Tech, Bugs & Rock & Roll

Mark's in Utrecht at Azure Lowlands so Stunt Mark for this episode is author, developer, consultant, thought provoker and occasional Linebreaker Kevlin Henney. Join Kevlin and Dylan as they pick apart what's been happening this week in the weird and wonderful world of technology... and hopefully Human Kevlin will be the ONLY Kevlin on this show, but you never know...

Dylan's been geeking out over a physical music player based on WinAmp, we made some music videos, and the internet's asking what "next Monday" means, which is always good for a laugh. Also we're both taking longer to recover from conferences, is that normal?

The lovely folks at NDC Oslo gave us a whole room and an audience to record this episode. We talk about Apple AI, Elon, and elephants, answer questions from the audience, and Mark reveals a previously unsuspected talent for dog impressions.

This week Dylan and Mark are swamped with getting workshops, talks and music stuff ready for NDC Oslo, but they find time to talk about Agile software development and whether it's good or not, as well as spaceships, GitHub and various other things.

Dylan found his new favourite thing in the entire world, Mark got ratio'd so hard on Twitter that the arithmetic overflowed, and the Windows 10 wallpaper? That's a real photograph! Also introducing a new regular feature (if we ever do it again) and news about Rockstar 2.0!

Mark's playing with GarageBand, Dylan's running Corel Linux, Google Cloud's deleting pension funds, Sam Altman's stealing ScarJo's voice (or is he), and Copilot's probably put AGPL code in every codebase on earth but can anybody prove it? Also there's a new C# compiler called Bflat but C# is Dflat so what's all that about?

A pre-recorded show this week as Dylan and Mark are both off doing exciting things. We talk about our favourite (and not-so-favourite) sci-fi books and authors and add a few to each other's to-read list.

Dylan's on a plane so Eli Holderness joins Mark to talk about tone-deaf Apple ads, functional Fortnite, privilege and neurodivergence.

Mark had to go to Zurich for work so Eli Holderness stepped up and talked to Dylan about whatever they talked about. I don't know, I was in Zurich.

That's right, folks - the right amount of booze makes you a better programmer, according to Science. Also Google has improved JPEG, NASA is talking to Voyager 1 again, and (checks notes) you can now buy a robot dog with a flamethrower attached for less than $10,000 including shipping. What a time to be alive, eh?

A pre-recorded episode because Dylan & Mark are both away this Thursday. We talk about the music we remember from our (very different) formative years, and pick our favourite albums from each decade we've been alive. Mark cheats.

Mark's Framework Laptop 16 is finally mostly working, Dylan's been in Copenhagen reviewing conference abstracts, and everybody else is delving into dynamic landscape... or are they?

This week Mark's solved the Fermi paradox, Dylan's built a teleprompter in JavaScript (twice!), somebody (not us) nearly backdoored every Linux system on the planet, and we just found out laser pointers are illegal in Switzerland.

We said when we got to 100 subscribers we'd have a theme song... well, here it is. Plus we're talking about the Redis license change, Microsoft's new Garnet project, green clouds, racing spreadsheets, and Bad Software Stockholm Syndrome.

Mark's been watching the rocket people launch new rockets, Dylan's been reading about rocket people launching old rockets, and we're talking about the npm ecosystem, building VS Code extensions, and what Disney movies have to do with Iain M. Banks. (Dylan's house fell off the internet during recording and I implied that I would edit the audio before publishing. I did not edit the a...

Dylan's been watching people play code golf with Rockstar, and pushing the key on his keyboard that tells him Cortana doesn't exist any more, Mark's been processing a billion rows of data and running FretBadger from a Raspberry Pi in his house, and Google Gemini won't show C++ code to people under 18 because apparently pointer arithmetic isn't safe for kids. What a time to be a...

Mark & Dylan talk about online advertising (evil), in-ear monitors (good), Beauty in Code in Malmö (good), NCrunch version 5 and JetBrains Rider (great), and Apple deciding they're not going to kill progressive web apps after all, maybe (still a bit evil though).

It's Leap Day! Mark & Dylan talk about leap years, Dylan's proposal for a new calendar system, why you shouldn't use AI to design your Willy Wonka experience, a tool for making your code look terrible, Mark's ongoing adventures with the Framework 16 Laptop, and more.

This week, Mark's been building the Framework 16 laptop, and Dylan's been building Entity Framework Core from source. Neither of them has had much success, but only one of them is now afraid of screwdrivers.

Dylan and Mark talk about the good old days where programs were so small you typed them in every time you needed them, and go off on tangents four or five levels deep. Again.

This week we're talking timezones, post-conference blues - and what if the best way to support sustainable open source is to SHOCK HORROR get a job at Microsoft?

This week Dylan and Mark are at NDC London showing off and geeking out. They are joined by fellow Linebreakers Eli Holderness and Hannes Lowette. Apologies for the audio quality on this one, it wasn't the ideal recording environment.

Dylan and Mark talk about running coding workshops, mechanical keyboards, estimating, Canon, complicated multi-effect pedals, tabs vs spaces and anything else that comes up.

Dylan and Mark talk about YAML, bugs, contracting and an Invincible Snail that's coming after them.

Dylan and Mark talk about Dylan's new "yak waxing" phrase, being scared when .NET apps upgrade by two versions and just work, and the Horizon Post Office scandal in the UK.