November 23, 2025 • 31 mins
Three months ago we set out to make complex tech feel simple for smart people. Today, we close Season 1 with a bonus episode that’s a candid debrief on what worked, what didn’t, and the practical concepts you told us made a difference at work and in everyday life. We answer listener questions and Hugh fails to answer Hannah’s trivia questions (in a throwback to Episode 1).
We start with reflections on learning the craft of podcasting while defining our mission and chemistry. Favourite episodes resurface—especially the outages deep dive—because they blend clear systems thinking with human stories and real fixes. Hannah share she learnt the most from our episode on LLMs (which was definitely the hardest episode for Hugh to prep for).
From there we jump into listener Q&A and tackle the acronyms that clutter meetings: VPN as an encrypted tunnel that blocks man-in-the-middle attacks, URL as these days a synonym for “web address”, and HTTP versus HTTPS as the protocol that is the backbone of the modern web. We keep the momentum with SQL and CSV as the backbone of analytics, plus LAN and WAN to map your home, office, and global networks. Along the way we bust a persistent myth: Wi‑Fi isn’t “wireless fidelity”; it’s simply a name that stuck (and one that was invented in Australia!).
Cloud computing takes centre stage as we lay out how AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud grew from internal platforms into the engines of modern startups. We talk trade-offs: price, performance, managed services, and the undeniable friction of switching providers. Then we answer a deceptively simple question: how do different programming languages “talk”? The practical path is APIs and shared contracts, with compilers and files as the quiet glue that lets JavaScript front ends call Java services and microservices cooperate at scale. For fun, we tip our hats to tech lore—from YouTube’s dating-app origin to Bluetooth’s Viking name—and why trivia can be both marmite and memorable (and why a Vegemite analogy isn’t the same!).
We’re lining up more expert interviews and deeper dives into data centres, energy use, Bitcoin mining economics, quantum timelines, and chip fabrication. If season one made you a little bit smarter, help us reach tens of thousands more learners: follow, share with a friend, and leave a review so we can shape season two around your biggest questions.
Like, Subscribe, and Follow the Tech Overflow Podcast by visiting this link: https://linktr.ee/Techoverflowpodcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (00:04):
Hello world and welcome to the Tech
Overflow Podcast.
I'm Hannah Clayton Mangon.
Hugh Williams (00:09):
And I'm Hugh Williams, and we're the podcast
that explains technical conceptsto smart people.
How are you, Hannah?
Hannah Clayton-Langton (00:15):
I'm great.
I am recording on the moves, soonce again, getting on a train,
this time at least on a planewith my microphone.
Um recording on a Saturdaynight, so that's a first.
How are you doing?
Hugh Williams (00:25):
I'm I'm good, I'm good.
And it's the end of the series.
We've made it to uh the bonusepisode 11.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (00:31):
We did it, and it's been a lot of fun.
I wonder if maybe we shouldjust do some quick reflections
while we're getting nostalgic,because people keep asking me
how it's been.
Um so how have you found it?
Like what has surprised you?
What have you enjoyed?
What have what has been morechallenging?
Hugh Williams (00:45):
I've enjoyed it a lot, actually.
I think I've I've learnt a ton,and I think it's uh you know
good for your brain to keep itplastic, learning new things.
Um so I've I've learned a ton.
I also think um what I'velearned is that podcasting is a
lot more work than perhaps theas a listener I would have I
would have perceived, for sure.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (01:03):
Yeah, totally.
I would agree.
I also would say, oh, and I saythis to friends that ask, is
that at the very beginning wewere learning how to podcast.
We were like understanding ourtopic and our mission and sort
of codifying that.
And actually when I think back,we were like really getting to
know each other, like we'veknown each other for a while,
but it was like a a differentlevel of sort of partnership and
(01:24):
like co-hosting.
And so we were doing all threeat once, which was pretty
intense at the beginning.
Hugh Williams (01:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
I feel like we figured it outnow, and uh, I'm up for a series
two.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (01:36):
Well I think we should do it.
I think we should too.
Hugh Williams (01:38):
We've hit our OKR, so we'll have to have a new
OKR for series two, maybe maybedouble the number of listens or
something like that.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (01:46):
Guys, Hugh, as we know, he's very
successful, and now I know why,because he is very he's like
ambitious, he like sends me thestats every day, he's all over
it.
So um, if he's gonna double theOKR, I better up my game.
Um, one final, one finalreflection from me.
I, as you know, came up withthe idea for the pod on the
(02:07):
basis of wanting to understandtech concepts as like a
non-engineer.
I have learned so much throughseries one, like aside from
learning how to podcast, likeactually about technology,
things that come up at work allthe time that before must have
just like gone over my head,things that come up outside of
work all the time in the sort oftech first world that we're
(02:28):
increasingly living in.
And on that personal level,when I think about that mission,
that is just a really awesomebenefit for me, and I hope at
least a few other people thatlisten in to the podcast every
week.
Hugh Williams (02:37):
I've heard the same from folks.
I've heard quite a few of ourlisteners say that uh they've
learned a ton and they feel abit smarter in you know their
everyday interactions and atwork.
Did you have a favoriteepisode, by the way?
I meant to ask you that.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (02:50):
Ooh.
I think for me, Hannah, someonethat wanted to learn about tech,
our deep dive on how LLM's workwas just like blew up my brain
in a really awesome way, butit's quite a technical episode.
I think when it comes to likelistening to the episodes and
how they went, for me, theoutages episode was a really
(03:10):
good one.
I don't know, but what do youthink?
Hugh Williams (03:12):
Yeah, I was gonna say the outages one, actually.
I really enjoyed that.
I mean, I liked uh I likedpulling apart the CrowdStrike
debacle, that was fun, and thenyou know, towards the end, got
to tell a couple of personalstories, and you know, we talked
about bugs, and I felt likethat episode had a little bit of
a little bit of everything init.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (03:28):
While we're on the topic of good
episodes, obviously Jonathan andNick, our interviewees, were
awesome too.
And I think we're gonna do moreinterviews in season two, and
guys, Hugh's black book ofcontacts is really good.
So send us who you want to hearfrom, and he probably knows
them.
Hugh Williams (03:43):
Yeah, that was fun.
It was also fun to just getreacquainted with those guys and
uh, you know, do some prep forthe episode with them and then
sort of have the conversationand then again see what the
output looked like.
Uh I I thought it was great.
Having somebody else on thepod's fun.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (03:57):
Yeah, definitely.
More of that to come.
Okay, so for our special bonusepisode, we've asked you, the
listeners, to send us some QA.
So we've got some good QA linedup.
And for those of you who havebeen for the ride from day one,
you may remember Tech Trivia,which turned out to be more
divisive than we expected.
Hugh Williams (04:19):
Some people said really love the tech trivia,
that was awesome.
And some people are like,please never do that again.
It interrupts the flow of theshow.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (04:24):
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Do you know in the UK we usethe phrase like it's very
marmite, which is like you loveit or you hate it.
I don't know if the Australianequivalent would be it's very
vegemite.
Hugh Williams (04:34):
Very vegemite.
If you said that to anAustralian, if you said it's
kind of like Vegemite, um, Iguess they go, What you what do
you mean?
But uh if you said kind of youlike it or you hate it, I go,
Oh, it makes sense.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (04:43):
There was like a very successful,
there was a very successful ummarmite marketing campaign like
15 years ago that's really stuckin the psyche of the British
public.
But anyway, tech trive ismarmite.
I've got some, I've only gotlike four or five, and we'll see
what makes the final cut.
But they are good guys.
Oh, and the first round of techtrivia, Hugh knew everything.
And I, if you know all ofthese, I'm gonna be very
impressed.
Hugh Williams (05:02):
Let's see how I go.
I've got a feeling you'veyou've gone for the hard stuff.
I think I'm probably introuble, but we'll see how we
go.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (05:07):
Okay, so should we get into the
questions?
Hugh Williams (05:09):
Yeah, so we've got one here from Toby in St
Albans, and I'm pretty surethat's not St Albans in
Melbourne, it's probably uh thebeautiful St Albans north of
London, is my guess, is whereToby is.
And he wants us to do a littlebit of uh jargon busting for
common tech acronyms like we didfor GPT.
So do you want to you want tohit the acronyms, Hannah, and
I'll uh do my best to demystifythem.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (05:28):
Yes, perfect.
So the first one is VPN.
So I as a lay person know a VPNis this thing that you use to
log in to, well, I mainly use itto log into like streaming
networks and watch Netflix stuffthat is only available in the
US or in Australia.
Oh, I've said this already.
I use it to watch Mappress.
Hugh Williams (05:46):
Yeah, you end up to this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
VPN, virtual private network.
Uh, and I think look, thesimplest way to describe it
would be to say it's a safetunnel that connects your device
to other devices.
And so we I think when we weredoing our second hacking
episode, which must have beenepisode nine, I think we briefly
mentioned VPNs.
And so a VPN is a way toencrypt all of the traffic that
(06:08):
leaves your device and have itarrive encrypted at the known
destination where the thedestination can decrypt the the
content.
Um, it also allows you todisguise where you are coming
from, and so that's what a lotof people use it for.
So that's how you're able towatch uh Married at First Sight
Australia Hannah by uh bypretending you are in Australia.
(06:29):
So you can pretend you'resomewhere and your traffic is
encrypted.
So a really good safe way to uhbe connected to the internet.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (06:36):
Okay, so other than disguising your
location, what else wouldsomeone be using encryption for?
Hugh Williams (06:42):
Do you remember we talked about man in the
middle attacks back in episodenine?
So that that's the issue wheresomebody in between you and the
destination um is looking at thetraffic that's passing by, or
they could even be modifying thetraffic that that passes by.
And remember also back inepisode nine, I said, look, if
there's a padlock next to yourweb address in your browser,
then it's encrypted.
So if you want everything to beencrypted, so you don't want to
(07:05):
ever have to worry about thetraffic that's going out of your
machine and heading off to somedestination, then you can use a
VPN.
So if you use a VPN, theneverything that leaves your
machine is encrypted, and thatmeans that man-in-the-middle
attacks are impossible or very,very difficult.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (07:20):
Okay, so like the CIA probably uses a
VPN.
Hugh Williams (07:23):
Yeah, I'd say most uh most folks are using
VPNs who are worried about youknow their traffic being
intercepted.
I'd say good practice is find areputable VPN and and use the
VPN whenever you're out andabout.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (07:35):
Oh, okay.
Do you do that?
Hugh Williams (07:36):
Yep.
Yep.
I use a company called NordVPN,who I quite like.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (07:41):
Oh, there you go.
Another top privacy tip.
Okay, speaking about traffic,um, what does URL stand for?
Hugh Williams (07:48):
Uh uniform resource locator, I think, is
what it stands for.
You might want to you mightwant to wanna check.
I haven't checked thatabbreviation in a long time.
I haven't thought about thatone in 30 years, but that's a
that effectively means with aweb address.
So when you uh when you go upin your web browser and you type
in something like you know,gmail.com or instagram.com or
whatever it is, that is a URL.
So that's that's what it'sthat's what it's technically
(08:10):
called.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (08:10):
That is correct.
I have fat checked.
Awesome.
And last one of this ilk, HTTPor HTTPS.
What's that for?
Hugh Williams (08:19):
That's hypertext transfer protocol.
And with the S on the end, itmeans secure.
Um, and that is basically thewhat we call a protocol in
computer science that's used forin web browsers and web
servers.
So so when you're when you'rein your web browser, Chrome or
Edge or Firefox, whatever it is,Safari, and you type a web
address.
Often people will type httpcolon slash slash and then the
(08:41):
web address, and that just meansit's a web protocol.
Um these days you can get awaywithout typing it in most
browsers, so you can just typegmail.com and press enter, and
you'll it'll turn it into httpscolon slash slash gmail.com.
But uh https is the way thatweb browsers talk to web
servers.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (08:58):
Okay, so it's always there, even if you
don't put it in, it will justget loaded in by the browser
you're using.
Hugh Williams (09:03):
Yep, that's it.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (09:04):
Okay, SQL.
I'm very because we talkedabout SQL injection in the
hacking episode, so but Iactually don't know what it
sounds for.
Hugh Williams (09:11):
So I always say SQL, you'll find a lot of people
will say SQL.
So you'll hear people you'llhear people use the phrase SQL,
and that's just them trying topronounce SQL as a word.
It stands for structured querylanguage.
And it's basically a a languagewhere you declare what
information you want from adatabase.
So let's imagine I think we usethe example, you know, you're
on the web and you want toupdate your address at your
(09:33):
fitness app, and probably behindthe scenes at your fitness app
is uh a database, and thatdatabase stores all the names
and addresses of all the peoplewho are you know using the
fitness app.
And when you update youraddress, there's some SQL that
actually does that.
So it might say, you know,update your address.
So it's a database language,uh, it's the most popular
(09:54):
database language, and it's usedwhenever there's you know
structured storage in anysoftware product that's built.
It's a common thing that a lotof people understand.
You'll find like um financepeople often can write SQL.
Uh, you'll often find theanalytics team.
If you if you work in abusiness that has analytics,
will be really good at SQL.
And anybody who does computerscience at university for sure
(10:15):
would have done a databasecourse, and they probably did
that in the second year of theircomputer science degree, and
that would have had SQL SquareCenter in it for sure.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (10:22):
I've written a tiny bit of SQL, but I
didn't realize that it doesn'tstand for SQL.
So that was structured querylanguage, is that right?
Hugh Williams (10:28):
That's it.
Yeah, often pronounced SQL.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (10:31):
I'm gonna be the annoying person at
work next time someone says SQL.
Okay, um CSV.
So like CSV is a file type,right?
Hugh Williams (10:40):
Yeah, so it's um I think it just stands for
comma-separated values.
If you've got a plain text fileon your computer and it's got
information in it, um oftenyou'll find that information is
stored in a CSV format, whichsimply means that there's commas
between each of the fields.
So imagine we've got names,addresses, phone numbers, email
addresses, and we've got a bigfile of those.
(11:01):
What you might find is thatthere's one person per line, and
each one of those lines has thename, a comma, the address, a
comma.
You'll find that mostspreadsheet software can import
and export CSV files.
So very common way to get datainto Excel and out of Excel or
into Google Sheets and out ofGoogle Sheets.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (11:20):
And that is comma delimited values, is
like a phrase I've heard, whichis like the same thing.
Hugh Williams (11:27):
Same thing.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (11:28):
Okay.
And then I've got LAN and WAN,which I assume are somehow
different versions of a similarconcept.
Hugh Williams (11:34):
Yeah, that's fair.
Um, so LAN is local areanetwork.
So, you know, if you're in abuilding, you've got Wi-Fi,
you've got some cables runningaround the building, could be a
house, could be where you work,that that would be called a LAN.
So it's basically the networkthat is within your building.
And then a wide area network isyou know the bigger version of
that, right?
So that's something that acompany might use to connect two
(11:55):
campuses together.
Or, you know, you've you've gotsome infrastructure out in out
in the field somewhere and youwant that connected back to the
the head office, then that wouldbe a wide area network that
you'd be using to connect all ofyour infrastructure together.
So folks like Google, Amazon,you know, those kinds of folks
have very, very large,sophisticated WANs that connect
together all theirinfrastructure, including all of
their data centers, warehouses,offices, all these kinds of
(12:17):
things are all connectedtogether on a giant network that
you'd call a WAN.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (12:21):
Okay, cool.
So WAN and LAN, local areanetwork, wide area network.
So do you know, Hugh, whatWi-Fi stands for?
Hugh Williams (12:31):
That's a good question.
I mean, I'm I'm guessing likewide and fidelity, but I but
that doesn't make sense as twowords to put together.
So I'm not sure.
No, I don't think I do, Hannah.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (12:42):
Well, there is a common misconception
according to ChatGPT, sorry,it's a misconception that it
stands for wireless fidelity,but actually ChatGPT told me
that it was just a catchy namethat was like made up, and then
some people have retrofitted themeaning of wireless fidelity,
but it's actually just Wi-Fi,it's just Wi-Fi.
They just came up with a namethat sounded cool.
Hugh Williams (13:05):
It does sound cool.
I don't know if I get a pointor half a point or no points for
that.
What do you think?
Hannah Clayton-Langton (13:09):
I'll give you half a point.
Our next question comes fromRuby in Edinburgh, and she's
asking about the cloud.
So she says, the cloud feelsquite mystical in general.
I would agree with that.
Why choose Google Cloud versusAWS, for example?
What do people use before thecloud?
Hugh Williams (13:26):
Oh, yeah, that is a great question, Ruby.
Thanks for asking.
Maybe, maybe let's start withwhat did people use before the
cloud?
Because I think that motivatesthe cloud.
Back in the old days when I wasuh when I was at Microsoft, um,
so we're talking sort of youknow 2005 to 2009, uh, we were
building Bing the search engine,and we built all of our
infrastructure by ourselves.
(13:48):
So we'd we'd very literally,you know, go and find uh some
land, uh, we'd put down someconcrete, we'd build some walls,
and we'd fill this uh thisgiant warehouse that we built
with computers and we'd wirethem all up, we'd cool them and
we'd get power.
And that was you know theinfrastructure that we used to
build Bing.
Later on, Microsoft realizedthat all the work we'd done in
(14:08):
building that infrastructure andbuilding the software to run
that infrastructure, and thesoftware to run that
infrastructure is prettycomplex, they realized that that
was a pretty valuable asset,and that became Azure, which
Microsoft now sells as theircloud product.
So the the origins of the cloudproduct at Microsoft are in
fact the work that was done atBing.
And the same story is true atAmazon, actually, is that they
built all of this infrastructureto run Amazon the store.
(14:31):
You know, Amazon the store isvery complex, needed a lot of
software, you know, does allthis logistics and whatever else
it is.
And then they realized, hang ona minute, you know, this is
something that other companiesaround the world are going to
do.
So they branded that as AmazonWeb Services or AWS and started
selling that to everybody.
So these big pieces ofinfrastructure that became the
cloud infrastructure were thingsthat were built by these
(14:51):
organizations to solve internalproblems.
Same at Google.
Google Cloud was theinfrastructure that was used to
build Google search.
You know, the world changed alot when these when this
infrastructure became available.
And so instead of having a teamof, let's say, 20 people at our
startup to even get started, wecould probably now have a team
of one or two and actually getget started.
So really today, you know,three people in a garage can
(15:12):
build a startup where you knowthat wasn't possible before the
the cloud came along.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (15:16):
Okay, so the cloud is still connected to
physical computers, it's justdone in a massive aggregate,
which is why we have these hugedata centers.
Hugh Williams (15:25):
Yeah, exactly.
And look, you know, we won'twon't talk too much about sort
of what is a virtual computerand these kinds of things, but
you know, you could you'reeffectively getting access to
computers that uh exist within awithin a warehouse somewhere.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (15:36):
And presumably there's like
economies of scale generally andhaving that all aggregated in
some place for loads ofdifferent companies than if
everyone did it individually.
Hugh Williams (15:44):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Um I mean, even if you justthink about the people involved,
right?
Like, you know, our littlestartup would need 20 people and
we'd have to go buy somecomputers and wire them up
somewhere in some data center.
We'd probably rent some spacein a data center and get them
working and run all the cablingand maintain those computers
when they break and all thosekinds of things.
Now we we just don't need to dothat, you know, Amazon or
whoever is doing that for us.
(16:06):
And as you say, there's gianteconomies of scale.
So every startup that startstoday is a lot smaller than
every startup that startedbefore the cloud.
Hannah Clayton-Lan (16:13):
Interesting.
And of Azure, Google Cloud, andAWS, which is Amazon Web
Services, are those like thethree main ones?
And which one's the biggest?
Hugh Williams (16:22):
Uh AWS is the biggest, followed by Azure,
followed by Google Cloud, butGoogle Cloud has really got its
act together in the last fewyears and is really coming at
the other two.
You you could argue from oneperspective that they're
commodities at some level, likethey're interchangeable.
And I think when you're anexecutive in a large company
that's not a tech company, youknow, being in that position,
(16:42):
you try and play them offagainst each other.
So you kind of say, hey, if youdon't do me a great deal, uh,
I'm gonna go to one of yourcompetitors, and you try and run
the argument that you know youguys are just a commodity and
it's easy to switch between you.
It's not actually easy toswitch between them, they are
quite different, and so there'sa lot of work that you need to
do to switch between them.
But often the cloud providerthat you're thinking about going
(17:04):
to will offer to do a lot ofthat work for you, right?
So let's imagine we're on AWSand we get a better deal from
Google.
Um, Google is probably going tooffer to help us migrate
everything that we had runningon AWS over to Google and give
us ultimately a better deal ifwe sign up for a nice long
contract.
So they're a little bitdifferent.
It's a bit like saying, youknow, using a Mac is different
to using Windows, right?
(17:25):
Like, you know, at some level,if you zoom out enough, they're
the same.
But if you zoom in, it'sdifferent enough that it'll
require some work to movesomething from one place to
another.
People often these days justchoose them on price, you know,
you go talk to all three of themand figure out who's got the
best deal and pick the best oneon price.
But I'd also say that each ofthem is better at something than
(17:45):
the others are, and worse atsomething than the others are.
So, you know, if you've got aparticular uh thing that you're
trying to build, you know, youmight find that one of the cloud
providers is better at thatthan one of the others.
So there's there's technicalreasons to choose one over the
other, but I'd say they'reconverging quite quickly over
time to being, you know,something that you can switch
between.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (18:04):
It's a really good question from Ruby
because I would say uh thatsomeone who never thought about
data centers for most of theirlife, they feel like they're
coming up more in the publicdomain.
So, like famously uh there wasa DNS related issue at an Amazon
data center fairly recentlythat took down a bunch of
services.
And a few years ago, I wasworking for a tech company uh on
(18:26):
like the client-facing side,and an Amazon data center went
down and that was disrupting ourservice, and they were pretty
annoyed about that.
Um, and there's a lot of chatabout data centers and how much
heat they generate as well.
So it could be interesting todo a deeper dive on data centers
at some point in a futureseason because they've suddenly
become something that peoplecare about.
Hugh Williams (18:45):
I might uh I might share a couple of pictures
on socials of me walking arounddata centers with some big data
center infrastructure from theold days, you know, lots of
blinking lights, cables, reallycold, fluorescent lights.
And they're gigantic pieces ofinfrastructure.
I mean, they're some of thebiggest warehouses you will ever
see, just completely filledwith computers.
It's it's very, very cool.
Hannah Clayton-Lan (19:02):
Interesting.
And they're like in randomplaces where there's like loads
of land available, right?
Hugh Williams (19:07):
Yeah, yeah.
And you might put it next to ahydropower station or somewhere
where there's a lot of solaravailable, or perhaps, you know,
nuclear energy or whatever itis, because they do use a lot of
power to basically to run theinfrastructure and keep the
infrastructure cool, because youknow, all of these CPUs and
GPUs get very, very hot, and soyou need a lot of cooling.
And so, you know, they'll putthem next to rivers and pump
cold water through them, allsorts of interesting things.
(19:29):
So they're in very interestinglocations, often hard to get to.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (19:31):
Okay, Sylvia from Barcelona wants to
know if companies use differentcoding languages, how do they
actually speak to each other onthe same tech platform?
So I think it's in our likeinaugural episode on the basics
of coding.
I think you said that goodpractice in a large tech company
is a single-digit number ofcoding languages being used
only.
And I'm really excited becauseI think I might know that this
(19:53):
answer has something to do withAPIs, which is not an acronym
that we went into.
And if it is part of theanswer, maybe you can explain.
But is that right?
There's like APIs are like theinterface.
Hugh Williams (20:02):
Yeah, that's good.
I like that a lot.
And I want to apologize toSylvia for torturing the uh the
it's just like human languagesanalogy in the first episode
because I think it breaks atsome point.
So uh we joke that it'd be hardto be in a company that had
everybody spoke a differentlanguage and it'd be hard to
communicate and things.
So I think I I probably causedthis question to happen.
(20:23):
But the languages don't speakto each other, I guess, is is
the punchline, right?
So you might write code inJava, you might have some other
folks writing code in Python,you might have some other folks
writing code in C or whatever itis, but the the actual code
doesn't speak to the code that'swritten in the other language.
That's that's not exactly howit works.
So a couple of things couldhappen.
(20:44):
APIs is definitely one of them,Hannah.
So that's a that's a good callout.
So let's imagine, for example,that you and I are building an
online shop.
We might, in the cloud, and wejust talked about the cloud, we
might have some some back-endservices running, and let's say
that they were written in Java,right?
Pick a random language, andthen we might go and build some
web stuff so that people can seeour store in their web browser,
(21:08):
so they can open up a store andit has some interactivity where
you can hover over the menusand whatever else it is, and
that code that's running in thebrowser might be written in
JavaScript.
And Java and JavaScript havegot nothing to do with each
other.
I think we talked about thatback in the first episode.
But the way that your webbrowser talks to the code that's
running in the cloud is viawhat's called an API, right?
(21:31):
So a variant of that.
What that means is that there'sthere's some way that the code
that's running in the cloud canreceive input from the code
that's running in your browser,and so you can pass in things
like values.
So you could pass in a name andan address, and the next action
you want to take, literally,those values would be passed
into the code that's running inthe server.
(21:52):
So APIs are a way where, youknow, it's like a channel, if
you like, where one piece ofsoftware can communicate with
another.
So that's that's one way to doit.
The other way to do it is wetalked about compilers back in
the very first episode.
So ultimately, you know, youwrite the code in this
English-like language, and thatultimately gets turned into
executable code that's you know,sort of much lower level in
(22:14):
nature.
And so that code can write outfiles, read in files, these
kinds of things, and those, youknow, those can be accessed by
other executables that might bewritten in a different language.
So we could write out a fileusing, you know, some code that
was compiled from one language,and then we could read in that
file with some code that wascompiled from a from a different
language.
So ultimately they useintermediaries in some way, and
(22:38):
there's lots of different waysto do that.
Hannah Clayton-Lan (22:39):
Interesting.
I had kind of forgotten aboutthe compiler, but that makes
sense.
If you break them back downinto something that's closer to
ones and zeros, then they'reprobably a lot closer to each
other than the actual code asit's written, technically.
Hugh Williams (22:51):
Yeah, so they can talk via files, they could talk
via the memory in the computer.
Um, there's lots of lots ofdifferent ways via an API, but
effectively there's some commonway that they can quote unquote
talk to each other, but youknow, via some asset that that
exists in the computer that'scommon between them.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (23:07):
Okay, and API, I've just done a quick
search, application programminginterface, which is kind of
self-evident, self-explanatory,is a yeah.
Okay, awesome.
Um, we had so many listenerquestions, and they're all
really, really good.
They've actually mostly givenus inspiration for season two.
So it's a little bit of acop-out.
Um, that's where we're gonnacall it here on the listener
(23:29):
questions, but some reallyinteresting topics on the roster
for season two, includingthings like Bitcoin mining,
quantum computing, and chipfabrication, which all three
sound super relevant, um, butprobably too complex to try and
break down in a quick QA.
But I do have some final techtrivia points.
I'll give you one which youalready know and two which I
(23:50):
think you don't know.
The one that now doesn'tsurprise me at all, but probably
would have surprised me beforewe started, is that a smartphone
like a smartphone that we allhave in our pocket has more
computing power than thecomputers that were used for the
Apollo moon landings.
Hugh Williams (24:04):
Yeah, and I think astoundingly more now.
I I don't know if we can we cando it in sort of orders of
magnitude, but it'd be have tobe 10x to 100x more computing
power in a smartphone than wouldhave been in the the computers
in that we used in the LunarLanders, for sure.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (24:19):
Now that I know that all our smartphones
have like barometers andmagnetometers, if you've not
listened to our apps episode,episode three, I think, we go
into it there, but that doesn'tsurprise me.
Um okay, so did you know thisis a a callback to our Tinder
episode, which this is a goodtest, episode five, I think it
was, with Jonathan Bedin.
So YouTube was first inventedas a dating app.
(24:42):
Did you know that?
Hugh Williams (24:43):
I did not.
No, no, I did not know that.
I'm a bit disturbed by the factit's called YouTube, but
anyway.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (24:50):
I think it was called something
different, to be fair.
I think I read that it had adifferent name.
But the the concept in like2005 was that people would it
was like a dating site wherepeople would upload videos about
themselves, like really shortones, and it just turned out not
to get much traction and peoplewere a little bit shy, which is
funny because I think probablynow that dating apps are more
(25:11):
commonly used, they might beless shy in that regard.
But yeah, it I think theycalled it pretty quickly, but
they realized that they'd kindof created some cool tech that
could upload videos anyway, andthey went a different way, and
it's obviously ended very wellfor them.
Hugh Williams (25:23):
Yeah, indeed.
Indeed.
Google bought it, and the restis history.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (25:27):
And the last one, which like genuinely
Actually, I got a question foryou.
Okay.
Hugh Williams (25:31):
Do you know which of the following gets the more
queries, YouTube or Googlesearch?
Hannah Clayton-Langton (25:36):
I I wanna say like my answer would
be Google, except I feel likeyou're asking me the question
because it's YouTube.
Hugh Williams (25:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I I've heard that down thegrapevine a few times.
Um, probably not something thatGoogle's gonna say out loud,
but um, YouTube is a biggerproperty than Google Search
these days.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (25:50):
It's kind of scary that, but fine.
And I wonder how it would, ifyou layer it in chat GPT now,
like what the what the usershipwould be.
Hugh Williams (25:59):
Yeah, I think layer in TikTok too, and uh, I
think it'd be a very interestingstory.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (26:03):
Oh god, probably depressing.
Okay, last one, yeah.
This last one genuinely feelslike fake news, but I'm gonna
say it and you can just tell meit was that really good.
So, according to my LLMresearch on tech facts,
Bluetooth is named after a 10thcentury Danish king who was
called Harold.
Well, it translates to HaroldBluetooth, but actually Blatand
(26:27):
was his nickname, which I assumemeans Bluetooth in whatever
ancient Danish uh was beingspoken at the time because he
apparently had like a deadtooth, which is a bit gross.
But it was literally namedafter him.
Um, first of all, did you knowthat?
Hugh Williams (26:40):
No, no, I didn't, but um, that seems appropriate
for what a crap protocol it isthat it's named after dead
tooth.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (26:46):
Okay, well, that's not how they talk
about it.
So it was a it was um heapparently united different
kingdoms together, and Bluetoothwas meant to unite different
communication protocols.
It was the project name for itwhen I guess it was like a new
exciting project.
And then they couldn't so theycouldn't think of a better name.
And then if this is ChatGPTfeeding me fake news, then this
(27:08):
is astonishing because I thinkthis sounds really legit.
So the Bluetooth logo, I don'tknow if you can imagine it, like
we see it all the time whenwe're connecting like headphones
to our phones and stuff.
Hugh Williams (27:16):
Well, look, it does, it does look like a rune.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (27:18):
Yeah, it's a rune.
It's two runes, allegedly an Hand a B.
I don't know if it's exactly anH and a B, but to me it sort of
tracks.
So it was named after this guy,he united different kingdoms.
It was an original project codename, which I don't know if
anyone listening has ever had tocome up with project code
names.
It's my least favourite part ofdoing cool projects, is coming
up with a name.
And you're always looking forlike a tenuous link.
(27:40):
And this is kind of a tenuouslink, but it yeah, so next time
you connect your headphones toBluetooth, you can think about
that.
Hugh Williams (27:46):
Yeah, it does look like a rune.
I believe the story.
I believe the story.
When I was at Microsoft, we umwhen I was first at Microsoft,
we were able to name projectsafter anything you wanted.
So I could call it ProjectHannah or whatever it is.
At some point while I wasthere, there was a big edict
that came down from the very topof the company that said
projects can now only be namedafter cities.
So thank you very much.
There will be no more crazyproject names um that are going
(28:07):
to leak out into the media andpeople are gonna read things
into.
So I think you know, we we hada big project at Bing that was
called Project Rome and then youknow Project Copenhagen and
whatever else.
So it suddenly got very, verysanitized.
So cities I would recommend asproject names.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (28:22):
Yeah, that that's a good one.
It's like literally the worstpart whenever I get given
something that is normally asuper exciting project because
you have to give it a name.
I'm like, oh god, what am Igonna call it?
And as you say, people readinto what you've called it.
Okay, well, thank you very muchto the large language models
who produced the alleged factsfor today's tech trivia.
(28:42):
And I think in the firstepisode, you knew literally
everything.
So these have gotten a littlebit kookier.
Hugh Williams (28:47):
That's it, that's it, that's the end of tech
trivia, we're never doing itagain.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (28:50):
Yeah, we're never, don't worry, it
will not, it will not persistinto season two.
Um, okay.
Well, speaking of season two,uh, we're gonna take a little
break.
We thank you so much toeveryone who has tuned in for
this inaugural season of TechOverflow.
It's been so much fun.
Hugh Williams (29:05):
Yeah, it's been fabulous.
Thank you to all of ourlisteners.
Um I love just waking up in themorning and seeing how many
folks listen to our shows andthink about how many hours of
listening that was and all thehard work that went into it.
Uh, and I hope we've uh I hopewe've made you a little bit
smarter.
That was our that was our planall along.
And um thank you so so much forlistening.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (29:23):
Yeah, we've had thousands of listens
in this season, but I think we'dlike to make that tens of
thousands or more in future.
So if you've liked what you'velistened to this season, please,
please, please share word ofmouth, like and subscribe
wherever you get your podcasts,tell your colleagues, tell your
friends, because we really wantto keep coming back and doing
episodes which we know you guysare enjoying.
Hugh Williams (29:42):
And when will series two come out, Hannah?
Hannah Clayton-Langton (29:45):
Oh well, I'm looking at flights to
Melbourne in February, so Iguess maybe like end of Q1 2026.
Hugh Williams (29:53):
Yeah, awesome.
Hopefully, March, maybe.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (29:55):
See how we go.
Yeah, see Hugh, see guys, Hughis like very bold.
Yeah, yeah, March sounds.
Great, yeah.
Hugh Williams (30:01):
Sounds good.
Just keep an eye on thesocials, and uh we'll let you
know when series two will beout, which will be super super
exciting.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (30:07):
And what are you gonna be doing between
now and March, Hugh, besidesprepping season two?
Hugh Williams (30:12):
Yeah, look, I'll just basically just focused on
that.
That's the only thing I'll bedoing.
Um, no, uh, I'm gonna I'm gonnado a high rox, Hannah.
That's that's my plan inDecember, and then um maybe more
fitness in 2026, so gettinggetting into good shape again.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (30:27):
Guys, I'm telling you, Hugh has no
chill.
Like, you're literally like,what are you doing over
Christmas?
And he's like, I'm doing a highrox.
If you don't know what a highrox is, look it up.
It's like a gruelling physicalactivity.
Hugh Williams (30:37):
Yeah, it should be fun.
Should be fun.
I'll talk you into it, Hannah.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (30:40):
Yeah, I'm up for it, and Hugh did try
and get me to come down for aHyrox in December, but it's
just, yeah, it was gonna be alittle bit too much for me in
2025, I have to say.
Hugh Williams (30:48):
And what about you?
Hannah Clayton-Langton (30:49):
Well, I'm about to go into the depths
of British winter, so it's notgonna be as fun as that.
I'll probably be mostlyplanning my trip to Melbourne in
February.
Hugh Williams (30:59):
Sounds good.
Well, I hope you have a goodholiday season anyway.
I know that at least um atleast the UK does a very festive
December.
So I hope you enjoy that andhave a really, really good
holiday season and we'll uhwe'll kick off again the new
year with some prep and lookforward to recording in
February.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (31:12):
This has been season one of the Tech
Overflow Podcast.
Hugh Williams (31:15):
Yeah, and if you've enjoyed it, then you can
uh always learn more.
Go back, listen to oldepisodes, share with your
friends TechOverflowpodcast.com.
We're also available onLinkedIn where we'll uh we'll
keep posting and also onInstagram and X.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (31:28):
All right, that's a wrap.
Season one.
Hugh Williams (31:30):
Thanks again, everybody.
We'll see you for series two in2026.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (31:34):
See you next year.
Bye.
Hello world and welcome to the Tech
Overflow Podcast.
I'm Hannah Clayton Mangon.
Hugh Williams (00:09):
And I'm Hugh Williams, and we're the podcast
that explains technical conceptsto smart people.
How are you, Hannah?
Hannah Clayton-Langton (00:15):
I'm great.
I am recording on the moves, soonce again, getting on a train,
this time at least on a planewith my microphone.
Um recording on a Saturdaynight, so that's a first.
How are you doing?
Hugh Williams (00:25):
I'm I'm good, I'm good.
And it's the end of the series.
We've made it to uh the bonusepisode 11.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (00:31):
We did it, and it's been a lot of fun.
I wonder if maybe we shouldjust do some quick reflections
while we're getting nostalgic,because people keep asking me
how it's been.
Um so how have you found it?
Like what has surprised you?
What have you enjoyed?
What have what has been morechallenging?
Hugh Williams (00:45):
I've enjoyed it a lot, actually.
I think I've I've learnt a ton,and I think it's uh you know
good for your brain to keep itplastic, learning new things.
Um so I've I've learned a ton.
I also think um what I'velearned is that podcasting is a
lot more work than perhaps theas a listener I would have I
would have perceived, for sure.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (01:03):
Yeah, totally.
I would agree.
I also would say, oh, and I saythis to friends that ask, is
that at the very beginning wewere learning how to podcast.
We were like understanding ourtopic and our mission and sort
of codifying that.
And actually when I think back,we were like really getting to
know each other, like we'veknown each other for a while,
but it was like a a differentlevel of sort of partnership and
(01:24):
like co-hosting.
And so we were doing all threeat once, which was pretty
intense at the beginning.
Hugh Williams (01:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
I feel like we figured it outnow, and uh, I'm up for a series
two.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (01:36):
Well I think we should do it.
I think we should too.
Hugh Williams (01:38):
We've hit our OKR, so we'll have to have a new
OKR for series two, maybe maybedouble the number of listens or
something like that.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (01:46):
Guys, Hugh, as we know, he's very
successful, and now I know why,because he is very he's like
ambitious, he like sends me thestats every day, he's all over
it.
So um, if he's gonna double theOKR, I better up my game.
Um, one final, one finalreflection from me.
I, as you know, came up withthe idea for the pod on the
(02:07):
basis of wanting to understandtech concepts as like a
non-engineer.
I have learned so much throughseries one, like aside from
learning how to podcast, likeactually about technology,
things that come up at work allthe time that before must have
just like gone over my head,things that come up outside of
work all the time in the sort oftech first world that we're
(02:28):
increasingly living in.
And on that personal level,when I think about that mission,
that is just a really awesomebenefit for me, and I hope at
least a few other people thatlisten in to the podcast every
week.
Hugh Williams (02:37):
I've heard the same from folks.
I've heard quite a few of ourlisteners say that uh they've
learned a ton and they feel abit smarter in you know their
everyday interactions and atwork.
Did you have a favoriteepisode, by the way?
I meant to ask you that.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (02:50):
Ooh.
I think for me, Hannah, someonethat wanted to learn about tech,
our deep dive on how LLM's workwas just like blew up my brain
in a really awesome way, butit's quite a technical episode.
I think when it comes to likelistening to the episodes and
how they went, for me, theoutages episode was a really
(03:10):
good one.
I don't know, but what do youthink?
Hugh Williams (03:12):
Yeah, I was gonna say the outages one, actually.
I really enjoyed that.
I mean, I liked uh I likedpulling apart the CrowdStrike
debacle, that was fun, and thenyou know, towards the end, got
to tell a couple of personalstories, and you know, we talked
about bugs, and I felt likethat episode had a little bit of
a little bit of everything init.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (03:28):
While we're on the topic of good
episodes, obviously Jonathan andNick, our interviewees, were
awesome too.
And I think we're gonna do moreinterviews in season two, and
guys, Hugh's black book ofcontacts is really good.
So send us who you want to hearfrom, and he probably knows
them.
Hugh Williams (03:43):
Yeah, that was fun.
It was also fun to just getreacquainted with those guys and
uh, you know, do some prep forthe episode with them and then
sort of have the conversationand then again see what the
output looked like.
Uh I I thought it was great.
Having somebody else on thepod's fun.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (03:57):
Yeah, definitely.
More of that to come.
Okay, so for our special bonusepisode, we've asked you, the
listeners, to send us some QA.
So we've got some good QA linedup.
And for those of you who havebeen for the ride from day one,
you may remember Tech Trivia,which turned out to be more
divisive than we expected.
Hugh Williams (04:19):
Some people said really love the tech trivia,
that was awesome.
And some people are like,please never do that again.
It interrupts the flow of theshow.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (04:24):
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Do you know in the UK we usethe phrase like it's very
marmite, which is like you loveit or you hate it.
I don't know if the Australianequivalent would be it's very
vegemite.
Hugh Williams (04:34):
Very vegemite.
If you said that to anAustralian, if you said it's
kind of like Vegemite, um, Iguess they go, What you what do
you mean?
But uh if you said kind of youlike it or you hate it, I go,
Oh, it makes sense.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (04:43):
There was like a very successful,
there was a very successful ummarmite marketing campaign like
15 years ago that's really stuckin the psyche of the British
public.
But anyway, tech trive ismarmite.
I've got some, I've only gotlike four or five, and we'll see
what makes the final cut.
But they are good guys.
Oh, and the first round of techtrivia, Hugh knew everything.
And I, if you know all ofthese, I'm gonna be very
impressed.
Hugh Williams (05:02):
Let's see how I go.
I've got a feeling you'veyou've gone for the hard stuff.
I think I'm probably introuble, but we'll see how we
go.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (05:07):
Okay, so should we get into the
questions?
Hugh Williams (05:09):
Yeah, so we've got one here from Toby in St
Albans, and I'm pretty surethat's not St Albans in
Melbourne, it's probably uh thebeautiful St Albans north of
London, is my guess, is whereToby is.
And he wants us to do a littlebit of uh jargon busting for
common tech acronyms like we didfor GPT.
So do you want to you want tohit the acronyms, Hannah, and
I'll uh do my best to demystifythem.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (05:28):
Yes, perfect.
So the first one is VPN.
So I as a lay person know a VPNis this thing that you use to
log in to, well, I mainly use itto log into like streaming
networks and watch Netflix stuffthat is only available in the
US or in Australia.
Oh, I've said this already.
I use it to watch Mappress.
Hugh Williams (05:46):
Yeah, you end up to this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
VPN, virtual private network.
Uh, and I think look, thesimplest way to describe it
would be to say it's a safetunnel that connects your device
to other devices.
And so we I think when we weredoing our second hacking
episode, which must have beenepisode nine, I think we briefly
mentioned VPNs.
And so a VPN is a way toencrypt all of the traffic that
(06:08):
leaves your device and have itarrive encrypted at the known
destination where the thedestination can decrypt the the
content.
Um, it also allows you todisguise where you are coming
from, and so that's what a lotof people use it for.
So that's how you're able towatch uh Married at First Sight
Australia Hannah by uh bypretending you are in Australia.
(06:29):
So you can pretend you'resomewhere and your traffic is
encrypted.
So a really good safe way to uhbe connected to the internet.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (06:36):
Okay, so other than disguising your
location, what else wouldsomeone be using encryption for?
Hugh Williams (06:42):
Do you remember we talked about man in the
middle attacks back in episodenine?
So that that's the issue wheresomebody in between you and the
destination um is looking at thetraffic that's passing by, or
they could even be modifying thetraffic that that passes by.
And remember also back inepisode nine, I said, look, if
there's a padlock next to yourweb address in your browser,
then it's encrypted.
So if you want everything to beencrypted, so you don't want to
(07:05):
ever have to worry about thetraffic that's going out of your
machine and heading off to somedestination, then you can use a
VPN.
So if you use a VPN, theneverything that leaves your
machine is encrypted, and thatmeans that man-in-the-middle
attacks are impossible or very,very difficult.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (07:20):
Okay, so like the CIA probably uses a
VPN.
Hugh Williams (07:23):
Yeah, I'd say most uh most folks are using
VPNs who are worried about youknow their traffic being
intercepted.
I'd say good practice is find areputable VPN and and use the
VPN whenever you're out andabout.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (07:35):
Oh, okay.
Do you do that?
Hugh Williams (07:36):
Yep.
Yep.
I use a company called NordVPN,who I quite like.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (07:41):
Oh, there you go.
Another top privacy tip.
Okay, speaking about traffic,um, what does URL stand for?
Hugh Williams (07:48):
Uh uniform resource locator, I think, is
what it stands for.
You might want to you mightwant to wanna check.
I haven't checked thatabbreviation in a long time.
I haven't thought about thatone in 30 years, but that's a
that effectively means with aweb address.
So when you uh when you go upin your web browser and you type
in something like you know,gmail.com or instagram.com or
whatever it is, that is a URL.
So that's that's what it'sthat's what it's technically
(08:10):
called.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (08:10):
That is correct.
I have fat checked.
Awesome.
And last one of this ilk, HTTPor HTTPS.
What's that for?
Hugh Williams (08:19):
That's hypertext transfer protocol.
And with the S on the end, itmeans secure.
Um, and that is basically thewhat we call a protocol in
computer science that's used forin web browsers and web
servers.
So so when you're when you'rein your web browser, Chrome or
Edge or Firefox, whatever it is,Safari, and you type a web
address.
Often people will type httpcolon slash slash and then the
(08:41):
web address, and that just meansit's a web protocol.
Um these days you can get awaywithout typing it in most
browsers, so you can just typegmail.com and press enter, and
you'll it'll turn it into httpscolon slash slash gmail.com.
But uh https is the way thatweb browsers talk to web
servers.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (08:58):
Okay, so it's always there, even if you
don't put it in, it will justget loaded in by the browser
you're using.
Hugh Williams (09:03):
Yep, that's it.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (09:04):
Okay, SQL.
I'm very because we talkedabout SQL injection in the
hacking episode, so but Iactually don't know what it
sounds for.
Hugh Williams (09:11):
So I always say SQL, you'll find a lot of people
will say SQL.
So you'll hear people you'llhear people use the phrase SQL,
and that's just them trying topronounce SQL as a word.
It stands for structured querylanguage.
And it's basically a a languagewhere you declare what
information you want from adatabase.
So let's imagine I think we usethe example, you know, you're
on the web and you want toupdate your address at your
(09:33):
fitness app, and probably behindthe scenes at your fitness app
is uh a database, and thatdatabase stores all the names
and addresses of all the peoplewho are you know using the
fitness app.
And when you update youraddress, there's some SQL that
actually does that.
So it might say, you know,update your address.
So it's a database language,uh, it's the most popular
(09:54):
database language, and it's usedwhenever there's you know
structured storage in anysoftware product that's built.
It's a common thing that a lotof people understand.
You'll find like um financepeople often can write SQL.
Uh, you'll often find theanalytics team.
If you if you work in abusiness that has analytics,
will be really good at SQL.
And anybody who does computerscience at university for sure
(10:15):
would have done a databasecourse, and they probably did
that in the second year of theircomputer science degree, and
that would have had SQL SquareCenter in it for sure.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (10:22):
I've written a tiny bit of SQL, but I
didn't realize that it doesn'tstand for SQL.
So that was structured querylanguage, is that right?
Hugh Williams (10:28):
That's it.
Yeah, often pronounced SQL.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (10:31):
I'm gonna be the annoying person at
work next time someone says SQL.
Okay, um CSV.
So like CSV is a file type,right?
Hugh Williams (10:40):
Yeah, so it's um I think it just stands for
comma-separated values.
If you've got a plain text fileon your computer and it's got
information in it, um oftenyou'll find that information is
stored in a CSV format, whichsimply means that there's commas
between each of the fields.
So imagine we've got names,addresses, phone numbers, email
addresses, and we've got a bigfile of those.
(11:01):
What you might find is thatthere's one person per line, and
each one of those lines has thename, a comma, the address, a
comma.
You'll find that mostspreadsheet software can import
and export CSV files.
So very common way to get datainto Excel and out of Excel or
into Google Sheets and out ofGoogle Sheets.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (11:20):
And that is comma delimited values, is
like a phrase I've heard, whichis like the same thing.
Hugh Williams (11:27):
Same thing.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (11:28):
Okay.
And then I've got LAN and WAN,which I assume are somehow
different versions of a similarconcept.
Hugh Williams (11:34):
Yeah, that's fair.
Um, so LAN is local areanetwork.
So, you know, if you're in abuilding, you've got Wi-Fi,
you've got some cables runningaround the building, could be a
house, could be where you work,that that would be called a LAN.
So it's basically the networkthat is within your building.
And then a wide area network isyou know the bigger version of
that, right?
So that's something that acompany might use to connect two
(11:55):
campuses together.
Or, you know, you've you've gotsome infrastructure out in out
in the field somewhere and youwant that connected back to the
the head office, then that wouldbe a wide area network that
you'd be using to connect all ofyour infrastructure together.
So folks like Google, Amazon,you know, those kinds of folks
have very, very large,sophisticated WANs that connect
together all theirinfrastructure, including all of
their data centers, warehouses,offices, all these kinds of
(12:17):
things are all connectedtogether on a giant network that
you'd call a WAN.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (12:21):
Okay, cool.
So WAN and LAN, local areanetwork, wide area network.
So do you know, Hugh, whatWi-Fi stands for?
Hugh Williams (12:31):
That's a good question.
I mean, I'm I'm guessing likewide and fidelity, but I but
that doesn't make sense as twowords to put together.
So I'm not sure.
No, I don't think I do, Hannah.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (12:42):
Well, there is a common misconception
according to ChatGPT, sorry,it's a misconception that it
stands for wireless fidelity,but actually ChatGPT told me
that it was just a catchy namethat was like made up, and then
some people have retrofitted themeaning of wireless fidelity,
but it's actually just Wi-Fi,it's just Wi-Fi.
They just came up with a namethat sounded cool.
Hugh Williams (13:05):
It does sound cool.
I don't know if I get a pointor half a point or no points for
that.
What do you think?
Hannah Clayton-Langton (13:09):
I'll give you half a point.
Our next question comes fromRuby in Edinburgh, and she's
asking about the cloud.
So she says, the cloud feelsquite mystical in general.
I would agree with that.
Why choose Google Cloud versusAWS, for example?
What do people use before thecloud?
Hugh Williams (13:26):
Oh, yeah, that is a great question, Ruby.
Thanks for asking.
Maybe, maybe let's start withwhat did people use before the
cloud?
Because I think that motivatesthe cloud.
Back in the old days when I wasuh when I was at Microsoft, um,
so we're talking sort of youknow 2005 to 2009, uh, we were
building Bing the search engine,and we built all of our
infrastructure by ourselves.
(13:48):
So we'd we'd very literally,you know, go and find uh some
land, uh, we'd put down someconcrete, we'd build some walls,
and we'd fill this uh thisgiant warehouse that we built
with computers and we'd wirethem all up, we'd cool them and
we'd get power.
And that was you know theinfrastructure that we used to
build Bing.
Later on, Microsoft realizedthat all the work we'd done in
(14:08):
building that infrastructure andbuilding the software to run
that infrastructure, and thesoftware to run that
infrastructure is prettycomplex, they realized that that
was a pretty valuable asset,and that became Azure, which
Microsoft now sells as theircloud product.
So the the origins of the cloudproduct at Microsoft are in
fact the work that was done atBing.
And the same story is true atAmazon, actually, is that they
built all of this infrastructureto run Amazon the store.
(14:31):
You know, Amazon the store isvery complex, needed a lot of
software, you know, does allthis logistics and whatever else
it is.
And then they realized, hang ona minute, you know, this is
something that other companiesaround the world are going to
do.
So they branded that as AmazonWeb Services or AWS and started
selling that to everybody.
So these big pieces ofinfrastructure that became the
cloud infrastructure were thingsthat were built by these
(14:51):
organizations to solve internalproblems.
Same at Google.
Google Cloud was theinfrastructure that was used to
build Google search.
You know, the world changed alot when these when this
infrastructure became available.
And so instead of having a teamof, let's say, 20 people at our
startup to even get started, wecould probably now have a team
of one or two and actually getget started.
So really today, you know,three people in a garage can
(15:12):
build a startup where you knowthat wasn't possible before the
the cloud came along.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (15:16):
Okay, so the cloud is still connected to
physical computers, it's justdone in a massive aggregate,
which is why we have these hugedata centers.
Hugh Williams (15:25):
Yeah, exactly.
And look, you know, we won'twon't talk too much about sort
of what is a virtual computerand these kinds of things, but
you know, you could you'reeffectively getting access to
computers that uh exist within awithin a warehouse somewhere.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (15:36):
And presumably there's like
economies of scale generally andhaving that all aggregated in
some place for loads ofdifferent companies than if
everyone did it individually.
Hugh Williams (15:44):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Um I mean, even if you justthink about the people involved,
right?
Like, you know, our littlestartup would need 20 people and
we'd have to go buy somecomputers and wire them up
somewhere in some data center.
We'd probably rent some spacein a data center and get them
working and run all the cablingand maintain those computers
when they break and all thosekinds of things.
Now we we just don't need to dothat, you know, Amazon or
whoever is doing that for us.
(16:06):
And as you say, there's gianteconomies of scale.
So every startup that startstoday is a lot smaller than
every startup that startedbefore the cloud.
Hannah Clayton-Lan (16:13):
Interesting.
And of Azure, Google Cloud, andAWS, which is Amazon Web
Services, are those like thethree main ones?
And which one's the biggest?
Hugh Williams (16:22):
Uh AWS is the biggest, followed by Azure,
followed by Google Cloud, butGoogle Cloud has really got its
act together in the last fewyears and is really coming at
the other two.
You you could argue from oneperspective that they're
commodities at some level, likethey're interchangeable.
And I think when you're anexecutive in a large company
that's not a tech company, youknow, being in that position,
(16:42):
you try and play them offagainst each other.
So you kind of say, hey, if youdon't do me a great deal, uh,
I'm gonna go to one of yourcompetitors, and you try and run
the argument that you know youguys are just a commodity and
it's easy to switch between you.
It's not actually easy toswitch between them, they are
quite different, and so there'sa lot of work that you need to
do to switch between them.
But often the cloud providerthat you're thinking about going
(17:04):
to will offer to do a lot ofthat work for you, right?
So let's imagine we're on AWSand we get a better deal from
Google.
Um, Google is probably going tooffer to help us migrate
everything that we had runningon AWS over to Google and give
us ultimately a better deal ifwe sign up for a nice long
contract.
So they're a little bitdifferent.
It's a bit like saying, youknow, using a Mac is different
to using Windows, right?
(17:25):
Like, you know, at some level,if you zoom out enough, they're
the same.
But if you zoom in, it'sdifferent enough that it'll
require some work to movesomething from one place to
another.
People often these days justchoose them on price, you know,
you go talk to all three of themand figure out who's got the
best deal and pick the best oneon price.
But I'd also say that each ofthem is better at something than
(17:45):
the others are, and worse atsomething than the others are.
So, you know, if you've got aparticular uh thing that you're
trying to build, you know, youmight find that one of the cloud
providers is better at thatthan one of the others.
So there's there's technicalreasons to choose one over the
other, but I'd say they'reconverging quite quickly over
time to being, you know,something that you can switch
between.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (18:04):
It's a really good question from Ruby
because I would say uh thatsomeone who never thought about
data centers for most of theirlife, they feel like they're
coming up more in the publicdomain.
So, like famously uh there wasa DNS related issue at an Amazon
data center fairly recentlythat took down a bunch of
services.
And a few years ago, I wasworking for a tech company uh on
(18:26):
like the client-facing side,and an Amazon data center went
down and that was disrupting ourservice, and they were pretty
annoyed about that.
Um, and there's a lot of chatabout data centers and how much
heat they generate as well.
So it could be interesting todo a deeper dive on data centers
at some point in a futureseason because they've suddenly
become something that peoplecare about.
Hugh Williams (18:45):
I might uh I might share a couple of pictures
on socials of me walking arounddata centers with some big data
center infrastructure from theold days, you know, lots of
blinking lights, cables, reallycold, fluorescent lights.
And they're gigantic pieces ofinfrastructure.
I mean, they're some of thebiggest warehouses you will ever
see, just completely filledwith computers.
It's it's very, very cool.
Hannah Clayton-Lan (19:02):
Interesting.
And they're like in randomplaces where there's like loads
of land available, right?
Hugh Williams (19:07):
Yeah, yeah.
And you might put it next to ahydropower station or somewhere
where there's a lot of solaravailable, or perhaps, you know,
nuclear energy or whatever itis, because they do use a lot of
power to basically to run theinfrastructure and keep the
infrastructure cool, because youknow, all of these CPUs and
GPUs get very, very hot, and soyou need a lot of cooling.
And so, you know, they'll putthem next to rivers and pump
cold water through them, allsorts of interesting things.
(19:29):
So they're in very interestinglocations, often hard to get to.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (19:31):
Okay, Sylvia from Barcelona wants to
know if companies use differentcoding languages, how do they
actually speak to each other onthe same tech platform?
So I think it's in our likeinaugural episode on the basics
of coding.
I think you said that goodpractice in a large tech company
is a single-digit number ofcoding languages being used
only.
And I'm really excited becauseI think I might know that this
(19:53):
answer has something to do withAPIs, which is not an acronym
that we went into.
And if it is part of theanswer, maybe you can explain.
But is that right?
There's like APIs are like theinterface.
Hugh Williams (20:02):
Yeah, that's good.
I like that a lot.
And I want to apologize toSylvia for torturing the uh the
it's just like human languagesanalogy in the first episode
because I think it breaks atsome point.
So uh we joke that it'd be hardto be in a company that had
everybody spoke a differentlanguage and it'd be hard to
communicate and things.
So I think I I probably causedthis question to happen.
(20:23):
But the languages don't speakto each other, I guess, is is
the punchline, right?
So you might write code inJava, you might have some other
folks writing code in Python,you might have some other folks
writing code in C or whatever itis, but the the actual code
doesn't speak to the code that'swritten in the other language.
That's that's not exactly howit works.
So a couple of things couldhappen.
(20:44):
APIs is definitely one of them,Hannah.
So that's a that's a good callout.
So let's imagine, for example,that you and I are building an
online shop.
We might, in the cloud, and wejust talked about the cloud, we
might have some some back-endservices running, and let's say
that they were written in Java,right?
Pick a random language, andthen we might go and build some
web stuff so that people can seeour store in their web browser,
(21:08):
so they can open up a store andit has some interactivity where
you can hover over the menusand whatever else it is, and
that code that's running in thebrowser might be written in
JavaScript.
And Java and JavaScript havegot nothing to do with each
other.
I think we talked about thatback in the first episode.
But the way that your webbrowser talks to the code that's
running in the cloud is viawhat's called an API, right?
(21:31):
So a variant of that.
What that means is that there'sthere's some way that the code
that's running in the cloud canreceive input from the code
that's running in your browser,and so you can pass in things
like values.
So you could pass in a name andan address, and the next action
you want to take, literally,those values would be passed
into the code that's running inthe server.
(21:52):
So APIs are a way where, youknow, it's like a channel, if
you like, where one piece ofsoftware can communicate with
another.
So that's that's one way to doit.
The other way to do it is wetalked about compilers back in
the very first episode.
So ultimately, you know, youwrite the code in this
English-like language, and thatultimately gets turned into
executable code that's you know,sort of much lower level in
(22:14):
nature.
And so that code can write outfiles, read in files, these
kinds of things, and those, youknow, those can be accessed by
other executables that might bewritten in a different language.
So we could write out a fileusing, you know, some code that
was compiled from one language,and then we could read in that
file with some code that wascompiled from a from a different
language.
So ultimately they useintermediaries in some way, and
(22:38):
there's lots of different waysto do that.
Hannah Clayton-Lan (22:39):
Interesting.
I had kind of forgotten aboutthe compiler, but that makes
sense.
If you break them back downinto something that's closer to
ones and zeros, then they'reprobably a lot closer to each
other than the actual code asit's written, technically.
Hugh Williams (22:51):
Yeah, so they can talk via files, they could talk
via the memory in the computer.
Um, there's lots of lots ofdifferent ways via an API, but
effectively there's some commonway that they can quote unquote
talk to each other, but youknow, via some asset that that
exists in the computer that'scommon between them.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (23:07):
Okay, and API, I've just done a quick
search, application programminginterface, which is kind of
self-evident, self-explanatory,is a yeah.
Okay, awesome.
Um, we had so many listenerquestions, and they're all
really, really good.
They've actually mostly givenus inspiration for season two.
So it's a little bit of acop-out.
Um, that's where we're gonnacall it here on the listener
(23:29):
questions, but some reallyinteresting topics on the roster
for season two, includingthings like Bitcoin mining,
quantum computing, and chipfabrication, which all three
sound super relevant, um, butprobably too complex to try and
break down in a quick QA.
But I do have some final techtrivia points.
I'll give you one which youalready know and two which I
(23:50):
think you don't know.
The one that now doesn'tsurprise me at all, but probably
would have surprised me beforewe started, is that a smartphone
like a smartphone that we allhave in our pocket has more
computing power than thecomputers that were used for the
Apollo moon landings.
Hugh Williams (24:04):
Yeah, and I think astoundingly more now.
I I don't know if we can we cando it in sort of orders of
magnitude, but it'd be have tobe 10x to 100x more computing
power in a smartphone than wouldhave been in the the computers
in that we used in the LunarLanders, for sure.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (24:19):
Now that I know that all our smartphones
have like barometers andmagnetometers, if you've not
listened to our apps episode,episode three, I think, we go
into it there, but that doesn'tsurprise me.
Um okay, so did you know thisis a a callback to our Tinder
episode, which this is a goodtest, episode five, I think it
was, with Jonathan Bedin.
So YouTube was first inventedas a dating app.
(24:42):
Did you know that?
Hugh Williams (24:43):
I did not.
No, no, I did not know that.
I'm a bit disturbed by the factit's called YouTube, but
anyway.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (24:50):
I think it was called something
different, to be fair.
I think I read that it had adifferent name.
But the the concept in like2005 was that people would it
was like a dating site wherepeople would upload videos about
themselves, like really shortones, and it just turned out not
to get much traction and peoplewere a little bit shy, which is
funny because I think probablynow that dating apps are more
(25:11):
commonly used, they might beless shy in that regard.
But yeah, it I think theycalled it pretty quickly, but
they realized that they'd kindof created some cool tech that
could upload videos anyway, andthey went a different way, and
it's obviously ended very wellfor them.
Hugh Williams (25:23):
Yeah, indeed.
Indeed.
Google bought it, and the restis history.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (25:27):
And the last one, which like genuinely
Actually, I got a question foryou.
Okay.
Hugh Williams (25:31):
Do you know which of the following gets the more
queries, YouTube or Googlesearch?
Hannah Clayton-Langton (25:36):
I I wanna say like my answer would
be Google, except I feel likeyou're asking me the question
because it's YouTube.
Hugh Williams (25:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I I've heard that down thegrapevine a few times.
Um, probably not something thatGoogle's gonna say out loud,
but um, YouTube is a biggerproperty than Google Search
these days.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (25:50):
It's kind of scary that, but fine.
And I wonder how it would, ifyou layer it in chat GPT now,
like what the what the usershipwould be.
Hugh Williams (25:59):
Yeah, I think layer in TikTok too, and uh, I
think it'd be a very interestingstory.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (26:03):
Oh god, probably depressing.
Okay, last one, yeah.
This last one genuinely feelslike fake news, but I'm gonna
say it and you can just tell meit was that really good.
So, according to my LLMresearch on tech facts,
Bluetooth is named after a 10thcentury Danish king who was
called Harold.
Well, it translates to HaroldBluetooth, but actually Blatand
(26:27):
was his nickname, which I assumemeans Bluetooth in whatever
ancient Danish uh was beingspoken at the time because he
apparently had like a deadtooth, which is a bit gross.
But it was literally namedafter him.
Um, first of all, did you knowthat?
Hugh Williams (26:40):
No, no, I didn't, but um, that seems appropriate
for what a crap protocol it isthat it's named after dead
tooth.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (26:46):
Okay, well, that's not how they talk
about it.
So it was a it was um heapparently united different
kingdoms together, and Bluetoothwas meant to unite different
communication protocols.
It was the project name for itwhen I guess it was like a new
exciting project.
And then they couldn't so theycouldn't think of a better name.
And then if this is ChatGPTfeeding me fake news, then this
(27:08):
is astonishing because I thinkthis sounds really legit.
So the Bluetooth logo, I don'tknow if you can imagine it, like
we see it all the time whenwe're connecting like headphones
to our phones and stuff.
Hugh Williams (27:16):
Well, look, it does, it does look like a rune.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (27:18):
Yeah, it's a rune.
It's two runes, allegedly an Hand a B.
I don't know if it's exactly anH and a B, but to me it sort of
tracks.
So it was named after this guy,he united different kingdoms.
It was an original project codename, which I don't know if
anyone listening has ever had tocome up with project code
names.
It's my least favourite part ofdoing cool projects, is coming
up with a name.
And you're always looking forlike a tenuous link.
(27:40):
And this is kind of a tenuouslink, but it yeah, so next time
you connect your headphones toBluetooth, you can think about
that.
Hugh Williams (27:46):
Yeah, it does look like a rune.
I believe the story.
I believe the story.
When I was at Microsoft, we umwhen I was first at Microsoft,
we were able to name projectsafter anything you wanted.
So I could call it ProjectHannah or whatever it is.
At some point while I wasthere, there was a big edict
that came down from the very topof the company that said
projects can now only be namedafter cities.
So thank you very much.
There will be no more crazyproject names um that are going
(28:07):
to leak out into the media andpeople are gonna read things
into.
So I think you know, we we hada big project at Bing that was
called Project Rome and then youknow Project Copenhagen and
whatever else.
So it suddenly got very, verysanitized.
So cities I would recommend asproject names.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (28:22):
Yeah, that that's a good one.
It's like literally the worstpart whenever I get given
something that is normally asuper exciting project because
you have to give it a name.
I'm like, oh god, what am Igonna call it?
And as you say, people readinto what you've called it.
Okay, well, thank you very muchto the large language models
who produced the alleged factsfor today's tech trivia.
(28:42):
And I think in the firstepisode, you knew literally
everything.
So these have gotten a littlebit kookier.
Hugh Williams (28:47):
That's it, that's it, that's the end of tech
trivia, we're never doing itagain.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (28:50):
Yeah, we're never, don't worry, it
will not, it will not persistinto season two.
Um, okay.
Well, speaking of season two,uh, we're gonna take a little
break.
We thank you so much toeveryone who has tuned in for
this inaugural season of TechOverflow.
It's been so much fun.
Hugh Williams (29:05):
Yeah, it's been fabulous.
Thank you to all of ourlisteners.
Um I love just waking up in themorning and seeing how many
folks listen to our shows andthink about how many hours of
listening that was and all thehard work that went into it.
Uh, and I hope we've uh I hopewe've made you a little bit
smarter.
That was our that was our planall along.
And um thank you so so much forlistening.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (29:23):
Yeah, we've had thousands of listens
in this season, but I think we'dlike to make that tens of
thousands or more in future.
So if you've liked what you'velistened to this season, please,
please, please share word ofmouth, like and subscribe
wherever you get your podcasts,tell your colleagues, tell your
friends, because we really wantto keep coming back and doing
episodes which we know you guysare enjoying.
Hugh Williams (29:42):
And when will series two come out, Hannah?
Hannah Clayton-Langton (29:45):
Oh well, I'm looking at flights to
Melbourne in February, so Iguess maybe like end of Q1 2026.
Hugh Williams (29:53):
Yeah, awesome.
Hopefully, March, maybe.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (29:55):
See how we go.
Yeah, see Hugh, see guys, Hughis like very bold.
Yeah, yeah, March sounds.
Great, yeah.
Hugh Williams (30:01):
Sounds good.
Just keep an eye on thesocials, and uh we'll let you
know when series two will beout, which will be super super
exciting.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (30:07):
And what are you gonna be doing between
now and March, Hugh, besidesprepping season two?
Hugh Williams (30:12):
Yeah, look, I'll just basically just focused on
that.
That's the only thing I'll bedoing.
Um, no, uh, I'm gonna I'm gonnado a high rox, Hannah.
That's that's my plan inDecember, and then um maybe more
fitness in 2026, so gettinggetting into good shape again.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (30:27):
Guys, I'm telling you, Hugh has no
chill.
Like, you're literally like,what are you doing over
Christmas?
And he's like, I'm doing a highrox.
If you don't know what a highrox is, look it up.
It's like a gruelling physicalactivity.
Hugh Williams (30:37):
Yeah, it should be fun.
Should be fun.
I'll talk you into it, Hannah.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (30:40):
Yeah, I'm up for it, and Hugh did try
and get me to come down for aHyrox in December, but it's
just, yeah, it was gonna be alittle bit too much for me in
2025, I have to say.
Hugh Williams (30:48):
And what about you?
Hannah Clayton-Langton (30:49):
Well, I'm about to go into the depths
of British winter, so it's notgonna be as fun as that.
I'll probably be mostlyplanning my trip to Melbourne in
February.
Hugh Williams (30:59):
Sounds good.
Well, I hope you have a goodholiday season anyway.
I know that at least um atleast the UK does a very festive
December.
So I hope you enjoy that andhave a really, really good
holiday season and we'll uhwe'll kick off again the new
year with some prep and lookforward to recording in
February.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (31:12):
This has been season one of the Tech
Overflow Podcast.
Hugh Williams (31:15):
Yeah, and if you've enjoyed it, then you can
uh always learn more.
Go back, listen to oldepisodes, share with your
friends TechOverflowpodcast.com.
We're also available onLinkedIn where we'll uh we'll
keep posting and also onInstagram and X.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (31:28):
All right, that's a wrap.
Season one.
Hugh Williams (31:30):
Thanks again, everybody.
We'll see you for series two in2026.
Hannah Clayton-Langton (31:34):
See you next year.
Bye.
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The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.