Getting into IT with Grant

Ben Whately is the CSO and co-founder of Memrise.  A psychologist by education, with a Masters in Experimental Psychology from Oxford where he focused on neural networks and computational modelling of human learning, Ben has spent the last 15 years looking at ways to learn and teach languages.

While studying psychology, he formed a theory for why this is, and founded the startup company Memrise in order to bring that theory into reality. He believes that people fundamentally learn languages to connect with other people or because they are enamored of the culture of that language, and Memrise strives to embody this experience of connection.

Ben is also a prolific angel investor, investing in and advising more than 50 companies in the UK startup ecosystem, with a focus on Al, machine learning and climate tech.

In this episode, we talk a lot about how the brain learns a new language as well as Ben's experience founding and growing a startup company.

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Get started with Memrise: https://www.memrise.com

Steve Toy is the CEO of Memrise, a language platform that uses spaced repetition of flashcards to increase the rate of learning, combined with a GPT3-powered "AI Language partner" that allows learners to practice human-like conversations. 

In this episode, Steve and I discuss how Memrise operated throughout the pandemic, the use of technology as a platform for running a language learning company, and how ChatGPT, GPT 3.5, and AI in general is impacting the tech landscape.

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Get started with Memrise: https://www.memrise.com

James Jones is an IT leader and the founder of the QOL Group, a non-profit organization providing support for the disabled.  He is a highly motivational speaker and I was blessed to be able to record an episode with him.

In this episode, James talks about his journey of getting into IT, the importance of emotional intelligence as a manager and leader, and shares experiences from the industry that have left an impact on him both personally and professionally.  We discuss what good leadership looks like, as well as how to be an ally to a diverse workforce, being supportive of people with different backgrounds from ourselves.

No matter your background, there's something we can all learn from James!

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Connect with James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-jones-m-jur-mim-mis-csm-sa-0231a47

Support QOL Group at: https://qolgroup.net

Building a web, or internet, scale application is no small feat.  Yes, anybody can get something running in the cloud quickly these days, but that doesn't make it good!  If you want to build a good internet scale application, listen and learn what it takes.

We'll discuss the three pillars of scalable applications: maintainability, reliability, and availability.  And we'll talk about SRE, DBRE, and Security in the context of scaling compute and databases at a global scale.

This episode is intended to give you a perspective on why internet scale applications are so expensive, and what it takes to build and maintain them.

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The Gab case study

System Design Interview Study Course

Dustin Warner is a Lead Member of the Technical Staff (LMTS) at Salesforce.  He has been leading hugely impactful, high potential next generation software development on their platform and he was gracious enough to spend some time with me and let me ask a few questions.

In this episode we talk about his career and how he got to the position he's in.  We also discuss the ins and outs of platform development, not just on the Salesforce platform but across a few different ecosystems like SharePoint and ServiceNow as well.  There are pros and cons to running your business on a platform, and we debate those while also getting into his thoughts on how AI will potentially impact the work and lives of platform admins and devs as its capabilities evolve.

Whether you are new to tech, or a seasoned executive, there is value in what Dustin has to say so listen to his words of wisdom!

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Connect with Dustin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustin-warner-127bb44a/

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2rzeI9jiuw

ChatGPT is beginning to consume my news feed.  Everywhere I look I see blog posts written by AI paired with AI generated images made by DALL-E, all headlining in news articles from the mainstream media which are probably also reviewed or distributed by AI!  It's Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning everywhere we turn!

The rise of AI isn't bothering me as much as the trend of attributing *actual intelligence* to these robots.  In this episode, we'll discuss what is going on under the hood of ChatGPT.  We'll dive into neural networks and the various training mechanisms that are used, as well as looking at ChatGPT specifically and how it was constructed.

Along with these tools comes a lot of creative ways to use them, which we'll take a look at as well, so buckle up!  We're going to surround ourselves with robots and take a peek inside.

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Additional resources that are mentioned in this episode:

3Blue1Brown - But what is a neural network? | Chapter 1, Deep learning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk

The history of chatbots

https://onlim.com/en/the-history-of-chatbots/

Okta was recently breached and some stuff was stolen by a hacker group!  Is this the end of Okta as a security provider?  You'll have to listen to find out what happened, how software exploits can work, and how to protect yourself (and your code) against them.

There are a lot of programming languages out there, so what's the difference between them and why would I choose to use one over another?  In this episode, I review the top 5 most used programming languages of 2022.  This will help clear up when these languages should be used, what they're useful for, and why they even exist in the first place!  I will talk about:

• Python
• Java
• Javascript
• C# (C-Sharp)
• C and C++ (C Plus Plus)

I've personally written a lot of code in these languages, so you won't just get a textbook knowledge from this episode.  You're going to get a whole lot of my personal opinion as well!

The world is watching Twitter become a brand new company under the leadership of Elon Musk, and in this episode I dive into the details of what has been going on!  The situation is changing from day to day, so by the time you listen to this episode new information may be available, but as of 11/22/2022 this is the story.  

This episode isn't just a "current events about Twitter" episode, though.  It also takes a look at Mastodon, one of the up and coming challengers to Twitter.  I have an account, have generated a fair amount of content on that platform, and share my experience with the ecosystem also known as the Fediverse (aka federated universe).  Mastodon is a distributed social media platform and is very interesting in its own right, even without all the craziness going on a Twitter.

My condolences to Uber on their recent hack (Sept 2022), but this does provide a great opportunity to highlight poor security practices, and share steps that companies can take so they don't fall victim to the same exploits as Uber.  In this episode we'll talk about security, as if it's an onion, do a step-by-step analysis of the Uber hack, and consider just how devastating this situation could have been if a real, malicious hacker had did exactly what this 18 year old did.