Bad Voltage

By Bad VoltageComedy Society & Culture Technology

Bad Voltage episodes

July 22, 2021 3×32: Trigger’s Broom
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which God is not our co-pilot. Instead, Github Copilot is. What’s the deal with this thing?
Copilot is “an AI pair programmer that helps you write better code”, according to Github themselves. “GitHub Copilot draws context from the code you’re working on, suggesting whole lines or entire functions.” Is this useful? Is it good? Is it good for open source?
Matthew Garrett wrote a thing about Copilot which is worth reading, especially if your basic feeling is that it takes our open source code against the licence and that’s bad.
And what about the bigger picture? Github — well, Microsoft — are one of the biggest players in the world; is this what they should be doing? And if it isn’t… what is?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×32-triggers-broom/12429
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
1 hr 2 min
June 24, 20213×31: Weaponised Death Roomba
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which there is much news from all over the tech industry, including:
[00:02:15] Anom app from FBI yanked in a huge amount of criminals

[00:08:45] FaceTime is coming to Android and Windows via the web, plus: how Apple’s rise to be the richest company on earth is wholly due to Airdrop

[00:15:50] Our Jeff Bezos News Special: Bald very rich guy whose company makes a Linux OS is going to space. I feel like we’ve heard this story before, but there is a petition for Bezos to stay in space once he gets there and it’s up to 80,000 sigs… and in more Bezos petition news, another one demands that Jeff Bezos buys and eats the Mona Lisa…

[00:21:30] Hyundair completes their acquisition of Boston Dynamics, makers of BigDog

[00:28:00] OnlyFans moving to more non-adult content (and gets valued at $1b), plus also WordPress, which you wouldn’t think was connected to this, but hey, that’s the Bad Voltage vibe right there

[00:37:00] Airbus designs in-flight quarantine tent

[00:45:45] Amazon websites are blocking FLoC (with a side order of disturbing but important musings on how new standards get made from mnot)

[00:56:20] Peloton start charging monthly money to existing customers of a treadmill that already cost three grand, in accordance with the prophecy (via @jimmysjolund on twitter)
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×31-weaponised-death-roomba/12428
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
1 hr 5 min
May 28, 20213×30: Reduced Amplitude
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which it is all the news all the time, including:
[00:03:30] The results of our (flagrantly biased) Room 101 polls from the last episode!

[00:10:29] The biggest GDPR fines so far

[00:16:45] Charlie Bit My Finger becomes an NFT

[00:31:50] Tesla (arguably) throttle older cars (at least according to Norway)

[00:36:50] Internet Explorer 11 is to finally be retired on June 15, 2022

[00:44:45] AMP pages are no longer being prioritised in Google Search

[00:59:15] People are taking UFOs seriously (!)
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×30-reduced-amplitude/12426
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
1 hr 2 min
May 13, 20213×29: Down With The Peeps 101
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we emulate the old British talk/game show Room 101 by nominating our pet hates and consigning those hates to oblivion in Room 101, the ultimate destination for all rubbish things. Assuming, that is, that our explanations convince our colleagues, which is not as easy as one might think.
[00:02:20] Jeremy: reality TV

[00:08:05] Stuart: Pepe the frog

[00:15:45] Jono: overly cartoony company mascots

[00:24:20] Jeremy: Facebook

[00:35:30] Stuart: peppers

[00:40:30] Jono: new features that slow down devices, um, because they prioritise new features over the operational modality of a device

[00:48:35] Jeremy: Peeps

[00:55:10] Stuart: websites and apps that demand your phone number

[01:00:05] Jono: cats
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
1 hr 12 min
April 30, 2021 3×28: Eat The Show
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the subject of artificial intelligence is discussed. We’ve walked around the outside of this topic a few times on the show, and now it’s time to dig in; is AI actually real, or are the jokes about reclassifying a Python script as “AI” to get funding founded in reality? Is AI useful, or is it mostly for parlour tricks? What’s going on that provides genuine use to normal people? And… what does the future look like? Should there be legislation; are AI and ML two sides of the same coin or two fundamentally different things… there’s lots to get into.
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×28-eat-the-show/12421
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
1 hr 2 min
April 15, 20213×27: Bargle-floop the podcast
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which horrible neologisms are proposed, things are both funny and also sad, and there is ooh gosh loads of news:
[00:04:10] The BBC’s coverage of the life and death of Prince Philip breaks the UK TV complaints record, and the National Rail make their website greyscale, breaking it for visually impaired users

[00:10:30] Sharding is called sharding because of the shards of the Gem of Immortality in Ultima Online

[00:13:00] Researchers asked 100 people whether “a reasonable person” would unlock their phone and allow someone to look through it, and most of them said: no, definitely not. Then the researchers tried it, and 100 out of 103 people absolutely allowed it

[00:18:00] Microsoft buy speech recognition firm Nuance for $16 billion

[00:26:50] Oracle vs Google: an end at last as the US Supreme Court rules that Google’s use of Java APIs is fair use (but gives no ruling on whether APIs are copyrightable)

[00:36:20] Jono thinks it is important that you learn that the world’s biggest rabbit has been stolen. We think: mess with the hoppo, bomb gonna droppo

[00:38:50] In the last couple of years, the last couple of puzzles from Perplex City, an ARG from 2005, have finally been solved, the last in December 2020

[00:44:44] China Creates Its Own Digital Currency, which seems like an alarmingly big deal for the future

[00:49:10] Apple changes ‘subscribe’ to ‘follow’ on Podcasts because people think subscribing means paying. We’re not sure we agree, but then we’re not sure we don’t agree either. Maybe we need a new word
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×27-bargle-floop-the-podcast/12420
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
59 min
April 01, 20213×26: Luminiferous Aether
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which flock is more than wallpaper, we say the word “cohort” about fifty billion times, and:
[00:02:15] FLoC, the “federated learning of cohorts”, is a proposal from Google as part of their Privacy Sandbox initiative to replace third-party advertising cookies but still enable targeted advertising; instead advertisers will be told your “cohort ID”, a calculated and anonymous summary of your last week’s browsing history, and then decide whether and how to target you based on that alone. It’s got some nuances: FLoC won’t appear in GDPR-covered countries because what it does doesn’t ask for consent, and those against targeted advertising entirely such as the EFF obviously don’t like it, but… is this an improvement? Is it detrimental? Does it change anything at all? And is it remarkably ill-defined and slippery deliberately or because it’s still being worked out?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×26-luminiferous-aether/12419
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
58 min
March 19, 20213×25: Novel Finance Things with No Flamin’ Time for this New-Fangled Tosh
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we invite special guest star Augustus de Morgan to comment, there is an intemperate argument about jeans, and:
[00:01:30] NFTs. “Non-fungible tokens“; a way to record ownership of some digital asset on a blockchain, something like a collectible or a trading card. Suddenly even more popular all of a sudden. So what’s the deal here? There are a lot of people saying these are nothing more than a big scam; there are a lot of others making bank while claiming this is the way art should work in the 21st century. We’re taking a look, including minting our very own NFT to see what all the fuss is about at rarible.com/badvoltage which you should immediately go and buy for a kajillion dollars. But seriously, folks… what’s the deal here? We have, not surprisingly, Thoughts.
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×25-novel-finance-things-with-no-flamin-time-for-this-new-fangled-tosh/12417
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
57 min
March 04, 20213×24: Weaponised Rooster
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest star Alan Pope present Bad Voltage, in which we are large and in charge, there is ancient history about electricians and phones, and:
[00:02:55] Rooster kills man in illegal cockfight

[00:05:40] What are Twitter Spaces? iOS only, invite-only to create them, and not Facebook Spaces so no prediction point for Jono!

[00:11:45] New EU right to repair laws require technology to last for a decade

[00:20:35] The One World Government have appointed the three of us as Heads Of Social Media for the planet. We can change anything we want, which is nice of them. And our goal is: deal with all the hatred and conspiracy theories and misery that social media creates; if social media does actually have a negative effect on humanity, how can that be reversed?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
1 hr 5 min
February 19, 20213×23: Multiple Otter Jacobs
Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Facebook aren’t watching our webinars and this is not nuanced, and:
[00:02:50] Advertising. Apple’s new IDFA moves prompt a larger conversation about targeted advertising and whether it works, some examples of how we’ve actually tried using it, and then the bigger picture. Is highly targeted advertising or a waste of money, or does it work fine? If it doesn’t make money, is that because it really doesn’t, or because it does but all the value is captured by Google and Facebook? Is authenticity in advertising actually important? Is anyone actually authentic, or simply pretending? How can exaggeration be stopped in online advertising, and whose responsibility is it to actually do that? Does this relate to the differences between online and offline rules for product placement? And will anyone buy anything that you tell them about by just speaking into your mobile phone?
Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!
https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×23-multiple-otter-jacobs/12415
News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!
57 min

About Bad Voltage

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Every two weeks Bad Voltage delivers an amusing take on technology, Open Source, politics, music, and anything else we think is interesting, as well as interviews and reviews. The show is presented by…

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