3×15: Interactive Multimedia Communications
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which things are not necessarily jazzed up versions of other things, we wonder what data truly is, and:
- [00:00:45] We dive in depth into the notion of “collaborative workspaces”. Coda and Notion both paint themselves as a new kind of document: something which lets you pull in all the information on a topic from all the different sources you use, something you can work on within a team, something over and above a folder of Google docs. They aren’t the first to pursue this dream. Is it a dream worth pursuing? And if it is, are Coda, or Notion, or both doing it right? We’ll go into this in detail, along with some philosophy on the very nature of collaboration itself
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×15-interactive-multimedia-communications/12394
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×14: Hard Where Thoughts
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which no news is good news, hardware makes us hard-wary, and:
- [00:01:45] The PlayStation 5 and the Xbox. Specifically, can you get a PS5? We can’t (and Sony admitted it), but the graphical things look amazing. They claim to have eliminated loading times with a new super-fast SSD… we’re looking forward to that, but what’s more interesting is that the two consoles seem to have pretty different business models…
- [00:26:00] …and in related news: exclusives. Microsoft have just bought Zenimax for $7.5bn, and this won’t be their last acquisition, although at least the Bethesda part of the purchase will apparently run “semi-independently”
- [00:41:36] And the final hardware question: are you going to buy a Pixel 5? The announcement of what the Pixel 5 will actually be was after recording time but before release time for this show, inconveniently, but we still have thoughts, and would like to hear yours…
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×14-hard-where-thoughts/12393
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×13: The Winter Of Our Content
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the Magna Doodle makes a comeback, Stuart is discontent, and:
- [00:04:50] Taco Bell have made their own wine, which we’re sure is delicious… US customs seize a bunch of counterfeit Airpods which turn out to be completely legitimate OnePlus wireless earphones… and Dave Grohl is in a drum battle with Nandi Bushell, a 10-year-old girl from Ipswich, and it is delightful…
- [00:13:50] Oracle are buying Tiktok. Or maybe they aren’t. It’s hard to say. Microsoft aren’t. Maybe nobody is. And what’s actually being bought? The US operations? Not the algorithm. Probably.
- [00:19:08] Anyway, a more successful deal seems to be that Nvidia are buying ARM for $40 billion. What will this mean?
- [00:33:28] Our main discussion: non-tech tech. Jono’s been looking at the Remarkable 2, an e-paper-based note-taking tablet. But should we be just using paper instead? Is everybody already using paper instead? And is this nostalgia, the tech backlash, or none of the above? Are you a pencil or a keyboard person?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×13-the-winter-of-our-content/12390
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×12: Staring at Potatoes
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which I buy your product but I still have virus, there are apparently cellphone pedestrian lanes all over the world, and:
- [00:04:30] Microsoft Flight Simulator has a very tall building in Melbourne, although the community are on the case; the FBI are worried that Ring doorbells are spying on police; the city of Yamato has banned walking with smartphones; a woman sees Jesus’ face on a potato and then eats it, and this is not John McAfee
- [00:17:00] Facebook threatens to pull news from Australia if new law passes, Zoom’s market capitalization is now roughly $115 billion, making it worth more than IBM, Amazon wins FAA approval to deliver packages by drone, and BMW plan to make owners pay subscriptions to get heated seats…
- [00:30:54] There have been a bunch of news stories about Apple’s handling of payments in their app store recently: Hey, WordPress, and Epic Games. There’s an increasing pushback from developers about the way that app store owners are demanding payments, Google as well as Apple, but perhaps it’s just a storm in a teacup and it’ll all blow over? What is reasonable for app store vendors when it comes to influencing app makers? How much are you entitled to extract from an ecosystem that you created? This seems a subject with a lot of ramifications: we’ll dive into it in detail
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×12-staring-at-potatoes/12382
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×11: The Most Evil MP3s
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which there is seemingly a theme but it’s wholly coincidental, succulent flaky pastry is mentioned, and:
- [00:02:38] Japan opens see-through public toilets open in Tokyo parks, an Amazon driver allegedly defecates in a Nottingham woman’s back garden, and a man in Chicago breaks into an ATM, live-streams it, and then unsurprisingly gets busted immediately
- [00:09:05] Apple and Epic get into an epic war (with Google involved too) about taking 30% of all money, and Mozilla lay off 250 staff
- [00:26:13] Our main discussion: software has gradually moved over the last decade from a buy-it-it’s-yours model to a pay-every-month model. We’ve recently discovered with a little shock just how many of these services we’re each subscribed to, and it’s worth talking about; this is a big shift in how the software industry sells its core product. Why has it happened, and what are the benefits for both sellers and purchasers? Is software today a fundamentally different thing from how it was in 2005, or even 1995? And where does open source fit into all this?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×11-the-most-evil-mp3s/12379
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×10: Chardonnay and Vinegar
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we take the security advice of international expert Hans Gruber, we find Jono’s lack of middle name preparation disturbing, and:
- [00:02:00] Some “fresh baby witches” have put a hex on the moon, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about. Apparently this is bad because “inexperienced witches should only be researching and doing protection work”
- [00:04:40] 14% of men fantasise about the voice of Alexa
- [00:07:30] Serious book author fails to properly read google search results, includes things from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in a historical novel about dye making
- [00:09:33] The Irish Health and Safety Executive donates their “Covid Green” contact tracing app to the Linux Foundation global public health project
- [00:12:59] The Twitter hack was apparently done via access to internal tools by compromising employees, although there are bigger questions, such as: should they have been better at doing crimes?
- [00:18:31] According to The Markup, Google search results are now mostly to Google properties. We’re not sure we buy this, but they have a point worth thinking about
- [00:25:55] Microsoft may be buying TikTok after conversations with the White House. The motives for this and the forces causing it to happen may be a little obscure, or may simply be Microsoft spotting a popular thing and buying it…
- [00:49:43] Musicians just aren’t working hard enough, says the Spotify CEO. “What is required from successful musicians”, says Daniel Ek, “is a deeper, more consistent, and prolonged commitment than in the past.” Should being a musician today be significantly harder than it was for the Beatles? Maybe yes: this is the new world order, and the business of music is different now
- [00:56:10] Google are partnering with ADT, using Google Home speakers for security to detect “critical noises” such as smoke alarms and breaking glass, and using ultrasonic sound as a movement detector
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×10-chardonnay-and-vinegar/12374
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×09: ASCII code 0x46
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which there is a certain amount of disagreement but it all works out in the end, and:
- [00:03:20] There’s a lot of conversation about “open core”, and there’s increasing polarisation around the topic. But… what actually is an open core project or product? Does everyone even agree on the terms? And once they do, is that thing a good idea? And how do you do it right? We’re going to look into it in some detail; what are the accusations and defences flying back and forth, which projects actually are “open core” and which not, and what’s a good business model for open source in the modern age?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×09-ascii-code-0x46/12373
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×08: Petrichoronavirus
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the word “content” gets used a lot, Stuart steals a double-bass joke from Dirk Gently, and:
- [00:03:20] In the second part of our speculation on how the tech world and the coronavirus pandemic intersect, we’re looking at how the world might be changed after the pandemic is over. What’s going to be the role of tech and the future state once we come out the other side of all this? We’ll look at when a vaccine might arrive and whether there’ll be systemic change. Then some thoughts on events: will tech events stay online even after life returns to mostly normality? What have we learned as a community about how to run an event online, and is that something that will alter how events work, or allow for new and different events even after that? And this plays into “content” more generally; when famous actors can entertain us with selfie videos from their sofas, and everyone is one decent camera away from becoming a YouTube personality, is there a place for high production values or have we decided that they aren’t important? Finally, we want to look a little at remote work: have corporate attitudes changed, and how many people might stay remote working when they aren’t forced to by the virus? What does this mean for cities and for companies?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×08-petrichoronavirus/12371
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×07: My Heart Went Boom
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which there is much argument about technology choices and:
- [00:02:00] New York City Health discourages orgies, instead advocating “sexy Zoom parties”, and also in NYC apparently driving into protesters does not violate use-of-force policy, and on the morning of Juneteenth, Tesla tells employees they can take the day off. Unpaid
- [00:12:10] The USA’s tax collection agency, the IRS, used cell phone data to try to track potential suspects, and following on from the last show Apple do indeed go ARM while never mentioning the word. We’ll quickly summarise some of the things from Apple’s WWDC event, including seeing the Gnome desktop on an Apple stage, blimey
- [00:34:55] Our main topic is the coronavirus. More specifically, technology and the lockdown. We’ll look at contact tracing apps and why hardly any country is building something correctly, and why there’s such reduced takeup by people of these apps, and then at technology more broadly: what ways can tech help everyone deal with the current situation? There are big sweeping changes, but maybe there’s room at the margins for small but effective ways that tech can alleviate the crisis?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×07-my-heart-went-boom/12370
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×06: Earballs
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which 286s make a comeback, we might be on Spotify, and:
- [00:01:50] The BBC search desperately for a way to describe “anti-racism critics” while describing tea condemning racists, Burger King start selling the Social Distancing Whopper” in Italy which has three times the onions, and a hidden treasure chest filled with gold and gems was found in the Rocky mountains.
- [00:07:30] In more serious news, IBM stop doing facial recognition technology because it’s used “for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms,” saying that tech “must not promote discrimination or racial injustice.” Privacy International call it cynical.
- [00:12:06] Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced his resignation from his role on the board of directors and asked to be replaced with a black candidate. He has also donated one million dollars to Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights campaign, and said he will funnel all future gains on his Reddit stock to benefit the black community.
- [00:13:55] Apple seem to be going ARM for laptops
- [00:21:16] Our main topic this week: exclusivity. With console games constantly being announced as “exclusives” to one platform or another, TV programmes only being available on one streaming service, and Joe Rogen moving exclusively to Spotify for a hundred million dollars, we look more deeply into the idea of exclusivity. What do the creators get out of it? What do the publishers get out of it? And can it ever be good for the audience?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×06-earballs/12367
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×05: This Podcast Will Self Destruct
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we are rendered with one meelion triangles. Also:
- [00:02:20] Three Bolivian brothers deliberately get bitten by a black widow spider in an attempt to get Spider-Man powers, while North Korea finally admit that Kim Il Sung wasn't a wizard, you should go feed messages into thiswebsitewillselfdestruct.com before it, er, self-destructs, and Elon Musk and Grimes's child is renamed to something else Unicodely-challenging, although that's still not as good as Dave's mate Obvious Lee
- [00:09:30] Gitlab spear-phish their own employees and then tell us the results, demonstrating their commendable commitment to openness and also that technically-savvy people are just as vulnerable to this as others, although what is to be learned from this is still in question; Facebook have bought Giphy (that's Giphy, not Giphy), and in preparation for next episode's discussion of exclusivity, Joe Rogan moves exclusively to Spotify
- [00:20:30] Did you see the new Unreal Engine demo? Looks pretty amazing. We're going to look a little into this, movie-quality source art, the upcoming PS5, gaming PCs running this, whizzy new SSD technology, and whether this will radically change gaming
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×05-this-podcast-will-self-destruct/12362
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×04: They Call It Dot Egg
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we like egg. Also:
- [00:02:38] And now, this: Famous rapper Jason Zed orders deepfake parodies of his voice off YouTube… Virginia spend time debating whether it’s ok to be drunk in your car while it’s in your driveway… a five-year-old steals a car to drive to LA to buy a Lamborghini, gets a free Lambo ride from Utah philanthropist… and Twitter think you’re interested in “egg” and a bunch of other stuff besides, so share your lists with us on the Slack channel…
- [00:15:35] The .org registry is being confirmed to not be being sold, Tim Bray, VP, quits Amazon over their firing of whistleblowers, and Facebook creates an oversight board, about which we are quietly pleased but a bit sceptical
- [00:26:20] Our main piece: health and posture and wellness, both digital and otherwise. Most of us in the technology community probably need to do better at sitting up straight, positioning monitors correctly, standing up, exercising more, and so on. We’ve been taking a look at some of the tools to help accomplish this, from standing desks and posture monitors to education and putting your screen on a pile of books. This also dovetails with the drive towards digital wellness: after the big initiative a couple of years ago to have OS vendors build tools into their systems to help us switch off, did it work? What do the tools do? And is anybody using them?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×04-they-call-it-dot-egg/12359
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
3×03: Massive Quantities of Potatoes
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which apparently it is Coventry’s turn in the barrel, and:
- [00:02:20] And Now This: it is possible that the MMR vaccine helps protect you from coronavirus, game over antivaxxers, in cyberpunk dystopia news Microsoft want to use your body heat for mining cryptocurrency, Belgians have been urged to eat fries twice a week, and the FDA say: don’t eat or inject yourself with disinfectant, which is a relief…
- [00:09:10] News: 74% of UK IT pros are getting less than the recommended 7-8 hours’ shut-eye on a weeknight; a quarter of the sample said they got 3-4h (!); more than half of IT pros wake up still feeling tired, sleepy or groggy, leaving them less motivated, less productive, more error-prone and less happy. (65% of director/CIOs are satisfied with their work/life balance; only 36% less senior say the same.) The solution, apparently, is cloud technologies. “There’s a positive link between the adoption of cloud technologies and people’s work/life balance, with 57 per cent of those whose organisations have embraced cloud technologies feeling satisfied with their work/life balance”. And in more tech stuff, Britain’s NHS want to take centralized approach to COVID tracking, and seem to be disregarding that nobody trusts the government’s assurances that this will never be misused, at least partially because they expressed the secret desire to deanonymise users which is exactly what everyone’s afraid of…
- [00:19:27] What’s digital fiat currency? It’s not cryptocurrency, and it’s not just avoiding cash. China and Sweden are looking into changing to digital fiat currency and some smaller countries have already done so, but why? As promised, we dive into this world, with an explainer of what this concept is, what some of the motives for wanting it are, and how it might affect the populace, restaurants and cash businesses, crime, trust, the economy, Facebook, and cocktails to be made at home. (The detail document Jeremy mentions is The Case for Digital Legal Tender.)
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×03-massive-quantities-of-potatoes/12354
News music: [http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Robbero/59218](Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero), used with attribution.
3×02: Bookish
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which apparently it is Coventry’s turn in the barrel, and:
- [00:02:07] And Now This: Tourists in Rishikesh, India ignored quarantine to go wandering and were made to write “I did not follow the lockdown, I am sorry” 500 times on sheets of paper, Taiwanese baseball team the Rakuten Monkeys will have dressed-up robot mannequins in the stands to watch them play instead of crowds, people in the UK are burning down 5g masts because they think they cause coronavirus, and Stanford have made a toilet that identifies you based on your “analprint”…
- [00:09:15] News: the US restates that they’re not party to the Moon Treaty from 1979 which declares that no country owns space and “the United States does not view space as a global commons”, Apple and Google collaborate on a COVID-19 contact tracing system based on the DP3T protocol explained in comic form, and you can measure connectedness of geographic areas based on Facebook and use it to predict the spread of the virus…
- [00:20:44] Main discussion: the Internet Archive have recently initiated what they call the “national emergency library” and what a whole bunch of authors call “taking our books and letting people read them for free so we don’t get paid” (the IA’s side and an author’s side). Listeners with long memories will have seen this play out before in the Napster days, and maybe more recently with Sci-Hub and Open Access scientific papers as well. Where do you draw the line between access and copyright/ownership? Who’s in the right here?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×02-bookish/12351
News music: [http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Robbero/59218](Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero), used with attribution.
3×01: See The Whole Staircase
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we begin a new series, the world is under lockdown, and:
- [00:01:40] And Finally: a medical fetish site donates its stock of scrubs after being contacted by the NHS, cops in Hamilton bust a cocaine dealer for doing “non essential business” during the coronavirus lockdown, more cops bust a man for teaching his dog to drive, and don’t use shredded T-shirts as toilet paper…
- [00:05:47] News: the BBC suggest that the compulsory licence fee could be replaced by a broadband levy, Twitter are removing a whole bunch of misinformation but Ben Thomson at Stratechery has issues, and yet another Zoom issue, this time that they’ve misleadingly claimed that their meetings are end-to-end encrypted although the UK government don’t seem to mind…
- [00:16:40] Main discussion: What’s the role of technology, open source, open data, and the community in a large-scale crisis scenario? Are there useful ways to contribute, or is it best to just stay out of the way? Can, and should, you get involved?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×01-see-the-whole-staircase/12347
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
2×65: Email Avengers Assemble
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we are all waaaaay more invested in email than certain companies would like us to be, and:
- In this episode we discuss Superhuman, a new email app. Jono, the email power user’s email power user, has been getting to grips with it and is frankly a bit of a fan. Jeremy and Stuart are perhaps a bit more sceptical of some of the claims that it makes. So, we drill down into it; what does it do, how does it work, who needs it… and what does this mean for the development of design-led apps as a whole? Is this a move in a good direction? All the people trying to claim that email is dead so you use their proprietary system instead… are they wrong? Is this the way to prove that? And why didn’t Gmail do it already?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×65-email-avengers-assemble/12332
2×64: Nobrac
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which is discussed the prodigal’s opinions of what we got up to while he was prodigaling, the Wurzels get a second look-in, and:
<
ul>
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×64-nobrac/12330
2×63: Give You The Key
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest Jorge Castro present Bad Voltage, in which the nature of purchasing goods is discussed.
There seem to have recently been various examples of companies selling a thing and then exerting control over it after they’ve sold it. Sonos speakers have “recycle mode”, HP printer cartridges in their “Instant Ink” programme stop working if you unsubscribe, and farmers buy 30-year-old tractors rather than new ones because they’re still fixable in the field. But are these actually examples of a trend for the worse, or is this not actually the problem that it’s being painted as? Is this just how capitalism works, and is this how we want it to work? We’ll dive into this, from a few different perspectives, and see where we end up…
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×63-give-you-the-key/12326
2×62: Hey Eckhardt
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which what will happen in 2020 is laid out for your consideration with perfect precision. Yes, it’s the predictions episode! This is what will happen in the next year:
Stuart
- Slack will be purchased by either Microsoft, WebEx (Cisco) or Zoom. (Jeremy thinks the same, but by Salesforce, Google, or Amazon, in that order)
- There will have been no convictions under the CCPA by the end of 2020
- It’s the end of cookie warnings, as the EU ePrivacy stuff actually starts to kick in
- Bonuses: Epic store releases on Linux; it’ll be common to have drone displays instead of fireworks
Jono
- Benioff leaves as CEO at Salesforce
- Microsoft, Amazon, and Google will all offer quantum computing services for their clouds, which will not be in preview but will actually be in beta or final
- Amazon will release a color kindle
- Bonuses: Canonical will get acquired; Playstation 5 will launch to very positive press reviews; Facebook Spaces will continue to be something people don’t care about; Dorsey steps down as Twitter CEO
Jeremy
- Disney acquires EA, or Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard
- Just a few short years after Ubuntu pulled the cord on convergence, a phone of that nature is released by a major manufacturer
- Uber shutters Uber Eats
- Bonuses: There will be no level 5 autonomous cars in 2020
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
2×61: Frankly Much Smarter
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which a tenth of a point is more important than one might think it is, Mother Shipton is turning in her grave, and:
- [00:02:10] A year ago we predicted everything that would happen in technology in 2019. Now… we revisit those predictions and see how we did. No spoilers, but we will say: when we return in 2020 and give new predictions for the upcoming year… we’ll probably do better. In advance of us doing so in the New Year, why not hop over to community.badvoltage.org to tell us what you think will happen?
- [00:50:30] And it’s goodbye from us for 2019! With some brief diversions into Craigslist getting its first official app after 24 years and a brief check in on the Ubports Ubuntu phone project
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×61-frankly-much-smarter/12321
2×60: Thanks Given
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we are very different on flights, Jono knows about the Bills, and:
- [00:01:30] The .org registry has been sold to a private equity firm, and there is a whole lot of suspicion about how that deal went down. We’ll unpack it a bit.
- [00:15:00] Google release Stadia, their streaming gaming platform, to early adopters. Reception was… mixed. Here are some thoughts.
- [00:33:30]
Lex LuthorElon Musk invents a low-poly truck. What’s the market for the Cybertruck? Are we going to buy one? - [00:49:25] The launch of Disney+, and their market. Disney now own rather a lot of video — their own films, but Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Hulu, Touchstone — and will this make Disney+ the thing that people buy instead of Netflix?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×60-thanks-given/12313
2×59: Inciteful
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Jono and Jeremy are coming to you direct from the Open Source Summit in France, the word for “full of incitement” is not “inciteful”, Stuart, and:
- [00:01:55] Facebook News and what it should include and what not: what responsibility, if any, does Facebook’s newly-proposed News tab have to choose the journalistic contributions that go into it?
- [00:25:05] Using “AI” in job interviews and whether this is a good idea
- [00:33:30] Disney seem to be stopping good older films from going into cinemas
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×59-inciteful/12308
2×58: Fat For Purpose
Stuart Langridge and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the summer break is over except that Jono is temporarily away, free software has some problems, and:
- [00:01:45] Is the definition of free software still fit for purpose? We’ve got companies trying to solve the problem of “we pay to build a thing then AWS get paid for it” and people trying to solve the problem of “we sweat to build a thing then ICE get to use it”, and both groups are doing so by looking at what the goals of free software are today, and whether current free software licences are still a good way of achieving those current goals. Matthew Garrett wrote some thoughts about this, and we have Opinions too, as we suspect will you. Give us your ideas on this topic at community.badvoltage.org.
- [00:23:02] There is speculation that the UK government are offering up quotes to the media which use the key words from negative stories in a new context, in an attempt to push those negative stories down the search rankings for those words. Real life SEO to get bad stories out of the news. Andy Maturin flags this for a search for “boris johnson model” (attempting to push this story down the rankings in favour of this story)
- [00:30:50] Gnome are being sued over a software patent (“a method that involves capturing a bunch of images, filtering them based on a topic, theme or individual, and wirelessly transmitting the filtered images to another device”) which Shotwell allegedly violates
- [00:40:08] The dating app maker, Match, are being sued by the US FTC for fraud for allegedly knowingly profiting from and sometimes augmenting the flood of fake profiles on their dating sites
- [00:45:45] More on Google’s determination to have a robot voice ring up restaurants and make bookings by talking to a real person: “Reserve With Google” seems to be the latest iteration of this plan, and it doesn’t seem to work all that well
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×58-fat-for-purpose/12300
2×57: Banned, On The Run
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we h4XX0r the Dark Web to pwn your s3ns3s, other people are inexplicably less annoyed about this than Stuart is, and:
- [00:01:15] After a terrorist murdered 22 people and injured 24 others in the mass shooting in El Paso in 2019, police said that they are “reasonably confident” that the shooter published an anti-Hispanic, anti-immigrant manifesto published on 8chan, a messageboard heavily linked to alt-right propaganda and mass shootings. Cloudflare then dropped their support for 8chan, refusing to provide them with DDOS protection.
In the midst of this, Kevin Roose, a tech writer for the NYT, said: there’s a big, interesting debate here about which layers of the internet should be responsible for banning extreme content. And we agree. So, this is that interesting debate: which levels should be banning stuff like this? ISPs, literally the provision of an internet service? Facebook and other end-user applications? Cloudflare and other infrastricture providers? And what justifies a decision to ban? Government regulation? Corporate PR? The CEO’s personal opinions? Is there a risk that challenging the orthodoxy results in banning by the mob, or is that just a fig-leaf used by those who want to keep their awful opinions? A bit of all of that, perhaps: we dig into the whole topic from a few different angles.
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×57-banned-on-the-run/12294
2×56: Solvitur Ambulando
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which there might be toilet paper conferences, you don’t know, and:
- [00:01:15] What makes a good conference? We’re digging into this in some depth; what makes a conference fun, or useful, or beneficial, or all of the above, and what stops it from being those things? What’s the point of conferences anyway? A wide-ranging discussion trying to work out what people are doing well, and not so well.
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×56-solvitur-ambulando/12290
2×55: Moaner Lisa
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the Mona Lisa is bobbins, it is important to have your privacy policy meet the overall goals you’re pushing, and:
- [00:01:00] There’s a new site launched calling for a ban on facial recognition. Should it be banned? There are dangers here, but perhaps the genie is out of the bottle on this one; what needs to be done?
- [00:30:30] More than 1,000 Android apps harvest data even after you deny permissions. iOS has similar issues. Is this just a bug, or a symptom of a more deep-seated malaise? And what, if anything, can and should be done about it?
- [00:44:13] British Airways faces record £183m fine for data breach; it’s the biggest penalty from the UK’s ICO ever
- [00:47:40] Someone writes a bit of software called “DeepNude” which takes a picture of women (only) and fakes a nude image of them, in a catastrophic misreading of the room. We tell them: don’t do this sort of thing, and then answer a question asked, which was: does this water down the power of blackmailers?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×55-moaner-lisa/12281
2×54: Well Baffled
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we only get the bad bits of Neuromancer, apparently “stank” is a noun, and:
- [00:01:13] More and more companies are going for some sort of “open core” business model approach to software distribution: parts of the software are open and parts are closed, or there’s a licence which prohibits its use by cloud providers without paying, or you have to pay for the branded version. We take a look into the different approaches here, and what it means for open source in general and the direction of the industry
- [00:27:50] This past weekend has seen a bit of dancing about whether Ubuntu will drop 32-bit libraries from the archive, ending up with a statement from Canonical about it saying they aren’t going to (and Valve have responded saying that they’ll continue to support Steam on Ubuntu, although that was after we recorded the show)
- [00:44:17] Facebook have released a cryptocurrency, Libra. What’s the deal here? We have some thoughts, not surprisingly
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×54-well-baffled/12260
2×53: The Route of All Evil
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Stuart gets the episode number wrong, the ghosts of KWebStat and Jokosher are unearthed, and:
- [00:01:52] Github Sponsors: a new donations programme from Github where people can give money to support an open source project. A good idea? Well, maybe. We have some thoughts on this latest attempt to bring money into the open source ecosystem, and whether they’re doing better than Tidelift or OpenCollective or any of the others
- [00:21:40] Stadia: Google’s upcoming streaming video gaming service (or possibly a terrible hatchback car from the 1980s). Are we on board? Or are there problems? Well, maybe a bit of both. Bringing the subscription model to gaming excites a lot of comment as a concept, and whether Google are the right people to do it is also a concern
- [00:34:57] Sign in with Apple: Apple’s new rival to signing in with Google or Facebook. Privacy preserving? Yes, at least partially. Mandatory for anyone using anyone else’s single sign on? Also yes. So, we are on the fence a bit here; time to dig into it, and what the iceberg is that this is the tip of as integration between services becomes more critical and harder to get away from
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×53-the-route-of-all-evil/12238
2×52: Apples to Oranges
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which there is charity and there is hope but there is not a lot of faith, and:
- [00:02:50] Lenovo are apparently making a Thinkpad-brand foldable PC next year. We have Thoughts, not surprisingly
- [00:08:40] Uber finally do their IPO, which manages to seriously underperform expectations and yet still be the 9th biggest US IPO ever
- [00:11:10] Someone comes up with a worrying Whatsapp remote exploit — dial a call which would then buffer overflow the target and install software on it. It went unmentioned in the release notes, although maybe that’s a good thing because people don’t install security updates?
- [00:13:50] Drinking six or more coffees a day can be detrimental to your health. In other news, a bear prays, and the Pope was seen heading into the woods with a roll of toilet paper
- [00:15:20] Our main feature: lots of people think it’s unfair if their open source software is bundled up and sold by someone putting no effort into it. This is certainly legal, but there seem to be more developers who are disillusioned about this, both for personal projects and in large enterprises. Historically the response has been: that’s legal, so you just have to live with it. But as the open source world has changed, is that still a good answer? Maybe those developers do need to live with it, but perhaps there should be a better explanation as to why living with it is actually better in the long term? Or maybe the open source pitch itself should change, or the world should: can we do better than dismissing people’s concerns rather than helping them understand?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×52-apples-to-oranges/12185
2×51: Game of Groans
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest presenter Jorge Castro present Bad Voltage, in which apparently reading A Song of Ice and Fire is as bad as being a Crossfit person or using Arch, Jorge refuses to publicly state just how many HDMI devices he has, and:
- [00:02:30] The Sony PlayStation 5 is coming. In 2020, probably. What’s going to be good, and what’s going to be less good?
- [00:17:40] Employee wellness programs apparently may not work: “The study concluded that the program didn’t seem to have much effect on total medical spending, employee productivity, or health behavior in the first year.
- [00:24:50] Is “996”, the idea that workers should work 9am-9pm six days a week, a good idea? Jack Ma of Alibaba says it is. Workers in China disagree. We have thoughts.
- [00:35:20] In light of the UK’s upcoming online harms” strategy document and porn blocking plans, how do you monitor or control your children’s internet access and screen time, or do you not? Do you block the things your kids can see, and if so how? Limit their time online, and how? Or none of the above?
- [00:49:50] Cloudflare plan to offer a free VPN for everyone.
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×51-game-of-groans/12150