Beyond the Hype

In this episode, Colin is joined by Rebecca Rumbul, CEO of Rust Foundation, and Mirko Boehm from Linux Foundation Europe. Between them, they have decades of experience in open source. They start by discussing the critical role open source has grown to play in the world of software and how this, along with its growing complexity, presents significant challenges. They then turn their attention to the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), a piece of EU legislation that is actively under development, designed to make end-user products more secure. Early drafts of this act detailed significant obligations on open source maintainers, despite the fact that they often work without financial reward. This caused concern, fear and some anger in the open source community. They discuss the latest update to the CRA, which has thankfully addressed these concerns, and ponder whether it will actually solve the problems it has set out to tackle. Links from the podcast: Panel Discussion: The Impact of the CRA on the Open Source Ecosystem – Cheukting, Mirko & Greg, Laura, Justin, Philip The EU's new Cyber Resilience Act is about to tell us how to code – Bert Hubert's writings Will the Cyber Resilience Act help the European ICT sector compete? Understanding the Cyber Resilience Act: What Everyone involved in Open Source Development Should Know EU CRA: What does it mean for open source? – Bert Hubert's writings  The EU's Proposed CRA Law May Have Unintended Consequences for the Python Ecosystem

In this episode, Oliver and Peter from Scott Logic are joined by Laura Bell Main, CEO and co-founder of SafeStack, for a lively discussion on DevSecOps. They touch on techniques such as “assume breach” and “shift left”, and the relationship to DevOps, which is trying to solve a similar problem. However, much of the discussion focused quite simply on security and the challenges this presents, especially when this so often falls to a very small team or an individual. Laura mentioned OneHourAppSec at the end of the recording. It’s a free appsec program that helps software teams worldwide bring security to their software development lifecycle in just one hour per sprint. You can join at any time, from anywhere. She’d love you to check it out. Links from the podcast: The Assume Breach Paradigm  Shift left vs shift right: A DevOps mystery solved  

Bailey Hayes and Sean Isom delve into the origins of WebAssembly, its potential beyond the browser, and the Component Model breaking language barriers. They discuss comparisons to Docker, secure default settings, and upcoming events. The podcast explores WebAssembly's role in web development, low adoption rates, and expanding use cases outside browsers. They highlight its performance benefits, language ecosystem unification, and simplified application deployment.

In this episode, Colin Eberhardt is joined by colleagues Oliver Cronk, Chris Price and James Heward for a lively debate on whether the latest advances in generative AI are going to threaten our jobs – are we going to be made redundant by our own creation? The discussion starts with a quick summary of the latest advances in AI, and considers the nascent reasoning capabilities these models exhibit. The discussion then explores the various tasks and roles required to build software applications, and considers the impact this technology will have. Links from the podcast: AI is morphing from tool to platform (and the next technology epoch begins) – some personal reflections on the impact of this technology Catching up with OpenAI – a quick update on the most recent advances and research from OpenAI An OpenAI API primer – a three-part series that covers explores the API, explaining concepts such as few-shot learning Sam Altman: OpenAI CEO on GPT-4, ChatGPT, and the Future of AI – Lex Fridman and Sam Altman chat about the future of AI Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4 – Researchers find that GPT4 is more than just a text generation engine

In this episode – the second of a two-parter – Oliver Cronk and Colin Eberhardt talk to Denis Mandich, CTO of Qrypt, a company that creates quantum-secure encryption products. Their conversation covers the perils of bad random number generation, which undermines our security protocols, and the growing threat that Quantum Computers will ultimately render our current cryptographic techniques useless – an event dubbed ‘Y2Q’, in a nod to the Y2K issue we faced over twenty years ago. Links from the podcast: Qrypt – the company where Denis is CTO A 'Blockchain Bandit' Is Guessing Private Keys and Scoring Millions Y2Q: quantum computing and the end of internet security

In this episode – the first of a two-parter – Colin Eberhardt and Oliver Cronk talk to Denis Mandich, CTO of Qrypt, a company that creates quantum-secure encryption products. Denis is also a physicist and has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to Quantum Computing.  Their conversation covers the physics that underpins this technology, including the strange concepts of superposition and entanglement. They cover the practical aspects of cloud-based Quantum Computers and what can be achieved today through circuit design. Finally, they look to the future to discuss the impact this breakthrough technology is likely to have. Links from the podcast: Qrypt – the company where Denis is CTO Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe – a fantastic lecture from the Royal Institution that gives a detailed, yet accessible, introduction to Quantum physics Einstein’s "Spooky Action at a Distance" Paradox Older Than Thought – some good background on the Einstein quote Qiskit – IBM's open source toolkit for creating quantum circuits

In this episode, Colin Eberhardt is joined by his colleague, Oliver Cronk, and Chris Booth from NatWest for a lively discussion about the much-hyped ChatGPT. They discuss the origins of this technology and the recent advances that contributed to its success. From there, they look at the new discipline of prompt engineering, and how this approach has democratised access to cutting-edge AI. They also consider the emotive response they feel towards this technology, and the shared belief that this is going to be huge! As this podcast aims to look ‘beyond the hype’, they also talk about practical applications and the limitations of this technology. Links from the podcast: ELIZA - one of the earliest attempts at creating a conversational AI Attention Is All You Need - the paper that describes the GPT-series architecture  An OpenAI API primer - a three-part series that covers explores the API, explaining concepts such as few-shot learning Prompt Engineering GitHub Copilot – an AI programming pair, based on a large language model WebGPT - Improving the Factual Accuracy of Language Models through Web Browsing

In this episode, Colin Eberhardt is joined by colleagues Oliver Cronk, Peter Chamberlin and Chris Price for a lively discussion about blockchain. They start by looking at the mechanics of bitcoin and the economic incentive model formed by proof of work consensus. From there, they discuss enterprise or permission blockchain, which leads them to discuss some specific use cases – for example, the oil market supply-chain challenges. They also discuss technologies which are blockchain-like, but prefer not to use that term. Finally, they ask themselves the question, is blockchain just hype? Spoiler alert: for the most part the answer is yes – this is hype! Links from the podcast: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System – Satoshi Nakamoto The DAO Video: Streamlining physical energy post-trade processes – Etienne Amic (CEO Vakt.io) Building the first enterprise blockchain platform – Lucy Kurian & Shodhan Sheth Certificate Transparency

In this episode, Colin Eberhardt is joined for a discussion about Web3 by his colleague Oliver Cronk, and guests Johanna Eiramo from the Finnish National Gallery, and Lilly Pencheva, a Blockchain & Web3 Specialist. As it’s quite a challenging and volatile topic, we should state that the opinions raised in this podcast are personal views rather than the views of any current or former employer. In the discussion, they ask the question “What is Web3?” and explore what it means to be a decentralised technology. They discuss the metaverse, Roblox and other virtual environments, and very briefly touch on Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). But for the most part, they talk about exploration and innovation. They begin the discussion with Johanna talking about bringing digital artwork into the virtual world of the metaverse, and the Finnish National Gallery’s motivation for experimenting with technology. Links from the podcast: Our (museum) eyes are focused on the future The Finnish Metagallery Decentraland What is Web3 and why is it important? The Ethereum Merge Can Web3 beat public cloud?

In this episode, Simon Martin, Chris Price and Rob Pilling share their interest and insights into Rust. This relatively new programming language has caught the attention of the development community, being voted the ‘most-loved’ language seven years in a row in the StackOverflow survey. They discuss a wide range of topics, including what it means to be a system-programming language, and what brought each of them to Rust. They ponder what it is that makes a programming language successful and, given this, consider what the future might hold for Rust. We pick up the conversation where Chris is trying to describe the nature of Rust through a bicycle metaphor. Yes, really… and we find out later in the podcast that this metaphor works surprisingly well. Links from the podcast: Nerd Sniping - xkcd webcomic StackOverflow 2022 Survey - most-loved language WebAssembly Asynchronous Programming in Rust