Episodes

  • O'Reilly Solid Podcast (RIP) with Jon Bruner | Trip to McMoon's, pt 2 - Rebooting a 1970s satellite with modern software and hardware

    O'Reilly Solid Podcast (RIP) with Jon Bruner | Trip to McMoon's, pt 2 - Rebooting a 1970s satellite with modern software and hardware
    Oct 8 2024
    In the first episode of the Solid Podcast, we talked with Dennis Wingo, founder of Skycorp, in the former NASA McDonald’s where he’s been restoring the first images of the moon taken from space. After an hour of recounting his techno-archaeology exploits — reverse-engineering the arcane analog image-transmission systems that NASA’s engineers developed in the 1960s — Dennis paused and said, “and that’s just one of our history projects.” That teaser is where we begin today’s episode. Ready to apply modern computing to another analog challenge, Dennis turned his attention to the reboot of the International Sun/Earth Explorer-3, a research satellite launched in 1978 and commended to the heavens in 1997. NASA decommissioned the equipment for communicating with the satellite in 1999, so Dennis set about reverse-engineering the ISEE-3’s control system and devising a way to communicate with it. In the 1970s, he would have needed custom analog hardware, but now, general-purpose hardware is powerful enough that he could do it all with software. Wingo’s team built a system on top of an Ettus software-defined radio that could analyze the satellite’s 2.2-gigahertz S band signal; all that remained was to transmit a wake-up call and then listen through a receiver powerful enough to hear the 36-year-old satellite’s signal. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico did just that. The “steely-eyed missile men” of the 1970s had done some magnificent engineering work. When Wingo re-established contact with the satellite, it was off course by 3,000 kilometers — after traveling 24 billion kilometers. The story is an excellent illustration of how software can replace physical complexity — one of the key themes we follow at the Solid conference, and Dennis will deliver a keynote at Solid San Francisco in June, where he’ll talk about his extraordinary combination of techno-archaeology and modern computing.
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    39 mins
  • O'Reilly Solid Podcast (RIP) with Jon Bruner | Trip to McMoon's, pt 1 - the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project

    O'Reilly Solid Podcast (RIP) with Jon Bruner | Trip to McMoon's, pt 1 - the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project
    Oct 7 2024
    We’re kicking off our newest series, the O’Reilly Solid Podcast, with an episode recorded in the manager’s office of a McDonald’s at NASA’s Ames Research Center. David Cranor and I (Jon Bruner) visited McMoon’s, as it’s known, to talk with Dennis Wingo, founder of two audacious “techno archaeology” efforts. In the first episode, we discuss the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, which has rescued NASA’s first high-resolution images from satellites orbiting the moon. Dennis’ team reverse-engineered the extraordinary analog image transmission system that the satellites used in 1966 and 1967, digitized 14 tons of magnetic tape, and interpreted them to compose imagery at vastly higher resolution than NASA was originally able to recover from the satellites. Before the invention of the charge-coupled device (CCD), collecting and transmitting images was an electro-mechanical enterprise. The process required to get images from the moon to the earth highlights the ingenuity of NASA’s early engineers — and the relative ease of working with electronics today, when crossing between physical and virtual is straightforward.
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • 30 for 30 Podcasts | Searching For Hobey Baker, Episode 1 The Natural

    30 for 30 Podcasts | Searching For Hobey Baker, Episode 1 The Natural
    Jun 12 2024
    Narrated by David Duchovny, Searching for Hobey Baker re-contextualizes and brings to life the story of one of the greatest college athletes who has largely been lost to history. After Hobey Baker makes his triumphant Princeton hockey debut against Williams, we travel back to his early days attending St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. He develops a reputation as both an athletic phenom and a kind, generous sportsman. After the economic crash of 1907, his father struggles to send him to college at Princeton where he becomes a two-sport star in football and hockey. After graduation, Hobey embarks on a summer motorcycle trip around Europe – a grand experience interrupted by the ominous clouds of conflict circling the continent.
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    42 mins
  • Lenny's Podcast | Zigging vs. zagging - How HubSpot built a $30B company Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO)

    Lenny's Podcast | Zigging vs. zagging - How HubSpot built a $30B company Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO)
    Apr 19 2024
    Dharmesh Shah is the co-founder and CTO of HubSpot (currently valued at $30 billion) and one of the most fascinating founders I’ve ever met. Dharmesh is the keeper of HubSpot’s Culture Code, built ChatSpot (an AI chatbot built on top of HubSpot CRM) and a game called WordPlay (which grew to 16 million users), and also founded and writes for OnStartups, a top-ranking startup blog and community with more than 1M members. He’s also invested in 100+ startups including OpenAI, AngelList, Coinbase, and Dropbox. In our conversation, we discuss • The biggest lessons he has learned from building HubSpot • The importance of leaning into your strengths • Dharmesh’s data-oriented approach to public speaking • How he developed HubSpot’s culture code • The decision-making process at HubSpot • His contrarian approach to building products • Why founders and product teams are all fighting the second law of thermodynamics • How “flash tags” can save your teams time • How to decide what ideas are worth investing in
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    1 hr and 42 mins
  • Aboard Podcast | Using AI Respectfully

    Aboard Podcast | Using AI Respectfully
    Apr 18 2024
    From copyright violations to environmental concerns to the looming threat of the singularity, AI is a hot-button topic these days. Paul and Rich talk through many facets of this conversation, and discuss how they think about the AI components of Aboard. Plus: A little roleplay in which we learn that Paul thinks Aboard is an earnest mid-century cartoon character.
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    25 mins
  • Quanta Magazine | Tiny Language Models Come of Age

    Quanta Magazine | Tiny Language Models Come of Age
    Mar 6 2024
    To better understand how neural networks learn to simulate writing, researchers trained simpler versions on synthetic children’s stories.
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    21 mins
  • Dwarkesh Podcast | Demis Hassabis - Scaling, Superhuman AIs, AlphaZero atop LLMs, Rogue Nations Threat

    Dwarkesh Podcast | Demis Hassabis - Scaling, Superhuman AIs, AlphaZero atop LLMs, Rogue Nations Threat
    Feb 28 2024
    Demis Hassabis - Scaling, Superhuman AIs, AlphaZero atop LLMs, Rogue Nations Threat Wednesday 28 February 2024 https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/podcast Open in Pocket Casts Share Here is my episode with Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind We discuss: Why scaling is an artform Adding search, planning, AlphaZero type training atop LLMs Making sure rogue nations can't steal weights The right way to align superhuman AIs and do an intelligence explosion
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Guardian Audio Long Read | One Swedish zoo, seven escaped chimpanzees

    Guardian Audio Long Read | One Swedish zoo, seven escaped chimpanzees
    Jan 31 2024
    When the great apes at Furuvik Zoo broke free from their enclosure last winter, the keepers faced a terrible choice. This is the story of the most dramatic 72 hours of their lives. By Imogen West-Knights.
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    53 mins