2×18: Before the Music
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we have not podfaded for one hundred shows (count ’em, a hundred), two-thirds of the team are at the Open Source Summit in LA, there is literally no news about the iPhones 8 or X, and:
- [00:03:00] News: the “BlueBorne” bundle of bluetooth attacks in which everything is vulnerable except iOS 10… the Linux Foundation announce CHAOSS, a project to make toold to measure open source community health, in the world’s best example of choosing the name and then finding a project to fit it… Equifax get hacked, expose 143 million users’ details, hilariously issue people PINs which are just the date through a pseudo-phishing website, cause end of the world… a mobile phone powered by radio waves which can make Skype calls on three microwatts (!) of power…
- [00:22:15] Jono and Jeremy are as mentioned at the Open Source Summit in LA; what’s the deal with it? Fun conference? We review what’s going on and what it’s all about, as well as some thoughts on the hallway track at conferences and what some tips on being a good public speaker
- [00:37:45] HitRecord (that’s “hit record”, not “hit record”) is “a new kind of online community working together as a production company”, set up by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, to be a movie/music/creative arts production company where people collaborate together to make things, or possibly to Fight The Power but in a way where everyone still gets paid. Sounds sorta Creative Commons-y, maybe… but is this one more dead idea powered by stardom, or the new way things will get made? We’ve got some thoughts. Generally positive ones. And maybe there’s some Bad Voltage things we could do on HitRecord? Tell us your ideas!
2×17: Nihil sub sole novum
Stuart Langridge and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Jono is away (and not fired, promise), there is too much news, and:
- [00:02:00] News: Juicero has run out of juice in the latest high-profile IoT market exit… Reddit close their source, igniting entirely atypical Redditor drama frenzy and prompting questions about whether anyone can stay open after getting millions of dollars… Oracle basically close down Solaris (gave it “a bullet in the head”, says James Gosling), so pour out a valedictory drink for Sun, now essentially gone away…
- [00:20:33] The Essential Phone: the hot new kid on the Android block. Lots of love and anticipation, and then a terrible tale of missing shipping and CCed photo IDs: is this going to be the next big thing? Would it have been the next big thing if they’d got the release right? Jeremy holds up his newly acquired phone and we look into the story around a product launch… and what you should do with goodwill when you find some
2×16: Indeskribable
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the Samsung Galaxy S5 is too big (unless it’s too small), it’s certainly too old (unless we’re too old), and:
- [00:02:00] News: DJI make over-the-air firmware updates for their drones mandatory, community spend only an hour working out how to circumvent it, 59 minutes of which was watching the eclipse… Stuart still harping on about being “forced” to listen to a U2 album one time years ago… the new Android Oreo release is out, along with the now traditional news blitz of articles explaining why you don’t have it and how to force it anyway… how big your phone ought to be and intemperate rhetoric thereof… Github CEO Chris Wanstrath steps down to spend more time with his text editor, help find new CEO to “lead Github into the next stage of growth”…
- [00:24:45] Jeremy reviews the Jarvis Bamboo standing desk from Fully, along with a bunch of discussion about whether standing desks as a whole are actually worth it and what the feature set you really need is
- [00:41:10] What’s the deal with AI and robots? On our forum, paulgault talked about killer robots and asked: “will mankind terminate itself with its own creations?” We’ll get into that, AI, and what this all means for our jobs and the future of the species. It’s a big topic, this one. (And we’d love to hear your thoughts on it too.)
Extra music by bensound.com. Artwork by David Revoy.
2×15: One Mouse in a Row
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we will not be your friend, we learn some Italian, the show actually gets mixed on time, and:
- [00:02:09] The news… Google “manifestbro” posts a screed about Google’s internal attitudes to diversity and opposing affirmative action programmes, says that the way to fix the gender gap is to stop alienating conservatives, gets fired (and we have a discussion thread going on this already)… Creators of GRSecurity Linux kernel security patches sue Bruce Perens after he says that using their stuff might lead to legal trouble… UK data protection people worrying about government employees use of Slack because it makes freedom of information and transparency harder…
- [00:19:40] What should you use to run your website? Lots of people reach for WordPress, and that’s got a broad community; what else is out there? If you are using WP, are there a good set of plugins and themes that you might find good? Also including a whole discussion about IFTTT and Zapier and “glue code” for tying many services together
- [00:44:33] Ben Thompson put forward the idea of “curated journalism”: that publishers stop being employers of creators and start instead being curated publications of creators who already exist, in a detailed article for Stratechery. Does this idea actually hang together? Is it just the obvious next step? And are we likely to see new companies spring up or existing companies pivot to becoming the service provider to creators rather than the owner of them?
2×14: Continuous Partial Affection
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we do not have “excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance”, we mention that Oggcamp is coming up in the UK and you should volunteer to be on the crew, nobody buys any illegally traded goods, and:
- [00:02:00] The news… Adobe kill Flash and Stuart defends it (up is down, down is up)… the police cooperate internationally to shut down two major darkweb markets in order to deny our previous assertions that the rozzers know nothing about technology… Microsoft kill MS Paint, internet erupts with sadness, Microsoft
wire the corpse to the mains, er, grant a stay of execution and put it in the Windows Store, which is not quite the same thing as death… - [00:15:15] Is there too much screen time in our lives? Are we spending too much time looking at things on screen and not in reality, or is this merely more old man yelling at cloud? And are we seeing some more long-term psychological effects — narcissism, shallowness of affect, shortness of attention span — which have come about because our relationships are now mediated in 140-character bursts? It’s a worry. Or maybe it isn’t. We have… many thoughts
2×13: Built With Alien Technology
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the po-po are f***ed, accusations of posh schooling are levelled, and:
- [00:02:00] The news… Someone raises $80k for a Jolla tablet… meanwhile Jolla themselves raise a startling thousand times as much to “develop Sailfish OS as the rival of Android”… Fedora 26 arrives for your full crimson headgear goodness… Ubuntu on Windows is now in the Windows Store, as the prophecy predicted…
- [00:20:22] System76 release Pop!_OS, “a powerful operating system just for creators”. What’s the deal here? There seems to be some confusion, and we’re here to sort it out. Or be more confused. Do we like the idea? Do we like the company? Do we like the name? Two out of three ain’t bad
- [00:49:37] In a previous show we referenced computers from our childhood, and here, a bit more depth. What did we use? What did you grow up with? Let us know on the forum!
2×12: Infinite Loop of Hack Back
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we don’t chop anyone’s Endless in half, we measure immeasurable things, and:
- [00:01:58] The news… Google get fined €2.4 billion for antitrust violations by the EU (who have a different approach to antitrust than the US)… the Five Eyes (of Sauron) countries are now all thinking of banning encryption… you can now circumvent the DMCA to repair stuff, although you’re not guaranteed to succeed… the word of 2017 seems to be randomware with the new amusingly-named but not amusingly-functioned “Not-Petya”… a report on FOSS Talk Live and charity runs ending in New Era Field at the weekend… Mycrofts are starting to arrive, in accordance with the prophecy, so look out for a review…
- [00:21:58] The Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act (or AC⚡DC Act, let there be rock) is a proposed US government bill which gives permission to companies and individuals to try and identify the computer or location of a cyber-attack against them. That is: if you’re being hacked, it makes it explicitly legal for you to “hack back”; to attack the perpetrator’s computer. Is this empowering people to help themselves in the face of an unhelpful government, or a romanticised view of the Wild West as applied to the internet? Crime prevention control a la the Guardian Angels or legitimisation of vigilanteism? There are some pretty nuanced outcomes from this law…
- [00:41:57] Wikipedia and Benjamin Mako Hill invent a gamified tutorial for new wikipedia contributors; everyone who takes it likes it and lots of people take it but it doesn’t actually achieve the goals of increasing the number and richness of Wikipedia contributions from participants. Some thoughts on how to (and whether to) gamify your community, and how to decide on and track metrics, and doing proper statistics (referencing Evan Miller’s work (not Evan Williams, sorry))
- [00:64:10] In the last show we asked you for your blue-sky suggestions for skills for Alexa and other home assistants… and we got a zillion responses, thank you all! We list a few of our best, and choose our winner, and they will be receiving their Mission One in due course. Thank you to Endless for giving us the prize to give away; now, skill developers, never complain again that you don’t have a good idea for a skill…
2×11: Alexa play the Bad Voltage podcast
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we command Alexa to play our podcast and it works, Jono turns off his phone so it doesn’t explode with helpful comments every time we say “OK Google” (you may wish to do the same), and:
- [00:01:55] The news… Verizon spends $4.5 billion on Yahoo for reasons we don’t understand… Pinboard buy Delicious, hilariously… Apple add podcast analytics with possible big implications for the advertising industry… and Apple also confirm that they’re working on self-driving cars… while losing a bunch of value in their share price, along with everyone else in tech…
- [00:18:35] Voice controlled “assistants”, on phones (“OK Google”, Siri, Cortana) or on in-home devices (Amazon’s Echo, Google’s Home, the upcoming Mycroft and Apple devices) are a whole new platform in its early stages. We’ve been testing out some of what’s on the market, and experimenting with how they fit into our lives and with how one might use them in the future. Are they a revolutionary new thing like smartphones? Or a flash in the pan like smartwatches? The Bad Voltage verdict…
- [00:51:15] You can win an Endless Mission One computer, which the Endless people have given to us to give away! Simply enter our competition: think up the best idea you can for a “skill” or plugin for voice-controlled assistants like Alexa or OK Google. You can aim to inspire us with a great idea, or make us laugh with a daft one. (And you don’t have to _write_ it, just think of the idea.) Email your suggestions to [email protected] by Monday 26th June 2017 and we’ll choose the best suggestion from somewhere in Europe and they’ll win the Endless Mission One! (You have to be in Europe to win, here. Loose definition; if you think you’re in Europe, you probably are. But this competition is only open to people in Europe, because the previous one was only US and Canada.)
- and finally, if you want to hear Stuart answer a particular question, he’s doing a live “mashup” show as part of FOSS Talk Live in London on June 24th 2017; Stuart, Joe Ressington, Dave Megins-Nichols, and Marius Quabeck will be answering your questions, so fill in a question you want their views on!
2×10: Rainbows and Unicorns
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which wifi is a problem, updating is a problem, and:
- [00:02:10] Real news… WannaCry (or WannaCrypt; did the name just get cut off by a tweet?) ransomware worm infects 400,000 machines… Microsoft call out the NSA for hoarding 0-days… will anyone change their update policy… Android O focusing on “vitals”, modular updates, battery life… Stuart’s net connection dies and he receives a bunch of mean abuse for it…
- [00:15:03] Fake news… it’s a problem. But maybe there’s a community solution? Jono has a plan for how a crowdsourcing karma-based approach might help provide balance to news articles. There is scepticism, certainly, but this also throws up some much deeper discussions about what “fake” news is, and who decides it’s fake. Can collective action help with this sort of problem? Stack Overflow may be an example of where it does work (and we spoke to Jeff Atwood about that); Reddit might be seen as an example of where it works or an example of it not working. And perhaps this is something worth building? A long-form discussion of how this might work, and a call to people who want to build such a platform
2×09: Visible Private Network
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we are secure, we wear the juice, we get to the choppa, and:
- [00:02:15] The news this week, including going to prison in Portland for calling yourself an engineer without permission, more fast-food incredulity at the KFC Double Down, robbing banks while invisible, and Intel’s chips are all vulnerable to a security exploit and you should check and get it fixed if it needs fixing
- [00:12:38] In a world where Intel and ARM are massively dominant, is there space for some more open architecture? OpenPOWER and SuperH could be candidates technologically, but what’s standing in the way of this from a business point of view? Would anyone make hardware on these less-popular architecture? Should we even want them to?
- [00:28:21] VPNs are the hot topic right now, for all sorts of reasons. Protecting your privacy from governments or your work from your client’s network, connecting to your employer’s systems from elsewhere, getting around geoblocking… there are all sorts of reasons you might want to use a VPN, but which ones out there are actually good, and how do you make a decision? A good place to start may be thatoneprivacysite.net, and we’re currently using some combination of Opera Browser’s built-in VPN, Lantern, PrivateInternetAccess, ExpressVPN, and Nord VPN; we certainly also want to hear recommendations for other providers and why you’re using those in particular; there are lots of different reasons why people want a VPN, and lots more why people should
- [00:44:23] We were asked by a listener to talk about working for oneself: all three presenters either work for themselves right now or have done so for over a decade, so we’ve got quite a few thoughts and war-stories about all this. Herewith, some ideas on why working for oneself is good (or why it isn’t), and what we’ve learned (sometimes pleasantly, sometimes less so) along the way…
2×08: Pique Oil
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Jono is repeatedly smug about Facebook VR, nobody urinates on a laptop, we devote almost the whole show to one topic, and:
- [00:02:30] In the news: Google settle an antitrust case in Russia by basically removing all their monopoly rules, but only in Russia… 90% of drivers admit to using smartphones behind the wheel despite how you really really shouldn’t do that… and a “Garadget” IoT garage door device was deliberately remotely bricked by the company after a customer left a bad Amazon review, with worrying implications for the future of dissent..
- [00:21:15] Canonical have said that Ubuntu will dropping the Unity desktop and a bunch of associated technologies. The conversation around this has got a bit heated at times. What does it mean for Ubuntu and for the free desktop more generally? Is this the right thing to do? And what’s next?
2×07: Exercise in Futility
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia, present Bad Voltage, in which there are packs of hacks, backs are waxed, Aq has snacks, and:
- [00:03:25] The first “hack” — suggestions and tips for little bits of software that we use and are amazed that others don’t — from Jeremy, which is a clipboard manager. Jeremy uses Diodon, but there are loads of others!
- [00:06:24] In the news this week: the US Congress voted to allow US internet service providers to sell the browsing habits of their customers to advertisers, we solicit your opinions on which VPNs are good (tell us on the forum), Amazon’s physical staffless shop beta is a disaster, AT&T join the Linux Foundation, the Linux Action Show close their doors, and Google publish a site listing all their open source software
- [00:23:50] Stuart’s “hack”: KDE Connect, which connects your Android phone and any Linux desktop (KDE or not) to show notifications, send files, control music, and generally tie them together
- [00:26:15] Jono reviews the Garmin Vivosmart HR+ activity band, and whether it’s better than the rivals and whether you should get it if you wear an activity band like everyone does these days
- [00:40:35] Jono’s “hack”: how does he edit the Bad Voltage show to get the audio production that he requires, and how do we record so that other people can use the same techniques for recording a remote podcast if they want to
- The competition to win a Dell Sputnik laptop will close before the next show! So if you’re in the US and you haven’t already entered, go to badvoltage.org/fruit and get your fruit-based entries in!
2×06: Cinderella Voltage
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, and special guest presenter Jeff Atwood present Bad Voltage, in which we all had baby hacker names, burner phones are probably not required, and:
- [00:04:00] In the news this week: the 2038 problem, advertisers start boycotting YouTube over ads on hate speech videos, Apple and augmented reality, and speaking passwords out loud with your lips used for authentication
- [00:21:23] Open Source Project Communication: historically open source projects used mailing lists and IRC. These days people use Slack and forums. What’s the future of communication for these kinds of projects, particularly given the balance of openness vs convenience?
- [00:46:00] Ads vs Recommendations: Google Home devices start doing ads for films, and everyone’s pretty upset. But these aren’t ads! They’re recommendations. According to Google at least. Is this a legit argument? Where is the blurry line between an advert and a helpful suggestion?
2×05: Bad Voltage Live at SCaLE 15x
The Bad Voltage live stage show, from SCaLE 15x in Pasadena, March 2017!
An epic time was had. Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge, live on stage, in which there was some downright unfair quizzing of Jono, a one-sh*t trumpet, the brightest suit that’s ever been seen, a machine to count eggs, Perl abuse, a hollow burrito, pies, more pies, hammer pants, the Phantom Zone, no air horns, the products of the Chevy company, and a reappearance of Bryan! As well as:
- [00:07:00] The news! Featuring the Amazon S3 outage, Snapchat being worth $33 billion, System76 bringing manufacturing in-house, and how swimming pools have dustbins full of urine in
- [00:11:30] Cloudflare had a pretty serious security flaw identified by the Project Zero team at Google, where sensitive data from all sorts of Cloudflare sites was leaked — passwords, auth tokens, and the like. What’s the deal with this sort of issue? It’s surprising how much of the internet turned out to be behind Cloudflare, and this sort of centralisation is a problem… but equally, there’s a reason we go to experts in the field and outsource services to them! So, what’s the best approach here?
- [00:20:00] Quizmaster extraordinaire Jeremy plays Much Taboo About Nothing, in which team opensource Jono and Rikki team up to battle heroic ginger team Stuart and Hannah in a game of wit, erudition, vocabulary, guesswork, and trying to not be too nasty about Ruby people. Partially successfully, depending on your attitude on rule-bending and wide appreciation of cultures…
- [00:33:20] Why are all our amazing technological advances being used to make stupid pointless gadgets that nobody should buy? Paper towel dispensers that magically detect your hand movement and then still dispense a bit of brown paper to dry your hands on; amazing iPad-based payment systems which still require you to sign your name with your finger; endless pointless stupid Internet of Things devices. Stuart rants, and Jono and Jeremy respond with various degrees of defence or agreement as to where we’re going and what to do about incredible technology put to wasteful ends
- [00:43:00] Ig-NOT — it’s like the Ignite talk series, but… not. The presenters each do a talk, on an unknown subject chosen by the audience, using unseen images suggested by the community and the other presenters. And… well, see how they get on. Featuring some properly unkind choices, a brief and magnanimous appearance by Bryan, and a very weird old guy with an axe…
Many thanks to the extra participants in the show: Chris Smith for warming up, the ever-wonderful and ever-supportive Ilan Rabinovitch, and show guests and guessers Rikki Endsley and Hannah Anderson!
We are hugely grateful to the companies who helped make this show happen: Linode for getting us there, SCaLE for inviting us again, Dell and Endless for providing prizes, and Ticketmaster for putting on the show and venue and tacos and many many beers and the band afterwards!
And… if you want to enter the competition announced in the outro and win that sweet Dell XPS laptop… you want badvoltage.org/fruit…
Watch the show here:
2×04: Pie In The Hold
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which pies are not permitted to be stored in the checked baggage. In this show:
- [00:01:50] In the news: the city of Munich are preparing a switch back from Linux to Windows, Chrome are preventing users from disabling their DRM and PDF plugins, UPS are working on a “rolling warehouse” by launching delivery drones from their brown vans, and Bad Voltage burger correspondent Jono announces the release of a new “bigger Big Mac” from McDonald’s
- [00:14:22] Disassembled: Gitlab. At the end of January Gitlab had a fairly major outage and lost data, and dealt with it in an unusually transparent way; a live video stream and live documentation of the fix investigation and progress, and afterwards a detailed technical post-mortem of what went wrong and why. We dig into the incident and the response.
- [00:30:15] The elementary team are crowdfunding a sprint to work on their app distribution story. But what’s the deal with the story they’re planning? We’ve got some thoughts saying that they’re doing it right… and some maybe that don’t.
- [00:54:40] Some updates on Bad Voltage Live, _next week_ (!!!) at SCaLE in Pasadena, California on 3rd March at 8pm. Buy your SCaLE tickets, come for the show, stay for the open bar and the taco trucks and the Spazmatics. And the show.
- We’ve also got a few questions for the audience — things we’d like to know. Come to our forums and help us discuss methods for the US border patrol and guest presenters!
2×03: And Those Who Dig
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, with special guest presenter Christina Warren, speaker, tech journalist from Gizmodo, and podcaster at Rocket. In this show:
- [00:03:12] In the news this week: Vizio get fined $2.2m for secretly collecting everything you watch on their TVs and lying about it, police use someone’s pacemaker data to help prove that they committed arson, Uber hire a NASA person and start talking about flying taxis, and Streetmap lose their appeal after suing Google for unfairly pushing their own map product
- [00:17:00] In honour of our special guest being @film_girl on Twitter, we’ve put together a list of “the good, the bad, and the ugly” in film: films that are really great, secretly great, and idiosyncratically terrible
- [00:39:30] Jeremy reviews the Pico Brew, a device for brewing your own beer easily without having to buy all the glassware and a forty foot mash tun
- [00:56:35] Is there actually a space for a successful “third player” in mobile phones? Microsoft, Ubuntu, Sailfish, Palm, RIM, all have foundered in pursuit of this market. And if there’s no space for it in phones, who will shift the market to some new _type_ of product, and what will that product be?
Also, Bad Voltage are returning to SCALE in Pasadena in March for a live show! With free food and an open bar, and the 80s nerd rocker band the Spazmatics, the show’s gonna be great. Buy your SCaLE tickets now!
2×02: Failed to Capture
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, your fortnightly recommended dose of vitamins and minerals. Featuring a still virulently ill Jono, the uttering of the phrase “FreeBSD” in these hallowed halls, and:
- [00:02:26] In the news this week, the Guardian wrongly declare WhatsApp to have a “back door” and get huge pushback from security experts demanding a retraction, Google is big enough to develop a trusted hardware solution for internal use only and isn’t going to sell it, possibly heralding a new era of hardware that nobody will be able to buy, and Facebook are doing something with VR thus confirming one of Jono’s predictions and he almost dies of smugness
- [00:13:00] We review the ACPAD, which calls itself “the electronic orchestra for your guitar” after its successful Kickstarter; what’s it all about?
- [00:27:30] Is ChromeOS “desktop Linux”? We asked this question in the last show, and it’s a bigger one than we might think. If it is, do Chromebook successes count as “the year of the Linux desktop”? If it isn’t, is it a threat? A rival or a friend? Should we buy a Chromebook?
- [00:50:07] People are using the GPL less and permissive licenses more; this isn’t just a feeling, it’s confirmed by research. Why is this? Is it a problem? And do we think that anyone should care?
Also, Bad Voltage are returning to SCALE in Pasadena in March for a live show! Keep your ears open for more details, and buy your SCALE tickets now!
2×01: He Grew Whiskers
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia return with the first episode of season 2 of Bad Voltage! Featuring a vitriolic Stuart, a victorious Jeremy, a virulently ill Jono, and:
- [00:04:00] We bring our predictions for what’s going to happen in the tech world in 2017. Broken up into three parts, first comes Stuart’s attempt to be Nostradamus with regard to the web, Apple, Oracle, and Amazon
- [00:14:30] In the news this week, a girl uses her sleeping mother’s fingerprint to buy Pokemon stuff, a newscaster says Alexa command words on air and orders a zillion doll houses, Samsung unveil 8K TVs and Panasonic unveil a baby voice recognition engine at CES, and the new Bad Voltage Roku channel courtesy of Martin Wimpress
- [00:22:30] Jono predicts 2017, focusing on Google+, electric cars, phones, and VR
- [00:33:00] Jono reviews the Cadillac XT5 Premium Luxury, including whether the technology inside it is actually good, what the deal is with Caddys these days, Android Auto and entertainment systems in a modern car, and whether Bacon knows anything about cars
- [00:50:00] Jeremy gives his predictions for 2017, looking at Canonical, mobile apps, and Linux market share
Also, Bad Voltage are returning to SCALE in Pasadena in March for a live show! Keep your ears open for more details, and buy your SCALE tickets now!
1×82: Didn’t They Do Well
The last show of 2016!
[00:03:14] A year ago, the four members of Bad Voltage looked forward in time and predicted what would happen in 2016. And now, we look back and say: how did we do? Our roles as Nostradamuses (Nostradami?) come under analysis, and we look at each of our predictions, what it would have meant were they true (spoiler alert: some were! but… some were not), and who is the worst most terrible futurologist.
[00:38:35] Also! An announcement. Things are changing, and this is where we tell you that. Listen to find out our news, and what this means for the show. Bad Voltage continues, in season 2, in 2017…
1×81: The Bad Voltage Holiday Gift Guide 2016
It’s the holiday season! An excuse to buy interesting tech for people. But… what to get? Well, we’re here for you. Stuart Langridge, Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke and Jono Bacon each give suggestions of some cool things that you might want to look at getting… or asking for, in these next couple of weeks of shopping days. And just maybe some things that you should actively avoid…
1×80: The Two-Percenters
In this episode, we devote the whole show to a different format: a wide-ranging discussion on Linux adoption and market share, following the news that it’s been trending up and over 2% consistently for a while now. Taking in the current state of hardware, Steam gaming, new devices from everyone else, and whether mobile is eating desktop or not, Stuart Langridge, Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke and Jono Bacon dive deep into where Linux is going and whether we want it to get there at all.
1×79: Who Watches the Undertakers
In a slightly altered format, we split into pairs this week and each sets the other pair a topic. Jono Bacon and Stuart Langridge set a topic for discussion for Bryan Lunduke and Jeremy Garcia, and Bryan and Jeremy do the same for Stuart and Jono:
- 00:01:50 What happens to your data when you die? Have you made provision for your family to have access to your digital accounts, or have you explicitly made provision for your data to get autodeleted on a dead man’s switch? Bryan and Jeremy discuss what they’ve already done, what they’ve thought about for this, and which options are available to you
- 00:18:42 The UK has seen proliferation of CCTVs and physical mass surveillance on a greater scale than in the USA and other places. Stuart and Jono discuss their thoughts, opinions on the public’s acceptance of this and whether the perceived benefits outweigh the perceived concerns?
1×78: A Different Kind of Duction
Je(re)my Garcia, Stuart Langri(dge), Jono Ba(con) and Bry-(in) Lunduke present Bad Voltage, in which half of us change phones, half of us go to All Things Open, and:
- 00:02:13 Jono buys the new Google Pixel and tells us what he thinks of the big G’s entry into the mobile market. Is it actually better? Is it just a new Nexus? What’s the deal with software makers making hardware anyway? And is it worth the money?
- 00:26:36 We’ve recently seen a large distributed denial of service, operated by shady figures in control of a huge internet-connected devices botnet. Are such things the wave of the future? What can be done to stop it? Taking in regulation, consumer purchasing decisions, the nature of the internet, next-generation platforms for IoT devices, the word “shonky”, geopolitics, collective action problems and human psychology, the impact had by speaking out, and whether anyone needs an Toaster of Things anyway
1×77: Wax Cylinder Coming Soon
Jeremy Garcia, Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon and Bryan Lunduke present Bad Voltage, in which three idiots fail to recognise the glory of having the theme tune from The League Of Gentlemen as one’s ringtone, we create Garcia’s Law, and:
- 00:02:01 Google have long been a player in the chat or IM ecosystem. But just lately their approach in this area seems to be getting more and more confused. What’s the deal, big G? You’ve got Allo and Duo and GTalk and Hangouts… what’s the end goal here?
- 00:24:33 Open sourcing your hardware. Kyle from OpenMYR, who are currently kickstartering wifi-controllable motors, asks the BV team: are we doing the right thing, publishing the hardware source for our creations? When’s the right time to open your hardware: before it exists, after it exists, or never? We look into the question and give some thoughts
1×76: Bd Vltg
The Bad Voltage team are half away this week. Fortunately, the good half remain. Since there’s only Stuart and Jeremy we decided to not do a “standard” show; instead, it’s a riff revisiting a bunch of previous topics and seeing what’s happened to them now. Bryan and Jono should be back next time, and meanwhile the smart half present:
- 00:01:24 Things. Many things. The beautiful things of the shop. Jeremy and Stuart’s wide-ranging conversation, containing the Brave web browser, finding ways to get paid on the internet, the Moto 360 customer service saga, what’s happening to the Motorola name, smartwatches, Mycroft, the absence of a Mycroft, Mycroft’s existing commercial rivals, Lancia’s in the UK, phones that are too big, the Note 7 exploding, the box to contain the explosion, four billion dollars…
1×75: Surround Meatballs
Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, and Stuart Langridge bring you Bad Voltage, in which there is a ginger Columbo, the Buffalo Bills come in for more hassle that even their performance warrants, Google release a release announcement for a new phone, and:
- 00:02:20 Apple have elected to remove the headphone jack from the upcoming iPhone model. This is a harbinger of things to come: will this flood across the industry as a whole? Some thoughts on what this means for iPhones, for phones, for Apple’s philosophy on technology, Bryan’s philosophy on Apple, all our philosophies on Bryan’s philosophies, and how the technology industry works as a whole. Plus, lots of slavering Bacon love for the Google Pixel range (send us review units!)
- 00:38:34 Jeremy reviews smart lightbulbs from both the Philips Hue and LifX ranges. Are they good examples of the breed? And more generally: are smart bulbs a good idea? What’s the point? Who uses them and how can they be used? Is security necessarily something you have to give up for convenience? And which team’s successes should cause your bulbs to flash?
1×74: Google Minus
Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, and Stuart Langridge bring you Bad Voltage, in which Bryan was sadly caught in traffic, Jeremy was caught by Motorola, litigators are caught offside, and:
- 00:22:40 Our own Jeremy purchased a Motorola 360 Sport runners’ smartwatch, and was quite happy with it. Until it went wrong, and he had to descend into the hell that is customer support. A tale of bravery and derring-do fighting the evil monsters of Lying, Misrepresenting, and Incompetence. Plus a review of the device itself.
- 00:01:54 Google+, the big G’s attempt to unseat Facebook, failed to unseat Facebook despite being wedged by leadership fiat into every Google property. Given their history of killing less-than-dominant products, should we expect G+ to go away? If it does… what replaces it? Where do we go from here?
- 00:41:17 When’s the right time to litigate over software freedom? A recent brouhaha between Brad Kuhn and Linus Torvalds (and others) on the Linux kernel mailing list throws into sharp relief the distinction between litigation and diplomacy: everyone claims that suing is a last resort, but is this borne out by the facts? And if we don’t sue, what do we do? And who’s “we”, here?
1×73: DEET Ox
Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, and Stuart Langridge bring you Bad Voltage, in which Kinder Eggs make a surprising appearance, no time off is taken from the internet, and:
- 00:02:12 It’s becoming trendy, and possibly useful, to “digital detox”: to take some time away from social media or the internet or the constant barrage of information in our modern age. But is it actually a good idea or just the hip thing to do? How do you manage the data flow, and do we need to hide from it now and again?
- 00:23:55 A while back, Elon Musk proposed Hyperloop, a next-generation super-fast transportation system involving a long tube and metal canisters which you sit in and get flung along the tube at hundreds of miles an hour. Since then, a number of organisations have taken up the challenge and are working towards building such a thing. Can it work? If the technology works, what about the politics and the economics? Will we soon be able to travel between cities in a few minutes? We be the judges.
1×72: Walking into Trees
Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, and Stuart Langridge bring you Bad Voltage, in which we poke mangoes, we set up a Tumblr about people walking off cliffs, we buy music or we don’t, and:
- 00:01:57 Pokemon Go is the latest sensation. Is this the harbinger of a brave new era of location-based games? Is it just Ingress with cartoon characters? Is it brilliant or bobbins? Is it a CIA plant? Do Nintendo have anything to do with it at all? All this and more is examined.
- 00:28:20 Music streaming services. Jono has recently discovered Spotify and is astounded by the idea that you can listen to any music you like. But is it the best on the market or are Tidal or Google Play or Amazon better? Should we be using streaming services at all rather than buying mp3s, or dare we say it vinyl?
1×71: Divisions
Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, and Stuart Langridge (Bryan is unavoidably absent but present in spirit) bring you Bad Voltage, in which there is worry about the future, there is concern about the present, there is revision of the past, and:
- 00:02:12 Brexit. The UK voted by referendum to leave the European Union, thus ushering in a world of despair and misery not seen since the bits about seven bowls in Revelation. Or, the UK voted by referendum to leave the European Union, thus seizing back control of the country. What’s the deal with Brexit? How’s it being presented both in and out of the country? And what happens next?
- 00: 37:05 Starting a discussion about next generation packaging systems. Snappy, Flatpak, AppImage are vying to be the new hotness. This is a potentially long discussion, so here we just start it off: a summary from our point of view of what’s going on here, and then we invite you to give your thoughts on community.badvoltage.org and we’ll bring that wider discussion back in a later show
- 00:44:35 We were asked the question: when should you open source? If you’re a company or a project, what goes into the decision to open source your code, what reasons are there to do it and to not do it, and why do some and not others?