In this episode, I talk with Kyle Rankin, vice president of engineering operations at Final, a credit card startup. We discuss old versus new approaches to server hardening in light of the cloud, how institutional inertia thwarts change, and the new security-minded desktop OS Qubes.

Kyle Rankin on Modern Server Hardening for the Cloud

In this episode of the Data Show, I speak with Peter Bailis, founder and CEO of Sisu, a startup that is using machine learning to improve operational analytics. Bailis is also an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University, where he conducts research into data-intensive systems and where he is co-founder of the DAWN Lab.

Machine Learning for Operational Analytics and Business Intelligence

O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators. At O’Reilly, a big part of our business is paying attention to what’s new and interesting in the world of technology. We have a pretty good record at having anticipated some of the big technology developments in recent history. For instance, we launched the first commercial Web site, GNN, in 1993; we organized the meeting at which the term “open source” was first adopted; we were early investors in Blogger, which helped launch the blogging revolution; and more recently, our Web 2.0 conference launched a world-wide meme. We call this predictive sense the “O’Reilly Radar.” And while we’re certainly not always right, we are, at least, good at making interesting guesses.

Our methodology is simple: we draw from the wisdom of the alpha geeks in our midst, paying attention to what’s interesting to them, amplifying these weak signals, and seeing where they fit into the innovation ecology. Add to that the original research conducted by our Research team, and you start to get a good picture of what the technology world is thinking about.

Machine Learning for Operational Analytics and Business Intelligence

O'Reilly Radar