3×61: A Room of Dalmatians
Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we revisit an old friend, Room 101, the place where all the things we hate should be banished. At least according to each of us: whether the other two can be so convinced is another thing entirely…
- [00:04:07] Jono: All videoconferencing except Zoom
- [00:11:04] Stuart: overly chummy email spam
- [00:16:16] Jeremy: Influencers
- [00:19:59] Jono: Marketing Gurus
- [00:25:07] Stuart: “we are experiencing unusually high call volumes”
- [00:29:26] Jeremy: Mozilla
- [00:37:55] Jono: Men who wear scarves inside
- [00:42:16] Stuart: “join our discord”
- [00:45:25] Jeremy: a secret extra!
We’re on Mastodon! @[email protected]!
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://join.slack.com/t/badvoltage/shared_invite/zt-1porzolgy-eNrK6wREoVIINTbLi_kbsg!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×54-the-joe-dolce-music-theatre/12476
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×60: Never Eat Shredded Wheat
Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which multiple minutes of pre-show work are awkwardly wasted, we haven’t got a sign on the roof, and:
- [00:01:39] GPTBot is launched to crawl your websites and add their technological distinctiveness to its own model, and there is discussion of robots.txt changes
- [00:11:08] MDN, the central resource for web documentation, added LLM stuff which caused a lot of pushback (and a Mozilla postmortem)
- [00:24:30] Apple announce a new VR headset, the Vision Pro
- [00:40:34] Instagram Threads starts up, Reddit is… hard to say, Bluesky seems to have not set the world alight… now that we’re a month or two in to all this, what’s going on in social media land? Everything’s all over the place
- [00:52:13] $5 billion lawsuit with Google over incognito mode tracking moves closer to trial
We’re on Mastodon! @[email protected]!
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://join.slack.com/t/badvoltage/shared_invite/zt-1porzolgy-eNrK6wREoVIINTbLi_kbsg!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×60-never-eat-shredded-wheat/12509
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×59: Addition Edition
Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we discuss ad-supported services and the (potential?) rise of subscriptions. Have ads gone away, or started to? Are social media networks being supported by ads now pivoting to something else? And are Patreon and sponsorships mostly a boon for small creators, or a seed of a shift in the culture of how businesses and services work online?
We’re on Mastodon! @[email protected]!
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://join.slack.com/t/badvoltage/shared_invite/zt-1porzolgy-eNrK6wREoVIINTbLi_kbsg!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×54-the-joe-dolce-music-theatre/12476
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×58: Large Langridge Model
Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which there is unsceptical intensity, we are all eaten by a T-1000, and we have collected a list of concerns about Large Language Model-based AI, which we’re going to dive into!
- [00:00:00] Introduction
- [00:04:30] The “free software” concern: it normalises inhaling information for free and then renting out access to it. Upcoming EU regulation requires LLM creators to declare copyrighted material used in training corpora
- [00:09:30] The automation one: puts lots of mid-level workers people out of a job, with zero provision for what should happen to those people
- [00:25:25] The costlessness one: if it’s free (or at least easy) to generate text (and images and sound and so on), it becomes easy to flood places with it, which leads to finding hotels online being even more difficult, more fake news sites, students submitting LLM-written essays, etc
- [00:30:40] The inaccuracy one: LLMs “hallucinate”, meaning that they make up lies and present it with as much confidence as actual information, so it’s very hard to tell the difference, which is problematic when it’s relied upon and can be downright defamatory (as in the case of Jonathan Turley, law professor, on an LLM-generated list of “lecturers who have sexually harassed their students” which he didn’t)
- [00:33:35] The magnification of existing bias one: generated text embeds existing biases
- [00:53:30] The creativity one: where does the next generation of music and art and writing come from if this generation is written largely by LLMs?
Also, we’re now on Mastodon! @[email protected]!
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://join.slack.com/t/badvoltage/shared_invite/zt-1porzolgy-eNrK6wREoVIINTbLi_kbsg!
https://community.badvoltage.org/
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×57: Conspiracyers
Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which there’s more smoky back rooms than usual, everyone’s on Orkut, and:
- [00:01:14] Who likes Microsoft Teams? Microsoft promises it’s made Teams less confusing and resource hungry, while Teams surprisingly now has 270m users to Slack’s 20m.
- [00:08:21] An “open letter” from tech pioneers calls for a halt on AI development
- [00:20:31] USA wants to ban TikTok: is this tech, security, or geopolitics?
- [00:33:25] Google Search Adds Features for Info Verification: will this work? can this work?
Also, we’re now on Mastodon! @[email protected]!
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://join.slack.com/t/badvoltage/shared_invite/zt-1porzolgy-eNrK6wREoVIINTbLi_kbsg!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmX7qyr1nV4 https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×54-the-joe-dolce-music-theatre/12476
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×56: Hyperbole is the Magic Word
Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we spend a show inventing topics which need a whole other show to talk about, we reminisce about Google Plus, and:
- [00:01:36] Twitter Blue, Meta Verified: the social networks go premium. Is it going to work?
- [00:35:45] The FBI recommend that everyone uses an ad-blocker
- [00:45:16] Salesforce pays Matthew McConaughey $10M/year
- [00:52:47] LastPass hack, allegedly via a senior developer’s Plex?
- [00:57:11] Reddit does comments search!
Also, we’re now on Mastodon! @[email protected]!
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://join.slack.com/t/badvoltage/shared_invite/zt-1porzolgy-eNrK6wREoVIINTbLi_kbsg!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×54-the-joe-dolce-music-theatre/12476
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×55: Don the Mast
Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we look, as has been threatened a bunch recently, at Mastodon. What’s it all about? Is Mastodon the new Twitter, and is it trying to be? And how far have we got into it?
Also, we’re now on Mastodon! @[email protected]!
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×54: The Joe Dolce Music Theatre
Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we create predictions for 2023! What will happen over the next twelve months in the world of tech? Here’s what we think…
- Stuart: the Texas HB20 social media law will come before the US Supreme Court, and the US Supreme Court will uphold it as constitutional
- Stuart: Global daily Twitter users will drop a minimum of 10% by the end of 2023
- Stuart: A song claimed to be composed and performed entirely by AI will get in the charts
- Stuart (Bonus): Apple will either allow sideloading or allow third-party browser engines on iOS
- Stuart (Bonus): Someone buys Netflix
- Jeremy: Tiktok gets banned in the USA
- Jeremy: At least one traditional financial institution will have taken on substantial crypto risk that wasn’t fully disclosed
- Jeremy: Netflix is acquired
- Jeremy: The rapid advances in AI slow down in a very obvious way
- Jeremy (Bonus): the web starts fragmenting into 3 distinct blocs: sino, euro, americano
- Jeremy (Bonus): Mastodon usage peaks in the first half and drops steadily from there
- Jeremy (Bonus): someone takes a large equity stake in Canonical
- Jono: Meta will announce significant (1000+ peolpe) layoffs in their Metaverse division
- Jono: Twitter will launch a YouTube competitor. Users will be able to upload long-form videos (1hr+), monetize their videos with ads, and see a video view
- Jono: There will be at least 1 legal regulatory requirement be put into practice in the US or EU that restricts the use of ChatGPT and/or Large Language Models
- Jono (Bonus): Apple will release their AR/VR headset, will garner positive reviews for the product, but press will still question the viability of AR/VR
- Jono (Bonus): Donald Trump will drop out of the election for one of two reasons: (1) claims of persecution, or (2) a legal decision prevents him from running
- Jono (Bonus): Bing will launch with ChatGPT-like functionality and see significantly increased growth. Significantly increased = 30%+
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×54-the-joe-dolce-music-theatre/12476
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×53: Representative but not Shining
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage for the last time in 2022, in which we take a look back at our predictions for this year and review how we did. Surprisingly… not as badly as last year. Although as you may expect there is shameless jockeying for extra points. How did you do by comparison?
We’ll see you in 2023!
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×53-representative-but-not-shining/12473
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×52: Click By 5pm
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we are not necessarily “extremely hardcore”, we aren’t verified (or are we?), we aren’t fleeing the country with a load of money that isn’t ours, and:
- [00:00:00] Intro
- [00:02:37] Twitter and Musk: much change is afoot in the world of Twitter, as Elon Musk completes his purchase of the social media network and immediately starts changing things and staffing with varying degrees of competence and forethought. We have Opinions on this, not surprisingly
- [00:34:46] Tech Layoffs: the world is heading into a recession, and tech firms are at the forefront of at least some of that. Some of the biggest names are laying off thousands of staff: many are affected
- [00:40:24] FTX: the latest crypto explosion is bigger than most, but it’s also pretty confusing to understand what exactly it’s all about. We’ll dive in for explanations!
- [00:49:38] Outro
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×52-click-by-5pm/12471
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×51: Control the Meta Connect
Jono Bacon, Stuart Langridge, and special guest Adam Lorimer present Bad Voltage, in which reality is virtual, metas are connected, and:
- Meta, nee Facebook, had their Meta Connect conference where they announced their upcoming plans, recent hardware and software releases, and the like. We have some interest in VR generally, as evidenced by Jono always having a prediction about it at Christmas, and so we’d like to dig a bit more into what’s going on over there, some of the upcoming hardware, and talk a little about the place of VR (and AR and MR) in the world order and how it does and might fit in with everything, especially with Adam who actually does this stuff for a living!
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×51-control-the-meta-connect/12470
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×50: Two Riders Were Approaching
Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, and special guest Erica Brescia present Bad Voltage, in which a generation of hypochondriacs is created, we are made to do research, and:
- [00:01:51] VC/WeWork/Flow
- [00:20:28] AI wins state fair art contest, annoys humans
- [00:28:14] New smart watches
- [00:38:22] Notkia
- [00:39:52] OSTP Issues Guidance to Make Federally Funded Research Freely Available Without Delay
- [00:42:47] Outro
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×50-two-riders-were-approaching/12468
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×49: The Noise of Doubt
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the roflcopter is created, Soli is forgotten, and:
- [00:00:00] Intro
- [00:02:04] Chorizo space prank
- [00:04:04] Floppotron 3.0
- [00:10:47] Doom running on $15 smart lamp, and in Doom
- [00:16:22] SCaLE 19X
- [00:19:59] Who’s liable for AI-generated lies?
- [00:28:48] Amazon Slashing Private-Label Selection
- [00:31:29] Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuums
- [00:36:56] Apple expecting to ship 1.5mill VR/AR units in 2023
- [00:38:37] VR as good as psychedelics to transcend
- [00:55:24] Firefox adds client-side machine translation
- [00:58:15] Outro
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×49-the-noise-of-doubt/12463
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×48: Brave Internet Explorers
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which everyone’s middle name is Elaine, there is discussion of the nature of business in the modern age, and:
- [00:02:45] We look at Brave, a privacy-focused web browser. They’ve got some interesting technical choices, but more importantly we want to look at the question of their business model. How do Brave propose to remain sustainable? How are they making money now? And once they get the cash… what are they doing with it?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×48-brave-internet-explorers/12460
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×47: Fallacious Piece of History
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Victorian Tumblr is a thing, you should probably check out Lethality, Jono’s band’s latest, and:
- [00:00:00] Intro
- [00:04:11] USB Type-C EVERYTHING
- [00:17:33] Firefox and Google are arguing about extension APIs that ad blockers use
- [00:34:00] Spotify comes for audiobooks
- [00:57:15] Outro
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×47-fallacious-piece-of-history/12459
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×46: Srtrerarm Deck
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest star Jorge Castro present Bad Voltage, in which those of the team not currently having fun on a beach in Spain dig into the latest tech news, including (but not limited to):
- [00:08:26] Github start requiring two-factor authentication for contributors
- [00:16:21] This show was edited live on Twitch by our audio producer, Marius Quabeck of NerdZoom Media, and you can watch him do that and see what misery we put him through every fortnight
- [00:25:05] Lots of Big Tech companies have put together $30 million to invest in the security of open source software in the Software Supply Chain Security Mobilization Plan, which is potentially quite great
- [00:33:21] Jorge has a Steam Deck! We have questions about Jorge’s Steam Deck!
- [00:48:11] Looks like USB-C is coming to Apple’s phones
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×46-srtrerarm-deck/12458
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×45: Natural Musk
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Times Square is a much better example, it is Stuart’s turn to seemingly sound like he recorded this at the bottom of a coal mine (sorry about that), and:
- [00:01:50] Elon Musk is buying Twitter. We have thoughts, and quite a few of them. There’s a question as to whether it’ll even happen, there are questions about what he plans to do, and there are questions (many, many questions) about what Twitter will look like after it’s been Elonified. Let’s dig into it
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×45-natural-musk/12455
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×44: The Loch Dustbinness Monster
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest star Alan Pope present Bad Voltage, in which intelligence is artificial, snaps are un-ned, and art is what you make it:
- [00:04:00] popey’s latest tool is unsnap, which helps you “quickly and easily migrate from using snap for applications to flatpak”, and we’ll get into how it works and why it exists
- [] AI-generated artwork. Aza Raskin made a very cool AI-generated video for Zia Cora’s song “submarines”, where he put together a list of text queries and then used AI algorithm Disco Diffusion to generate images as video frames. This sort of AI-generated imagery and art is increasingly common, whether This Person Does Not Exist or This Bench Does Not Exist or National Novel Generation Month or whatever. But what are the wider ramifications of this, for ownership, collaboration, and open source? What are your intuitions in this: is a list of text descriptions of an image really the “source code” for that image? If someone uses the same queries that you did, is their work a derivative work of yours? Would you feel delighted or ripped off if that happened? This is all a new area, and it’s evolving very fast: where are the precedents for this sort of collaborative art creation and where should we be drawing inspiration and understanding?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×44-the-loch-dustbinness-monster/12454
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×43: Self Assembly
Stuart Langridge, Jeremy Garcia, and special guest star Jorge Castro present Bad Voltage, in which we in theory want to talk about loads of news but actually we spend all our discussion time on one topic:
- [00:02:00] Jorge is into Flatpak. And there’s quite a lot to talk about here. This is very much about the Linux desktop, distribution of applications, and how things have changed; stuff has certainly happened since the last time we looked at this, and it’s worth getting into. Let’s talk about what flatpak means today.
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×43-self-assembly/12449
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×42: That High Level of Unlikeliness
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia return, after a couple of months of trials and tribulations, to reveal our predictions for (the rest of) 2022! Prepare to find out What Comes Next in our roles as Cassandras:
- [00:06:20] Jono:
- VR bonanza: Apple will release their VR headset this year, and PSVR2 will be released, both purchasable by real people. Both will experience critical acclaim (although we won’t have good sales figures)
- Tesla won’t release a phone, Neuralink will launch in beta this year
- Truth Social will experience significant growth (but nowhere near as much as Twitter etc) but will be plagued with (1) stability issues, and (2) extremist content
- Bonus 1: Canonical will not be acquired
- Meta’s VR services will actually not be terrible
- [00:28:35] Jeremy:
- Apple will, for the first time in a long time, release a completely new product line. It will be AR/VR, and it will be panned by critics
- At least one very large (think FAANG size but does not have to be a FAANG) will walk back their remote work policy
- both the US and EU pass sweeping tech related laws that have broad impact on the industry (part of the “techlash”)
- Bonus 1: Gamestop stock price still above $100
- Inflation for the year below five percent
- Truth Social will shut down
- Mark Zuckerberg will not be CEO of Meta
- [00:49:40] Stuart:
- Apple will either allow sideloading or allow third-party browser engines on iOS
- Matter (the common protocol for IoT stuff) will see first devices released, people will not care (they should, but they won’t, of course) and it won’t actually work
- Meta’s share price a third at end of year what it is at start: under $100 at end of 2022.
- Bonus 1: Some company will leak private customer data onto a blockchain so it’s there forever
- Someone buys Twitter (likely to not happen because of the regulatory environment, as Jeremy points out!)
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×42-that-high-level-of-unlikeliness/12447
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×41: By A Hair Or Two
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia are in your ears for the last time in 2021, as we look back on what we thought this year would be back in January, and then how it’s actually been now that we’ve lived through it. Yes, it’s prediction review time! Did you do better than us?
We will do better next year. And we plan to do so, live and on camera! Keep an eye out for our first live stream of a show recording, January 13th 2022!
Have great holidays, and see you all in the new year!
- [00:01:35] SIL: Remote work starts to hollow out cities
- [00:05:44] SIL: Social media credibility checker
- [00:09:37] SIL: Amazon buy Zoom
- [00:10:58] SIL: Bonuses – Canonical, Vaccinations, Apple
- [00:16:42] JG: Jeff Bezos richest man ever
- [00:18:09] JG: Google makes largest acquisition in history of company
- [00:19:20] JG: BTC below $5,000 or above $55,000
- [00:22:05] JG: Facebook loses 15%-20% of active user count
- [00:23:26] JG: Bonus – Amazon search engine, security breach larger than Solarwinds
- [00:27:29] JB: Sony releases PSVR headset V2
- [00:29:21] JB: vaccine passport required by airlines
- [00:34:45] JB: Donald Trump’s Twitter account disabled but not banned
- [00:35:52] JB: Zoom remote-working offering
- [00:37:48] JB: Bonuses – Facebook spaces, Canonical not getting acquired
- [00:41:12] Outro
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×41-by-a-hair-or-two/12445
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×40: The House on the Hill
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia hold these rights to be self-evident:
- [00:02:17] Adele gets Spotify to remove shuffle button
- [00:09:20] Apple announces self repair program
- [00:26:25] Meta has a new VR glove
- [00:35:11] Ubuntu Accomplishments rides again
- [00:39:03] FTC says “click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal
- [00:49:16] Cryptobros try to buy the US Constitution, fail, with ConstitutionDAO
- [00:55:46] El Salvador government strikes deal with Bitfinex for “Bitcoin City”
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×40-the-house-on-the-hill/12441
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×39: Ready Player No
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia claim to do research, run conferences, encourage people to hire Marius, and:
- Meta. Facebook rebranded to Meta and have gone all in on the “metaverse”, which they call “a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world”. VR and AR are coming with a Facebook brand on it, and we’re going to talk about it. What’s the metaverse all about? Can it work? Does anyone want it? And are Facebook (er, “Meta”) the people who should be providing it?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×39-ready-player-no/12440
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×38: Nikola Where Are You Now
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest Jorge Castro present Bad Voltage, in which Stuart honestly thought for one second that the Americans have a very worryingly-titled show called “Poor Patrol” before realising that he misheard, and:
- [00:02:33] The return of the legendary Bacommunity app! Made by friend of the show Roger Light, who has also been celebrating the 12th birthday of Mosquitto, the MQTT server he built!
- [00:07:02] Roku and Google are fighting over content
- [00:15:59] A man ate for an entire year at the Six Flags theme park
- [00:20:52] F12 is a crime in Missouri, it seems: don’t look in the HTML or they’ll try to send you to prison, you filthy h4XX0r
- [00:25:09] Hertz orders 100,000 Teslas in $4.2 billion deal
- [00:40:50] Truth dot social dot hahaha dot ohno
- [00:45:35] Happy 20th Birthday Windows XP!
- [00:51:27] The Steam Deck, with gaming correspondent Jorge
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×38-nikola-where-are-you-now/12439
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×37: I Will See Them In The Fire
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which whistles are blown, audio is twitched, and:
- [00:02:18] A whole show on one topic: Facebook and content moderation. Since Frances Haugen left Facebook for the life of a whistleblower, filing complaints with federal law enforcement that Facebook knows that it amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest and conceals that knowledge, this discussion has been in the news a lot. We want to look at it from two different angles: policy and process. Obviously Facebook could choose to do better; if they do not choose to do better, what if anything can be done to make them do better? Regulation may be required, but what should that regulation say? And if we take the more charitable view that Facebook actually do want to fix the problems that hate speech causes on their platform and by extension for the world: is it even possible to do so? Facebook are in the business of spreading people’s thoughts, especially those which produce strong reactions. Is it possible for them to fix or even further alleviate this problem while continuing to be Facebook?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×37-i-will-see-them-in-the-fire/12438
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×36: Nor Any Drop
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we discuss the mysterious arrival of boxes, how to play CDs, and:
- [00:02:18] We review the 8Sleep Pod Pro Cover, an internet-connected mattress, which Jono claims is actually useful. There is, not surprisingly, some scepticism about this claim, but equally: sleep is important and basically nobody gets enough of it. So let’s have a look!
- [00:21:35] There has recently been a bunch of governmental, court, and regulatory pushback on Apple around the world about their policies on their app store and their gatekeeping process for their platform: in the US and Japan, South Korea, and Russia among others. Relatedly, the UK are also doing a regulatory study into this sort of thing and Stuart was invited to speak to them as an expert and showed them some slides about browser choice on iOS. We’re going to talk about this a little.
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×36-nor-any-drop/12437
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×35: Generated For The Purpose Of Journalism
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which
- [00:02:50] Online trolls are assholes offline too, at least according to a new survey
- [00:17:20] Facebook Workrooms seem to be the long-promised “Facebook Spaces”, much to Jono’s intemperate joy
- [00:29:50] Excellently detailed albeit mildly depressing summary of Google’s myriad messaging apps which is worth reading
- [00:40:50] The UK government’s planned “Online Harms Bill” tries, among other things, to define what a journalist is so they can be exempt from some regulations, which is possibly a very concerning development
- [00:55:00] Twitter are allegedly going to start requiring viewers to be signed in to view tweets (pro tip: embrace nitter.net if this is a problem!)
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×35-generated-for-the-purpose-of-journalism/12435
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×34: The Days To Come Will Be Filled
Stuart Langridge and Jono Bacon present Bad Voltage, in which Jeremy is away, there used to be a star and now there isn’t, and we devote the whole show to a discussion of Apple’s recent announcement that your iPhone will now scan some of your photos and report them if they’re child porn. This has created quite a lot of discussion (ZDNet, EFF, Forbes). In particular, the concern from most is that this is the top of a slippery slope. We’ll dig into this a bit; when the former CSO of Facebook is writing New York Times editorials there’s a discussion to be had, at least, and when seventh-graders now think that Apple is looking at their photos, the message has got a bit out of control, especially as it may relate to Apple’s relationship with governments, especially the Chinese government. Let’s see what all this is about, and whether we’re merely one more screeching minority for asking questions.
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×34-the-days-to-come-will-be-filled/12432
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×33: Eternal Bronze Medallists
Stuart Langridge and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Jono is away, you too are not an astronaut, and:
- [00:02:00] Shares slide after China brands online games “electronic drugs”
- [00:03:50] The US FAA changes the definition of “astronaut” after Bezos and Branson go into space, LOL
- [00:06:25] Machine learning sucks at covid
- [00:12:15] Sinclair are 60, and some thoughts on retro computing popularity prompted by @popey
- [00:15:45] The Pixel 6 has been announced; what’s the score? They’re being a bit close-mouthed about it, but it’s apparently a real flagship this time, whatever that means
- [00:23:00] Firefox lost 50M users since 2019, down from around 250 million
- [00:26:25] Bronze Medalists Are Happier Than Silver Winners, although this is decided by facial recognition
- [00:30:00] Facebook creates new unit to build a “metaverse”
- [00:34:50] Scarlett Johansson sues Disney over streaming of Black Widow
- [00:42:45] Netflix Plans to Offer Video Games in Push Beyond Films, TV
- And we said we’d look into Amazon revenue per business unit, and an infographic from “visual capitalist” suggests that it’s 50% from their selling on Amazon.com (and .co.uk, etc) plus another 20% from third-party sales through amazon.com (etc). AWS is about half of the remainder (12.4% overall), and the remainder is divided roughly evenly between subscriptions (Prime), real-world stores (Whole Foods), and other, all at about 5% overall each.
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×33-eternal-bronze-medallists/12430
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×32: Trigger’s Broom
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which God is not our co-pilot. Instead, Github Copilot is. What’s the deal with this thing?
Copilot is “an AI pair programmer that helps you write better code”, according to Github themselves. “GitHub Copilot draws context from the code you’re working on, suggesting whole lines or entire functions.” Is this useful? Is it good? Is it good for open source?
Matthew Garrett wrote a thing about Copilot which is worth reading, especially if your basic feeling is that it takes our open source code against the licence and that’s bad.
And what about the bigger picture? Github — well, Microsoft — are one of the biggest players in the world; is this what they should be doing? And if it isn’t… what is?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×32-triggers-broom/12429
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!