Orchestrate all the Things

Did you ever wonder how data is used in the medical industry? The picture that emerges leaves a lot to be desired. In the early 90s,the evidence-based medicine movement tried to make medicine more data-driven. Three decades later, we have more data, but not enough context, or transparency. Today's episode features David Scales, Chief Medical Officer at Critica, and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. Scales specialized in internal medicine, and also has a PhD in sociology, with a particular interest in the sociology of science. The conversation with David covers the fundamentals of evidence-based medicine, how data is generated through Randomized controlled trials and accessed via Cochrane Reviews. We draw parallels with best practices in data science and data governance, touching upon provenance, context, and metadata. We also explore the dark side of data in the medical industry: pharmaceutical company involvement, bias, the controversy around Cochrane, and the tyranny of the Randomized controlled trial. We also explore predictive models and data parasites in COVID-19 times, and the role of the World Health Organization. Articles published on ZDNet: https://linkeddataorchestration.com/2020/07/20/garbage-in-garbage-out-data-science-meet-evidence-based-medicine/ https://linkeddataorchestration.com/2020/07/27/data-governance-and-context-for-evidence-based-medicine-transparency-and-bias-in-covid-19-times/

jSonar offers a security layer that sits on top of databases. Let's face it: database security is not the most appealing topic for most people. Bennatan is very aware of it. That, however, has not stopped him and the jSonar team from carving out a spot for themselves. And it has not stopped Goldman Sachs from investing 50 million dollars in jSonar either. Let's hear why, and what makes jSonar special. Article published on ZDNet in June 2020

Data warehouses alone don't cut it. Data lakes alone don't cut it either. So whether you call it data lakehouse or by any other name, you need the best of both worlds, says Databricks. A new query engine and a visualization layer are the next pieces in Databricks' puzzle. We connected with Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks, to discuss their latest news: the announcement of a new query engine called Delta Engine, and the acquisition of Redash, an open source visualization product. Our discussion started with the background on data lakehouses, which is the term Databricks is advocating to signify the coalescing of data warehouses and data lakes.  We talked about trends such as multi cloud and machine learning that lead to a new reality, how data warehouses and data lakes work, and what does the data lakehouse bring to the table. We also talked about Delta Engine and Redash of course, and we wrapped up with an outlook on Databricks business growth. ZDNet article published in June 2020

The conflict between access to data and data sovereignty is key to understanding how AI works, and moving it forward. The Ocean Protocol Foundation wants to help resolve that conflict, by introducing a way of letting AI work with data without giving up control. The goal is to decentralize data science and AI using blockchain, and the latest milestone called Compute-to-Data brings this one step closer We connected with Trent McConaghy, Ocean Protocol Foundation Founder, to discuss how it all works. Article published on ZDNet in June 2020

Streamlit is an open source framework that wants to revolutionize building machine learning and data science applications, and just secured a $21 million Series A funding to try and do this. Streamlit wants to be for data science what business intelligence tools have been for databases: a quick way to get results, without bothering much with the details. In today's episode, we welcome Streamlit CEO and Founder, Adrien Treuille. We discuss what makes Streamlit special, how it works, and where data-driven applications at large are going next. Article published on ZDNet in June 2020.

Your good old on-premise SQL database is in terminal decline. A pure-play open-source cloud-native PostgreSQL, with support for Apache Cassandra and GraphQL interfaces, is what you need. Or at least, this is what the Yugabyte crew thinks. The company, founded by Facebook data infrastructure veterans, announced that it has raised $30 million in an oversubscribed Series B round to double down on community and team growth. This is a crowded market, but big enough to be a non-zero-sum game. We connected with Yugabyte founders Kannan Muthukkaruppan and Karthik Ranganathan, and newly recruited CEO Bill Cook, previously of Sun Microsystems and Pivotal, for a deep dive in the company, the funding, and the market. Article published on ZDNet in June 2020

Fact or fiction? That's not always an easy question to answer. Incomplete knowledge, context and bias typically come into play. In the nascent domain of scientific fact checking, things are complicated. If you think fact-checking is hard, which it is, then what would you say about verifying scientific claims, on COVID-19 no less? Hint: it's also hard -- different in some ways, similar in some others. Fact or Fiction: Verifying Scientific Claims is the title of a research paper published on pre-print server Arxiv by a team of researchers from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), with data and code available on GitHub.  In this backstage chat, David Wadden, lead author of the paper and a visiting researcher at AI2 and George Anadiotis connected to discuss the rationale, details, and directions for this work. Article published on ZDNet in May 2020

Now that the dust from Nvidia's unveiling of its new Ampere AI chip has settled, let's take a look at the AI chip market behind the scenes and away from the spotlight. Few people, Nvidia's competitors included, would dispute the fact that Nvidia is calling the shots in the AI chip game today. The announcement of the new Ampere AI chip in Nvidia's main event, GTC, stole the spotlight. Let's put the new architecture into perspective by comparing against the competition in terms of performance, economics, and software. Article published on ZDNet in May 2020

From user, to partner and investor. That's not a very common scenario for software vendors, especially if the user-cum-partner-investor is someone like Visa. GoodData is evolving more than its relationship with select users. In this backstage chat, GoodData CEO and Founder Roman Stanek and George Anadiotis discuss the ins and outs of the deal, the data landscape, the way data are used to shape directions for organizations big and small, and what's next for GoodData. Article published on ZDNet, May 2020

Grafana Labs, makers of popular open-source observability platform Grafana, announced the general availability of Grafana 7.0. This comes only a few months after Grafana Labs scored $24 million in Series A funding to double down on open-source strategy and build what it dubs the world's first open and composable observability platform. In this backstage chat, CEO and Founder Raj Dutt and George Anadiotis connected to discuss Grafana 7.0, and the road forward. Article published on ZDNet, May 2020.