Who are we?
Dr. Chris Zimmermann is a FOSS fanatic, communist (sometimes) and expert on esoteric software aspects how to configure Mail Transfer Agents while not carving in to insanity, troubleshoot computer networks without the use of recreational drugs and the advanced enjoyment of craft beverages. He mostly lives in Frankfurt, Germany. In contrast to Mr. Visser the size of his brain has a reverse correlation to the size of his head.
Martin Visser is a slightly less egocentric (actually far from egocentric) computer scientist and engineer, non-communist from Birmingham, UK. In contrast to Dr. Zimmermann, he has human interaction and social protocols down to a fine art.
Why another FOSS podcast?
For those who use any means of transport on a regular basis it is a great way to stimulate the brain.
Others have come before us, tried and failed to achieve this level.
What's in it for me?
Great entertainment
Invaluable tech tips helping with aspects of everday life including the proper recital of Vogon poetry in that worst-case scenario that Brexit finally shadows the Vogons’ landing and how to take care of the proper biological foundation for recreational drugs
A chance to feedback your comments. Glowing ones will be published, others ignored.
The opportunity to request expert knowledge and discussion on a topic of your choice!
What's in it for the Inlaws?
The impending fame and successful broadcasting careers (Martin’s vision) play a small part in this decision.
Which is of course totally overshadowed by the reason of world domination. Donations are encouraged. Ideally in liquid wheat brew format (of course rye, barley, spelt and other assorted grains go as well).
How to get up and running?
(this is how we do it, your mileage may vary)
- Pick an open source operating system of choice that features a decent package management system (unless you’re really technical and know what you’re doing) and is Posix-compliant. In this instance Ubuntu 19.10 was the preferred candidate
- Don't worry about Mumble. Many have tried, most have failed to use this piece of
software for synchronous podcast recording
- Get some really cool music licensed under CC-BY(-SA) from places like Jamendo
- Install a Synapse server on a publicly accessible server and use Riot-Web as a front-end for this instance
- Get Audacity and tty-clock (if you really want to accurate synchronise your system clock with an NTP server)
- Using Audacity and tty-clock, record your friendly podcast locally using Riot-Web's audio call feature to synchronise the hosts and guests
- For the post-production, simply mix the individual streams together and edit to your
heart's content.
- Stick to mono when producing the final ogg or mp3 file, adding music and other content as appropriate
- Upload the audio file to HPR
- Create associated website using some cool HTML/CSS framework
- Watch it go viral (the important bit!)
The kit?
- One home server running Ubuntu 19.10 with mumble-server and Synapse (a reference implementation) of the federated protocol known as Matrix for comms
- One cheap bit of kit running somewhere in Germany at a snails pace (Martin’s opinion before the D-Wave upgrade - little did he know :-)) => much patience is required attempting to use this
- Two laptops for remote access, running a Murmur client (typically Mumble itself), Audacity and various text editors in addition to riot-web or another Matrix / Synapse client
- One MPow USB headset and one interim Logitech 2 Pro (thank you MPow for the countless hours of debugging x-talk issues - we learned a lot! :-)
The Episodes
All episodes are hosted on the Internet Archive.
The following only represents the last ten episodes, you find the
full backcatalog of all episodes released so far here.
- S02E32: FLOSS in the real estate biz
In this episode, Martin and Chris talk about the use of FLOSS in real estate. Chris laments his big landowner woes which he got into after inheriting a zoo of different pieces of real estate some time ago. And how he solved this using FLOSS components that put sense into half-baked billing information coming from property management companies and how a neural net was recruited to help along the way. Even if you're not insane but just curious about how it's done you don't want to miss this episode. Plus bonus content about what happened to format of the show and why that was.
Links:
- S02E31: Talking Kotlin
In this episode Martin and Chris host Hadi Hariri and Sebastian Aigner from Jetbrains to talk about Kotlin, IDEs, world domination and many other topics. Such as politics (maybe). And protein bars and their rise to fame in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. And how Google was actually kidnapped. Confused? You should be. But don't miss this episode for the resolution of all this, fun on Google and money, programming languages and more. Much more.
Links:
- S02E30: The Five Year Plan again
In this anniversary episode our two ageing heroes recount the last five years of the Inlaws and the progress of the famous five year plan (as avid listeners will probably recall from earlier anniversary episodes - if you can't, there's always the back-catalogue). Plus some more NoSQL/Cache Software Bashing. In case you're interested...
Links:
- S02E29: The Free Software Foundation
In this episode the Inlaws host Zoë Kooyman and Greg Farough from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), one of the backbones of the FLOSS movement. Home to many primordial projects including the GNU congregation of free software such as Emacs and its compiler collection, the FSF can look back on forty years of shaping the FLOSS ecosystem in a way that few other organisations have managed to achieve. So if you wanted to know why Emacs is actually an operating system rather than just an editor, what the FSF really is beyond Richard M. Stallman and what's in store for the FSF, then you don't want to miss this episode! Plus bonus content: the low-down on Dutch street organs and a really well-kept Dutch secret (woa!). Ya REALLY dunt wanna miss tis! :-)
Links:
- S02E28: A kernel slightly rusty
This episode shines some light on a new (?) technology entering the Linux kernel. Traditionally the Linux has been programmed using C, a programming language almost as old as our two hosts, and assembler for the machine-dependent parts which cannot be done in C. A few years back a couple of kernel devs started to explore the possibility of using a modern, much safer system programming language by the name of Rust (as featured quite a few times on this podcast in the past - check out the back catalog for the details). Even if you're not a kernel dev check out the episode if you're interested in kernel programming or the use of Rust in system programming in general.
Links:
- S02E27: The Internet Security Research Group
In this episode Martin and Chris host Sarah Gran and Josh Aas of the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). The ISRG is home to such little-known projects :-) such as Let's Encrypt and Prossimo, an approach to rewrite some of the most important pieces of the Internet infrastructure including the Network Time Protocol (NTP) and cURL in a memory-safe language (spoiler alert: details in the episode). So even if you're not running a website where the SSL certificates come from Let's Encrypt: You don't want to miss this episode!
Links:
- S02E26: The Grumpy Old Coders DejaVu
This episode is host to the Grumpy Old Coders (GoCs) once again. This dynamic duo consisting of David Meier and Thomas Glaser has made appearances in the past, but this instalment is the one to rule them. You want move this to the very top of your podcatcher's playlist for some serious discussion about the world in general (especially Redis :-), free software in particular and some very dark, ie. really black, humour. Plus bonus content. For example, who's the active one between the two of them. And thoughts about the ultimate monetisation strategy.
Links:
- S02E25: The CHAOSS project
This episode is host to Dawn Foster and Sean Goggins from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software (CHAOSS) project, an endeavour to ensure a quality baseline for FLOSS. If you ever wanted to know what chaos(s) really is, how introduce it into your FLOSS developer existence or just curious about chaos never mind quality of FLOSS, you don't want to miss this episode.
Links:
- S02E24: An Interview with Kris Moore
This episode is host to a BSD veteran by the name of Kris Moore. So for the hipsters among you, this trip down memory lane (and more!) explains to where distros such as FreeBSD and friends all come from (to some extend :-). Plus more insights on TrueNAS, why Linux preempted BSD (not only here:-) and long forgotten projects such as GlusterFS, PC-BSD and MacOS. Did I hear you ask: "MacOS?!?!?". Fear not, all will be revealed - just listen to the episode (lame attempt at episode marketing :-).
Links:
- S02E23: The Halloween episode
This year's Halloween episode has it all: Our two ageing heroes being together once again in a secret location and rambling about free, libre open source software, philosophy and other nonsense, The Darkside Tech Support Halloween sketch (the longest one ever in the history of Linux Inlaws), Moloch, God and her call center, Buddha, Vlad the Impaler and a cast of thousands of supporting characters (/usr/bin/bc just ran out of battery power, so this number may be wrong). Even if you're not religious - you don't want to miss this episode!
Links:
The following artistic content is used as part of the production of this podcast: "Salut Margot" by Bluesy Roosters (intro and outro music), "Flow" by Twin Flames (section separation) and "Sweet Justice" by Celestial Grounds (The Darkside Tech Support); all material licensed under CC-BY-SA. The Inlaws would like to thank these artists for making their work available for the revolution and other fine purposes.
All content licensed under
The DarkSide Tech Support (DSTS)
The DSTS is loosely inspired by the Bastard Operator From Hell,
where a somewhat misguided support specialist tends to break all hell loose on innocent callers who expect help
and guidance on various computer problems. In contrast to this purely fictional prototype, the DSTS deals with
real-world problems such as rewriting history aided by computers, how American presidents tackle virus issues and
how an ancient Egyptian pharaoh tries to remedy the seven plagues inflicted on his empire by talking to God herself.
More episodes in the making - stay tuned!
Similar to other parts of the show, DSTS welcomes listeners' suggestion about topics they would like
to see covered. So if you have a plague you cannot get rid of or need divine intervention otherwise, don't
hesitate to send us a mail.
Contact
Joking aside, we do appreciate feedback. So please email us at feedback@linuxinlaws.eu
Or you can follow us on Mastodon (fosstodon.org)
Or talk to us at various open source events!