1x66: Perchance to Dream

Show Feedback
#1

Jono Bacon, Jeremy Garcia, Bryan Lunduke, and Stuart Langridge bring you Bad Voltage, in which we are all Satoshi Nakamoto, quoting the dictionary at people does not help because it never ever helps, and:

  • 0o:02:00 Is activism actually effective? A continuation of a previous discussion; does activism actually work? Although a more fundamental question seems to be: what _is_ it?
  • 00:52:38 Google Hangouts allows you to send pictures in your conversations, and it works with existing XMPP/Jabber clients such as Pidgin or Psi as well as its own web-based front end. But it won't do both at the same time; there's an XMPP-ish way to send images, but Google aren't using it. Is this Google's job to fix, or Pidgin's? And what should open projects do when confronted with this choice: stand tall for open standards, or provide their users with the best experience?
  • 00:31:28 Jeremy reviews the Withings Aura Smart Sleep System, an Internet of Things Thing which acts as sleep monitor and alarm clock

Download the show now!

#2
#3

Great episode, guys.
The thing with images in XMPP is that clients and servers are doing things in completely non-standard ways anyway. I’ve experimented with a lot of combinations of XMPP clients and servers and the conclusion is that you never know whether the other party has received the embedded image or not. For example, try sending an embedded image from Conversations to Psi+ or Gajim and it won’t work at all. Gajim will show you the link to the location the image is stored in, but Psi+ fails silently. Add OTR or OpenPGP for E2E encryption into the mix and everything breaks in million pieces. One of the nastiest clients is Zom, a “user-friendly” version of ChatSecure, which implements Telegram-like stickers which only can be understood by Zom, of course. Sometimes these things don’t even work when two parties are using the exact same client but have their accounts on different servers, usually because of how each server is configured. So I wouldn’t expect Google to do anything to fix compatibility between their proprietary XMPP server and stock XMPP clients when not even real XMPP servers and clients understand each other.
And now onto a small thought about XMPP. XMPP is for sure the best protocol for IM out there and the proof is that everyone is building their own proprietary IM protocols on top of XMPP, but its descentralized nature produces a lot of problems that you really don’t want to happen in your communicate with people. That’s why Telegram has become so popular: the fact that the server is centralized and closed has made its adoption very, very easy. Yes, there are third-party clients, besides the official ones, but you have one single server you must be sure your client talks correctly to.
I want to wish @bryanlunduke’s activist action will be helpful… Let’s cross fingers…
(BTW, I want you to talk about hamburgers… There’s this Brazilian hamburgers place here in the neighborhood I live in in Barcelona and you’ve made me want go buy one of their AMAZING burgers).

2 Likes
#4

Yeah. I thought that there was a sort of emerging standard, but there really isn’t, which is bloody terrible.

2 Likes
#5

I want to wish me luck, too. If I don’t get at least some results out of it… Jono is going to bring it up in every episode from now until 2019.

1 Like
#6

I wonder how sensitive the sleep system @jeremy reviewed is. Would one’s pet sleeping along side affect it? Or would it sense you are sleeping in the middle of the day if such pet decided to take a nap where you sleep?

My wife’s doctor was sharing the data from his Fitbit to show how a supplement affected his sleep. Such data was interesting and useful.

Another good review Jeremy.

#7

If the pet is sufficiently large, it would register that you were napping during the day if said pet were to lay near the sleep sensor. The pet sleeping aside you should not have an impact.

–jeremy

#8

Yesterday was my first show, it seems people gang on Bryan and Bryan just dont care. LOL!!!
I think that even thought Bryan say good stuff that makes sense. The rest of the guys want to (to a failure), prove their point of controversy.

#9

Last episode I really empathized with @bryanlunduke in the opening segment. This time around, I felt his argument was a stretch, I agreed with @jeremy @jonobacon and @sil, and everything again felt right with the world.

#10

So, so true. :laughing:

1 Like
#11

I imagine that maybe a cuddle would interfere. Or would it?

#12

Wittering is in Sussex. I don’t think the internet has got there yet.

#14

Cheers. Someone else mentioned this. I have been mispronouncing it for quite a long time, so good to know.

–jeremy

#15
Please respect our code of conduct which is simple: don't be a dick.