Bad Voltage
122 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 months ago - ★★★★★ - 31 ratingsEvery two weeks Bad Voltage delivers an amusing take on technology, Open Source, politics, music, and anything else we think is interesting, as well as interviews and reviews. The show is presented by Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, and Stuart Langridge.
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Episodes
3×65: Not Evenly Distributed
March 01, 2024 15:41 - 50 minutes - 41.8 MBJono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we look to the year ahead (well, the 10 months ahead) and predict what will happen in the tech industry and the world in 2024. 2024’s predictions: [00:00:00] Intro [00:02:49] Jeremy: Sundar Pichai will not be CEO by end of 2024 [00:06:55] Jeremy: […]
3×64: Cassandra Go Home
December 14, 2023 09:59 - 57 minutes - 48.4 MBJono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which in traditional Christmas style we look back on our predictions for 2024 and Jono whines about half points. More successfully than usual this year, admittedly. Have a happy holiday season! We’ll be back in the new year. [00:00:00] Intro [00:01:44] Jeremy: Tiktok gets […]
3×63: Autonomous Helicopters
November 18, 2023 15:32 - 47 minutes - 39.5 MBJono Bacon and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which Jeremy is temporarily not present, website hosting issues are acknowledged and briefly discussed, and: [00:00:00] Intro [00:01:16] New York intends to have air taxis by 2025, including bonus London Illustrated News content [00:10:23] Microsoft Teams announce upcoming 3D meetings in VR, including a Lex Friedman/Mark […]
3×62: Class One Catastrophic Hypercredibility
October 19, 2023 18:02 - 40 minutes - 33.4 MBJeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we do a bit of a deep dive into the (semi-)recent trend of finding new ways for creators to get paid. Patreon’s been around for a long time (but could be doing better), and the idea of making a thing and getting paid […]
3×61: A Room of Dalmatians
August 26, 2023 12:35 - 51 minutes - 42.4 MBJeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we revisit an old friend, Room 101, the place where all the things we hate should be banished. At least according to each of us: whether the other two can be so convinced is another thing entirely… [00:04:07] Jono: All videoconferencing except Zoom […]
3×60: Never Eat Shredded Wheat
August 13, 2023 14:25 - 1 hour - 54.7 MBJeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which multiple minutes of pre-show work are awkwardly wasted, we haven’t got a sign on the roof, and: [00:01:39] GPTBot is launched to crawl your websites and add their technological distinctiveness to its own model, and there is discussion of robots.txt changes [00:11:08] MDN, […]
3×59: Addition Edition
June 16, 2023 21:29 - 56 minutes - 50.4 MBJeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we discuss ad-supported services and the (potential?) rise of subscriptions. Have ads gone away, or started to? Are social media networks being supported by ads now pivoting to something else? And are Patreon and sponsorships mostly a boon for small creators, or a […]
3×58: Large Langridge Model
May 19, 2023 10:51 - 1 hour - 49.5 MBJeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which there is unsceptical intensity, we are all eaten by a T-1000, and we have collected a list of concerns about Large Language Model-based AI, which we’re going to dive into! [00:00:00] Introduction [00:04:30] The “free software” concern: it normalises inhaling information for free […]
3×57: Conspiracyers
March 31, 2023 11:35 - 41 minutes - 35.5 MBJeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which there’s more smoky back rooms than usual, everyone’s on Orkut, and: [00:01:14] Who likes Microsoft Teams? Microsoft promises it’s made Teams less confusing and resource hungry, while Teams surprisingly now has 270m users to Slack’s 20m. [00:08:21] An “open letter” from tech pioneers […]
3×56: Hyperbole is the Magic Word
March 02, 2023 10:52 - 1 hour - 50.3 MBJeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we spend a show inventing topics which need a whole other show to talk about, we reminisce about Google Plus, and: [00:01:36] Twitter Blue, Meta Verified: the social networks go premium. Is it going to work? [00:35:45] The FBI recommend that everyone uses […]
3×55: Don the Mast
February 18, 2023 20:05 - 1 hour - 56.7 MBJeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we look, as has been threatened a bunch recently, at Mastodon. What’s it all about? Is Mastodon the new Twitter, and is it trying to be? And how far have we got into it? Also, we’re now on Mastodon! @[email protected]! Come chat with […]
3×54: The Joe Dolce Music Theatre
January 20, 2023 18:26 - 54 minutes - 45.8 MBJeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, and Stuart Langridge present Bad Voltage, in which we create predictions for 2023! What will happen over the next twelve months in the world of tech? Here’s what we think… Stuart: the Texas HB20 social media law will come before the US Supreme Court, and the US Supreme Court will uphold […]
3×53: Representative but not Shining
December 23, 2022 10:47 - 1 hour - 43.9 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage for the last time in 2022, in which we take a look back at our predictions for this year and review how we did. Surprisingly… not as badly as last year. Although as you may expect there is shameless jockeying for extra points. How did […]
3×52: Click By 5pm
November 20, 2022 18:42 - 52 minutes - 36.9 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we are not necessarily “extremely hardcore”, we aren’t verified (or are we?), we aren’t fleeing the country with a load of money that isn’t ours, and: [00:00:00] Intro [00:02:37] Twitter and Musk: much change is afoot in the world of Twitter, as Elon […]
3×51: Control the Meta Connect
October 24, 2022 14:33 - 52 minutes - 36.4 MBJono Bacon, Stuart Langridge, and special guest Adam Lorimer present Bad Voltage, in which reality is virtual, metas are connected, and: Meta, nee Facebook, had their Meta Connect conference where they announced their upcoming plans, recent hardware and software releases, and the like. We have some interest in VR generally, as evidenced by Jono always […]
3×50: Two Riders Were Approaching
September 15, 2022 08:35 - 47 minutes - 32.9 MBJono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, and special guest Erica Brescia present Bad Voltage, in which a generation of hypochondriacs is created, we are made to do research, and: [00:01:51] VC/WeWork/Flow [00:20:28] AI wins state fair art contest, annoys humans [00:28:14] New smart watches [00:38:22] Notkia [00:39:52] OSTP Issues Guidance to Make Federally Funded Research Freely Available […]
3×49: The Noise of Doubt
August 11, 2022 07:46 - 59 minutes - 41.5 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the roflcopter is created, Soli is forgotten, and: [00:00:00] Intro [00:02:04] Chorizo space prank [00:04:04] Floppotron 3.0 [00:10:47] Doom running on $15 smart lamp, and in Doom [00:16:22] SCaLE 19X [00:19:59] Who’s liable for AI-generated lies? [00:28:48] Amazon Slashing Private-Label Selection [00:31:29] Amazon […]
3×48: Brave Internet Explorers
July 21, 2022 10:36 - 58 minutes - 40.7 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which everyone’s middle name is Elaine, there is discussion of the nature of business in the modern age, and: [00:02:45] We look at Brave, a privacy-focused web browser. They’ve got some interesting technical choices, but more importantly we want to look at the question […]
3×47: Fallacious Piece of History
June 24, 2022 14:10 - 58 minutes - 40.9 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Victorian Tumblr is a thing, you should probably check out Lethality, Jono’s band’s latest, and: [00:00:00] Intro [00:04:11] USB Type-C EVERYTHING [00:17:33] Firefox and Google are arguing about extension APIs that ad blockers use [00:34:00] Spotify comes for audiobooks [00:57:15] Outro Come chat […]
3×46: Srtrerarm Deck
May 19, 2022 09:45 - 1 hour - 42 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest star Jorge Castro present Bad Voltage, in which those of the team not currently having fun on a beach in Spain dig into the latest tech news, including (but not limited to): [00:08:26] Github start requiring two-factor authentication for contributors [00:16:21] This show was edited live on Twitch […]
3×45: Natural Musk
April 29, 2022 07:13 - 48 minutes - 34.1 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Times Square is a much better example, it is Stuart’s turn to seemingly sound like he recorded this at the bottom of a coal mine (sorry about that), and: [00:01:50] Elon Musk is buying Twitter. We have thoughts, and quite a few of […]
3×44: The Loch Dustbinness Monster
April 14, 2022 07:22 - 59 minutes - 41.8 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest star Alan Pope present Bad Voltage, in which intelligence is artificial, snaps are un-ned, and art is what you make it: [00:04:00] popey’s latest tool is unsnap, which helps you “quickly and easily migrate from using snap for applications to flatpak”, and we’ll get into how it works […]
3×43: Self Assembly
March 24, 2022 14:11 - 52 minutes - 36.6 MBStuart Langridge, Jeremy Garcia, and special guest star Jorge Castro present Bad Voltage, in which we in theory want to talk about loads of news but actually we spend all our discussion time on one topic: [00:02:00] Jorge is into Flatpak. And there’s quite a lot to talk about here. This is very much about […]
3×42: That High Level of Unlikeliness
March 03, 2022 08:35 - 1 hour - 47.1 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia return, after a couple of months of trials and tribulations, to reveal our predictions for (the rest of) 2022! Prepare to find out What Comes Next in our roles as Cassandras: [00:06:20] Jono: VR bonanza: Apple will release their VR headset this year, and PSVR2 will be released, […]
3×41: By A Hair Or Two
December 23, 2021 19:36 - 43 minutes - 30.9 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia are in your ears for the last time in 2021, as we look back on what we thought this year would be back in January, and then how it’s actually been now that we’ve lived through it. Yes, it’s prediction review time! Did you do better than us? […]
3×40: The House on the Hill
November 25, 2021 10:36 - 1 hour - 47.2 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia hold these rights to be self-evident: [00:02:17] Adele gets Spotify to remove shuffle button [00:09:20] Apple announces self repair program [00:26:25] Meta has a new VR glove [00:35:11] Ubuntu Accomplishments rides again [00:39:03] FTC says “click to subscribe, call to cancel” is illegal [00:49:16] Cryptobros try to buy […]
3×39: Ready Player No
November 11, 2021 10:23 - 1 hour - 44.2 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia claim to do research, run conferences, encourage people to hire Marius, and: Meta. Facebook rebranded to Meta and have gone all in on the “metaverse”, which they call “a hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world”. VR and […]
3×38: Nikola Where Are You Now
October 28, 2021 11:13 - 1 hour - 47.8 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest Jorge Castro present Bad Voltage, in which Stuart honestly thought for one second that the Americans have a very worryingly-titled show called “Poor Patrol” before realising that he misheard, and: [00:02:33] The return of the legendary Bacommunity app! Made by friend of the show Roger Light, who has […]
3×37: I Will See Them In The Fire
October 14, 2021 11:17 - 45 minutes - 31.6 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which whistles are blown, audio is twitched, and: [00:02:18] A whole show on one topic: Facebook and content moderation. Since Frances Haugen left Facebook for the life of a whistleblower, filing complaints with federal law enforcement that Facebook knows that it amplifies hate, misinformation […]
3×36: Nor Any Drop
September 30, 2021 10:13 - 1 hour - 44.4 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we discuss the mysterious arrival of boxes, how to play CDs, and: [00:02:18] We review the 8Sleep Pod Pro Cover, an internet-connected mattress, which Jono claims is actually useful. There is, not surprisingly, some scepticism about this claim, but equally: sleep is important […]
3×35: Generated For The Purpose Of Journalism
September 02, 2021 07:18 - 1 hour - 42.3 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which [00:02:50] Online trolls are assholes offline too, at least according to a new survey [00:17:20] Facebook Workrooms seem to be the long-promised “Facebook Spaces”, much to Jono’s intemperate joy [00:29:50] Excellently detailed albeit mildly depressing summary of Google’s myriad messaging apps which is […]
3×34: The Days To Come Will Be Filled
August 19, 2021 08:57 - 1 hour - 46.4 MBStuart Langridge and Jono Bacon present Bad Voltage, in which Jeremy is away, there used to be a star and now there isn’t, and we devote the whole show to a discussion of Apple’s recent announcement that your iPhone will now scan some of your photos and report them if they’re child porn. This has […]
3×33: Eternal Bronze Medallists
August 05, 2021 11:24 - 54 minutes - 37.8 MBStuart Langridge and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Jono is away, you too are not an astronaut, and: [00:02:00] Shares slide after China brands online games “electronic drugs” [00:03:50] The US FAA changes the definition of “astronaut” after Bezos and Branson go into space, LOL [00:06:25] Machine learning sucks at covid [00:12:15] Sinclair […]
3×32: Trigger’s Broom
July 22, 2021 07:03 - 1 hour - 43 MBStuart 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 […]
3×31: Weaponised Death Roomba
June 24, 2021 08:48 - 1 hour - 44.4 MBStuart 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 […]
3×30: Reduced Amplitude
May 28, 2021 13:21 - 1 hour - 84.5 MBStuart 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 […]
3×29: Down With The Peeps 101
May 13, 2021 12:28 - 1 hour - 98.2 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we emulate the old British talk/game show Room 101 by nominating our pet hates and consigning those hates to oblivion in Room 101, the ultimate destination for all rubbish things. Assuming, that is, that our explanations convince our colleagues, which is not as […]
3×28: Eat The Show
April 30, 2021 16:35 - 1 hour - 84.6 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the subject of artificial intelligence is discussed. We’ve walked around the outside of this topic a few times on the show, and now it’s time to dig in; is AI actually real, or are the jokes about reclassifying a Python script as “AI” […]
3×27: Bargle-floop the podcast
April 15, 2021 08:28 - 58 minutes - 80.3 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which horrible neologisms are proposed, things are both funny and also sad, and there is ooh gosh loads of news: [00:04:10] The BBC’s coverage of the life and death of Prince Philip breaks the UK TV complaints record, and the National Rail make their […]
3×26: Luminiferous Aether
April 01, 2021 11:30 - 57 minutes - 80.3 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which flock is more than wallpaper, we say the word “cohort” about fifty billion times, and: [00:02:15] FLoC, the “federated learning of cohorts”, is a proposal from Google as part of their Privacy Sandbox initiative to replace third-party advertising cookies but still enable targeted […]
3×25: Novel Finance Things with No Flamin’ Time for this New-Fangled Tosh
March 19, 2021 11:49 - 56 minutes - 77.8 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we invite special guest star Augustus de Morgan to comment, there is an intemperate argument about jeans, and: [00:01:30] NFTs. “Non-fungible tokens“; a way to record ownership of some digital asset on a blockchain, something like a collectible or a trading card. Suddenly […]
3×24: Weaponised Rooster
March 04, 2021 11:58 - 1 hour - 89.2 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest star Alan Pope present Bad Voltage, in which we are large and in charge, there is ancient history about electricians and phones, and: [00:02:55] Rooster kills man in illegal cockfight [00:05:40] What are Twitter Spaces? iOS only, invite-only to create them, and not Facebook Spaces so no prediction […]
3×23: Multiple Otter Jacobs
February 19, 2021 16:24 - 56 minutes - 78.2 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Facebook aren’t watching our webinars and this is not nuanced, and: [00:02:50] Advertising. Apple’s new IDFA moves prompt a larger conversation about targeted advertising and whether it works, some examples of how we’ve actually tried using it, and then the bigger picture. Is […]
3×22: Phantom Power
February 04, 2021 09:53 - 1 hour - 86 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we take what Jono calls an avant-garde and everyone else calls a ridiculous improvised approach to the set list. [00:01:10] Flash, aaargh. It saved every one of us. [Flash is now dead](https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html). We take a look back over the history of the web […]
Poetry in Notion
January 21, 2021 11:14 - 1 hour - 84.2 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which Bad Voltage is on Spotify! Also, we have great content, you should review us on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere, and: [00:05:55] We review the Remarkable 2 e-ink writing pad, with reference to our previous show on using paper instead of tech and Alan […]
3×20: According To The Prophecy
January 07, 2021 13:00 - 1 hour - 90.3 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we present our predictions for 2021! Stuart: [00:11:11] Remote work starts to hollow out cities and as a result, three major cities see population drops (or the populations drop more than they already were) [00:17:20] Social media sites band together to avoid fake […]
3×19: We Have A Bit Of A Point
December 17, 2020 16:50 - 1 hour - 94.7 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we look back at 2×62, our predictions show from a year ago and see whether we correctly foresaw what happened in 2020, or… not. Also features SHAMELESS grovelling for points. [00:02:07] Stuart on Slack purchases, CCPA convictions, ePrivacy, Epic, and drones [00:22:20] Jono […]
3×18: Ultracrepidarian
December 10, 2020 10:26 - 1 hour - 104 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which we are ultracrepidarian, the Apple phone becomes slightly more annoying, and: [00:05:45] Lightheartedly, we take a look at metal monoliths around the world, drinking hand sanitizer instead of alcohol, a bunch of parrots were removed from UK family safari park after teaching each […]
3×17: Such People In’t
November 27, 2020 15:50 - 1 hour - 91.4 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the reality distortion field is strong in this one, the middle name game continues unsuccessfully, and: [00:02:03] Jeremy has opted for the Pixel 5! So it’s time for a review. The latest Google phone is out, and we have thoughts on the direction […]
3×16: Not Fun To Watch
October 29, 2020 11:39 - 1 hour - 86.5 MBStuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which the utilities question comes up again, we create spin-off show “Sussing Out Stocks With Stuart”, and: [00:02:50] Sony allow recording and reporting of private audio chats [00:09:40] Zoom are refusing events which talk about Zoom censorship [00:30:00] Quibi crashes and burns having spent […]