In this episode, Ian and Ash plunge headfirst into the wild world of “vibe coding” - where developers surrender to the AI gods and trust whatever code they spit out! Watch in horror as our intrepid hosts debate whether letting AI write your code without checking it is just weekend fun or a recipe for cybersecurity disaster. Marvel as semantic diffusion transforms innocent terms into tech industry nightmares before your very ears! Will Ian’s adamant defence of the original definition save the term from the clutches of corporate jargon, or is he just fighting against the vibe?

But wait, there’s more! The dynamic duo then migrates to the fresh pastures of Bluesky, the social media platform where exiled Twitter users now frolic freely. Gasp as they navigate the thorny thickets of free speech absolutism, moderation policies, and Jack Dorsey’s digital flounce! Between debating buttons that lead to nowhere and dreaming of Figma-specific content filters, Ian and Ash once again prove that in the chaotic landscape of tech, sometimes you just have to read the diffs, and sometimes you have to vibe your way through it all.

But what do you think? Have your say on Bluesky

Links

• The Clangers and the clip from the episode "Goods" whence sprung our name (2m 40s watch).
• Leeds Testing Atelier, at which we are recording a Live Episode of What A Lot Of Things!
• Andrej Karpathy on X: Vibe coding
• Claude Code and Cursor (and Github Copilot)
• TechCrunch: TurinTech reveals $20M in backing to fix problems in ‘vibe coding’
• Simon Willison: Semantic Diffusion (and Wikipedia article on Semantic satiation)
• ThoughtWorks: Fuzz Testing
• YouTube: Interview with vibe coder 2025
• leojr94_ on X: “guys, i’m under attack”
• Wikipedia: Fuzz testing
• Bluesky, the AT Protocol, and Bluesky starter packs (and Mastodon).
• Fast Company: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber on her company’s ascendant year and what she’s planning next or you can read a more ad-free version of the article including Ian's highlights.
• Ian Dunt, now on Bluesky
• Wikipedia article on Freedom of Speech
• Quote Investigator on "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" and "My Customers Would Have Asked For a Faster Horse"

In this episode, Ian and Ash embark on a thoroughly British adventure through the land of presentation software, complete with the obligatory post-implementation complaining. Marvel as Ian delivers a monumental discourse on PowerPoint crimes, Keynote superiority, and why Comic Sans should be punishable by “a damn good encouragement.”

Meanwhile, Ash provides a heartfelt eulogy for Skype, Microsoft’s once-beloved communication tool that’s being put out to digital pasture this May, only to be replaced by its demonstrably worse offspring, Teams.

Between passionate debates about slide etiquette and whether “post-amble” should be a real word, our intrepid hosts ponder why big companies buy innovative tools only to slowly suffocate them, contemplate the future of VR meetings with battery life measured in minutes, and propose a spin-off podcast called “Terrible Product-Type Meetings.” All delivered with the quintessential British approach of having an idea, implementing it, and then complaining about it afterwards – just as nature intended.

Links

• Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
• Rethinking the Presentation: Ian’s presentation opus astonishingly preserved on Slideshare from 2009.
• Apple’s Keynote and Microsoft’s Powerpoint. Oh and Google Slides.
• Fonts: Arial and, er… Comic Sans
• Sir Ken Robinson’s iconic TED talk: Do schools kill creativity?
• Toastmasters
• The Thick of It (watch on iPlayer) and In The Loop, both by Armando Iannucci, and featuring Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker
• Difficult difficult lemon difficult.
• The Register: Non-biz Skype kicks the bucket on May 5
• BBC: Microsoft announces Skype will close in May
• Weekend Testing
• Microsoft with the world’s highest cookie consent form to press release size ratio: The next chapter: Moving from Skype to Microsoft Teams
• The Team Guide to Software Testability by Rob Meaney and our very own Ash Winter
• Meta’s Horizon Workrooms Virtual Office and Meetings and Ian’s VR experiments in using it with Dan Hammond
• Lawyer cat filter mishap

In Episode 29, Ian and Ash venture into the wild frontiers of video podcasting, with Ian's "door and chair" background sure to be nominated for design awards. The pair tackle the thorny art of story splitting, with Ash confessing his frustration at watching teams scramble around massive requirements like ants on a dropped ice cream cone. Meanwhile, Ian suggests testers might be uniquely positioned to lead such efforts, having "a clear foot in each domain" – or as Ash quips, possibly Schrödinger-like properties.

The mood darkens as Ian reveals Apple's "deeply disappointed" (not "gravely disappointed" – an important semantic distinction) announcement about disabling UK encryption features following secretive government demands. Our hosts explore the concerning implications, suggesting this puts the UK's surveillance powers closer to China than democratic peers, while wondering if police might soon arrive because "computer said nick."

Between discussions of HP's spectacular customer service own-goal (forcing callers to wait 15 minutes even when operators were available), Ian's surprisingly positive experiences with Claude Code AI, and the shocking revelation that they're podcast royalty in Côte d'Ivoire (top 10!) and Cameroon (top 100!), our hosts deliver an episode that proves that story splitting may be challenging, but splitting hairs about levels of disappointment is an art form unto itself.

Links

• The Register: HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls, and then ditches it.
• Live Multicam in Final Cut Pro for iPad
• What A Lot Of Things on Bluesky, and our podcast hosting service Transistor.
• The Humanizing Work Guide to Splitting User Stories
• Mike Cohn: Five Story-Splitting Mistakes and How to Stop Making Them
• Conway's Law (wikipedia) which explains why heavily delineated technical teams (front-end, back-end, database) end up splitting work along those same boundaries rather than by user-pathway centred flows.
• Youtube: Introducing Claude Code, and Claude Code: Overview
• Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection in the United Kingdom to new users
• Matthew Green: Three questions about Apple, encryption, and the U.K.
• UKGov: Investigatory Powers Act 2016, and its Wikipedia entry.
• Edward Snowden (wikipedia) and Uber's God View (The Guardian)
• ...and, of course, Cynefin.