Visions Under Construction

Simon Monk has a bachelor's degree in cybernetics and computer science and a Ph.D. in software engineering. He has authored more than 25 books, including Programming Arduino, 30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius, Hacking Electronics, and Programming the Raspberry Pi. Dr. Monk also runs the website monkmakes.com, which features his own products and can be followed on Twitter where he is @simonmonk2.

What benefits are we reaping from the technology that surrounds us and does it justify the time and money spent getting it, setting it up and maintaining it?

After taking to Amit Rathore about Presscoin, it was interesting to hear more about it from investigative journalist and author Nafeez Ahmed whose Insure Intelligence is well-known to Medium and other readers. Dr. Ahmed has written 6 books about the political state of the world and is a former columnist at The Guardian. In this chat we talk about his academic beginnings and his move to investigative journalism, leading him first to found crowd-funded Insurge Intelligence and now Presscoin, a platform that will federate several journalistic and creative efforts.   There is also a video version on YouTube.

Alan Quayle works at the bleeding edge of IT and Telecoms, building new businesses and services. His work experience includes: BT, Lucent Technologies, Cambridge Technology Partners, founder of Teltier (sold to Cisco) and 10 years as an independent focused on the intersection of IT, Web and Telecoms. A longtime friend of VUC and the mind behind TADHack and TADSummit, Alan will share his "Tech Ikigai" with us.

Terry Hughes has spent over a half century directing comedy on TV, first in Britain and then the US. He talks about his early career as a record producer, what it was like to work on the TV shows, and what he thinks makes or breaks a show. He won 2 primetime Emmy awards for his work on The Golden Girls. I happened to be watching the show "Whoopi!" with a friend and when the credits came up, he recognized the name, so I was able to get in touch with Terry and chat via phone. My interest in Whoopi was related to a collection and video I did last year called "50 Years of Black Actors on American TV". Whoopi was very edgy and very black for its time, in the early 2000's, the Bush years.

Dave Taht and friends have put 6 years of beating bufferbloat on every piece of gear we can fix, with network latency reductions of orders of magnitude on fiber, ethernet, cable, dsl, and now, some wifi chipsets. This discussion will discuss what might happen in 2018, and for all we know, devolve into some select ranting on network neutrality. Jim Gettys, an integral member of the fight against bufferbloat also joined at the last minute. Thanks Jim!   Today's video session is here. Dave's previous appearances on VUC include:  Benchmark Bokononism, make-wifi-fast, and TCP (2016) The FCC vs. Open Firmware (2015)

A general discussion on the rise (and perhaps fall?) of Bitcoin (BTC), ETH, LTC and the rest. Based on the blockchain technology, there are many facets of this fascinating topic. Jay Carpenter of Desert Blockchain joins to chat about the basics and more. This session is in NO WAY suggesting that anyone invest in these currencies. This is just an explanation of what they are, why they are popular, how they work, what's happening with them recently, etc. The past 48 hours have shown how volatile Bitcoin is. We'll talk about that Friday, too.  

PressCoin platforms compensate everyone involved with revenue and real asset ownership of the PressCoin ecosystem – journalists, citizens, NGOs, local news organizations, and local businesses. This creates a sustainable foundation for independent journalism- making free press possible – by enabling true independence – financial independence, while richly rewarding all investors. PressCoin is decentralized media at work: for the people, by the people.    Watch the video

We talk to Eugen Roshko, creator of Mastodon and Hugo Gamiero, who has a fast setup and hosting service for building your own Mastodon instance in less than a day and with no knowledge or work. The discussion with Eugen is interesting as he proved to be a very thoughtful and skilled developer. The federated Mastodon instances are becoming popular, but will of course have a hard time beating Twitter.

After about 37 emails back and forth, the formidable reputation of Dr. Richard Stallman did not scare us off. What resulted in this episode was a very interesting and enjoyable discussion about everything he's known for.   You can watch the video here.

We discuss the new models of distribution for content creators and what's in store for the future. Also discussed, piracy, torrents and privacy. Check out Jamie's excellent podcast, Steal This Show.

When I started talking to Bruce Conte via text a few months ago, I decided it was time we talked via Skype. After we met in Fresno, Bruce went on to play with Tower of Power and many other very famous artists. Today he's recording his own material, which you can check out at BruceConte.com. I asked if we could record an "interview". Bruce needs no prompting, I mostly sat back and listened to him tell the story of what he's been up to for the last 40 years, which is how long it's been since we last spoke.