GeekNights Monday - Science and Technology

Tonight on GeekNights, Rym and Emily discuss roller coaster technology in the course of tier ranking every roller coaster at Cedar Point. We live streamed this episode back in August, but now it's in the podcast feed! Millennium Force still holds up 26 years later.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about robots. Real ones from the real world: not movie robots. In the news, Igor has tasted blood, the Meta pervert glasses are getting regulated in Norway, and do not give Meta's Muse thing your credit cards.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider e-bikes, e-scooters, monowheels, and all the assorted electric conveyances that aren't cares and that are becoming more and more popular everywhere there are people. E.g., what are the "classes" of ebikes? In the news, streamers are suing Twitch and Amazon for their opt-out AI model training, 404 tracked down the "rare book" AI training story, and the Steam Frame might finally be coming.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss data centers. Once as positive thing, they have become a blight on the Earth in the ever-growing wake of the AI bubble. Rym and Emily are back from Cedar Point and will have a couple of special episodes about it in the near future, and also have a secret VR project that's slightly less secret than it was before. In the news, the AI slop factory wants help flagging AI slop, and ZGM is an open source gaming mouse firmware.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the growing trend of seeking retro technology. From the Charmera to flip phones to audio cassettes, it's part aesthetic and part anti-consumerist anti-capitalist pushback to the ravages of modernity. In the news, Mamdani announces new Click-to-Cancel rule for New York City, workers in Acklam discover Medlar fruit trees (also known as dog's arse), and no technology is going to make exercising effectively take less time. Also, we did it.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the current state and evolution of bicycle technology. Not all advancement in modernity is "good" advancement. In the news, delivery robots are a menace, the illegitimate and fully compromised Supreme Court's broken clock was correct on geofence warrants, climate change is killing us, and AI slop music should be demonetized.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the challenge of company-managed devices. In the news, Britain has banned the kids from all social media, Nvidia is issuing $25 Billion in corporate bonds, and Verizon screwed a guy over with MDM.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the evil cameras all around us. In the news, Nvidia introduces an underwhelming chip to make underwhelming PCs, the US gestapo are trying to buy advertiser datasets in a dangerous escalation of the police state, and Furality is this weekend!

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the problem of spam in the current era. We last talked about spam in 2007. (Note that spam is distinct from slop. In the news, Rym is back from Hong Kong, supply chain attacks remain a major threat, the kids are booing AI people at graduations, Musk lost his lawsuit against OpenAI, deepfake software is getting better, and Meta is laying off 10% of its entire workforce.

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Tonight on GeekNights, it's a Tech News Roundup! Madison Square Garden's insane surveillance machine, Github's ongoing collapse, Mac minis being hit by the ongoing RAM crisis, Ask.com is dead, a trivial-to-exploit Linux vulnerability, OpenAI won't stop talking about goblins, Apple fixes a notification vulnerability with Signal, iOS finally adds end-to-end encryption to RCS, AI slop podcasts are spreading, Roblox can't make money if kids can't sign up, and Tim Apple is replaced by John Apple.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about the dangers of trying to mandate age verification on the Internet. In the news, Discord embarks on a disastrous age verification scheme, Anthropic is mad that other "AI" companies are using their product, and Goldman Sachs launches an AI-free index.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss webcams. In the news, ICE murdered another person in broad daylight with video and witnesses, and Senate Democrats are willing to shut the government down over continued funding of ICE. Call your senators today. No funds for ICE: abolish, dismantle, and prosecute.

In other news, Europe may ban Elon Musk's nonconsensual porn machine and France is planning to build a video conferencing tool to reduce dependence on American technology.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss tech bubbles like the Dot-com bubble. Unrelatedly here's a video by Hank Green titled The State of the AI Industry is Freaking Me Out, and a video by Adam Conover titled Sora Proves the AI Bubble Is Going to Burst So Hard. In the news, nearly 7 million Americans marched in defense of democracy, Amazon AWS went down Sunday night reminding us how fragile the Internet has become, and the end of Windows 10 shouldn't be ignored.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss fitness tech like heart rate monitors and Strava and Dance Dance Revolution. In the news, Tik Tok has a dubious deal to keep operating in the US and the regime has plans for the algorithm. Also go see Perfect Blue remastered while you can. And read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about specific mice. Mice we've used over the years, since the days of balls. In the news, Google dodges consequences in the US but not in the EU, Google is sued yet again for their advertising monopoly, and Google is looking to flood the phone lines of tiny businesses.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about the modern marvel that is video chat. In the news, Perplexity is using undeclared crawlers to scrape content, Samsung has a crazy Micro LED TV, real life ad block is possible, and Trump is forming the American SS.

The next GeekNights Book Club book will be The Running Man, by Richard Backman, who you may know better as Stephen King.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss audio interfaces. Rym uses a PreSonus Studio 1810c to record GeekNights, and as his general purpose "sound card" in the studio.

In the news, the CEO of GitHub steps down, you can consider Forgejo if that worries you, Reddit will block the Internet Archive, and Trump illegally forces the National Guard to deploy to the streets of Washington DC.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider why there, broadly, aren't major consumer technology developments lately. In the news, Debian reduces support for i386 and Chrome OS is combining with Android. Also we'll be live at PAX West!

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the blinky lights and LEDs the kids are putting on everything including their computers. In the news, Windows 10 has extended security support, Broadcom is desperate to monetize VMware, and the EU forced Apple to comply, at least in the EU.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider toilets, washlets, and bidets. (Oh my). In the news, some context on the current Iran conflict, and Apple WWDC25 was mostly uneventful other than keeping old devices going for a while yet.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss capacity management. It's changed a lot over the years. In the news, evil people are trying to accelerate climate change, and a silly camera is coming.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we muse a bit on the problem of discoverability. Nearly all experience is mediated, and this includes deciding what web site to look at. In the news, Rym is back from Zenkaikon, Moon Zooz is continuing to rock it, the cosmological constant might not be, niri is a scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor, and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a dangerous idiot.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about MIDI. The Musical Instrument Digital Interface, which is still in use today. In the news, Donkey Kong ‘94 is re-released on Switch, Youtube adds translated dubbing, and Ontario (rightly) taxes Americans using their energy.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider Windows 11 and the fools who refuse to upgrade. In the news, the iPhone 16e arrives, Gmail is (correctly) dropping SMS two-factor, Twitch is capping uploads for 0.5% of streamers, and Germany represents a profound realignment of global politics.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss electronic payments. We grew up in a world where credit cards were imprinted on carbon paper and cheques were on physical paper. In the news, the Baltics have disconnected from the Russian power grid, Football Manager 25 will be skipped, and there's one weird trick to stop Google's terrible AI summaries.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider all the ways to sell software. From shareware to software-as-a-service to "just buying it" it's evolved quite a bit over the years. In the news, CES happened, Republicans killed net neutrality, and Pornhub is blocked in the entire US south. Also we will be live at MAGFest, which is imminently about to sell out.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about Terminals. From the VT100 to any modern Terminal Emulator, they are still a part of the computing world and are worth knowing about. In the news, Jimmy Carter has died at 100, Chinese state-sponsored hackers attacked the US Treasury, and a hero has defeated a fake Nintendo lawyer.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about drones. In the news, the common clay of the New West think they're seeing nefarious drones everywhere and we have WordPress vs WP Engine.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider blogging. In the news, Roblox is making a closed ecosystem Discord competitor, the US gave Intel a pile of money, and Intel's CEO hit the bricks. Rym has also consolidated all of his social media into rym.social and talks about how he set up cross-posting across microblog, Mastodon, and Bluesky.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about widgets. Mostly status and telemetry widgets that people like to put on their desktops or their phones. They have their uses, but are usually useless. In the news, Cloudplane is shutting down in December, Adobe's Project Turntable is stunning, and Tesla's robots were (obviously) fake.

If you are able to vote in the United States, make a plan to vote. You can't sit this one out. You can't vote for a "third party." It's frankly unethical to do anything but vote straight ticket for Democrats.

There are two power-seeking...

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about cores and concurrency and threads and such. Also Rym and Emily fought a bear. In the news, Intel's chip instability saga has concluded, and Python 3.13.0 is pretty good.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the evils of web trackers and analytics. They are used almost exclusively to feed the ad industry and you should block them wherever possible. Rym has installed the microcode patch for some Intel chips and you should too if you have one of them.

In the news, Microsoft is moving to a security-first posture, nostalgia accounts on social media are making up nonsense, and chatbots are intruding into and slowly ruining online social spaces.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the sad state of the technology creeping into car dashboards. In the news, the US Supreme Court has disastrously ruled that the president is above the law in extreme and shocking complicity with authoritarian takeover. In other news, some good Python development practices and Apple cramming AI into their largely failed Vision Pro.

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Tonight on GeekNights, it's a Tech News Roundup! Mouse movers are getting people fired but are also a sign of late stage capitalism, social media is messing up the kids, don't operate your i9 at turbo voltages when it's overheating, Adobe is mostly wrong here but also read what you buy, this is a good car that will never reach the US, data breaches are getting worse as people care less and less that they happen, Wine patches bug 7955 after 17 years, the Pentax 17 is bad, Apple cancels Apple Pay Later, New York gets digital IDs (sort of), Microsoft slow...

Tonight on GeekNights, we make some technology predictions for one, five, and ten years into the future. We did this once back in 2010. In the news, Ticketmaster and Santander have massive data breaches, Google accidentally published its secret search sauce, Twitter adds pornography, and Rubin is the next generation AI chip.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss markup languages like Markdown. In the news, Rym posted an analysis of strange noises in Sportsnet NHL streams, the ship that broke Baltimore Harbor has been removed, you can read a paper exploring The consequences of generative AI for online knowledge communities, and there are new iPads.

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Tonight on GeekNights we talk about when technology fails. Dead PSUs, dead hard drives, and the like. In the news, there is a vulnerability in practically all VPNs and Tesla is firing everybody after they fired a bunch of people.

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Tonight on GeekNights we consider what A New TV in 2024 looks like. In the news, the Stanley Cup Playoffs are underway, GameCube and Wii emulators won't work on iOS due to Apple's ban on just-in-time compilation, and Meta really makes money from all the data they collect about you.

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Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the ramifications of a ridiculous Texas law being argued before the Supreme Court, and its ramifications for the imperfect but valuable Section 230. In the news, A lot of Redditors hate the Reddit IPO, Reddit is selling your data to Google for AI training, and Reddit admitted that your moderator protests are working. Also Rym has some notes on his new workstation.

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Tonight on GeekNights, 18 years after Rym tried to switch to Mac, Scott switches to Mac. (Except for gaming). In the news, Rym is building a new primary workstation,, Tim Sweeney calls out Apple's "malicious compliance" in light of The Digital Markets Act, and the Superb Owl went to overtime.

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