Happy Tech

Episode 14 of the Happy Tech Podcast, and our first episode on the new biweekly schedule!

This week's headlines: a brain implant that lets people with paralysis speak AND gesture through a personalized digital avatar, Xbox launching Xbox Labs to embrace fan-made AI game ports (Halo in a web browser, anyone?), and NC State researchers building a real-life "lightsaber," a laser-made plasma beam that works as a radio antenna and vanishes when you switch it off.

Opinion of the Week: AI is rebuilding expensive software for free. Could it finally break the subscription model, or at least get Premiere Pro to stop crashing?

More good news: SpaceX's Dragon delivers artificial-retina manufacturing to the ISS, portable solar kits keep the lights on in disaster zones from Bangladesh to Ukraine, and Refund This Game, the indie platformer that dares you to beat it inside Steam's two-hour refund window.

Plus: How Was Your Week (a Pokémon and pop culture show, a new Hot Wheels racing channel, and a Magic tournament in Halifax), Guess the Price with rare vintage mice, from the Apple Lisa mouse to a 1983 Microsoft original (and one modern mouse that outsold them all), and Show and Tell with a Pokémon battle-menu box and vintage Magic: The Gathering binders. Can you name all five cards on the covers without looking them up? Tell us in the comments!

Sources:

Brain implant and avatar: https://www.fox13news.com/news/brain-implants-restores-gestures-speech-paralysis-patients-through-virtual-avatars

Xbox Labs: https://finalweapon.net/2026/10/13/xbox-announces-formation-of-xbox-labs-division/

Plasma "lightsaber" antenna: https://thedebrief.org/?p=53352

SpaceX CRS-35 and artificial retinas: https://www.nasa.gov/?p=1056486

Solar kits in disaster zones: https://www.wsbtv.com/news/world/climate-driven/YVLM5X353YZSXA5HFAN4VPKQN4/

Refund This Game: https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/this-steam-game-wants-you-to-beat-it-within-two-hours-so-you-get-a-refund-3418759/

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Apple skipped the keynote and quietly dropped a whole smart home lineup at its invite-only Welcome Home event on October 13. We go product by product: HomeView, Apple's $299 tilting smart display that knows who's looking at it; the Apple Home Collection of cameras, locks, doorbells, and thermostats built with LG and Schneider Electric; the HomePod mini 2 and its album-art Sound Glow; and the new Apple TV 4K, whose A19 chip has us dreaming about a tiny living room game console.

Plus: Canadian Thanksgiving, reviving Dan's PC with a new power supply, progress on our cocktail arcade cabinet, and a Show and Tell with two G4 iMacs, the lamp-shaped ancestor of HomeView.

Prices mentioned are in USD.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro

0:30 Headlines: Apple's Welcome Home event

1:36 HomeView: Apple's first smart home hub

17:08 Apple Home Collection (LG and Schneider)

24:36 HomePod mini 2

29:24 Apple TV 4K (2026)

39:07 How was your week?

39:41 Fixing Dan's PC

41:43 Cocktail arcade cabinet progress

42:25 Show and Tell: G4 iMacs

46:31 Outro and patron shoutout

Welcome to our newest patron, Graham! Join him for $1 a month and get your name on our patron list: https://www.patreon.com/canadiancomputercollector

Want the highlights? Check out our Happy Tech Clips channel for clips and compilations from the show.

Happy Tech is a podcast about positive, optimistic tech and gaming news.

#Apple #HomeView #SmartHome #HomePod #AppleTV

IKEA's sentient Kallax shelf joins Skyrim (voiced by Matt Berry!), a repairable Framework laptop out-lasts a MacBook Pro, and the GTA devs' lost Kirby game is finally playable. Plus: an operating system for the Atari Jaguar, a $100 space particle detector, Valheim 1.0, Canadian kids coding for the ISS, 8BitDo's Tomb Raider controllers, and an NES classic remade by the couple who made it in 1988. We also guess the price of graded Pokémon Game Boy games and share a Commodore phone and some antique show finds.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro

0:26 IKEA's talking Kallax shelf joins Skyrim

8:53 Framework Laptop 13 Pro beats MacBook Pro on battery

13:27 The GTA devs' lost Kirby game is playable

16:51 How was your week?

20:30 Tech garage sale recap

22:11 JagOS: the Atari computer that never was

26:30 Build a $100 space particle detector

28:36 Canadian kids can run code on the ISS

31:20 Valheim hits 1.0

34:48 8BitDo Tomb Raider 30th anniversary controllers

38:28 LAN party stories

42:15 Battle of Olympus remade by its original creators

44:36 Solar cells set another efficiency record

45:07 Guess the Price: graded Pokémon Game Boy games

52:41 Show and Tell: Commodore phone

56:23 Show and Tell: antique show finds

1:01:49 Outro

SOURCES

IKEA x Skyrim: TheSixthAxis, PCWorld

Framework Laptop 13 Pro: Notebookcheck (citing PCMag)

Kid Kirby: Time Extension, Notebookcheck

JagOS: Time Extension

CosmicWatch: ScienceDaily, via Archyde

Astro Pi Challenge: Raspberry Pi Foundation (sign up at astro-pi.org)

Valheim 1.0: ComicBook.com

8BitDo Tomb Raider controllers: Notebookcheck, 8BitDo

The Battle of Olympus remake: PC Gamer

Longi solar cell record: pv magazine

Full source links are in the YouTube description.

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Dan's out this week, so Marc Lagace (formerly of the Wrecked by Tech podcast and Android Central) pulls up a chair in the Happy Tech studio for his first visit. We cover Framework refunding laptop buyers without anyone asking, CDs outgrowing vinyl in the RIAA's mid-year numbers, a medical AI tool going global, a 108-year-old WWI cipher finally cracked, and Xiaomi's SkyNomad SUV with swivelling seats, a built-in fridge and a pop-up second storey. Plus a graphics card that doubles as an air freshener, a real ocarina you can play to control the Switch 2 Ocarina of Time remake, a live ocarina performance in Show and Tell, and Guess the Price: AI subscription edition.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open

0:31 Welcome, Marc Lagace fills in for Dan

1:04 Framework refunds laptop buyers without being asked

8:34 CDs are cool again

22:22 How was your week?

27:26 Anthropic and OpenEvidence take medical AI worldwide

32:20 GPT-6 Astra cracks a 1918 WWI cipher

33:41 Xiaomi's SkyNomad SUV is a living room on wheels

42:58 The RTX 5070 that's also an air freshener

44:38 Play a real ocarina in the Switch 2 Ocarina of Time remake

46:46 Show and Tell

49:28 Guess the Price: AI subscriptions

55:45 Wrap-up

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Thank you to all of our supporters and listeners! Want to see the ocarina and Marc's Show and Tell art? Catch the full video on YouTube at Canadian Computer Collector, where we're back to regular videos after taking the summer off.

BlizzCon is back, PS3 emulation got physical, and a UK tinkerer built a working 8-bit computer from 460 Soviet-era vacuum tubes. In Episode 10, Stacy and Dan cover everything Blizzard announced (WoW: Forever, Diablo 5, an open-world StarCraft shooter and more), RPCS3 playing PS3 games straight off the disc, a rapid-fire round of retro wins, Guess the Price with rare original Xbox special editions, and Show and Tell. Plus: we're having a tech garage sale!

HAPPY TECH GARAGE SALE

Saturday, [DATE] at our studio (the former Mike's General Store location), Winnipeg. Cables, keyboards (so many keyboards), routers, cases, monitors and more, all cheap.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open

0:35 Welcome to the Happy Tech Podcast

1:16 BlizzCon 2026 is back

2:32 World of Warcraft: Forever

6:49 Diablo 5 goes dark

13:49 StarCraft returns as an open-world shooter

16:16 New Warcraft III campaign + remastering the classics

19:02 Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch updates

21:14 Diablo animated series on Netflix

22:37 RPCS3 now plays PS3 games straight from the disc

26:34 Should you grab a PS5 before GTA 6?

28:28 A working computer built from 460 vacuum tubes

30:37 Announcement: Happy Tech garage sale

32:36 How was your week?

35:34 Rapid fire: Nintendo's back-to-back Directs

40:49 Commodore and Amiga are (sort of) back together

41:44 Lenovo fixes bricked Legion Gos for free

43:13 Sierra adventures come to the Commodore 64

45:33 Doom running inside MS Paint

46:06 A full 386 PC on a cheap dev board

47:10 Minecraft rebuilt in C++ on the PS2

49:20 A 16-bit CPU built out of relays

50:36 Guess the Price: original Xbox special editions

57:19 Show and Tell: a signed StarCraft pro-scene case panel

1:01:00 Show and Tell: a vintage Apple poster

1:03:37 Garage sale reminder + outro

SOURCES

BlizzCon: Blizzard News, GamesRadar, Game Informer. RPCS3: TechSpot, Tom's Hardware. Tube computer: Hackaday. Nintendo Directs: Nintendo Life. Commodore/Amiga: GamesRadar, Hackaday. Legion Go: PC Gamer. AGI-64: Mean Hamster Software. DoomPaint, Minecraft on PS2: Tom's Hardware. tiny386, relay computer: Hackaday. Full links are in the YouTube description.

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Apple's September 9th Worldwide Developer Conference included a TON of exciting news we can't wait to talk about. This WWDC was packed with cool new products and features, and in today's episode of the Happy Tech Podcast, we will be going over everything together, focusing on the positive items that make us optimistic about the future! Did you watch this WWDC? What stood out most to you? Last week's episode: https://youtu.be/0sMCAoVl66Q Become a Patron for only $1 a month and support the show! https://www.patreon.com/canadiancomputercollector Subscribe for weekly positive tech and gaming news.

Eleven stories, zero doom. This time: a 47-year-old grudge finally ends, the first arcade game ever built goes under the hammer, and a company hands its customers their money back simply because it was the right thing to do.

Atari and Activision are on the same shelf again. Activision was founded in 1979 by four Atari programmers who walked out over working conditions and accidentally invented third-party publishing in the process. Now, 47 years later, 39 Atari 2600 classics — Pitfall!, River Raid, Kaboom! — are returning on real cartridges that run on original 2600 and 7800 hardware as well as the 2600+ and 7800+. Standard carts land in November, with four themed Deluxe box sets rolling out through 2027. Stick around for Guess the Price, because there are three numbers in play and one is genuinely startling.

A working 1973 Computer Space also went to auction: the rare green sparkle two-player cabinet, sold out of Earthworm Jim developer David Perry's personal collection because he ran out of room at home. Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney built the original under the name Syzygy Engineering, the company that became Atari, and the cabinet turns up as a prop in Soylent Green and again in the arcade scene in Jaws. No, we are not spoiling the hammer price here.

And Panic, maker of the Playdate, got refunded for the tariffs it had passed on to customers as a clearly labelled line item at checkout. Rather than pocketing the windfall, it built an entire system to hand every dollar back. Cabel Sasser's explanation is the best quote of the episode, and worth sitting with next to how the largest companies handled the same situation.

RETRO BLOCK

• Commodore is putting the TAC-2 joystick back into production after 40 years. The original was built around an automobile tire valve, and because those use thinner copper today, Commodore fabricated its own one-piece steel shaft instead. It keeps the direct metal-contact mechanism, and it is still a plain 9-pin plug. No USB, no app, no pairing.
• THEA1200 is now an officially licensed Amiga product with the real logo on the box, following the settlement of the long-running Amiga lawsuit. A name originally chosen to dodge a trademark problem no longer has to.
• Two Atari 5200 games nobody had ever seen — Mail Boy and Topsy Turvee — were compiled from source code found in a disk case marked simply "5200." Mail Boy turned out to be an early ancestor of Cohen's Towers. The original programmer is alive, involved and credited, and both games were released free.
• A storage unit auction winner turned up a Y2K-era Pentium 4 tower with a see-through, UV-reactive power supply, sitting among 100 laptops and hundreds of loose RAM sticks. Acrylic panels, colour-coded internals, blue LEDs. Transparent hardware is quietly coming back after two decades of matte black.

TECH AND HARDWARE

• Texas becomes the ninth US state with right-to-repair in force: parts, tools and manuals, for up to seven years on anything over $100. The state throws out 621,000 tons of electronics a year, much of it fixable.
• Modders had DLSS 5 running on RTX 4000 cards roughly a day after the DLL leaked, patching out the instructions Ada could not handle. The same thing happened with Frame Generation on the 20 and 30-series. Fair warning that the frame rate cost is steep.
• A PhD student in Edinburgh built an offline skin cancer screener on a £35 Raspberry Pi, deliberately choosing a Pi over a smartphone because phones and connectivity are not a given everywhere. She is in talks with NHS Scotland and hopes it reaches patients before 2030.

We close on the 2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Challenge — Old Iron versus Modern Retro, with entries open until October 27. Tell us what you would build and we will read the best ones out.

Steve from Mac84 joins us for the latest episode of the Happy Tech Podcast - a podcast where we focus on the good news in tech, because there's enough coverage for all the doom and gloom.

ek the Happy Tech crew is joined by guest host Rory, holding down the fort while regular host Stacy is off in beautiful British Columbia (with a Magic card show stop in Calgary along the way!). Still, it's all the same feel-good tech and gaming news you come here for Epic Games' trek to Linux, a haunted patch in World of Warcraft, a $750 million battery made of rust, Dell's return of an iconic ad campaign, GTA V's absurd sales numbers, and a hydrogen car that just broke 400 mph. Plus a round of "Guess the Price" with some legendary graphics cards and a show-and-tell full of retro console nostalgia. HEADLINES: Epic Games Store Will Support Linux: https://steamdeckhq.com/news/epic-games-store-will-support-linux-soon/ WoW's Haunted: Disconnected Players' Characters Are Playing Themselves: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/wows-haunted-players-report-that-their-disconnected-friends-characters-are-starting-to-play-the-game-on-their-own/ Windows 11's August Patch: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/biggest-changes-microsoft-is-rolling-out-in-august-for-windows-11 Energy Startup Raises $750 Million for Rust-Powered Batteries: https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/energy-startup-raises-750-million-for-rust-powered-batteries-e2354154 Dell Revives "Dude, You're Getting a Dell": https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/dude-youre-getting-a-dell-ai-server-rack-dell-recycles-famous-ad-campaign-to-appeal-to-its-new-ai-overlords GTA V Has Now Sold Over 230 Million Copies: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/grand-theft-auto-5-averages-more-copies-sold-per-year-than-most-megahits-manage-in-their-entire-lifetime-with-a-total-of-230-million-since-2013/ JCB's Hydrogen Car Hits 406 MPH at Bonneville: https://www.techspot.com/news/113471-jcb-hydrogen-powered-hydromax-hits-record-406-mph.html

Welcome to Happy Tech, the tech podcast that only features positive headlines! We aim to talk about all of the fun, exciting, and uplifting news in tech - because it's easy to forget, with all the doom and gloom out there, that there is still some cool stuff happening in the tech world!