Tech Lounge

I speak with Mike McQuaid, long-term maintainer of Homebrew, the macOS package manager, about Workbrew, a new commercial version of Homebrew that brings extra security and governance features to Homebrew.This interview formed the basis of my article on The Next Web in July. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

In this episode, Cate and Chris dive into tech events. The different types, how they work, how they feel, and how they've changed the past few years. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

Corey from Crowdbotics joins me in the Tech Lounge to talk about their six year journey in creating an AI-powered code reuse platform, long before others jumped on the bandwagon. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

This episode is all about WASM at KubeCon EU 2024 way back in March. I speak with WASMEdge and Cosmonic to find out what they bring and their thoughts on WASM. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

It's a discussion episode! And this time, Cate Lawrence from Tech.eu joins me to talk about alternative meats and proteins, and I ask in a sea of jargon and hype, what really is artificial intelligence? For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

In the tech lounge this episode, I have Leonard Pahlke talking about bringing sustainability to infrastructure and the work of the CNCF sustainability TAG and Dedy Kredo from Codium AI talking about their AI-powered IDE and text editor extension. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

No real episode, but rather a small update on some changes coming to the show. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

 00:00 Introduction and Welcome01:33 AI Crawlers and Content Scraping04:17 TechCrunch and the State of Tech Journalism06:12 Retro Tech: Classic Mac OS and Image Formats08:25 Web Browsing Privacy Enhancements10:08 Sleep Tracking and Orthosomnia11:05 Sign OffLike what you’re reading?It’s a tough time for content creators right now. If you enjoy what you read, then consider a contribution. Here are the ways you can help me out.Or please share or review the newsletter!Thanks :)AI crawlers need to be more respectfulabout.readthedocs.comThere’s a growing backlash against AI crawlers consuming websites, videos, and other content with little respect for robots.txt, copyright issues, or the spikes of traffic that hosts have to pay for. Now, more people are talking about the impact.Apple Nvidia Anthropic Used Thousands of Swiped YouTube Videos to Train AIwired.comSee above…Tech Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its waykeepgoingpod.comThis honestly feels like a summation of the trials and tribulations of tech journalism over the past 20 years, seen through the focus of one of the best-known sites. To some anyway.Orthosomniaen.wikipedia.orgI am a terrible sleeper, but one of the best pieces of advice I read is to stop worrying about it. In fact, I found out this week that worrying about sleep now has a medical term.Managing Classic Mac OS resources in ResEditeclecticlight.coSometimes, I miss the hackability of classic Mac OS. Then I remember how unstable it was 😬Here’s why you have to deal with so many annoying webPs nowpcgamer.comTurns out I am not the only one endlessly irritated by this odd image format that pops up more and more and never feels like a “real” image.Artifactingtedium.coOn the subject of webP, what’s the history of the JPEG? Maybe one of the most successful image formats of our time.Private Browsing 2.0webkit.orgWhen is private browsing truly private? When it’s version 2! For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

I am literally powered by Magic Mind right now. It’s helping me focus and keep going in some tough weeks of poor sleep and too much to do.If you also need that helping hand, head over to magicmind.com/chinchillasqueaks and use the code “CHINCHILLASQUEAKS20” for 48% of subscriptions or 20% off one-time purchases.More interviews from KubeCon Paris. This time, Matt Wilson, a colleague from Docker Build Cloud, and Sebastian Blanc of Aiven.00:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview01:42 Docker Build Cloud Explained03:22 Challenges in Docker Image Building04:33 BuildCloud Features and Benefits06:22 User Experience and Feedback18:50 Future Plans and Roadmap20:34 Aiven - Exploring Data Management Solutions22:17 Aiven - Open Source Commitment and Contributions25:23 Aiven - Competing in the Cloud Market31:39 Aiven - Developer Experience and Tools36:24 Aiven - Future Directions and Innovations40:57 Conclusion and Final Thoughts For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

I am literally powered by Magic Mind right now. It’s helping me focus and keep going in some tough weeks of poor sleep and too much to do.If you also need that helping hand, head over to magicmind.com/chinchillasqueaks and use the code “CHINCHILLASQUEAKS20” for 48% of subscriptions or 20% off one-time purchases.Like what you’re listening to?It’s a tough time for content creators right now. If you enjoy what you read, then consider a contribution. Here are the ways you can help me out.Or please share or review the show!Thanks :)Peering Into The Black Box Of Large Language Modelshackaday.comHow do LLMs *actually* work? A surprisingly small amount of people know, or bother to find out. But slowly, their creators are starting to ask questions about their creations, like any good creator really should.A revolution in your hand: Happy 45th birthday to the Sony Walkmanmusicradar.comI had a depressing conversation with a 22 year old recently where they had no idea what ripping or burning CDs was. Imagine if I’d told them about cassettes, battery life, and changing sides…How Labour Can Fix the UKs Tech Industrywired.comI am still registered to vote in the UK, and I’m not going to get to optimistic (yet), but it’s nice to see some attempt to build upon an already fairly strong tech industry from the new government.The telltale words that could identify generative AI textarstechnica.comHave you noticed how overly verbose and full of verbiage AI-generated text is? And, of course, the more that goes in, the more comes out again in some kind of self-fueling flurry of verbs. Lovely.EuRuKo 20242024.euruko.orgEuRuKo is the annual European Ruby Conference. Join us in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2024 on 11th — 13th of September. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

In this episode, more interviews from KubeCon Paris.I speak with Dinesh from CIVO, a European cloud-native hosting company, and Thierry of the Open Infrastructure Foundation, whose projects typically power data centres.This episode is powered by magic mind, a little green bottle of goodness that helps your focus and energy. Head over to magicmind.com/chinchillasqueaks and use the code "CHINCHILLASQUEAKS20" for 48% of subscriptions or 20% off one-time purchases.Want to come see me do sounds and lights for a play in Berlin?https://www.eventbrite.de/e/the-house-of-bernarda-alba-tickets-920747038177 For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

I am literally powered by Magic Mind right now. It's helping me focus and keep going in some tough weeks of poor sleep and too much to do. If you also need that helping hand, head over to magicmind.com/chinchillasqueaks and use the code "CHINCHILLASQUEAKS20" for 48% of subscriptions or 20% off one time purchases.Like what you’re reading?It’s a tough time for content creators right now. If you enjoy what you read, then consider a contribution. Here’s the ways you can help me out.Or please share or review the newsletter!Thanks :)‘The first few nights were punishing’: how sleep restriction cured my lifelong insomniatheguardian.comI am an on/off long-suffering poor sleeper. The middle-of-the-night insomnia is better than it used to be, but I still find it hard to stay in a deep sleep and wake up too early most of the time. I have also been trying to stay up later, hoping it might mean I wake up later, but it’s not working especially in summer. I am not sure I want to push things to this extreme, but maybe it’s worth trying.Managing Your Mac Menu Bar: A Roundup of My Favorite Bartender Alternativesmacstories.netI love macOS’s menu bar, but it can get cluttered quite quickly. Thanks to Setapp I’ve been using Bartender for some time to keep mine tidy. Recently, the developer sold the company to a new owner who, shall we say, didn’t handle the transition well. Most people’s concerns around security and privacy seem to now be resolved, but it still gave developers of alternative applications a great opportunity, and this list summarises some of the best.Training AI music models is about to get very expensivetechnologyreview.comDid I mention before I used to be a professional musician? I think I did 😅. Anyway, as I still make some money from that part of my life, it makes me more sensitive to those exploiting musicians’ work. Oddly, AI-generated music is one of the rare cases where the archaic archaeology of the music business works in favour of artists. They are not an industry with a reputation for taking a hit to their bottom line lightly, and now the AI companies are firmly in their sights.Are rainy days ahead for cloud computing?bbc.comWhile some companies are still beginning their journey with cloud-native, some of the early adopters are already moving to the next thing, which seems to be back to running your own servers. The promise of flexible costs hasn’t been the reality for many, and the loops and hoops providers make you jump through too much work. 37signals (and isn’t it great to hear from them again!?) are one of many recent examples of this trend. While I don’t think we need to worry about the big three providers yet, what’s next?EuRuKo 20242024.euruko.orgAnd on the subject of Ruby! EuRuKo is the annual European Ruby Conference. I’ll be there in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2024 on 11th — 13th of September. Hope to see you there!SimCity Isnt a Model of Reality. Its a Libertarian Toy Landwired.comAnyone reading for a while might know I am a fan of building-style games (on the rare occasions I play games anyway). Sim City is a classic of this genre, and it became so popular that its influence spread further than you may realise. “Simulations” being something new meant that the game’s developer was asked to create simulation games for a lot of different industries, but not all of them were as successful as the original.Micropoliswebmicropolisweb.comAnd if all this talk of SimCity makes you nostalgic or experience what we oldies had to put up with, you can play it in the browser thanks to the power of WebAssembly.News from me2024 hasn’t been the best year for many of us. Unfortunately, the same applies to me. Especially in the past few weeks, I have had several projects cancelled, but there’s one I am most annoyed by and would like to try to find a new home for.I was working on a book covering Ableton Live 12, and the project was suddenly cancelled. I was quite enjoying the process and was building up a good plan and body of work covering the topic, bringing a dose of practical “analogue” music experience to a largely electronic topic.It’s too late for a specific Live 12 book now, but I would love to take some of what I have to a new home. A new book, a course, maybe. I was thinking of ideas around “Live for drummers”, or “Live for analogue musicians”, that kind of thing. If you, or anyone you know, might be interested in this, let me know!Finally, I am planning a rebrand of the podcast and newsletter. I still need to investigate a few things and all being well, I will push ahead in August, as it’s a quiet month.I’ve been painting For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

Two of my interviews from the State of Open Con in London back in February. Featuring Lorna Mitchell, VP of developer experience at Redocly and Amanda Brock, CEO of open UK.Lorna and I cover open source developer experience and with Amanda, we discuss the unique role the UK can take in open tech in the world. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloudsecurity.apple.comDepending on who you speak with and how much attention they actually paid to the event, WWDC was either one of the best or worst events Apple has ever done. Personally, I was excited by a lot of the user and developer-facing announcements and can't wait to try them. Among all the announcements was this detailed post on how Apple intends to keep its new AI cloud services private and secure. It is a fascinating insight from a company that isn't typically so forthcoming with details.Smartphones May Affect Sleepbut Not Because of Blue Lightwired.comFor years, I, like many others, have tried to reduce screen time before bed due to it and the infamous "blue light" effect on my sleep. It turns out that many of the reports we based this belief on were not as accurate as we maybe thought and that, as always, "it depends".13 Inventors Killed By Their Own Inventionsgetpocket.comGrim, but I am always a fan of hearing of those who, well, erm, died, for what they loved and believed in. Musicians outraged as Spotify CEO claims the "cost of creating content" is "close to zero" : "Our albums took hundreds of hours of human effort hard work and creativity"musicradar.comAs a sometime professional musician from the pre-streaming times, no streaming service is exactly great for musicians, but Spotify, ever since they created the idea, have always had disdain for artists, and I refuse to use them. Well, the latest news from the company has not changed my opinion.AI Writing Will Feel Real Eventuallyevery.toA balanced and pragmatic discussion on how we always get used to new things. Eventually.The Forgotten History of Chinese Keyboardsspectrum.ieee.orgAnyone who regularly follows me knows that I love computing history. But most of what I know has a Western bias, and I have also always had a side fascination with different keyboard layouts, especially those that don't use Latin characters. Unsurprisingly, one of the largest nations in the world has quite a history of its own keyboard layout. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

I spoke with Kalyan of Datacebo, a company that creates open-source and enterprise tools for generating synthetic data for testing, load testing, and more. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

I speak with Saravana Kumar of Document 360 about their enterprise-level solution for documentation and knowledge management and what AI could mean for the industry.00:00 Introduction to the Podcast00:50 Interview with Saravana Kumar Begins01:11 Document360: Use Cases and Benefits02:18 The Origin Story of Document36006:52 Customization and Integration Options15:21 AI and the Future of Document36022:50 Wrapping Up the Interview31:37 Chris's Latest Updates and Sign-Off For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

Mac Power Users #745: “Inventing the Future” with John Buck — Relay FMrelay.fmAnother MPU recommendation from me and a trip down Apple memory lane. John Buck published a book covering the “Apple Technology Group,” a division within Apple that operated back in the 1980s and 1990s and experimented with many forward-looking bits of technology that we take for granted today.Stack Overflow suspends user for editing posts in OpenAI protestbleepingcomputer.comIt was a matter of time before Stack Overflow admitted defeat in their own AI efforts and asked Open AI for a big pile of money to access their data instead. However, as an almost entirely user-generated content site, the people who write said content aren’t happy, and unsurprisingly, Stack Overflow isn’t handling this well.Dell turns 40: How a teenager transformed $1000 worth of PC parts into a tech giantzdnet.comLess noisy than other long-lasting competitors, Dell have been there longer than most, quietly in the background making a big pile of money in varying degrees.Ten years ago Microsoft bought Nokia’s phone unit then killed it as a tax write-offtheregister.comNokia, once a diamond of European tech, slowly sold off parts of its business until even those who bought those sold them on again.Flood of AI-Generated Submissions Final Straw for Small 22-Year-Old Publisher404media.coPublishers, small and large, are already asking for hopeful submitters to sign disclaimers on AI-generated content. But even this is not enough to prevent the flood of AI-generated crap flooding publishers and ruining it for those of us who actually want someone to read our very human words. For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

In the first round-up of interviews from KubeCon EU 2024 in Paris, I focus on developer platform-related tools and productivity. The episode features interviews with Luca Galante of Humanitec, Sebastian Stadil of Scalr, and Lev Lazinskiy of Dagger.0:00 Intro02:26 Humanitec17:23 Scalr and OpenTofu40:27 Dagger01:01:23 Outro For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

In this episode of Chinchilla Squeaks, I delve into two main topics. First, a series of articles on how AI, specifically GPT-4 and other models, struggle to understand and generate sheet music, highlighting issues with tempo, dynamics, and basic music theory.Second, the financial hardships faced by touring musicians today, with insights into the low profitability and high costs of touring, even for bands with significant chart success. I also shares updates, including recent work on writing for robots and a demo of the cloud-native security tool Falco.Can AI read music? By Yennie Jun‘The working class can’t afford it’: the shocking truth about the money bands make on tour by Daniel Dylan WrayWriting for robotsCloud-native threat detection with Falco00:00 Welcome to Chinchilla Squeaks!00:38 Exploring AI's Understanding of Sheet Music03:37 The High Cost of Touring for Musicians06:46 Personal Updates and Engagements08:04 Looking Ahead: KubeCon Coverage and More For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/

I speak with Asif Awan of AppCD about their generative AI tool that creates the infrastructure as code configuration you need based on application code.- For show notes and an interactive transcript, visit chrischinchilla.com/podcast/ - To reach out and say hello, visit chrischinchilla.com/contact/ - To support the show for ad-free listening and extra content, visit chrischinchilla.com/support/