3×11: The Most Evil MP3s

Explicit content warning

08/20/20 • 61 min

Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which there is seemingly a theme but it’s wholly coincidental, succulent flaky pastry is mentioned, and:

[00:02:38] Japan opens see-through public toilets open in Tokyo parks, an Amazon driver allegedly defecates in a Nottingham woman’s back garden, and a man in Chicago breaks into an ATM, live-streams it, and then unsurprisingly gets busted immediately
[00:09:05] Apple and Epic get into an epic war (with Google involved too) about taking 30% of all money, and Mozilla lay off 250 staff
[00:26:13] Our main discussion: software has gradually moved over the last decade from a buy-it-it’s-yours model to a pay-every-month model. We’ve recently discovered with a little shock just how many of these services we’re each subscribed to, and it’s worth talking about; this is a big shift in how the software industry sells its core product. Why has it happened, and what are the benefits for both sellers and purchasers? Is software today a fundamentally different thing from how it was in 2005, or even 1995? And where does open source fit into all this?

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

https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×11-the-most-evil-mp3s/12379

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 there is seemingly a theme but it’s wholly coincidental, succulent flaky pastry is mentioned, and:

[00:02:38] Japan opens see-through public toilets open in Tokyo parks, an Amazon driver allegedly defecates in a Nottingham woman’s back garden, and a man in Chicago breaks into an ATM, live-streams it, and then unsurprisingly gets busted immediately
[00:09:05] Apple and Epic get into an epic war (with Google involved too) about taking 30% of all money, and Mozilla lay off 250 staff
[00:26:13] Our main discussion: software has gradually moved over the last decade from a buy-it-it’s-yours model to a pay-every-month model. We’ve recently discovered with a little shock just how many of these services we’re each subscribed to, and it’s worth talking about; this is a big shift in how the software industry sells its core product. Why has it happened, and what are the benefits for both sellers and purchasers? Is software today a fundamentally different thing from how it was in 2005, or even 1995? And where does open source fit into all this?

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

https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×11-the-most-evil-mp3s/12379

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

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

Previous Episode

3×10: Chardonnay and Vinegar

Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we take the security advice of international expert Hans Gruber, we find Jono’s lack of middle name preparation disturbing, and:

[00:02:00] Some “fresh baby witches” have put a hex on the moon, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about. Apparently this is bad because “inexperienced witches should only be researching and doing protection work”
[00:04:40] 14% of men fantasise about the voice of Alexa
[00:07:30] Serious book author fails to properly read google search results, includes things from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in a historical novel about dye making
[00:09:33] The Irish Health and Safety Executive donates their “Covid Green” contact tracing app to the Linux Foundation global public health project
[00:12:59] The Twitter hack was apparently done via access to internal tools by compromising employees, although there are bigger questions, such as: should they have been better at doing crimes?
[00:18:31] According to The Markup, Google search results are now mostly to Google properties. We’re not sure we buy this, but they have a point worth thinking about
[00:25:55] Microsoft may be buying TikTok after conversations with the White House. The motives for this and the forces causing it to happen may be a little obscure, or may simply be Microsoft spotting a popular thing and buying it...
[00:49:43] Musicians just aren’t working hard enough, says the Spotify CEO. “What is required from successful musicians”, says Daniel Ek, “is a deeper, more consistent, and prolonged commitment than in the past.” Should being a musician today be significantly harder than it was for the Beatles? Maybe yes: this is the new world order, and the business of music is different now
[00:56:10] Google are partnering with ADT, using Google Home speakers for security to detect “critical noises” such as smoke alarms and breaking glass, and using ultrasonic sound as a movement detector

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

https://community.badvoltage.org/t/3×10-chardonnay-and-vinegar/12374

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

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

Next Episode

3×12: Staring at Potatoes

Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which I buy your product but I still have virus, there are apparently cellphone pedestrian lanes all over the world, and:

[00:04:30] Microsoft Flight Simulator has a very tall building in Melbourne, although the community are on the case; the FBI are worried that Ring doorbells are spying on police; the city of Yamato has banned walking with smartphones; a woman sees Jesus’ face on a potato and then eats it, and this is not John McAfee
[00:17:00] Facebook threatens to pull news from Australia if new law passes, Zoom’s market capitalization is now roughly $115 billion, making it worth more than IBM, Amazon wins FAA approval to deliver packages by drone, and BMW plan to make owners pay subscriptions to get heated seats...
[00:30:54] There have been a bunch of news stories about Apple’s handling of payments in their app store recently: Hey, WordPress, and Epic Games. There’s an increasing pushback from developers about the way that app store owners are demanding payments, Google as well as Apple, but perhaps it’s just a storm in a teacup and it’ll all blow over? What is reasonable for app store vendors when it comes to influencing app makers? How much are you entitled to extract from an ecosystem that you created? This seems a subject with a lot of ramifications: we’ll dive into it in detail