The Machine: A computer science education podcast

Coming out of our latest Computing Week on campus in SETU, Rob spoke with two members of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau – Detective Sergeant Eoin O’Connell and Detective Noel O’Gorman. They spoke about the work of the Bureau, how cybercrime threats have evolved over the past few years and what individual and organisations can do to help protect themselves. TRIGGER WARNING: the podcast includes discussion of offences around online sexual abuse and child pornography. The conversation is not graphic but listeners may want to exercise discretion.   By an amazing coincidence, in the period from when the interview was recorded and published, SETU has been the victim of a cyberattack. At the time of podcast publication, all systems on the Waterford campus are offline and the site is under active investigation. So the podcast is particularly timely for the SETU community …   For more information on the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau, please visit https://www.garda.ie/en/about-us/organised-serious-crime/garda-national-cyber-crime-bureau-gnccb-/ To keep up to date with The Machine or for any follow-ups, you can contact Rob via the SETU website https://www.setu.ie/staff/robert-oconnor

Autonomous Systems are the jumping off point for this podcast episode with Indrakshi Dey of the Walton Institute at SETU. We talk about how computer science research is progressing in this area, encompassing the world of AI and forming links with partners across all disciplines. This leads on to a chat about how we (humans) tend to anthropomorphise Artificial Intelligence systems. We also discuss Indrakshi’s career to date and how being a woman of colour has given her unique insight across the sector. Here are some links if you wish to follow up the podcast: ·       Walton Institute Key Research Areas https://waltoninstitute.ie/research/key-research ·       CONNECT project https://www.connect-science.net ·       Indrakshi Dey’s profile at the Walton Institute https://waltoninstitute.ie/about/staff/dr-indrakshi-dey ·       Indrakshi Dey’s profile on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/indrakshi-dey-aa658839/   ·       Rob O’Connor on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertoconnorirl/

To help celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, Rob spoke with Spanish computer scientist Nuria Oliver about her work to date, such as using big data systems to help unbanked people access credit in developing nations or combating bias in AI systems. Nuria recounted how she first became interested in computing and turned that interest into a career. They also discussed the gender imbalance in computing today and Nuria offered some thought-provoking suggestions as to how these issues might be addressed. Nuria is also a fellow with Association of Computing Machinery, so thanks to the ACM for setting up the interview.   Here are links to projects mentioned during the podcast: ELLIS – European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems https://ellis.eu Data-Pop Alliance https://datapopalliance.org Nuria Oliver’s Personal Website https://www.nuriaoliver.com Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) https://www.acm.org   To keep up to date with The Machine, you can find the podcast on X/Twitter @machine_podcast or you can connect with Rob O’Connor via LinkedIn

Here's a live panel discussion we recently hosted at SETU, in which a bunch of computing professionals talked about what it's like to work in the tech sector in Ireland. This took place in front of approx. 200 Leaving Cert students, tied in with Computing Week at SETU. If you're a student or someone who's interested in starting a career in IT, this discussion might be very useful. The panel is comprised of: Padraig O’Neill – UNUM Sinead Queally – VoxGig Mick O’Brien – Kargo Donna Tilson – Sun Life Brendan O’Farrell – Red Hat Amanda Freeman-Gater - SETU Please excuse the poor audio in places. This was held as a live event and not a podcast. However, there were some great nuggets of info in there so we decided it was better to get it out there, warts and all.

Another #ComputingWeek talk turned into a podcast! Two Red Hat software engineers, both recent graduates of SETU, returned to discuss the issues surrounding running your own LLM on a local machine, how models and datasets are built and reduced (quantised) so as to run on a laptop rather than an array of servers. Mark Campbell and Dimitri Saradkis provided excellent insight on the technical issues surround this topic, before getting into some of the ethical and moral issues with host Rob O'Connor at the end. You can connect with all the people on this podcast on LinkedIn at: Mark Campbell https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-campbell-76846b194/ Dimitri Saradakis https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitri-saridakis-32a087139/ Rob O'Connor https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertoconnorirl/ Here are links to some of the tools referenced in the podcast: Red Hat OpenShift AI https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/openshift-ai LMStudio https://lmstudio.ai/ Ollama https://ollama.ai/ HuggingFace https://huggingface.co/

On the back of a packed #ComputingWeek talk at SETU, Rob nabbed two speakers from UNUM Ireland – Gary Kenneally and Shourjya Sanyal – and recorded a conversation about the pace of change in the ICT industry, how AI tools can be integrated into a workflow and why new developers should even care about AI. The lads discuss why the think AI won’t be replacing anyone anytime soon – but it may help us work smarter.   To keep up to date with The Machine, you can find the podcast on X/Twitter @machine_podcast Or you can contact Rob via the SETU website. Thanks for listening

Don't know your q-bits from your bytes? This is the podcast for you! Quantum Computing is one of the next-gen technologies that can truly usher in a new era in computing. Quantum Communications has the potential to provide a truly secure infrastructure for communications across small or vast distances. Deirdre Kilbane (Director of Research at the Walton Institute) joined Rob O'Connor in the studio to talk about all of this and the recent announcement of a large research investment in Ireland QCI (Quantum Communications Infrastructure). Deirdre breaks down some of the theoretical elements in an easy to understand manner and lays out the practical applications for this technology across Europe (and beyond). For more information on Ireland QCI, check out this web story https://waltoninstitute.ie/projects/ireland-qci For more information on Deirdre Kilbane, check out her profile https://waltoninstitute.ie/about/staff/dr-deirdre-kilbane Stay up to date with The Machine podcast by following us on Twitter @machine_podcast

Hazel Farrell and Pete Windle are academics at SETU who have been playing with ChatGPT (and other AI tools) to see how they can be used in the classroom to assist teaching and learning. They both take an open approach towards the technologies, rather than shutting down conversation. They sat down with Rob O'Connor to talk about the potential of these technologies to be a useful tool in education. Pete is a lecturer in Computing, whereas Hazel is a lecturer in Music - so there is a cross-disciplinary aspect to the discussion. The podcast doesn't lead to many answers for academics or students who may be struggling with AI, but it does spark some interested questions and dialogues. This is definitely a topic we'll be discussing again. During the podcast, Hazel recommends following Mushtaq Bilal on Twitter @MushtaqBilalPhD for interesting threads on ChatGPT. Pete recommends the ChatGPT Insights Facebook group. You can follow Hazel on Twitter @renshigirl. Pete's profile on LinkedIn can be found here. Rob O'Connor is on Twitter @roboconnor_irl or on Mastodon http://mastodon.ie/@roboconnor. Follow the podcast on Twitter at @machine_podcast

Red Hat are the world's largest open source software company. Senior Engineers at Red Hat - Brendan O'Farrell and Leigh Griffin - joined SETU lecturers Rob O'Connor and Amanda Freeman-Gater to chat about Red Hat Academy, an online portal that provides free resources for students of computer science. They discussed the kind of material you can find there and why students might be interested in this. There's a lot of conversation about Linux in here, but it's not confined to CentOS or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They also talked about the characteristics that they look for when hiring graduates and their thoughts on learning as a life-long activity (not something that ends when you complete your degree). You can learn more about Red Hat at redhat.com. You'll find general company info there, as well as details on the Red Hat Academy. You can follow The Machine podcast on Twitter @machine_podcast. Staff profiles for Rob O'Connor and Amanda Freeman-Gater can be found on SETU.ie

Two colleagues at SETU from the School of Engineering, David Alarco and Natalie Romanyatova, joined Rob in the podcast studio to discuss additive manufacturing (3D printing), how it dovetails with computing and how it's changing the way "stuff" is made. They have a new course starting bout it too. More information about Additive Manufacturing Advancing the South East (AMASE) can be found at amase.ie This is the last episode of The Machine for the season. We'll be back in the new academic year with more interesting chats about technology. Enjoy your summer holidays!

Can we detect an excess of carbon in a field using equipment that already in place? Rob spoke with SETU academic Bernard Butler and his graduate student Thakshilla Wedage about their work in VistaMilk and using the physical properties of wireless signals to predict atmospheric conditions in a farming context. The speed of the terahertz signals they use are hampered by our wet, dense atmosphere - but they may allow wireless communications 100-times faster than current speeds on a dry environment, such as Mars. They talked about their next phase of their work which is looking at employing these technologies to facilitate high-bandwidth, low-latency communications off-world. To quote a famous space traveller - Fascinating!  More information about the VistaMilk project and the people involved can be found at vistamilk.ie

What place does religion have in video games? Why should developers be concerned with religion, theology or morality when creating games? Frank Bosman is a Dutch academic with Tilberg University who spoke with Rob about some of the larger ideas contained in video games and how they add depth to the gaming experience.  Frank's book "Gaming and the Divine: A New Systematic Theology of Video Games" is published by Routledge Press. He can found on Twitter @frankgbosman. Stay up to date with the latest from the podcast @machine_podcast

A rerun of an episode we published a few years back - Rob sat down with some final year students who'd just completed their undergraduate degree. He asked them to reflect on their time studying in Waterford, highlight the areas of computing they liked most/least and also offer advice to their 1st year-selves. The students in the room were Ciaran Malone (Games Development), Dimitri Saradakis (Applied Computing) and Erinn Whitty (Internet of Things).

StudyAtHome is a collection of eLearning courses approved by Universities across Europe where students can pick up extra credits in a variety of specialist computing courses, such as Data Ethics and Open Data, The Connected Car and Assistive Technologies Basics. Rob discussed the initiative with two of the computing academics involved: Brendan Jackman from SETU Waterford and Martin Deihnhofer from FH Technikum Wien (Vienna).  Details on StudyAtHome can be found at https://hub.studyathome.technikum-wien.at

To kick off a short season at the end of the academic year, Eamonn Deleastar and Siobhan Drohan joined Rob O'Connor in the studio to discuss issues around learning your second (or third!) programming language. They touched on the the programming language family tree, how tools and tech have changed over the years and identified some programming trends to watch out for in the coming few years. 

A documentary tracing the 50+ years history of Waterford Institute of Technology, from its initial creation as Waterford Regional technical College in 1970, through to its re-designation as the South East Technological University in 2022. The documentary features a number of voices including: Caroline Corcoran; Willie Donnelly; Ray Griffin Sr & Ray Griffin Jr; Mary Lacey; Venie Martin; Denis Moran; Marie Morrissey (RIP); Anne Phelan; Jim Phelan; Tony Whelan; Liz White. It also contains some music performed by Joe Phelan and Dave’s List.

It's not a new episode, but Rob gives an update as to where The Machine podcast current stands (HINT - will be back soon!) and also reposts an episode of their new podcast 9plus which was recorded for International Womens Day 2022. If you like what you hear, you can find 9plus wherever you normally get your podcasts www.podfollow.com/9plus

Continuing our series looking at sub-disciplines of computer science, in this episode we're discussing Automotive Computing (yes, the computers that run cars!) On the panel are Brendan Jackman, head of the Automotive Control Group research unit at Waterford Institute of Technology. Also on the panel is Applied Computing graduate David Evans, now working as a Connected Vehicle R&D Engineer with AppPlus IDIADA in Cambridge, UK. David would have taken the Automotive & Automation stream option on Applied during his studies. They discuss how cars have changed over the past 20 years, the type of devices used inside them to control aspects such as anti-lock braking, climate control and other safety systems. More information on the Automotive Control Group can be found at www.wit.ie/automotive 

Mícheál Ó'Foghlú is a former computing faculty member at WIT, one of the founders of the TSSG research group (now Walton) and instrumental in the spin-out of FeedHenry and its evolution into Red Hat. Mícheál's current role is that of Engineering Director at Google Core Developer unit based in Munich, Germany. He spoke with Rob about his career to date, musing on technology and how it can be a force for good in the world. They also chatted about Mícheál's advice for newcomers to the industry (and he made some media recommendations also!) - Mícheál's personal website - https://www.ofoghlu.net - The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy (BBC Radio Drama) - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03v379k - The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond (Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49234.The_Third_Chimpanzee)

Continuing our explorations of sub-topics of Computer Science, WIT lecturer Frank Walsh and student Dominik Wawak joined Rob O'Connor in the studio to discuss the Internet of Things. The discussed some samples projects, the technologies involved, how it all fits together and where it might be going. There is also a conversation about beer - as Frank used a homemade IoT setup to help him brew his own!