Decipher SciFi

Nov 16 2020 269 ep. 43 mins 1.7k
Decipher SciFi Podcast artwork

Decipher SciFi explores the how and why in science fiction with conversations about technology, humanity, and the future. This is not a review show, nor will you see much criticism or snark. It is a rationally optimistic look, through film, at where society and technology are and where they are headed. Also, butts.

  Science  TV & Film
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Isolated BS: VR breakthroughs, space clouds, and earthworm jerky

Nov 16 2020 31 mins  
Spaaaaace Clouds in space…? Microsoft Azure Space and Azure Orbital. Making space cheaper and more accessible with satcomm as a service. VR The new Oculus Quest. Past predictions. Pulling the VR market in the direction of affordability? Pandemic winter VR. Hating Facebook while embracing their VR product. Getting better at not getting sick. Experiences of unreality. Confe

Her: sad foreheads, augmented audio presence, and friendly AI takeoff scenarios

Nov 09 2020 37 mins  
AI everything Creating a thinking, feeling artificial intelligence to do really important things for humanity like… sorting through your e-mail. N-dimensional AI chess. Rapid takeoff scenarios. Personal Assistants Natural language processing developments. The rise of proactive digital personal assistants. Predictive local, personal information. Digital relationship Virt

An unexplained absence

Nov 03 2020 5 mins  
You may be wondering where we went for a minute there 😬 Support the show!

The Core: Flying bricks, pacemakers, and quantum avian eyeballs

Oct 05 2020 23 mins  
Forgetability The valley of forgetability (The Core) between science-respecting sci-fi (e.g. Arrival) and totally bonkers nonsense (e.g. Jupiter Ascending). Space shuttle Landing the “flying brick.” Bird navigation Magnetite beaks. The possibility of quantum eyeball magnetic navigation HUDs. Corvid appreciation. Why birds don’t all fly into our windows and our eyeba

Stank waffles, VR development, and Venusian cloud datacenters

Sep 21 2020 38 mins  
Clouds in episode image from “Storm Clouds” by Albert Bierstadt/The White House Historical Association CC-O @ Wikipedia Waffles Belgian Waffle formula Tasty waffles! Stank waffles! With lots of syrup! Solving food problems with casseroles. Gravy! VR Marveling at the Oculus Quest two 25% price drop from the last generation. Hating Facebook. Realizing the separatene

Raised by Wolves: exoplanets, eating rats, and fake-karate floaty physics

Sep 14 2020 47 mins  
Happy 5-year anniversary whoooooo 🥳🎉 Subluminal interstellar travel Accelerating for half of the ride, and braking for the other half. The advantage of avoiding squishy human cargo for high acceleration. The difference between the Alucard and the Alcubierre drive technologies (hint: a miserable pile of secrets). Special floaty physics, magnets on your feet, and fake kar

Isolated BS: nuclear bananas, unreal simulations, and buttplug archaeology w/ Josh

Sep 07 2020 50 mins  
“Banana” image used in featured image with our brains by nicubunu CC-0 Josh, recently Made a strong showing on the recent Saving Private Ryan episode over at LSG Media. Real human stuff in between the dick and fart jokes. Teledildonics Tales of coupled internet-connected sex toys are way up! Hooray for free and open source teledildonics at buttplug.io. Nuclear thin

On Decipher History - Titanic! rich people, bad luck, and ever-increasing hugeness w/ Joe

Aug 31 2020 100 mins  
Production Costly! The costs of vising the wreck twelve times for research and footage, not to mention the cost of the film production overall. The extreme profitability of this film and James Cameron in general. Classism First, second, and third class on the same ship. Titans of industry. Runaway capitalism. The class divide and point of view before The Great War. The modern

Proactive prostheses, facial recognition, and correlating diarrhea

Aug 17 2020 24 mins  
Fawkes mask in post image Multipainkiller Studio CC-BY Prosthetics Proactive prostheses in our future? Recognizing that we routinely do this with major joints, and with for a full cyberpunk limb-improvement future. Big brother etc Machine learning facial recognition. Fawkes machine learning facial image “cloaking.” The possible value of poisoned data sets. Placing indiv

X-Men First Class: nuclear panic, destructive resonance, and woolly mammoth piñatas

Aug 10 2020 39 mins  
Fear of mutation Our recent X-Men. Irl post-war nuclear anxieties. More mutant panic and more mutant supremacy bad guys. Irradiating Earth Not enough to make superpowers, but we sure did irradiate a lot. The clear mark of human civilization in the geological record. Past discussions of the Silurian Hypothesis. Neanderthal interactions 2010 Neanderthal DNA news and the pos