Tonight on GeekNights, we consider tech debt. Where it comes from, what it means, and what you can do about it. Rym's made a career of owning and addressing the tech debt of legacy systems, and there aren't really "correct" answers here. In the news, Microsoft is offering an Edge VPN, Ukrainian drones are shockingly effective against the Russian Navy, and you should check your home to see if it has any of these strange old holes. Also don't forget that the GeekNights Book Club is a thing!
Tags: tech news, technology/tech news, computing, games & hobbies, science & medicine, it, servers, gadgets, unix, linux, cs, natural sciences, technology, education/training, information, research, games & hobbies/other games, training, technology/gadgets, science & medicine/natural sciences, other games, cellular, windows, science, computers, pseudoscience, education
Older Episodes
Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about display cables. The standards can be confusing, S-Video was not that common, VGA was king for a long long time, and we grew up in the days of RF. In the news, web scraping is perfectly legal, the bad man is trying (an
Tonight on GeekNights, we revisit the topic of hosting we last covered in 2006. From simple web hosting to SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and even Iaas (Infrastructure as a Service), a lot has changed. Amazon EC2 didn't even e
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the concept of lock-in in technology. From platforms to software, app stores to physical connectors, it's actually a fairly complex topic. In the news, reason 499 not to buy a Tesla, Facebook collapses in the manner we
Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about package managers. We've covered Linux package management specifically in the ancient past. In the news, Rym's gonna do the Tunnel Run once it's safe to travel again, Europe has better vaccination policies than the US,
Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss software libraries. Most of you are probably too old to remember DLL Hell, but you probably don't want to be proving how square roots are calculated just to calculate them in your program. In the news, Amazon has had mul
Tonight on GeekNights, we present our 2021 GeekNights holiday technology gift guide! You can refer to our recent gaming gift guide as a companion to this. In the news, COVID vaccine boosters are fantastic, take heed as the Omicron variant poses a "very h
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider Home HVAC: Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning. We've previously covered server room cooling, and the show is interrupted at the end by a classic. In the news, New York is taking some action on robocalls (though
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider documentation. Client documentation, user guides, service runbooks, developer notes, and the like. We've previously covered Documentation Systems, as well as in a game design lecture on game rules. In the news, Rym fina
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider upgrades of and migrations between Operating Systems. We may need to consider that the concept of an Operating System has changed and continues to evolve as computer technology matures. In the news, Apple Day told us ab
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the Leopard that is social media. It is difficult to summarize the myriad ways that social media has materially harmed society despite its great promise. From Orkut to Facebook to Twitter, it's been a destabilizing forc
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the archaic "computer magazine" that you may have heard old people talking about. From PC Gamer to Maximum PC to Computer Shopper, the pre-Internet was a wild time. In the news, Western Digital "My Book" users had all t
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider Apple, CSAM, and Privacy. Apple is under fire for its solution here, some have warned of its dangers, and other companies already do similar things. (It's worth noting that Apple is already doing this on iCloud Mail). I
Tonight on GeekNights, we accidentally do a June tech news roundup. So, in that news, US carries share vertical location data for 911 calls, Apple adds additional safety measures to AirTags (though there are still workarounds), Facetime is (sort of) comi
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the video camera. In the news, there is drama at Freenode, Audacity won't gather telemetry data, Spotify is getting podcast transcription, and Samsung seems to have given up on upcycling.
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the humble remote control. We are some of the youngest people who remember having screens and other devices without remote controls, and they changed things in more ways than you might have expected. In the news, Apple
Tonight on GeekNights, we bring you a technology news roundup for April 2021. Apple announces several things, Apple must face a lawsuit over whether or not people "buy" things, early results show promise for a new malaria vaccine, capitalism is keeping t
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the current world of laptops and tablets. The world is changing, and laptops are increasingly becoming desktop replacements or niche devices. Don't take our advice from how to buy a laptop in 2008, and internalize how l
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider how multi-factor authentication works. We've previously talked about single Signon, biometrics, the levels of security & privacy, and the like, but we've never actually talked about how TOTP and other multi-factor a
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider cable management. From inside your computer to... outside your computer. Rack & stack to mounting a TV, cable management is more important than you might realize. In the news, maybe we can end the terror of Daylight