Technorama

Episode 781: Roomba, You’ve Done It Again!

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  • QOTW:
    • What’s a piece of forgotten ’90s tech that you think deserves a modern comeback, and how would you upgrade it?
      • On This Day In History for September 17, 2025

      This is the 260th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 105 days remaining in 2025.

      • It was on this date in 1543, that The first Finnish-language book, the Abckiria by Mikael Agricola, was published in Stockholm.
      • Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote a letter to the Royal Society describing “animalcules”, later known as protozoa on this date in 1683.
      • Also on September 17, 1908, The Wright Flyer flown by Orville Wright, with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as passenger, crashed, killing Selfridge, who became the first airplane fatality.
      • It was 64 years ago today that the world’s first retractable roof stadium, the Civic Arena, opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
      • The Space Shuttle Enterprise was unveiled by NASA on this date in 1976.

        • Happy birthday goes out on this date to:

        • Italian astronomer, Celio Calcagnini, born on this date in 1479.
        • German geologist and paleontologist, Herman Adolfovich Trautscohold was born 208 years ago today.
        • Bernhard Riemann, the German-Italian mathematician and academic was born 199 years ago today.
        • Scottish-American businessman, founded Buick Motor Company, David Dunbar Buick, born on this date in 1854.
        • Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian scientist and engineer was born on that same date in 1857.
        • Russian chemist, Vera Yevstafievna Popova, born on this date in 1867.
        • Eivind Astrup, Norwegian explorer was born on that same date in 1871.
        • Gerald Guralnik, the American physicist and academic was born 89 years ago today.

          • Listener Birthdays

          • 18 – Jeff Schultz (Gorbash)
          • 20 – Joel Harper (Rincewind) / Milwaukee WI
          • 20 – Joel Rickenbach [deceased] (host of the You’ve Got Geek Podcast)
          • 21 – Dean Jensen (Beaker1)
          • 22 – Bilbo Baggins
          • 22 – Frodo Baggins

            • And that’s the way it was, on this day in history for September 17, 2025

            • If you want to get on the Technorama Birthday Calendar, visit our website and look for the Birthday Calendar link.
              • News
              • Did NASA’s Perseverance rover actually find evidence of life on Mars? We need to bring its samples home to find out, scientists say | Space
              • Orson Welles’ Lost Movie Will Use AI to Reconstruct Missing 43 Minutes
              • Ant queen gives birth to two different species | CNN
                • Hacks & Strange Stories
                • Former MS engineer Dave Plummer admits he accidentally coded Pinball to run ‘at like, 5,000 frames per second’ on Windows NT | PC Gamer
                  • Shout out to the chat room

                  Watch us live every Sunday night at 8:30PM ET on Facebook. Go to Join our page and get notified automatically. Join us on the live chat!

                  Remember When
                  • Retrotechtacular: The Noisy Home Computer From 1967 | Hackaday
                    • Thank you Patrons!

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                    Pass me the remote
                    • Kreg
                      • Aka Charlie Sheen – Netflix
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                          • Question of the week
                          • What’s the most useless robot you can imagine and what does or doesn’t it do?
                            • End of Show Stuff

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                                    TechnoramaBy Chuck Tomasi and Kreg Steppe
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