Bad Voltage

Latest Episodes:

3×52: Click By 5pm Nov 20, 2022

Show notes

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 Oct 24, 2022

Show notes

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 Sep 15, 2022

Show notes

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 Aug 11, 2022

Show notes

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 Jul 21, 2022

Show notes

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 Jun 24, 2022

Show notes

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 May 19, 2022

Show notes

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 Apr 29, 2022

Show notes

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 Apr 14, 2022

Show notes

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 Mar 24, 2022

Show notes

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!

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