3×05: This Podcast Will Self Destruct

Explicit content warning

05/28/20 • 51 min

Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we are rendered with one meelion triangles. Also:

[00:02:20] Three Bolivian brothers deliberately get bitten by a black widow spider in an attempt to get Spider-Man powers, while North Korea finally admit that Kim Il Sung wasn't a wizard, you should go feed messages into thiswebsitewillselfdestruct.com before it, er, self-destructs, and Elon Musk and Grimes's child is renamed to something else Unicodely-challenging, although that's still not as good as Dave's mate Obvious Lee
[00:09:30] Gitlab spear-phish their own employees and then tell us the results, demonstrating their commendable commitment to openness and also that technically-savvy people are just as vulnerable to this as others, although what is to be learned from this is still in question; Facebook have bought Giphy (that's Giphy, not Giphy), and in preparation for next episode's discussion of exclusivity, Joe Rogan moves exclusively to Spotify
[00:20:30] Did you see the new Unreal Engine demo? Looks pretty amazing. We're going to look a little into this, movie-quality source art, the upcoming PS5, gaming PCs running this, whizzy new SSD technology, and whether this will radically change gaming

Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!

https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×05-this-podcast-will-self-destruct/12362

News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.

Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!

Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we are rendered with one meelion triangles. Also:

[00:02:20] Three Bolivian brothers deliberately get bitten by a black widow spider in an attempt to get Spider-Man powers, while North Korea finally admit that Kim Il Sung wasn't a wizard, you should go feed messages into thiswebsitewillselfdestruct.com before it, er, self-destructs, and Elon Musk and Grimes's child is renamed to something else Unicodely-challenging, although that's still not as good as Dave's mate Obvious Lee
[00:09:30] Gitlab spear-phish their own employees and then tell us the results, demonstrating their commendable commitment to openness and also that technically-savvy people are just as vulnerable to this as others, although what is to be learned from this is still in question; Facebook have bought Giphy (that's Giphy, not Giphy), and in preparation for next episode's discussion of exclusivity, Joe Rogan moves exclusively to Spotify
[00:20:30] Did you see the new Unreal Engine demo? Looks pretty amazing. We're going to look a little into this, movie-quality source art, the upcoming PS5, gaming PCs running this, whizzy new SSD technology, and whether this will radically change gaming

Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!

https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×05-this-podcast-will-self-destruct/12362

News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.

Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!

Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we like egg. Also:

[00:02:38] And now, this: Famous rapper Jason Zed orders deepfake parodies of his voice off YouTube... Virginia spend time debating whether it’s ok to be drunk in your car while it’s in your driveway... a five-year-old steals a car to drive to LA to buy a Lamborghini, gets a free Lambo ride from Utah philanthropist... and Twitter think you’re interested in “egg” and a bunch of other stuff besides, so share your lists with us on the Slack channel...
[00:15:35] The .org registry is being confirmed to not be being sold, Tim Bray, VP, quits Amazon over their firing of whistleblowers, and Facebook creates an oversight board, about which we are quietly pleased but a bit sceptical
[00:26:20] Our main piece: health and posture and wellness, both digital and otherwise. Most of us in the technology community probably need to do better at sitting up straight, positioning monitors correctly, standing up, exercising more, and so on. We’ve been taking a look at some of the tools to help accomplish this, from standing desks and posture monitors to education and putting your screen on a pile of books. This also dovetails with the drive towards digital wellness: after the big initiative a couple of years ago to have OS vendors build tools into their systems to help us switch off, did it work? What do the tools do? And is anybody using them?

Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!

https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×04-they-call-it-dot-egg/12359

News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.

Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!

Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which 286s make a comeback, we might be on Spotify, and:

[00:01:50] The BBC search desperately for a way to describe “anti-racism critics” while describing tea condemning racists, Burger King start selling the Social Distancing Whopper” in Italy which has three times the onions, and a hidden treasure chest filled with gold and gems was found in the Rocky mountains.
[00:07:30] In more serious news, IBM stop doing facial recognition technology because it’s used “for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms,” saying that tech “must not promote discrimination or racial injustice.” Privacy International call it cynical.
[00:12:06] Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced his resignation from his role on the board of directors and asked to be replaced with a black candidate. He has also donated one million dollars to Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights campaign, and said he will funnel all future gains on his Reddit stock to benefit the black community.
[00:13:55] Apple seem to be going ARM for laptops
[00:21:16] Our main topic this week: exclusivity. With console games constantly being announced as “exclusives” to one platform or another, TV programmes only being available on one streaming service, and Joe Rogen moving exclusively to Spotify for a hundred million dollars, we look more deeply into the idea of exclusivity. What do the creators get out of it? What do the publishers get out of it? And can it ever be good for the audience?

Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!

https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×06-earballs/12367

News music: Long Live Blind Joe by Robbero, used with attribution.

Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for being our audio producers!