Technology Labs – Details, episodes & analysis

Former member of our Podcast team and Microsoft Cloud Advocate Daniel Laskewitz is now our guest. A great opportunity to check with him the status of Gen-AI at Microsoft. Before we dive into details with Daniel there are some very interesting tech items to discuss. We start with an article on the Verge telling us about how Microsofts Dall-e can filter out specific prompts that could let Copilot generate controversial images (https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/10/24096451/microsoft-blocks-terms-that-could-let-copilot-generate-controversial-images). Local Gen-AI with RAG is something we have been looking at for a long time. Specifically with privacy heavy data (https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/what-is-retrieval-augmented-generation/). A big topic that Microsoft also implements at scale. Further Gen-AI features that Microsoft delivers can be found in the new partnership that is out there with Mistral AI (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-and-mistral-ai-announce-new-partnership-to-accelerate-ai-innovation-and-introduce-mistral-large-first-on-azure/). It really unlocks new Large Language Models to be used by developers.

All-in-all a fun episode to listen to, with some great Gen-AI updates from Microsoft.

Our guest is Finn Lorbeer (Director of Engineering at MOIA). With him we find out why one great performing autonomous car can master autonomous driving. This opposed to a fleet of cars that are 'semi'-autonomous. There are some great examples of traffic jams caused by deadlocked autonomous cars (either stand-alone or with each other).

Our podcast is not complete without tech updates and in this episode we discuss the gadget guide of 2023 (which turns out not to be so innovative) and how AI can help Formula 1 to guard 1000's of track violations in one race (a digital referee of sorts).

Gadget gift list EoY 2023 

https://www.theverge.com/23933231/smart-home-tech-gift-guide-2023-video-doorbells-plugs-robot-vacuums 

Formula 1 uses AI to observe track limits 

https://www.reuters.com/sports/motor-sports/formula-one-trials-ai-tackle-track-limits-breaches-2023-11-23/#:~:text=The%20AI%20will%20sort%20out,and%20speeding%20up%20the%20response. 

Sustainability is a very hot topic right now. In this episode, we will talk with Maheshwar about this subject. Maheshwar is Global Quality Engineering & Testing Sales Leader at Sogeti Global. He has been researching sustainability for a couple of years now. 

During this episode, the following tech items are discussed:

New rules for people in self-driving cars

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61155735

Boring Company raises additional $675 million as investors chuck money into holes in the ground

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/21/23035162/elon-musk-the-boring-company-675-million-funding-series-c-total-vaulation

The term "MLOps" refers to deploying, managing, and monitoring machine learning models in production. It takes best practices from the field of DevOps and utilizes them for the unique challenges that arise running machine learning systems in production. In this episode, MLOps is the main subject. Tia and Ed are our guests and provide valuable insights about this exciting subject! 

During this episode, we discussed the following tech updates:

Spotify Car Thing gets 'add to queue' and call answering features

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/7/23015144/spotify-car-thing-add-to-queue-calls-podcasts

Researchers in Hong Kong create 'soft robot' made of magnetic slime 

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-60961184

Collaborate on code, a 3D print stl-file or CAD drawing or on a document. Github is at the root of all of this. Now the worlds largest collaboration tool and full of features you might not have heard of. Together with Jeff Beehler from Github we talk you trough the basis of Github, find out its latest and greatest features but also how inner source can act as a quality gatekeeper for the outside world.

More information on Github is found on https://github.com. You can build your own Octocat here https://myoctocat.com. A live editor for your mermaid diagrams as used in Github's Copilot: https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid-live-editor/. Collaboration is key and you can learn all about it in this Technology Labs conversation. We always start with a couple of tech updates. Here are the links to what we discussed:

Include diagrams in your Markdown files with Mermaid | The GitHub Blog

https://github.blog/2022-02-14-include-diagrams-markdown-files-mermaid/

Ford makes it easier to 3D-print your own accessories for the Maverick

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/16/22936380/ford-maverick-cupholders-3d-print-accessories-cad-fits

SpaceX lost 40 satelites because of electro-magnetic storm

https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-lost-geomagnetic-storm

The metaverse is one big digital environment and a windmill can be represented by a nice digital wireframe image. Are they digital twins? Together with Jeroen Kersten we take a look at three different instances of a digital twin (digital assets, digital production and digital organisations). A lot of examples come by ranging from the Digital Twin of Sweden for mining transportation optimisation and windmill farm. Digital Twins are not those wireframe or CAD images you sometimes see with some data plotted on them. They ARE data. An elastic knowledge graph or a infinite mind map as Jeroen puts it shows the full potential of the digital twin. Ask your question in the context of the twin you are looking at and all the interconnections and relations become visible, hopefully solving your puzzle. Now only to integrate GPT3 natural language interpretation to these digital twin environments and we can just talk to our models to get the info we want.

It is the Matrix all over the place in this episode of the technology labs podcast. Of course we have a set of technology updates at the start of the podcast and in this case it was about:

Meta’s market value plunges by $230 billion in one day

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/3/22916007/facebook-meta-stock-drop-history-invest

NS en Arriva gaan in- en uitchecken op basis van gps en smartphoneapp testen

https://tweakers.net/nieuws/192850/ns-en-arriva-gaan-in-en-uitchecken-op-basis-van-gps-en-smartphoneapp-testen.html

Netherlands parliament made new law: mandatory updates for digital products

https://www.nu.nl/tech/6181899/tweede-kamer-stemt-in-met-verplicht-leveren-updates-digitale-producten.html

Can Deepa Mamtani do a better prediction on AI for 2022 than AI itself? This is the episode for you to learn more about how AI is taking shape the coming year. Not unsurprisingly generative AI has a place but there is so much more. A little bit more explanation on what you can expect to be doing with machine learning algorithms the coming year is all revealed in this podcast.

Our tech updates cover a variety of topics. The tech this episode spans VR and fun one: Baby shark!

Baby Shark is the first YouTube video to surpass 10 billion views - The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/13/22881970/baby-shark-youtube-video-10-billion-views

VR in home automation

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2022/01/07/android-quest/

In VR, there are no rules, so parents are making up their own.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/10/tech/virtual-reality-parents/index.html

Technology is evolving rapidly. We can hardly keep up with research done on AI and its commercial implications. With AI thought leader Johan Steyn from Johannesburg, South Africa, we discuss the latest developments on AI and automation. During this podcast we talk about current generations not needing a driving license, solar powered headphones, brain interaction and the name change to Meta from Facebook.

Let us know your thoughts on AI or any questions you have on the topics. We are scheduling a series of AI episodes with Johan Steyn. Any questions for him we will make sure to ask him in one of er next podcasts.r

Let us know your thoughts on AI or any questions you have on the topics. We are scheduling a series of AI episodes with Johan Steyn. Any questions for him we will make sure to ask him in one of er next podcasts.

The links to the tech topics are:

Facebook changes its name to Meta as part of company rebrand

https://news.sky.com/story/facebook-changes-its-name-to-meta-as-part-of-company-rebrand-12453440

Solar powered headphones

https://www.theverge.com/22738229/urbanista-los-angeles-solar-powered-noise-cancelling-wireless-headphones-powerfoyle

Bionic limbs

Hugh Herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance

Together with Quantum expert Julian van Velzen we discussed the current state of Quantum computing. We encounter a lot of quantum computing links when discussing heavy computing calculations. In this podcast we take a look to some news items and their link to quantum computing (can you do crypto mining with quantum computing for example). To take things to the next level we even get the improbability drive from the book by Douglas Adams "Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" into our quantum discussion. In under an hour you have your update on quantum in your ears.

Microsoft says it mitigated the largest DDoS attack ever recorded

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/12/22722155/microsoft-azure-biggest-ddos-attack-ever-2-4-tbps

No crypto locks on Intel arc GPU's

https://tweakers.net/nieuws/188022/intel-arc-videokaarten-krijgen-geen-ingebouwde-cryptomininglock.html

James Bond uses Nokia

https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/no-time-to-die

It is not a question of what to automate but when to start with test automation. Vincent Wijnen talks with us on the current state of test automation. Products or applications that are (automatically) tested are evolving rapidly. Should test automation evolve just as fast? Before answering this question, Vincent shows us the values of test automation and that it needs to be quantified. 

Be sure to check out the current state of test automation in the technology labs podcast!

Starting the podcast we always look at some tech updates and in this episode we discuss the take over of MailChimp for $12B. An astonishing amount of money. Is it worth it? New vendors are entering the smart glasses market. Ray-ban, Xiaomi and facebook are busy with this technology. During the podcast Rik even weighs his own glasses to compare it with a smart version. Listen to find out our conclusions!

• Intuit to acquire Mailchimp (Intuit Inc. - Intuit to Acquire Mailchimp)
• Xiaomi shows off concept smart glasses with MicroLED display (https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/14/22673144/xiaomi-smart-glasses-announced-microled-display-ar)
• Ray-ban smart glasses (https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22662809/facebook-ray-ban-stories-camera-smart-glasses-hands-on)