AwesomeCast: Tech and Gadget Talk

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The Minions made a Wi-Fi router — and somehow it’s actually good.

Sorg, Katie Dudas, and Dave Podnar are back for AwesomeCast 798 with a wonderfully strange collection of tech, gaming, nostalgia and Pittsburgh stories.

Sorg discovers Solitaire Alone Together, a browser experience that recreates Windows 98-era Solitaire while letting you watch people around the world play alongside you. Katie unboxes an adorable Optimus Prime from Symbiote Studios and gets excited about an upcoming Grimlock puppet. Dave recaps completing both the 5K and 10K at Pittsburgh’s Great Race and celebrates the runners who have participated since the event began.

Plus: Castlevania celebrates 40 years, Call of Duty experiments with turning off goofy skins, Microsoft continues reshaping Xbox, Wendy’s releases an actual emo album, Pizza Hut teams with Little Free Library, the crew talks about the future of U.S. astronaut transportation, and a viral Minions Wi-Fi 6E router turns out to have surprisingly serious hardware.

It’s nostalgia, gadgets, gaming, Pittsburgh and the wonderfully weird side of technology on AwesomeCast 798.

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Sorg and Dave Podnar dive into Apple Shortcuts’ increasingly powerful automation tools, including a shortcut that can generate Instagram captions and hashtags from a photo and prepare the post for sharing.

Then Sorg brings stories back from California: a visit to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizzeria in Santa Monica, a wild experience aboard Universal Studios Hollywood’s new Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift coaster, and a useful Nissan Rogue CarPlay setup that let him run Waze and Apple Maps at the same time.

The crew also celebrates astronaut Ellen Ochoa and her Barbie tribute, discusses a $1.5 million Haas Foundation commitment to SAE University Programs, reacts to the incredible Street Fighter Guile popcorn hat, and gets into the growing problem of low-effort AI graphics appearing everywhere from small businesses to major corporations.

Show Notes

Apple Shortcuts automation demo:

Dave’s Instagram shortcut:

TMNT Pizzeria:

Sorg’s TMNT Pizzeria video:

Ellen Ochoa:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/05/03/ellen-ochoa-sdsu-graduate-and-first-latina-to-travel-in-space-awarded-presidential-medal-of-freedom/

CarPlay multitasking:

2027 Haas registration information:

Guile popcorn hat:

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Michael Sorg and Katie Dudas are joined by Sam Eitzen, CEO of Snapbar, for a deep dive into how artificial intelligence is changing experiential marketing, trade shows, conferences, brand activations, and the humble photo booth.

Sam explains how Snapbar evolved from physically hauling hundreds of photo booths to events into building a web-based platform that lets brands create interactive experiences accessible from an iPad, touchscreen, QR code, or an attendee’s own phone. What started as a necessary pandemic pivot has developed into AI photo experiences, highly personalized AI Stories, and new ways for brands to combine entertainment with lead generation.

The conversation also gets beyond the AI hype. Sam discusses the unpredictability of image models, why prompt engineering still requires humans, how Snapbar tests and switches between different AI models, and why brands need to understand that generative AI is not simply automated Photoshop. Snapbar’s system remains cloud-based, meaning connectivity and third-party model reliability are still real considerations for live events.

Topics and products discussed:

Learn more about Snapbar at https://snapbar.com, which Sam specifically shares at the end of the interview.

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Katie Dudas visits Pittsburgh Robotics & AI Discovery Day 2026 and catches up with Trevor Sibley, Marketing Manager at Pittsburgh-based HEBI Robotics, to meet a robot with a very Pittsburgh story.

When the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh, HEBI had the opportunity to appear on the main stage alongside Carnegie Mellon University. Naturally, they decided their robot needed a local upgrade: “PLAY RENEGADE” displayed right on the robot. HEBI CEO Bob Raida helped get the crowd going as “Renegade” played during the demonstration.

Trevor also explains the technology behind the robot, including HEBI’s modular platform and R-Series smart actuators. Their mobile robots are designed to carry tools and equipment into muddy, dirty and hard-to-reach environments while remaining easy to control.

Katie also gets a look at HEBI’s industrial robotics work and how the company uses robots to make dangerous jobs safer while keeping skilled human operators in control.

It’s Pittsburgh robotics, Pittsburgh football culture and a robot that knows exactly when it’s time to Play Renegade.

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Apple finally gave the tech world its foldable iPhone, and the biggest question on AwesomeCast 796 isn’t whether it looks impressive. It’s whether anyone needs a $1,999 phone.

Sorg, Katie Dudas and Dave Podnar spend this week’s episode looking at where Apple is going next, while also catching up on Nintendo, MapQuest, Pittsburgh technology and some unusually revealing internet analytics.

Dave upgraded to iOS 27 and came away impressed with its speed and stability, but the headline Siri AI features come with a catch: there’s a waitlist.

Apple’s rollout includes a more capable Siri experience, improved Visual Intelligence and upgrades to Image Playground. Sorg, who had access earlier through the beta process, says Siri already appears better at understanding spoken requests and answering questions without immediately handing everything off elsewhere.

More on the Siri AI rollout:

Then there’s the iPhone Duo.

The foldable became one of the episode’s biggest discussions after an unlikely piece of analytics showed just how much attention Apple’s announcement received: Pornhub reported a significant traffic drop when Apple revealed the device.

https://mashable.com/life/pornhub-apple-event-viewers-dropped-iphone-duo

Beyond the jokes, there are intriguing ideas here. Apple is using matching aspect ratios between the outside and inside displays, potentially making life easier for developers. The larger format opens up interesting multitasking possibilities, and the crew sees potential for business users, presenters and some creators.

The problem is impossible to ignore: $1,999 is a lot of money for a phone.

Katie compares the experience to having a dual-monitor setup in your pocket but struggles to get past the cost. Sorg sees the Duo more as Apple’s latest first-generation experiment — something that may eventually trickle down into less expensive devices after early adopters figure out what the form factor is actually good for.

A smaller Apple announcement may prove more immediately useful.

The crew discusses an Apple Watch listening feature that can help recover something you recently heard. The example involved replaying information like restaurant specials, but Sorg immediately saw a production use for it: remembering instructions received in a noisy event environment.

Sometimes the best technology feature isn’t spectacular. It simply fixes a small problem that happens constantly.

Chachi’s Video Game Minute brings an update on the White House Tetris-style game, which has now been removed.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2026/09/08/white-house-removes-controversial-tetris-style-game-from-arcade-website/

Nintendo also showed gameplay for the Switch 2 remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, scheduled for November 5.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/nintendo-shares-the-first-gameplay-and-release-date-for-the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time-remake/

Sorg continues the Nintendo discussion with Mario Kart World’s newly accessible recreations of classic Super Nintendo tracks and a new Metroid announcement.

Mario Kart update:

Nintendo Direct roundup:

The larger question is whether Nintendo is leaning too heavily on remakes — even as genuinely new games continue arriving beside them.

MapQuest’s unexpected comeback continues, powered partly by something its bigger competitors often lack: personality.

Katie introduces two more Questies — Corgi and Black Cat — along with Rufus, the dog who inspired the Corgi design, and the upcoming Jimothy character. Future MapQuest updates are also expected to include CarPlay, Android Auto and transit improvements.

Corgi and Black Cat:

Rufus:

Jimothy:

It’s a reminder that a challenger brand doesn’t always have to beat Google on pure scale. Sometimes giving people a reason to care about the product is enough to get another look.

For Hispanic Heritage Month, Dave’s Awesome History segment highlights Luis von Ahn.

Von Ahn came from Guatemala to Carnegie Mellon, became one of the researchers behind CAPTCHA and later co-founded Duolingo. The discussion expands into the importance of university research and how work that begins without an obvious commercial product can eventually become foundational technology.

https://www.invent.org/inductees/luis-von-ahn

Sorg’s Awesome Thing of the Week comes from a very different kind of technology production.

The Sidekick Media crew helped capture Prospect Pro Wrestling’s “Banger in the Hangar” at the 911th Air Wing. Wrestlers entered through a huge cargo aircraft, Stormtroopers showed up, the Pirate Parrot got involved, and the production took place inside an enormous working hangar.

Watch the event:

It is another episode that jumps from smartphones and video games to Pittsburgh production stories — exactly the kind of wonderfully strange technology mix AwesomeCast was built for.

Support AwesomeCast at Patreon.com/AwesomeCast and find more shows at www.SorgatronMedia.com.

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Xbox cloud gaming limits are changing Sorg’s living-room setup, MapQuest is turning navigation into a pixel-art adventure, and a rooster alarm app wants you to work for your snooze button.

On AwesomeCast 795, Michael Sorg, Katie Dudas, and Dave Podnar explore gaming news, gadgets, apps, and geek culture from Pittsburgh.

• Xbox Cloud Gaming limits: Sorg explains why he moved his Xbox Series S back downstairs. The hosts discuss the impact of monthly streaming allowances on long games and cloud-focused devices, plus a follow-up on Xbox’s disc-to-digital licensing preview.

• Next-generation Xbox affordability: An interview about Project Helix sparks a conversation about efficiency, console prices, PC game compatibility, and unanswered disc-drive questions.

• Retro cartridges on modern computers: Sorg discovers Epilogue’s GB Operator and SN Operator. The discussion covers playing existing Game Boy and Super Nintendo collections, preserving cartridge saves, and a Game Boy Camera connection.

• MapQuest’s 8-bit personality: Katie shares her experience with pixel-style maps, Questies character avatars, playful navigation voices, CarPlay, and live radio.

• Star Trek at 60: Dave reflects on the franchise’s cultural impact, diverse vision of the future, and connections to real-world technology, from communicators to tablet-like PADDs.

• John Snow and disease mapping: Dave’s Awesome History explores the Broad Street cholera outbreak and connects historical mapping with modern wastewater surveillance and community preparedness.

• Panic’s tariff refunds: ChachiSays covers the Playdate company’s decision to return tariff charges to customers.

• The Tetris Company responds: Chachi discusses the company’s statement about a Tetris-like game on the White House website.

• Zelda anniversary reactions: Sorg discusses the presentation’s movie reveal, music-tour news, and Ocarina of Time remake footage. The hosts weigh remake pricing, revisit Nintendo memories, and talk Twilight Princess, Star Fox, and Super Mario Sunshine.

• Street Fighter 6 meets the movies: Movie-actor challenger screens, including Roman Reigns as Akuma, spark excitement and memories of Street Fighter’s earlier film and game crossover.

• Snoopy at Starbucks: Katie highlights Great Pumpkin-inspired Peanuts merchandise, including mugs, travel cups, bags, and pins.

• Dungeon Crawler Carl LEGO Ideas: Two fan proposals bring Carl, Princess Donut, and friends into brick form. The hosts explore a dungeon scene and larger character builds seeking community support.

• Clucky’s demanding wake-up call: Sorg sets up a rooster alarm app with snooze challenges, samples its loud sounds, and chooses a tilt-game mission. Katie explains how the app turns getting out of bed into an interactive routine.

Plus, Dave shares his Steelers 5K experience, and the hosts bring their usual mix of hands-on discoveries, gaming opinions, and Pittsburgh personality.

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How do you preserve physical video games in a world increasingly designed around downloads? How much would you pay for a really good keyboard? And what exactly happens when you sort the Nintendo Switch store from cheapest to most expensive?

Those questions—and several much stranger ones—come up on AwesomeCast 794 with Sorg, Katie Dudas, and Dave Podnar.

One of the episode’s biggest discussions centers on Microsoft’s Xbox Discs to Digital initiative.

The concept offers an interesting middle ground between physical and digital ownership. A supported Xbox disc can be authenticated and connected to a player’s digital library, potentially giving players digital access while the disc itself continues to function as the transferable proof of ownership.

That last part is important. If the disc is sold and authenticated by somebody else, the digital access moves with it.

For Sorg, who has stacks of Xbox One games and a console with a failed optical drive, this could solve a very practical problem. It also opens possibilities for finding inexpensive used Xbox games at stores such as GameStop and turning them into accessible digital titles.

There are still questions surrounding Xbox 360 compatibility, licensing, sports games, delisted games and publisher participation, but it is a fascinating attempt to bridge two very different eras of game ownership.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/08/26/your-discs-now-also-digital/?ocid=Platform_soc_omc_xbo_fb_Photo_lrn_8.26.2

That question carries directly into this week’s ChachiSays Video Game Minute.

Chachi points to figures showing U.S. spending on physical video games falling to levels not seen since physical-game statistics began being tracked in 1995. Nintendo represented a sizable portion of the remaining physical market.

The contradiction is hard to ignore: gamers regularly criticize publishers for abandoning physical media, but those products need enough buyers to justify continuing to manufacture and distribute them.

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/console-gaming/us-console-sales-fall-39-percent-in-july-as-memory-costs-push-average-price-to-542

Chachi also discusses reports of generative AI being used during development of multiple titles connected to Gamescom 2026.

The larger concern is not simply whether AI tools exist inside game development. The segment focuses on how companies disclose that use, what work the systems replace, and whether developers are being transparent with their audiences.

Project Zeta, Aion 2, Train Sim World 7, Crimson Desert and Crazy Taxi: World Tour are among the games brought up during the discussion.

https://kotaku.com/opening-night-live-2026-genai-slop-games-geoff-keighley-2000728477

Katie highlights a much more thoughtful use of technology: the little visual Easter eggs hidden inside Roku City.

The screensaver incorporated imagery referencing Dolly Parton and Tim Curry along with an Optimus Prime-inspired tribute to Peter Cullen.

That leads the crew into memories of Cullen’s massive voice-acting career and the strange experience of realizing, years later, just how many familiar childhood characters were voiced by the same small group of performers.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DcrPR8alYG3/?img_index=1

Dave’s Awesome History segment turns toward NASA and astronomer Nancy Grace Roman.

Roman played an important role in pushing space-based astronomy forward, helping lay the groundwork for what ultimately became the Hubble Space Telescope.

The telescope carrying her name represents another enormous leap in what astronomers can observe. The hosts discuss its much wider field of view, the search for exoplanets, dark matter and dark energy, as well as the unusual orbital environments used by major observatories.

https://www.planetary.org/articles/the-nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope-launch

Katie has an annual public-service announcement: if you want a particular Advent Calendar, buy it when you see it.

LEGO’s 2026 calendars are already appearing, including traditional Christmas offerings alongside Star Wars, Marvel and Disney sets.

Waiting until December is how you end up frantically checking every store in town for the one calendar somebody decided they absolutely had to have.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/search?q=advent%20calendar%202026&suggestion=true

Dave then discovers a corner of technology that makes even premium mechanical keyboards look inexpensive.

A social video begins with keyboards priced in the hundreds of dollars, moves into models costing thousands, and eventually reaches one sitting around the $100,000 mark.

At that point, calling something a “computer accessory” may no longer adequately explain what is happening.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1593262308558803

Double Fine found an extremely appropriate way to honor Tim Curry by making Brütal Legend free for 666 minutes.

The Xbox 360-era heavy-metal adventure stars Jack Black and features Curry among its memorable cast.

Sorg recently returned to the game and found that, despite showing its age in places, it remains surprisingly enjoyable.

https://www.ign.com/articles/double-fine-productions-makes-brutal-legend-free-for-666-minutes-to-honor-tim-curry?link_source=ta_first_comment&taid=6a905803b9a113000189638d&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook

Speaking of things that have aged differently, Sorg rediscovers the computer-animated Donkey Kong Country television series from the late 1990s.

The show provides an incredible time capsule of early television CGI: stiff animation, questionable lip synchronization and character models that can occasionally drift into nightmare territory.

And yet there is something fascinating about seeing what creators were able to accomplish with 1990s rendering technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWpI4vahfIY

There is another kind of digital archaeology available right now.

Go to the Nintendo Switch store. Sort everything from lowest price to highest. Start scrolling.

The result is a journey through inexpensive retro games, indie releases, zombie games, cat games, simulators, dating games, suspiciously AI-looking artwork and enough shovelware to keep the AwesomeCast crew entertained far longer than expected.

There are legitimate bargains hiding in the pile—but finding them is part of the adventure.

https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/sales-and-deals/#show=0&p=1&sort=pa&f=priceRangeFilter&priceRangeFilter=%240+-+%244.99

The episode’s final major retro-tech rabbit hole comes courtesy of a Cyberpunk-themed Commodore 64.

The unusual crossover sends Katie and Dave back into memories of the original beige Commodore machines, while Dave recalls using GEOS for word processing and schoolwork long before the modern Windows experience became standard.

https://commodore.net/store/commodore64/

Dave also shows off the giant magnetic medals earned through the Pro Football Hall of Fame virtual race series.

https://runsignup.com/Race/OH/Canton/HOFRaceSeries

Katie introduces what may become a recurring feature, “What Is Katie Labeling Now?”, after discovering one of her USB-C cables was charging her laptop dramatically slower than the others.

And before any of that, the crew revisits Sorgstock and its real-life video game wrestling match, where the performers recreated all of the awkward movement, button mashing, missed attacks and controller confusion of playing a wrestling game when nobody remembers the controls.

From the future of game ownership to 1980s computers and $100,000 keyboards, AwesomeCast 794 once again proves there is always something wonderfully strange happening in technology.

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Sorg, Katie Dudas, and Dave Podnar are back for another round of geeky tech, gadgets, games, collectibles, and Pittsburgh happenings. The episode opens on a somber note with a tribute to Dolly Parton and the impact of her philanthropy, including her work supporting childhood literacy.

Then the crew gets into everything from simulated RC racing and Apple’s latest Macs to a life-size Grogu, Linux history, Pokémon fossils, GTA VI leaks, and gaming at Pittsburgh International Airport.

Topics discussed include:

The crew also checks in on their recent Pittsburgh Shootout adventures and previews more of what’s happening around the Sorgatron Media universe.

RC Racing / CloudRC

Plastic Fun Time 3D Prints

Apple Mac mini / Mac Studio Updates

35 Years of Linux

Kingdom Hearts Announcements

Mattel Game Studios

GTA VI Leak Story

Transformers Minecraft

Nature Calls Restroom Finder – iOS

Ultimate Grogu

Pittsburgh Airport Gameway

Disney x Pittsburgh Steelers

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Sorg, Katie Dudas, and Dave Podnar explore an AI pocket pet that grows up with its owner, clues pointing toward camera-equipped Apple AirPods, TikTok’s concerning voice-call feature, robots building electric vehicles, changes to YouTube view counts, retro Mario experiments, and more technology news from Pittsburgh.

This week’s stories and gadgets:

Support AwesomeCast and receive bonus aftertalk content at https://www.patreon.com/awesomecast.

Support AwesomeCast: Tech and Gadget Talk