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Software Engineering Daily

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Software Daily: The world through the lens of software.

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Jan 27, 2021 · 52 min
Reinforcement Learning and Robotics with Nathan Lambert
Reinforcement learning is a paradigm in machine learning that uses incentives- or “reinforcement”- to drive learning. The learner is conceptualized as an intelligent agent working within a system of rewards and penalties in order to solve a novel problem. The agent is designed to maximize rewards while pursuing a solution by trial-and-error. Programming a system to respond to the complex and unpredictable “real world” is one of the principal challenges in robotics engineering. One field which is finding new applications for reinforcement learning is the study of MEMS devices- robots or other electronic devices built at the micrometer scale. The use of reinforcement learning in microscopic devices poses a challenging engineering problem, due to constraints with power usage and computational power. Nathan Lambert is a PhD student at Berkeley who works with the Berkeley Autonomous Microsystems Lab. He has also worked at Facebook AI Research and Tesla. He joins the show today to talk about the application of reinforcement learning to robotics and how deep learning is changing the MEMS device landscape. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 25, 2021 · 53 min
Pre Seed Investing with Gaurav Jain
For startups that are still seeking product/market fit, pre-seed investments are critical to funding initial investments in the product and in the infrastructure needed to scale. Afore Capital is a pre-seed fund that invests in innovative companies across a wide variety of verticals. Afore focuses on startups with unique product insights and novel distribution approaches. Gaurav Jain is a co-Founder and Managing Partner at Afore Capital. Before that, he worked with the Android team at Google. Gaurav joins the show today to talk about the risks and rewards of pre-seed investing, and about how founders and investors can find opportunity in the current venture environment. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 22, 2021 · 52 min
Redpanda: Kafka Alternative with Alexander Gallego
Kafka has achieved widespread popularity as a popular distributed queue and event streaming platform, with enterprise adoption and a billion dollar company (Confluent) built around it. But could there be value in building a new platform from scratch? Redpanda is a streaming platform built to be compatible with Kafka, that does not require the JVM nor Zookeeper, both of which are dependencies that made Kafka harder to work with than perhaps necessary. Alexander Gallego is a core committer to Redpanda and joins the show to talk about why he started the project and its value proposition. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 21, 2021 · 37 min
Machine Learning Carbon Capture with Diego Saez-Gil
Companies can have a negative impact on the environment by outputting excess carbon. Many companies want to reduce their net carbon impact to zero, which can be done by investing in forests. Pachama is a marketplace for forest investments. Pachama uses satellites, imaging, machine learning, and other techniques to determine how much carbon is being absorbed by different forests. Diego Saez-Gil is a founder of Pachama, and joins the show to talk through how Pachama works and the long-term goals of the company. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 20, 2021 · 46 min
Rust and Go Research with Linhai Song
Rust and Golang are two of the newest lower level languages for doing systems programming. They are often used for applications such as file systems, operating systems, and latency-sensitive applications. How do they compare in terms of safety, speed, and programming ergonomics? Linhai Song is an assistant professor and researcher at Penn State University, and joins the show to talk about his work researching Go and Rust. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 19, 2021 · 48 min
Dgraph: Native GraphQL Database with Manish Jain
GraphQL has changed the common design patterns for the interface between backend and frontend. This is usually achieved by the presence of a GraphQL server, which interprets and federates a query from the frontend to the backend server infrastructure. Dgraph is a distributed graph database with native GraphQL support. Manish Jain is a founder of Dgraph, and joins the show to talk about its purpose and his vision for the future of the technology. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 15, 2021 · 56 min
Smart Agriculture with David Potere
Agriculture infrastructure allows plants such as corn, soy, and wheat to move from large scale farms to consumers all around the world. The relevant players in the agricultural infrastructure includes growers, shippers, and planners. These individuals need new technology to interact more efficiently. Growers need to be able to connect more smoothly with buyers. Farmers need better management of their carbon credits. Microbial technology can allow plants to be better shielded from tough conditions. Agricultural health, transport, commerce, and logistics are all problems that Indigo Agriculture is focused on solving. David Potere is head of geoinnovation at Indigo, and joins the show to talk about the problems the company is solving and the engineering practices at Indigo. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 14, 2021 · 48 min
Network Discovery with HD Moore
Network discovery allows enterprises to identify what devices are on their network. These devices can include smartphones, servers, desktop computers, and tablets. Being able to index the devices on a network is crucial to figuring out the security profile of that network. HD Moore is a founder of Rumble Networks, a company focused on network discovery and asset inventory. He joins the show to talk about how network discovery works and his experience building Rumble. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 13, 2021 · 49 min
Big Tech with Alex Kantrowitz
Large technology companies are a new type of industry. Their power and reach is resistant to a comparison of previous generations, such as big oil. Alex Kantrowitz is a journalist who has covered big technology for much of his career, and he currently runs Big Technology, a newsletter and podcast about the biggest technology companies in the world. He’s also the author of “Always Day One: How The Tech Titans Plan To Stay On Top Forever”. Alex joins the show to talk about his work and share his thoughts on big tech.
Jan 12, 2021 · 50 min
Kubecost with Webb Brown
Cost management is growing in importance for companies that want to manage their significant cloud bill. Kubernetes plays an increasing role in modern infrastructure, so managing cost of Kubernetes clusters becomes important as well. Kubecost is a company focused on giving visibility into Kubernetes resources and reducing spend. Webb Brown is a founder of Kubecost and joins the show to talk about Kubernetes cost optimization and what he is building with Kubecost. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 11, 2021 · 43 min
TensorFlow Lite with Pete Warden
TensorFlow Lite is an open source deep learning framework for on-device inference. TensorFlow Lite was designed to improve the viability of machine learning applications on phones, sensors, and other IoT devices. Pete Warden works on TensorFlow Lite at Google and joins the show to talk about the world of machine learning applications and the necessary frameworks and devices necessary to build them. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 8, 2021 · 38 min
Data Observability with Barr Moses and Lior Gavish
Data lakes and data warehouses store high volumes of multidimensional data. Data sources for these pieces of infrastructure can become unreliable for a variety of reasons. When data sources break, it can cause downstream problems. One company working to solve the problem of data reliability is Monte Carlo Data. Barr Moses and Lior Gavish are founders of Monte Carlo and join the show to talk about data reliability and the overall landscape of data infrastructure. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 7, 2021 · 58 min
Vendia: Serverless and Blockchains with Tim Wagner and David Wells
When Tim Wagner worked at Amazon, he invented AWS Lambda. After working on the early serverless infrastructure, he joined Coinbase and worked as VP of Engineering. Since leaving Coinbase, he has started a new company called Vendia. Vendia combines his learnings from the serverless space with the innovations around blockchains to work on the problem of data sharing. Tim and David Wells join the show to discuss what they are working on with Vendia. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 6, 2021 · 37 min
Serverless Revolution with Tyler McMullen
Serverless has grown in popularity over the last five years, and the space of applications that can be built entirely with serverless has increased dramatically. This is due to two factors: the growing array of serverless tools (such as edge-located key value stores) and the rising number of companies with serverless offerings. One of those companies is Fastly, which originally gained adoption for its CDN solution. Tyler McMullen is the CTO of Fastly and he joins the show to talk through how Fastly looks at edge computing today. This is Tyler’s third appearance on the show. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 5, 2021 · 52 min
WebAssembly on IoT with Jonathan Beri (Repeat)
Originally published July 30, 2019 “Internet of Things” is a term used to describe the increasing connectivity and intelligence of physical objects within our lives. IoT has manifested within enterprises under the term “Industrial IoT,” as wireless connectivity and machine learning have started to improve devices such as centrifuges, conveyor belts, and factory robotics. In the consumer space, IoT has moved slower than many people expected, and it remains to be seen when we will have widespread computation within consumer devices such as microwaves, washing machines, and lightswitches. IoT computers have different constraints than general purpose computers. Security, reliability, battery life, power consumption, and cost structures are very different in IoT devices than in your laptop or smartphone. One technology that could solve some of the problems within IoT is WebAssembly, a newer binary instruction format for executable programs. Jonathan Beri is a software engineer and the organizer of the San Francisco WebAssembly Meetup. He has significant experience in the IoT industry, and joins the show to discuss the state of WebAssembly, the surrounding technologies, and their impact on IoT. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Jan 4, 2021 · 54 min
Facebook GraphQL with Lee Byron (Repeat)
Originally published July 19, 2019 In 2011, Facebook had begun to focus its efforts on mobile development. Mobile phones did not have access to reliable, high bandwidth connections, and the Facebook engineering team needed to find a solution to improve the request latency between mobile clients and the backend Facebook infrastructure. One source of latency was recursive data fetching. If a mobile application client made a request to the backend for newsfeed, the backend API would return the newsfeed, but some components of that feed would require additional requests to the backend. In practice, this might result in a newsfeed loading partially on a phone, but having a delayed loading time for the comments of a newsfeed item. GraphQL is a solution that came out of this problem of recursive data fetching. A GraphQL server provides middleware to aggregate all of the necessary information to serve a complete request. GraphQL connects to backend data sources and federates the frontend request across these different data sources. GraphQL was open sourced in 2015, and has found many use cases in addition to simplifying backend data fetching for mobile clients. Today, GraphQL is used by PayPal, Shopify, Twitter, and hundreds of other companies. Lee Byron is the co-creator of GraphQL and he joins the show to tell the story of GraphQL, and how it fit into Facebook’s shift to mobile. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Dec 30, 2020 · 52 min
Cloud-Native Applications with Cornelia Davis (Repeat)
Originally published September 13, 2019 Amazon Web Services first came out in 2006. It took several years before the software industry realized that cloud computing was a transformative piece of technology. Initially, the common perspective around cloud computing was that it was a useful tool for startups, but would not be a smart option for large, established businesses. Cloud computing was not considered economical nor secure. Today, that has changed. Every company that writes software is figuring out how to utilize the cloud. Software companies with on-prem servers are migrating old applications to the cloud, and most companies that have started in the last decade do not even have physical servers. Applications that are started on the cloud are referred to as “cloud-native.” The architecture of cloud-native applications is a newer topic of discussion, and some software patterns that became established in the pre-cloud era make less sense today. Cornelia Davis is VP of technology at Pivotal and the author of Cloud Native Patterns, a book about developing applications in the distributed, virtual world of the cloud. Cornelia was previously on the show to discuss Cloud Foundry. In today’s episode, our conversation centers on her book, and her perspective on the emerging patterns of cloud native software. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Dec 29, 2020 · 48 min
Kubernetes vs. Serverless with Matt Ward (Repeat)
Originally published May 29, 2020 Kubernetes has become a highly usable platform for deploying and managing distributed systems. The user experience for Kubernetes is great, but is still not as simple as a full-on serverless implementation--at least, that has been a long-held assumption. Why would you manage your own infrastructure, even if it is Kubernetes? Why not use autoscaling Lambda functions and other infrastructure-as-a-service products? Matt Ward is a listener of the show and an engineer at Mux, a company that makes video streaming APIs. He sent me an email that said Mux has been having success with self-managed Kubernetes infrastructure, which they deliberately opted for over a serverless deployment. I wanted to know more about what shaped this decision to opt for self-managed infrastructure, and the costs and benefits that Mux has accrued as a result. Matt joins the show to talk through his work at Mux, and the architectural impact of opting for Kubernetes instead of fully managed serverless infrastructure. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Dec 28, 2020 · 54 min
Drishti: Deep Learning for Manufacturing with Krish Chaudhury (Repeat)
Originally published April 17, 2019 Drishti is a company focused on improving manufacturing workflows using computer vision. A manufacturing environment consists of assembly lines. A line is composed of sequential stations along that manufacturing line. At each station on the assembly line, a worker performs an operation on the item that is being manufactured. This type of workflow is used for the manufacturing of cars, laptops, stereo equipment, and many other technology products. With Drishti, the manufacturing process is augmented by adding a camera at each station. Camera footage is used to train a machine learning model for each station on the assembly line. That machine learning model is used to ensure the accuracy and performance of each task that is being conducted on the assembly line. Krish Chaudhury is the CTO at Drishti. From 2005 to 2015 he led image processing and computer vision projects at Google before joining Flipkart, where he worked on image science and deep learning for another four years. Krish had spent more than twenty years working on image and vision related problems when he co-founded Drishti. In today’s episode, we discuss the science and application of computer vision, as well as the future of manufacturing technology and the business strategy of Drishti. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
Dec 24, 2020 · 58 min
Complacency with Tyler Cowen (Repeat)
Originally published April 7, 2017 Engineers in Silicon Valley see a world of constant progress. Our work is creative and intellectually challenging. We are building the future and getting compensated quite well for it. But what if we are actually achieving far less than what is possible? What if, after so many years of high margins, gourmet lunch, and self-flattery, we have lowered our standards for innovation? And if Silicon Valley has been lulled into complacency, what does that say about the rest of the United States? American exceptionalism has faltered and complacency has risen in its wake. Today’s guest Tyler Cowen is an economist and author. His new book The Complacent Class is the final book in a trilogy that describes a decline of American output and a decline in American mindset. Complacent America has lost its ability to assess risk. Children are prevented from playing tag for risk of injury. College students protest against speakers who might present challenging ideas. The number of Americans under 30 who own a business has fallen by 65% since the 1980’s--millennials are too busy going to business school to start businesses. In his books, Tyler weaves together history, philosophy, and contemporary culture. He presents hard data about many different fields, and theorizes about how the trends in those fields relate to each other. He also has a podcast, Conversations with Tyler, and in this episode I tried to mirror his interview style. If you like this episode, you should check out his show--he has interviewed people like Ezra Klein, Peter Thiel, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com

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