October 16, 2025

npm Worms & RubyGems Coups: Trust Issues in Open Source

1 hour 6 minutes

This week, Robbie, Chuck, and Adam talk about the worst whiskey they’ve tasted, Tailwind as a “state management library,” and recent security scares in open source. Also — dependency hygiene, developer visa drama, and whether inflated tech salaries are finally being reckoned with.

In this episode:

(00:00) - Intro

(02:14) - Whiskey rating & review: Evan Williams Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

(13:00) - What's with all the recent web dev security issues?

(28:39) - Is Tailwind secretly the worst state management library?

(32:45) - Visa chaos: H-1Bs, gold cards, and reverse immigration

(40:51) - Are tech salaries being intentionally driven down?

(49:45) - Adam’s AI experiment with Claude + Parallelize

(54:09) - Why AI should specialize (and stop trying to do everything)

(54:44) - Best AI tools right now

(01:01:16) - Chuck’s VPN chaos + funny wifi names

(01:04:04) - Plugs

Links

GoDaddy: https://www.godaddy.com/

Bob Parsons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Parsons

Intuit: https://www.intuit.com/

Evan Williams Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey: http://evanwilliams.com/straight-bourbon

Wrigley Chew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigley_Company

Bazooka: https://www.bazookajoe.com/

Juicy Fruit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicy_Fruit

Cinnamon Toast Crunch: https://www.cinnamontoastcrunch.com/

Jack Daniel's: https://www.jackdaniels.com/

Crown Royal Black: https://www.crownroyal.com/canadian-whisky/crown-royal-black

Suntory World Whiskey Ao: https://house.suntory.com/ao-whisky

Fresca Mixed: https://www.frescamixed.com/

All Things Open: https://allthingsopen.org/

Ken Wheeler: https://x.com/ken_wheeler/

JavaScript: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript

Ruby: https://www.ruby-lang.org/

NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/

GitHub: https://github.com/

Blockchain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

pNPM: https://pnpm.io/

Ransom: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117438/

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/

WordPress: https://wordpress.org

David Cramer: https://x.com/zeeg

Django: https://www.djangoproject.com/

Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/

SemVer: https://semver.org/

Google: https://www.google.com/

Snowpack: https://www.snowpack.dev/

Socket.io: https://socket.io/

Guillermo Rauch: https://x.com/rauchg

Socket.dev: https://socket.dev/

Tailwind CSS: https://tailwindcss.com/

David K Piano: https://x.com/DavidKPiano

Tesla: https://www.tesla.com/

Next.js: https://nextjs.org/

OpenAI: https://openai.com

Amazon: https://amazon.com

Jason Lengstorf: https://x.com/jlengstorf

Perl: https://www.perl.org/

Rust: https://www.rust-lang.org/

Cobol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL

Jarred Sumner: https://x.com/jarredsumner

Bun: https://bun.com/

Zig: https://ziglang.org/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/

Claude: https://claude.ai/

Codex: https://openai.com/codex/

Opencode: https://opencode.ai/

Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/

Ep 92: Hot Takes, Bun, and Zig with Jarred Sumner: https://whiskey.fm/hot-takes-bun-and-zig-with-jarred-sumner

Neovim: https://neovim.io/

Bolt: https://bolt.new/

Lovable: https://lovable.dev/

Spec Kit: https://github.com/github/spec-kit

South Park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park

Proton VPN: https://protonvpn.com/

HBO Max: https://www.hbomax.com/

Raspberry Pi: https://www.raspberrypi.com

Stephen King: https://stephenking.com/

Cujo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cujo

Nerdy.dev: https://nerdy.dev/

Starpod.dev: https://starpod.dev/

Como FC: https://comofootball.com/

Connect with the hosts

Robbie Wagner: https://x.com/RobbieTheWagner

Chuck Carpenter: https://x.com/CharlesWthe3rd

Adam Argyle: https://x.com/argyleink

Subscribe and stay in touch

Website: https://whiskey.fm

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whiskey-web-and-whatnot/id1552776603

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/19jiuHAqzeKnkleQUpZxDf

Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1552776603

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhiskeyWebAndWhatnot

Whiskey Web and Whatnot Merch
Enjoying the podcast and want us to make more? Help support us by picking up some of our fresh merch at https://whiskey.fund.

...more

View all episodes

By RobbieTheWagner, Charles William Carpenter III, Adam Argyle, and The Radcast Network

4.8

5454 ratings