Techstrong Gang – September 27, 2024

Hey, everyone. Happy Friday. I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to this weekend.

But what's standing between the weekend and you Textron Gang? Hey everyone. Happy Friday.

It's Allen Shival for Techstrong. As I mentioned, we're we're what's standing. If we're what's standing between you and the weekend you're in for a treat.

'cause we've got a great show today. We are, you know, Google, Google's running to mama to uh, uh, get Microsoft in trouble for some antitrust over in Europe. We've got cloud, the Battle of CloudFlare and the AI bots, and I think I may make my professional singing, debut singing, covering an old stick song or maybe not.

We'll see. We've got a lot to talk about. Let me introduce you to our gang members for today.

First of all, joining us from high up in his perch in the Rocky Mountain. I don't know how high he is. It's early in the morning, right?

High up in his perch, in the Rocky Mountains. It's our CTO and and Fu of CTA. Mitch Ashley.

Hey Mitch. Welcome. Fantastic to be here.

I'll do harmony on your stick song. You know what, I couldn't think of a better person. Mitch.

Hey You. I'm here for you. I always welcome.

Joining us is a relatively new member of our gangs, not really wearing her gang colors, but we don't really have gang colors. Who am I kidding? Um, I'm gonna try to get her name correctly.

It's Ann. Ann, you're gonna have to help me. Couple more.

It's okay. A AA Ward. Aa?

Yep. You got it. All right.

Hey Anne. Hello, Anne. You're joining us from Austin, Texas, you know, helping to keep Austin weird.

But for folks who maybe aren't familiar with Ann, give them a quick background. Absolutely. I'm CEO of an agency.

I've been running for 15 years called Circle Click. I'm also a published O'Reilly author. Uh, I wrote the SEO Battlefield in 2017.

I'm a TV tech pundit. I've been on TV over 90 times. Fantastic tech.

I'm a tech. I'm lucky to have you on here and thank you so much. Thank you.

And then finally joining us from, you know, in his kingdom of, uh, Silicon Valley, the Czar, the czar of Silicon Valley. Know he is name. It's not Alexander, it's our own roving editor extraordinaire, Jon Swartz.

Hey John. How are you, man? Hey, Alan.

A little bit of a, uh, eventful morning here. First I had a dream that I overslept and missed the show, and then when I was just getting ready to prep, I heard a blood curdling scream. La downstairs.

There's a little black mouse on the loose in our house right now. So if you hear another scream, I hear my wife, a little black mouse running around, scurrying around. And so if you hear another scream, that will be my wife Jackie, trying to avoid it.

You know, I gotta give you a lot of credit, John. 'cause if there was a black mouse crawling around my house and my wife was screaming, I don't know if I would have, if I'd have the ability to sit still here for her text again, she'd probably have me. Well, we'll See what happens.

We'll see. Okay. Um, if you gotta I believe I, I understand.

You gotta leave. It's all good. Okay, well, with that, let's jump into our, uh, text show gang for today.

Guys. I, I, I mentioned it earlier, I don't know, you know what, Google running to the EU to file a complaint against Microsoft Azure for antitrust. Of course, they're to the EU because they're forum shopping.

The eus a lot, a lot friendlier to this kind of stuff. But John, what do you, what what, what's your take on this one? You stole my thunder with your opening statement, Alan.

I I, I, I thought the same thing. You know, if it's Tuesday or Wednesday, it must be Belgium because these companies go running to Brussels in the EU and complain about one another. This has become, I I I, there's a little bit of a twist that's going on right now.

So in a sense, Google has filed this lawsuit, uh, about Azure and its dominance in the markets. And in a sense, what it's doing is kind of taking the place of the government in the us And I think Google, from its own experience, which has been fine multiple times, billions of dollars by the EU, is now taking that tact. In a sense.

I think there's a little bit of revenge involved in this because Microsoft, for the last several years has played at the holier than thou White Knight in all of this tech regulation field. Brad Smith in particular has spent a couple of years pointing out all the flaws that Amazon Meta, Google, et cetera, have, have, have perpetrated. Um, and that Microsoft had learned from its mistakes with the Department of Justice back in the nineties and early two thousands.

So, in assess, this is a little bit of payoff. I don't think this is going to evolve to much. I think if, if, if it does go to a quarter, it will take years.

And I think we're gonna have just a back and forth battle between the two companies. This is all about marketing and about market share. Um, Microsoft has done some things that were a little pretty dicey, but in a sense, this is as much for show and revenge motivated as anything else.

I couldn't agree more with you, John. I think that they couldn't get what they wanted privately, and so they're doing it publicly. And we both know that Google and Apple are the absolutely most fined by the EU of any of the Mm-Hmm.

Apple. Exactly. So it's a little petty.

I mean, the way that people see Apple and Google. Now, I saw Microsoft when I was in, in a University of Texas. I remember Apple Desktop Bus was the, you know, protocol you use to connect mouse and keyboard, and then it switched to USB.

And I remember gamers and lots of them around me saying, Hey, this micro Microsoft isn't following the standard. Apple followed the standard of USB and Microsoft didn't, and it took a lot of lawsuits to get them to do it. They didn't play nice.

They were the big giant that we now look at, uh, these other companies. Google was a little startup to me. So it's just interesting how that shifted, uh, what 20 years can do.

Yeah. You know, this to me is, um, you remember back in the Lord of the Rings, when they need to take the pass to go over the mountain and the stone giants start their battle. The titans are crashing against each other.

This is just stone, stone, stone giants, you know, exerting their, their pressure on each other, that they give it to it, they receive it, it's back and forth, whether it's coming from regulatory agencies or let's get you back in the spotlight. Yeah. It's, it's somewhere, I think Lena Kahn from the FTC and maybe Jonathan Cantor from the Justice Department are smiling because in a sense, this goes back five years, right?

Even to the Trump administration, when they started murmuring about this idea of filing these antitrust actions against the most successful companies in the world, because it's very popular and bipartisan now to rip big tech and to go after it. In a sense, now they must be smiling because now the, the companies are turning on each other. And, and just, I'll just throw this one thing in, is that, um, a few years ago, a story about how Microsoft in a sense was playing, as I said earlier, the holier than Thou card.

And I talked to Amazon Meta, Google, apple, all on background, they all told me the same thing. They, they said basically that Microsoft was trying to make hay from their issues with the governments. And that Microsoft, in a sense was kind of almost an extended mouthpiece of the government.

And I noticed I, this is kinda like this proverbial can of worms that we open up, uh, about regulatory issues, Alan, and, and it's, and it, and it's kind becoming now a little bit re re re repetitive, redundant, whatever you wanna call it. And it, it's getting a little bit outta control. You know, to me, this is Mr.

Pot, say hello to Mr. Kettle. Good.

And, um, and, and if you read the article, it's up on text showing that I-T-S-M-I think it makes reference that AWS might be doing something here too, joining in or filing a separate sort of claim. Here's my take on it, Mitch. It goes to kind of your analogy on, on Lord of the Rigs.

These three titans are going to do whatever they can to lock in whatever advantages they can. But the thing about if, if you go back to Sherman antitrust, and the whole thing about monopolies is that you, you have a company that is a monopoly and, and therefore there's no competition, viable competition in the market. They, they shut down viable competition in the market, market.

The very profile of AWS Google Cloud and Microsoft being as big as they are, and in terms of revenue and size and footprint, almost on its face as timeout. This is a competitive market. And these guys are just reaching, I would be more from a legal point of view, more sympathetic, more likely to say, Hey, Microsoft, what you're doing here is monopolistic.

If it was at some up and coming cloud company who couldn't break into the market, they probably wind up suing all three of these guys, because collectively they're shutting people out of the market. And I think that's really where the antitrust here lies. Alan, what this makes me think of, kind of thinking forward and, and love to get your perspective on this.

It seems like the next battlefield is gonna be AI built into the operating system. And the unfair advantage that it gives Apple with their oss with Microsoft, with Copilot Plus, and now you have other application providers, cloud providers for AppSec that are running on local devices. It seems like that's the next battleground of they're gonna be fighting over.

Well, you already have it built into the operating system. You have an unfair advantage, at least to do inferencing at the edge. I don't know, Ann, what you think about that?

I mean, I think so much of the operating system has been eaten by the browser. I mean, we're doing so much more of our, our work these days in the browser. So my, the lens I view these things through is search.

I'm an SEO, um, AI overviews are now in 17% of Google searches. There are, you know, threats of an AI search engine, OpenAI. I think that it's gonna, the way that consumers will see it first is gonna be through search.

Um, and these bots that, that are supposed to be so much better, they're not, consumers are gonna push back. But I, I do think that yes, absolutely, that's, that's the next Great Arms race. But What, we've already had an antitrust industry pop up over the browser, right?

Oh, Yeah. And So, And Apple's got an antitrust against them, right? Not for ai, but For Star Yeah.

The other app store and policies and things. Yeah. The irony is, is, and Alan referenced this, is that, um, in your instance, these cases have kind of gained traction when the smaller competitors went after Apple and, and got them in trouble.

Um, so, so there is, there is a precedent that makes sense. Well, it, it's very hard to build up any form of sympathy when you have these behemoths who each own at least 20% of the markets pointing fingers at each other. Uh, right.

So yeah, with, with ai, we're gonna Right. Keep probably going through the same cycle too, probably with Microsoft and Google being banned or being Accused, want a sympathetic plaintiff. Yes.

No, You know, it definitely, he reminds me the very first time I did a trial, you know, three years outta law school, I get to do a real trial, personal injury case. My client is a female attorney, and she was not, she didn't make for a sympathetic plaintiff at all. She was, it was, I'll tell you about an over beer, some type, but suffice to say, my judge was blind.

I kid you not, he was blind. And my whole case was based on pictures. And I, I had nothing left to do, but put this woman up on the stand.

And she did not, the jury did not warm up to her. I settled, I settled before the verdict came in. Um, but anyway, you know, you, you've got to, you gotta learn it.

You gotta play the room. You gotta read the, read the room, as they say. And, and this is, yeah, There's so much lobbying going on behind the scenes here.

These companies are, are becoming like the, the gun lobbyists. They're just, they're putting as much effort into the legal side as they are, as as they are on the technology side. That's a, that's or generalization.

That's an exaggeration. Yeah. Well, because It so important, Every, every 10th of a point of market share here is big money.

And, and that's what you're dealing with. I, um, you know, I think we give them dueling pistols and tell 'em, you know, whatever it is, 20 paces and fire. That might be the easiest solution.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, we'll see. But I, I, I generally speaking it, they're just, they're not, it's not sympathetic Google.

It's not a good luck. Anyway, I think that's enough on if no one has anything else on this one. Let's take a break right here on the gang.

We're going to come back and we've, speaking of dueling, we have CloudFlare versus the AI box. So stay tuned. You're watching Textron Gang.

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All right. Hey, we're back here at Text and Gang. You know, uh, CloudFlare recently celebrated a birthday and anniversary.

I don't know, does a company have a birthday? I Anniversary? Yeah, Anniversary, birthday.

Found, know what the right word is. I don't know what it is From its founding though. And actually, I remember when CloudFlare was founded, believe it or not, I, you know, back then there weren't a lot of big CDNs out there.

And of course, CloudFlare is, CloudFlare is so much more than a CDN now. But, um, they celebrated by releasing a bunch of new tools. Uh, Mitch, you were following this one, you wanna Yeah.

Give us the scoop. Yeah, very much so. There, there were really two, two categories of things that they announced.

One was a lot about AI and what you, if you wanna take that, I'll, I'll take the security side of it and maybe a little bit of why they're doing that. They actually made a number of tools free for you, Cloudflare's going from CDN to, you know, this cloud with lots of services in it, to, we do a show with them called the, the Last Great Cloud transformation. It's really about, uh, a connectivity cloud that's, that's programmable.

People can connect to it where they're adding a lot of, or opening up a lot of, uh, security services, things that people can use for free. And of course, you know, free is great, especially when you build your network around it. All of a sudden you might become a customer, but they have some things around, um, public key, uh, private key exchange.

There's a standard coming out about key transparency, which is actually publishing your public key instead of holding onto it. 'cause that's what you use to initiate the communication to try to get around man in the middle attacks. Like, okay, we already, you already know my public key.

You don't need to do a man in the middle attack to try to take it over. Um, but so there's some free, uh, threat research. Um, they've got some DNS tools, um, HT V secure, like bunch of stuff that will be helpful to both network provider or networks as well as, uh, so developers, software developers, building AppSec, you know, leveraging their cloud and a whole bunch of AI stuff.

You wanna hit on that, Ann? Absolutely. Um, I think that really what this announcement, uh, signal to me is that they're course correcting all the AI scraping and bot blocking.

Um, they're helping sites identify and block bots and label bots, which I think is great. Um, as an SEO of, you know, many, many years, I will say the robots txt was typically a, a sort of tacit gentleman's agreement as to how a site's content would be treated, right? Uh, I don't want you to crawl this directory.

I don't want you to look at this. Please know, that does not exist in the world of ai. It's all the content all the time.

It's all for us. We're scraping it for our models. And so this is a counter attack to that, which I appreciate on a systemic level.

I think the other thing that is extremely exciting to me is that they're, they also announced the intention to launch a marketplace. A marketplace would definitely solve a lot of problems in these content creators who are, it, it creates like a broker relationship where even if you're not being paid as a content creator, at least you get recognized. I think that content creators getting paid has been a problem as long as content creation has been a thing.

Um, I don't know that this is going to fix that, but it seems like a nice counter attack towards getting us there to at least acknowledge that you're stealing, uh, that these companies are stealing. They're gonna be labeled and possibly thwarted. So I think that that's exciting on a, on a bunch of levels.

I don't know what the timeframe is for the marketplace. They didn't really announce it. Uh, but I think that that is going to help a lot of the, the tide turning, You know, and they also announced something called Speed Brain.

Oh, yeah. Who are in the backend inside the network using AI to Predictably Cache gets you to the cache of the content you're most likely to visit next or look at next. So they're using AI in their network too.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's like supposed to speed it up like over 40%, which is pretty incredible.

Um, you know, CloudFlare is a great company. I I definitely recommend them to clients. I think that they're, uh, have made some interesting and bold moves over the years.

Um, you know, the first CD and Ivory user, Zima, I wonder if they're still around it, but they are. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. They, they seem to be doing okay. I think they're doing alright.

Um, I mean, let me weigh in here. First of all, full disclosure, tech Strong is a CloudFlare client. Oh, I can do that customer too, by the way.

So yeah, I'm a customer. I've been a customer for years. They, uh, they protect it.

And, and I gotta tell you that bots are a major PIA for us here, right? Both, uh, malicious bots as well as whatever, you know, all bots are malicious in some way, but even non-malicious bots, the, the, the resources they consume and the, uh, they're just a pain, right? And, and CloudFlare does a great job with them.

We have seen an onset of AI bots over the last year, year and a half. And again, we've been trying our best to filter it, and this should make life a lot easier. And then secondly, you know, we're a bit of a content provider.

We, we, we, we have, I, I don't know, 10 different titles between video and written, uh, you know, textual and, you know, I'm fed up and don't want to take it anymore, that it's be, all of our content has been stolen by ai, uh, training, you know, LLM providers for their, for their models. And we haven't gotten a red set, let alone a, a mention, right? com alone, I think has over 40,000 DevOps articles at every single one of them I bet has been you Over 7,000 videos For, you know, security.

Yeah, I say high time for this high time. And Mitchell, that means something else to you in Colorado. Ain't no, but I say high time for this, and, you know, we, we've gotta do something about it.

But, um, I, I should also mention Mitchell and I actually co-host a new show sponsored by our friends at Cloud Flair called the Connectivity Cloud. What we talk about really, you know, as this cloud, the, it's, it's, it's, well, the show's called the Last Great Cloud Transformation. And it, you know, talks about moving from just the core cloud provider, uh, core cloud centers to the edge to endpoints and the connectivity and security involved there.

And this is, you know, right in that sweet spot, how do we secure this and, and make, make work on latency and all these other things. So, and I agree with you, Cloudflare's always been a pretty innovative company, not to dis Akamai. They're pretty innovative too, which I know you they're doing some great things also.

Yeah. From an They paved the way they paved the way, that's what we used when I was a developer at Apple. Mm-Hmm.

I would say Cloudflare caught my attention in the early 2000 tens because of, they were speaking at a conference, the ceo EO was, and my good friend had, had put together a PR proposal for them and was very excited about having them as a client. And so she came with me to watch the CEO speak, and he announced in this, in, in the, um, in his speech, we we're gonna just go transparent. We're not hiring pr.

Yeah. Well, Fred found it. Fred quickly kind buzzed out and said, okay, I'm outta here.

What talk am I doing? Um, but you know, they both, I mean, CloudFlare, I, I forgot what the number is, Mitch, you may remember, but CloudFlare something like 20% or maybe a little more of the internet goes to CloudFlare. I think it's a similar number.

That's right. It was that, I don't know what it is Now. Yeah, AkaMy probably right there as well.

They both do a decent job with security, interestingly. They both aspire and have become more than a CDA. Yep.

Right. Well, just to contrast that, Alan, we've, we've done work with Akamai too, and a lot of that work has been around, uh, cloud workload portability, moving your workloads where the, where the processing or data may be should be, uh, but also security, application security. So Cloud, cloud, when you think of CVNs, you would never would've thought anybody in that space would be in the A API security business.

But they are, because it's all so much of that's going through their network, and they can either stop it or pass it through, uh, through there themselves. So it's a great thing. Agreed.

Good stuff. Um, by the way, the article that this discussion is based on is up over at Textron ai. It'll be in your notes.

You can check it out there. Um, John, you've been silent on this one. Well, I'm just learning from the Masters right now, and I'm also girding for a scream downstairs.

Actually, my wife went to work. Oh, she left with the Yeah, I mean, he's my co-host today. So, uh, or she is, um, I, I find this really interesting.

I mean, I, I, I remember, um, is, is, but uh, Anne was referencing about Cloud CloudFlare as, as this, this company as well as Akamai. And yeah, you're right, this, this kind of curse of the AI bots and content being ripped off is, is an agonizing thing. And it's a very frustrating thing.

Um, and I'm glad it's being addressed. Um, but you know, in, in a case like this, in a segment like this, I'll be honest with you, I'm like the kid in the back of the class who's learning from the, the much smarter kids in the front. And hoping you don't pass me to raise my Anderson, I don't call your name.

Okay. No, no, no. But I, i just in a sense though.

Um, so the beauty of this show, and I always wanted to say this on, on the show, is that you learn a lot of, along with the discursive of conversation. And for me as a reporter, this is a great, like, I'm taking notes actually sometimes during these segments, or often during these segments. So it, it helps me in my reporting.

And, um, that's why I love the mix of the people who are deep knowledge in tech versus marketing or, or like the journalistic approach. And there's nothing about with marketing, don't get me wrong. No, No, not at all.

No, I, I actually Knowledge gained and learned in marketing. I, I, yeah, absolute. But I do agree, absolutely agree with you, John.

I mean, the, the, uh, and we shake, have a shout out. He's not here. He probably won't hear this, which is all this call good.

But you know, it's Mike Ard, our chief Content officer, who when he is not watching the Yankees play, is busy, you know, drawing up the, uh, the, uh, topics for every day's. Yes. Yes.

Dag Now I miss, I miss Lisa. Lisa, yeah. Lisa Martin is not here, or you miss her.

And I really en enjoy talking to her. I talked to her off, off camera as well, uh, for the marketing perspective, because she opens my mind the things, and again, it's a big equation. Like anything, there are various different elements to any tech company that makes it interesting, or any topic that makes it interesting.

So I'm kind of try to look at it from those different Angles. I, I mean, hey, you know, that was when we, when we we're conceptualizing the tech shown gang, that was why we called it the gang, right? Because the idea here is, is that it's not just the people who work at Textron, but it's the ends, it's the leases, it's Tracy Reagan and, and, and, um, trace Span and, and John Willis and Mark Kinkle, who was on yesterday.

And so many of our friends that we've made over, over a long time in tech, let's call it. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's, it, it's an interesting dichotomy because Ann and I do a lot of TV shows that are for a very broad mainstream audiences, and we don't have an element of expertise on those shows all the time. So we have to, in a sense, address certain, like the anchors who, whomever, they have a certain mindset, which is, which is exactly what their audience is.

But when I came on here, which makes it very interesting, is, um, there, yeah, it's just incredibly eclectic mix of people with different expertise viewpoints. And I think it makes it much more interesting than the classic kind of question answer Approach. Yeah.

No, we don't go very deep on those shows. We don't do that. We don't like to do that.

Not that we do that, but I, well, some of us go deep, Mitch. Okay. You know, you may not remember, but some of us go deep.

Oh, I think you guys go very deep like that. We were, it, was it yesterday? Patent, the patent discussion?

I mean, that was like, Yes, because I I about that. I'm sorry. Yeah, that was, oh, the t read About that?

Yes. I hadn't written about that in 10 years. And, and I, well, I deal with that every day.

You did? I'm looking at you. Copy check in Germany.

Okay. Anyway, So is my long-winded, say my long-winded answer, But you know what, I I, I'd appreciate you bringing it up. I appreciate our gang members who, who contribute all this.

And most of all, I appreciate our audience. I hope you guys appreciate the discussion. 'cause that's why we do it.

Um, anyway, hey, congratulations to CloudFlare on their anniversary, birthday, celebration, whatever, and really ni a nice, a nice release of new functionality here that I think will help, help us all. Let's take another break here on the gang though, and come back for our third block. Um, come sail away.

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Hey everyone, we're back here on Textron Gang for our third block today. I wanted to go to a, uh, a video that I, uh, recently played on Textron TV of an interview I did. And, um, it's, it's with the, lemme see if I remember his Marine director or director Marine.

He's Marine director of Siemens, uh, division of Siemens. And of course, we all know Siemens. The fellow's name is Demitri Reov.

And Dmitri Dmitri's a maritime guy, right? He's been in the maritime world his entire career, probably 30 years. And, uh, what was really interesting about it was, uh, they worked with team USA, uh, sailing at the recent Paris Olympics.

And for the first time in, I don't know, 8, 10, 12, maybe 16 years, team USA actually medaled the team, USA sailing team medaled at Paris. And they gave some credit to it, to the digital twinning, uh, work that was done using this Siemens software. And I spoke to Dmitri about it.

It was a great interview and it was a great example of how digital twinning can help real world situations. Let's roll to the tape and then we're gonna come back and discuss it. Here's Dimitri Panoff of Siemens.

Hey everyone. Welcome back here to Text Drug tv. You know, I, I think I'm, I'm, we're gonna have a lot of fun.

I've got a great story to share with you folks here today. Let me introduce you to Dmitri Panoff. Uh, Dmitri is the Marine Director over at Siemens Digital Industry Software.

I hope I got all that right. Dmitri, welcome to Tech Drunk tv. Thank you very much.

Thank you. It's a great pleasure being here. Thank you.

I think it's a great, uh, pleasure to have you on Dmitri, we're gonna be talking about how semen and a lot of people, this is gonna be new to them. We're gonna talk in a little bit about how Siemens has helped, helped team USA sailing to win its first Olympic medal since 2016. And it's quite a story you would think, how the heck did a company like Siemens and Siemens Digital help a sailing team?

We're going to get to that in a second, but before we do, I wanted to sh kind of ask you to share with our audience a little bit about you, right? Who are they listening to? I said, you're the marine director.

I'm not even sure what a marine director is, but be tell us a, tell us the Dmitri Tuff's, the punk rat story. Yes. So, um, my story is pretty simple.

I am just passionate about ship building and maritime business in general. So when I was at just eight years old, I felt like, oh, that's a in very instance industry, and I would like to be part of that. And since then, it's just, you know, I'm just, I'm, I'm stuck to this industry.

I'm doing my best, you know, to, to do, um, as much as possible, as much co collaboration and interaction with this industry. So, for instance, um, it's a very inter, uh, international industry. So I did my PhD in China.

Then, uh, um, after the defense, I moved to Norway. Um, and then in Norway I was a teacher at university again, the maritime things. And then, uh, after that I got an, um, invitation to join a lawyers register, which is the eldest, uh, classification society, maritime Classification Society based in London.

And that was really hands-on experience. So I was part of, um, technical investigation department, and this is department is, uh, it's like a short notice department. If something happening on the shipyard or vessel, uh, they can call us and say, listen, can you please come to Singapore or Panama tomorrow and fix, fix, like, or fix our vessel?

And that was my job for nearly, um, uh, six years. And then I got invited to join the, um, Royal Institution of Naval Architects in the position of, um, uh, technical director. And again, it's very international, um, organization.

It's, it's a professional body. And we had a very interesting collaboration with the different companies, individuals and so on. And then just last year after, um, uh, uh, Royal Institution of never acted, so I joined, uh, Siemens Digital Industry software.

But I would say that because I'm so passionate about the maritime industry, so even like if I have a spare time, I do something, something related to the, to the maritime business. I do sailing, I do swimming, I do model making. And again, it's ship model making, um, this kind of things.

And recently, um, uh, so for this year, I had a quite a, well, I had two main challenges. One is, uh, uh, cross Atlantic ocean on the wooden boat using the traditional navigation tools. So it was the stand and the, um, the, the debt tracking.

And the second one was actually to swim from Europe to Asia, uh, in Danella Street. That was only a few, few weeks ago. So that's why, you know, that's Amazing, my passion.

But let's, yeah, I, I, I, well, your passion comes through even in your voice and your face, but let, let me dive in there a little bit. So a wooden boat, like a Viking or Norse kind of boat, or more like maybe, you know, we don't have Spanish Galleons anymore, but you know, what, what kind of wooden boat was it? Is it 18th century lagger?

So that's Vessel was designed in, uh, northern France, um, to chase smugglers because, uh, obviously that time, it was quite a, quite an instant trait happening between, um, England and France. So it's a, it's a very instant design. So it's a three, uh, three mast, um, boat Uhhuh, um, about the 20 meters long, um, wooden and this exact replica of that boat, Was it only sail powered, or was there an engine?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah. Oh, sailing. So you sailed the Atlantic.

Exactly. So it was no engine. Well, it was engine, but we didn't use this cross Atlantic sail.

That's amazing. Look, how cool is that? And then, you know, look, not everyone is, is geographically tuned in.

They hear swimming from Europe to Asia. They may think you're going around the Horn of Africa, and, and that's, you didn't make that swim. But, you know, there's the land bridge Turkey for many, many years.

What is today? Turkey, uh, was the bridge from Asia to Europe, right. And, and the, the pho straits and the mineral straits, as you mentioned, really are where you can swim on one side, on Europe, go through and, and ur nasia, how, how long a swim is that to give us some sort of, uh, you know, scale.

So for me, it was my first experience. That's, that's why, um, I was not, um, I was happy with my time. 5 kilometers, and it took me one hour and 48 minutes.

Um, that's Fine. That, that's about, you know, for us Americans who are metric challenged, you know, that's probably a tool over 10 miles. Right.

So that's a, that's a decent swim. Good for you. No, I think it's, it's less, less than that.

5 kilometers. I don't think it's at 10 miles. No, no.

Isn't it? Oh, no, it's two kilometers per mile, right? Yeah.

I'm sorry, I had it reversed. I, I told you with metric challenged. It's still a nice swim though, and, and good for you.

Um, and I'm glad to at least, you know, I guess the water was clean enough for you to swim in, which is more than we could say for the river during the Olympics, where, you know, some of the swimmers got sick in the triathlon. Um, we're gonna talk more about the Olympics in a second. I think we understand why you're the marine director over here, but for those of our audience who maybe are not familiar with Siemens digital industry software, give us a, if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about that.

Yes, it's a quite a interesting segment of the, again, of the maritime industry and Siemens, Siemens business. So it's not about, um, building or producing the physical assets. It's about the software.

Because now there are a lot of opportunities to, to, um, make, um, for instance, simulations the digital simulation of the real assets. So before, let's say, building a plane or a vessel. So there is a very good opportunity to simulate this, to test in the digital environment, to find the best, uh, design the, the optimal design, um, to check against like different conditions, uh, different, let's say, uh, weather states, the sea states and so on, to find the real optimal, optimal point, and then build this actual vessel.

So it's kind of, it's a, now it's a, it's a part of the, a very well recognized design process, just, you know, to have like simulation and the, um, digital, you know, tests of the actual asset. And that's exactly what we do. So we developing the software for this, and I'm focusing on the maritime side.

So we collaborating with the shipyards, with the ship designers, with the classification societies to make sure that future designs of our vessels are the best ones. So I, I've heard this sort of process referred to as digital twinning, right? We make a digital twin of, of the real world, in this case a vessel.

It could be an airplane, it could be a car, a building. And, and then with that digital twin of, of the in real life IRL, uh, uh, property, we can then test it in, in, in, in a virtual environment to, as you said, find out it's not just testing to see if a ship can go faster, safety issues, security issues. You know, there's a lot of places where we're using this digital twinning kind of technology today to, to improve things before we start investing a lot of money in manpower into actually building the physical structures.

So, excellent. If you don't mind, let's, let's talk about this Olympic story. So you guys, I guess partnered or, uh, team USA sailing and employed some Siemens digital industry, software technology.

Uh, and I'm not saying that's the reason they got a medal, but it didn't hurt, as they say, right? It probably helped. Tell us a little bit about that.

So probably I should start with the, with the main challenge first, because obviously sailing been around us for thousands years, it's kind of, it's not, it's something like we already, um, have a very good knowledge and experience. So the challenge comes that now every year on early every race or competitions, so we are trying to push, you know, the boundaries. We're trying to do something better, better and better.

And at some point we realized that, okay, I think we achieved the maximum for the, um, uh, for the vessels actually sailing in the water because the resistance of the water, um, the bay resistance actually quite high. And obviously you can get something of the wind power, you know, to, to move the vessel, but it still is quite a significant resistance. And then the next kind of level it was like, okay, what if we place the vessel out of the water so we have some sort of, you know, planning house or like, uh, uh, using hydrofoils, you know, to dynamically, um, put the vessel outta the water and then reduce the resistance, the way it resistance on that.

And it's, it's a great concept because obviously by doing that, you can achieve significantly higher speeds compared to the, um, to usual, uh, to usual boats, because obviously the, um, risk will be less, uh, wave resistance. And at the same time, you know, so it'll be like a very nice and light structures. The challenge is stability because once the vessel is, uh, out of the motor, then the stability, uh, becomes a real challenge.

So you have to kind of maintain the position of this boat, which is not touching the water. It's only like a few, um, uh, hydrofoils is actually still in the water. And this is, well, it's a great challenge how to do that.

And these are like digital twin technologies, as you mentioned. It's exactly, you know, designed for this. So instead of try and have like, you know, um, uh, trial on the, on the actual vessel, on the actual boat, because it's, it might be quite a difficult experience to build, to move this hydrofoils around to find the optimal position.

So you can use the digital environment for that. So you can test and find the best position, the best load, the best configuration and arrangement for these hydrofoils. And that's exactly what, what was done in the, um, US setting.

So they used our product, we supported them with that, and they used our product to find the, the best design, the, the optimal location of the hydrofoils and the, the optimal strategic, how to use those hydrofoils in order to know to not just to displace the, well, not to put the vessel out of the water, but in order to control this in the right way, that the, uh, um, the, the, uh, hydrofoils in the boats actually pretty stable and you can achieve very high results. So in that sense, it's quite a instant concept because it's a newly developed. So in the, for instance, in Toki Olympic games in 2020, it's only, uh, was only one class with the hiker foil.

So it was kind of a new concept. Now in this Olympic games in 2024, it's already five classes. So you see how it's gonna rapidly recognize and developed in the maritime industry.

And definitely in the future, it'll be one of the major, um, uh, you know, advancement for the, for the sailing boats. And this is quite interesting, you know, combination of digital and real environment and how we can use those together. Absolutely.

You know, one thing about competitive athletics, any competition is once one side is perceived to have an advantage by deploying a new technique or a new technology or something like that, immediately it's a bit of a copycat league, right? A copycat sport where everyone will say, okay, I've gotta do that. 'cause it worked for them.

And so I'm wondering, have you already seen maybe other nations, other teams, other industries saying, Hey, this worked for them, we'd like to try it out here, or maybe it's too soon yet? It's a very good question because we, in the, because I mainly focus on the commercial shipping, you know, just imagine the, the container ship tankers, you know, the cruise liners, those kind of vessels. And obviously we are far away from the sailing competition in terms of the technologies, but at the same time, we are looking, you know, with a great attention about, you know, what's actually happening on the, um, saline industry, on the, uh, on the racing, because this is exactly the learning curve that we would like to employ in our commercial shipping.

So it's, um, uh, those races, the sailing boats, it's kind of like a benchmark for us, you know, just to understand like, okay, where's the potential to improve the commercial shipping? Because in commercial shipping, unfortunately, um, it's very traditional, it's very, um, solid. It's very difficult, you know, to move this technology very conservative.

And that's why we need this, uh, smaller boats and yachts in order to understand, you know, for us to understand the, the potential, how to improve the commercial shipping. So that's why it's, it's a very interesting concept, and that's why we are very passionate about looking at the smaller boat and the folding boat and the usual digital technologies, digital twins for the, um, for the, for the boats in order to, you know, to use the same, uh, lesson learned for the commercial shipping. Absolutely.

Dmitri, I, I think we spoke off camera, you're based in London now, have had, you know, from when you're royal, uh, your, your position with the royal, uh, service there. But, um, of course, anyone around the world can engage Siemens digital industries and and anyone in the maritime industry. What, what website would be the best way to kind of engage, you think, or to get more information?

Yeah, so definitely, again, I would refer to the digital environment because, uh, we have very well developed website and social media, so it's, everyone wanted to get in touch with us. So probably, um, website would be the, the, the best way forward or otherwise it would be, um, on the social media, like LinkedIn on somewhere. Um, it'll be a good starting point.

But the good point about Siemens, though, we have offices literally in, in every country, everywhere. So definitely, yeah, definitely it'll be someone around nearby you, we actually know, have some sort of connection with the Brazils. I love it.

Dmitri, keep up exploring and doing these things you're doing. It's what makes life exciting. Congratulations on the work of Siemens Digital Industries on this.

I mean, this has, I mean, it's great that it's helped a team win, uh, an Olympic medal, but the applications here go far beyond that, obviously, and it'll be interesting to see how this continues to develop. Thanks for being with us today on Textron tv. Thank you very much.

Okay. Alrightyy, Dmitri re Punkre marine director, Siemens Digital Industry software here on Tech Truck tv. We're gonna take a break.

We'll be back in just a moment. I hope you enjoyed that video. We're gonna discuss digital tweeting, but before we do, you know, some, some situations just lend themselves to this, right?

Couldn't help but think of the stick song, come Sail Away. And I would sing it for you, but I wouldn't inflict that damage on, on you. Um, but it's one of my favorite songs by a band I'm very, very fond of.

I I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Steelers fan, and you know, Renegade is our, is the anthem of the Steelers, right? Old bomb.

I'm in fear of my life from the law mom of the law. They play it every fourth quarter at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh. And we've had tremendous success.

But say, come sail away, man. The last time I sang this song, I'll be honest with you, I was on a boat traveling, uh, a charter boat. We chartered to do some snorkeling in the from Lanai to Maui in that area during whale season.

And what a great tie. I think it was a lot of ker and other spirits passed around and we killed the song, though I probably sang it terribly. But you know, John, what a great song by Sticks.

We were talking Anne and, and yes, Uh, little Come way, I have a little knowledge of Come Sale Way and of Renegade because I just watched a podcast where Dennis d Young's doing a lot of interviews because I think he's nearing the end of his, I guess he has his Sticks band. So there's, if anyone doesn't know the history of the, the, the band members broke up and, and Dennis Young is at war, or has been at war with Tommy Shaw and yes, James Young for years, like 25 years, they last played together in 1999 in Florida of all places during a television telethon. You go on YouTube, you can see their final performances and they, it was really good, but there was a lot of tension on stage.

Anyway, come Sail Away. Dennis D. Young says that he wrote that song like in 10 minutes while he was in Hawaii, and he started Dream like France, and he wrote it in Renegade.

He claims that that song was supposed to be a very slow song, but he convinced Tommy, this is debatable to make it a faster version and to speed it up. So that's my, that's the extent of my stick knowledge. Knowledge.

And I also tell you that Anne and I, full disclosure, do a lot, used to do this a lot. We used to do a lot of karaoke, which included sticks back in the day. Oh Yeah, it sure did.

Especially Mr. Absolutely. Well, you know, I also love Lady.

I mean, sticks lady's great. Yeah. You know, for those who maybe are not familiar with the band, go check out whatever your favorite music, uh, provider is from Chicago, the south side of Chicago.

They were, well, they Alto brother. Well, what's interesting is the real, so Tommy Char, Ty Young were the kind of two frog guys, but the real heart of the bed was the two brothers, the bass and drummer. I think one of them passed away, if I'm not mistaken.

John was an alcoholic who drank himself to death, basically. Yes. He died a long time ago.

And then his brother is, his brother is still alive, Chuck, he, he performs occasionally with them on page, They're right, they're touring as Sticks, not with Dennis De Young, it's Tommy. And you know, It's taught Shaw, James Young Zo sometimes this new guy. Yes.

Not new guy. He is been there with the Banford longer than the young, actually. He's the keyboard Player.

Yeah, no, absolutely. But Dennis De Young was the front man, man. When they would, he was, when they would spotlight him on the piano and he'd sing Lady or come sail away, um, it was, uh, they probably Talk their bands Quite a show.

Quite a show. Yes. But we could go two ways here guys.

We could continue talking about rock and roll, which I'd love to and I bet our audience would too. Yeah. But it is tech strong and we gotta kind of turn it back to digital twinning.

So what do we mean by digital twinning? Well, what, what the folks at Siemen did is they, they, they basically digitally cloned the USA sailing vessels and all in every kind of dimension and, and feature that you could think of there, then put it in a digital environment that so sought to recreate the, the conditions in which they were competing and, and then try to optimize what, what tactics, what courses, what, uh, what actions to take to maximize speed and performance. And then fed that back into team USA and then team USA in real world would practice it and they would compare that to the digital twin and, and could improved it.

And, and as I said, for the first time in a very long time, team USA medal at the Olympics for, you know, it, It's, go ahead. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh, No, I was gonna say jolly.

It was great, but go ahead. It was, it was interesting. I, I interesting interview with Dmitri.

Really, really fascinating stuff. And it reminded me of F1 in a certain way. So, um, over the years I've been, I've had the privilege, the honor to, to cover a couple of races, uh, where I, when I used to work at USA today, so I went to Austin for an F1 race, and, uh, they led me down into the pits in, into the control room.

This was basically like a miniature data center. Yeah. That banks, computers, servers, and they had a link to England, this is the Ferrari team.

They had a link to England basically, where they, to the, like thousandths of the second could improve every part of the car. Um, it, it was, it was incredibly fascinating and I think now you kind of fast forward, we've got, um, Oracle Red Bull team, we've got a MD Mercedes, a MG, Patronus, uh, Le Lenovo, Salesforce, AWS all have deep global sponsorships with F1, which makes it that this is a credible endeavor. And, and I think also about the America's Cup and Oracle and how I, I mean, 2013, how they had this incredible comeback and a lot of it had to do with technology.

And I, I actually see, and here's, here's a topic we always love to talk about. I know we, we've done this before about sports and how younger audiences are kind of drawn to this kind of sophisticated, dare I say, geeky approach to sports and how it incorporates technology. So when I saw your piece, it gave me a flashback to all these fond memories.

And the reasons why I think these sports are, are so popular worldwide. Well, it's for every sport you look at golf, right? You know, the legend, the beds, bang, bagger, he's picking up a wooden cane for a golf club and, and swinging versus the super titanium, you know, carbon based computer generated aided design of the clubs they use.

Now, you know, the, the technology that a Tiger Woods uses versus the technology that even a Jack Nicholas used is, is, is so the same thing goes for racing. The same thing goes car racing. The same thing goes obviously now for for sailing vessels as well.

Um, so, and I think you're right, there is a geek element to sports, Right? You know, it, it, so, so there was a, I'll, I'll I just jog my memory of another, another thing, I'll say this and I'll get it outta the way, but these are things that really stuck with me. There was an NBA all-star game in New Orleans that I covered.

And in the SSAP did a lot of work with the NBA. They still do. They, they were showcasing as part of their NBA weekends, this program they put together.

And it basically diagrams where every shot is taken during a game by each individual. Yes. The time the shot was taken.

And it gives you an idea, it gives the players an idea of how effective they are from different parts of the floor based On, well also from a defender's point of view, where are they likely to shoot from? And you get that in basketball. You get it in hockey.

Hockey, you get it in football as well, even in baseball, you know, show me the, I've seen the diagram of who hits the left field, right field, center field, how often it's what, and it affects your ships and everything. Well, the Funny Thing, I bring this, go ahead, John. Oh, I, I was gonna say, but the one thing, the one thing I was gonna mention is during this Chris b she was a fantastic basketball player who's career Was Miami By injury.

Yeah. Miami, uh, he played for Toronto. He was, yes, he had, um, he had an engineering degree from Georgia Tech, and I remember interviewing him and he was absolutely fascinated.

He actually helped them develop the program with, with SAP. So I saw like this, this, this integration between the, the players, the company and then the teams themselves, the coaching staff. So, uh, it is just fascinating.

Yeah, I I, we don't have a lot of time 'cause we've got to break outta here. But I will tell you that this whole digital twinning thing though, that goes beyond sports, right? Whether we're designing buildings or, or, or communities or other systems.

The idea of recreating it in a digital environment to see how it plays out and to optimize. We've just started scratching the surface on this stuff and it's, it's, it's coming and AI's gonna accelerate it. So, you know, if you haven't gotten familiar with digital twining, I think it, you really owe it to yourself to do it.

On that note, come sail away. Um, I'm not saying it, but John, thanks for the sticks inside. That is, that's what makes the gang great.

And thank you for joining us today. We, we ran it a little bit late, but we gotta get moving. Um, have a great weekend everyone.

We'll be back Monday with some great new content. But you know, for those in the path of this, uh, hurricane Hawaii, whether it's Florida or Georgia, or wherever it's heading. Stay safe.

Stay out of the way of that and we'll see you all Monday. This is Alan Shimel. We're out.