Tech memory with a skeptical grin.
Roaring Elephant pairs relaxed co-host banter with serious technical memory. Its best episodes use old industry stories to test what changed, what got commercialized, and what still matters.
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Roaring Elephant is a technology conversation built around memory, argument, and working experience. Its center of gravity is big technology, especially open source, data platforms, cloud infrastructure, AI, security, and the habits required to keep learning as an adult. Dave and Yon speak like people comparing notes after years inside the industry rather than presenters working through a tidy lesson plan. That gives the show a loose shape, but not a lightweight one. A joke can turn into a critique of corporate power. A story about old big data tooling can become a broader point about what open source communities used to feel like. A cloud discussion can move from infrastructure-as-a-service nostalgia to vendor lock-in, hyperscalers, Kubernetes, containers, and the tension between technical flexibility and business incentives. The 10-year retrospective episodes are a useful entry point because they show the show’s main habit: looking back at a decade of change and asking what was genuinely progress. Big data is remembered through cluster work, Ambari mishaps, storage tiers, real-time systems, and the rough excitement of tools that were not yet polished. AI is treated as both deeply interesting and commercially distorted, with attention to training data, copyright pressure, corporate consolidation, OpenAI, ChatGPT, and the way innovation can be absorbed into the status quo. The hosts are skeptical without sounding empty or performative. They still like the machinery. They just do not trust every sales pitch around it. Security-focused episodes with Parandar and Ken Foster bring in PCI DSS 4.0, encryption costs, operational mandates, and the practical burden of compliance beyond the largest providers. Episodes on lifelong learning shift the focus from platforms to people, with the same impatience for vague advice. The pacing is brisk, full of interruptions, callbacks, and self-corrections. Some threads wander before they land. That is part of the appeal for listeners who already know enough jargon to follow the detours. Roaring Elephant works best as an informed, mildly skeptical hangout for people who care how technology ecosystems age, consolidate, and sometimes lose the community energy that made them interesting in the first place.
Made for: For technically fluent listeners who enjoy infrastructure history, open source culture, cloud and AI debates, security practice, and adult learning without beginner-level handholding.
What sets it apart: Roaring Elephant stands out by treating technology trends as lived eras, not isolated news items. Its retrospective style connects tools, companies, communities, and incentives across a decade of change.
A weekly community podcast about Big Technology with a focus on Open Source, Advanced Analytics and other modern magic. Visit us: http://www.roaringelephant.org/
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Roaring Elephant connects major technology shifts to the costs, compromises, and organizational friction that determine how those shifts work in practice.
Roaring Elephant turns shifts in enterprise technology into candid conversations between co-hosts who have watched the tools, vendors, and promises change around them.
Dave and Jan's ten-year cloud lookback gives you reason to question the vendor lock-in pitch.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A ten-year AI retrospective that ties together Hive-era pragmatism, startup absorption, and the broader forces behind the boom.
Roaring Elephant frames its ten-year AI retrospective as more than a look back at machine learning hype. It follows the thread from Hive and big-data-era SQL to the point where AI stops sitting at the edge of the story and takes over the center of it, while also tracing how…
A cloud history discussion that moves from VMs and lock-in to containers and Kubernetes.
Roaring Elephant uses its 10-year cloud retrospective to show how much changed and how much stayed familiar. Dave and the host move from early cloud as basic IaaS, with only very simple SaaS and PaaS options, to the familiar picture of a VM spun up by someone else and then…
A loose, memory-rich look at how big tech shifted from shared momentum to something more fractured.
This episode takes a 10-year retrospective angle on how interactions with big tech companies have shifted over time. Rory Gelliford and Jorn keep the tone wry, but the most durable strand is the memory work: conference awe, rapid innovation, and the feeling that many people were…
A reflective look back at Hadoop and the big-data era, told with practical detail and personal memory.
Roaring Elephant marks its near-10th-anniversary moment by looking back at Hadoop and the wider big-data era with a steady, grounded tone. It stays close to practical shifts such as tiered storage, cheaper SSDs for enterprise use, and the later rise of machine learning as…
A brisk, grounded review of the data questions and business pressures behind GenAI adoption.
Roaring Elephant returns to GenAI with a practical, lightly skeptical discussion of what adoption looks like once the hype meets real data and business constraints.
A practical conversation about PCI DSS 4.0 as a scope, cost, and prioritization problem.
Roaring Elephant treats PCI DSS 4.0 as a working guide, not a slogan. The conversation stays grounded in what changes for real teams: systems, operations, and the daily habits around them.
Host Jack Rhysider narrates true hacking, breach, and privacy stories from the people involved.
David Pierce and Verge staffers cover AI industry news, gadgets, and tech policy weekly.
Long-form interviews on AI coding agents, infrastructure, and security, plus a recurring SED News roundup.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
David Sparks and Stephen Robles dig into Keyboard Maestro, Shortcuts, and Mac automation weekly.
The Roaring Elephant podcast hosts a second part of an interview with guests Paranda and Ken, focusing on practical implementation of PCI DSS 4.0.
The hosts celebrate nearing their 10th anniversary by planning a retrospective series looking back at the podcast's history.
Hosts Dave and Jan discuss GenAI adoption challenges with guests Zach and Alex.
On Roaring Elephant's 10-year AI retrospective, co-hosts Jon and Dave argue that today's "AI" is really advanced statistics and machine learning rather than true intelligence, tracing the field's shift from research-driven work in the mid-2010s to enterprise adoption and consolidation around a handful of dominant companies.
Roaring Elephant’s 10-year cloud retrospective contrasts the cloud of 10 years ago, when AWS, Azure, and Google offered mostly IaaS, blob storage, and basic databases, with the more service-heavy world that followed.
Roaring Elephant episode 476, “Ten Year retrospective: The Demise of the Hero Culture,” centers on how big tech interactions changed from the Hadoop and Hive era to the AI era.
Roaring Elephant marks its approaching 10th anniversary by starting a retrospective on big data, which Dave calls the show's “big bang.” The hosts contrast the old Hadoop era with today’s AI talk, saying big data became usable when MapReduce, commodity hardware, and internet-scale data arrived together.
Roaring Elephant’s Episode 474 examines whether employee security training works, using the hosts’ discussion of the Verizon DeBeer report.
Roaring Elephant episode 473 continues the hosts' walkthrough of the DBIR, covering figures 43-45 on pages 39-40 and the ransomware payment data.
The hosts discuss the day-to-day life of an adult student, continuing their series on adult education.
A panel discussion on the practical implications and costs of implementing PCI DSS 4.0 compliance, focusing on encryption and operational changes.
An interview with cybersecurity expert Ken Foster about the PCI DSS 4.0 standard and its implications.