SE Radio 643: Ganesh Datta on Production Readiness

Lukas Gentele, CEO of Loft Labs, joins host Robert Blumen for a discussion of kubernetes vclusters (virtual clusters). A vcluster is a kubernetes cluster that runs kubernetes application on a host kubernetes cluster. The conversation covers: vcluster basics; sharing models; what is owned by the vcluster and what is shared with the host; attached nodes versus shared nodes; the primary use case: multi-tenancy vcluster per tenant; alternatives - namespace per tenant, full cluster per tenant; trade-offs - isolation; less resource use; spin up time; scalability; how many clusters and how many vclusters should an org have? Deployment models for vclusters - helm chart with standard resources; vcluster operator; persistent storage models for vclusters; vcluster snapshotting, recovery, and migration. how many vclusters can run on a cluster? ingress, TLS and DNS. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Matthew Adams, Head of Security Enablement at Citi, joins SE Radio host Priyanka Raghavan to explore the use of large language models in threat modeling, with a special focus on Matthew's work, Stride GPT. The episode kicks off with an overview of threat modeling, its applications, and the stages of the development life cycle where it fits in. They then discuss the STRIDE methodology and strideGPT, highlighting practical examples, the technology stack behind the application, and the tool's inputs and outputs. The show concludes with tips and tricks for optimizing tool outputs and advice on other open source projects that utilize generative AI to bolster cybersecurity defenses. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Praveen Gujar, Director of Product at LinkedIn, joins SE Radio host Kanchan Shringi for a discussion on how generative AI (GenAI) is transforming digital advertising technology platforms. The conversation starts with a look at how GenAI facilitates scalable ad content creation, using self-attention mechanisms for customized ad generation. They explore AI's role in simplifying campaign management, automating tasks such as audience targeting and performance measurement. Praveen emphasizes that ad tech platforms use AI models tailored to different needs leveraging both first-party and third-party data sources, with privacy maintained through methods such as CAPI (conversion API). They also consider the differences between retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and fine-tuning in AI models: Whereas RAG uses brand-specific data at runtime for precise ad content, fine-tuning focuses on broader model optimization. The segment highlights the importance of vector embeddings and vector search in storing and retrieving contextual content. Lastly, Praveen discusses the integration of AI teams within product development to improve collaboration and AI proficiency across organizations. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Matthew Skelton joins host Giovanni Asproni to talk about team topologies—an approach to organizing teams for fast flow of value. The episode starts with a description of the underlying principles before exploring the approach in more detail. From there, they discuss when to consider implementing the approach; keys to a successful implementation; and some common mistakes to avoid. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Vinay Tripathi, a senior network engineer in Google Backbone Engineering and an 18-year network engineering veteran, discusses BGP optimization, a technique that's critical in achieving top goals in distributed applications. Host Philip Winston speaks with Tripathi about BGP, autonomous systems, peer grouping, router hardware and software, software-defined networks, and shared network optimization and debugging stories. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Tim McNamara, a well-known Rust educator, author of Rust in Action (Manning), and a recipient of a Rust Foundation Fellowship in 2023, speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about error handling in Rust. They discuss the errors that Rust prevents, what an error is in Rust, what Tim classes as the "four levels of error handling," and the lifecycle of your journey reaching for them. McNamara explains why Rust handles errors as it does, how it differs from other languages, and what the developer experience is like in dealing with Rust errors. He advocates best practices for error handling, what Result is, the power of Rust Enums, what the question mark operator is, when to unwrap, what Box really means, how to deal with errors across the FFI boundary, and the various Rust error-handling crates that you can use to give you more control. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Ganesh Datta, co-founder of Cortex.io, joins host Robert Blumen for a conversation about production readiness. The conversation covers the history of production readiness; its relationship to microservice architecture; the Google SRE model's impact on production readiness; production readiness checklists; the process; and production readiness transparency.

Simon Wijckmans, founder of c/side -- a company that focuses on monitoring, securing, and optimizing third-party JavaScript -- joins SE Radio host Kanchan Shringi for a conversation about the security risks posed by third-party browser scripts. Through real-world examples and insights drawn from his work in web security, Simon highlights the dangers, including malicious attacks such as the recent Polyfill.io incident. He emphasizes the need for vigilant monitoring, as these third-party scripts remain essential for website functionalities like analytics, chatbots, and ads, despite their potential vulnerabilities. Simon explores the use of self-hosting solutions and content security policies (CSPs) to minimize risks, but he stresses that these measures alone are insufficient to fully safeguard websites.  As the discussion continues, they delve into the importance of layering security approaches. Simon advocates for combining techniques like CSPs, real-time monitoring, and AI-driven analysis, which his company c/side employs to detect and block malicious scripts. He also touches on the complexities of securing single-page applications (SPAs), which allow scripts to persist across pages without full reloads, increasing the attack surface for third-party vulnerabilities. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Catherine Nelson, author of the new O’Reilly book, Software Engineering for Data Scientists, discusses the collaboration between data scientists and software engineers -- an increasingly common pairing on machine learning and AI projects. Host Philip Winston speaks with Nelson about the role of a data scientist, the difference between running experiments in notebooks and building an automated pipeline for production, machine learning vs. AI, the typical pipeline steps for machine learning, and the role of software engineering in data science. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Jonathan Horvath of Z-bit discusses physical access control systems (PACS) with host Jeremy Jung. They start with an overview of PACS components and discuss the proprietary nature of the industry, the slow pace of migration to open standards, and why Windows is commonly used. Jonathan describes the security implications of moving from isolated networks to the cloud, as well as credential vulnerabilities, encryption using symmetric keys versus asymmetric keys, and the risks related to cloning credentials. They also consider several standards, including moving from Wiegand to the Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP), as well as the Public Key Open Credential (PKOC) standard, and the open source OSDP implementation that Jonathan authored. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.