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2 min read

v3.8_bonus: Eventosterone and AI-generated hyperslop

A large pile of rubbish at a dump.
The internet is still trash, but now it's AI-generated. Photo by Evan Demicoli / Unsplash

It’s time for more techin’ legends and techin’ eejits with Jenny and Elaine! (You can decide which category we fit for yourselves...)

As usual, our bonus content is for HeadStuff+ subscribers only, so you’ll have to sign up to listen if you haven’t already.

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And if you aren’t a subscriber, you’ll be missing out on our celebration of Irish space-tech. Last week, Dublin company Réaltra had a role to play in the European Space Agency’s Ariane 6 rocket launch and Irish waveforms expert Dr Anna Heffernan was revealed to be part of the ESA’s LISA mission, which will launch an observatory into space to study gravitational waves. 🚀

It’s a testament to the reputation of Ireland’s space-tech sector, which includes many companies such as Enbio, ÉireComposites, Enovus Labs and Lios, not to mention the student-led EIRSAT-1 team who successfully launched Ireland’s first satellite last year. We didn’t even have time to mention Dr Norah Patten, who is soon to be the first Irish person in space! 👩🏻‍🚀

As regular listeners will know, we are big fans of space-tech (we even got the inside story on EIRSAT-1 in one of last season’s bonus episodes) and robots, which have been a persistent theme of this season’s bonus content – almost as much as AI, though that’s definitely more of a love-hate relationship. Thanks to the reincarnation of The Unofficial Apple Weblog, we even have a new name for the genAI sludge now populating the internet: plagiarised hyperslop. (The Verge did a great deep dive on this that is well worth a read.)

And if you think ‘hyperslop’ is too harsh...

Also, ever since Canva Cringe, we’ve not been a fan of bombastic tech events, and Jenny has coined the phrase ‘eventosterone’ to describe this form of aggressive eventing. And it’s definitely contagious, as Bolt’s Summer Summit proves. 🎶

That’s it until we’re back in the main feed next week with an all-new episode. In the meantime, here’s a look at the giant Gundam robot in Japan which, sadly, has taken its last bow. 🦾