Podcasts about Computing

BAE Systems contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense. It's in the difficult business of handling military and intelligence secrets. And while there is a lot the company can't talk about, there are plenty of useful insights they can share, which will help leaders across different industries. In this podcast segment with Dr. Nandish Mattikalli, […]

BAE Systems contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense. It's in the difficult business of handling military and intelligence secrets. And while there is a lot the company can't talk about, there are plenty of useful insights they can share, which will help leaders across different industries. In this podcast segment with Dr. Nandish Mattikalli, […]

EP282 - Cyberweek Recap with Salesforce's Rob Garf  Rob Garf (@retailrobgarf) is VP and GM, Retail at Salesforce. Rob returns to the show for the third time (EP249 and EP110) to talk about November, and especially cyber week e-commerce sales. The Salesforce shopping index combines data and holiday insights on the activity of more than a billion global shoppers across more than 54 countries powered by Commerce Cloud, billions of consumer engagements and millions of public social media conversations through Marketing Cloud, and customer service data powered by Service Cloud. We cover e-commerce sales in November 2021 vs 2020 and 2019. First mile issues, last mile issues, inflation, winning and losing categories, predictions for December. Episode 282 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, November 30th, 2021 http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 282 being recorded on Tuesday November 30th 20:21 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott showed listeners well Jason we're in the thick of it we are recording this the day after Cyber Monday this is our favorite time of the year and who better to help us recap the turkey five than longtime friend of the show Rob Garf he is the VP and GM retailgeek at Salesforce and he is here to sling some hot data and some fresh takes welcome Rob. Rob: [1:06] Hey Scott Jason it's great to be here as always happy holidays. Jason: [1:12] Happy holidays to you Rob I feel like it wouldn't be holidays if I if we weren't recording a podcast with you it's kind of an annual tradition. Rob: [1:20] Absolutely look forward to it every year. Jason: [1:22] So before we jump into it remind our listeners who you are and what you do for Salesforce. Rob: [1:30] Yeah absolutely some VP and GM for retail so what that means is I oversee the industry product solution and insights and the insights portion is really what brings me here today we have a team whose Charter is really to stay out in the industry understand where. The retail space is going and that helps us really think about our products and solution but also have really interesting. And informative conversations with our customers as well and most of that data and Analysis is based on our shopping index are shopping index looks at all the data that flows through the Commerce Cloud platform we obviously bubble that up. We strip out all the pii data and it really becomes the de facto standard of what's happening in retail and this is our holiday it's our Super Bowl where we really allow the data to come to life and not only project where. The industry is going over the critical holiday time but report on it so it's been a couple of sleepless nights over the last week and really excited to be here today to crawl through the data and just have really good conversations with two good friends. Jason: [2:38] We are excited to do it and I'm extra excited because if I'm not mistaken it seems like you have a bigger scope than you did last time you were on the show did you get a promotion because of what a good job you did on the show. Rob: [2:52] I think it was exactly that and I appreciate it by the way your check is in the mail yeah you know certainly. It's important to Salesforce to look at Industries and industries as a practice within Salesforce has really then one of the focus one of the priority areas over the last couple years and so for retail taking a real close look at what products what Solutions we have to bring to Market across the entire supply chain obviously in Salesforce we grew up in the sales and service space grew to marketing Commerce now and analytics and data and collaboration but we want to look at it always through the industry lens and in this case that's retail so it's my Charter along with the insights that I talked about a minute ago to oversee our product and solution strategy so thanks for that help by the way. Jason: [3:43] It was well-earned and well-deserved so good props test Salesforce erect for recognizing talent and I want to call out I feel like you're famous for three things first for being on the Jason and Scot show. Second for all the great work you do foreign with your co-workers at Salesforce and then third you are the. Kind of egotistical center of the whole garfi movement. Rob: [4:11] Haha you know I miss that's one of the many things I miss about the pandemic is not being able to do live gar fees that I've been out on the road. Over the last I don't know how to say four to six weeks or so and it's been a highlight to get back at that a little bit so can you promise me gentlemen in a couple weeks hopefully knock on wood will be back in New York for NRF and we can get another garfi of us we can try it virtually here it's just not always the same so we can see how that plays out. Scot: [4:42] Yeah yeah we're always up for garfi and that's got several in my library. Jason: [4:46] So before we move on from that explain to our listeners what a garfi is. Rob: [4:51] Yeah of course so garfi obviously a play on selfie and you know I struggled for a long time trying to find my persona. Via social you know first was LinkedIn and you know what I realized is I spent a lot of time on the road and when I'm on the road I need a lot of awesome people and when I meet those people I get really inspired and so I just you know for no plan in particular started taking pictures with them and me whether it's one-on-one one you know a few of us or me up on stage and just turning around and doing I selfie with a bunch of people in the crowd and a much more creative person than I am. Salesforce's social media team all of a sudden one day said that's a garfi and then you know really where it came to life is over and our F that same person had a great idea to say hey why don't we make some money for a charity by. [5:53] Donating a certain amount of money. For every time somebody takes a selfie or a garfi with me and that I guess I don't know two or three years running we've connected and collaborated with the retail orphan initiative great music in friends and really raise money for kids in need and so it has a nice altruistic angle to it which of course is part of Salesforce and ar111 model and giving back really please really closely to our values so I'm able to do a couple of things, really share with those in the social sphere what I'm up to hopefully helping. Inspire them like it's expired inspired me and then finally raise some money in and around NRL so that's kind of I don't know if I've ever shared and not much detail the Genesis of it but it was fun doing it so thanks for asking. Jason: [6:49] Yeah and I also admire I feel like it's an underappreciated talent to take a good selfie I feel like I really struggled frame the photo well with my arm fully extended and hit the shutter and you I don't know if you started out doing it this easily but I feel like in more recent years it seems like you do it effortlessly so just hats off to you on your quality of your selfies. Rob: [7:12] I mean that's the best compliment I'll get all day or holiday I can tell you that right now I started I was really bad like really bad and now my family like I'm the go-to during holidays to be able to do it so yeah it's you know chin up don't go you know don't angle to I don't go to Le I mean I could write probably a social posts are a blogger I don't know there might be something in there. Jason: [7:36] Art of the the art of the garfi. Rob: [7:37] The art of the confit. Jason: [7:39] Yeah I strongly I strongly encourage that and then getting slightly closer to like topics that that our listeners came for I do want to caveat one thing we're going to be talking a lot about how holiday has played out and what the interesting Trends are and just I want to underscore the mainland's you're looking at this through is a online lens so I'm sure I'm sure the bulk of your clients are omni-channel and you get some some good insight into what's happening in stores but the actual data set is measuring how much consumers shop and buy on websites is that do I have that right. Rob: [8:16] Totally you got that right I mean if you think about it as I mentioned the shopping and X which we have throughout the year and we release it quarterly is really the backbone of it it's billions and billions of Shoppers digitally it's across thousands of sites across dozens and dozens of countries yeah like you said we do do primary research and we do have some instrumentation understand some of the things that show the intersection between online and digital but the short answer to your point Jason it is really primarily the digital shopping that we've seen. Scot: [8:53] We'll call let's that's really good backdrop and we should definitely dig into the garfi thing on another episode but the enough foreshadowing how are things going for the holiday season give us kind of the the big picture. Rob: [9:08] Yeah well you know coming into this sky the way we're looking at it even going back till June was you know if last year's headline with ship a gettin was all around a smile how and if products are going to get to the doorstep of the consumer this has been all about the first mile we've all heard about it I think you're going Supply pain right so it's more of the inbound Logistics the container stuck off the port of LA and trouble getting the containers off the vessels in through the domestic supply chain and that's really, kind of cast the context for the holiday and you know the headline in addition to the first Mile and the issues that retailers have been seeing is a pulling forward of holiday demand you know it's something that retailers have wished for four decades upon decades and this year it actually came to life I have a lot more to share on that you know I can keep on going but I can also pause as well to see if you have any. Follow up questions are just you know you can just fly me up I can tell you a little bit more of what we're seeing broadly in the holiday so far. Scot: [10:22] Yeah one of the theories was that you know the Press wasn't shy about the supply pain and consumers you know when my aunt ji is asking me about this stuff I was I know it's reached the zeitgeist. How do you say it pull it Forward are you talking like right even like before Halloween you saw unusual activity or like give us an idea of like how how much of the the oxygen move to the front of the balloon there. Rob: [10:47] Yeah yeah yeah well like that oxygen moved to the front of blue and I like that might have to borrow that Scott yeah so so what we saw is that. Real demand got pulled forward you know if you look at the first two weeks of November we saw an 18% year-over-year increase and that is significant last year we saw a bit, in October because Prime day if you remember got pulled into October and we had that halo effect so if you were named Amazon you were still you know getting some of that Halo of the demand and the buzz and the conditioning that happened but it really simmer down late October through. November until the week before cyberweek this year really you know again as I mentioned 18% year-over-year increase for the first two weeks of November you pull that out to the first three weeks in November we saw a 10% your of your increase so there actually was a pull forward and you know I want to. [11:48] Put this in context I mentioned retailers have been hoping and dreaming for this forever I call this discount chicken you might remember I reference this last year probably last couple years I've been on the show and this is this phenomena where retailers go into the holiday season with this amazing promotional calendar all the expertise all the data all the analysis and after the first week. They usually rip it up call an audible and they chased the discount and you know consumers have been conditioned to wait it out. Consumers typically win the game a discount chicken they wait until Black Friday they wait until Cyber Monday, for that last big deal and this year I have to say given what we've seen so far consumers aren't winning at that game. Retailers have really held their own on discounts and you combine that with like you mentioned the headlines that consumers were seeing around the supply chain and you know inflationary concerns as well and they were actually buying early and that did have an impact by the way spoil alert on cyberweek all you know all in. Jason: [13:06] Awesome will you open the door so let's dive in there so first of all you you call it cyberweek and so what what is that weak to you does that start Thursday Friday when does it. Marker 01 Rob: [13:17] Yeah good call so yeah we look at cyberweek from the Tuesday before American Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday it's the way we've been, reporting on it for the last bunch of years than just for like for like now analysis we've kept that I know there's the turkey five and the Cyber five that certainly are looked at for benchmarks and you know partly why we do that is we started to see early on a smoothing out of demand not just through the course of November as I just referenced before but over the course of the week and we wanted to represent that in a more holistic way so you know the short answer to your question we look at it from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving all the way through Cyber Monday. Jason: [14:01] Perfect and fun fact for our listeners Thanksgiving is obviously a North American holiday but Black Friday and cyber week our Global phenomenon which is interesting the holiday is not Global but the shopping is so how did cyberweek play out we're recording this a day after cyberweek so we're we up from. 20/20 and I'd also love to know how he did versus 2019. Rob: [14:24] Yeah absolutely so we wore up so for the course of cyberweek we were up four percent year-over-year and that represents about sixty two billion dollars with the be of digital revenue and you know you look at that number and you say wow that's kind of you know muted it's kind of leveling off and I can't lie it is because we saw such a significant Spike to your point from 2019 to 2020 so there's a whole new Baseline that's been set but to really replicate that seismic growth that we saw last year with non-essential retail closed people really focused on their health and their safety also looking at dealing with retailers that provided convenience and Trust. I see four percent year-over-year as as good as you know a retailer should hope right again because retailers should have seen brand should have seen that pulling forward of demand earlier in the season. Jason: [15:28] Yeah and then can you and part of it is last year was a monster year for digital so like do you do you have your like do you do it a two-year year-over-year or do you remember what the growth was last year for cyberweek just for frame for comparison. Rob: [15:44] You know I don't have that exact number in front of you what I can say for the holiday so November December was 50% year-over-year growth so you know you got to imagine suck cyberweek was way up there I could tell you that Force four. Black Friday in the u.s. because those are u.s. numbers just to remind you to sixty two billion at the four percent year-over-year we saw 20 percent growth. On Black Friday so that gives you a sense of what you saw throughout the year a lot of the growth last year actually came the week before. Cyberweek and in large part because the two of you everybody saw a ship again in like everybody right it made the Today Show. Large part really in the growth the for cyberweek last year we saw something like eighty percent year-over-year growth for the week before. Cyberweek because consumer saw the headline you know I was asked by a customer just recently in the specialty apparel space. Who worked for the wholesale division asking will this year. Consumers understand the issues that are happening in the inbound supply chain unlike last year where ship again was front and center I mean we all felt the Bermuda Triangle of packages being you know delayed significantly so as a consumer. [17:07] That kind of triggered you to think hey maybe I should buy early to make sure I get the product and also by the way maybe I should buy online and pick up in store so I know I can actually. Pick it up because it's more black a smile under my control. [17:22] That's my long way saying once again we saw growth last year in large part 3 cyberweek Black Friday we saw twenty percent so this 4% bringing it back today. Around cyberweek was you know leveling off from prior years but was on such a significant or based on such a significant New Normal that we really hit last year and by the way we don't see the snapping back to what we saw before the pandemic. Jason: [17:51] Yeah and I think that's a mistake people make and in their head when they're looking at growth rates they see this year's 4% is smaller than last year's twenty to thirty percent and they say oh gosh digital shrinking and no it's growing off a huge number from last year it just growing in a smaller slower rate than it than it did last year. Rob: [18:13] Exactly and by the way people are getting back into the store right especially for those not essential retail we're experiencing something and they want to go talk to a knowledgeable store associate and want to touch and feel the product you know they actually want to see friends out in a mall believe it or not and so there's you know. A rising tide here that's really lifting both digital and physical so you can't kind of look at one without the other I don't think there's a cannibalization happening per se because you're still seeing growth but you can't forget what's happening in-store this holiday. Jason: [18:48] Yeah it's super interesting and inside just to highlight like macro Trend that you're sort of underscoring here so this year cyberweek grew around 4% but holiday digital is growing in like ten percent so I'm gonna I'm gonna do risky public math that sounds like the holiday spike is kind of flattening out and holidays becoming more about that hole. Um cyber November if you will instead of instead of cyberweek is that do I have that right. Rob: [19:21] You got it spot-on Jason you know just throwing some more numbers at you because I know you love them but I know there's a lot is that for November and you hit it by the way you said 10% we saw based on a nine percent year-over-year growth across, the month of November and so in the US that represents 136 billion dollars of online sales so there is this smoothing out there is this flattening I'm not ready to put the nail in the coffin for Cyber Monday and Black Friday just you know consumers are just so condition to shop on those days but retailers can't ignore the fact that you know these spikes are still relevant but there is this smoothing out that started even before this year and we saw even more pronounced this year. Jason: [20:16] Yeah I was talking to a very big client and they were talking about how early in his career they used to celebrate this anomaly where the wear like during cyberweek they would have their. There billion dollar day in total retail sales and this year every day in November is a billion dollars for them. Yeah. So I am still curious even though it does seem like it's slightly less relevant it still is a super interesting novel to me novelty to me can you break down. The key days within cyberweek like I'm always interested in. E-commerce sales on Black Friday versus Cyber Monday and whether you know with the Advent of the smartphone are we selling more stuff at the Thanksgiving table on Thursday what sort of Trends did you see across the week. Rob: [21:11] Yeah I love it that's awesome yeah so let's dive into that you know a couple of things here you know Cyber Monday we saw a three percent year-over-year growth representing eleven point three billion and digital sales on Black Friday we saw five percent year-over-year growth which represented thirteen point four million and online sales and so we saw. [21:38] And this isn't the first year on this it's happening over the course of the last three or four maybe even five years. That Black Friday is a bigger digital sales day van Cyber Monday let me say that again Black Friday according to our data is a bigger digital sales day and Cyber Monday a lot of that you hinted at it Jason is that Cyber Monday you all know this was really. Coming to bear from our friends at the national retail Federation. To coin a term to signify people getting back into their office when the internet was not so great at home so they can get high-speed connectivity and Shop but now. We're all connected right we're all connected all the time and so in fact over the course of cyberweek 61%. Of borders and close to eighty percent of traffic was on a mobile device by the way that's phone. To be specific that doesn't include your tablets. And so there is this moving out partly because of connectivity what we saw in Thanksgiving for the last couple of years is a growing. [22:56] Disproportionately growth I'll say over Thanksgiving because you kind of. Finish your meal you're done with your crazy uncle Lou and you want to sit on the couch a little bit you can press and you pull out your phone and you know shopping generally and especially over the holiday is you know totally embedded and fragmented now you often get inspired by what you see on your phone. When you start shopping what we saw this Thanksgiving actually was. There was a little bit of leveling off we feel like people were more present last year I know I didn't have Thanksgiving and the one or two times over the holiday we did get together last year was underneath our patio heater we probably one of the last people in the country to get one and our fire pit and people want to be present this year and so. It wasn't as strong what I thought was interesting is two more points I'll make is. [23:55] Saturday Sunday we're pretty strong and those are generally pretty light days but this year people are online and people were buying so. You know I'll pause there probably a lot more to talk about but certainly again you see these Peaks happening with Cyber Monday with Black Friday in particular Black Friday where I should say one more thanks I'm just thinking about it is you know obviously Black Friday digitally was really large because more stores were closed and even if they were open people still felt more comfortable buying online. Jason: [24:29] Yeah just just to sort of echo that point Walmart told me that in 2019 they sold a billion dollars worth of turkeys on Thanksgiving and this year they sold 10 billion dollars worth of turkeys. So like a twenty percent jump in in American turkey consumption so that. Rob: [24:50] That's crazy that's amazing. Jason: [24:51] Yeah so sir clearly indicating that people were excited and did get back together so I almost wondered if that was gonna put a damper on the online shopping but it seems like it really didn't. Rob: [25:03] Not across the entire cyberweek it was still again I I'll risk even say healthy but probably closer to moderate growth is what I've been talking to our customers about but again that growth. I'm really or moderate growth is because of the earlier demand which retailers that's what they wanted that's what they got they should be smiling and be happy. Scot: [25:27] Very cool so just for the record Black Friday bigger than Cyber Monday for the first time that's pretty I think it's worth saying again. Rob: [25:36] Yeah it is it's kind of interesting because you know Black Friday think about is such a physical store holiday right and. It's really smooth it out and I know I've used that word before but it's really the theme for this holiday, and I think we'll see how I think it is a sign of things to come by the way I don't think this is now an anomaly but rather. How we're going to view the holiday season moving forward finally it didn't really by the way pull as forward as I would have suspected into October we saw some blips here and they're based on. The promotional calendar but it really started in Earnest on November first. Scot: [26:16] Yeah as a pure play e-commerce guy I'm glad we kind of overtook Black Friday and so yeah the so now that now that we're through these key days does it change your forecast up down or you feel like it's kind of right in line with what you guys were expecting. Rob: [26:34] Yeah we were expecting 10 percent growth over the course of the holiday in the u.s. and 7% growth. Globally we're sticking to that right now we're about just shy of 50 percent of All Digital sales in the books for this holiday. But we still have a way to go and in fact fun fact I guess that wasn't the exact questions got you ask but I'll grow it out there is about one-third of All Digital sales happen in November and December. So yeah we expect there are still a lot of sales to be had out there and we are anticipating similar results and so we're staying Pat on our our ten percent growth year over year across the entire holiday season for digital. Scot: [27:22] Wrinkle any indications of the data so far if you mentioned kind of that first mile any indications of other than it pulling forward that it's you know that it's causing any kind of problems like increased stock outs or we've had this first wave and you're worried there won't be anything on the shelves at the back end or what do you see in there. Rob: [27:43] We do see some concern with that you know I've been cautioning anybody I've talked to so I'll say here now is if you see something you like buy it don't wait for that last big discount we can talk about discounts in a little bit if you like but you're not going to necessarily get it in the product might not even be there what retailers have done based on our data is pull back on their assortment and so what we saw is. First cyberweek in the u.s. we saw a shrinkage of 6% of product catalogs so retailers are being conservative. They're selling what they know or hope is available but there is a concern as we go into these last couple of. Weeks of the holiday as The Last Mile and shipping cut off window starts to creep up what it will look like for those replenishable items if they actually will be replenishable but we thought was super interesting as I just mentioned is retailers were really being conservative and trying to do you know going deeper in there. [28:55] Inventory rather than going broader in their assortment and that's evident by what we saw in cyberweek with a six percent decrease in the product catalog where is generally speaking for cyberweek you're seeing you know anywhere from a five to ten and some cases of fifteen percent increase in that product catalog. Scot: [29:14] Nursing and then let's flip to the other side last year we had ship again in the indications there that that the shipping infrastructure was having problems keeping up. Rob: [29:26] You know we're feeling a lot Rosier than we did last year certainly you hit it on the head with chip again and we. [29:35] We anticipate in Saab 700 million packages at risk and those in most cases were delayed that was pulled back tremendously this year retailers really moved over the course of the last 20 months from Scrappy standing up some pretty Innovative but Scrappy nonetheless solutions for Last Mile and they've really worked to scale that and to not only do it effectively but efficiently efficiently meaning don't crush their margins by trying to get the product to the consumer buy online pick up in store still seems to be the winner, this holiday so those that put it in place over the course of the pandemic are actually seeing. Some really nice benefits from it one interesting fact that the team was able to gather was for those, retailers on Black Friday that offered buy online pick up in store so orders placed with the confidence at home and being able to picked up in and around the store grew at a 50% higher rate than those that didn't so consumers think about it over the course of the pandemic really showed loyalty retailers who are able to provide health safety convenience and Trust to the denominator there is removing the friction from the shopping process and those that offer that service were really. [31:04] Able to leverage and benefit from that in the new consumer Baseline of removing the friction. Jason: [31:12] Yeah you know it's an interesting thing on the last mile. Last year Amazon passed FedEx in terms of the number amount of packages they delivered themselves right in there. Depending how you count something like 30 to 40 percent of all e-commerce the middle news this week one of the supply chain guys that he expects by the end of this year or the first quarter of next year that they'll not only will they ship more packages than FedEx they'll ship more packages than UPS so Amazon could be the large the largest non-governmental last Last Mile in the in the country by next year. Rob: [31:50] Yeah you mean it's quite amazing how large Amazon has gotten with Last Mile and I give credit to anybody who isn't last excuse me who isn't Amazon. And who is in a big box retailer who has you know some capital of fro at The Last Mile Challenge and you know those that partnered with these you know collaborative networks to be able to. [32:16] Outsource if you will the the last mile or even provide buy online pick up in store to you know Outsource The Last Mile to the consumers have really benefited and you know where we saw unfortunate gap between the large players and the neighborhood and local players they somewhat of leveling the playing field. [32:39] Will be leveraging the stores not only for a filament Center but an experiential Center as well and I know I'm shifting a little bit but it's something that comes to mind Jason Scott is you know our research showed coming into this holiday. Those retailers that leverage their store for more than just scanning and bagging will benefit in fact 60% of. Online orders will be influenced by the physical store let me say it again 60% of digital will be influenced by the store which is somewhat the opposite that for store really came at us with five ten years ago about digital orders. Influencing store orders and you know that could be whether the store is generating demand or fulfilling demand and that could be from fulfillment or store associates being social media managers or you know even Service agents whether they're in the store or they're picking up micro shifts at home and then certainly obviously pick packing and shipping and getting the products ready to either be picked up or Filled from there so I know that was a little bit of a tangent to say you know most don't have the scale of an Amazon and so you got to get really crafty and Innovative of how you're going to kind of level the playing field particularly around Last Mile. Jason: [34:07] Yeah no totally agree and it's actually if you have too much free time on your hands it's really fun to read all these retailer Q3 earnings reports because like they often embedded in the back of that they do talk about like the percentage of their sales that are fulfilled by store influence from store and that that's a standout stat for almost every retailer now is how important that store is for the digital supply chain so that's that exactly mirrors your data I want to like there's so much going on this holiday I feel like we could we could do a two-hour show which we won't do to our listeners but another interesting one is pricing promotion and inflation and how all that pays out like it was a lot of the growth from this year in your guys estimation was it. Inflation and consumers just paying more for less or or was it. Rob: [35:00] Yeah yeah we got the data and it's it's fascinating it is really it's you know it's fascinating on one hand but it's like pretty basic on the other which is a lot of the growth was driven by increase prices and so what we saw for instance over cyberweek the average selling price was up 11%. In the US and 5% globally what we also saw at the same time is that order volume was lower, and average order value was higher so the math says, that people are buying fewer items at fewer retailers because they have kind of a zero-sum game you know they have a specific budget and so if you're buying things at higher prices you're buying less of those things and you could equate the 11%. [36:00] Increase of average selling price to inflation and we're seeing that across the board meeting across the different product categories so you know. That's happening we predicted that for the second half of the Year retailers and brands. We're going to have an incremental 223 billion dollars of cost of goods sold and that's from manufacturing supply chain labor they absorbed a good amount of it but. They had to pass some on to the consumers consumers they're happy they're positive. They want to focus on buying things that they want versus just needs. [36:40] So they bought now what retailers did to the discount piece of this and why consumers are likely to lose out on discount chicken this year is discounts were the lowest levels and we've seen. Andres when I say that discount rates where some of the lowest we've seen in recent history and so the discount and the rates being lower I think it's something like eight percent. Down your view here in the u.s. is because you know retailers. Just had to hold their own right and really protect some of the margin and you know even on Cyber Monday where you see some of the biggest discounts it just wasn't happening this year. Jason: [37:28] Yeah interesting you know you talked about consumers picking fewer retailers and buying being a few items for more money I wonder to me that sounds like it's a recipe for sort of retail, I hate using this word because Steve Dennis will get all excited bifurcation that you know if consumers are buying less items than their first choice retailer is likely to win and they're you know kind of longer tail retailers are likely to lose those that are using that at all or do you think that's how it's going to play out this year. Rob: [38:02] Yeah I do just plainly you know loyalty has been redefined we don't mention it before in terms of health safety, convenience and Trust now that's the Baseline and retailers really need to focus you know what we're hearing from consumers they want to be treated special they want to E M I don't know what personalization means but when you ask them the attributes of it they want that right they want to feel like they're unique two-thirds say they want to, have a unique experience and feel like they're being treated uniquely the challenge based on Research that we just conducted is only one-third of retailers can actually harness and democratize that data and turn it into personalized promotions and prices and offers and so. Yeah there's this will give a shout out to Steve face Steve happy holidays there is this bifurcation taking place and it's you know so important especially as we go into this cooking this world for retailers to really harness their data more than they ever have it's not, a new story right we've been talking about for a while but this first part is zero party data so important because that same research showed three strikes and you're out after three bad experiences retail with a retailer or brand consumer is going to abandon and go somewhere else and not come back so yeah just I think you're onto something this and I need to really not just a choir but think about the consumers that you have those loyal shoppers. Jason: [39:31] Yeah if only there was some kind of tool set that merged I Commerce and data and it all lived like I don't know in the cloud that would be amazing. Rob: [39:39] It would be kind of amazing woman that I know I think we're in a pretty good spot. Jason: [39:43] Someone should do that. Another thing that's been interesting to me regarding the inflation is it seems like some retailers are. Passing more of the the costs on to Consumers than others and it's been funny I don't know if you followed all these all these Q3 earnings but there's retailers that are like. We pulled a lot of levers we got a lot of extra inventory in but it came in way more expensive we didn't raise our prices a lot and so our sales have been great but our profitability is down and then there have been other retailers that are like, consumers have been willing to pay more for a good so our sales are up in our profitability is up. Side note I don't I don't follow this is much but the investors like the retailers that took the prophet a lot more than the retailers that acted as a shock absorber. Rob: [40:31] Shocker yeah I think generally that equation that you just talked about not only sales but profit come back into play here retailers and of what I've seen I've gotten somewhat of a hall pass over the course of the pandemic because you know the focus on. Consumer safety. Associate safety getting the product through the supply chain and so the Retailer's took a hit there I think we're taking you know a. Refocus you know back on to profitability and you know that's why it's interesting I was hosting a Roundtable virtually just recently and one of the participants one of the executives reminded all of us is of the profitability of the box right we kind of lost sight up that'll is what I mean by that obviously the physical store. And I think we lost sight of that purposely over the course of last 20 months but. And I think we're going to have to really hunker down and really look at what that looks like especially as you know consumers have gotten used to having a lot of flexibility and choice around how they get in where they get the product. Scot: [41:44] Cool and interesting data from the categories apparel has been under a lot of pressure since the pandemic Electronics have been surging Home Improvement seems to be running non-stop it anything any changes to those kind of Trends we've seen for the last 18 months. Rob: [42:02] Yeah you know I'll look I'll give you some information and across cyberweek. Because it's most recent but I think it speaks to what's happening Scott or what has happened over the last 20 months. Um what we saw in the hottest categories across cyberweek are luxury handbags with a sixty percent year-over-year growth. Furniture at a 56 percent year over year growth. In general Footwear at a 22 percent year-over-year growth now luxury handbags in general apparel I get it. That's going off of a base that shrunk last year nobody saw my feet on any zooms right so my slippers were just fine legs are handbags. I know we weren't really going out to many restaurants in SLE need to refresh that so the growth on Lower base or. Shrinking base from last year makes sense for getting back out in the world you know we're focusing on exponential categories as consumers like entertainment and travel and being outdoors. [43:11] What really is super interesting is furniture. Furniture has been on a tear because we've all been home and whether we're redoing our outdoor patio set because that's where we're spending time outdoors I did for the holiday as I mentioned or it's my home office. You know what I can think about as my team look through the data is it's a shifting slightly of what people are buying for their home they're buying more entertainment type of products whether it's home appliances or its couches. Or the like where people are coming back into your home after a long respite and we want to spruce up our home as well so you know like I said the handbags from where I get it which is great to see Furniture you know ears. Really didn't know walls over the course of the pandemic and as we come through this holiday. Scot: [44:07] Nursing how about any interesting toys you want to highlight like I think Jason mentioned the mixy as one that was kind of called out as being a hot toy. Rob: [44:16] Jason what's the Mixie tell me more. Jason: [44:20] You are I don't I actually haven't seen any data on whether it came to fruition but the toy it was the toy the toy industry was leaning into and it's like it's like a combination of a chemistry toy with a plushie so like like it create smoke and then a plushie comes out of the smoke I think is the the gist of it the the big toy I've seen in terms of sales velocity is that the gaming platforms are selling like hotcakes. Rob: [44:51] Yeah yeah yeah that's what I was saying it's really just a sample size of one where it's like for my boys 15 and 12 they're all about whatever's digital whether that's devices or Dean's on those devices so you know shopping is gotten a little easier on one hand but we have to also be really creative as well. Jason: [45:12] Yeah I wonder we'll see how it plays out but it doesn't feel like Last Mile has had a big impact on on shopping up till now but like even if give last-mile holds up in there's no capacity problems we still have these holiday cut-offs right you know we still get to this date where we can no longer cost-effectively ship something to your home in time for the holidays and I feel like there's more digital gifts out there than ever before so you think of all the streaming services you can gift a subscription to all the content for these these gaming Platforms in these Computing platforms and I'm not super Bush for this holiday but like I think we're going to see more retailers offering enough teas and things this year so it I'm kind of curious if the back half of. December becomes the sort of digital holiday season. Rob: [46:01] Yeah we certainly saw that didn't we Jason last year in terms of the shipping cut off. Come in really early on the heels of Cyber Monday because the last mile issues and a lot of retailers really honed in on gift cards as another source of. A gift and I think you're right I think you're right in terms of you know whether it's and FTS maybe we're a little early for that but we'll see. My colleague Michelle Grant has been tracking that really closely and she's pretty bullish about the whole category as relates not only gifts but the intersection between that and loyalty programs but yeah I mean I think it's you know whether it's gift cards to restaurants or travel or the like gaming as you mentioned just I think there's something that I really think there's something to that. Jason: [46:50] Yeah well listen this has been a super exciting conversation and I always like to end it on a total Debbie Downer note so the. I'm curious if you have seen or have you guys are trying to figure out how you're going to model like any impact from the new covid variant like in my world it feels like people were definitely planning to get together and more in person events but it does seem like people are starting to second-guess those there's all the news articles are talking about what what's the correct pronunciation is it Omicron. Makan. Rob: [47:27] Sounds good to me I'll let you stick to that one I will try to because I know all. Jason: [47:31] Got you I think a Peyton Manning screaming Omaha is my. Rob: [47:34] Hahaha I like that reference nicely done yeah. That's a good question I as I mentioned earlier I only hope we can see each other in person at an arrest in January you know where. We're at Salesforce tracking just. [47:53] Now this new digital world really closely because we're not going back to the same. You know mindset as we had before as our newly assigned co-ceo put it is work isn't where you go but it's what you do and you know we're living in this digital headquarters and it's going to be hybrid I've. Attended plenty of hybrid types of executive meetings over the course of the last month or two as people start, get back on the road as it relates to retail you know I can't really speak to what's to come. But what I can say is we tracked digital sales across the last 20 months as it relates to cases and maybe it shouldn't be a surprise you know as. Non-essential. Stores closed and I hope that doesn't happen again but people want to hunker down and be home and order products online there was a direct correlation between cases and order and sales growth in fact over the course of 2020 we saw a 50% year-over-year growth. And by the way that was I'm sorry 57% to be precise and that was driven in large part by 40% growth in net new digital Shoppers so these are people would hang on a line right they go to social media they be able to browse and. [49:22] Do some research but they ultimately go in the store and buy they're also buying new categories as well and so you know as things. As we look forward we can certainly based on history see a correlation between digital which is set a whole new Baseline as I mentioned before and what that looks like as it relates to traffic orders and sales. Jason: [49:47] Yeah it is certain there is no short – of variables to impact this holiday as it feels like we've gone from playing checkers to playing 3D 3D chess a little bit with all this stuff. Rob: [50:02] Yes you're right I need to bring in my 15-year old to help me play that game because yeah I'm a couple moves behind but you know we can look at data and that's the fun part about our part of the fun part about my job as looking at the data and seeing what people have done. Jason: [50:17] I I do other and that's why we love having you on the show so much is because you bring the data in Rob that is going to be a perfect place to wrap for tonight because we have used up all our a lot of time on this special cyberweek / Hanukkah edition of the show so if you if listeners enjoyed this show we sure would appreciate it as our holiday gift if you would jump onto iTunes and give us that five-star review. Scot: [50:45] Rob we really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us here on the day after Cyber Monday you guys have a fancy cool new portal or I don't know what you want to HUB how do folks find that. Rob: [50:59] We do have the insights hub for the holiday and so perhaps we can in the show notes or however you do it these days share it with the crew but if you also searched Salesforce holiday insights Hub you'll get right to it so you'll see all the data that I talked about and even more across marketing as we get further into the holiday season you'll see it for service as well and so I encourage your listeners to engage through that portal and you know Scott Jason thank you so much sincerely I mean it's been a long week not a lot of sleep for the team and me but. It's been a highlight to share this with you and make this an annual tradition so happy healthy and safe holiday season. Scot: [51:46] Thanks Rob will have Jason put a link to the hub on his friend stir page. Rob: [51:52] Perfect. Jason: [51:55] I will do it I will put it in all the socials and if folks want to keep track of the gar fees that's its retail Rod right is it retail Rob Garf is that your Twitter handle. Rob: [52:07] You got it retail Rob Garth and then I'm on LinkedIn as well. Jason: [52:10] Awesome I will put links to all of the above Rob really appreciate it one of the conversations I look forward to every year and absolutely look forward to seeing you in person at the interrupt Big Show next month and until then happy commercing!

Comparing cultural expressions is a risky enterprise:  especially, in our case, because too many  still perceive Western “classical” art music to be somehow superior to other  musics because of its alleged and “universal” values. But we think the challenge can be worthwhile, especially at a deeper level, because it can help us  tease out complementary ways rulers use sound to literally underscore their political power. In today's episode we investigate music and power in the Black Atlantic, where European and African musics collided in history.Our first example is that of the Italo-French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), who often features as the father of French opera. We focus on his role as composer of lavish multimedia productions known more formally as tragédies en musique, tragedies set to music and celebrating his patron Louis XIV. These fusions of music, drama, and dance were pure political spectacle, and in Louis's younger years even involved the king himself as a dancer. The king was dancing because the purpose of a tragédie en musique was to place the king's body (which itself represented France, to contemporary ways of thinking) at the center of a complex piece of theatre. The point was not so much to entertain the audience, which often consisted of France's political elite, but to remind them of the king's absolute power. Lully made a career of creating works like these. Tom unpacks Lully's work, his dismissal by Louis after a sexual scandal (with a digression to the composer's subsequent death of gangrene as the result of a self-inflicted wound sustained while directing music) and turns, finally, to Louis's global political ambitions. Had those ambitions  been fully realized, the cultural world of the Black Atlantic (and thus our music history) would have been much more French.Chris's postcard takes us to the soundworlds of the great empires of sub-Saharan West Africa in the pre-colonial era. He starts with the Empire of Mali, whose first emperor, Sundiata Keita (ruling  in the thirteenth century CE) is memorialized in magnificent musical-epic poetry that has been passed down by oral and aural tradition. The bearers of this memory are called jeliat in the languages of West Africa (in French: griot). Chris explains how rulers of empires such as Mali depended on the jeliat, whose memorized epics were key sources of historical, genealogical, and legal knowledge, to tell their stories and legitimize their power.We then attempt one of those challenging cross-cultural comparisons. Did Lully serve as a kind of praise-singerto Louis XIV? On the face of it certainly. Yet  historical comparisons are never simple or neutral. Just look at where we would be likely to encounter Lully's music today: in “classical” opera houses or in other formats popular with elites in the “global north,” who are often culturally conditioned to value “timeless classics,” not political messages. In contrast the musical aesthetics and outputs  of the oral-aural epics of West Africa, which are still performed by musicians who claim direct lineage to their predecessors at the court of Sundiata, are more likely to pop up on playlists of “traditional” or “world” music. Both are “old” music, so why is one “classical” and the other “traditional”?The answer is the Western colonization of Africa, the flows of labor, energy, and data that made it possible, and--in turn--the influence of the jelat tradition on the vernacular musics of the Black Atlantic, which underpin nearly so many pop music genres today, from the Delta Blues to hip-hop. Music, it seems to us, is never unmoored from political and economic realities.Key PointsIn different ways around the world, political power and music mix.The prestigious genre of French “tragedy in music” formed in the late seventeenth century in lavish spectacles that told stories about the political power of Louis XIV, the “Sun King”The great poetic epics of the West African Empires, such as the Sundiata Epic from the court of the Empire of Mali, functioned similarly.Lully's operas live on, often stripped of their political meaning, in Western “classical” music. The West African epics live on too, as African “traditional music.” Some of their ethos informs the popular genres today that stem from the collision of European and African cultures in the era of the Black Atlantic, with its trade in goods and enslaved people.ResourcesWe are fans of Gérard Corbiau's 2000 film costume drama Le roi danse (even if it's somewhat over the top!). Excerpts are available widely on YouTube and other platforms. The soundtrack is available on CD or download from Deutsche Grammophon, and the streaming services Apple Music and Spotify.Timothy Blanning's book The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe 1660-1789 is an excellent introduction to the use of cultural spectacle to underpin political power.Eric Charry's Mande Music: Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa is a masterful situation of “traditional” music as part of contemporary West Africa aesthetics and politics.Christopher Waterman's Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music places the proverb-rich Yoruba contemporary vocal/instrumental music juju in contemporary West African context.All of the books mentioned in the episode can be found in our Sounding History Goodreads discussion group. Join the conversation!

In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, the crew completes an SC roundup discussing supply chain issues, composable computing, and Oracle's cloud service. RadioFreeHPC is brought to you by Prairie Gulch Old Western Reenactment Club. Join them in their new Oregon Trail reenactment. Apply online. RadioFreeHPC is distributed in partnership with HPCwire. *Download the MP3 * Follow us… Read More »But Is It Composable? (SC Roundup)

Keshav Pingali is CEO and co-founder of Katana Graph, a high-performance scale-out graph processing, AI and analytics company, which extracts actionable insights from massive unstructured datasets. Keshav holds the W.A."Tex" Moncrief Chair of Computing at the University of Texas at Austin, and is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE and AAAS. Website: https://katanagraph.com/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatanaGraph  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/katana-graph/ 

Jean-Martin Bauer, Senior Digital Advisor from the United Nations World Food Program speaks with Daniel Huttenlocher, the inaugural dean of MIT's Schwarzman College of Computing, board chair of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and board member of Corning Inc. and Amazon.com. Jean-Martin and Daniel discuss MIT's new college, AI education, humanitarian applications of artificial intelligence and a new book co-written by Daniel, Eric Schmidt and Henry Kissinger called the “The Age of AI”. This insightful and cautionary book focuses on AI and our human future, topics that Jean-Martin and Sarah Spencer point out are highly relevant to humanitarian actors.

Mac or Windows? Laptops or Desktops? What are some of the best options for drone pilots? Today's show is about the best computer options available for drone pilots. Our caller for today, Cody is, of course, a drone pilot who is scouting for the best and most affordable computer system. So, what are some of the main things that Cody should consider when buying a computer for his drone business? How can he get the maximum bang for the buck? To answer Cody's question, we first discuss the all-new Macbook Pro, and whether or not it is a good buy for professionals. You will also learn how the ongoing chip shortage coupled with the surge in cryptocurrency mining has led to skyrocketing prices. So, as a drone pilot, should Copy opt for the latest Apple laptop? Or should he go for desktop-based GPU's like Alienware? For all this and much, much more, don't miss out on this show. Get Your Biggest and Most Common Drone Certificate Questions Answered by Downloading this FREE Part 107 PDF Make sure to get yourself the all-new Drone U landing pad! Get your questions answered: https://thedroneu.com/. If you enjoy the show, the #1 thing you can do to help us out is to subscribe to it on iTunes. Can we ask you to do that for us real quick? While you're there, leave us a 5-star review, if you're inclined to do so. Thanks! https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ask-drone-u/id967352832. Become a Drone U Member. Access to over 30 courses, great resources, and our incredible community. Follow Us Site – https://thedroneu.com/ Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/droneu Instagram – https://instagram.com/thedroneu/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/thedroneu YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/droneu Timestamps [03:03] Today's show is about the best computing systems for drone pilots [04:18] About the ongoing chip shortage and its impact on computer prices [04:50] How to gauge your work requirements and select the right computing system [05:35] Is the Macbook series a good option for drone pilots? [07:15] Getting the most out of your Apple laptop [08:40] Laptop based GPUs vs. desktop based GPUs – which is the best option for drone mapping and modeling  

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell Does computing and digital technology have any serious impact on energy use, carbon emissions, and Climate Change? The largest society of computer professionals in the world says Yes! Here’s why. Here is the link to the paper discussed today. About the host: Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon's words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station's sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage. The post Notes from the Electronic Cottage 11/25/21: Computing, digital tech and climate change first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Over 20 years ago the Institute of Medicine included “equitable” as one of six domains of quality, but when we talk about equity and quality today, we don't often discuss them in tandem. To reach health improvement goals, that must change. In this episode of the Business Group on Health Podcast, we speak with Dr. […]

Medicine has eluded the tech disruptions which seemingly overnight rewrote business models in media, telecommunications, transportation and other industries. That doesn't mean healthcare is untouched by technology. Hospitals are keen on innovations for diagnosis and medical procedures such as AI doing predictive analysis of patients with COVID-19 or natural language processing algorithms reviewing consumer claims […]

This episode is about what happens when sounds and people meet and mix. A lot of what we talk about takes place away from North America and Europe, but we end up circling back to a primary question in this season of the podcast: how did Westerners use the sounds of others to perceive the world, “The West,” and themselves?Our first example is one of those historical stories that is so, well, weird you have to wonder if it is actually fiction. In the early years of the seventeenth century Chinese officials discovered a thousand year-old stone pillar (or “steele”) near the city of Xi'an in Western China, along the old east-west trade route known as “the Silk Road.” It was inscribed both in Chinese and Syriac, a form of Aramiac in which many early Christian texts are transmitted. Recently arrived Jesuit missionaries were quick to pick up on this find, because it supported their claim that Christianity had a long history in China. They also transmitted the news back to Rome. Then the fun starts. The great Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, famous among other things for his collection of interesting objects and texts from around the world, used what he read about the stone to speculate about the intonation of the Chinese language (and China's relationship to ancient Egypt!). A few decades later a minor German clergyman in then very provincial Berlin read Kircher's account and proposed the idea that in China people sang all the time (as if they were in an opera) instead of speaking. Our point is that conclusions about far-away places don't have to be true to be interesting.Our second postcard was inspired by a TikTok meme. At the time we recorded the show, sea shanties were everywhere on the internet, thanks mainly to the music-video sharing app ability to amplify strange (we would say interesting!) sound objects: the app can act as a kind of digital version of Kircher's collection of curiosities. This got us thinking about where sea shanties, and other seafaring songs come from.And so we found ourselves talking about whaling ships. As Chris points out, whalers, which were really floating factories, were a kind of Silk Road on the water, thanks to their global routes and diverse crews. They also remind us that music history, economic history, exploration, and extraction often run along the same tracks. The sea shanty meme was good fun (for most listeners!). But sea shanties, and other songs from the riches of maritime history, are more than just curiosities. They offer vital sonic clues about big processes, fascinating moments, and human experience in global history.Key TakeawaysHistorical misunderstandings can be interesting in their own right: take the story of how the discovery of an ancient monument in China led one European to speculate that Chinese people sang all the time as if they were in an opera. Behind this odd idea is a story of someone struggling to make sense of new historical evidence.Whaling ships and other workhorses of the maritime trade were both “floating factories” and fascinating soundscapes. The music passed down from them (including the recent TikTok sea shanty craze) offer clues about these soundscapes, and the ways that music history and the histories of economics (especially the history of working people) travel on the same tracks.ResourcesDaniel Chua and Alexander Rehding's Alien Listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth got us thinking about how it can be illuminating to speculate about how other people--OK, they're talking about space aliens--make sense of sound.Bathsheba Demuth's Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait is a must read on the entanglements of ecology and economy. The author is a former dog-sled musher.We're very inspired by Peter Linbaugh and Markus Rediker's The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, which profoundly shapes our thinking about labor and maritime trade.Check out the podcast Time to Eat the Dogs for thought-provoking stories about science, exploration, and “life at the extreme” presented by the historian Michael Robinson.All of the books mentioned in the episode can be found in our Sounding History Goodreads discussion group. Join the conversation!

In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, the crew discusses the new Top500 list, Atos' Quantum Learning Machine, and a few SC tidbits. RadioFreeHPC is produced by the greater Columbus Dungeons and Dragons team, led by Kevin, Lord High Dungeon Master and Slayer of the Wasteland. Meeting Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in Kevin's Mom's basement. Cookies and… Read More »Top500, Quantum, And SC

In the widely circulated article “The Cost of Cloud: A Trillion-Dollar Paradox,” venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz showed how the rush to public cloud IT services can eat away business valuation over time. In this Tech Barometer podcast segment, explore the real cost of running a business on public cloud with Martin Casado, general partner […]

In the widely circulated article “The Cost of Cloud: A Trillion-Dollar Paradox,” venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz showed how the rush to public cloud IT services can eat away business valuation over time. In this Tech Barometer podcast segment, explore the real cost of running a business on public cloud with Martin Casado, general partner […]

In this Intel Conversations in the Cloud audio podcast: Nitin Somalaraju from Tech Mahindra joins host Jake Smith to talk about the company's Speech Analytics platform named Sayint, which uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) to uncover meaningful insights from customer conversations. Nitin talks about why regional localization […]

Dr. Rebecca Parsons is the Chief Technology Officer at Thoughtworks (TWKS), a global software consultancy. Dr. Parsons has deep technical expertise, including leading the creation of large-scale distributed applications and the integration of disparate systems. Separate from her passion for deep technology, she is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in the technology industry. Dr. Parsons is a frequent speaker at industry events including Collision Conference, Web Summit, YOW!, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and more. She is the co-author of several books: “Domain-Specific Languages,” “The ThoughtWorks Anthology,” and “Building Evolutionary Architectures.”We spoke to her live at Web Summit 2021 on whether or not the tech sector is approaching sustainability in the right way, DEI efforts within the sector, and how the tech sector can take responsibility for the unintended consequences of tech innovation.As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

The machines that make the biggest difference are the ones that make things move and bring people together. This week, our postcards take us to critical moments in the history of technology: the completion of the Erie Canal from the Hudson River to Lake Erie across northern New York state, and the development of the first civilian computers just after the Second World War. In both stories there is a surprising amount at stake for music history.Just clearing a path for and then digging the Erie Canal (mile by mile, by hand) required an immense and dangerous effort. There were not enough workers available, so migrants, many from Britain and Ireland, but also free and enslaved people of color, were brought in to do the job. When the work was done the canal accelerated travel and communication, connecting the metropolis of New York to an immense hinterland to the west. The canal gave the new nation a vastly different sense of its borders and identity. Those who had given their labor (and in some cases their lives) to make it forged soundworlds for this new space. In the evenings and on rare days off they sang and danced together, making new kinds of music. What they did–a kind of synthesis travelling back and forth on the wonder they had built--would go on to underpin what we recognize as “American music” today. After 1945 Alan Turing, who had spent the war working in secret developing the electronic computers that helped break “unbreakable” German codes, helped set up a civilian computer lab at the University of Manchester. Turing was by all accounts not a particularly musical man, but there were good ears on his team. One night, for fun (!), one of Turing's junior colleagues, Christopher Strachey, used an alarm signal already built into a prototype computer to make a basic synthesizer, with hilarious-sounding but in the long run profound results. Thanks to recently discovered archival recordings we can hear its honky efforts, and the sleep-deprived giggles of Turing's young colleagues when they heard what they had done. The members of Turing's lab might not have known it, but what they did eventually opened up a wholly new chapter in the datafication of music. Like the workers on the Erie Canal two centuries ago, we suddenly find that our musical borders have shifted dramatically. Unlike them we ask ourselves where music “is” if it now only lives in digital code.Key PointsThe construction of the Erie canal brought labor and technology together to make new kinds of music, and the connections it made forged a new sense of American identity, also in sound.Alan Turing was involved in efforts to develop the first civilian computers in Britain after World War Two. Although they didn't set out to do so, members of his team found that they could synthesize musical sound, inadvertently setting the stage for the cultures of digital music we now live in.ResourcesChris Smith's The Creolization of American Culture: William Sydney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy explores how working people came together before the Civil War to make a new kind of “American” culture.In Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music Kyle Devine explores the idea that digital music is just as material music on other media (such as shellac, vinyl, and plastic), and just as bad for the environment.The IEEE (Institute of Electronic and Electronics Engineers) website has a detailed and engaging description of early computing and music-making in Alan Turing's postwar Manchester lab.You can read more about Alan Turing in B. Jack Copeland, Alan Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age.All of the books mentioned in the episode can be found in our Sounding History Goodreads discussion group. Join the conversation!

Colonialism reconfigured the world economy around the extraction of natural resources and the exploitation of humans to provide the labor for that extraction. A by-product was profound change to how people made, heard, and paid for music. In this episode we talk about what sound has to do with the Anthropocene, explore how profits from the slave trade had a direct impact on European musical life in the eighteenth century, and immerse ourselves in the soundscape, full of colliding cultural experiences, of a Jamaican dance hall at the turn of the 19th century.We begin by grappling with the Anthropocene, the era of human-caused climate change. There are solid arguments that it was sparked by European colonialism. Together we explain how empire, as early as 1600 CE, contributed to a “Little Ice Age,” before industrialization--and the intensive use of fossil fuels such as peat, wood, coal, steam, and petrochemicals--set temperatures rising again.Individual people paid the price. To find out more we look at the origins of the “triangular trade” of wind-borne commerce between Africa, the Americas, and Europe. We then turn to some pretty famous names from the history of Western Art Music, to discover the impact of the lucrative profits of this commerce, in particular the trafficking of enslaved people from Africa, had on their careers.Hearing the names of Handel, Mozart, and Haydn in association with the murderous trade in enslaved people may come as a shock, so we take some time to understand music-makers and consumers as actors in music history, unpacking connections between high art and the global economy of the early Anthropocene. Or to put it more bluntly, between “then and them,” and “now and us.”Our next stop is early nineteenth-century Jamaica. We take a look (and a listen) to that island's fraught colonial history, by “entering” Abraham James's painting, “A Grand Jamaica Ball,” moving from its two dimensions to an imaginary sonic three. Pictures don't make noise, it's true, but if you take time with them, they can reveal a lot about the human experience of sound. We'll be doing this frequently in the podcast: looking across times and places for unexpected sonic clues about how people lived their lives. Especially in the pre-electrical era paintings, sculpture, prose, and other objects are key materials in our sonic-historic workshop. Key PointsGlobal history took a new turn around 1500 with the beginning of Western colonial expansion and the rise of a new global economy based on resource extraction and long-distance trade. This new turn had a direct and measurable impact on Earth's environment: many historians now place the beginning of the Anthropocene (the era of human-made climate change) around 1600.One fundamental impact of Western expansion and empire included the large-scale eradication of Indigenous people through disease and violence. Another was the enslavement of Africans and their transport to the Americas, a process marked by unspeakable mass violence. Both catastrophes changed global soundworlds in many ways.Historical honesty compels us to recognize that heroes of Western Art Music such as Haydn, Handel and Mozart were all connected to the new global economy. None of them could have had the careers they did without money from patrons whose money came from trade in resources like sugar, which in turn depended on enslavement and the exploitation of human suffering.ResourcesGary Tomlinson's ground-breaking work on the deep history of music includes A Million Years of Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity.Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin's exploration of the long history of human impacts on climate, which includes their take on the “Orbis spike”: The Human Planet: How We Created the AnthropoceneDavid Hunter's discussion of evidence of Handel's investments in the slave economy, on Will Robin's Sound Expertise PodcastFor cutting-edge musicological work on sound, music history, and the Anthropocene, check out @prof_ajchung on TwitterAll of the books mentioned in the episode can be found in our Sounding History Goodreads discussion group. Join the conversation!

Wes McKinney joins us to discuss the history and philosophy of pandas and Apache Arrow as well as his continued work in open source tools. In this episode you will learn: • History of pandas [7:29] • The trends of R and Python [23:33] • Python for Data Analysis [25:58] • pandas updates and community [30:10] • Apache Arrow [41:50] • Voltron Data [55:10] • Origin of Wes's project names [1:08:14] • Wes's favorite tools [1:09:46] • Audience Q&A [1:15:34] Additional materials: www.superdatascience.com/523

One of the world's biggest defense contractors, BAE Systems, has to navigate the world of cloud computing just like everyone else. But the stakes are much higher. The company not only provides weapons systems to the U.S. military but cybersecurity protecting highly classified intelligence. In this podcast segment, Dr. Nandish Mattikalli, the chief engineer for […]

One of the world's biggest defense contractors, BAE Systems, has to navigate the world of cloud computing just like everyone else. But the stakes are much higher. The company not only provides weapons systems to the U.S. military but cybersecurity protecting highly classified intelligence. In this podcast segment, Dr. Nandish Mattikalli, the chief engineer for […]

In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, Dan, Jessi, and Shahin talk AMD's big swing at NVIDIA and the concept of Metaverse. RadioFreeHPC is produced by a group of concerned helicopter mothers who don't understand why they can't have lunch with their adult kids in the clean room, and distributed in partnership with HPCwire. *Download the MP3 *… Read More »Cue The Processor Wars

In this Intel Conversations in the Cloud audio podcast: James Carnall from ZeroFOX joins host Jake Smith to talk about AI-powered digital risk protection across the internet, including text, images and video, to identify threats ranging from deep fakes and fraud to potential cyberattacks. James explains why the ZeroFOX team worked directly with Intel for […]

In Episode 218 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher. Eric is co-founder of Schmidt Futures and the former CEO & Chairman of Google and Daniel is the inaugural dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. They are the co-authors, along with Henry Kissinger, of a phenomenal new book titled, “The Age of AI And Our Human Future,” which explores how Artificial Intelligence is transforming human society—and what it means for all of us. Eric and Dan spend the first hour discussing the technical dimensions of artificial intelligence—what it is and how it works—as well as how it will continue to shape and transform our social and physical realities. The second half of the conversation focuses on the national security dimensions of artificial intelligence, as well as the profound philosophical challenges that it poses for humanity, specifically our need to find meaning in a world where machines will provide answers to more and more questions but without the ability, in many cases, to provide us with a rational or methodology by which they arrived at those answer. For those of you who are interested in the field of blockchain and DLT-enabled applications and smart contracts, Demetri had a chance to ask Eric about where he thinks these technologies fit in an AI future, what the main hurdles are going to be, and what some of the interesting projects in the space are. You can access the second part of this episode, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week's conversation through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 11/08/2021

Max breaks out his 2016 blog posts on passive computing, a possibility for the next wave of computer human interfaces and software platforms. We discussion how much of it has actually played out. localmaxradio.com/198

In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, the crew talks the biggest news on the mind – China hitting exascale. RadioFreeHPC was produced by a grant from Neo-Luddite, a group dedicated to the belief that the tech invented during their active career represents the peak of innovation and that anything that comes after is at best derivative… Read More »China Hits Exascale

Parenting is a deeply personal journey with profound professional implications. And never has it been more important for employers to acknowledge and adopt strategies to help employees and their families navigate pregnancy, the baby years, and beyond. In this episode of the Business Group on Health Podcast, we speak with Emily Oster, PhD, an economist […]

In this Intel Conversations in the Cloud audio podcast: Jeff Boudier from Hugging Face joins host Jake Smith to talk about the company's open source machine learning transformers (also known as “pytorch-pretrained-bert”) library. Jeff talks about how transformers have accelerated the proliferation of natural language process (NLP) models and their future use in objection detection […]

Jacob Navok is the co-founder and CEO of Genvid, which is the leader in interactive streaming technology. They are working on one of the most interesting problems in the pursuit of the metaverse vision which is, how do you get millions of people to concurrently be participating and interacting in one live experience with no latency (delay or lag)? This is as opposed to what's happening right now with server sizes of around 50 people in say Fortnite concerts. Jacob was the co-author of the networking and compute articles in Matthew Ball's Metaverse Primer series. There he outlined the technical and infrastructural limitations and challenges we have today to make the metaverse a reality.Beyond the buzz around what kinds of new use cases and consumer experiences the Metaverse will enable, it's important to think about the foundations. What is the infrastructure and computing power we will need to actually power this future? This is not something that will be solved by any company alone, but a collective effort of all the builders of the internet. ABOUT THE GUESTPrior to founding Genvid, Jacob led worldwide business development and strategy at Square Enix Holdings, reporting to the CEO. He also built their cloud gaming division, Shinra Technologies, where he met many of his Genvid colleagues.SHOW NOTES[5:20] Definition of the Metaverse[7:20] Why VR is not representative of the Metaverse[13:05] Concurrency and the challenges of hosting live, synchronous events with millions of people[17:35] Twitch as the first example of massive multiplayer concurrent gaming[19:40] Rival Peak, Genvid's Live Interactive Multiplayer Reality Show with AI contestants[22:50] Hacks for the concurrency problem[25:30] Why decentralized systems don't work well for live 3D experiences[27:15] Future use cases of live synchronous events[30:30] Social platforms like FB, Twitch, Discord as identity systems of the Metaverse[37:15] Why FB keeps investing in AR/VR[39:10] How will life in the Metaverse be different from the real world?

There are a lot of people trying to innovate in the area of specialized AI hardware, but most of them are doing it with traditional transistors. Lightmatter is doing something totally different. They're building photonic computers that are more power efficient and faster for AI inference. Nick Harris joins us in this episode to bring us up to speed on all the details.

There are a lot of people trying to innovate in the area of specialized AI hardware, but most of them are doing it with traditional transistors. Lightmatter is doing something totally different. They're building photonic computers that are more power efficient and faster for AI inference. Nick Harris joins us in this episode to bring us up to speed on all the details.

Every collaboration has a backstory. Ours goes back nearly 30 years, when Chris (the older one, jazz musician, former line-cook and nightclub bouncer, some tattoos) and Tom (the slightly younger one, classical musician, serial migrant, no tattoos) worked together at WFIU, Indiana University Public Radio. Both of us were in grad school at Indiana at the time, Chris in jazz and musicology and Tom in music performance. In radio those were the old days. We worked with reel-to-reel tape and rudimentary hard-wired networks on the studio computers, pulling shifts late nights and early mornings for a listening audience scattered through the southern Indiana hills. And then we went our separate ways: Chris to start his academic career in Texas, Tom to Germany to work as a musician before returning to the US for a PhD in musicology at Cornell. Fast forward fifteen years: we are both in academia, two American scholars on divergent paths. Chris is at Texas Tech building a Vernacular Music Center and much else besides. Tom has landed in Southampton in the UK, beginning to move from pretty old-fashioned art music (ask him about Mozart and he'll tell you a lot of things you didn't know people even knew) to global music history. Fast forward another ten years to the summer of 2018. Chris has just finished the second of two books about American vernaculars, and Tom is wrapping up a book about European experiences of Chinese music around 1800 and starting a new project about jazz and AI. Over the years we'd seen each other at conferences in strange airless hotels. You could count on us (the big guy with the tattoos and the bookish Mozart scholar living as a migrant in Britain) to regale anyone who would listen with stories about small-town radio in the good old days, where you knew your audience because some of them would call you on the control room phone just to talk, and the reel-to-reel machines sometimes did terrible things to you on air.And, curiously enough, we realize that our paths are beginning to align: Chris is working on “history from below,” in music and dance soundscapes across the Americas, and Tom is working in material and social history using soundscapes of global imperial encounter and modern technology.Chris has an idea. Why don't we two surprise people (because despite our shared history, from the outside we seem an unlikely duo in academia, where everyone is trapped in narrow specialties) and do a thing. We're both all-in on global history and empire, on music and what it means in the world. We feel like we need to say something in times of environmental and political crisis. So...an essay collection? Maybe a symposium? You could feel our enthusiasm waning even as one of us suggested these. As energizing as it can be to spend time in a room full of really cool colleagues, neither of us wanted the thing to be that. Instead, after decades in academia, both of us were looking for something more immediate, the kind of experience we know from the classroom and yes, from the old days on the radio. We talk it over some, and agree to meet in England next time Chris is traveling in Europe. You'll have to listen to the episode to get the rest of the story. It didn't take long for us to settle on an ambitious project: a music history book for non-academic readers. And a podcast, a medium Tom and Chris, Old Radio Guys, were just beginning to discover. A few emails later we had found our producer, Tom's sister Tatiana Irvine, and her production company, Seedpod Sound. And here we are.Key PointsHow we came to be writing a book together nearly 30 years after first working at the same public radio station in small-town Indiana (or “How a global history of imperial encounter, across five centuries, was born in the studios of a small public radio station in southern Indiana, 30 years ago”)What it's like to come up with an ambitious joint project in a business that favors lone working (or “Getting our brains, and those of our colleagues and managers, around the idea of an international collaboration across time zones and disciplines--in the midst of a global pandemic.”)What excites us about podcasting as a medium: its immediacy and the possibility of two-way communication with the audience (or “How podcasting engages and unites us through shared personal and scholarly goals: radio skills, expertise in sound as both meaning and technology, a sense of history, and an urgent desire to contribute to global efforts to fight environmental destruction”)How we want to structure the podcast around three themes: labor, energy and data (or “Why ‘labor'; why ‘energy'; why ‘data'? What are the human, ecological, cultural, and historical stories that brought us to this moment?”)Why we want to tell bold new stories about voices most music historians miss (or “The untold stories, the silenced voices, the unseen or unrecognized encounters between people, places, eras, and experience--between labor, energy, and data--for which we seek to create new spaces for encounter and understanding.”)ResourcesTom Irvine's Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounter, 1770-1839 is about the shifting responses of Western travellers, musicians, philosophers, and diplomats to China and its soundscapes around 1800, and how these responses shaped their sense of what it meant to be “Western.”Dreams of Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor, edited by Tom Irvine and the Southampton historian Neil Gregor, explores how Germans reacted in music to the most significant developments of the twentieth century, including technological advances, fascism, and war on an unprecedented scale, and how the world responded to German music in return. The introduction and Tom's chapter on how ideas of “Germanness” shaped the British composer Hubert Parry's heavily racialized approach to music history are available for free on the Berghan Books website.Chris Smith's The Creolization of American Culture: William Sydney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy uses the artworks of painter and musician William Sidney Mount (born in Setauket, Long Island in 1807) as a lens through which to recover the earliest roots of the Black-white cultural exchange that gave birth to the street musics that were the roots of the “Creole Synthesis” of African and Anglo-Celtic sound and movement that lies at the heart of American music.Chris Smith's Dancing Revolution: Bodies, Space, and Sound in American Cultural History is a study of 400 years of movement and noise--street dance and "rough music"--as tools by which minoritized peoples, across many moments in the history of the Americas, have sought to create freedom “from below.”All of the books mentioned in the episode can be found in our Sounding History Goodreads discussion group. Join the conversation!

Adoption of Python has been enormous over the last decade. Why? It’s easy to use, accessible, versatile and can be used for AI, machine learning, data analytics, data visualization, and all types of science. Tune into how 3 experts are involved in building common standards for Python data APIs that can help users use a […]

Technology, philosophy, and society. We have been primed to think that a capitalist system is capable of giving everyone the compensation they deserve—but we also know that this isn't always the case, especially for those who may need it the most. How do we take a closer look at the technologies and the organizations that provide the quality of life we have now? A foundation on the theories that apply to our circumstances is a step in the right direction. In this episode, Alexander McCaig explores these ideas with Bernd Stahl, author of Information Systems: Critical Perspectives. Bernd is also a Professor of Critical Research in Technology and Director of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University. Is Emancipation in Today's Labor System Possible? The process of emancipating someone may seem like a noble goal. However, it can be difficult to gauge whether or not we are actually doing harm by taking this opportunity on their behalf. For example, one common perspective of companies is that they have the social responsibility to make profits because it would be distributed to the shareholders and trickle down to employees. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who do not participate in this success and are not capable of being a part of this economic system. Wealth generation and opportunities to it are vastly different, especially in a capitalist structure. There are plenty of possible approaches to consider for this problem. Those who are pessimists believe that the system inherently ensures that some people will always be “outside.” As a result, the only true solution would be to implement radical change. Others believe that information systems can be used to make the economy more inclusive and spread wealth more evenly. With such polarizing views on how the labor system should be structured, it may seem like an impossible task to bring everyone into a discussion where they can give their own benchmarks for what is best. The Impact of Today's Environment on Our Reflexivity: The magnitude of such a feat is further emphasized when we think of the tech-driven world we live in. Due to our different backgrounds and preferences, Bernd points out that the idea of maximizing individual potential can vary widely from one person to another. The essence of critical theory would be to have a society where people are free to flourish, without other individuals or systems telling them what success is and how it should be achieved. It's an extension of our capacity to practice our individual liberties. Sadly, those in power often influence the system to fulfill their vested interests—and a crucial part in making this possible is taking away our ability to self-reflect, or to practice reflexivity. This is TARTLE's mission: to give people the avenue to practice critical reflection and self-awareness, bringing back that sense of common responsibility to humanity one step at a time. Surveillance Capitalism and Its Effects on Human Behavior: In such a tech-driven landscape, the provision of goods and services does not provide a lot of opportunities to interact with other people. Bernd illustrates this by pointing to electronic marketplaces and discussing how straightforward the transaction is. If this seems like an advantage, we need to dig a little deeper. We are no longer encouraged to think of the human realities behind eBay, Amazon, or other e-commerce platforms. All we need to consider is the availability of the product, estimated shipping time, and the most competitive cost. As a result, these platforms discourage us from taking more discursive action—all a part of surveillance capitalism efforts by big internet service providers to prevent us from thinking deeper about our purchases. The formula across different systems is similar: structure our work, extract our data, and lead us to buy something that we may or may not need. Regardless, the end result is to influence the general population's behavior so that they are at an advantage. “The potential for giving people freedom or reducing their freedom is there in any type of technology, across different types of political systems, even though it may look very different in different systems,” Bernd concluded. Modern technology draws parallels to a panopticon, where prisoners would be watched around the clock. While the original intention of this set-up was to benefit the prisoner through observation and feedback, the term is now being used as a mechanism of control. Indeed, when we are under constant surveillance from devices we've become so reliant on, it can either have a chilling effect or a normalizing effect. The outcomes are undetermined, but it certainly plays a crucial role in altering human behavior. Transparency in information systems will be important in bringing back the power, and the capacity to speak, to the people. Closing Thoughts: Awareness of the Human Ecosystem: When asked about his parting words, Bernd encouraged listeners to think of humanity as an ecosystem: the reality that we live in a society of other individuals and other actors, with unique needs and desires. It's a fragile ecosystem, and one that we should try and balance in our capacity, as stewards of the earth and of each other. Businesses and information systems were previously thought to be all about improving efficiencies and maximizing productivity. However, we've moved far beyond such a profit-driven perspective; now, Bernd hopes we remember that technology is always socio-technical, with human beings working alongside modern devices to improve the living circumstances of their fellow human beings. It is this sense of urgency to uplift the living conditions for humans across the board that encouraged us to develop TARTLE. Data-driven measures are the key to rebuilding the self-awareness we've lost in the great tech race for the boldest, biggest, and flashiest devices. The power is back in your hands.   What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   A Critique of Capitalism With Author, Professor, and Director, Bernd Stahl by TARTLE is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, a candid and unfiltered interview with Bronis de Supinski, General Chair of SC21. The challenges of St. Louis… with a few tangents along the way. RadioFreeHPC is produced by oldster tech fogies who believe that the good old days of tailor-made custom supercomputers was the pinnacle of tech achievement. Their motto?… Read More »Bronis de Supinski on SC21

Helen Wang from Magic Data joins host Jake Smith to talk about the company's work in automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), and natural language processing (NLP). Helen discusses the scalable capabilities Magic Data offers customers worldwide and goes into detail about how Intel engineers worked with Magic Data developers to optimize OpenVINO (often associated […]

Helen Wang from Magic Data joins host Jake Smith to talk about the company's work in automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), and natural language processing (NLP). Helen discusses the scalable capabilities Magic Data offers customers worldwide and goes into detail about how Intel engineers worked with Magic Data developers to optimize OpenVINO (often associated […]

In this episode of RadioFreeHPC, Jessi vanishes from recording due to DSL issues, Addison Snell of Intersect360 joins to add to the scintillation, and a host of issues are discussed from new scalability to cluster competitions to voice recognition. RadioFreeHPC is a production of millennial tech hipsters who believe that any and all HPC workloads can… Read More »Musical Chairs

In Nashville, TN, there is a collaborative movement underway to improve the health of the city that involves the largest employers, health care systems, non-profits and community leaders. Key to this movement called NashvilleHealth, are the use of data, the input of diverse expertise and the alignment of resources. On this episode of the Business […]

Rob and Jason are joined by Hal Finkel from the US Department of Energy. They first talk to Hal about the LLVM 13 release and why the release notes were lacking. Then they talk to Hal about his C++ JIT Proposal, the Clang prototype and how it could be used. They also talk about Hal's work at DOE, Exascale computing and more. News LLVM 13 released Some lesser-known powers of std::optional Barbarian, an open and distributed Conan package index! Links ClangJIT P1609R1 C++ Should Support Just-in-Time Compilation Hal Finkel "Faster Compile Times and Better Performance: Bringing Just-in-Time Compilation to C+" US Department of Energy: Advanced Scientific Computing Research Sponsors Use code JetBrainsForCppCast during checkout atJetBrains.com for a 25% discount  

On today's Day Two Cloud we talk trends and predictions in cloud computing, including emerging technologies such as Web assembly, rivals to Kubernetes, and the role of GitOps in infrastructure as code. Our guest is Adrian Mouat, Chief Scientist at Container Solutions. His blog post "10 Predictions for the Future of Computing or; the Inane Ramblings of our Chief Scientist" inspired this episode. The post Day Two Cloud 120: Web Assembly, K8s Rivals, And Other Cloud Computing Trends appeared first on Packet Pushers.

On today's Day Two Cloud we talk trends and predictions in cloud computing, including emerging technologies such as Web assembly, rivals to Kubernetes, and the role of GitOps in infrastructure as code. Our guest is Adrian Mouat, Chief Scientist at Container Solutions. His blog post "10 Predictions for the Future of Computing or; the Inane Ramblings of our Chief Scientist" inspired this episode. The post Day Two Cloud 120: Web Assembly, K8s Rivals, And Other Cloud Computing Trends appeared first on Packet Pushers.

A recent study from Lancaster University in the UK has concluded that global computing is likely to be responsible for a greater share of greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought and that share is continuing to grow. Previous calculations of the contributions from information and communications technology (or ICT) estimated that globally it accounts for […]

William Hurley (or “whurley” as he prefers to be called) is a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and open-source advocate, who's achieved what many geeks only dream of, including critically recognized work at Apple, IBM, and CERN. He's started and sold businesses; invented, invested, published, advised, and mentored. Currently, he's best known his thoughts on—and experience with— quantum computing. SolarWinds Head Geek Leon Adato asks about the insights whurley's gleaned from his work in quantum computing as it applies to everyday IT. But the conversation didn't stop there. Listen in (or read the transcript) to find out more.  This podcast is provided for informational purposes only. © 2021 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.

William Hurley (or “whurley” as he prefers to be called) is a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and open-source advocate, whose work at Apple, IBM, and in the area of quantum computing is world-renowned. Picking up where we left off in part 1, SolarWinds Head Geek Leon Adato and whurley explore a range of topics – everything from the state of the tech industry in Austin; to career advice for those just starting out (as well as those who've been around the NOC a few times); to the things whurley wishes people would ask him. Give it a listen or read the transcript.  

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DTSS, or The Dartmouth Time Sharing System, began at Dartmouth College in 1963. That was the same year Project MAC started at MIT, which is where we got Multics, which inspired Unix. Both contributed in their own way to the rise of the Time Sharing movement, an era in computing when people logged into computers over teletype devices and ran computing tasks - treating the large mainframes of the era like a utility. The notion had been kicking around in 1959 but then John McCarthy at MIT started a project on an IBM 704 mainframe. And PLATO was doing something similar over at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. 1959 is also when John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College bought Librascope General Purpose computer, then being made in partnership with the Royal Typewriter Company and Librascope - whichwould later be sold off to Lockheed Martin. Librascope had Stan Frankel - who had worked on both the Manhattan Project and the ENIAC. And he architected the LGP-30 in 1956, which ended up at Dartmouth. At this point, the computer looked like a desk with a built-in typewriter. Kurtz had four students that were trying to program in ALGOL 58. And they ended up writing a language called DOPE in the early 60s. But they wanted everyone on campus to have access to computing - and John McCarthy said why not try this new time sharing concept. So they went to the National Science Foundation and got funding for a new computer, which to the chagrin of the local IBM salesman, ended up being a GE-225. This baby was transistorized. It sported 10,0000 transistors and double that number of diodes. It could do floating-point arithmetic, used a 20-bit word, and came with 186,000 magnetic cores for memory. It was so space aged that one of the developers, Arnold Spielberg, would father one of the greatest film directors of all time. Likely straight out of those diodes. Dartmouth also picked up a front-end processor called a DATANET-30 from GE. This only had an 18-bit word size but could do 4k to 16k words and supported hooking up 128 terminals that could transfer data to and from the system at 3,000 bits a second using the Bell 103 modem. Security wasn't a thing yet, so these things had direct memory access to the 225, which was a 235 by the time they received the computer. They got to work in 1963, installing the equipment and writing the code. The DATANET-30 received commands from the terminals and routed them to the mainframe. They scanned for commands 110 times per second from the terminals and ran them when the return key was pressed on a terminal. If the return key was a command they queued it up to run, taking into account routine tasks the computer might be doing in the background. Keep in mind, the actual CPU was only doing one task at a time, but it seemed like it was multi-tasking! Another aspect of democratizing computing across campus was to write a language that was more approachable than a language like Algol. And so they released BASIC in 1964, picking up where DOPE left off, and picking up a more marketable name. Here we saw a dozen undergraduates develop a language that was as approachable as the name implies. Some of the students went to Phoenix, where the GE computers were built. And the powers at GE saw the future. After seeing what Dartmouth had done, GE ended up packaging the DATANET-30 and GE-235 as one machine, which they marketed as the GE-265 the next year. And here we got the first commercially viable time-sharing system, which started a movement. One so successful that GE decided to get out of making computers and focus instead on selling access to time sharing systems. By 1968 they actually ended up shooting up to 40% of the market of the day. Dartmouth picked up a GE Mark II in 1966 and got to work on DTSS version 2. Here, they added some of the concepts coming out of the Multics project that was part of Project MAC at MIT and built on previous experiences. They added pipes and communication files to promote inter-process communications - thus getting closer to the multiple user conferencing like what was being done on PLATO with Notes. Things got more efficient and they could handle more and more concurrent sessions. This is when they went from just wanting to offer computing as a basic right on campus to opening up to schools in the area. Nearby Hanover High School started first and by 1967 they had over a dozen. Using further grants from NSF they added another dozen schools to what by then they were calling the Kiewit Network. Then added other smaller colleges and by 1971 supported a whopping 30,000 users. And by 73 supported leased line connections all the way to Ohio, Michigan, New York, and even Montreal. The system continued on in one form or another, allowing students to code in FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP, and yes… BASIC. It became less of a thing as Personal Computers started to show up here and there. But BASIC didn't. Every computer needed a BASIC. But people still liked to connect on the system and share information. At least, until the project was finally shut down in 1999. Turns out we didn't need time sharing once the Internet came along. Following the early work done by pioneers, companies like Tymshare and CompuServe were born. Tymshare came out of two of the GE team, Thomas O'Rourke and David Schmidt. They ran on SDS hardware and by 1970 had over 100 people, focused on time sharing with their Tymnet system and spreading into Europe by the mid-70s, selling time on their systems until the cost of personal computing caught up and they were acquired by McDonnell Douglas in 1984. CompuServe began on a PDP-10 and began similarly but by the time they were acquired by H&R Block had successfully pivoted into a dial-up online services company and over time focused on selling access to the Internet. And they survived through to an era when they migrated their own proprietary tooling to HTML in the late 90s - although they were eventually merged into AOL and are now a part of Verizon media. So the pivot bought them an extra decade or so. Time sharing and BASIC proliferated across the country and then the world from Dartmouth. Much of this - and a lot of personal stories from the people involved can be found in Dr Joy Rankin's “A People's History of Computing in the United States.” Published in 2018, it's a fantastic read that digs in deep on the ways that many of these systems evolved. There are other works, but she does a phenomenal job tying events into one another. One consistent point across her book is around societal impact. These pioneers democratized access to computing. Many of those who built businesses around time sharing missed the rapidly falling price of chips and the ready access to personal computers that were coming. They also missed that BASIC would be monetized by companies like Microsoft. But they brought computing to high schools in the area, established blueprints for teaching that are used through to this day, and as Grace Hopper did a generation before - made us think of even more ways to make programming more accessible to a new generation with BASIC. One other author of note here is John Kemeny. His book “Man and the computer” is a must read. He didn't have the knowledge of the upcoming personal computing - but far more prophetic than not around cloud operations as we get back to a time sharing-esque model of computing. And we do owe him, Kurtz, and everyone else involved a huge debt for their work. Many others pushed the boundaries of what was possible with computers. They pushed the boundaries of what was possible with accessibility. And now we have ubiquity. So when we see something complicated. Something that doesn't seem all that approachable. Maybe we should just wonder if - by some stretch - we can make it a bit more BASIC. Like they did.

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