Beyond the Hype Scott Logic

In this episode, Colin Eberhardt is joined by Jess McEvoy and Peter Chamberlin, who have both spent many years in senior roles within public sector organisations.
Their conversation covers the excitement and concerns around AI, both from a citizen's perspective and for those building public services. They discuss the UK government’s approach to addressing AI challenges with its pro-innovation mantra, and whether this creates the right environment for success. They also touch on the need for global cooperation when tackling what are increasingly becoming global challenges.
Links from this episode
A guide to using artificial intelligence in the public sector 
National AI Strategy (PDF)
A pro-innovation approach to AI
Prime Minister's speech on AI: 26 October 2023
The Bletchley Declaration – November 2023
Policy implications of artificial intelligence (AI) 
A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation: government response 
AI Safety Institute - Third progress report

In this episode, Oliver Cronk, Andrew Carr and David Hope talk about the ever-changing world of data, with conversations moving from data warehouse to data lake, and data mesh to data fabric. They discuss the importance of data ownership and common tooling, and their view that data mesh is an approach rather than an architecture.
Links from the podcast
Data Mesh by Zhamak Dehghani
Data Fabric as Modern Data Architecture by Alice LaPlante
Principles of Data Fabric by Sonia Mezzetta

In this episode, Oliver Cronk is joined by experts including Jeremy Axe, Group CTO at DS Smith, and consultants Darren Smith and Katie Davis from Scott Logic. Together, they unpack topics like the energy usage and carbon emissions of IT infrastructure, the challenges in accurately measuring sustainability, and whether claims of ‘green tech’ are substantiated or just hype.
The conversation covers the nuances around operational versus embodied carbon emissions, the sustainability trade-offs involved in cloud versus on-premises hosting, and the need for transparency and standards around eco-friendly tech claims.
Links from the podcast Proposed Technology Carbon Standard – open sourced by Scott Logic under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence
Scott Logic blog posts on Sustainability – including the Conscientious Computing series
DS Smith's approach to sustainability
Scott Logic’s approach to supporting technology sustainability

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
 

In this episode, Colin Eberhardt is joined by Bailey Hayes from Cosmonic and Sean Isom from Adobe – between them, they have a wealth of WebAssembly experience and insights.
They start by discussing the early days of WebAssembly, and where it all began, in the browser. They debate the infamous tweet that compares WebAssembly to Docker, and look at the future promise of the Component Model, which aims to break down language barriers.
Given the amount of activity happening in the WebAssembly/WASI/Component Model space, there are a few upcoming events you might be interested in:
WasmCon, 6-7 Sept
Componentize the World Hackathon, 8 Sept
Enjoy this episode!
Links from the podcast:
WebAssembly nanoprocesses: making WebAssembly outside-the-browser secure by default
AutoCAD featured in Google I/O Keynote
WASI - WebAssembly System Interface
How Prime Video updates its app for more than 8,000 device types
Introducing the Disney+ Application Development Kit (ADK)
Bytecode Alliance
If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to created Docker
WebAssembly Component Model
Photoshop's journey to the web
WebAssembly: An Updated Roadmap for Developers