Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

Robert Seacord, the Standardization Lead at Woven by Toyota, the convenor of the C standards committee, and author of The CERT® C Coding Standard, Effective C, and Secure Coding in C and C++, speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about What's New in the C Programming Language. They start with a review of the history of C and why it has a standard, and then they discuss what C23 brings and how programmers can take advantage of it. They consider the sectors in which C is most used and whether you should use C to start a brand new project in 2025. Seacord discusses 8 new things that C23 brings, use case examples, must haves, floating point numbers, how automotive systems use C, why C is used there, Rust vs C, compile time checks vs static analysis, all the various safety standards they can use, why you should use the right tool for the job and never trust user input no matter the language.  Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Praveen Gujar, Director of Product at LinkedIn, joins SE Radio host Kanchan Shringi for a discussion on how generative AI (GenAI) is transforming digital advertising technology platforms. The conversation starts with a look at how GenAI facilitates scalable ad content creation, using self-attention mechanisms for customized ad generation. They explore AI's role in simplifying campaign management, automating tasks such as audience targeting and performance measurement. Praveen emphasizes that ad tech platforms use AI models tailored to different needs leveraging both first-party and third-party data sources, with privacy maintained through methods such as CAPI (conversion API). They also consider the differences between retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and fine-tuning in AI models: Whereas RAG uses brand-specific data at runtime for precise ad content, fine-tuning focuses on broader model optimization. The segment highlights the importance of vector embeddings and vector search in storing and retrieving contextual content. Lastly, Praveen discusses the integration of AI teams within product development to improve collaboration and AI proficiency across organizations. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Lukas Gentele, CEO of Loft Labs, joins host Robert Blumen for a discussion of kubernetes vclusters (virtual clusters). A vcluster is a kubernetes cluster that runs kubernetes application on a host kubernetes cluster. The conversation covers: vcluster basics; sharing models; what is owned by the vcluster and what is shared with the host; attached nodes versus shared nodes; the primary use case: multi-tenancy vcluster per tenant; alternatives - namespace per tenant, full cluster per tenant; trade-offs - isolation; less resource use; spin up time; scalability; how many clusters and how many vclusters should an org have? Deployment models for vclusters - helm chart with standard resources; vcluster operator; persistent storage models for vclusters; vcluster snapshotting, recovery, and migration. how many vclusters can run on a cluster? ingress, TLS and DNS. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Matthew Adams, Head of Security Enablement at Citi, joins SE Radio host Priyanka Raghavan to explore the use of large language models in threat modeling, with a special focus on Matthew's work, Stride GPT. The episode kicks off with an overview of threat modeling, its applications, and the stages of the development life cycle where it fits in. They then discuss the STRIDE methodology and strideGPT, highlighting practical examples, the technology stack behind the application, and the tool's inputs and outputs. The show concludes with tips and tricks for optimizing tool outputs and advice on other open source projects that utilize generative AI to bolster cybersecurity defenses. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.