What's Tech?

For longer than I would like to admit, I thought Raspberry Pi was a dessert. I'm not proud of that. Fortunately, I eventually learned what Raspberry Pi actually is, and though it's not nearly as tasty, it's just as exciting: an affordable, customizable computer the size of a credit card. Raspberry Pi has changed how thousands of people tinker with and learn about computers. People have used the hardware to create Game Boy emulators and synthesizers, tiny cameras and jukeboxes...

Whether or not you've used a video game emulator yourself — and if you have, it's okay, I'm not gonna snitch — it's impossible to deny their prevalence. Since the age of modern computing, people have figured out how to use code to mimic game consoles like NES and Genesis in order to play them on everything from laptops to smartwatches. Sometimes it's a near-perfect recreation of a childhood memory...

Graphics cards! So hot right now. Whether it's the slow realization that jumping on board with the 2016 VR revolution requires a tricked-out gaming rig you'd never previously have dreamed of stashing under your desk, or the blitz of hype surrounding Nvidia's latest 1000-series GPUs, there's more reason to get excited about PC gaming hardware than there has been in years. But what is a graphics card? Do you really need one, and which one do you need? Learn more about your ad choices...

Share on Facebook Tweet Share Pin Drake is a former child actor, current pop star, and the secular god of memes — even if he denounces that last label. Born Aubrey Drake Graham, the Canadian celebrity has been inescapable, not just for fans of music, but enthusiasts of technology. That's because Drake is a meeting point of the two...

A couple weeks ago, my friend and colleague Bryan Bishop visited Las Vegas for a flashy conference called CinemaCon, where movie studios and theater owners discuss the future of the film industry — a future that isn't as predictable as it used to be. Many theater owners worry that in the age of streaming, the cineplex will become less relevant...

If you own a smartphone or have a Facebook account, odds are you've played a free-to-play game. Maybe you grew crops in Farmville or scrimmaged in Clash of Clans. If you're anything like me, one of those city-building games (the kind that publishers shrewdly pair with a popular intellectual property like The Simpsons or Star Wars), has sunk its claws into your free time and shredded it into gory pulp. Odds are you haven't, however, paid for your free-to-play games...

This week, The Verge launched a gadget blog. It's called Circuit Breaker, and you can read about its origin and purpose in The New York Times. Paul Miller, the editor of Circuit Breaker, has spoken a lot this week about the broader hopes and ambitions for the new site. But ever the dullard, I wanted to learn the basics: what is a gadget blog, anyway? I invited Miller onto the show to get an answer...

2016 is shaping up to be the year of the bot. Late last month, Microsoft made a big bet on tools that will help developers create artificial intelligence software meant to improve the lives of humans by completing small tasks, and last week Facebook launched an entire bot platform for its communication tool, Messenger. I invited my buddy and colleague Casey Newton — who wrote one of my favorite features on bots — to explain the technology...

For nearly 60 episodes, one question has persisted through What's Tech: what is happening in the ending of Steven Spielberg's 2001 sci-fi film A.I. Artificial Intelligence? To settle the question once and for all, I invited my friend and artificial intelligence expert, Sam Byford, to appear on the show. Sadly, as you will hear me learn, Sam Byford is in expert in actual artificial intelligence, not the film Artificial Intelligence. Truth is, he's never even seen the film. But that's okay...

I love Slack, the mega-popular corporate-friendly chat client. I love it so much that I desperately want to delete it from my phone, because I can't help but check its messages every hour of every day. Yesterday night, I responded to a message at 3AM...