3×31: Weaponised Death Roomba

Explicit content warning

06/24/21 • 64 min

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!

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!

Previous Episode

3×30: 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!

Next Episode

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!