Tech Lounge

In this episode I speak with Molham Aref from Relational AI. we discuss the concept of an AI co-processor for data and its relevance to those working with Snowflake. We delve into the importance of data management in machine learning and AI projects. The interview covers topics such as the integration of Relational AI with Snowflake, the company's roadmap for the future, and the possibility of expanding to other platforms.Find out more at: https://chinchillasqueaks.substack.com/p/8334dac6-34b6-4a06-90a0-a1708ae0220e 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/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It's a busy weekend of tech in Berlin, but have things cooled or are we all taking a well-earned break?No ads for this episode, but instead, a personal request to anyone I’ve interviewed or featured or if you’re a long-term or short-term follower. Please spread the word by rating, reviewing, or sharing the newsletter or podcast.First, a couple of linksThe best iPad score reader for most people →Even before Apple announced the iPad, seeing the first Amazon Kindle had me excited for the day that I would be able to leave my giant stacks of music scores at home.How the iMac saved Apple →The original iMac entered a computing world that desperately needed a shake-up. After the wild early days of the personal computer revolution, things had become stagnant by the mid-1990s.Elegy for the Native Mac App →The first Macintosh came out in 1984 with a familiar formula: expensive, limited, but elegant and easy to use. From the start it was something of a cult classic. Apple was struggling financially, and spent most of the 90s on hair-brained ideas: the Newton, the Pippin, the QuickTake.The rise of the tech ethics congregation →Just before Christmas last year, a pastor preached a gospel of morals over money to several hundred members of his flock.Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) 1.0 →Get your sites sustainable! Officially.My highlights of IFA and Startup night Berlin 2023https://medium.com/@chrischinchilla/my-highlights-of-ifa-and-startup-night-berlin-2023-d0417bbcb610 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/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Something of a music theme in this issue. My interview is with Sefi Carmel of Spheretrax, a new take on selecting, synchronising, and licensing music for TV, films, and games. I also look at what “noise” really is, ancient music software, the continuing sage of Terraform, the end of Google, and maybe one of the most famous Rock and roll fights of all time.Sponsored by ZencasterThis issue is sponsored by Zencaster, who’s all-in-one podcasting platform helps me deliver my show episode.Use my special link zen.ai/chinchillasqueaks to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan.The end of the Googleverse →Is Google’s business model coming to an end? Or are they just changing?Is Terraform still open-source? Yes, but… →OpenTF promises to fill the gap now (maybe) left behind by Terraform. But what are those gaps?“I made my first album on that actually,” he reveals. I used it long after I should have stopped using it.” →Turns out I wasn’t the only one to use an obscure piece of music software on an Amiga. I have famous company.A Well-tempered History of Noise →What is noise? Different cultures make music differently, and different genres have different concepts of “good”. As always, it’s in the ear of the beholder."Never call me your drummer again": remembering the time Charlie Watts punched Mick Jagger in the face →A year on from Charlie Watts’ sad passing, the world fondly remembers the late Stones drummer’s shy, slightly retiring nature: never one to give interviews unless absolutely necessary, and - for the most part - unimpressed by the trappings of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. 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/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A packed issue full of AI content, what powers the internet, the real cost of food, offline-first, and an interview all about CK editor and TinyMCE.Full show notes here: https://chinchillasqueaks.substack.com/p/bd2d57e5-b110-4963-947b-5afaa19130c8 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/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode I speak with Ines Akrap at the recent We Are Developers event about how we can make the web greener. Trust me on this one, nothing captured the enthusiasm I felt from her in the room, but I try 😁.This issue is sponsored by Zencaster, who’s all-in-one podcasting platform helps me deliver my show episode.Use my special link zen.ai/chinchillasqueaks to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan. State of Open: The UK in 2023 Phase Two, Part 1 “Show us the Money - The Economics of Open Source Software” Download the full report. Green energy tycoon to launch UK’s first electric airline → How to create a personal website, but it’s 1999 → Wikipedia’s value in the age of generative AI → How Do Lit Mags Make Money, Anyway? → Paul Nurse: The power of genetics, battling politicians, and the fight against cancer → The World’s Last Internet Cafes → The Wrath of Goodreads → Logitech buys editing console maker Loupedeck →From me CSS in Depth, Second Edition by Keith J Grant. Find the early version on manning.com. It’s Setapp month and all month I will be producing content around how I use this macOS application subscription service but I begin with an overview of my favourite apps that I use on a regular basis. If you like what you read and want to get your hands on a Setapp subscription to try some of those applications, then follow my referral link to get started, much appreciated 🙇! 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/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode is a links show and I cover Red Hat’s latest open source upsets, lab grown meat, AI ‘aint that bad, happy birthday ethernet, and more!This episode is sponsored by Zencaster, who’s all-in-one podcasting platform helps me deliver my show episode.Use my special link zen.ai/chinchillasqueaks to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan.Find full show notes here: https://chinchillasqueaks.substack.com/p/lab-grown-forks?sd=pf 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/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I am joined by hacker turned software entrepreneur, John Davenport to show me his new idea for using AI to summarise conversations and drill into topics covered.Also features… AI and Music-Making Part 2: Tomorrow Is The Question →This is Part 2 of our deep-dive into AI music-making. In Part 1, we learned what AI is; examined the challenges of applying AI technology to music-making; and explored uses of AI such as MIDI generation, timbral transfer, and analog modeling. Back to the Monolith: Why Did Amazon Dump Microservices? →It’s been a harsh couple of years for buzzy digital products and services. Crypto exchanges have been closing left and right. NFTs haven’t been panning out. Let’s Talk About YouTube Face and Clickbait →Today I’m taking off my publisher hat and putting on my content creator hat to examine “YouTube face” and clickbait titles. A few weeks ago, someone asked for my thoughts on YouTube face on my weekly livecast. Five big takeaways from Europe’s AI Act →This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review's weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. Your Fave Band Is Reuniting – But Not For the Reasons You Think →Blur, The Walkmen and Pulp are some of the bands staging comebacks. Is it a cynical sign of the times or has something changed? Nostalgia: It’s a hell of a drug, and the 2023 gig calendar is packed with reunion tours that show it’s more potent than ever. 30 years of change, 30 years of PDF →We live in a world where the only constant is accelerating change. The twists and turns in the technology landscape over the last 30 years have drained some of the hype from the early days of the consumer digital era. Today we are confronted with all-new, even more disruptive, possibilities. AI and Music-Making Part 1: The State of Play →Listen to this article. This is Part 1 of two-part aricle. Read Part 2 here. 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/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello all! It’s been a little while and I’ve been holding on to a really great interview the whole time. In summary, after a long few years of running the podcast through varying shapes and sizes… I am joining a podcast network and agency! This is great news for me and will help me move the show to the next level, however I need to do a few technical transfers behind the scenes and that made me pause for a few weeks to avoid downtime. Unfortunately we hit a few issues here and there and that switch over will happen after this issue and episode now.Podcast versionSo, with that news over, the great interview mentioned above is with Aaron A. Reed, author of the amazing “50 years of text adventures”. I backed the book on Kickstarter, but Aaron gave me an advanced press copy and it’s a fantastic read! We spoke about the book, text adventures in general, and had a great conversation around the intersection of technology and writing.Flop or future?WWDC happened, and nestled amongst other announcements that actually excited me much more, was the new Vision Pro. I am extremely un-excited by VR, and while AR has interesting applications, we have seen many large projects from equally large companies fail. But who am I to know? Here’s some interesting links from the discussion around WWDC.With Vision Pro, Apple shows computing's future. But who's it for? →Tomorrow belongs to somebody, but Apple’s much-talked-about mixed-reality device, Vision Pro — unveiled Monday during a glitzy presentation at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference — won’t ship until early 2024.Apple will face an uphill battle convincing developers to build apps for its headset →The ‘one more thing’ announced by Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this year was the industry’s worst-kept secret. The Apple Vision Pro, the tech giant’s gamble on making mixed reality headsets a thing, has received a mixed welcome.News from WWDC23: WebKit Features in Safari 17 beta →It’s been a fantastic year for WebKit. We’ve shipped eight Safari releases since WWDC22, with more than 140 new web technologies in the first half of 2023 alone. Now, we are pleased to announce another 88 web features coming this fall in Safari 17. Web apps are coming to Mac.AInt so smart?It wouldn’t be a tech newsletter without AI news would it? This week, efforts to regulate and the sites feeding all those “smarts”.Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart →An analysis of a chatbot data set by The Washington Post reveals the proprietary, personal, and often offensive websites that go into an AI’s training data.Ethics — what ethics? For Microsoft, it’s full speed ahead on AI →Microsoft is all in on artificial intelligence (AI) for a very simple reason: it believes its lead in the technology will make it the tech world’s top dog again.Who should take responsibility for evil UX design and digital ethics? →Ethics = moral philosophy. It defines what’s good and what’s evi 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/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello everyone!A big dive into questioning artificial intelligence and an interview with Avi from Scarf, who aims to help open source developers gain insights into their usage.Questioning artificial intelligenceIt’s another AI-heavy issue, but this time I want to highlight some content that questions the technology and attitudes to it in some nuanced ways. I start with how AI creators and users are “hallucinating” its potential, wonder if it’s as smart as it looks, and look at the discussions around how to block AI using your content.AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are →Inside the many debates swirling around the rapid rollout of so-called artificial intelligence, there is a relatively obscure skirmish focused on the choice of the word “hallucinate”.ChatGPT Is Powered by Human Contractors Getting Paid $15 Per Hour →ChatGPT, the wildly popular AI chatbot, is powered by machine learning systems, but those systems are guided by human workers, many of whom aren’t paid particularly well. A new report from NBC News shows that OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT, has been paying droves of U.S.A 23-year-old Snapchat influencer used OpenAI’s technology to create an A.I. version of herself that will be your girlfriend for $1 per minute →These boyfriends are dating a virtual version of Marjorie, powered by the latest artificial intelligence technology and thousands of hours of recordings of the real Marjorie.AI Tools Are Scraping Your Website. Is That a Good Thing? →The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has been disruptive. Things are changing rapidly. And it seems like this technology is posing new moral, ethical, and existential questions each day. There are plenty of stories and opinions to choose from. But one recent incident caught my eye.Inside the Discord Where Thousands of Rogue Producers Are Making AI Music →On Saturday, they released an entire album using an AI-generated copy of Travis Scott's voice, and labels are trying to kill it.Before AI Takes Over, Make Plans to Give Everyone Money →The U.S. needs policies now to support workers made redundant by artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is coming for all our jobs. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chinchillasqueaks.substack.com 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/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Let’s start with some funThis newsletter gets dark quickly, so first something to enjoy.Farrago 2 soundboard for Mac arrives with 50 new features including Shortcuts and Stream Deck integration →Rogue Amoeba is releasing a major update to Farrago, the great soundboard app for Mac. Farrago 2.0 includes 50 new features ranging from fun emoji art to well-designed Stream Deck interactivity.Thanks for reading Chinchilla Squeaks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Microsoft is busy rewriting core Windows code in memory-safe Rust →Microsoft is rewriting core Windows libraries in the Rust programming language, and the more memory-safe code is already reaching developers.David Rumsey Map Collection →111,792 RESULTS Media Type Year Collection Creator LanguageTech makes cutbacksFor years we’ve told people with less job prospects to “learn to code”, now tie cutbacks and AI, what do we tell people instead?Learning to code isn’t enough →A decade ago, tech powerhouses the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon helped boost the nonprofit Code.org, a learn-to-code program with a vision: “That every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science as part of their core K–12 education.Tech companies are finally firing tech workers →Software engineers made up the biggest portion of tech layoffs in 2023. That advice is starting to feel even less welcome.Amazon and Microsoft’s AI Gains Mask Cloud Slowdown →(Bloomberg) -- The buzz around artificial intelligence that’s helped juice gains for Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. this year may also be masking struggles in a business far more critical to the pair’s bottom lines.AI, when and where will it stop?Palantir Demos AI to Fight Wars But Says It Will Be Totally Ethical Don’t Worry About It →Palantir, the company of billionaire Peter Thiel, is launching Palantir Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), software meant to run large language models like GPT-4 and alternatives on private networks. In one of its pitch videos, Palantir demos how a military might use AIP to fight a war.The first babies conceived with a sperm-injecting robot have been born →Last spring, engineers in Barcelona packed up the sperm-injecting robot they’d designed and sent it by DHL to New York City.Why I'm no longer writing stories with AI →Preface: Stories by AI is on hiatus. We may or may not be back soon. If you’d be interesting in writing stories for us, get in touch! contact@storiesby.ai I won’t be publishing any more stories with storiesby.ai. What was once a quirky lark of a side-side-project hits darker now.Thanks for reading Chinchilla Squeaks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to d 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/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.