1x49: The Tapas Of All Bananas

Jeremy Garcia, Jono Bacon, Bryan Lunduke, and Stuart Langridge bring you the wonderful world of Bad Voltage, in which it's all about the money, it's never about the privacy, and we disagree about:

  • 00:05:03 The Endless Computer bills itself as "a computer for emerging markets"; a unit with a priority on design, created to plug into an existing TV and pre-packaged with content so it doesn't need an internet connection. We discuss whether it lives up to its lofty goals.
  • 00:21:26 At roughly the same time, Dustin Kirkland wrote an extremely angry "open letter" to Google about his horrible Nest smoke alarms, and meanwhile our own Jeremy found himself very happy with his Nests. We asked Dustin for a comment, and Jeremy reviews the Nest 2 and why he's considerably happier
  • 00:37:52 Hack Voltage: Stuart has been playing with drawing app Gliffy
  • 00:39:15 Microsoft: friend or foe of the open source community? Every time they seem good they turn around and do something terrible to us, but then the open source community have finally moved beyond the "Micro$oft" years and we want to embrace them as being on-side. Are they OK now? Are they as bad as they ever were?

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What is with the couple of minutes of Morse code instead of into music??

It must be @jonobacon sending his tax extension information to the IRS before he files it to the shoe box on the porch. :smile:

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Wait a minute here Mr. @bryanlunduke. You ranted about how wrong “Wrong in 60 Seconds” was, but now you want to do a “Bryan Thinks You’re Stupid” segment? :confused:

I admit I had to check my sound setting after the first minute. If I had time and was extremely bored I’d see if the code actually meant anything.

In the mean time I’ll assume @jonobacon just mixed up Bad Voltage with the nuclear codes he was transmitting.

Does anyone know morse?

There must be some kind of message in there…

I had time and was extremely bored so I saw if the code actually meant anything. I got:
“NEED TO GET THE WORD OUT. BEST WAY TO CONTACT YOU IS THIS. COLLECT IN SOTS. WILL PROVE MYSELF MONDAY 1500 UTC. MY CALL SIGN FOR FUTURE MESSAGES IS COVIN ENDIT”

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I’m confused. Does this mean @jonobacon is a 419 scammer?

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Regarding the Endless computer, I wonder how many TV’s with HDMI or VGA ports are available in developing countries. Wouldn’t it have been prudent to also have composite output too?

I really don’t like wifi anyway and like ethernet by a cord. I you say don’t have wifi or bluetooth as pointless than you would call my i5 4590 desktop with 16 GB of ram a 256 GB ssd a 2tb hard drive a gigabit ethernet and 2 free dimms. Wait why do you want bluetooth I would rather have ps/2. Also taking about US States having internet Time warner cable does not even max out my pci ethernet card that I got secondhand with a computer with ME or Windows 98 SE. Also celeron depends on what kind of celeron it is. Although being 30 watts it is probably atom based. Although when not under heavy load the newer Intel processors will not use the full load.

I also wonder why can’t Microsoft bring their text to speech software to Linux. This would be helpful but I don’t see a financial reason for Microsoft to do this. I am not sure there is enough goodwill from this accessability technology but there probably should be.

I threw morse2ascii at it and it failed miserably :smile:, but using a morse code reader from google play I came to the same result.

I guess this is what Jeremy is talking about:

Looks pretty frustrating.

That is, indeed, the video I was referring to. Really hoping the gen 2 devices have fully addressed the issue. So far so good in that regard here.

–jeremy

We need imperial data. Perhaps you should do, to borrow a term from the electronic’s world, a smoke test! :smiley:

Wow, these Nest smoke detectors are one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever heard of.
There are reasons why traditional smoke detectors are how they are:

  1. they are cheap because it’s a thing you put on the ceiling and then they just do nothing in 99,99% of the cases
  2. they are build using simple technology to be reliable (I’m thinking of things like a software update/crash while your house is burning)

This really shows that people are buying every bullshit google builds, without thinking about it (No offense Jeremy).

I wouldn’t consider Nest “something Google builds”. The company was only recently acquired, the protect was released before the acquisition and the company is now a fully independent subsidiary of Alphabet, not Google. You can not like the product, but to not like it because of Google is silly. For me, the fact that a traditional smoke detector is only useful if you are physically located in proximity to it means I find value in the additional functionality offered by a device like this (note that I own multiple brands, so it’s not just about Nest). I also understand that not everyone may find that functionality valuable.

–jeremy

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As it seems that I disagree with @bryanlunduke with almost everything ever (hope I’m not too much of an asshole about it) i would love to hear a 60 second segment of him ranting against those evil leftists or sth.

The idea behind infinity computer seems to me completely unintelligible and the machine itself is terribly overpriced. When it comes to developing countries, I guess i still live in one, or i’ve been living for a large part of my life and actually network access for average family was never an issue.And ithat’s Poland in mid-nineties. I think people behind this project might be Silicon Valley enterperneur types with loose connection to reality.

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I think it is INSOTS, not IN SOTS

/phfff