ctrl-alt-expletive

ctrl-alt-expletive

By Mark McCracken & Michael McCarthyBusinessNewsTechnologyTech NewsManagement
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ctrl-alt-expletive episodes

  • Episode 7: Executive Strategy and Execution, with Georgia Smith

    After an extended break, our first episode of the year is here!

    CES 2025 has come and been

    • Michael thinks about persuading his cats to come to work
    • I want to charge my phone in 5 econds

      • Are we dry January-ing? No.

      Resolutions:

      • Mark will play more darts
      • Michael will listen to political podcasts and 2 new albums a week
      • Georgia will go to places where people will help us meet goals

        • What's it like being a Consultant Strategist?

        Companies are going full on RTO - why? Are governments pressuring big business back into the office?

        Breaking Prod

        Georgia wastes 50k on unnecessary cloud spend, currently ranked about 2nd on our "Breaking Prod" leaderboard.

        Is the future of relationships just dating a robot?

        Big Topic

        Georgia has been involved in the disability and age care space. Some of the problems we've encountered, and how we can tackle them.

        How does Georgia fit it all in?

        In the News
        1. Tiktok ban looking likely
        2. LG’s creepy air purifiers
        3. Apple Intelligence notification summaries not quite good enough
        4. Facebook ditching fact checkers
        5. Facebook has AI profiles
        6. JP morgan 5 days RTO
        7. Ghostty terminal emulator release, from Mitchell Hashimoto
          8. Recommendations
          Books
          • Mark read (listened to) Nuclear War: A Scenario
          • Mark has a potential contender for equally grim (because it’s true), Alexei Navalny’s Patriot
            • TV:
            • Black Doves Spy Drama with Keira Knightly and Ben Whishaw
            • Game of Throws and Dart Kings on Sky for documentaries about darts now and then.
            • Severance Season 2 is out on Friday.
            • Silo season 2
            • Traitors season 3
            • Mr. MacMahon on Netflix
              • Music
              • Cahill Costello

                • Michael recommends getting a Stanley Cup

                Next time...

                We're hoping to have Sam Jones on, talking about burnout, journalling, and plenty more fun stuff.

                Special Guest: Georgia L. Smith.

                1 hr 28 min
              • Episode 6: Recruitment, and starting a company, with Jean-Paul Ashby

                We've got Jean-Paul Ashby, a.k.a. JP, a recruiter, director, entrepreneur, talking about all things recruitment, CVs, interviews, and more

                • Lenny Visits Wayde
                • Michael finishes the last Espresso Martini Mouse
                • JP sipps a duvel, not a duv-elle

                  • We've got some quickfire questions for JP on all things recuitment.

                  • Does github activity matter?
                  • How many interviews is too many interviews?
                  • What's your go-to interview question?
                    • Big Topics
                    Recruitment
                    • Michael and Mark get a CV review from the professional.
                    • Comparison of job platforms, LinkedIn meets Otta
                    • Most memorable interviews
                      • Starting a new Venture
                      • Starting your own business! JP talks about his new venture, Torch, how he developed the idea, what does the MVP do?
                      • How JP found a technical founder, and started talking to clients about it.
                      • Michael and I talk about team moves and what the process looks like.
                        • In the News
                        1. Broadcom Triples software revenue, somehow. What a mystery.
                        2. Starlink competitor IRIS launching in Europe – 290 satellites
                        3. Tom Hanks is forever young
                        4. Online Safety Act comes into effect in 3 months
                        5. A look at why OpenAI’s K8s server got overloaded and they got locked out
                        6. Aqua finds 336,000 Prometheus servers and exporters are wide open, uses them to get system info and cause dos attacks
                        7. Even Krisy-Kreme aren’t safe! Why are people attacking a donut company?!
                          8. Recommendations
                          TV

                          JP also recommends The Day of the Jackal

                          Books

                          Michael has finished Nuclear War: A Scenario

                          Out and About

                          Hidden City - a real-world texting adventure to help James Bond

                          Special Guest: Jean-Paul Ashby.

                          1 hr 41 min
                        8. Episode 5: Data Center Repatriation, with Ian Reeves

                          It's become less surprising as the weeks fly by that we're still doing it.

                          • Ian gives us his tooling preferences and why.
                          • Cynic to advocate for public cloud
                          • The phones are ringing off the hooks, thanks to Ian Reeves!
                          • What do we think of DHH?
                          • Should you run your own stuff, or pay for SaaS?
                          • Kim Jung Un's inner SuperHero
                            • Big Topics

                            Data Center Repatriation.

                            Why DHH moved 37signals from public cloud to on-prem, here's his blogs on How it started vs. How it's going.
                            Is this reverting back to on-premise becoming commonplace?
                            Has the sales pitch for public cloud shifted?

                            In the news
                            1. Broadcom is making some major changes to stop VMware exodus
                            2. Indonesia squeezes apple even harder for $1Bn
                            3. New openAI model is pen tested for reasoning, and subversion. Can it act in its own interests to deceive the user? This is absolutely fascinating
                            4. Landlords Are Using AI to Raise Rents—and Cities Are Starting to Push Back
                            5. OpenAI releases Sora
                            6. Is AI hitting a wall?
                            7. Are AI Leaders overly optimistic?
                              8. Recommendations
                              Music
                              • Everyday is Christmas, Sia
                              • A keen follower told us that the Mark Lanegan tribute gig is on YouTube
                              • It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land, Soulsavers
                              • Try out Teddy Swims for some soul/pop
                              • Synthwave Goose's Blade Runner 2049 single and Hacker music album fit for Mr. Robot
                                • Books
                                • Nuclear War, A Scenario by Annie Jacobson
                                • Bill Bryson's A Really Short History of Nearly Everything
                                  • TV

                                  True Detective on Sky/NowTV

                                  Special Guest: Ian Reeves.

                                  1 hr 18 min
                                • Episode 4: Technical Diagrams, and Breaking Prod Leaderboard

                                  We're still here for number 4.

                                  • We add some jingles and an intro.
                                  • Michael gets third party confirmation that he's old
                                  • All the guests have mugged us off, so it's just Michael and I
                                  • Mark predicts the rise of AI Santa
                                  • Mark publishes the show too early and forgets about the shownotes and jingles first time round
                                  • Michael scours the news with a "2 years or older" filter on.
                                  • Social Media sites
                                    • Big Topics

                                    Technical diagrams

                                    • What makes a good diagram?
                                    • What are we doing diagrams of?
                                    • Do people use 'em?

                                      • Incidents

                                      • MIchael and I recap our biggest hiccups at work
                                      • what happened
                                      • what impact?

                                        • All our subscriptions

                                        • everything we've subscribed to currently, is it any good?
                                        • one thing we should ditch?
                                        • Domain Hoarding
                                          • In the news

                                          A.K.A. Not news.

                                          • Medium once upon a time said they don't like AI
                                          • We get a comment on the LinkedIn which is AI generated
                                          • X loses momentum to reddit in the UK
                                          • Journalists from europe are off X too
                                          • Thoughtworks tech radar is published
                                          • Platform Engineering Report is published. Michael promises to give some highlights next week
                                          • Some lucky gambling prompter wins $50,000 from Freysa AI, a blockchain connected LLM who shouldn't give out the money
                                          • A 14-year-old kid makes a digital braille reader under $20
                                          • David Mayer gets the Barbra Streisand effect, as ChatGPT has a few crashes

                                            • Stuff we didn't mention:

                                            Half a cup of water for every chatGPT interaction? Is this real?

                                            Recommendations
                                            Tech
                                            • Homey Pro home hub
                                            • Keepa - chrome/brave extension for price comparison on Amazon
                                            • iZotope & Hindenburg for audio/podcast stuff
                                            • NetNewsWire RSS Reader
                                            • UsesThis.com - interviews for what tools people use to get their jobs done
                                              • Music

                                              Michael's got 2 gigs, one of which is a Mark Lanegan tribute gig.

                                              Mark recommends some HipHop, Joey Ba.Da.$$
                                              Truck Festival tickets released

                                              TV

                                              HiJack thriller on AppleTV

                                              Dune: Prophecy on Sky/NowTV

                                              1 hr 37 min
                                            • Episode 3: Home Automations, with Fredrik Alm

                                              We've got Fredrik Alm, Infrastructure Architect from Sweden on, to talk about Smart Home setups.

                                              • Michael goes on mute, leading to widespread panic
                                              • DIY Dishwasher APIs
                                              • Everyone hates JFrog, but not as much as Mark
                                              • We've got Jarvis at home!
                                              • Don't touch the mirror
                                                • Smart Homes is our big topic

                                                Do we trust Eero? Do we trust China?

                                                Home experiments.
                                                Having guests in your smart home.

                                                Never Mind the AI-BuzzCocks

                                                In the news:

                                                1. Confess your sins to AI Jesus
                                                2. Mac Mini Clusters for LLMs
                                                3. Fancy Bear 'Nearest Neighbour' attack
                                                4. Big Cisco Brother is watching you
                                                5. NHS gets blasted for the 3rd time this year, they're using pen and paper
                                                6. LinkedInfluencers are mostly AI
                                                7. Indonesia doesn't care about the latest iPhone, just give them the money
                                                  8. Recommendations

                                                  Smart Home Equipment

                                                  • Fred recommends this Homey system, which he can't recommend enough. "It just works, but with everything"
                                                  • Aqara Doorbell

                                                    • Music

                                                    • Even more Father John Misty: Mahashmashana
                                                    • Ghosting Season

                                                      • Blogs

                                                      • Michael has started a blog
                                                      • Mark's existing blog

                                                        • Books

                                                        • Observability Engineering, by Charity Majors, Liz Fong-Jones, George Miranda
                                                        • The Standard for Program Management

                                                          • Movies

                                                          • The Platform & The Platform 2
                                                          • The Day of the Jackal, 1973

                                                            • Special Guest: Fredrik Alm.

                                                            1 hr 29 min
                                                          • Episode 2: Discovering AI on your career break, with Mitan Patel

                                                            We're back for episode two!

                                                            We've got an old friend, Mitan Patel as our guest this week.

                                                            • Mitan tells us about his career break.
                                                            • We chat about AI tools.
                                                            • Mark reviews the last recommendations, badly.
                                                            • Michael has put some effort into the news.
                                                            • Mitan was gonna write his recommendations down but his ADHD got the better of him this time.
                                                              • Big topics
                                                              • The Career Break. Why? Why now? What are you doing?
                                                              • Journalling and AI tooling
                                                              • Bolt.new and Cursor.com
                                                                • Have I got tech news for you?
                                                                1. O2 unveils Daisy, the AI granny wasting scammers’ time
                                                                2. Cheating the GitHub activity graph
                                                                3. Musk $1M giveaway wasn’t random
                                                                4. "We're basically building Webkinz + Sims + Tamagotchi."
                                                                5. Robotic dog runs marathon (faster than I ever have)
                                                                6. Google Gemini tells grad student to 'please die' while helping with his homework
                                                                7. Russia be cutting undersea cables
                                                                8. Northern Ireland cancels IT contract with Fujitsu for Schools worth £485M
                                                                9. Microsoft PC that is just a wrapper for Windows 365
                                                                10. Github giving away $1.25m, $10k at a time for open source peeps to stay secure
                                                                11. Christmas Scams cost over £11m
                                                                  12. Recommendations:
                                                                  Tools
                                                                  • Bolt.new
                                                                  • Cursor.com
                                                                  • Obsidian
                                                                  • Notion
                                                                    • Music
                                                                    • Michael:
                                                                      • Father John Misty's album Pure Comedy
                                                                      • Worriedaboutsatan, tasty electro working music
                                                                      • Mark:
                                                                        • Girlie and Frankie by Alexandra Saviour
                                                                        • The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
                                                                        • Cinema 3000
                                                                        • Mitan
                                                                          • The Low End Theory by a Tribe Called Quest
                                                                            • Podcasts
                                                                            • Jim Browning hates scammers, who contributed to O2's Daisy AI, is a guest on Darknet Diaries, fasinating listen on a really good podcast
                                                                            • Apple Music 100 Best Albums radio
                                                                              • TV
                                                                              • Monk
                                                                              • Brian Cox' Wonders of the Solar System
                                                                                • Books
                                                                                • Cujo by Stephen King
                                                                                  • Beer
                                                                                  • Hepcat IPA
                                                                                  • Tippy Yoghurt's Fruity Sour
                                                                                  • Jubel peach beer
                                                                                  • Roadie IPA

                                                                                    • Special Guest: Mitan Patel.

                                                                                    1 hr 26 min
                                                                                  • Episode 1: Imposter Syndrome, with Jess O'Neill
                                                                                    We're live!
                                                                                    • How early is too early for the Christmas Tree?
                                                                                    • How many plugs is the right number of plugs for your workspace?
                                                                                    • Who even are these people?
                                                                                      • Imposter syndrome is our big topic

                                                                                      Who are these psychpaths that don't get imposter syndrome?

                                                                                      Newsy stuff
                                                                                      • Excel turns 40, with a few bloopers of usage in that time
                                                                                      • Google has racked up $2.5 decillion of fines in Russia
                                                                                      • UK Gov website launches an AI chatbot
                                                                                      • AWS CDK flaw exposed accounts to full takeover
                                                                                      • Apple Intelligence Ads are out in the US:
                                                                                        • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m0MoYKwVTM
                                                                                        • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deNzYrTvqCs
                                                                                          • Recommendations
                                                                                          Music:
                                                                                          • The Cure - Songs of a Lost World, recommended by Michael
                                                                                          • Therapy?, recommended by Michael again and again
                                                                                          • Sleep Token, recommended by Jess
                                                                                            • TV
                                                                                            • The Day of the Jackal, recommended by Mark
                                                                                            • The Penguin
                                                                                              • Books
                                                                                              • Code Dependent - Living in the shadow of AI, recommended by Jess
                                                                                              • How Big things Get Done, recommended by Mark
                                                                                              • Deep Work by Cal Newport, recommended by Michael
                                                                                                • Games
                                                                                                • Baulder's Gate 3
                                                                                                  • Technology
                                                                                                  • Dagger.io

                                                                                                    • Special Guest: Jess O'Neill.

                                                                                                    Links:

                                                                                                    • Excel turns 40, with a few bloopers of usage in that time
                                                                                                    — As the software used by millions around the world nears its 40th birthday, here are some of the low points
                                                                                                    ...
                                                                                                    MI5, the UK’s domestic spy agency, tapped 134 incorrect telephone numbers in 2010 following a spreadsheet error that altered the last three digits in the numbers to “000”.
                                                                                                    A report admitted the errors were caused by “a formatting fault on an electronic spreadsheet”, adding euphemistically that “a degree of unintended collateral intrusion occurred”.
                                                                                                    1 hr 23 min

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