Abstractions
Abstractions is a podcast about technology, software, hardware, and the Internet, and the way the ever-increasing layers of these technologies permeate every aspect of our everyday lives.
- Update frequency
- every 7 days
- Average duration
- 50 minutes
- Episodes
- 25
- Years Active
- 2025
Distrust and Verify
Substack sent a push alert promoting racist content, and ChatGPT confabulated a SoundSlice feature that developers subsequently decided to implement.
You Just Have to Eat It
Goo.gl link obfuscator shutdown, digital sovereignty & self-hosting, and computers that sleepwalk instead of sleeping.
- Draw a fish
- Five Songs Daily
- Hostile Government Takeover (EDM remix)
Neurospicy Automaton
An employee recounts code-generation software mandates at their company, and a chicken restaurant chain experiments with taking customer orders via LLM-powered software.
Half an Eye
Justin experiments with local-LLM-assisted searches via Perplexica & SearXNG, and local LLM tool diversity continues to flourish despite general awareness fixation on a single tool.
Even More Ephemeral
Terms like “AI” and “vibe coding” lose their original meaning through semantic diffusion, Justin connects his Vim text editor to a local large language model, and Dan goes down the Vim vs. Emacs rabb…
Harm Over Failure
Large language models will commit blackmail and murder to achieve goals, LLMs know a lot about us, and some managers mandate employees use LLM tools to do their jobs.
- Historic web nostalgia
Super Wicked Awesome
Different methods of ignoring files in version control, “Any updates?” comments on open-source issues, Dan’s new speakers, and EU’s expanded Product Liability Directive.
Semi-Coherent Output
Community organizers contend with increasingly sophisticated “A.I.” spam, while the jury is still out regarding the legality and morality of LLM training on authors’ content.
Whimsical Yesteryear
MacOS Tahoe beta drops Firewire support, web app developers continue to bungle password input, Apple considers using 3rd-party LLMs to power Siri, and Justin wrote an article about running LLMs on lo…
Perverse Cargo Cult
Open-source projects continue to contend with “AI”-generated issue reports, and opinions abound regarding Apple’s “Liquid Glass” and other user interface design changes.
Designers Gonna Design
Impressions of Apple WWDC 2025 announcements: “Liquid Glass” UI design unified across all 26-series operating systems, Messages & Phone app enhancements, and new Apple Intelligence APIs for app devel…
Someday You & I Will Be Dead
Web sites try to thwart “A.I.” bot scrapers, Stack Overflow is almost dead, bot slop may soon plague GitHub, and Apple may need a new CEO in order to change.
Some Real Side-Eye
Cotypist autocompletion for MacOS is available in beta, Google wrecks search results on purpose, SoundCloud adds “AI” training to TOS, and authors imprison themselves in Substack’s walled garden.
Nerds Less Welcome
Redis is open source again, Synology wants to restrict you to their own branded disks, and someday the “A” in “A.I.” may stand for “advertising”.
Sea Monkeys in a Pool
Facebook tries to convince us that we love ads and that their new name is about the “metaverse” instead of an attempt at whitewashing their toxic brand, while Google’s “AI Mode” confabulates wildly.
- …
iPhone-Related Foofaraw
iPhone may lose its USB-C port, and Tesla sales in Europe go off a cliff.
- Hostile government takeover song
- Link Unshorte…
Them’s the Breaks
WordPress and WP Engine lock horns in a drama-filled dispute, and open source projects experiment with various monetization models.
Some Yaks Are Worth Shaving
Justin engages in “yak shaving” with varying degrees of success, and open-source enthusiasts grapple with what to do when projects are abandoned.