Happy (U.S.) Thanksgiving!  As we come together with friends and family, our thoughts turn to one thing - shopping!  The guys dig into where Cyber Monday came from and how Amazon handles all the traffic.  We also talk about the conservation of energy and thermodynamics, but in a super cool and hip way.

The .5 episodes are now a new segment!  We are calling these individual episodes "Office Hours," where one host goes in-depth in a single topic!

Today, Mark talks about why you might get those "do you want to update" messages from your software and why you should pay attention to them.

We missed a week!  We are so sorry!  Life's tough that way... then the world ends... ?!?!?  Yes, this week we talk about how the world is going to end!  Until Mark has had enough and talks about recycling. 

It's a solo show again this week as it's advising season at UVA and things are really crazy!  But Mark just HAD to talk about the new MacBook Pros and what it means for them to be using the M1 (ARM) CPU!  How is it different than an x86 (Intel) CPU?  Listen and find out!

We're back with a full episode, talking about professors slinging burgers at Michigan State, questions from robots, the right to repair, and can you trust research!

After a tough week, McBurney flies solo to talk about morality in gaming, specifically around some ideas in Mass Effect.  

Extra Credits Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Tp8JopdIc

Alternate Episode Title: "Ironic Witcher Quotes"

We have our first listener email question!  What is better - passwords with gibberish or passphrases?  We talk about password best practices before a new round of "Excuse Me, What Now?", Will goes into why Microsoft moved on from Times New Roman to Calibri (and we debate how to even say "Calibri"...), before we discuss how Facebook fell off the Internet for a few hours.  Come join us!

Cloudflare's blog post on what they saw during the Facebook outage - https://blog.cloudflare.com/october-2021-facebook-outage/

In this episode of Regrade Request, we take a look at the dangers of being a gamer.  While Mark discusses physical injuries that have happened due to playing Nintendo (such as "Nintenditis" and various blunt force traumas from using a Wii remote), Will goes more into emotional issues, such as cyber bullying.

And, of course, a few questions from No Stupid Questions to round out the show!

We go back to the future by talking about the next Y2K - Y2K38!  Yes, there's another one on the horizon!  Also, questions about why you don't find OLED computer monitors, whether you should upgrade to Windows 11, and the current state of bananas.  Oh, and why can't barbers pull teeth anymore?  I mean... that was a thing in the Old West... right?

In a more (hopefully) thought-provoking episode, we examine the aesthetics of gaming, as described in the paper "MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research" by Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek from Northwestern University.  It is also discussed in the wonderful Extra Credits YouTube series: https://youtu.be/uepAJ-rqJKA

We discuss games that have affected us in major ways and what aesthetics lend themselves to those experiences.

Bottom line: 1) games are great and 2) Will and Mark will never agree on Breath of the Wild.