Bad Voltage

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?

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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

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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

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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…

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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?

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Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, and Bryan Lunduke bring you Bad Voltage, in which the wisdom of naming children for your favourite restaurant is debated, Stuart and his daughter Niamh Chipotle write the show notes from a New York cafe, and also:

00:01:58 Is the tech industry in a bubble? is the tech industry ever not in a bubble? More importantly, what shape is the bubble? What can we do about it?

00:17:20 Jeremy and Jono tag-team a further review of Google’s Pixel C laptop. Warning: contains gushing

00:36:50 After discussing Nextcloud in previous episodes, we talk to Frank and Jos from the new project about their plans as a company and where they’re headed

01:01:00 A catch-up on the current status of the Global Learning X-Prize

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