Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the humble vacuum cleaner.You definitely don't want to be in a situation where a shop vac would be the solution to your problem and you do not have a shop vac. Also these are "not a scam." In the news, necrobotic spiders are a thing, Amazon continues to rush toward being a full-on dystopian megacorb, and Netflix has 90 seconds to get your attention.

Tonight on GeekNights we discuss Software as a Service (SaaS). This is one of the most lucrative, important, and enduring ways software is created and sold. In the news, a chess robot attacked a kid, Amazon buys One Medical as we edge ever closer to cyber-capitalist dystopia, Minecraft (rightly) bans blockchain (and nothing of value was lost), and warming rivers due to human-caused climate change threaten the nuclear power that is crucial to transition us off of fossil fuels.

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider refrigeration. In the news, the illegitimate Supreme Court of the United States has taken away basic human rights, Google Hangouts is shutting down, and Google is merging Meet and Duo.

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss the Google engineer who thinks the AI has come to life. It's a LaMDA, and one Blake Lemoine has made some extraordinary claims. In the news, the Rangers had a good run, Meet Web Push for Safari, New York wins a right to repair, and everybody is having fun with DALL E.

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider scanners. Ancient devices used to convert paper documents and photos into files on computers, often using something called TWAIN. For many consumers, they have been replaced by "smart phones." In the news, NVIDIA releases open source GPU drivers, hell has frozen over, Russia appears to have lost custody of a relatively intact Krasukha-4.

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider tech debt. Where it comes from, what it means, and what you can do about it. Rym's made a career of owning and addressing the tech debt of legacy systems, and there aren't really "correct" answers here. In the news, Microsoft is offering an Edge VPN, Ukrainian drones are shockingly effective against the Russian Navy, and you should check your home to see if it has any of these strange old holes.

Also don't forget that the GeekNights Book Club is a thing!

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about display cables. The standards can be confusing, S-Video was not that common, VGA was king for a long long time, and we grew up in the days of RF. In the news, web scraping is perfectly legal, the bad man is trying (and failing) to buy Twitter, and Rym got a 3080Ti.