact, technology advances tend to be discontinuous. A particular tech may improve in a linear fashion, then suddenly supplanted by something else. We've seen SSDs rapidly replace HDDs in many applications. As SSD storage approaches hard drive capacities and prices drop, SSDs become incredibly attractive. As with past discontinuities, the companies benefiting tend to be new companies, not companies entrenched with the old tech. Eric Klein, David Bryant and I rif

Users often think of the mobile app programmer as being one or two people in their homes, writing code for a few weeks, then releasing their content on the world. Moden mobile apps requires a team of people, as with any software project. Today's guest is Joan Wood, VP of Product Development for Jigsaw Informatics. Jigsaw develops mobile apps for IOS. These apps: ZapVM, Pingz, and Reclarity, enable users to easily create voice-annotated slideshows using only their phones. (Full disclosure: I worked with Joan at Jigsaw for about a year, prior to my current day job). Meaning [caption id="attachment_366" align="alignleft" width="169"] Pingz lets you create voice and graphically annotated slideshows, rendered to video.[/caption] Creating a complex mobile app involves creativity, planning, teamwork, and execution. Joan shares her experiences creating several mobile apps in her role at Jigsaw. Along the way, we learn a bit about Pingz, Jigsaw's app for creating voice-annotated slideshows, which can include graphic

Star Wars. Star Trek. Mass Effect. The Elder Scrolls. Firefly. Lord of the Rings. What do these have in common? These are creative endeavors whose fans extend and enhance the original creations. Independent films, online video, game mods, cosplay are all creations of fans, and serve to extend and enhance the enjoyment of these shared universes, sometimes long after they've been abandoned by their creators. What is it about these universes, and not others, that generate such enthusiasm and devotion among the fanbase? Meaning Let's look at a few examples of enthusiastic fans doing cool stuff with their passions. First, an unknown person posted a PSA of sorts from the Shenandoah County Sheriff's Office. Many more similar examples exist, which illustrates just how deeply Star Wars has embedded itself into our pop culture. [caption id="attachment_279" align="alignleft" width="296"] This Shenandoah County Sheriff's Office "PSA" is only one example of many.[/caption] Other examples of fan art permeate the Intern

Nathan Edwards, once an editor at Maximum PC, put up a tweet recently that almost read like a Zen koan: "*buys a thing* this is great, now i'll be happy [six months later] all my things are making me sad *gets rid of things* i need new things" It's possible Nathan was talking about consumerism in general, but that's about an apt a description of the early adopter cycle as I've ever seen. Eric Klein and I use Nathan's bit of Twitter poetry to discuss the joys and pitfalls of being an early adopter. Meaning What drives early adopters to participate in an endless upgrade loop? For example, I'm eyeing a new DSLR, even though my current digital camera is excellent. When a new GPU technology arrives, I'm often first in line to upgrade to a new graphics card. Early adopters adopt based on what they're passionate about. They often buy into new tech early, for the sake of exploring the tech. It's partly about knowledge and exploration, but there's certainly something deeper in the early adopter psyche that drives t

The Lowly Microcontroller Inside your PC, your mobile phone, your car, your kitchen appliances, and many other everyday items are tiny little computers -- microcontrollers. These are complete computing engines, with CPU, memory, storage, I/O, and sometimes connectivity that control our modern world. The impact microcontrollers have on our lives is huge. Meaning Your phone may have a big applications processor, but without the tiny microcontroller taking care of the baseband, you wouldn't get data or make calls. Your PC has its CPU, but the power supply, keyboard, mouse wouldn't work without microcontrollers. Cars have dozens of them. Any toy or gadget with a flashing LED has one. David Bryant and Loyd Case discuss the impact microcontrollers have had on our lives, on product development, and even on the maker movement. After all, Arduino and Raspberry Pi are really microcontrollers at heart. Come along for the ride as we dive into these seemingly insignificant, yet vitally important, parts of the computing la

The Meaning of CES 2016 CES 2016 is now over. There seemed to be a distinct lack of overarching trends, but there were many major threads. Virtual reality, IoT, smart home, audio, and many other technologies all made an impact at one of the world's biggest technology showcases. Meaning We're joined this week by co-host Eric Klein, third chair David Bryant, and guest Camille Bryant to discuss this year's CES, and reflect on the meaning of technology shows in the Internet era. We talk about the cool tech we saw, what nifty gadgets we thought were really useful, and the various aspects of mega-trade shows in the modern age.  Eric thinks there wasn't a lot of wheat to be found in the chaff of copycats at this year's show. Loyd is impressed by Nikon's return to Pro DX format cameras with their spiffy new D500. David clearly wants a drone. Camille was super-impressed with the Oculus booth and demos. But there were a lot of other things to see and cool tech to discuss. Tools David and Eric talk about how little

Geek Year Resolutions What do you want to hack this year? David Bryant and Loyd Case talk about what they'd like to accomplish this year in tech, gaming, and other general geek topics.  Meaning Loyd talks about scaling back on PC building while investigating topics like 3D printing and IoT related hacks. David wants to do more with hand-built circuit boards and board gaming. Most of Loyd's resolutions revolve around doing more with what he already has, including playing all the unplayed games in his board game collection,  doing more with interesting printing materials, and writing for fun again. David wants to dive more into VR, but spend less (but more focused) time at cons, such as Comicon. And he's really gonna build that new PC inside the old HP Blackbird case. Tools David wants to put a reliable holder for mobile devices in his car. And he now has a storage box for his burgeoning watch collection. Loyd gives an update on his Skylake build, adding another 16GB (for 32GB total). The system is im

The Meaning of Star Wars Loyd Case, David Bryant, Eric Klein, and Ron Talbot gather to debate and discuss the meaning of Star Wars. SPOILER NOTE: We've all seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We discuss and debate the merits and flaws of the new movie in the Fun section, which starts roughly 56 minutes in. So if you haven't seen The Force Awakens, and you want to avoid spoilers, tune out at 56 minutes.  But it's all spoiler-free until the 56 minute mark. Meaning When Star Wars (aka Episode IV) released in 1977, the movie theater and industry landscape was considerably different. For better or worse, Star Wars reshaped the industry. We talk about how the movie shaped us as geeks, our first encounters with Star Wars, and what it means to us today. We also discuss the sequels, the prequels, and why it became a little embarrassing to admit you were a fan of the series.  Tools The gang talk about what they got for Christmas this year. Fun  We analyze and debate the merits and flaws of Star Wars:

The Meaning of Geek This week's format is different; we're abandoning our usual segments this week to talk about our favorites and disappointments of the year. We're also joined by Mozilla's tech director David Bryant, a builder and tech geek extraordinaire.  We divvy up the podcast into the following sections:   Tech & Gadgets Other Gear (non-tech) Video & PC Games Tabletop Games Visual Media (TV, Movies) Music Books and Reading After listening, let us know some of your favorites and duds of the year! About this Podcast Improbable Insights is a technology, gaming and general geekery podcast. We try to be short and pithy, splitting the podcast into three segments. Meaning We dig deep into a single technology, gaming, or geek-related topic, trying to parse the meaning and implications that underlies the hype and general noise surrounding these topics. The meaning segment always focuses on a single topic. Tools As Eric puts it, this is about what’s in our bag. What do we actu

The Meaning of Geek Eric and Loyd muse on what it means to be a geek in 2015. And what will 2016 bring? Meaning Being a geek used to mean belonging to an exclusive community -- sometimes a community of one. It also mean alienation, loneliness, and being the weird person. Today, geekery is almost mainstream. And geeks of every stripe exist. The Internet has made being a geek easy, where it used to be hard. But does the ease and acceptance of geekery means we've lost something in the process? Will commercialization and merchandising destroy the exclusivity of geekdom? Are we just old men yelling at clouds? Tools Loyd builds his Skylake production system, and tosses in a new graphics card for good measure. He also talks about new tires and fenders for bicycling in the rainy season. Eric gets a second Dell Ultrasharp U3415W, this time using the built-in speakers. And he's amazed -- they're the best built-in monitor speakers he's ever hard. Fun  Loyd wraps up his first run-through in Fallout 4 -- but of cours

Cutting the Cord We have special guest Robert Heron this week, along with regulars Loyd Case and Eric Klein, to talk about cutting the cord. Get your entertainment without having to subscribe to cable or satellite TV services and save yourself some real money. Meaning Cable and satellite TV services are huge businesses. However, they still follow the all-you-can-eat model, along with the high charges. Even basic cable is almost $100 per month; with premium services, bills as high as $200 per month are not uncommon. Cutting the cord means using the Internet and over-the-air broadcast to get your entertainment. Even if you pay for some of the services: Hulu Plus, Netflix, and some others, you're likely to come out ahead. Robert, Eric, and Loyd discuss what it takes to cut the cord -- and why it might not work for some people. Tools The three amigos talk about tools useful for cutting the cord -- in particular, streaming media hardware, such as Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV and others. Loyd talks about the new generat

Microsoft Windows is 30 Meaning Microsoft Windows 1.0 arrived roughly 30 years ago, along with the first Microsoft Mouse. Windows eventually became the dominant desktop and server OS. While Linux made inroads on Windows Server, desktop Windows still dominates, even against a resurgent MacOS. But threats loom on the horizon. Mobile, and new paradigms for user interaction and application use, may make desktop operating systems less relevant over time. We trace the history of Windows in an attempt to glimpse what the future of Microsoft's OS may hold. Tools Loyd's been playing with cloud storage systems. They all suck, in various ways. Eric and Loyd discuss the values and pitfalls of DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and others. Loyd also ditches one of his pricey monitor arms, mostly because its reach wasn't quite long enough. And he brings up the upcoming integration of Thunderbolt into the USB 3.1 ecosystem. Fun  It's all about Fallout 4, except when its about Diablo III. Loyd's up to level 42, and is jus

Green Homes, Green Living Meaning Living the green life means more than just recycling your cardboard. It's a step-by-step process in changing how you view resources, energy, and your lifestyle. Eric and Loyd discuss solar power, recycling, lighting, windows, lifestyle changes, and all the myriad things you need to do on the path to living a more green life. First world countries still use the most resources, generate the most waste, and have the largest impact on our environment. But it's amazing how much you can do to minimize the impact of living in a modern, technological civilization. Tools Eric and Loyd talk about tools to help the green life. Loyd's been using a Watts Up Pro USB to capture power usage data. Eric and Loyd both discuss LED lighting, lighting upgrades, retrofit lighting, and other tools that help lower power consumption. Fun  Loyd's cranking along on Fallout 4, while Eric promises this will be the week he launches into the wasteland. Star Wars: Battlefront is out, gorgeous looking, b

Smart Kitchens Meaning Eric wants his kitchen to be smart. But what does "smart kitchen" really mean? It's not internet access on your fridge, but much more than that -- and in some ways, much less. Along the way, Eric and Loyd talk about the evolution of cooking in the 21st century, and how millenials approach cooking. How does social media and social sharing affect kitchen use? What about energy efficiency and nutrition? Smart kitchens answer a number of these questions, but we're just scratching the surface. Tools Loyd gets a reference Radeon Nano from AMD, and it's now running in the small form factor gaming rig like a charm. Heat is manageable, game glitches are gone, and the only noticeable issue is the relatively loud fan. Eric volunteers to be the guinea pig at the next Friday Night Follies LAN party in Loyd's basement lab.  Bicycling into a cold headwind is never fun, but jackets made with Gore's Windstopper fabric make it a lot more bearable. Loyd talks about his Kathmandu Windstopper jacket. I

Infinite Data Meaning The coming age of the Internet of Things, combined with autonomous driving, will usher in an age of infinite data. Vast troves of data will be collected on our every activity, monitor our health, track our movements, and watch our consumption. What we do with that data will shape what we become as a society. Eric and Loyd wrestle with the problems of collecting, storing, and processing these immense silos of data. They also talk about what it might mean for the future of the digital society. Tools Loyd took his new Surface Pro 4 on a road trip, and gives it a big thumbs up. He also builds a new portable hard drive into a tiny chassis using an M-SATA SSD. While on the topic of flash memory, he also obtains a cool new USB key that looks like an old-school vacuum tube. Eric's not so sure about the portable SSD thing. He's betting cloud storage may just kill off portable SSDs and hard drives.  Fun  Fallout 4 is coming. 'Nuff said. Okay, there is more to say. Loyd's Jedi Consul