Bad Voltage

Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we discover that whitehouse.com is not the government. We also discuss:

Outernet, Google Loon, Facebook et al’s internet.org: all attempts, from small to globally-changing, to help bring internet connectivity to places and people that don’t have it, through satellites or balloons or drones or lasers. What’s the deal? And will it work? (2.15)

We speak to Carl Richell, CEO of Ubuntu laptop, desktop, and server vendors System76, about their new rebrand, the nature of design in hardware, and how they work (17.05)

Wrong in 60 Seconds: Jono is extremely annoyed (for a minute) about people (34.32)

A while back we were pretty sceptical about the Arubixs Portal, a bendable very powerful upcoming phone being crowdfunded: we are still sceptical, and so Brandon Mears, CEO of Arubixs, takes some time to explain to us how it’s not a hoax and the Portal is on its way (36.05)

Jeremy reviews the latest model of Amazon’s ebook reader, the Kindle Voyage (54.26)

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Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we celebrate our completed first year of the show by not actually doing anything celebratory. We also discuss:

Debian agreed to ship systemd as default and now people are talking about forking the whole distribution. The question is: at what point is it right to fork a distro? (2.45)

Bryan reviews ChromeOS on the Chromebook Pixel and explains how someone who doesn’t like requiring an internet connection deals with a laptop which does (16.27)

Wrong in 60 Seconds: the first of a new regular feature where one of us steps onto the soapbox for one minute. For this inaugural Wrong in 60 Seconds, Stuart talks about choice (32.58)

We speak to Guy Martin, senior open source strategist in Samsung’s open source group, about what open source means to Samsung and what it’s like influencing things inside such a huge organisation (34.32)

Technology is increasingly being used to help connect people after recent or alert you of upcoming natural disasters or extreme weather conditions. We look at the existing approaches and suggest some new ones. (50.59)

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Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which there is only one. We also discuss:

Would it be bad if the open source desktop fails to go mainstream? Is not wanting large public success just elitism? Or is this the year that we pronounce it isn’t and never will be “the year of the Linux desktop”, and is that a terrible thing? (3.14)

We review the Canon HF-R500 digital camcorder (27.10)

Why do film and TV scripts get technology wrong when it would be just as easy to get it right? Should we be amused or annoyed by technobabble? (39.45)

Should programming be part of a school curriculum, not to program specifically but to teach skills of logically constructing an argument and meta-skills of thinking “how to think”? (50.58)

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Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which the team fail to laugh at one another’s jokes, succeed in laughing at one another’s approach to privacy, and discuss:

A company named Arubixs have started, and then had cancelled, a crowdfunding campaign for a wrist-strappable device named Portal, in the face of scorn from the Android Police site and disbelief. What’s going on? And how does crowdfunding work in this sort of situation? Should we think of crowdfunding as more like investment than like shopping? (1.55)

Bryan reviews the Samsung Galaxy Camera 2, a point-and-shoot camera running Android

Xprize have launched the Global Learning Xprize and an associated crowdfunding campaign: we ask Jono to explain it and answer our questions on how it all works and what its open-source requirements could mean for the field (32.48)

We are going live. Live Voltage, the first Bad Voltage live show, will be the main evening entertainment at the Los Angeles SCALE conference in 2015! And we ask for your thoughts on how we make it happen and what you’d like to see there on the forum; let us know! (47.29)

Are there privacy implications to storing genetic information? A recent announcement and retraction by generic analysis and ancestry company 23andme prompted discussion around the nature of their business and what a big database of genetic information might be useful for (53.42)

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Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we discuss the wonderful products of the Jimmy Dean sausage empire, have unexpected bouts of poetry, lunch each other with frippery, and also discuss:

The final installment of the Bad Voltage Reverso Debate, which, due to a tie in the last installment, results in an awkward three-way. Jeremy and Jono are donating to Charity:Water as a result, and we are looking to raise $1500 from the Bad Voltage community to help – go and donate! (2.30)

Stuart reviews the EZCast and evaluates whether he can use it to rock the conference circuit on his phone (21.58)

We crown the winner of the Bad Voltage Mashed Voltage competition who wins a piece of tat from each member of the team. Go and listen to all the entries (33.27)

We cover work/life balance and discuss where the burden of responsibility is between the employer and employee in ensuring people have the balance right (39.32)

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Jeremy Garcia, Bryan “the Cheater” Lunduke, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we discuss operating systems, magnanimity in defeat, cheating, mendacious

donations to charity, fingerprints being rubbish, how to kiss a Red Hat engineer, and:

The “reverso” debate: Jeremy and Jono debate whether projects should have a publicly visible figurehead or if that does harm to the project, but (and this is the key point) argue for the position opposite to what they actually believe. You can (and should)

vote for who you think was the winner, by going to community.badvoltage.org and choosing in the poll! (2.48)

We review the Samsung Galaxy S5 phone running Android, and diverge into the nature of phones and way to choose (20.56)

Karsten Wade, CentOS engineering manager at Red Hat, talks about the recent partnership between Red Hat and CentOS and why it happened (36.25)

Is it possible to create a political party which runs like an open source project? Run as a meritocracy? (54.12)

Lots of stuff going on in the Bad Voltage community: we have a round-up (61.12)

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Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we discuss technology, social media, milkshakes, history, and argue violently about:

Is putting together technical solutions to social problems a good idea? Can we enforce or

encourage good social rules through technical means? (3.30)

Blender review by the whole team (18.34)

We speak to Emma Marshall from System76, who manufacture and sell laptops, desktops and servers with

Ubuntu (29.34)

The “reverso” debate: Bryan and Stuart debate whether desktops should be simple or complicated, but (and this is the key point) argue for the position opposite to what they actually believe (40.16)

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We return to our normal places around the globe and continue to bring you tasty things for your ears. Jeremy Garcia, Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and an inexcusable absence of Bryan Lunduke think up a new competition involving things in our houses, and also discuss:

Where’s our free culture revolution? Lawrence Lessig predicted a world filled with remix culture and set up the Creative Commons, but little to none of it has actually changed the way people think. Or has it? (2.25)

Graham Morrison of Linux Voice answers some of the questions from our discussion in the previous show about their magazine, their process, and why the December issue comes out in June (17.45)

Mashed Voltage: we start a new competition. Read about it on the forum and listen to it on the show, and enter before September 10th to celebrate remix culture (36.48)

Jono reviews the Samsung Gear Live smartwatch and the team watch, smartly (40.25)

Open source projects sometimes decide that they’ll build their own hardware. When they try, they fail. Why? What motivates the decision to do it in the first place? (54.22)

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The Bad Voltage team present tasty things for your ears. Jeremy “stalwart” Garcia, Stuart “stalwart” Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Bryan Lunduke fight through the logistical challenges of being even further apart than usual to bring you thoughts, expertise, and arguments about:

Do Google still know how to make compelling technology? It seems that all Google’s successful products are ten years old. Have they forgotten how to build a new product that lots of people like?

Is the technology world ageist? Is being old a problem, and are you old at 40? And is the Valley worse?

Linux Voice is a print magazine run by the ex-Linux Format team, and which was initially funded by an Indiegogo campaign. Is this a good idea? A review of the team’s thoughts

Ask For Advice: Online payments are a mess. Lock-in everywhere — Android must use Google Wallet; all payments on iOS must go through Apple; Amazon won’t take Paypal; eBay pushes it hard; Verified by Visa is rubbish. What’s good about the current system? What’s bad about it? What could be fixed? Stuart asks for the team and the community’s input.

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The Bad Voltage team present tasty things for your ears, here for the twentieth time. Jeremy Garcia, Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Bryan “Stopped Clock” Lunduke bring you the Knowledge, specifically this time of:

The Bad Voltage Versification Perversification: the community gave us a selection of words around which to compose a poem and here are the distinctly poetic results, followed by some poetic justice

Uber and Lyft: are taxis relics of the last century? Does having an iPhone app exempt you from the law? Comparing the new cabs with the old, and whether disruption is inherently a good thing

We review the Dropcam: a webcam to protect your house and make the footage easy to review in the cloud, specifically by talking mostly about the privacy implications of this approach and not very much about the actual device at all, unless you have a meth lab in your front room

The Blackphone is “the world’s first smartphone to put privacy and control ahead of everything else”. Following on from our discussion of privacy implications, we look at a device aiming to change the public debate on the topic

Bad Voltage apps for many platforms, and feedback on Firefox OS and free software from the community

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