Google Cloud Platform Podcast

Google Developer Advocate Jen Person talks with Mark Mandel and Mark Mirchandani today about developments in Firebase. Firebase is a suite of products that helps developers build apps. According to Jen, it’s equivalent to the client-side of Google Cloud. Firebase works across platforms, including Android, web, iOS and offers many growth features, setting it apart from other Google products. It helps site and app owners interact with and reach customers with services like notifications, remote configurations to optimize the app, testing, and more.

Cloud Firestore has come out of beta, and it is available both through Firebase and Google Cloud Platform, making it easy for developers to move from one to the other if their needs change.

Recently, the Firebase team has been working to refine their products based on user feedback. Firebase Authentication has been upgraded with the additions of phone authentication, email link authentication, and multiple email actions. They’ve also added a generic authentication option so developers can use any provider they choose.

ML Kit makes machine learning much easier for client apps or on the server. With on-device ML features, users can continue using the app without internet service. Things like face recognition can still be done quickly without a wifi connection. ML Kit is adding new features all the time, including smart reply and translation, image labeling , facial feature detection, etc.

Cloud Functions for Firebase is also out of beta. It includes new features like a crash-litics trigger that can notify you if your site or app crashes and scheduled functions. An emulator is new as well, so you can test without touching your live code.

Jon Foust is back this week, joining Mark Mirchandani for an in-depth look at Stackdriver with fellow Googler, Rory Petty. To start, Product Manager Rory explains that Stackdriver is a full observability solution for Google Cloud (as well as other clouds). We touch on how monitoring, logging, and APM tools allow developers and operators to fully understand how a website is performing. In addition to Monitoring and Logging, the suite of Stackdriver tools also includes Debugger, Trace, and Profiler to help users not only monitor their sites, but to solve problems that occur.

Stackdriver Monitoring and Logging support Google Cloud services out of the box. Users can use Monitoring to set up alerts, so if something goes awry, they are notified immediately and can address the problem. Alerts can also be custom designed to inform developers of things like number of checkouts on your e-commerce site, the amount of time between checkouts, and more. Stackdriver Monitoring allows blackbox monitoring, too, to make sure your service is healthy. The Monitoring dashboard makes it really easy to get started, with a resources section that has pre-made dashboards for developers to use. Developers don't have to do a lot of configuration out of the box. However, if you need a more customized dashboard, that is also possible in Stackdriver Monitoring.

At Cloud Next earlier this year, Stackdriver announced Service Monitoring in alpha, which shows users a map of their microservices architecture. Public beta will hopefully be later this year. Stackdriver Sandbox, another recent project currently in the alpha stage, gives people an easy way to configure a test Stackdriver environment. This way, developers can play with Stackdriver tools without effecting their websites. Stackdriver Profiler, a great tool to understand the performance of your system, went GA at Cloud Next as well.

Stackdriver's tools are all meant to work together to help you maintain and perfect development projects on many different cloud services and on-prem.

Rory Petty is Product Manager for the Stackdriver Monitoring Platform. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking and is a vinyl record enthusiast. Rory is a midwest transplant living in Brooklyn.

• Commute just got easier with Google Pay and Google Assistant blog
• 5 year anniversary of Kubernetes and KubeCon content videos
  • Kubernetes Podcast podcast
• Early Preview of AR in Google Maps video

• Stackdriver site
• Stackdriver with Kubernetes video
• Stackdriver Monitoring site
• Stackdriver Logging site
• Stackdriver Debugger site
• Stackdriver Trace site
• Stackdriver Profiler site
• App Engine site
• Compute Engine site
• GKE site
• Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Book site
• Istio site
• Stackdriver Service Monitoring site
• Stackdriver Sandbox site
• Cloud Next '19 DevOps & SRE Sessions videos
• Cloud On Air site
• Stack Doctor Playlist videos
• Implementing GCP Stackdriver and Adapting SRE Practices to Samsung's AI System video
• Stackdriver Documentation site

How do I decide between Apps Script and App Maker?

Jon is going to Games for Change.

Mark is going to be in NYC right before Games for Change.

• "Spaceship Fly-by, A" by InspectorJ of Freesound.org
• "Teleport" by Sergenious of Freesound.org
• "Moretube.wav" by NoiseCollector of Freesound.org
• "Mystery Peak2.wav" by FoolBoyMedia of Freesound.org

Jon Foust is back this week, joining Mark Mirchandani for an in-depth look at Stackdriver with fellow Googler, Rory Petty. To start, Product Manager Rory explains that Stackdriver is a full observability solution for Google Cloud (as well as other clouds). We touch on how monitoring, logging, and APM tools allow developers and operators to fully understand how a website is performing. In addition to Monitoring and Logging, the suite of Stackdriver tools also includes Debugger, Trace, and Profiler to help users not only monitor their sites, but to solve problems that occur.

Stackdriver Monitoring and Logging support Google Cloud services out of the box. Users can use Monitoring to set up alerts, so if something goes awry, they are notified immediately and can address the problem. Alerts can also be custom designed to inform developers of things like number of checkouts on your e-commerce site, the amount of time between checkouts, and more. Stackdriver Monitoring allows blackbox monitoring, too, to make sure your service is healthy. The Monitoring dashboard makes it really easy to get started, with a resources section that has pre-made dashboards for developers to use. Developers don’t have to do a lot of configuration out of the box. However, if you need a more customized dashboard, that is also possible in Stackdriver Monitoring.

At Cloud Next earlier this year, Stackdriver announced Service Monitoring in alpha, which shows users a map of their microservices architecture. Public beta will hopefully be later this year. Stackdriver Sandbox, another recent project currently in the alpha stage, gives people an easy way to configure a test Stackdriver environment. This way, developers can play with Stackdriver tools without effecting their websites. Stackdriver Profiler, a great tool to understand the performance of your system, went GA at Cloud Next as well.

Stackdriver’s tools are all meant to work together to help you maintain and perfect development projects on many different cloud services and on-prem.

Today on the podcast, we're speaking with Chris Aniszczyk about the Linux Foundation and the important work they do to further the advancement of technology through open source initiatives. Mark and Mark are your hosts this week, and they begin by speaking with Chris about what the Linux Foundation is and how it's unique.

The Linux Foundation, while seeking to support open source projects, sets itself apart by also providing professional services such as marketing, technical writing, legal help, and running events. It acts as a parent foundation for smaller open source foundations like Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Node.js Foundation, and the Automotive Linux Foundation, which strives to bring open source to the automotive industry.

Though typically companies can be leery of working with competitors, The Linux Foundation has been successful bringing companies together to create useful software that benefits everyone. Collaboration can be easier when done through the foundation. Chris also actively reaches out to companies in industries that don't typically engage in open source practices and encourages them to consider working together to make their industry better. Specifically, Chris works with companies within CNCF and the Open Container Initiative.

Chris Aniszczyk is an open source executive and engineer with a passion for building a better world through open collaboration. He's currently a VP at the Linux Foundation where he co-founded the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and currently serves as CTO. Furthermore, he's a partner at Capital Factory where he focuses on mentoring, advising and investing in open source and infrastructure focused startups. Throughout his career he has worked at the intersection of open source, internet scale organizations and the enterprise; at Twitter he created their open source program/strategy and led their open source efforts to change the infrastructure industry. In a previous life, he bootstrapped an open source startup, was a Gentoo maintainer, made many mistakes, lead and hacked on many developer tooling and Linux related projects.

• Uber datasets in BigQuery: Driving times around SF (and your city too) blog
• Topping the tower: the Obstacle Tower Challenge AI Contest with Unity and Google Cloud blog
• Querying the Stars with BigQuery GIS blog
• GKE Sandbox: Bring defense in depth to your pods blog
• Google Cloud launches new Osaka region to support growing customer base in Japan blog

• Linux Foundation site
• OpenJS Foundation site
• CNCF site
• Automotive Linux Foundation site
• Let's Encrypt site
• How to start a project with the Linux Foundation site
• Community Bridge site
• Academy Software Foundation site
• Open Container Initiative site
• CNCF Cloud Native Definition site
• CNCF Annual Report site
• GraphQL site
• Linux Foundation Events site

How do I connect Cloud SQL to my serverless?

Mark Mirchandani will be working on more film projects.

Mark Mandel will be at Tokyo Next in July and will be at Open Source in Gaming the day before the Open Source North America Summit in August.

Today on the podcast, we’re speaking with Chris Aniszczyk about the Linux Foundation and the important work they do to further the advancement of technology through open source initiatives. Mark and Mark are your hosts this week, and they begin by speaking with Chris about what the Linux Foundation is and how it’s unique.

The Linux Foundation, while seeking to support open source projects, sets itself apart by also providing professional services such as marketing, technical writing, legal help, and running events. It acts as a parent foundation for smaller open source foundations like Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Node.js Foundation, and the Automotive Linux Foundation, which strives to bring open source to the automotive industry.

Though typically companies can be leery of working with competitors, The Linux Foundation has been successful bringing companies together to create useful software that benefits everyone. Collaboration can be easier when done through the foundation. Chris also actively reaches out to companies in industries that don’t typically engage in open source practices and encourages them to consider working together to make their industry better. Specifically, Chris works with companies within CNCF and the Open Container Initiative.

Michelle and Mark are together again this week to talk with John Bohannon about AI startup, Primer. His goal is to build systems that continuously read documents and write about what they discover. He discusses his recent work building a self-updating knowledge base and the research his team just published.

Perhaps most interesting is the circuitous path he took to get to Primer. Hear about his adventures along the way to becoming a data scientist specializing in natural language processing. How does a microbiologist who developed a pregnancy test for fish get distracted by Python? What does contemporary dance have to do with establishing AI policy? Join us as he weaves a common thread along his career path: encountering interesting problems and discovering creative ways to solve them.

John Bohannon is the Director of Science at Primer, an AI startup in San Francisco. Until 2017 he was an investigative journalist and data scientist writing mainly for Science magazine and Wired. He spent the first half of his career as a foreign correspondent, including as a Fulbright scholar in Berlin. His reporting from Gaza won the Reuters-IUCN Media Award for Excellence in Environmental Reporting from Europe. While embedded with military forces in Afghanistan he engineered the first voluntary release of civilian casualty data by NATO and the United Nations. As a visiting scholar in the Program in Ethics and Health at Harvard University he focused on the involvement of doctors and social scientists in the US government's torture program. He was also the scientific advisor to Isabella Rosselini for "Green Porno" (winner of 4 Webby awards) and "Animals Distract Me" (official selection, 2011 Sundance Film Festival). He is the author of a peer-reviewed study of people's inability to distinguish pet food from paté, which inspired Stephen Colbert to eat cat food on television. He has a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Oxford.

• Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone book
• Next '19 Recap video
• I/O '19 Recap video
• All I/O Sessions videos
• Michelle's Favorites:
  • Session: Taylor Wilson interviewing Michio Kaku on the future of humanity video
  • Sandbox: AI on the Edge by Gabe Weiss, Noah Negrey, Yu-Han Liu, and Luiz Gustavo Martins
    • TensorFlow Lite site
    • OSS site
  • Codelab: AI on a microcontroller with TFLite and SparkFun Edge site

• Primer site
• Primer Blog blog
• Headline Generation: Learning from Decomposable Document Titles paper
• BERT site
• Ngram Viewer site
• Google Books site
• Dance Your PhD 2018 WINNER - Superconductivity: The Musical! video
• Kinetech Arts site
• John Bohannon's Website site

How can we be like John?

Michelle will be at Kubecon Europe and CERN. Mark Mirchandani will be hanging around the bay area. Mark Mandel is in Tokyo. Gabi is in France. John is in NYC. Brian will be in Boulder, Colorado.

Michelle and Mark are together again this week to talk with John Bohannon about AI startup, Primer. His goal is to build systems that continuously read documents and write about what they discover. He discusses his recent work building a self-updating knowledge base and the research his team just published.

Perhaps most interesting is the circuitous path he took to get to Primer. Hear about his adventures along the way to becoming a data scientist specializing in natural language processing. How does a microbiologist who developed a pregnancy test for fish get distracted by Python? What does contemporary dance have to do with establishing AI policy? Join us as he weaves a common thread along his career path: encountering interesting problems and discovering creative ways to solve them.

Mark Mirchandani and Michelle Casbon take over the show this week to discuss AI and the PAIR Guidebook to Human-Centered AI. Mark Mandel pops in on the interview, and Di Dang, Design Advocate at Google, talks about her role in designing and building the guidebook with the intent of helping others create quality AI projects.

Di describes human-centered AI as a practice of not only being conscious of the project being built, but also considering how this AI project will impact us as humans at the end of the day. We influence machine learning so much, both intentionally and unintentionally, and it's our job to look at the project and results as a whole.

In the guidebook, topics like data bias in machine learning, what design patterns work, how to establish trust with the user, and more are addressed. Di explains that the guidebook is a work in progress that will develop with input from users and advances in technology.

Di Dang recently joined Google's Design Relations team as a Design Advocate supporting emerging technologies such as augmented reality and machine learning. Previously, she worked as a Senior UX Designer and led the Emerging Tech group at Seattle-based digital agency POP, advising clients on how VR/AR, web/mobile, conversational UI, and machine learning could benefit their end users. With a degree in Philosophy and Religion, she considers herself an optimistic realist who is passionate about ethical design. You can find Di onstage doing improv or on Twitter @dqpdang.

• Bringing the best of open source to Google Cloud customers blog
• James Ward's Cloud Run button site
• Michelle's favorite codelabs from I/O
  • TPU-speed data pipelines site
  • Your first Keras model site
  • Convolutional neural networks site
  • Modern convnets, squeezenet, with Keras with TPUs site

• People + AI Guidebook site
• PAIR site
• GCP Podcast Episode 114: Machine Learning Bias and Fairness with Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell podcast
• Machine Learning Crash Course site
• Google Clips site
• Google Brain Team site

• How do I get started with practical AI?
• Build an Appointment Scheduler Chatbot with Dialogflow

Michelle will be at Google I/O and Kubecon Europe.

• No I/O event in your area? You can host one!

Mark Mirchandani and Michelle Casbon take over the show this week to discuss AI and the PAIR Guidebook to Human-Centered AI. Mark Mandel pops in on the interview, and Di Dang, Design Advocate at Google, talks about her role in designing and building the guidebook with the intent of helping others create quality AI projects.

Di describes human-centered AI as a practice of not only being conscious of the project being built, but also considering how this AI project will impact us as humans at the end of the day. We influence machine learning so much, both intentionally and unintentionally, and it’s our job to look at the project and results as a whole.

In the guidebook, topics like data bias in machine learning, what design patterns work, how to establish trust with the user, and more are addressed. Di explains that the guidebook is a work in progress that will develop with input from users and advances in technology.

On the podcast today we have a fascinating interview from our time at Cloud Next '19! Mark and Jon went in-depth with Andrew Davidson about MongoDB to find out what they do and how they do it.

MongoDB is a document database that stores JSON natively, making it super easy for developers to work with data in a way that's similar to how they think about building applications. The database is scalable, highly available by default with built-in replication, has an intuitive query language, and can be run anywhere.

MongoDB Atlas is a global database service that runs on Google Cloud; it automates deployment and provisioning, and ongoing operations such as maintenance, upgrades, and scaling with no downtime. Atlas is a declarative model to manage your databases easily, is easy to migrate to, and offers advanced features such as global clusters for low latency read and write access anywhere in the world.

In the future, Andrew sees a world where we think in terms of JSON-style documents instead of just tables. MongoDB can help make that happen.

Andrew Davidson, a Silicon Valley native who lives in NYC, is the Director of Cloud Products at MongoDB with a focus on MongoDB Atlas, MongoDB's global database as a service. He previously worked on scaling global mapping operations at Google, has a background in physics, and has lived extensively in South Asia.

• Level up on Android with Indie Games Accelerator blog
• Berglas site
• American Cancer Society uses Google Cloud machine learning to power cancer research blog
• Efficiently scale ML and other compute workloads on NVIDIA's T4 GPU, now generally available blog
  • GCP Podcast Episode 168: NVIDIA T4 with Ian Buck and Kari Briski podcast
• After school, this teen tracks climate change with NASA blog

• MongoDB site
• MongoDB Atlas site
• JSON site
• Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) site
• Kubernetes site
• MongoDB Charts site
• MondgoDB Stitch site
• MongoDB University site
• MongoDB.local site
• MongoDB World site

How can I access Google Cloud Shell from any terminal?

• Introducing the ability to connect to Cloud Shell from any terminal blog
• gcloud alpha cloud-shell ssh site
• gcloud alpha cloud-shell scp site
• gcloud alpha cloud-shell get-mount-command site

Jon and Mark will be at IO.