Podcasts about GitHub

In this episode, we explore how to de-risk your career roadmap by identifying the hidden vulnerabilities that hold your decision-making hostage.

Armin Ronacher thinks AI agent psychosis might be driving us insane, Dan Abramov explains how AT Protocol is a social filesystem, RepoBar keeps your GitHub work in view without opening a browser, Ethan McCue shares some life altering Postgres patterns, and Lea Verou says web dependencies are broken and we need to fix them.

We rebuild a small office network around Linux, with an Unplugged twist and real-world constraints. Things don't go quite as expected...Sponsored By:Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love. 1Password Extended Access Management: 1Password Extended Access Management is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and they ensure that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps. Support LINUX UnpluggedLinks:

This episode opens with mic and Nintendo banter before plunging into macOS release pain points: sandboxing, hardened runtime, notarization, Sparkle auto‑updates, and automating releases with GitHub Actions and tags. James and Frank offer practical tips—drag builds into /Applications to test signing—and unpack .NET 10 trimming/reflection pitfalls and CI/CD quirks for anyone shipping native apps outside the App Store. Follow Us Frank: Twitter, Blog, GitHub James: Twitter, Blog, GitHub Merge Conflict: Twitter, Facebook, Website, Chat on Discord Music : Amethyst Seer - Citrine by Adventureface ⭐⭐ Review Us (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/merge-conflict/id1133064277?mt=2&ls=1) ⭐⭐ Machine transcription available on http://mergeconflict.fm

We dive into the mystery of the newest Bitcoin Core maintainer and the project to separate consensus code. From GitHub hierarchies to the quest for client diversity, learn how a $2 trillion network is actually governed and why the "lead maintainer" no longer exists. Subscribe to the Blockspace newsletter! Explaining the latest shakeup in Bitcoin development: the addition of a sixth Bitcoin Core maintainer known as "The Charlatan." We explore the history of Bitcoin's governance—from Satoshi to Wladimir van der Laan—and why the project has moved away from a single lead maintainer. We also break down the "Bitcoin kernel" project, an initiative to separate consensus code to allow for a more diverse ecosystem of Bitcoin clients, and address the common conspiracies surrounding who really controls the network. Subscribe to the newsletter! [https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com](https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com) Notes: * Bitcoin is a $2 trillion network asset. * Bitcoin Core has six current maintainers. * No person officially holds lead maintainer title. * GitHub is a Microsoft-owned product. * Bitcoin on path to $100 trillion valuation. * New maintainer added first time since Feb 2023. Timestamps: 00:00 Start 03:09 What's Github? 05:29 What is a Maintainer? 09:27 Client diversity 16:24 Lead maintainer 18:28 Faketoshi 26:15 New Maintainer

Found a cool package on Laravel News? But how do you know if it's actually worth installing?In the latest episode of the No Compromises podcast, we discuss what we look for when evaluating third-party packages before bringing them into a project.Aaron makes the case that what he finds in the tests folder is essentially a deal-breaker: no tests means no trust, but leaving default example tests behind is somehow even worse. Tests reveal whether the maintainer thought through edge cases and serve as living documentation when the README falls short.We also cover the other signals we weigh: GitHub stars, download counts, issue responsiveness, and how quickly maintainers keep up with new Laravel versions.(00:00) - Evaluating packages you stumble across (01:30) - Why leftover example tests frustrate Aaron (03:45) - Tests as documentation and edge case proof (05:00) - Checking issues and Laravel version history (08:00) - Silly bit Want to work with us on your project?

Nik and Michael are joined by Radim Marek from boringSQL to talk about RegreSQL, a regression testing tool for SQL queries they forked and improved recently. Here are some links to things they mentioned:Radim Marek https://postgres.fm/people/radim-marekboringSQL https://boringsql.comRegreSQL: Regression Testing for PostgreSQL Queries (blog post by Radim) https://boringsql.com/posts/regresql-testing-queriesDiscussion on Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45924619 Radim's fork of RegreSQL on GitHub https://github.com/boringSQL/regresql Original RegreSQL on GitHub (by Dimitri Fontaine) https://github.com/dimitri/regresql The Art of PostgreSQL (book) https://theartofpostgresql.comHow to make the non-production Postgres planner behave like in production (how-to post by Nik) https://postgres.ai/docs/postgres-howtos/performance-optimization/query-tuning/how-to-imitate-production-planner Just because you're getting an index scan, doesn't mean you can't do better! (Blog post by Michael) https://www.pgmustard.com/blog/index-scan-doesnt-mean-its-fastboringSQL Labs https://labs.boringsql.com~~~What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!~~~Postgres FM is produced by:Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustardNikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.aiWith credit to:Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Chad and Will start the new year off right by discussing their aspirations for 2026. Chad discusses this year's theme for the company of being bold and how having a clear vision keeps thoughtbot on track, the pair discuss how they plan to rise up to the challenge of being bold in their work, and Will seeks some advice on a project he's been looking to pursue. — Once you're done with this week's episode why not check out Chad's podcast recommendation of Cortex (https://www.relay.fm/cortex), a show that explores how creative people think about their work. You can find Chad all over social media as @cpytel. You can also connect with the duo via their LinkedIn pages - Chad (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cpytel/) - Will (https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-larry/) If you would like to support the show, head over to our GitHub page (https://github.com/sponsors/thoughtbot), or check out our website (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com). Got a question or comment about the show? Why not write to our hosts: hosts@giantrobots.fm This has been a thoughtbot (https://thoughtbot.com/) podcast. Stay up to date by following us on social media - LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/) - Mastodon (https://thoughtbot.social/@thoughtbot) - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/thoughtbotvideo) - Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/thoughtbot.com) © 2026 thoughtbot, inc.

When AWS has a major outage, what actually happens behind the scenes? Ben Hartshorne, a principal engineer at Honeycomb, joins Corey Quinn to discuss a recent AWS outage and how they kept customer data safe even when their systems couldn't fully work. Ben explains why building services that expect things to break is the only way to survive these outages. Ben also shares how Honeycomb used its own tools to cut their AWS Lambda costs in half by tracking five different things in a spreadsheet and making small changes to all of them.About Ben Hartshorne: Ben has spent much of his career setting up monitoring systems for startups and now is thrilled to help the industry see a better way. He is always eager to find the right graph to understand a service and will look for every excuse to include a whiteboard in the discussion.Show highlights: (02:41)Two Stories About Cost Optimization(04:20) Cutting Lambda Costs by 50%(08:01) Surviving the AWS Outage(09:20) Preserving Customer Data During the Outage(13:08) Should You Leave AWS After an Outage?(15:09) Multi-Region Costs 10x More(18:10) Vendor Dependencies(22:06) How LaunchDarkly's SDK Handles Outages(24:40) Rate Limiting Yourself(29:00) How Much Instrumentation Is Too Much?(34:28) Where to Find BenLinks: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benhartshorne/GitHub: https://github.com/maplebedSponsored by: duckbillhq.com

We discuss the current state of society and politics, emphasizing the need for a new framework to address the challenges faced by marginalized communities. We talk about the importance of free speech, the impact of media on public perception, and the necessity of building a unified movement that prioritizes community and belief systems over hyper-individualism and identity politics. Jump in with Janaya Future Khan. Project MVT on Github: https://github.com/mvt-project/mvt SUBSCRIBE + FOLLOW IG: www.instagram.com/darkwokejfk Youtube: www.youtube.com/@darkwoke TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@janayafk SUPPORT THE SHOW Patreon - https://patreon.com/@darkwoke Tip w/ a One Time Donation - https://buymeacoffee.com/janayafk Have a query? Comment? Reach out to us at: info@darkwoke.com and we may read it aloud on the show!

On episode 29 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Cameron Foxly to talk about ASCII Motion, an open source tool for creating animated ASCII art. Cameron shares how a brand design challenge at GitHub led to his first open source project and how AI tools helped him move from idea to production quickly. The conversation explores developer delight, terminal design, and why taste still matters in an AI-powered world.

Mat Ryer is back and he brought his impromptu musical abilities with him! We discuss Rob Pike vs thankful AI, Microsoft's GitHub monopoly (and what it means for open source), and Tom Tunguz' 12 predictions for 2026: agent-first design, the rise of vector databases, and are we about to pay more for AI than people?!

В этом выпуске: заменяем Redis на Postgres, обсуждаем машинки и язык программирования Rust, а также темы слушателей к прошлому выпуску. [00:00:00] Чему мы научились GitHub — C19HOP/WiSafe2-to-HomeAssistant-Bridge: Connect FireAngel WiSafe2 alarm networks to HomeAssistant Hack Pack Subscription by Mark Rober — Choose Your Plan [00:25:00] ErrataZen: Саша нашел исчезнувшую галочку в Zed [00:28:40] #темы523 [01:36:57]… Читать далее →

Joël and Sally tidy up the place as they discuss the different ways a new codebase and team can feel welcoming to them. Together they break down the things that help them ingrate into a new project more easily, explain why the lore of a project can be sacred to some, what you can do in the present to make things easier for a developer down the road, and why communication is crucial for keeping everyone on the same page even long after you've moved on. — Check out these resources for a deeper dive into some of the topics mentioned in this week's episode - Fixtures (https://api.rubyonrails.org/v3.1/classes/ActiveRecord/Fixtures.html) - Hierarchy of Documentation (https://challahscript.com/hiearchy_of_documentation) - Domain Modelling 1 (https://martinfowler.com/bliki/AnemicDomainModel.html) - Domain Modelling 2 (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/avoid-putting-logic-in-map-blocks) Thanks to our sponsor for this episode Scout Monitoring (https://www.scoutapm.com/). Your hosts for this episode have been thoughtbot's own Joël Quenneville (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-quenneville-96b18b58/) and Sally Hall (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallyannahall). If you would like to support the show, head over to our GitHub page (https://github.com/sponsors/thoughtbot), or check out our website (https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com). Got a question or comment about the show? Why not write to our hosts: hosts@bikeshed.fm This has been a thoughtbot (https://thoughtbot.com/) podcast. Stay up to date by following us on social media - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@thoughtbot/streams) - LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/) - Mastodon (https://thoughtbot.social/@thoughtbot) - BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/thoughtbot.com) © 2026 thoughtbot, inc.

A quick little respite. Thanks for the support. Love u fam~ info@darkwoke.com o Project MVT on Github: https://github.com/mvt-project/mvt SUBSCRIBE + FOLLOW IG: www.instagram.com/darkwokejfk Youtube: www.youtube.com/@darkwoke TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@janayafk SUPPORT THE SHOW Patreon - https://patreon.com/@darkwoke Tip w/ a One Time Donation - https://buymeacoffee.com/janayafk Have a query? Comment? Reach out to us at: info@darkwoke.com and we may read it aloud on the show!

Topics covered in this episode: port-killer How we made Python's packaging library 3x faster CodSpeed Extras Joke Watch on YouTube About the show Sponsored by us! Support our work through: Our courses at Talk Python Training The Complete pytest Course Patreon Supporters Connect with the hosts Michael: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org / @mkennedy.codes (bsky) Brian: @brianokken@fosstodon.org / @brianokken.bsky.social Show: @pythonbytes@fosstodon.org / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky) Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too. Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it. Michael #1: port-killer A powerful cross-platform port management tool for developers. Monitor ports, manage Kubernetes port forwards, integrate Cloudflare Tunnels, and kill processes with one click. Features:

ANTIC Episode 124 In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… We have lots of game news and  emulator updates, Brad imitates a pirate, and Kay tells us that the Atari 8-bit is the "Computer of Love"! READY! Recurring Links  Floppy Days Podcast  AtariArchives.org  AtariMagazines.com  Kay's Book "Terrible Nerd"  New Atari books scans at archive.org  ANTIC feedback at AtariAge  Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge  Interview index: here  ANTIC Facebook Page  AHCS  Eaten By a Grue  Next Without For  What we've been up to Kay's 2025 Wrapped - https://www.patreon.com/posts/kays-2025-147182056  Support Kay's Patreon and support ANTIC! -  https://www.patreon.com/savetz  Annual posting of older articles: https://archive.org/details/savetz_articles?sort=-addeddate https://archive.org/details/savetzarticle_reverend-apple https://archive.org/details/savetzarticle_finding-randy https://archive.org/details/savetzarticle_the-making-of-antic Interim Computer Museum - https://icm.museum  Events at https://icm.museum/?events  Repairing The Atari 8 Bit Astra Big D Disk Drive! by Paul Westphal - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIZPgYxfrAU  Fujisan:  https://github.com/pedgarcia/fujisan/releases/tag/v1.1.0  Fujinet Lobby games - http://fujinet.online:8080/  FastBASIC - https://github.com/dmsc/fastbasic  Video from Paul Garcia showing Fujinet-PC integration - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwd0wwFohso  Indy Vintage Computer Club -  XF551 drive - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_XF551  Commodore 64 Ultimate - https://www.commodore.net  RM 800XL - https://revive-machines.com/index-en.html  Stan Veit Podcast: David Greelish and Randy read Chapter 13 ("The Atari Story") - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLCoJ-oA_V0  Stan Veit @ wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Veit  New and Updated Games Ultimate Atari Games Database by Philippe Lafortune:  https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1JaKMQio82/?mibextid=wwXIfr  Invite link - https://airtable.com/invite/r/rhutWb7a  Atari Party Panic v1.2 by Andy Diller:  https://forums.atariage.com/topic/386758-atari-party-panic-v12/  https://massiverobot.itch.io/panic  New game: Carcer from h4plo: You can get it from here - https://h4plo.itch.io/carcer  Discussion - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/386514-new-game-carcer/  Overflow Santa - New Christmas game from A/W/A: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/386809-overflow-santa-new-christmas-game-from-awa/  Overflow Santa 8bit.xex(Atari 8-bit binary file)  Overflow Santa 8bit.rom(Atari 8-bit cartridge)  KillZone: First Real-Time Multiplayer Gaming - https://www.atariorbit.org/2025/12/13/killzone-v-1-2/  Street Fighter II Released!: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/381129-street-fighter-2-for-atari-xexl/page/25/#findComment-5759887  https://vega.atari.pl/  https://vega.atari.pl/main-page/street-fighter-ii/ Pole Position Now Saves Tracks Over FujiNet (Thom Cherryhomes): Discussion - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/387116-sharing-pole-position-race-designer-tracks-over-fujinet/  Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI0sgh9DGaw  Atari 8-Bit/5200 Homebrew Games Released/Completed/WIP in 2025 - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/378311-atari-8-bit5200-homebrew-games-releasedcompletedwip-in-2025/  New and Updated Software News Years Disk 2026 - https://demozoo.org/productions/384184/  Altirra 4.40 released from Phaeron: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/387055-altirra-440-released/  https://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html  New version 7.0 of ASAP, Another Slight Atari Player, the most accurate Atari 8-bit computers tunes player for modern computers and mobile devices - https://asap.sourceforge.net  Publications December, 2025 Compute's Gazette with ANTIC article written by Brian Cox - https://shop.computesgazette.com/product/computes-gazette-issue-6-digital-edition/  AtariProjects - https://atariprojects.org/  Atari Insights January 2026: Newsletters - https://ataribasics.com/newsletter-hub/  YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@AtariBasics  New and Updated Hardware Atari SX212 WiFi Retromodem - https://tempestfpga.com/sx212/  XL-Expander, a prototype add-on for Atari 800XL machines - https://bsky.app/profile/philsan.bsky.social/post/3ma6ybpxd6s2j  Custom Casing for the 130XE Pixel Perfect Motherboard - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/383379-new-11-1000dpi-replica-of-atari-xe-motherboard-%E2%80%93-interest-check/page/10/#comment-5772225  3D printed joystick Atari XL computers style - https://makerworld.com/en/models/2108894-atari-xl-style-joystick#profileId-2281361  Atari 400 mini at Atari.com - https://atari.com/products/atari-400-mini-1  Other The Magic Room film ebay - https://www.ebay.com/itm/116928122102  A 'Playable' Atari-Themed Hotel Is Coming - https://people.com/atari-hotel-planned-for-phoenix-interactive-esports-venue-photos-11871760 Stewart Cheifet died: https://obits.goldsteinsfuneral.com/stewart-cheifet  https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles  Upcoming Shows Vintage Computer Festival Montreal - Jan. 24-25, 2026 - Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC - https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/  Vintage Electronics Expo - Jan. 31, 2026 - Oakland Expo Center, Waterford, MI -  https://www.thevee.org/  Vintage Computer Festival SoCal - February 14-15, 2026 - Hotel Fera Events Center, Orange, CA - vcfsocal.com  Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo - March 20-22 - Wyndham Indianapolis Airport Hotel, Indianapolis, IN - https://indyclassic.org/  VCF East - April 17-19 2026 - InfoAge Science and History Museums, Wall, NJ - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/  Midwest Gaming Classic - April 24-26 - Baird Center, Milwaukee, WI - https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/  VCF Europe - May 1-3 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/  Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest 2026 - May 2-3 - Tukwila Community Center, South Tukwila, WA -  https://vcfpnw.org  VCF Southwest - May 29-31, 2026 - Westin Dallas Ft. Worth Airport - https://www.vcfsw.org/  Retrofest 2026 - May 30-31 - Steam Museum of the Great Western Railway, Swindon, UK - https://retrofest.uk/  YouTube Videos FujiNet Battleship now for Atari 8-bit, Apple II, CoCo, and MS-DOS - Thom Cherryhomes - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3BQc3zVl8qk  How I made an Atari 130XE Laptop Using Original Hardware - Sideburn Studios - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAKrEe_ttOE  The Atari 8-Bit Second Maturity (A 2025 Deep Dive) - AtariBasics with John Zielke - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d3JgZMFZIo  FujiNet-RetroMate: Online Chess with Atari 8-bit Computers - Greg Gallardo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H53JR2-PBQE  New at Github  https://github.com/mozzwald/pokeystream https://github.com/mozzwald/udp-pokey-sample https://github.com/rickcollette/atariforge https://github.com/fredlcore/ATASCOIID https://youtu.be/g4ffy4TXI-c?si=fihGVG0pGeuSOQqg  https://github.com/rachel-multiverse/rachel-atari-800  Listener Feedback https://github.com/gitGalu/8bitworkshop-mcp   

In this episode James and Frank dive into the practical realities of using AI in everyday development—arguing that AI shines in brownfield (existing) code because it respects your architecture, while greenfield work rewards iterative prompting. They unpack model quirks: context-window limits, hallucinations, and why trying different models matters. The heart of the show is Frank's nerdy delight: feeding a 64KB EEPROM through a disassembler and having Sonnet decompile it into readable C, exposing a PID autopilot and hardware checks—proof that AI can accelerate reverse engineering and embedded work. Along the way they share hands-on tips (trim and clean context, use disassembly first, tweak prompts), and fun examples of AI-generated icons and AppleScript. A must-listen for devs curious how AI can supercharge real projects. Follow Us Frank: Twitter, Blog, GitHub James: Twitter, Blog, GitHub Merge Conflict: Twitter, Facebook, Website, Chat on Discord Music : Amethyst Seer - Citrine by Adventureface ⭐⭐ Review Us (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/merge-conflict/id1133064277?mt=2&ls=1) ⭐⭐ Machine transcription available on http://mergeconflict.fm

Aishwarya Naresh Reganti and Kiriti Badam have helped build and launch more than 50 enterprise AI products across companies like OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Databricks. Based on these experiences, they've developed a small set of best practices for building and scaling successful AI products. The goal of this conversation is to save you and your team a lot of pain and suffering.We discuss:1. Two key ways AI products differ from traditional software, and why that fundamentally changes how they should be built2. Common patterns and anti-patterns in companies that build strong AI products versus those that struggle3. A framework they developed from real-world experience to iteratively build AI products that create a flywheel of improvement4. Why obsessing about customer trust and reliability is an underrated driver of successful AI products5. Why evals aren't a cure-all, and the most common misconceptions people have about them6. The skills that matter most for builders in the AI era—Brought to you by:Merge—The fastest way to ship 220+ integrations: https://merge.dev/lennyStrella—The AI-powered customer research platform: https://strella.io/lennyBrex—The banking solution for startups: https://www.brex.com/product/business-account?ref_code=bmk_dp_brand1H25_ln_new_fs—Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-openai-and-google-engineers-learned—My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/183007822/referenced—Get 15% off Aishwarya and Kiriti's Maven course, Building Agentic AI Applications with a Problem-First Approach, using this link: https://bit.ly/3V5XJFp—Where to find Aishwarya Naresh Reganti:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/areganti• GitHub: https://github.com/aishwaryanr/awesome-generative-ai-guide• X: https://x.com/aish_reganti—Where to find Kiriti Badam:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sai-kiriti-badam• X: https://x.com/kiritibadam—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Aishwarya and Kiriti(05:03) Challenges in AI product development(07:36) Key differences between AI and traditional software(13:19) Building AI products: start small and scale(15:23) The importance of human control in AI systems(22:38) Avoiding prompt injection and jailbreaking(25:18) Patterns for successful AI product development(33:20) The debate on evals and production monitoring(41:27) Codex team's approach to evals and customer feedback(45:41) Continuous calibration, continuous development (CC/CD) framework(58:07) Emerging patterns and calibration(01:01:24) Overhyped and under-hyped AI concepts(01:05:17) The future of AI(01:08:41) Skills and best practices for building AI products(01:14:04) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• LevelUp Labs: https://levelup-labs.ai/• Why your AI product needs a different development lifecycle: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-your-ai-product-needs-a-different• Booking.com: https://www.booking.com• Research paper on agents in production (by Matei Zaharia's lab): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.04123• Matei Zaharia's research on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=I1EvjZsAAAAJ&hl=en• The coming AI security crisis (and what to do about it) | Sander Schulhoff: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-coming-ai-security-crisis• Gajen Kandiah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gajenkandiah• Rackspace: https://www.rackspace.com• The AI-native startup: 5 products, 7-figure revenue, 100% AI-written code | Dan Shipper (co-founder/CEO of Every): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-every-dan-shipper• Semantic Diffusion: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/SemanticDiffusion.html• LMArena: https://lmarena.ai• Artificial Analysis: https://artificialanalysis.ai/leaderboards/providers• Why humans are AI's biggest bottleneck (and what's coming in 2026) | Alexander Embiricos (OpenAI Codex Product Lead): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-humans-are-ais-biggest-bottleneck• Airline held liable for its chatbot giving passenger bad advice—what this means for travellers: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know• Demis Hassabis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/demishassabis• We replaced our sales team with 20 AI agents—here's what happened | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/we-replaced-our-sales-team-with-20-ai-agents• Socrates's quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unexamined_life_is_not_worth_living• Noah Smith's newsletter: https://www.noahpinion.blog• Silicon Valley on HBO Max: https://www.hbomax.com/shows/silicon-valley/b4583939-e39f-4b5c-822d-5b6cc186172d• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1903340/Clair_Obscur_Expedition_33/• Wisprflow: https://wisprflow.ai• Raycast: https://www.raycast.com• Steve Jobs's quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/463176-you-can-t-connect-the-dots-looking-forward-you-can-only—Recommended books:•  When Breath Becomes Air: https://www.amazon.com/When-Breath-Becomes-Paul-Kalanithi/dp/081298840X• The Three-Body Problem: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Cixin-Liu/dp/0765382032• A Fire Upon the Deep: https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Upon-Deep-Zones-Thought/dp/0812515285—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

Shoot us a Text.Episode #1239:  Ford earns top honors as America's most iconic company, Stellantis drops every PHEV from its 2026 lineup, and McKinsey's CEO reminds us there are still a few things humans do better than AI. A day of big shifts, bold moves, and even bolder expectations.Show Notes with links: https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/ford-named-no-1-most-iconic-american-company-nationwide-survey-making-peoples-lives-betterFord just topped Time and Statista's list of the 250 most iconic American companies, beating household giants like Apple, Coca-Cola and Amazon. The ranking highlights not just commercial success, but each company's impact on U.S. culture and society.Time's nationwide survey put Ford at No. 1 for its cultural influence and long-standing role in shaping American life.Bill Ford pointed back to the company's founding mission, emphasizing innovation tied to improving people's lives—not just tech for tech's sake.Ford underscored its status as the largest hourly auto employer in the U.S., reinforcing its commitment to American workers.Time credited Ford's assembly-line legacy for transforming modern manufacturing and reshaping cities and suburbs.“Innovation is not just about building batteries or technology for its own sake; it is about making people's lives better,” said Bill Ford.https://www.jalopnik.com/2071397/stellantis-canceling-all-plug-in-hybrids-2026-model-year/Stellantis is pulling the plug—literally—on every PHEV in its North American lineup starting with the 2026 model year. Once top sellers like the Wrangler 4xe,  Grand Cherokee 4xe, and Chrysler Pacifica PHEV are being discontinued as the company shifts its electrification strategy.Stellantis says every brandwide PHEV program in North America will be phased out beginning in 2026.The automaker plans to pivot toward traditional hybrids and range-extended EVs, where it says customer demand is stronger.Models like the Alfa Romeo Tonale and Dodge Hornet R/T will also lose their plug-in variants.Stellantis says it will “focus on more competitive electrified solutions, including hybrid and range-extended vehicles where they best meet customer needs.”https://www.businessinsider.com/mckinsey-boss-shares-human-skills-ai-models-cant-do-2026-1As AI reshapes knowledge work, McKinsey's top executive says there are three capabilities machines still can't touch—and they're exactly what young professionals should double down on. The comments came as the firm shared how AI has already saved millions of employee work hours.McKinsey's 25,000 AI agents handled 1.5 million hours of search and synthesis last year and produced 2.5 million charts in six months.With routine tasks offloaded, consultants are now tackling higher-order, more complex problem-solving.CEO Bob Sternfels says graduates should focus on the three skills AI cannot replicate: aspiration, judgment, and true creativity.He also says AI will shift hiring away from pedigree and toward demonstrated work—like engineers' GitHub portfolios.“What can the models not do? Aspire… That's a uniquely human capability,” Sternfels said.Join Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier every morning for the Automotive State of the Union podcast as they connect the dots across car dealerships, retail trends, emerging tech like AI, and cultural shifts—bringing clarity, speed, and people-first insight to automotive leaders navigating a rapidly changing industry.Get the Daily Push Back email at https://www.asotu.com/ JOIN the conversation on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asotu/

In this start-of-year FC episode, Chris and Daniel break down what really mattered in AI in 2025, and what to expect in 2026. They explore the rise of AI agents, the practical reality of multimodal AI, and how reasoning models are reshaping workflows. The conversation dives into infrastructure and energy constraints, the continued value of predictive models, and why orchestration (not just better models) is becoming the defining skill for AI teams. The episode wraps with grounded 2026 predictions on where AI systems, tooling, and builders are headed next.Featuring:Chris Benson – Website, LinkedIn, Bluesky, GitHub, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XSponsor:Framer - The enterprise-grade website builder that lets your team ship faster. Get 30% off at framer.com/practicalaiUpcoming Events: Register for upcoming webinars here!

In this talk, Rileen, a Senior Computational Biologist and Cancer Data Scientist, shares his professional journey from physics and computer science to cutting-edge cancer genomics and applied machine learning. From his early work in alternative splicing models to deep learning in medical imaging, Rileen explains how biology, data science, and AI intersect to transform cancer research.TIMECODES:00:00 Rileen's Career Journey and Education06:14 Understanding Alternative Splicing in Computational Biology10:56 Modeling Alternative Splicing with Machine Learning14:52 Model Error Analysis and Transition to Cancer Research18:37 What Is Cancer? Mutational Theory Explained21:45 Cancer Treatments and Causes24:57 Cancer Genomics and Tumor Models28:59 Comparing Cell Lines and Tumor Samples (Multi-omics Analysis)32:32 Machine Learning Applications in Cancer Research35:38 Deep Learning for Medical Imaging and Pathology39:17 Data Privacy and Applied ML Course Projects42:50 Learning Outcomes and Future Plans46:36 Industry Experience in Pharmaceutical Research50:14 Day in the Life of a Computational Biologist55:02 Advice for Current ML Students58:40 Project Management and Challenges in Genomics1:02:23 Public Data Sets and Cancer Research in GermanyConnect with Rileen:- Twitter - https://x.com/RileenSinha- Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rileen-sinha-a644692/- Github - https://github.com/OptimistixConnect with DataTalks.Club:- Join the community - https://datatalks.club/slack.html- Subscribe to our Google calendar to have all our events in your calendar - https://calendar.google.com/calendar/r?cid=ZjhxaWRqbnEwamhzY3A4ODA5azFlZ2hzNjBAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ- Check other upcoming events - https://lu.ma/dtc-events- GitHub: https://github.com/DataTalksClub- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/datatalks-club/ - Twitter - https://twitter.com/DataTalksClub - Website - https://datatalks.club/

David Heinemeier Hansson is a true innovator. He is the co-founder of Basecamp, which has been used by over 20 million people globally. He's also the founder of Hey and the creator of the transformational Ruby on Rails, an open source web framework that was used to create Basecamp, Github, Shopify, Airbnb and more. David is also a frequent writer at Hey World, the New York Times bestselling author of four books, including Rework, and even an award winning racecar driver.  In this classic episode, David joined host Robert Glazer on ⁠the Elevate Podcast⁠ to talk about his unconventional path to entrepreneurial success, why profit matters more than growth, and much more. Thank you to the sponsors of The Elevate Podcast Shopify: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠shopify.com/elevate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Masterclass: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠masterclass.com/elevate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Framer: ⁠framer.com/elevate⁠ Northwest Registered Agent: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠northwestregisteredagent.com/elevatefree⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Homeserve: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠homeserve.com⁠⁠⁠ Indeed: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠indeed.com/elevate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI isn't quietly changing software development… it's rewriting the rules while most security programs are still playing defense. When agents write code at machine speed, the real risk isn't velocity, it's invisible security debt compounding faster than teams can see it. In this episode, Ron Eddings sits down with Varun Badhwar, Co-Founder & CEO of Endor Labs, and Henrik Plate, Principal Security Researcher of Endor Labs, to break down how AI-assisted development is reshaping the software supply chain in real time. From MCP servers exploding across GitHub to agents trained on insecure code patterns, they analyze why traditional AppSec controls fail in an agent-driven world and what must replace them. This conversation pulls directly from Endor Labs' 2025 State of Dependency Management Report, revealing why most AI-generated code is functionally correct yet fundamentally unsafe, how malicious packages are already exploiting agent workflows, and why security has to exist inside the IDE, not after the pull request. Impactful Moments 00:00 – Introduction 02:00 – Star Wars meets cybersecurity culture 03:00 – Why this report matters now 04:00 – MCP adoption explodes overnight 10:00 – Can you trust MCP servers 12:00 – Malicious packages weaponize agents 14:00 – Code works, security fails 22:00 – Hooks expose agent behavior 28:30 – 2026 means longer lunches 33:00 – How Endor Labs fixes this Links Connect with our Varun on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vbadhwar/ Connect with our Henrik on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henrikplate/   Check out Endor Labs State of Dependency Management 2025: https://www.endorlabs.com/lp/state-of-dependency-management-2025   Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams Join our creative mastermind and stand out as a cybersecurity professional: https://www.patreon.com/hackervalleystudio Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com Continue the conversation by joining our Discord: https://hackervalley.com/discord Become a sponsor of the show to amplify your brand: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/    

Fresh out of the studio, Jay Parikh, Executive Vice President of Core AI at Microsoft, joins us to explore how Microsoft is fundamentally transforming software development by placing AI at the center of every stage of the development lifecycle. He shares his career journey from scaling the internet at Akamai Technologies during the dot-com boom, to leading infrastructure at Facebook through the mobile revolution, and now driving Microsoft's AI-first transformation where the definition of "developer" itself is rapidly evolving. Jay explains that Microsoft's Core AI team, is moving beyond traditional tiered architecture to a new paradigm where large language models can think, reason, plan, and interact with tools—shifting developer time from typing code to specification and verification while enabling parallel project execution through specialized AI agents. He highlights how organizations like Singapore Airlines cut project timelines from 11 weeks to 5 weeks using GitHub Copilot and challenges both individuals and enterprises to raise their level of ambition: moving from being amazed by AI to being frustrated it can't do more, while building cultural experiments that unlock this exponential technology. Closing the conversation, Jay shares what great looks like for Microsoft's Core AI to enable AI transformation for every organization around the world. "There's this set of people that are using these AI-powered tools and they're like, 'Wow, that's amazing!' Stunned as to how incredible the response is from AI. Then there's another set of people that have these experiences when they work with AI—they're frustrated with it because they're just like, 'Why can't it do this for me yet?'And they're pushing the envelope of what this LLM or what this system can do, what this tool can do. If you are in the former group, then you need to raise your level of ambition. You need to delegate harder things to it. And if you're in the second group, then you need to learn more about how these things work." - Jay Parikh Episode Highlights:[00:00] Quote of the day by Jay Parikh[01:00] Introducing Microsoft's Core AI strategy and transformation[02:34] Career philosophy: pursuing hard problems and discomfort[04:08] Core AI team's mission: empowering every developer[06:00] Reinventing the entire software development lifecycle[09:17] Parallel projects and agents transforming development workflows[12:12] AI first strategy across Microsoft's product ecosystem[15:37] GitHub platform beyond code: context and orchestration[20:33] Building AI platforms: lessons from scale experience[21:00] Two mindsets: amazement versus frustration with AI[22:15] Raising ambition and pushing AI tool boundaries[25:00] Enterprise adoption challenges: tools and cultural transformation[28:00] Learning loops: shrinking circles to accelerate growth[31:00] Alignment without tight coupling across global teams[36:56] Concrete trends: use tools, understand model development[40:27] Responsible AI and security built from start[43:30] Asia innovation: two thirds of developers here[46:19] Raising ambition to unlock human creativity collaboration[48:35] Goal: AI transformation for every global organizationProfile: Jay Parikh, Executive Vice President, Core AI, Microsoft LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayparikh/Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.

In this episode, we discusses the tragic execution of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents, highlighting the systemic issues of police brutality and the indifference of the government towards marginalized communities. We also talk about the significance of the current movement era, emphasizing the need for accountability and the fight against racism. Jump in with Janaya Future Khan. Project MVT on Github: https://github.com/mvt-project/mvt SUBSCRIBE + FOLLOW IG: www.instagram.com/darkwokejfk Youtube: www.youtube.com/@darkwoke TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@janayafk SUPPORT THE SHOW Patreon - https://patreon.com/@darkwoke Tip w/ a One Time Donation - https://buymeacoffee.com/janayafk Have a query? Comment? Reach out to us at: info@darkwoke.com and we may read it aloud on the show!

In this episode, I'm breaking down a guide from Ben Tossel on how you can actually build with AI agents without being technical. I walk through what he's shipped as a “non-technical” builder, why he lives in the terminal/CLI, and the exact workflow he uses to go from idea → spec → build → iterate. We also talk about the meta-skill here: treating the model like your over-the-shoulder engineer/teacher, and using every bug as a learning checkpoint. The takeaway is simple: pick a tool, ship fast, fail forward, and build your own system as you go. Ben's Article: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/Ben-Tossell-Article Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:04 – What Ben Has Shipped 03:21 – The Workflow: Feed Context → Spec Mode → Let The Agent Rip 07:52 – His Agent Setup 08:56 – Coding On The Go 10:07 – Things to Learn 13:33 – The New Abstraction Layer: Learning To Work With Agents 14:33 – Learning from Others 16:15 – Use The Model As Your Teacher (Ask Everything) 18:13 – Contributing to Real Products 19:13 – Why this is Different 21:31 – Asking Silly Questions 24:00 – Beyond “Vibe Coding”: A New Technical Class 24:43 – Vibe Coding is a game 27:12 – Fail Forward + Permission To Build And Throw Things Away 28:16 – Pick One Tool, Minimize Friction, Keep Shipping Key Points I don't need to be a traditional engineer to ship—I can learn by watching agent output and iterating. The terminal/CLI is the power move because it's more capable and I can see what the agent is doing. “Spec mode” works best when I interrogate the plan like a philosopher instead of pretending I understand everything. agents.md becomes my portable instruction manual so every new repo starts clean and consistent. The fastest learning path is building ahead of my capability and treating bugs as checkpoints—fail forward. Numbered Section Summaries The Thesis: Non-Technical Doesn't Mean Non-Builder I open with Ben's core claim: you can ship real software by working through a terminal with agents, even if you can't write the code yourself—because you can read the output and learn the system over time. Proof: What He's Actually Shipped I run through examples Ben built—custom CLIs, a crypto tracker, “Droidmas” experiments, an AI-directed video demo system, and automations that keep projects moving even when he's away from his desk. The Workflow: Context → Spec Mode → Autonomy High Ben's process is straightforward: talk to the model to load context, switch into spec mode to pressure-test the plan, link docs/repos for exploration, then let the model run while he watches and steers when needed. http://agents.md/ The “Readme For Agents” That Follows You Everywhere I explain why agents . md matters—one predictable place to tell your agent how you want repos structured, how to commit, how to test, and what “good” looks like so each session gets smoother. Coding On The Go: PRs, Issues, Phone, Telegram, Slack We get into the real “agent native” behavior: install the GitHub app, work via pull requests and issues, tag the agent to self-fix, and even push changes from your phone—plus using Slack as a one-person “product” with an agent in the loop. Learning The Primitives: Bash, CLIs, VPS, Skills I cover the building blocks Ben's learning: bash commands and repeatable terminal workflows, preferring CLIs over MCPs to save context, and using a VPS + syncing to keep projects always-on. The Mindset Shift: The Model Is The Teacher The real unlock is treating the model like your patient expert—ask everything you don't understand, bake “explain simply” into your agent instructions, and close knowledge gaps as they appear. Fail Forward, Pick One, Keep Shipping I end on the playbook: build ahead of your capability, treat it like play, give yourself permission to throw things away, and stop tool-hopping—pick one system and go deep. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

While Dan is on hold, we talk about gadgets other than the iPhone and then we throw some shade(s).Dan's e-reader is here and he likes the firmware you can get for it on Github.Anyone want a Nokia banana phone?The menus in Tahoe are causing consternation among some.If you want to help out the show and get some great bonus content, consider becoming a Rebound Prime member! Just go to prime.reboundcast.com to check it out!Were you aware that you could buy things from us?! That's right! Shirts, iPhone cases, mugs, hats and one other type of thing are all available from our Rebound Store!

AI tools continue to evolve - what can we do with them today? Richard chats with Cecilia Wirén about her experiences using the latest AI tools to support DevOps workflows, diagnostics, and the crafting of new scripts. Cecilia focuses on tools that can help admins who occasionally work on scripts, including getting into a GitHub workflow to track prompts and results generated by LLMs, so you can always revert and learn from various approaches to interact with these new tools. The tools continue to evolve; it's worth looking at the latest features and models!LinksAzure SRE AgentMicrosoft Security CopilotGitHub CopilotAwesome CopilotCopilot ExtensionsRecorded December 3, 2025

In this episode of the Ardan Labs Podcast, Bill Kennedy talks with Miles Spencer, founder of Reflekta, about using AI to preserve the stories and legacies of loved ones. Miles explains how Reflekta enables meaningful, ongoing conversations with elders through AI while prioritizing privacy, ethics, and emotional responsibility.They explore the technical foundations of the platform, the challenges of building trust around deeply personal data, and the business model behind Reflekta. Miles also shares his journey from high school to entrepreneurship and reflects on how technology can foster genuine human connection rather than replace it.00:00 Introduction 02:35 How Reflekta Uses AI05:10 Media Processing and Conversations08:26 Privacy, Security, and Ethics13:25 Miles' Background and Journey27:57 Early Entrepreneurship and Family Challenges36:49 Finance, Venture Capital, and Media44:57 New Ventures and Career Shifts56:54 COVID-19 and Business Impact01:00:04 The Birth of Reflekta01:09:03 Ethical Challenges and the Road AheadConnect with Miles: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesspencer/Mentioned in this Episode:Reflekta: https://reflekta.ai/Want more from Ardan Labs? You can learn Go, Kubernetes, Docker & more through our video training, live events, or through our blog!Online Courses : https://ardanlabs.com/education/ Live Events : https://www.ardanlabs.com/live-training-events/ Blog : https://www.ardanlabs.com/blog Github : https://github.com/ardanlabs

In this conversation, we reflect on personal loss and the broader political landscape, emphasizing the need for resilience and collective action. We also take a critical examination of American intervention in Venezuela, exploring historical context, the implications of imperialism, and the fight for political legitimacy. Jump in with Janaya Future Khan. Project MVT on Github: https://github.com/mvt-project/mvt SUBSCRIBE + FOLLOW IG: www.instagram.com/darkwokejfk Youtube: www.youtube.com/@darkwoke TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@janayafk SUPPORT THE SHOW Patreon - https://patreon.com/@darkwoke Tip w/ a One Time Donation - https://buymeacoffee.com/janayafk Have a query? Comment? Reach out to us at: info@darkwoke.com and we may read it aloud on the show!

In this live episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar sits down with Jay Parikh, EVP of Core AI at Microsoft, to unpack the company's evolution from a software factory to an agent factory Jay leads the team responsible for Microsoft's core AI stack, the systems that power Copilot, the tools developers rely on, like GitHub, and the infrastructure that makes large-scale AI possible. In short, his group builds the underlying tech that Microsoft and thousands of companies use to create AI-powered applications and agents. In this conversation, Soma and Jay dive into what Jay calls the Agent Factory, which is a new paradigm reshaping how software gets built in the reasoning era. They explore how AI changes the development lifecycle, why observability and evals are becoming mission-critical for enterprises, what it means to collapse traditional engineering functions, and how organizations should prepare for a world where models, agents, and human builders all collaborate in real time. This is a must-watch for founders, developers, and enterprise leaders who want to understand what's coming — and how to prepare for a world of real-time collaboration between humans, models, and agents. Full Transcript: http://www.madrona.com/microsofts-agent-factory-the-future-of-ai-software-with-evp-of-core-ai-jay-parikh Chapters: (00:00) Introduction (2:43) Jay's Background & Microsoft Role (4:33) The Reasoning Revolution (6:45) From Software Factory to Agent Factory (8:38) Building the Agent Factory (10:54) Impact on Microsoft's Future (12:49) AI Code Generation & Productivity (14:46) Shifting Engineering Focus with AI (16:22) Future of Software Development (18:17) Real-World AI Productivity Gains (20:18) Microsoft's AI Infrastructure Investments (24:01) Challenges with AI Evaluation & Observability (26:12) Model Choices & Microsoft's Strategy (28:40) Audience Q&A 

Aji and Joël talk all things hackerthons and why taking the time to have a little having fun with your work every now and then is important for developers. Our hosts reflect on their shared experience at a previous RailsConf where they entered a mini hackerthon, why playing around in a creative sandbox is crucial to honing your skills as a dev, and how programming on the fly can teach you a lot about your own strengths and weaknesses. — Read more about Joël's entry in Rails Rumble (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/rails-rumble-roundup), as well as their participation in the RailsConf 2022 mini Hackerthon (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/thoughtbot-presentations-good-vibes-from-railsconf-2022). Thanks to our sponsors for this episode Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way (https://judoscale.com/bikeshed) (check the link for your free gift!), and Scout Monitoring (https://www.scoutapm.com/). Your hosts for this episode have been thoughtbot's own Joël Quenneville (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-quenneville-96b18b58/) and Aji Slater (https://www.linkedin.com/in/doodlingdev/). If you would like to support the show, head over to our GitHub page (https://github.com/sponsors/thoughtbot), or check out our website (https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com). Got a question or comment about the show? Why not write to our hosts: hosts@bikeshed.fm This has been a thoughtbot (https://thoughtbot.com/) podcast. Stay up to date by following us on social media - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@thoughtbot/streams) - LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/) - Mastodon (https://thoughtbot.social/@thoughtbot) - BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/thoughtbot.com) © 2025 thoughtbot, inc.

In this episode, Matt speaks with Thibault Imbert, Chief Product Officer and Growth Officer at The Brief, about the transformative impact of AI on marketing workflows.They discuss 'vibe marketing' and how to turn disjointed AI-generated content into cohesive, repeatable marketing workflows.Thibault shares insights from his tenure at Adobe and GitHub, highlighting the challenges and potentials of AI in marketing.They explore the evolution and current capabilities of AI models in text, image, and video generation, and the emerging trend of 'vibe coding.'The discussion also covers practical AI applications for marketers and the future of creative workflows.--Key Moments:00:40 Defining Vibe Marketing01:11 The Evolution of AI in Marketing02:21 Challenges in AI-Driven Design03:21 The Power of Vibe Marketing06:09 Blurring Lines Between Roles07:07 The GitHub Copilot Revolution09:47 Building Cohesive AI Workflows11:43 Demo: AI-Powered Marketing Tools16:44 Ensuring Brand Consistency with AI19:30 The Evolution of Mobile Development21:15 The Rise of Generative AI in Marketing23:44 The Future of AI in Product Development27:41 AI's Impact on Marketing Workflows30:42 The Changing Role of Marketers with AI33:51 Personal Insights and Future of AI--Key Links:The BriefConnect with Thibault on LinkedInMentioned in this episode:AI Opportunity FinderFeeling overwhelmed by all the AI noise out there? The AI Opportunity Finder from HatchWorks cuts through the hype and gives you a clear starting point. In less than 5 minutes, you'll get tailored, high-impact AI use cases specific to your business—scored by ROI so you know exactly where to start. Whether you're looking to cut costs, automate tasks, or grow faster, this free tool gives you a personalized roadmap built for action.

Follow Us Frank: Twitter, Blog, GitHub James: Twitter, Blog, GitHub Merge Conflict: Twitter, Facebook, Website, Chat on Discord Music : Amethyst Seer - Citrine by Adventureface ⭐⭐ Review Us (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/merge-conflict/id1133064277?mt=2&ls=1) ⭐⭐ Machine transcription available on http://mergeconflict.fm

Christina and Jeff kick off the new year of Overtired sans Brett. They delve into Christina's impending cervical spine surgery, ICE raids, and neighborhood signal groups. How do you keep mental health in check when Homeland Security is in your alley? Tune in for a wild start to 2026. Sponsor Copilot Money can help you take control of your finances. Get a fresh start with your money for 2026 with 26% off when you visit try.copilot.money/overtired and use code OVERTIRED. Chapters 00:00 New Year Kickoff 00:41 Personal Updates and Health Challenges 01:49 Surgery Details and Insurance Woes 04:45 Exploring Surgery Options and Recovery 12:44 Journaling and Mental Health 15:40 The Artist’s Way and Creative Practices 24:31 Unexpected Alley Incident 38:10 Family Activism and Signal Setup 38:52 Unexpected End of Year Incident 39:35 Speculations and Concerns 40:13 Dealing with Law Enforcement 45:35 Reflections on Responsibility 54:43 Gratitude for Signal 59:31 Tech Talk: Synology and Backup Solutions 01:03:08 Mac Updater Alternatives 01:10:03 Conclusion and Well Wishes Show Links Journaling – The Artist's Way Signal Synology Updatest Join the Conversation Merch Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Transcript Promise Not to Whine [00:00:00] New Year Kickoff Christina: Well, happy New Year. You are listening to Overtired and I am Christina Warren, and I’m joined as always by Jeff Severance Zel and, uh, Brett Terpstra couldn’t be, uh, here with us in this, uh, happy early 2026 episode, but I’m, I’m super excited to be able to kick off the, uh, the first pot of the year with you, Jeff, how are you? Jeff: I am good. Happy New Year to you. Christina: Likewise, likewise. Um, oh, here, here, here’s to 2026 being significantly better than 20, 25. So Jeff: So far, not so good, but I’m, I’m really, I’m really excited about 2026. I’m Christina: I was gonna say, like, like globally, globally, so far not great, but, but, Jeff: in here. Good in here. Personal Updates and Health Challenges Christina: So, um, so how are, uh, uh, how, how, how is the, I guess a, I guess we can kind of a drill into like a, a brief kind of mental health or, or just personal update thing if we want. Um, how, um. How are things for you so far? Um, I guess the end of the year. How are things with the kids? Um, the [00:01:00] wife, everything. Jeff: the, how the year ended is, and that gets us back to almost a political level. I will save for a topic ’cause boy do I have a story. Um, but, uh, generally speaking, doing really well. Like we traveled, saw my dad and stepmom in Iowa. Saw my in-laws in Indiana, had a really nice, just like generally had a really nice time off. Um, and despite the fact that I’m under a super stressful deadline over the next few days, I feel good. How about you? You got a lot going on. Christina: I, I do, I do. So I guess just kind of a, a, an, an update on, um, the, uh, the Christina, you know, cervical spine, um, saga since we last spoke a couple of weeks ago. Um, I guess maybe two weeks ago now. Um, uh, it was maybe a week ago. Um, uh, it was two weeks ago, I think. Sorry, it was, it was right before Christmas. Surgery Details and Insurance Woes Christina: Um, I was still awaiting, um, hearing back about when I would be scheduled for, uh, surgery and I’m getting, um, uh, artificial disc replacement in, um, I guess [00:02:00] between like C six, C seven of my cervical spine. And I do finally have a surgery date. Yay. Um, the bad, yeah, the bad news is it’s not until February 2nd, so I’ve gotta wait, you know, a month, which sucks. Um, I would have been able to get in, you know, uh, three weeks ago at this point. Um, had I been able to like, I guess like book immediately, but without insurance, like approval, um, I didn’t really want to do that. Um, I think, I think people, uh, can understand why, like, you know, when the doctor’s like, well, we can book you now, but you’ll just need to sign some forms that say you’ll be responsible for the bill if insurance doesn’t pay. Jeff: Oh fine. Get Where’s my pen? Christina: right, right. And I’m like, yeah, this is, you’re gonna keep me overnight just for, you know, observation to make sure like nothing bleeds or, or, or whatever’s a problem. Um, ’cause they’re gonna go through like the, the, the front of my, of my neck to, to be able to reach, you know, um, things that way and, and, and so, [00:03:00] you know, and be under, you know, anesthesia, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not like a huge critical procedure, but it’s still neurosurgery. Jeff: is through the front of your neck. Christina: and, and, and, and, and, and again, and it’s a neurosurgeon and it’s like, you know, they’re gonna, you know, take some stuff out and try to make sure that like, you know, very, like they’re gonna be, you know, um, screwing up against my trachea and stuff. And like, yeah. I mean, like, you know, it’s, it’s not, it’s not minor. It’s not like I can just go in in an afternoon and be like, oh, I’m, I’m, I can just like walk out. Jeff: Right. Christina: Um, um, although apparently I will feel better, uh, as soon as it happens, but yeah, I mean, this is probably gonna be a six figure, you know, operation, I’m assuming so. No, I, I, I’m sorry. In, in this climate, uh, I don’t feel comfortable. Just, I need my name to be like, oh, yeah, I’ll, I’ll be responsible for that, and then be responsible for trying to track everyone down to, to pay. So that’s the frustrating thing is that, and now of course, you know, you, you get the beginning of the year, a bunch of people have been waiting, you know, to get, you know, things scheduled, I’m sure, and [00:04:00] whatnot. So I’m grateful that I’m scheduled at all. Um, I’m also grateful that right now I’m not insignificant pain, which is a really good thing because if this had been the pain level that I was in for the first few weeks, then like, I wouldn’t, I, you know, I mean, I would wait. I mean, if, if, if you have to wait, you have to wait. But, um, I, I, I might have like pressed upon them like. Is there any way we can move this up? Um, but I’m not in that position, which is good. The only thing is just that the numbness, um, on both arms. But, but, but primarily, yeah. No, I mean, that’s not gone away and, and it’s, and it’s not going to is the thing, right? Like there are a lot of people and like, and I, I’ve started now that I’ve got, got it like actually like done and like scheduled and you know, I’m going through all like the, you know, um, checklist stuff before you, you go in and whatnot. And I have like my, you know, pre-up appointments and all that stuff scheduled. Exploring Surgery Options and Recovery Christina: Um, I am starting to, to look more into, I guess like, you know, I guess recovery videos that people have put up on YouTube and, and reading a few things on Reddit. Although I’m doing my best to, to stay off the internet with [00:05:00] this stuff as much as possible. Um, just because for me it’s, it’s not beneficial, right? Like, it, it’s, it’s one thing if you know, um, you, uh, you don’t like. If, if you can separate and not kind of go down rabbit holes and like freak yourself out or whatever, sure. Maybe it can be good information, but for me, like I, I know my own kind of, you know, limits in terms of, of how much is good for me. And so I’ve, I’ve tried to keep that in moderation, but I have watched a few, you know, videos of people, you know, kind of talking about their experiences. And then of course then that gets used sent with like videos of like doctors who of course, for their own reasons, like are trying to promote like, oh, well you should do the, the, the fusion versus the, the, the disc replacement and, or you should do this versus that. And I’m like, okay. I actually watched one interesting talk that, that some guy gave it a medical conference and neurologist gave it a medical conference and it was a neurosurgeon, I guess is, is the proper term. But that I think kind of really distinctly a, it was very similar to. Exactly what my surgeon said to me, [00:06:00] um, when he was kind of explaining the differences in the procedures. Um, and, and b but kind of went into, I guess like the, the difference in terms of outcomes and, um, and it made me feel better about like that if I’m a good candidate for this procedure, that, that this is, um, the right thing to, to do and probably will be better for me long term. Um, because the, the results are, are better and, but not by a small portion, not like by like a, a gargantuan portion. But they are, they are, there is like a sizable difference between outcomes in terms of whether like the average person who needs a revision, um. For, you know, cervical spine versus getting, you know, disc replacement versus, um, uh, fusion. Fusion has been around a lot longer, and so insurance companies are a lot more likely to approve that. But in Europe, they’ve been doing the, the disc replacement stuff for 25, 30 years. Um, and so there is a lot of data on it, but it’s been a much more recent thing in the United States because insurance companies didn’t really start to do it until about five or 10 years ago. And so, and so, you know, some people will, [00:07:00] like some doctors who very clearly have an agenda on, on YouTube and like, that’s fine, like your practices, your practice and you’re comfortable with what you’re comfortable with. But they’ll be like, oh, we don’t have enough data on, you know, the types of, um, you know, discs that we’re putting in people’s, you know, necks and, and how, how long they, you know, last and, and there might be some differences in terms of if you’re doing like a multi-step, meaning you’re doing like multiple discs at once. Or if, you know, depending on like what, what, what part of the spine you’re in. And like, I, I think at this point for, for artificial disc replacement in the US they’ll do it two steps. So they can do two at once, but they won’t typically do three, although they will do three in Europe. And so there are people who will go to Europe and get the three Jeff: They’re so liberal in Europe. We’ll do three. Christina: Well, I mean, I think it’s a difference in, in that case, just a matter of like, if they’ve been doing the surgeries there longer, you know, then, then they, you know, and, and, and you know, and, and this is not uncommon in, in various forms of, of medicine, you know, where like you have different, you know, procedures and different exploratory things in different fields, in different areas.[00:08:00] So anyway, so then I get kind of trapped into those rabbit holes. But the interesting, the night, the, the, I guess comforting thing is that like, you know, I’ve been reading, you know, around reading, but watching people who were doing vlogs, like after their surgery and like there was this guy who. I was a few years younger than me, but he, you know, posted some updates. I, I guess he got his in July and he kind of did like, you know, updates, you know, kind of like, you know, this was me right after surgery. This was me, you know, three weeks later. This was me however many months later. And that was really great to see. Um, and, and his, his scar actually healed really nicely, which was encouraging. So, um, yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m hopeful. I mean, the one thing that’s interesting that, like almost the universal thing that people say, of course you have a few people who say, this didn’t help or, or, you know, this, this was bad or whatever. And, and obviously like that’s always terrible to see that, but you know, you’d have to kind of like go by law of averages. But the, one of the central kind of things is a lot of people being like, I should have done this earlier. And, and so I’m feeling good about that because that is, I, I, I, I don’t know what this says about me, [00:09:00] but like there’s was never a moment in my mind where I’ve been like, oh, I’m not gonna get the surgery as soon as I can get the surgery. That’s never even been part of my like, thought process. And, and, and, and, and it’s funny because I think that like, that is actually odd compared to almost everybody else. Um, the general public, I guess, who goes into these sorts of things. Um, or at least the people who are vocal on the internet, right? So, so maybe like, maybe there are a lot more people like me who just don’t go to forums and comment on stuff and are just like, yeah, I’m gonna get the surgery because that’s what the doctor says. There’s the right thing to do, and that’s what makes sense to me and I wanna, you know, not be in pain and I wanna be able to feel my arm and all that stuff. Um, but there are a lot of people who, I don’t know why, um, I mean, I guess the idea of surgery is, is really scary. And, and like, I can, I can understand that obviously, but to the point where they’re like, okay, well no, I’m gonna try physical therapy and I’m gonna do everything I can to avoid surgical intervention. And I’m, I’m like, no. Like, like [00:10:00] freaking cut me up, doc. Right? Like, like, like, get me in, get me in. Like, let’s get better, right? Like, I, I’m not, I’m not here to like fuck around with like, ’cause right now, because the immediate pain is not there, I could be okay. Right? Like, I Jeff: Sure. Christina: try steroids, I could try pt, I could try to do other types of therapies and be like, well, maybe that will move the nerve around. Or maybe it can get the disc like UN you know, bolt, whatever the case may be. And maybe I won’t need surgery. Um, or I could let this go on longer and continue to be weakness, you know, and, and, and in, you know, it’s not like I’m not in, I’m, I’m not in active pain, but it’s not, not painful at certain times. Not worrying about is this just going to become like a permanent way that I feel, which would be. Awful. Um, and, you know, and, and, and like, it’s not the most debil debilitating thing, like I said. Um, if, if I was in a position where I, I couldn’t get surgery, obviously I could be okay right now, but you never know. Also, like, when is it going to, to swap again? Right? [00:11:00] Like, and, and, and, and for me, I’m also, I’m like, I, I don’t wanna have to like, live in fear of doing something, you know, to my arm or my neck or, or whatever, and, you know, making things worse. So, Jeff: right. Oh, I’m glad you’re doing it. Christina: yeah, me too. So anyway, that was a long-winded update, but Wow. Jeff: Yeah, that’s intense. So I’m really glad the pain is not what it was ’cause Holy shit. Christina: Yeah, the pain was, was really, really bad. And I, like, I look back now and it’s, you know, I, I guess ’cause it’s been a couple of weeks since it’s been really debilitating and it is, and again, I don’t know like that this is me or this is like just somebody else, but I, or this is me or this is the comment with other people. Sorry. Um, is that. Like when I’m not in pain anymore. It is such, so much like, I mean, depression is like this too. It’s so much like a vacuum. It’s like when you’re in it, that’s all you can see. But when you’re out of it, like it’s so easy to forget what it was like Jeff: Yeah, yeah, totally. Completely. Christina: totally completely right. Yeah. Jeff: Yeah. I can even imagine being in the [00:12:00] situation you’re describing, knowing I have a surgery coming up and being like, well, do I want to? Which, like, to your point now, you make that call and you’re worrying forever. Am I gonna wake up? And this thing’s there. Next time it happens, I gotta wait another God knows how long before the surgery, when I’ll know it’s time. Like, you know it’s time now. Get in there. Christina: No, totally, totally. And and that’s the thing. And I think sometimes it can be. Like I said, like when you’re not in the thick of, of it, whether it’s like, you know, feeling depressed or feeling overwhelmed or, or stressed or, or in physical pain or whatever, like it’s easy for to forget like what that can be like. And so I have to just kind of like remind myself like, no, this was really fucking bad. And yeah, you got through it and now you’re on the other side of it. And so you’re like, oh, okay, well, you know, I, I, I could, you know, do whatever, but you’re like, don’t, don’t forget what that was like. Right. Journaling and Mental Health Christina: Um, sometimes I think like, and, and I, and I’m bad at remembering to do this, but new thing for the new year, I guess is why, um, it is important I think to like write things down, right. Like however we’re feeling, whether it’s, you know, good, bad, whatever. [00:13:00] Sometimes, like for me, like it is Jeff: Just like journal you mean, right? Christina: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Be, because it can be useful just to like look back and like, if you’re in a darker spot to remember, hey, there were times when I felt this way. Right. Might not bring, bring me back to that place. But it’s a good reminder. But also I think almost just, it’s importantly, it’s, it’s, it’s the inverse where it’s like you need to remember when you’re in a good place. What it can be like to be in a worse place. Um, because, you know, I think that’s why sometimes people make decisions they make about what medicines they’re going to take or not take or what therapies they’re going to continue or not continue. And, um, and it’s, and it’s really easy to get into that, you know, cycle of, okay, well I’m fine now, um, because you’re removed enough from what it felt like to be bad, you know? And, and then, and, and, and also I think sometimes like, uh, and this is why I wish that I’ve been journaling more over the last few years. You can really get yourself into a deep depression and not realize it. Jeff: Yes, yes. Yeah. And I feel like journaling too, just like helps you internalize some of the flags and [00:14:00] warning signs, even if you’re never looking back, like, ’cause you’re gonna process them a little bit. Christina: yeah, yeah. Jeff: can’t, I, I’ve journaled over the years for stints of time. I can’t go back into them. I almost like, I almost like bounce off the page when I try. Um, but I really have come to believe that just the act of doing it is the thing. Christina: agree. Jeff: Yeah, Christina: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I, I usually don’t re reread my old stuff either, and I haven’t journaled regularly in a really, really long time, and I actually would like to get back into that again. I think it would be better for my overall health, but similar to you, it’s one of those things I wouldn’t necessarily revisit, Jeff: But now, you know, you have a document, you have a reason to go back into it. Christina: right. Well, but, but also, I mean, I think to your point, just the act of doing it, um, you know, and this is case, we’re both writers. I think this is the, the case for a lot of, of people who, who write like it, it is one of those things that like, that’s what will almost like cement it in my mind. You know what I mean? Like, as, as, as mattering [00:15:00] like, like even if it’s something innocuous, even if I don’t remember the small details of just that, that the fact that like, I’ve done it, like, like to your point, helps you kind of process things and kind of, you know, act more as kind of a therapeutic place. Jeff: Yeah, I don’t, when I’m writing like that, or just in general, I don’t feel like I’m writing from my brain or feel like I’m writing on my brain. Christina: Yeah, yeah. Jeff: It’s like I am actually putting the information in, not drawing it out weirdly. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I know, I, I, I, I love that actually, I’ve never thought of it before. Writing on my brain. I love that. That’s really, that, I think that’s really profound. Jeff: Yeah. So there’s, um, there’s a kind of journaling that I wish I, I, well, I don’t beat myself up at all to be clear about this ’cause that I’m too old to do that anymore. The Artist’s Way and Creative Practices Jeff: Um, but there’s this book I read back in. Oh God, 2019 99 called The Artist’s Way by this woman Julie Cameron. And I don’t remember much about this book except for, and I probably have talked about it on this podcast [00:16:00] years ago at this point, but she has this practice, she calls morning Pages. And the idea is you sit down first thing in the morning, you fill three pages, you don’t think about what you’re writing or why you just keep the pen moving. And, and I, what I have found, that’s the only kind of real regular journaling I’ve ever done. It’s a great, great hack for me. ’cause it, it, I can do that. And I fill, I’ll fill a, you know, big notebook and I have a box full of them from over the years. ’cause again, I’m old. Um, but what is, I have never, I don’t think there’s been a single day that I’ve done those morning pages when I haven’t been a little surprised and something hasn’t emerged that. I’m like, I’ll think to myself, well shit, if I hadn’t have done this, where would that have stayed and lived and, and lodged itself. Right. Like, um, so anyway, I I’m glad you are bringing this up ’cause it’s reminding me of that and New Year is a great time to be thinking about that. Christina: Totally, totally. No, I love that. And I, yeah, I, I found the book The Artist’s Way, a Spiritual Path to Higher [00:17:00] Creativity. Jeff: Yes, Christina: and it’s like this yellow gold book, but like, apparently, and then like they, they, they, they, they sell Morning pages Journal, a Jeff: they do, of course. I Christina: Yeah. Yeah, of course. Jeff: it probably took her two decades to realize she should be cashing in on that, but she did. Christina: No, honestly, so the book, it looks like it was published the first one in 92, Jeff: Yeah. Christina: then they were selling the companion volume to the Artist’s Way as December 29th, 1997. Um, so, so like Jeff: that you’re doing this history. This is delightful. Christina: I, well, I just looked at Amazon is just kind of filling this out for me, so I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, so at least it is possible that, that the, the book pages might have been even earlier than that, but like, good for her on like, recognizing there’s also a Artist’s Way workbook, um, now that was like a decade later, like 2006. Jeff: Yeah, that’s what I, maybe that’s what I’m thinking of. That came much later. Christina: Yeah, yeah. But, but it does seem like she got into that, like a David Allen kind of, you know, like, you know, whatever steps of highly, you know what I mean? Like, like all that kind of like stuff, [00:18:00] which Jeff: You’re letting the publisher have those meetings with you. Christina: Which honestly look good for you if you’re selling that many and whatnot. And, and if you come up with this journaling way, yes, sell the freaking paper. You should be selling PDF copies so that people can have it on their iPads now, like, you know, Jeff: Yeah. Christina: or, or, or on the remarkable tablets or whatever. Jeff: she had another thing actually I haven’t thought about in a long time. It wasn’t as useful to me long term. It helped me in the moment I. In the moment I was in, she called ’em artist dates and the idea was like, ’cause as you said in the title, it’s all about creativity. She was like, you, you take yourself out, go to a, whatever it is, a museum, a art supply shop, something like that. But with intention, like, I am going out to do this thing on my own alone because I know that it has some connection to what feels good to me about art and creativity and expression, whatever it was. That seems like a silly thing. Like it’s basically her saying, go to a museum. There was something about calling it an artist date. I think I was in a relationship too at the time where I was like not, it was not easy for me to [00:19:00] just go do something on my own. It was just a weird dynamic a little bit. So anyway, that was another good thing that came out of it. I mean, I, you don’t really have to work hard to tell me to go do something on my own, but at that time in my life you did. Yeah, she was great. That’s awesome. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. No, that is funny. Yeah. So yeah, so apparently that book was published in, in 1992 and, um, you know, uh, was immediately like, well, the first printing was about 9,000 copies. In 1992, the book was published by Jeremy Tarcher. Now part of Pink Wing Group revised and millions of copies have since been sold millions. Jeff: it was total like guru status by the Christina: Oh yeah, absolutely. No, absolutely. You know, and, and in a, yeah, she, she was, uh, she’s a, she was born in 1948, and so, uh, she’s still alive. She’s still kicking it. Um, Jeff: yeah. I think she made some new book that was like kind of a take on it, but it was a different, I don’t remember. Anyway. You’re the Christina: Yeah, no, no. Her, her list of like, of like books that she’s published is, she’s the, the most recent one. So she’s still doing the, the, the [00:20:00] writer’s way thing, living the, the artist’s way. An intuitive path to greater creativity. So I guess they did a 2024 version Write for Life, a toolkit for Writers Seeking wisdom, A spiritual Path to Creative Connection. Six week artist program. Jeff: it’s kind of like David Allen, where it’s like, wouldn’t it be nice to have created something when you were, whatever, reasonably younger, like 20, 30 years ago, that not only that you can ride for a long time, but you probably don’t feel bad about riding it for a long time. Right? Like, ’cause you can create things or have a band or something like that, that like your only choice is to ride that thing, but it gets pretty ugly. I see you Vince Neil. Um, but yeah, anyway, must be Christina: No, it ha it has to be nice, right? ’cause it’s like, okay, well no, and, and then it has all these little spinoff things, so it’s not like you have to feel like, I mean, although th this actually, this would, this would be an interesting idea for like a, a, a novel or a screenplay or something, which would be to be like, okay, you know, and people have have done like riffs on these things before on, on, you know, shows or whatever. But, so this would be an interesting story, I think to kind of focus on where it’s like you have somebody who is like, just famous for like, this, this one thing that they did, [00:21:00] and now their whole life has to revolve around it. But what if it was like, something that they didn’t like actually, like, believe in? Jeff: yes, Christina: what if you have the guru? What if you have the guru who’s like, actually is like, actually I don’t really, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m David Allen, but I, but I can’t actually get anything done. I have to have like a whole, you know, cadre of assistance to actually organize my, my, my, my calendar and my life. For me, you know, I don’t Jeff: Carol and Pluribus, I don’t know if you’re watching Pluribus, but that Yes. Her, her whole like book series. Clearly she was at a point where she’s like, yes, I should still ride this, but I cannot. That’s all right. Things changed for her. Um, okay. I have to tell you about something insane that happened to me at the end of 25. Christina: Okay. Alright. Before, before we do that, let me let Ru first, um, let’s, uh, let’s, let’s go ahead and, and get our, our sponsor read Jeff: Oh, way to remember the sponsor. We remember you sponsor. Christina: We, we, we do. So, um, I, I, I, before we hear about what happened to you at the end of 2025, let’s, uh, let’s go ahead and talk, uh, forward a little bit about 2026. So, are you [00:22:00] ready to take control of your finances? Well meet copilot money, the personal finance app that makes your money feel clear and calm with the beautiful design and smart automation. Copilot money brings all your spending, saving and investment accounts into one place available on iOS, Mac, iPad, and now on the web. And so, as we are entering 2026, it is time for a fresh start. And, you know, with Mint, uh, shutting down last year and rising financial uncertainty, consumers are seeking clarity and control. And this is where copilot money comes in. So, copilot money. Basically helps you track your budgets, your savings goals, and your net worth seamlessly. And with a new web launch, you can enjoy a sending experience on any device. 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That’s try dot copilot money slash Overtired and use that coupon Overtired and you will, as I said, save 26% off your first year. So try copilot money slash Overtired. Use the coupon code Overtired. Thank you very much. Copilot money. Jeff: Bam. Can you hear my Synology? Christina: No, Jeff: Oh, that’s funny. ’cause I, I get this. Hum. I recently com I, I’ll visit this in GrAPPtitude. I, [00:24:00] uh, I completely clean, installed my Synology after like six years. ’cause when I did. Build it. Initially, I actually didn’t really understand how to use it, and I, and I made some mistakes that because of all the stuff I put on, it was hard to sort of, I was treating it like it was gonna be an external drive and I could just kind of work with, you know, which was a huge mistake. Um, but anyway, I, it’s working so hard. It’s working so hard and it’s on my desk, which it normally wouldn’t be. So I hear this humming. Didn’t know if you heard it. Christina: I, I did not, I did not, which is a good thing. So, okay, so, all right. Uh, let, let’s, let’s go back. So what, what, yeah, I’m ready. I need to hear what happened to you at the end of 2025. All right. Unexpected Alley Incident Jeff: All right, so, um, my boys are out. They’re almost never out, but they’re both out with friends, different places. My wife and I we’re home and we were eating dinner and I got an alert from my back door ring camera, and. That almost never happens. It’s only exists to, to notify me of like alley shoppers. We’re in, in the city. We have an alley behind us and, and we get a fair amount of pretty [00:25:00] harmless alley shopping. Like it’s, is the car unlocked? If it is, you got some change. If not, I’m moving on. Um, but I like to know when they’re there. Christina: yeah, Jeff: We’ve had some bikes stolen and some people go into our garage and stuff like that. It’s very rare that it goes off less than I actually thought it would. Um, and so it goes off and it goes off at around 7:00 PM very unusual. And, uh, and so I, I, I pull it up and I look and, and I, all I can see is there’s two cars parked in the alley. I have this weird view where, um, it’s kind of a fence and then our garage. So I can see between those two things to the alley basically. So there’s two cars. That’s weird actually. And when I see some of people’s like videos about folks breaking into their cars, there’s often two that come. And so I was like, oh, okay, well it’s, I should just like go out and look. So we go and we kind of look at our, at our back window to see if we can see anything. And we’re just like, yeah, it’s weird. They’re not only parked but the headlights are off. And like, I’m gonna go out and check it out. She’s like, well first, why don’t you look at the video it recorded, which I wasn’t thinking of at all. So I pull up the video, it recorded, and I see these [00:26:00] cars park, but it’s like three or four of them come through the two that I can see park. And all of a sudden there are probably seven or eight figures running down the alley from these cars. Okay? And I’m like, well, that’s crazy. And so I walk out there and I go up to the first car and it’s got Texas plates. And around here where we have a little bit of an ice invasion, Texas plates are reported a lot. I look at the next car and it’s got no plates at all. And I look at the car after that and it’s got vanity plates, specifically chosen one with a Z. Um, and, and I’m like, oh my God. It’s the thing like ice is in my alley. And, uh, and so I come back in, I I’m like, you tell my wife, like, should probably get your coat on. I think it’s the thing is what I said. And, and we go out and sure enough, like at the end of our alley where there is a family and, and they are, um, US citizens, they’re Mexican immigrants, um, that’s where I see all these officers sort of, or these agents sort of coalescing and um, I’m gonna leave some aspects of this out. They were [00:27:00] actually, they were serving, uh, uh, narcotics warrant that ended up being totally misguided. Nothing happened of it. Um, but it was super scary. But I kind of don’t wanna say more than that because I wanna be really clear that as everyone should know about policing, a search warrant is not an indictment. Um, and oftentimes search warrants are so searching and, and, and often come up with. With nothing. Right? And, and maybe even were targeted at the wrong person. And there’s didn’t even have the name of my neighbor on it. It’s this whole thing. But the point is, it was a little different from what we’ve been hearing because there was a different agency there serving a warrant. It was the airport, airport, police department, ’cause of a package. So there was that piece, there was actually a signed warrant. ’cause everyone’s trained to say, show me the warrant. Show me the warrant. So everyone, you know, my wife and I were the first ones there. Um, and then another neighbor rolled up, and then I’ll get to the rest in a second. Um, so it, it’s shocking that it’s happening in our alley. Christina: in our alley, right? Jeff: just like, Christina: you, yeah. Jeff: what? What the Christina: I, I mean, how [00:28:00] I would feel to a certain extent would be like, I’d be like, am I in Amer in an episode of the Americans? Like, like, you know, Jeff: is, did they have to write it this way? Just ’cause how else are you gonna bring it to the people? You know? It’s, you gotta bring it to the characters. Um, so anyway, we go down there and, and there’s one, so all of the, everyone decides the airport PD guy who has no mask and is kind of like presenting like a pretty normal cop basically. And he is got a badge and a name and a number. But walking in and out of the house, all around us are these guys who are in full battle fatigues. They’ve got masks on, they’ve got ars. Um, they are, they are a weird mix of people. There’s a woman in there who’s like looking like, literally like she was cast for a movie to be, uh, an, an ice person. In this case they were Homeland Security Investigations, HSI. But it’s all intertwined at this point. Um, and then there was a guy that must have been like eight feet. That was crazy. There was a single guy that was wearing a, like a straight up like helmet, uh, for, as if he were going into battle. [00:29:00] Nobody else is wearing a helmet. Um. And none of them were talking. They were just passing through. And, um, and so we tried to engage one of them, talked to them for a little bit, do the thing you do. Hey, why don’t you take that mask off? You know, I don’t wanna get docked. I was like, uh, Christina: around. Jeff: it was like, I both understand why you don’t wanna get docked. I also feel like you’ve got the power here, brother. Um, and which was the conversation we had, um, I was like, you have a mask on. You also have your finger on the trigger of a gun. And he’s like, well, that’s not, it’s not on the trigger. This is how we hold guns, dude. I was like, I understand that, but your finger is itching at the trigger of a gun. And so he put his hands on top of the butt of the gun. ’cause it was kind of, you know, mounted the way it is. Is that better? I was like, no, you’ve still got all the power. Take the mask off. Like, at least. Um, and uh, what, what was really interesting, and I I have this sort of like wrap up that occurred to me later that kind of blew my mind is, you know, in our neighborhood, um, because ice activity has been going on all around our neighborhood, like in. Neighborhoods [00:30:00] surrounding our neighborhood or a little further out, but all within a, I could get in the car and rush out there distance. Basically we have these, we have these neighborhood signal groups. The first one that popped up was actually around my son’s school, which is very close to here and has a lot of East African and Hispanic, um, immigrants and, and, um, and so that we knew that was like, you know, people were scared there. Some kids weren’t coming to school. And so, um, some neighbors organized in such a way that they could a, have a signal, uh, communication channel. But also part of that was planning at the beginning of the day and that release time for enough people to sort of be paired up in areas around the school, but not so close that it freaks the kids out. That like if something happened, there could be sort of a rapid response. So we had that signal group. There’s a broader signal group that probably covers like a four block area, and then there’s a wider one that’s our wider neighborhood basically. And that one’s like a rapid response signal group. So these have been going. Pretty, like consistently [00:31:00] ever since it was announced that we were getting ICE and Homeland Security folks here. Um, so the network was all in place. And, and so I’m out there initially and I see all the cars. I’m like, holy shit. Wife and I go to the end of the block. We start talking to first the airport PD guy who’s there, and then the the one HSI guy who comes out. Then another neighbor, another neighbor. I go back to take pictures of the plates because folks around here are keeping a registry that you can get through the signal group of all of the makes and models of cars that we know have been at these, um, kind of ICE activities or homeland security activities, and then their license plates. And so there’s like a running log, which has happened in other cities too. So I was taking pictures of all the cars. Um, but I was pretty like, I mean, I’ve been through some shit and. Having it in your alley is very different from going halfway across the world as like an activist or something. Um, and having it ha neighbors are people we know and care about. And so knowing that, not knowing what’s happening for them, which I don’t mean to bury that lead [00:32:00] ’cause I’m kind of getting to that part, but I also want to just respect their privacy. Um, so like the thing I should have mentioned at the top is like, we know these folks and it was fucking terrifying to be standing there arguing with these HSI guys knowing that at some point, or just assuming at some point these people we know are gonna be dragged outta the house in front of us. And then it was just like this constant question of what the fuck will we do? Then? It did not happen to be really clear, uh, ahead of time. So I’m taking pictures of these cars, I’m like, oh shit. I’m supposed to notify like the signal group, but I’ve got, I’ve got all the presence I need to take pictures of cars. I’ve got the presence I need to engage these guys, which my wife was doing plenty good job of, so I could just like walk away and do the license plate thing. But when I pulled up my phone. To open signal. I opened Slack three times, like I could not, I got an S into my search, my app search, and like kept clicking the wrong thing. I was shaking. It was also freezing out and so like I’m shaking and so [00:33:00] thank God it occurred to me. I have one friend I know on this signal group that I, I know would answer the phone, so I called her. I called her and I was like, I need to be quick. Here are like the fundamental details. Can you please notify? The signal group and the rapid response people. So that was great. She did initially, the first group that showed up, which was just incredible, were like all of our neighbors, we all know this family. Like it’s not, they are just neighbors. It’s not like it’s a special offset group or something. Like they’re neighbors. So all of the neighbors show up. We have a really tight block. Um, that was incredible because it’s not like it’s a neighbor of activists. It’s what’s been incredible about this stuff from the beginning, which is like how easy it seems to be for people to pop outta their house and be like, Uhuh. Like it seems like, it seems like a lot of people are not feeling inhibited about that, which I think is really cool. And I totally respect the people that feel inhibited, right? Like, ’cause it’s just, it’s a whole thing to go out there. So we had this great group of neighbors and they were all, we had a public school teacher who was just killing it with this one HSI guy. It was so, [00:34:00] so good to watch and it felt really powerful and I think she was doing a really good job of trying to sort of like. Knock some things into this guy’s head knowing that like, you know, you’re in a dynamic that kind of you, there’s not a lot of room for things to change. Right. But given that she, it was really just inspiring watching her do her thing and then the like rapid response community showed up, which is like a mix of, you know, folks who are kind of just dedicated neighbors and then people who are sort of what you might call the usual suspects, right? Like the people you would expect, especially in South Minneapolis to show up at a thing like this. And I don’t know if you’ve heard about the thing people do with whistles around these things. Christina: Yeah. Well, I, I, all I’ve heard is that, and I ha, so all I know is I think sometimes people have whistles and kind of like, like, like blow them, almost like to alert people like that, that like, like the, like the, the, the, that like ice is there. Jeff: Yes, exactly. And that yes, that’s exactly it. And that’s been going on here and, [00:35:00] and everybody’s getting whistle. You know, sometimes when you get a good, it’s, I’m not calling it a bit, ’cause I’ll tell you in a minute why it was effective, um, in ways that I hadn’t anticipated. But, uh, you know, it’s like a, it’s, I can do this, I can get a whistle, I’m gonna get a whistle, right? Like, that’s something I can do. Like, it’s something that really caught on and there’s all these whistles being passed around and people on the neighborhood group being like, got a bag of whistles if you wanna come by. So I, ima imagine at this point that when these HSI or ICE people roll up to a thing before they get out, they’re like T minus 15 minutes to whistles, right? Like, this is how long we have before everyone shows up. And, and so pretty soon it’s whistles everywhere. I had a neighbor who kept putting off her, um. Car alarm just to make more crazy noise. We had another neighbor next to this neighbor who is a very conservative like Trump guy who, when he doesn’t like the noise that’s happening in the neighborhood sets off fireworks. And for some reason he was like, I’m gonna do the thing I do, even though there’s all these guys with guns and I’m gonna set off fireworks. But in that case, ’cause he is pissed off at all of us, like it was so [00:36:00] fucking chaotic for a minute. Um, but it was, it was an incredible thing to see how quickly people can deploy basically. Um, ’cause we aren’t like Chicago where like we’ve had a lot of activity here, but it’s been pretty quiet activity. Like, it’s like what happened here? It’s like you and your neighbors know about it and maybe 20 people showed up from your neighborhood rapid response. But like, they’re not the kinds of stories that. They’re not landing on rooftops, they’re not showing up with a hundred cars and calling people away. They’re hauling one person at a time away. And you hear about it here and there, but it’s been very quiet, unlike Chicago. Um, and so to have it given that, especially to have it show up just in your alley was like really, really insane. Um, so anyway, so it all, fortunately the, the police HSI, everybody left with nothing. They did not carry our neighbors away. They did not have any, any result of this warrant that we could tell. But of course, we’re not gonna know. Another [00:37:00] theme of this is how, how hard it is for good information to be resilient in a moment like this, right? That’s a whole other theme. And that, that’s one that gets me kinda riled up when people start after the fact or during the fact really kind of shouting out almost things that are wrong. Like the, the call that went out. For people to come. Said there were six cars in my alley with Texas plates, but I was very clear, there are six cars in my alley. One of them has Texas plates, right? So it’s like, that kind of stuff is a little spooky, but here’s what happened. So at the end it was all over. Our neighbors were able to pop out, wave at everybody, thank everybody. They had been handcuffed this family, um, in their living room while HSI figured out if they were citizens. And, um, what had what the whistles meant in this case was that they knew people were all over around the house. And that was, I’m sure, a level of comfort to know that like something’s happening out there. And then we learned later that there was an immigrant family down the block in the [00:38:00] other direction, across kind of a thoroughfare that we’re on the intersection of who heard the whistles and knew like, let’s stay in the house. There’s a lot going on out there. I dunno what it is, but now I hear whistles. Let’s stay in the house. And, um, and so it was quite a, quite a thing. Family Activism and Signal Setup Jeff: And what I kind of realized afterwards. Was we started this year. My family, my in-laws, my in-laws especially, were very, they’re, they’re, they’re very, um, active. They do kind of activist work, but it’s very like, um, service oriented. But they’ll go to an anti-war protest. They’ll go, you know, they’ll do the thing. They’re, they’re lovely people. And my father-in-law, especially at the beginning of the year, I was like, I don’t know what’s coming. Um, I hear that it’s good for everyone to have signal if we wanna be able to communicate to each other. So I wanna learn how to use signal. And so I helped him, my mother-in-law set it up. I created kind of a family group for Signal and everyone was setting up signal, right? Like at that point, not knowing what was gonna come. It wasn’t even January 20th yet. Unexpected End of Year Incident Jeff: And I wrapped up my year activating a signal network for rapid response because I [00:39:00] had masked people in my alley with guns refusing to identify themselves driving cars from out of state. That is insane. And I was like, that looks pretty tight. Season wrap up. Like, what the fuck? Because I kind of had gotten to the point, I guess prior to when ICE got here in, in the first place, I’d gotten to the point where I’m like, I don’t even really think about Signal anymore. Um, but then they came here and it, and it popped up. So that’s what, that’s what happened in my alley. Um, at the end of the year. Christina: And, and, and, and, and, and I mean, and, and, and you said, you said your neighbors are okay. Speculations and Concerns Christina: I mean, do, do you know anything more about like, like what, what happened or like what the, what the situation was? Jeff: I don’t know anymore. And that’s where I’m like a little cautious because since it was like a warrant for something, it was a narcotics warrant, right? Like, I, I have no idea what happened there. I don’t know. I can, I can only speculate. Um, but I know that the, the [00:40:00] name on that warrant was not someone that lives there. Um, so I can tell you that ’cause I saw the warrant. Um, and, and that’s the most I really feel comfortable saying. Christina: Fair enough. Yeah. I, I, I, I, yeah. I’m not, I’m not trying to like, Jeff: No, I get it. I get it. That’s me actually. Dealing with Law Enforcement Jeff: I’ve been wrestling with like, how much, even on the, I kind of like was asking people to be cautious, even on the signal, because they were sharing details about the warrant. I was like, Hey, details in a warrant. Do not share those, because that sticks to people. And like the details in the warrant were just like, no, we’re not gonna do this. Even when the guy read me the warrant, I was like, are you serious about that? He’s like, oh man, for sure. Okay, sounds good. Let’s, we’ll talk in an hour when you’re all done and you don’t have anything. Like I, I’ve been down this road before. I was a reporter for a long time, like I watched The Wire. Um, Christina: exactly. I was gonna say, yeah, I was gonna say the, the sort of reporting I did, like, yeah, I watched the Wire. Um, so would be Jeff: I said that to the guy. I didn’t say I watched the, yeah, I didn’t say I watched The Wire to the guy, but I was like, he [00:41:00] kept gaslighting us and I was like, come on man. Like you and I we’re smart people, you and I, and that was me being generous. But like, we’re smart people. You and I like, we know this thing you’re saying. It’s like, it’s totally not the case. Like when I asked him. The airport PD guy. What’s up with the cars with Texas plates and no plates and vanity plates? I don’t know, I don’t coordinate with those guys. I was like, okay, that’s weird. ’cause like here you are and they’re walking all around you. Surely you coordinated with them enough to get them here. It was just like, what the fuck? Just so much gaslighting that I won’t even get into, but it was just nonstop. But I was so proud watching my neighbors when the rapid responsible showed up. It was a, there’s always like some people in those situations where I, I, I get pretty activated around lack of discipline and I understand how that happens. But having been in like really super high stakes situations where people could, and who this was one, right? Like I don’t, I don’t react well internally to people who I feel like are working out something that’s theirs. Um, [00:42:00] and at the same time, how do we know how to process this, right? Like, I don’t, we, it was something incredible to watch Mask men and one masked woman walking up and down my alley, bumping past me with guns, with masks, with no idea, with no badges, refusing to pro produce any saying, why does it matter anyhow, saying how much threat they’re under, seeing how they get followed, like just, it was, it was an incredible thing. I had my reaction, but my reaction was based on wiring, based on really intense, unusual experiences. Um, other people, this is new to them. This kind of thing is new to me too, but, so anyway, I, I just like, I saved that. I didn’t even tell you guys when it happened. I’m like, I’ll just tell them on the podcast. ’cause Christina: yeah, no, I mean, that’s, that’s wild. I mean, like, and it’s just, it’s just, well, and, and it’s, I don’t know, it’s so dystopic, right? Like, it’s such a, like a, a terrible like thing to like have to like witness part of, right? Because like, look, yeah, there are going to be circumstances when maybe like, you know, Homeland Security or somebody else, like really actually does need to be involved and, you know, [00:43:00] um, you know, at your neighbor’s house. And like, that’s unfortunate, right? But like, there, there are real circumstances where that could be a case. Like I, I, I, I, I mentioned the, the Americans earlier, that was like, based Jeff: I need to watch that. Christina: It’s a great show. But, but the, the, the, uh, a former CIA agent was one of the, the, the, the creators. But the, um, the idea came to like, uh, one of the showrunners basically, he read an article, I think in the New Yorker or something about a, a family that like seemed like, just like the perfect, like normal family next door. And like the kids came home from school one day and the parents had been picked up because it turns out that they had been Russian spies living in the United States for like 20 years. And like, they were like actual Russian spies. And, and then that kind of like went into, okay, well, well, well, what happens then? Like, what happens to that family and, and what happens to get to that point? Like, what happens? Like if your neighbors are those things, right? And so there are those like very much like stranger than fiction. Like, like things, right? But in most cases, that’s not the circumstance. And, and certainly the way that like all this has been handled and the way that they’re doing all of this treat things for, [00:44:00] you know, like whatever the warrants were for whatever the situations are where they’re like, okay, now we’re gonna bring all these other groups in. We’re not going to have any due process at all, and we’re not going to, to bother with any sort of thing of humanity at all and then freak everybody else out, like is just, you know, then, and then it puts you like, as, as the neighbor, like in this position where you’re like, okay, well how do we get the word out? How do we help, how do we, you know, make sure that if’s something, is that if this is something that you know, isn’t what we, what we think that it is or whatever, that we can make sure that they’re not going to be. ’cause we see all the reports all the time. I mean, US citizens are getting arrested for, Jeff: Yeah, totally. Christina: the wrong way, Jeff: Oh yeah, we had a, we had a woman here probably, I think she was like in her sixties, and she walked out of her house ’cause there was something happening across the street. And in moments she was in the car, she was gone. Her husband didn’t know where she was. She was released later that day. Like we’ve had a lot of stories like that. And so that was stressful too, going in, right? Like when my partner and I went, went up to talk to this guy, I, I left down the alley to take pictures, but I [00:45:00] was like looking over my shoulder constantly. ’cause she and I have talked about how, like, can you imagine if one of us was taken and we didn’t know? And I was like, oh, we are in a situation right now where no way can I say, there’s no chance one of us will be taken. Like, no way. And you know, the longer you’re there, the more you push it a little bit, you know, not push it like physically or something, but just like push it a little more people out front. Someone kicked an ice car in, in an HSI car and got like pepper sprayed or whatever. Um, Christina: and it’s, and it’s like, don’t do that. Like, don’t like, Jeff: Well, it’s funny because, it’s funny because that per I, this is, I, I know there are people listening who will think I’m such an asshole for this, but I, to I, I feel zero apologetic for it. Reflections on Responsibility Jeff: So I am, I’m not like a huge fan, like kick the car when there’s a family that we don’t know how they’re doing and these people are around, like, don’t escalate in that way with these people. Don’t set off fireworks behind the guys that have their fingers resting near triggers. Like you Christina: That’s what I’m saying. That, that, yeah. Jeff: yeah, you just don’t do that. Uh, but here’s the part that makes me sound like an asshole and, and I don’t mind at all. [00:46:00] Um, they were, they were the only person that was pepper sprayed. And, and it was this, you know, certain people that come from outside the neighborhood. It was this very dramatic thing, whatever they pepper spray, you know, whatever. And I was like, what, what happened? They kicked the car. I was like, eh, I’m going in like, I mean like, yeah, you got pepper spray because you kicked the car. I assume you were in for that. Like you signed just like the guy with the mask who’s worried about being docked. He signed up for this dude. Christina: I was gonna say, you, you, you, you signed up for this, you, you, you, you’ve signed up because you saw Christina O’s you know, like ridiculous, like, you know, like, come, come join Ice, you know, like, like, you know, freaking social media, you know, posts or whatever, like there ads you’re doing like, yeah. Like you, you know exactly what you’re doing, so fuck off. I don’t, yeah, I have zero. Jeff: I I said you signed up for this. I did not sign up for this. I said you signed up for all of it, dude. Like you Christina: Yeah, absolutely. No, I mean, honestly, well, well look, you know, it’s the same thing like the military, frankly, like, you know, like in the, in, in the seventies and stuff, and we saw, you know, more of it then, like, I’m not saying that it was like the, the right or like nice or like humane thing to spit in the, in their faces. [00:47:00] Right. But like. Especially after the draft was gone. Like, you sign up for that shit, Jeff: It’s a tough man. I, I had that, I, that experience throughout the Iraq war where. I knew. I mean, there’s the economic draft. There’s all right, there’s all these reasons people end up in war. But at the end of the day, when I am walking around a city I love, and other Americans are there in armor and Humvees and they have destroyed a city, I feel like this is what you signed up for. It’s not what you signed up for, but it is literally what you signed. Same with police. It’s a little bit Christina: that’s Jeff: I totally respect the trauma. I respect that you’re in situations where Christina: that’s real. No. Jeff: your values. Like I Christina: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, and that, that is real. And, and to your point, there might be like, like economic scenarios, drafts and other scenarios where like you’re like, well, I had a choice, but I didn’t have a choice. Okay, but you knew that this was a trade off. Like you knew that this was a thing that comes with, with, with the territory. If it comes with adulation, but it comes with the bad stuff too. Right. Jeff: And if you’re killing people, I don’t feel super bad about saying that. I feel super bad for you for having to live with that [00:48:00] fact. But like I don’t feel bad for saying, Hey man, Christina: well, I mean, like, and, and it’s a Jeff: have said no. Christina: and it’s a completely different like thing. I’m not even trying to categorize it the same way. ’cause it’s, it’s not. But like, just, just like in, in my life, you know, people oftentimes will like, yell at me about stuff that they don’t like, about, like the companies like that I work for. And you know, what I, I’m, I’m part of my job is to kind of be a public face for, for those things. And that means that I get yelled at and that’s okay. And like that, that I, I quite literally knew that I signed up for that. Does that mean that I always appreciate it? That is, does that mean that I don’t get annoyed sometimes? Does that mean that I like being like tarred and feathered with like mistakes or decisions that like, I had nothing to do with Absolutely not right. But like, that’s quite literally part of my job. So, you know, it, it, it is. So I can’t like turn around and be like, oh, well, you know, you can’t, you know, like. You know, say, say this to me, or whatever. Right. Um, but, and, and again, I realize it’s a completely different scale of things. I’m not in any way trying to equate the, the, the, the two [00:49:00] scenarios, Jeff: No, but it’s, I mean, it is, yeah, Christina: but all of us, but all of us, we have jobs and we do things and like in a case like this, like if you work for those agencies, right. Especially right now, and like I recognize and I can be sympathetic that you may not have signed up. Under these circumstances. Having said that, I will say that if you signed up in the last eight years, you knew that these were things that were going in a certain direction, right? Um, I, I, I, I, I will, I will further say that like I, I’m not gonna say that like every single person is involved, but I will say like in the last eight years, you’ve, you’ve seen which way the wind was going and, and, and, and, and that’s okay. You can make that decision and, and like, I’m not gonna judge you or your character as a person for that decision. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m not. ’cause we all have to make decisions about where we work. Having said that, that just also means like what we’ve been saying, you’re gonna have to deal with some shit. You’re gonna deal with people recording your face. You’re gonna have to deal with people being angry with you. You’re gonna have to deal with, to your point, people kicking the cop car. And if that’s all that happens and like, and, and, and, and it’s not gonna lead to another escalation point, that’s fine. I, I’m with you. I

Introducing Rob Ruiz Meet Rob Ruiz, a seasoned Senior Full Stack Developer with nearly two decades of expertise in WordPress innovation and open-source magic. As the Lead Maintainer of WP Rig since 2020, Rob has been the driving force behind this groundbreaking open-source framework that empowers developers to craft high-performance, accessible, and progressively enhanced WordPress themes with ease. WP Rig isn’t just a starter theme—it’s a turbocharged toolkit that bundles modern build processes, linting, optimization, and testing to deliver lightning-fast, standards-compliant sites that shine on any device. Show Notes For more on Rob and WP Rig, check out these links: LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robcruiz WP Rig Official Site: https://wprig.io GitHub Repository: https://github.com/wprig/wprig Latest Releases: https://github.com/wprig/wprig/releases WP Rig 3.1 Announcement: https://wprig.io/wp-rig-3-1/ Transcript: Topher DeRosia: Hey everybody. Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m your host Topher DeRosia, and with me today I have- Rob Ruiz: Rob Ruiz. Topher: Rob. You and I have talked a couple of times, once recently, and I learned about a project you’re working on, but not a whole lot about you. Where do you live? What do you do for a living? Rob: Yeah, for sure. Good question. Although I’m originally from Orlando, Florida, I’ve been living in Omaha, Nebraska for a couple of decades now. So I’m pretty much a native. I know a lot of people around here and I’ve been fairly involved in various local communities over the years. I’m a web developer. Started off as a graphic designer kind of out of college, and then got interested in web stuff. And so as a graphic designer turned future web developer, I guess, I was very interested in content management systems because it made the creating and managing of websites very, very easy. My first couple of sites were Flash websites, sites with macro media Flash. Then once I found content management systems, I was like, “Wow, this is way easier than coding the whole thing from scratch with Flash.” And then all the other obvious benefits that come from that. So I originally started with Joomla, interestingly enough, and used Joomla for about two or three years, then found WordPress and never looked back. And so I’ve been using WordPress ever since. As the years have gone on, WordPress has enabled me to slowly transition from a more kind of web designer, I guess, to a very full-blown web developer and software engineer, and even software architect to some degree. So here we are many years later. Topher: There’s a big step from designer to developer. How did that go for you? I’m assuming you went to PHP. Although if you were doing Flash sites, you probably learned ActionScript. Rob: Yeah. Yeah. That was very convenient when I started learning JavaScript. It made it very easy to learn JavaScript faster because I already had a familiarity with ActionScript. So there’s a lot of similarities there. But yeah. Even before I started doing PHP, I started learning more HTML and CSS. I did do a couple of static websites between there that were just like no content management system at all. So I was able to kind of sharpen my sword there with the CSS and HTML, which wasn’t particularly hard. But yeah, definitely, the PHP… that was a big step was PHP because it’s a proper logical programming language. There was a lot there I needed to unpack, and so it took me a while. I had to stick to it and really rinse and repeat before I finally got my feet under me. Topher: I can imagine. All right. So then you work for yourself or you freelance or do you have a real job, as it were? Rob: Currently, I do have a real job. Currently, I’m working at a company called Bold Orange out of Minneapolis. They’re a web agency. But I kind of bounce around from a lot of different jobs. And then, yes, I do freelance on the side, and I also develop my own products as well for myself and my company. Topher: Cool. Bold Orange sounds familiar. Who owns that? Rob: To be honest, I don’t know who the owners are. It’s just a pretty big web agency out of Minneapolis. They are a big company. You could just look them up at boldorange.com. They work for some pretty big companies. Topher: Cool. All right. You and I talked last about WP Rig. Give me a little background on where that came from and how you got it. Rob: Yeah, for sure. Well, there was a period of time where I was working at a company called Proxy Bid that is in the auction industry, and they had a product or a service — I don’t know how you want to look at that —called Auction Services. That product is basically just building WordPress sites for auction companies. They tasked us with a way to kind of standardize those websites essentially. And what we realized is that picking a different theme for every single site made things difficult to manage and increase tech debt by a lot. So what we were tasked with was, okay, if we’re going to build our own theme that we’re just going to make highly dynamic so we can make it look different from site to site. So we want to build it, but we want to build it smart and we want to make it reusable and maintainable. So let’s find a good framework to build this on so that we can maintain coding standards and end up with as little tech debt as possible, essentially. That’s when I first discovered WP Rig. In my research, I came across it and others. We came across Roots Sage and some of the other big names, I guess. It was actually a team exercise. We all went out and looked for different ones and studied different ones and mine that I found was WP Rig. And I was extremely interested in that one over the other ones. Interestingly enough- Topher: Can you tell me why over the other ones? Rob: That’s a great question. Yeah. I really liked the design patterns. I really liked the focus on WordPress coding standards. So having a system built in that checked all the code against WordPress coding standards was cool. I loved the compiling transpiling, whatever, for CSS and JavaScript kind of built in. That sounded really, really interesting. The fact that there was PHP unit testing built into it. So there’s like a starter testing framework built in that’s easy to extend so that you can add additional unit tests as your theme grows. We really wanted to make sure… because we were very into CICD pipelines. So we wanted to make sure that as developers were adding or contributing to any themes that we built with this, that we could have automated tests run and automated builds run, and just automate as much as possible. So WP rig just seemed like something that gave us those capabilities right out of the box. So that was a big thing. And I loved the way that they did it. Roots Sage does something similar, but they use their blade templating engine built in there. We really wanted to stick to something that was a bit more standard WordPress so that there wasn’t like a large knowledge overhead so that we didn’t have to say like, okay, if we’re bringing on other developers, like junior developers work on it, oh, it would be nice if you use Laravel too because we use this templating engine in all of our themes. We didn’t want to have to worry about that essentially. It was all object-oriented and all that stuff too. That’s what looked interesting to me. We ended up building a theme with WP Rig. I don’t know what they ended up doing with it after that, because I ended up getting let go shortly thereafter because the company had recently been acquired. Also, this was right after COVID too. So there was just a lot of moving parts and changing things at the time. So I ended up getting let go. But literally a week after I got let go, I came across a post on WP Tavern about how this framework was looking for new maintainers. Basically, this was a call put out by Morton, the original author of WP Rig. He reached out to WP Tavern and said, “Look, we’re not interested in maintaining this thing anymore, but it’s pretty cool. We like what we’ve built. And so we’re looking for other people to come in and adopt it essentially.” So I joined a Zoom meeting with a handful of other individuals that were also interested in this whole endeavor, and Morton reached out to me after the call and basically just said, “I looked you up. I liked some of the input that you had during the meeting. Let’s talk a little bit more.” And then that eventually led to conversations about me essentially taking the whole project over entirely. So, the branding, the hosting of the website, being lead maintainer on the project. Basically, gave me the keys to the kingdom in terms of GitHub and everything. So that’s how it ended up going in terms of the handoff between Morton and I. And I’m very grateful to him. They really created something super cool and I was honored to take it over and kind of, I don’t know, keep it going, I guess. Topher: I would be really curious. I don’t think either of us have the answer. I’d be curious to know how similar that path is to other project handoffs. It’s different from like an acquisition. You didn’t buy a plugin from somebody. It was kind of like vibes, I guess. Rob: It was like vibes. It was very vibey. I guess that’s probably the case in an open source situation. It’s very much an open source project. It’s a community-driven thing. It’s for everybody by everybody. I don’t know if all open source community projects roll like that, but that’s how this one worked out. There was some amount of ownership on Morton’s behalf. He did hire somebody to do the branding for WP Rig and the logo. And then obviously he was paying for stuff like the WPrig.io domain and the hosting through SiteGround and so on and so forth. So, we did have to transfer some of that and I’ve taken over those, I guess, financial burdens, if you want to think of it like that. But I’m totally okay with it. Topher: All right. You sort of mentioned some of the things Rig does, compiling and all that kind of stuff. Can you tell me… we didn’t discuss this before. I’m sitting at my desk and I think I want a website. How long does it take to go from that to looking at WordPress and logging into the admin with Rig? Rob: Okay. Rig is not an environment management system like local- Topher: I’m realizing my mistake. Somebody sends me a design in Figma. How long does it take me to go from that to, I’m not going to say complete because I mean, that’s CSS, but you know, how long does it take me to get to the point where I’m looking at a theme that is mine for the client that I’m going to start converting? Rob: Well, if you’re just looking for a starting point, if you’re just like, okay, how long does it take to get to like, okay, here’s my blank slate and I’m ready to start adopting all of these rules that are set up in Figma or whatever, I mean, you’re looking at maybe 5 minutes, 10 minutes, something like that. It’s pretty automated. You just need some simple knowledge of Git. And then there are some prerequisites to using WP Rig. You do have to have composer installed because we do leverage some Composer packages to some of it, although to be honest, you could probably get away with not using Composer. You just have to be okay with sacrificing some of the tools the WP Rig assumes you’re going to have. And then obviously Node. You have to have Node installed. A lot of our documentation assumes that you have NPM, that you’re using NPM for all your Nodes or your package management. But we did recently introduce support for Bun. And so you can use Bun instead of NPM, which is actually a lot faster and better in many ways. Topher: Okay. A lot of my audience are not developers, users, or light developers, like they’ll download a theme, hack a template, whatever. Is this for them? Am I boring those people right now? Rob: That’s a great question. I mean, and I think this is an interesting dichotomy and paradigm in the WordPress ecosystem, because you’ve got kind of this great divide. At least this is something I’ve noticed in my years in the WordPress community is you have many people that are not coders or developers that are very interested in expanding their knowledge of WordPress, but it’s strictly from a more of a marketing perspective where it’s like, I just want to know how to build websites with WordPress and how to use it to achieve my goals online from a marketing standpoint. You have that group of people, and then you have this other group of people that are very developer centric that want to know how to extend WordPress and how to empower those other people that we just discussed. Right? Topher: Right. Rob: So, yeah, that’s a very good question. I would say that WP Rig is very much designed for the developers, not for the marketers. The assumption there is that you’re going to be doing some amount of coding. Now, can you get away with doing a very light amount of coding? Yes. Yes, you can. I mean, if you compare what you’re going to get out of that assumed workflow to something that you would get off like Theme Forest or whatever, it’s going to be a night and day difference because those theme, Forest Themes, have hours, hundreds, sometimes hundreds of hours of development put into them. So, you’re not going to just out of the box immediately get something that is comparable to that. Topher: You need to put in those hundreds of hours of development to make a theme. Rob: As of today, yes. That may change soon though. Topher: Watch this space. Rob: That’s all I’ll say. Topher: Okay. So now we know who it’s for. I’m assuming there’s a website for it. What is it? Rob: Yeah. If you go to WPrig.io, we have a homepage that shows you all the features that are there in WP Rig. And then there’s a whole documentation area that helps people get up and running with WP Rig because there is a small learning curve there that’s pretty palatable for anybody who’s familiar with modern development workflows. So that is a thing. So the type of person that this is designed for anybody that wants to make a theme for anything. Let’s say you’re a big agency and you pull in a big client and that client wants something extremely custom and they come to you with Figma designs. Sure, you could go out there and find some premium theme and try to like child theme and overhaul that if you want. But in many situations, I would say in most situations, if you’re working from a Figma design that’s not based off of another theme already that’s just kind of somebody else’s brainchild, then you’re probably going to want to start from scratch. And so the idea here is that this is something to replace an approach, like underscores an approach. Actually, WP Pig was based off of underscores. The whole concept of it, as Morton explained it to me, was that he wanted to build an underscores that was more modern and full-featured from a development standpoint. Topher: Does it have any opinions about Gutenberg? Rob: It does now, but it did not when I took it over because Gutenberg did not exist yet when I took over WP Rig. Topher: Okay. What are its opinions? Rob: Yeah, sure. The opinion right out of the gate is that you can use Gutenberg as an editor and it has support like CSS rules in it for the standard blocks. So you should be able to use regular Gutenberg blocks in your theme and they should look just fine. There’s no resets in there. It doesn’t start from scratch. There’s not a bunch of styling you have to do for the blocks necessarily. Now, if you go to the full site editing or block-based mentality here, there are some things you need to do in WP Rig to convert the out-of-the-box WP Rig into another paradigm essentially. Right when you pull WP Rig, the assumption is you’re building what most people would refer to as a hybrid theme. The theme supports API or whatever, and the assumption is that you’re not going to be using the site editor. You’re just going to kind of do traditional WordPress, but you might be using Gutenberg for your content. So you’re just using Gutenberg kind of to author your pages and your posts and stuff like that, but not necessarily the whole site. WP Rig has the ability to kind of transform itself into other paradigms. So the first paradigm we built out was the universal theme approach. And the idea there is that you get a combination of the full site editing capabilities. But then you also have the traditional menu manager and the settings customizer framework or whatever is still there, right? These are things that don’t exist in a standard block-based theme. So I guess an easy example would be like the 2025 WordPress theme that comes right out of the box. It comes installed in WordPress. That is a true block-based theme, not a universal theme. So it doesn’t have those features because the assumption there is that it doesn’t need those features. You can kind of transform WP Rig into a universal theme that’s kind of a hybrid between a block-based and a classic theme. And then it can also transform into a strictly block-based theme as well. So following the same architecture as like the WordPress 2025 theme or Ollie or something like that is also a true block-based theme as well. So you can easily convert or transform the starting point of WP Rig into either of those paradigms if that’s the type of theme you’re setting out to build. Topher: Okay. That sounds super flexible. How much work is it to do that? Rob: It’s like one command line. Previously we had some tutorials on the website that showed you step-by-step, like what you needed to change about the theme to do that. You would have to add some files, delete some files, edit some code, add some theme supports into the base support class and some other stuff. I have recently, as of like a year and a half ago or a year ago, created a command line or a command that you can type into the command line that basically does that entire conversion process for you in like the blink of an eye. It takes probably a second to a second and a half to perform those changes to the code and then you’re good to go. It is best to do that conversion before you start building out your whole theme. It’s not impossible to do it after. But you’re more likely to run into problems or conflicts if you’ve already set out building your whole theme under one paradigm, and then you decide how the project you want to switch over to block-based or whatever. You’re likely to run into the need to refactor a bunch of stuff in that situation. So it is ideal to make that choice extremely early on in the process of developing your theme. But either way it’ll still work. That’s just one of the many tools that exist in WP Rig to transform it or convert it in several ways. That’s just one example. There are other examples of ways that Rig kind of converts itself to other paradigms as well. Topher: Yeah. All right. In my development life, I’ve had two parts to it. And one is the weekend hobbyist, or I download cadence and I whip something up in 20 minutes because I just want to experiment and the other is agency life where everything’s in Git, things are compiled, there are versions, blah, blah, blah. This sounds very friendly to that more professional pathway. Rob: Absolutely. Yes. Or, I mean, there’s another situation here too. If you’re a company who develops themes and publishes them to a platform like ThemeForest or any other platform, perhaps you’re selling themes on your own website, whatever, if you’re making things for sale, there’s no reason you couldn’t use WP Rig to build your themes. We have a bundle process that bundles your theme for publication or publishing. Whether you’re an agency or whether you’re putting your theme out for sale, it doesn’t matter, during that bundle process, it does actually white label the entire code base to where there’s no mention of WP Rig in the code whatsoever. Let’s say you were to build a theme that you wanted to put up for sale because you have some cool ideas. Say, page transitions now are completely supported in all modern or in most modern browsers. And when I say print page transitions, for those that are in the know, I am talking about not single page app page transitions, but through website page transitions. You can now do that. Let’s say you were like, “Hey, I’m feeling ambitious and I want to put out some new theme that comes with these page transitions built in,” and that’s going to be fancy on ThemeForest when people look at my demo, people might want to buy that. You could totally use WP Rig to build that out into a theme and the bundle process will white label all of the code. And then when people buy your theme and download that code, if they’re starting to go through and look through your code, they’re not going to have any way of knowing that it was built with WP Rig unless they’re familiar with the base WP Rig architecture, like how it does its object-oriented programming. It might be familiar with the patterns that it’s using and be able to kind of discern like, okay, well, this is the same pattern WP Rig uses, so high likelihood it was built with WP Rig. But they’re not going to be able to know by reading through the code. It’s not going to say WP Rig everywhere. It’s going to have the theme all over the place in the code. Topher: Okay. So then is that still WP Rig code? It just changed its labels? Rob: Yeah. Topher: So, it’s not like you’re exporting HTML, CSS and JavaScript? The underlying Rig framework is still there. Rob: Yeah. During the bundle process, it is bundling CSS and HTML. Well, HTML in the case of a block-based theme. But, yeah, it is bundling your PHP, your CSS, your JavaScript into the theme that you’re going to let people download when they buy it, or that you’re going to ship to your whatever client’s website. But all that code is going to be transpiled. In the case of CSS and JavaScript, there’s only going to be minified versions of that code in that theme. The source code is not actually going to be in there. Topher: This sounds pretty cool. You mentioned some stuff might be coming. You don’t have to tell me what it is, but do you have a timeline? When should we be watching for the next cool thing from Rig? Rob: Okay, cool. Well, I’m going to keep iterating on Rig forever. Regardless of any future products that might be built on WP Rig, WP Rig will always and forever remain an open source product for anybody to use for free and we, I, and possibly others in the future will continue to update it and support it over time. We just recently put out 3.1. You could expect the 3.2 anytime in the next six months to a year, probably closer to six months. One feature I’m looking at particularly closely right now is the new stuff coming out in version 6.9 of WordPress around the various APIs that are there. I think one of them is called the form… There’s a field API and a form API or view API or something like that. So WP Rig comes with a React-based settings framework in it. So if you want your theme to have a bunch of settings in it to make it flexible for whoever buys your theme, you can use this settings framework to easily create a bunch of fields, and then that framework will automatically manage all your fields and store all the data from those fields and make it easy to retrieve the values of the input on those fields, without knowing any React at all. Now, if you know React, you can go in there and, you know, embellish what’s already there, but it takes a JSON approach. So if you just understand JSON, you can go in and change the JSON for the framework, and that will automatically add fields into the settings framework. So you don’t even have to know React to extend the settings page if you want. That will likely get an overhaul using these new APIs being introduced into Rig. Topher: All right. How often have you run into something where, “Oh, look, WordPress has a new feature, I need to rebuild my system”? Rob: Over the last four or five years, it’s happened a lot because, yeah, I mean, like I said, when I first took this thing over, Gutenberg had not even been introduced yet. So, you had the introduction of Gutenberg and blocks. That was one thing. Then this whole full site editing became a thing, which later became the site editor. So that became a whole thing. Then all these various APIs. I mean, it happens quite frequently. So I’ve been working to keep it modern and up to date over the past four years and it’s been an incredible learning experience. It not only keeps my WordPress knowledge extremely sharp, but I’ve also learned how various other toolkits are built. That’s been the interesting thing. From a development standpoint, there’s two challenges here. One of the challenges is staying modern on the WordPress side of things. For instance, WordPress coding standards came out with a version 3 and then a version 3.1 about two years ago. I had to update WP Rig to leverage those modern coding standards. So that’s one example is as WordPress changes, the code in WP Rig also needs to change. Or for instance, if new CSS standards change, right, new CSS properties come out, it is ideal for the base CSS in WP Rig, meaning the CSS that you get right out of the box with it, comes with some of these, for instance, CSS grid, Flexbox, stuff like that. If I was adopting a theme framework to build a theme on, I would expect some of that stuff to be in there. And those things were extremely new when I first took over WP Rig and were not all baked in there essentially. So I’ve had to add a lot of that over time. Now there’s another side to this, which is not just keeping up with WordPress and CSS and PHP, 8. whatever, yada yada yada. You’ve also got the toolkit. There are various node packages and composer packages of power WP Rig and the process in which it does the transpiling, the bundling, the automated manipulation of your code during various aspects of the usage of WP Rig is a whole nother set of challenges because now you have to learn concepts like, well, how do I write custom node scripts? Right? Like there were no WP CLI commands built into WP Rig when I first took it over. Now there’s a whole list. There’s a whole library of WP CLI commands that come in Rig right out of the gate. And so I’ve had to learn about that. So just various things that come with knowing how do you automate the process of converting code, that’s something that was completely foreign to me when I first took over WP Rig. That’s been another incredible learning experience is understanding like what’s the difference between Webpack and Gulp. I didn’t know, right? I would tell people I’m using Gulp and WP Rig and they would be like, “Well, why don’t you just use Webpack?” and I would say, “I don’t know. I don’t know what the difference is.” So over time I could figure out what are the differences? Why aren’t we using Webpack? And I’m glad I spent some time on that because it turns out Webpack is not the hottest thing anymore, so I just skipped right over all that. When I overhauled for version 3, we’re now not using Gulp anymore as of 3.1. We’re now using more of a Vite-like process, far more modern than Webpack and far better and faster and sleeker and lighter. I had to learn a bunch about what powers Vite. What is Vite doing under the hood that we might be able to also do in WP Rig, but do it in a WordPress way. Because Vite is a SaaS tool. If you’re building a SaaS, like React with a… we’re not a SaaS. I guess a spa is a better term to use here. If you’re building a single page application with React or view or belt or whatever, right, then knowing what Vite is and just using Vite right out of the box is perfect. But it doesn’t translate perfectly to WordPress land because WordPress has its own opinions. And so I did have to do some dissecting there and figure out what to keep and what to not keep to what to kind of set aside so that WordPress can keep doing what WordPress does the way WordPress likes to do it, but also improve on how we’re doing some of the compiling and transpiling and the manipulation of the code during these various. Topher: All right. I want to pivot a little bit to some personal-ish questions. Rob: Okay. Topher: This is a big project. I’m sure it takes up plenty of your time. How scalable is that in your life? Do you want to do this for the rest of your life? Rob: That’s a fantastic question. I don’t know about the rest of my life. I mean, I definitely want to do web development for the rest of my life because the web has, let’s be honest, it’s transformed everyone’s way of life, whether you’re a web developer or not. You know, the fact that we have the internet in our pocket now, you know, it has changed everything. Apps, everything. It’s all built on the web. So I certainly want to be involved in the web the rest of my life. Do I want to keep doing WordPress the rest of my life? I don’t know. Do I want to keep doing WP Rig the rest of my life? I don’t know. But I will say that you bring up a very interesting point, which is it does take up a lot of time and also trust in open source over the past four or five years I would argue has diminished a little bit as a result of various events that have occurred over the past two or three years. I mean, we could cite the whole WP Engine Matt Mullerwig thing. We can also cite what’s going on with Oracle and JavaScript. Well, I mean, there’s many examples of this. I mean, we can cite the whole thing that happened… I mean, there’s various packages out there that are used and developed and open source to anybody, and some of them are going on maintained and it’s causing security vulnerabilities and degradation and all this stuff. So it’s a very important point. One thing I started thinking about after considering that in relation to WP Rig was I noticed that there’s usually a for-profit arm of any of these frameworks that seems to extend the lifespan of it. Let’s just talk about React, for example, React is an open source JavaScript framework, but it’s used by Facebook and Facebook is extremely for-profit. So companies that are making infrastructural or architectural decisions, they will base their choice on whether or not to use a framework largely on how long they think this framework is going to remain relevant or valid or maintained, right? A large part of that is, well, is there a company making money off of this thing? Because if there is, the chances- Topher: They’re going to keep doing that. Rob: They’re going to keep doing it. It’s going to stay around. That’s good. I think that’s healthy. A lot of people that like open source and want everything to be free, they might look at something like that and say like, well, I don’t want you to make a paid version of it or there shouldn’t be a pro version. I think that’s a very short-sighted way of looking at that software and these innovations. I think a more experienced way of looking at it is if you want something to remain relevant and maintained for a long period of time, having a for-profit way in which it’s leveraged is a very good thing. I mean, let’s be real. Would WordPress still be what it is today if there wasn’t a wordpress.com or if WooCommerce wasn’t owned by Automattic or whatever, right? They’ll be on top. I mean, it’s obviously impossible to say, but my argument would be, probably not. I mean, look at what’s happened to the other content management systems out there. You know, Joomla Drupal. They don’t really have a flourishing, you know, paid pro service that goes with their thing that’s very popular, at least definitely not as popular as WordPress.com or WordPress VIP or some of these other things that exist out there. And so having something that’s making and generating money that can then contribute back into it the way Automattic has been doing with WordPress over these years has, in my opinion, been instrumental. I mean, people can talk smack about Gutenberg all they want, but let’s be real, it’s 2025, would you still feel that WordPress is an elegant solution if we were still working from the WYSIWYG and using the classic editor? And I know a lot of people are still using the classic editor and there’s classic for us, the fork and all that stuff. But I mean, that only makes sense in a very specific implementation of WordPress, a very specific paradigm. If you want to explore any of these other paradigms out there, that way of thinking about WordPress kind of falls apart pretty quickly. I, for one, am happy that Gutenberg exists. I’m very happy that Automattic continues. And I’m grateful, actually, that Automattic continues to contribute back into WordPress. And not just them, obviously there’s other companies, XWP, 10Up, all these other companies are also contributing as well. But I’m very grateful that this ecosystem exists and that there’s contribution going back in and it’s happening from companies that are making money with this. And I think that’s vital. All that to say that WP Rig may and likely will have paid products in the future that leverage WP Rig. So that’s not to say that WP Rig will eventually cost money. That’s just to say that eventually people can expect other products to come out in the future that will be built on WP Rig and incentivize the continued contributions back into WP Rig. The open source version of WP Rig. Topher: That’s cool. I think that’s wise. If you want anything to stay alive, you have to feed it. Rob: That’s right. Topher: I had some more questions but I had forgotten them because I got caught up in your answer. Rob: Oh, thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment. I mean, my answer was eloquent. But I’m happy to expand on anything, know you, WordPress related, me related, you know, whether it comes to the ecosystem in WordPress, the whole WordCamp meetup thing is very interesting. I led the WP Omaha meetup for many years here in Omaha, Nebraska and I also led the WordCamp, the organizing of WordCamp here in Omaha for several years as well. That whole community, the whole ecosystem, at least in America seems to have largely fallen apart. I don’t know if you want to talk about that at all. But yeah, I’m ready to dive into any topics. Topher: I’m going to have one more question and then we’re going to wrap up. And it was that you were talking about all the things you had to learn. I’m sure there were nights where you were looking at your computer thinking, “Oh man, I had it working, now I gotta go learn a new thing.” I would love for you to go back in time and blog all of that if you would. But given that you can’t, I would be interested in a blog moving forward, documenting what you’re learning, how you’re learning it and starting maybe with a post that’s summarizes all of that. Obviously, that’s up to you and how you want to spend your time, but I think it’d be really valuable to other people starting a project, picking up somebody else’s project to see what the roadmap might look like. You know what I mean? Rob: For sure. Well, I can briefly summarize what I’ve learned over the years and where I’m at today with how I do this kind of stuff. I will say that a lot of the improvements to WP Rig that have happened over the last year or two would not be possible without the advent of AI. Topher: Interesting. Rob: That’s a fancy way of saying that I have been by coding a lot of WP Rig lately. If you know how to use AI, it is extremely powerful and it can help you do many things very quickly that previously would have taken much longer or more manpower. So, yeah, perhaps if there was like five, six, seven people actively, excuse me, actively contributing to WP Rig, then this type of stuff would have been possible previously, but that’s not the case. There is one person, well, one main contributor to WP Rig today and you’re talking to them. There are a handful of other people that have been likely contributing to WP Rig over the versions and you can find their contributions in the change log file in WP Rig. But those contributions have been extremely light compared to what I’ve been doing. I wouldn’t be able to do any of it without AI. I have learned my ability to learn things extremely rapidly has ramped up tenfold since I started learning how to properly leverage LLMs and AI. So that’s not to say that like, you know, WP Rig, all the code is just being completely written by AI and I’m just like. make it better, enter, and then like WP Rig is better. I wish it was that easy. It’s certainly not that. But when I needed to start asking some of these vital questions that I really didn’t have anyone to turn to to help answer them, I was able to turn to AI. For instance, let’s go back to the Webpack versus Gulp situation. Although Gulp is no longer used in WP Rig, you know, it was used in WP Rig until very recently. So I had to understand like, what is this system, how does it work, how do I extend it and how do I update it and all these things, right? And why aren’t we using WebPack and you know, is there validity to this criticism behind you should use webpack instead of Gulp or whatever, right? I was able to use AI to ask these questions and be able to get extremely good answers out of it and give me the direction I needed to make some of these kind of higher level decisions on like architecturally where should WP Rig go? It was through these virtual conversations with LLMs that I was able to refine the direction of WP Rig in a direction that is both modern and forward-thinking and architecturally sound. I learned a tremendous amount from AI about the architecture, about the code, about all of it. My advice to anybody that wants to extend their skill set a little bit in the development side of things is to leverage this new thing that we have in a way that is as productive as possible for you. So that’s going to vary from person to person. But for me, if I’m on a flight or if I’m stuck somewhere for a while, like, let’s say I got to take my kid to practice or something and I’m stuck there for an hour and I got to find some way to kill my time 9 times out of 10, I’m on my laptop or on my phone having conversations with Grok or ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever. I am literally refining… I’m just sitting there asking it questions that are on my mind that I wish I could ask somebody who’s like 10 times more capable than me. It has been instrumental. WP Rig wouldn’t be where it is today if it wasn’t for that. I would just say to anybody, especially now that it’s all on apps and you don’t have to be on a browser anymore, adopt that way of thinking. You know, if you’re on your lunch break or whatever and you have an hour lunch break and you only take 15 minutes to eat, what could you be doing with those other 45 minutes? You could just jump on this magical thing that we have now and start probing it for questions. Like, Hey, here’s what I know. Here’s what I don’t know. Fill these knowledge gaps for me.” And it is extremely good at doing that. Topher: So my question was, can you blog this and your answer told me that there’s more there that I want to hear. That’s the stuff that should be in your book when you write your book. Rob: I’m flattered that you would be interested in reading anything that I write. So thank you. I’ve written stuff in the past and it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. But I also don’t have any platforms to market it either. But yeah, no, I made some… I’m sorry. Topher: I think your experience is valuable far beyond Rig or WordPress. If you abstract it out of a particular project to say, you know, I did this with a project, I learned this this way, I think that would be super valuable. Rob: Well, I will say that recently at my current job, I was challenged to create an end to end testing framework with Playwright that would speed up how long it takes to test things and also prevent, you know, to make things fail earlier, essentially, to prevent broken things from ending up in the wild, right, and having to catch them the hard way. I didn’t know a lot about Playwright, but I do know how toolkits work now because of WP Rig. And I was able to successfully in a matter of, I don’t know, three days, put together a starter kit for a test framework that we’re already using at work to test any website that we create for any client. It can be extended and it can be hooked into any CI CD pipeline and it generates reports for you and it does a whole bunch of stuff. I was able to do this relatively quickly. This knowledge, yes, does come in handy in other situations. Will I end up developing other toolkits like WP Rig in the future for other things? I guess if I can give any advice to anybody listening out there, another piece of advice I would give people is, you know, especially if you’re a junior developer and you’re still learning or whatever, or you’re just a marketing person and just want to have more control over the functionality side of what you’re creating or more insight into that so you could better, you know, manage projects or whatever. My advice would be to take on a small little project that is scoped relatively small that’s not too much for you to chew and go build something and do it with… Just doing that will be good. But if you can do it with the intent to then present it in some fashion, whether it be a blog article or creating a YouTube video or going to a meetup and giving a talk on it or even a lunch and learn at work or whatever, right, that will, in my experience, it will dramatically amplify how much you learn from that little pet project that’s kind of like a mini learning experience. And I highly encourage anybody out there to do that on the regular. Actually, no matter what your experience level is in development, I think you should do these things on a regular basis. Topher: All right. I’m going to wrap this up. I got to get back to work. You probably have to get back to work. Rob: Yeah. Topher: Thanks for talking. Rob: Thanks for having me, Topher. Really appreciate it. Topher: Where could people find you? WPrig.io?  Rob: Yeah, WPrig.io. WP rig has accounts on all of the major platforms and, even on Bluesky and Mastodon. You can look me up, Rob Ruiz. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on all of those same platforms as well. You can add me on Facebook if you want, whatever. And I’m also in the WordPress Slack as well as Rob Ruiz. You can find me in the WordPress Slack. And then I’m on the WordPress Reddit and all that stuff. So yeah, reach out. If anybody wants to have any questions about Rig or anything else, I’m happy to engage.  Topher: Sounds good. All right, I’ll see you. Rob: All right, thanks, Topher. Have a good day. Topher: This has been an episode of the Hallway Chats podcast. I’m your host Topher DeRosia. Many thanks to our sponsor Nexcess. If you’d like to hear more Hallway Chats, please let us know on hallwaychats.com.

In this panel episode, the crew discusses AI platform consolidation, open-source sustainability, and the future of web development. We break down Anthropic's acquisition of Bun, what it means for the JavaScript ecosystem, and whether open-source projects can remain independent as AI companies invest heavily in infrastructure. We also discuss Zig leaving GitHub, growing concerns around AI-first developer tools, npm security vulnerabilities, and supply-chain risk in modern software. The episode wraps with hot takes on AI infrastructure costs, developer productivity, and practical advice for engineers navigating today's rapidly changing tech landscape. Resources Anthropic acquires Bun as Claude Code hits $1B milestone: https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-acquires-bun-as-claude-code-reaches-usd1b-milestone Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession ruined the service: https://ziglang.org/news/migrating-from-github-to-codeberg/ Shai-Hulud: 1K+ npm packages & 27K repos infected: https://helixguard.ai/blog/malicious-sha1hulud-2025-11-24 IBM CEO says AI data center spending “won't pay off” at current costs: https://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-ceo-big-tech-ai-capex-data-center-spending-2025-12 We want to hear from you! How did you find us? Did you see us on Twitter? In a newsletter? Or maybe we were recommended by a friend? Fill out our listener survey (https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu)! https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu Let us know by sending an email to our producer, Elizabeth, at elizabeth.becz@logrocket.com (mailto:elizabeth.becz@logrocket.com), or tweet at us at PodRocketPod (https://twitter.com/PodRocketpod). Check out our newsletter (https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/)! https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/ Follow us. Get free stickers. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/get-podrocket-stickers), and we'll send you free PodRocket stickers! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket provides AI-first session replay and analytics that surfaces the UX and technical issues impacting user experiences. Start understanding where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com. Try LogRocket for free today. (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Chapters 01:00 – Meet the Panel: Paige, Jack, and Paul 02:00 – Anthropic Acquires Bun: First Reactions 05:30 – What the Bun Acquisition Means for JavaScript Runtimes 09:00 – Open Source Funding, Independence, and New Exit Models 14:30 – Zig Leaves GitHub: AI-First Platforms and OSS Friction 20:30 – GitHub, Copilot, and Developer Experience Tradeoffs 24:30 – npm Security, Supply Chain Attacks, and Trust at Scale 31:00 – Are We Too Dependent on Big Tech Platforms? 36:30 – AI Infrastructure Costs and the Sustainability Question 43:00 – Small Models, Local AI, and the Future of Inference 50:30 – Hot Takes: Subscriptions, Burnout, and Developer Frustration 58:30 – Security Alerts, Tooling Wins, and Final Thoughts Special Guest: Jack Herrington.

From creating SWE-bench in a Princeton basement to shipping CodeClash, SWE-bench Multimodal, and SWE-bench Multilingual, John Yang has spent the last year and a half watching his benchmark become the de facto standard for evaluating AI coding agents—trusted by Cognition (Devin), OpenAI, Anthropic, and every major lab racing to solve software engineering at scale. We caught up with John live at NeurIPS 2025 to dig into the state of code evals heading into 2026: why SWE-bench went from ignored (October 2023) to the industry standard after Devin's launch (and how Walden emailed him two weeks before the big reveal), how the benchmark evolved from Django-heavy to nine languages across 40 repos (JavaScript, Rust, Java, C, Ruby), why unit tests as verification are limiting and long-running agent tournaments might be the future (CodeClash: agents maintain codebases, compete in arenas, and iterate over multiple rounds), the proliferation of SWE-bench variants (SWE-bench Pro, SWE-bench Live, SWE-Efficiency, AlgoTune, SciCode) and how benchmark authors are now justifying their splits with curation techniques instead of just "more repos," why Tau-bench's "impossible tasks" controversy is actually a feature not a bug (intentionally including impossible tasks flags cheating), the tension between long autonomy (5-hour runs) vs. interactivity (Cognition's emphasis on fast back-and-forth), how Terminal-bench unlocked creativity by letting PhD students and non-coders design environments beyond GitHub issues and PRs, the academic data problem (companies like Cognition and Cursor have rich user interaction data, academics need user simulators or compelling products like LMArena to get similar signal), and his vision for CodeClash as a testbed for human-AI collaboration—freeze model capability, vary the collaboration setup (solo agent, multi-agent, human+agent), and measure how interaction patterns change as models climb the ladder from code completion to full codebase reasoning. We discuss: John's path: Princeton → SWE-bench (October 2023) → Stanford PhD with Diyi Yang and the Iris Group, focusing on code evals, human-AI collaboration, and long-running agent benchmarks The SWE-bench origin story: released October 2023, mostly ignored until Cognition's Devin launch kicked off the arms race (Walden emailed John two weeks before: "we have a good number") SWE-bench Verified: the curated, high-quality split that became the standard for serious evals SWE-bench Multimodal and Multilingual: nine languages (JavaScript, Rust, Java, C, Ruby) across 40 repos, moving beyond the Django-heavy original distribution The SWE-bench Pro controversy: independent authors used the "SWE-bench" name without John's blessing, but he's okay with it ("congrats to them, it's a great benchmark") CodeClash: John's new benchmark for long-horizon development—agents maintain their own codebases, edit and improve them each round, then compete in arenas (programming games like Halite, economic tasks like GDP optimization) SWE-Efficiency (Jeffrey Maugh, John's high school classmate): optimize code for speed without changing behavior (parallelization, SIMD operations) AlgoTune, SciCode, Terminal-bench, Tau-bench, SecBench, SRE-bench: the Cambrian explosion of code evals, each diving into different domains (security, SRE, science, user simulation) The Tau-bench "impossible tasks" debate: some tasks are underspecified or impossible, but John thinks that's actually a feature (flags cheating if you score above 75%) Cognition's research focus: codebase understanding (retrieval++), helping humans understand their own codebases, and automatic context engineering for LLMs (research sub-agents) The vision: CodeClash as a testbed for human-AI collaboration—vary the setup (solo agent, multi-agent, human+agent), freeze model capability, and measure how interaction changes as models improve — John Yang SWE-bench: https://www.swebench.com X: https://x.com/jyangballin Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: John Yang on SWE-bench and Code Evaluations 00:00:31 SWE-bench Origins and Devon's Impact on the Coding Agent Arms Race 00:01:09 SWE-bench Ecosystem: Verified, Pro, Multimodal, and Multilingual Variants 00:02:17 Moving Beyond Django: Diversifying Code Evaluation Repositories 00:03:08 Code Clash: Long-Horizon Development Through Programming Tournaments 00:04:41 From Halite to Economic Value: Designing Competitive Coding Arenas 00:06:04 Ofir's Lab: SWE-ficiency, AlgoTune, and SciCode for Scientific Computing 00:07:52 The Benchmark Landscape: TAU-bench, Terminal-bench, and User Simulation 00:09:20 The Impossible Task Debate: Refusals, Ambiguity, and Benchmark Integrity 00:12:32 The Future of Code Evals: Long Autonomy vs Human-AI Collaboration 00:14:37 Call to Action: User Interaction Data and Codebase Understanding Research

Joël contributes some thoughts on working with custom attributes as he follows up on last week's discussion about ActiveModels with Sally. Joël breaks down how he transforms various strings and objects when working with ActiveModels to simplify more advance workloads, as Sally queries their different use cases and how best to utilise them for her own workflow. — Catch up on Sally and Aji's episode from last week on ActiveModels before diving into this discussion! (https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com/) If you'd like to give some of the gems mentioned in this episode a try for yourself they can be found here - phonelib (https://github.com/daddyz/phonelib) - money-rails (https://github.com/RubyMoney/money-rails) - astronoby (https://github.com/rhannequin/astronoby) Thanks to our sponsors for this episode Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way (https://judoscale.com/bikeshed) (check the link for your free gift!), and Scout Monitoring (https://www.scoutapm.com/). Your hosts for this episode have been thoughtbot's own Joël Quenneville (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-quenneville-96b18b58/) and Sally Hall (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallyannahall). If you would like to support the show, head over to our GitHub page (https://github.com/sponsors/thoughtbot), or check out our website (https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com). Got a question or comment about the show? Why not write to our hosts: hosts@bikeshed.fm This has been a thoughtbot (https://thoughtbot.com/) podcast. Stay up to date by following us on social media - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@thoughtbot/streams) - LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/) - Mastodon (https://thoughtbot.social/@thoughtbot) - BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/thoughtbot.com) © 2025 thoughtbot, inc.

James and Frank unwrap 2025 as the Year of AI Development, covering new models, the rise of agents, and editor integrations like Copilot in VS Code that changed how developers write and maintain code. You'll hear practical takeaways—how next-edit, local models, RAG/vectorization and app‑on‑demand sped prototyping, slashed maintenance time, and why the hosts think the AI boom has legs into 2026 despite looming uncertainty. Follow Us Frank: Twitter, Blog, GitHub James: Twitter, Blog, GitHub Merge Conflict: Twitter, Facebook, Website, Chat on Discord Music : Amethyst Seer - Citrine by Adventureface ⭐⭐ Review Us (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/merge-conflict/id1133064277?mt=2&ls=1) ⭐⭐ Machine transcription available on http://mergeconflict.fm

Jorge Suarez joins The PowerShell Podcast to share his journey into PowerShell, automation, and community contribution. From attending his first MMS conference to building creative and practical PowerShell projects, Jorge talks about how PowerShell became the primary driver of his career growth. The conversation covers his popular Intune Hydration Kit, creative TUI projects inspired by shows like Severance, and how curiosity and experimentation led him to build tools he wished existed earlier in his career.   Beyond tooling, Jorge opens up about imposter syndrome, learning in public, and using PowerShell as a force multiplier to automate work, stand out professionally, and think differently about problem solving.   Key Takeaways: PowerShell accelerates careers – Automating repetitive work and forcing yourself to use PowerShell daily builds fluency and opens new opportunities. Build what you wish you had – Jorge's projects, including Intune Hydration Kit and multiple TUI tools, came from solving his own real-world problems. Imposter syndrome is fuel – When managed well, it can drive curiosity, learning, and long-term growth instead of holding you back. Guest Bio: Jorge Suarez is an Endpoint Platform Engineer and PowerShell enthusiast. Jorge is known for building creative PowerShell solutions—including terminal user interfaces and Intune automation projects. He's an active community contributor who blogs, shares code on GitHub, and advocates for learning in public.   Resource Links: Jorge Suarez on GitHub – https://github.com/jorgeasaurus Jorge's Blog – https://www.jorgeasaur.us/ Intune Hydration Kit – https://github.com/jorgeasaurus/IntuneHydrationKit Connect with Andrew - https://andrewpla.tech/links PDQ Discord – https://discord.gg/PDQ PowerShell Wednesdays – https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=PowerShell+Wednesdays The PowerShell Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NEDX_3kDhZQ

Lovable CEO Anton Osika joins the AI Daily Brief to unpack how AI-assisted coding evolved from early GitHub experiments into load-bearing infrastructure inside companies, why 2025 marked the inflection point for vibe coding, and why 2026 will belong to builders who can think, plan, and ship with AI end to end. The conversation covers the shift from prototypes to production, how enterprises are rethinking workflows and SaaS, the rise of personal and ephemeral software, and what skills will actually matter as AI takes on more of the mechanics of building. Brought to you by:KPMG – Discover how AI is transforming possibility into reality. Tune into the new KPMG 'You Can with AI' podcast and unlock insights that will inform smarter decisions inside your enterprise. Listen now and start shaping your future with every episode. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.kpmg.us/AIpodcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Blitzy.com - Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://blitzy.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to build enterprise software in days, not months Robots & Pencils - Cloud-native AI solutions that power results ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://robotsandpencils.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Agent Readiness Audit from Superintelligent - Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://besuper.ai/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠to request your company's agent readiness score.The AI Daily Brief helps you understand the most important news and discussions in AI. Subscribe to the podcast version of The AI Daily Brief wherever you listen: https://pod.link/1680633614Interested in sponsoring the show? sponsors@aidailybrief.ai

One year ago, Anthropic launched the Model Context Protocol (MCP)—a simple, open standard to connect AI applications to the data and tools they need. Today, MCP has exploded from a local-only experiment into the de facto protocol for agentic systems, adopted by OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Block, and hundreds of enterprises building internal agents at scale. And now, MCP is joining the newly formed Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation, alongside Block's Goose coding agent, with founding members spanning the biggest names in AI and cloud infrastructure. We sat down with David Soria Parra (MCP lead, Anthropic), Nick Cooper (OpenAI), Brad Howes (Block / Goose), and Jim Zemlin (Linux Foundation CEO) to dig into the one-year journey of MCP—from Thanksgiving hacking sessions and the first remote authentication spec to long-running tasks, MCP Apps, and the rise of agent-to-agent communication—and the behind-the-scenes story of how three competitive AI labs came together to donate their protocols and agents to a neutral foundation, why enterprises are deploying MCP servers faster than anyone expected (most of it invisible, internal, and at massive scale), what it takes to design a protocol that works for both simple tool calls and complex multi-agent orchestration, how the foundation will balance taste-making (curating meaningful projects) with openness (avoiding vendor lock-in), and the 2025 vision: MCP as the communication layer for asynchronous, long-running agents that work while you sleep, discover and install their own tools, and unlock the next order of magnitude in AI productivity. We discuss: The one-year MCP journey: from local stdio servers to remote HTTP streaming, OAuth 2.1 authentication (and the enterprise lessons learned), long-running tasks, and MCP Apps (iframes for richer UI) Why MCP adoption is exploding internally at enterprises: invisible, internal servers connecting agents to Slack, Linear, proprietary data, and compliance-heavy workflows (financial services, healthcare) The authentication evolution: separating resource servers from identity providers, dynamic client registration, and why the March spec wasn't enterprise-ready (and how June fixed it) How Anthropic dogfoods MCP: internal gateway, custom servers for Slack summaries and employee surveys, and why MCP was born from "how do I scale dev tooling faster than the company grows?" Tasks: the new primitive for long-running, asynchronous agent operations—why tools aren't enough, how tasks enable deep research and agent-to-agent handoffs, and the design choice to make tasks a "container" (not just async tools) MCP Apps: why iframes, how to handle styles and branding, seat selection and shopping UIs as the killer use case, and the collaboration with OpenAI to build a common standard The registry problem: official registry vs. curated sub-registries (Smithery, GitHub), trust levels, model-driven discovery, and why MCP needs "npm for agents" (but with signatures and HIPAA/financial compliance) The founding story of AAIF: how Anthropic, OpenAI, and Block came together (spoiler: they didn't know each other were talking to Linux Foundation), why neutrality matters, and how Jim Zemlin has never seen this much day-one inbound interest in 22 years — David Soria Parra (Anthropic / MCP) MCP: https://modelcontextprotocol.io https://uk.linkedin.com/in/david-soria-parra-4a78b3a https://x.com/dsp_ Nick Cooper (OpenAI) X: https://x.com/nicoaicopr Brad Howes (Block / Goose) Goose: https://github.com/block/goose Jim Zemlin (Linux Foundation) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zemlin/ Agentic AI Foundation https://agenticai.foundation Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: MCP's First Year and Foundation Launch 00:01:17 MCP's Journey: From Launch to Industry Standard 00:02:06 Protocol Evolution: Remote Servers and Authentication 00:08:52 Enterprise Authentication and Financial Services 00:11:42 Transport Layer Challenges: HTTP Streaming and Scalability 00:15:37 Standards Development: Collaboration with Tech Giants 00:34:27 Long-Running Tasks: The Future of Async Agents 00:30:41 Discovery and Registries: Building the MCP Ecosystem 00:30:54 MCP Apps and UI: Beyond Text Interfaces 00:26:55 Internal Adoption: How Anthropic Uses MCP 00:23:15 Skills vs MCP: Complementary Not Competing 00:36:16 Community Events and Enterprise Learnings 01:03:31 Foundation Formation: Why Now and Why Together 01:07:38 Linux Foundation Partnership: Structure and Governance 01:11:13 Goose as Reference Implementation 01:17:28 Principles Over Roadmaps: Composability and Quality 01:21:02 Foundation Value Proposition: Why Contribute 01:27:49 Practical Investments: Events, Tools, and Community 01:34:58 Looking Ahead: Async Agents and Real Impact

César Hidalgo has spent years trying to answer a deceptively simple question: What is knowledge, and why is it so hard to move around?We all have this intuition that knowledge is just... information. Write it down in a book, upload it to GitHub, train an AI on it—done. But César argues that's completely wrong. Knowledge isn't a thing you can copy and paste. It's more like a living organism that needs the right environment, the right people, and constant exercise to survive.Guest: César Hidalgo, Director of the Center for Collective Learning1. Knowledge Follows Laws (Like Physics)2. You Can't Download Expertise3. Why Big Companies Fail to Adapt4. The "Infinite Alphabet" of EconomiesIf you think AI can just "copy" human knowledge, or that development is just about throwing money at poor countries, or that writing things down preserves them forever—this conversation will change your mind. Knowledge is fragile, specific, and collective. It decays fast if you don't use it. The Infinite Alphabet [César A. Hidalgo]https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/458054/the-infinite-alphabet-by-hidalgo-cesar-a/9780241655672https://x.com/cesifotiRescript link. https://app.rescript.info/public/share/eaBHbEo9xamwbwpxzcVVm4NQjMh7lsOQKeWwNxmw0JQ---TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 The Three Laws of Knowledge00:02:28 Rival vs. Non-Rival: The Economics of Ideas00:05:43 Why You Can't Just 'Download' Knowledge00:08:11 The Detective Novel Analogy00:11:54 Collective Learning & Organizational Networks00:16:27 Architectural Innovation: Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble00:19:15 The First Law: Learning Curves00:23:05 The Samuel Slater Story: Treason & Memory00:28:31 Physics of Knowledge: Joule's Cannon00:32:33 Extensive vs. Intensive Properties00:35:45 Knowledge Decay: Ise Temple & Polaroid00:41:20 Absorptive Capacity: Sony & Donetsk00:47:08 Disruptive Innovation & S-Curves00:51:23 Team Size & The Cost of Innovation00:57:13 Geography of Knowledge: Vespa's Origin01:04:34 Migration, Diversity & 'Planet China'01:12:02 Institutions vs. Knowledge: The China Story01:21:27 Economic Complexity & The Infinite Alphabet01:32:27 Do LLMs Have Knowledge?---REFERENCES:Book:[00:47:45] The Innovator's Dilemma (Christensen)https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244[00:55:15] Why Greatness Cannot Be Plannedhttps://amazon.com/dp/3319155237[01:35:00] Why Information Growshttps://amazon.com/dp/0465048994Paper:[00:03:15] Endogenous Technological Change (Romer, 1990)https://web.stanford.edu/~klenow/Romer_1990.pdf[00:03:30] A Model of Growth Through Creative Destruction (Aghion & Howitt, 1992)https://dash.harvard.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7312037d-2b2d-6bd4-e053-0100007fdf3b/content[00:14:55] Organizational Learning: From Experience to Knowledge (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011)https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228754233_Organizational_Learning_From_Experience_to_Knowledge[00:17:05] Architectural Innovation (Henderson & Clark, 1990)https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200465578_Architectural_Innovation_The_Reconfiguration_of_Existing_Product_Technologies_and_the_Failure_of_Established_Firms[00:19:45] The Learning Curve Equation (Thurstone, 1916)https://dn790007.ca.archive.org/0/items/learningcurveequ00thurrich/learningcurveequ00thurrich.pdf[00:21:30] Factors Affecting the Cost of Airplanes (Wright, 1936)https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/research/papers/others/1936/wright1936a.pdf[00:52:45] Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find? (Bloom et al.)https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/IdeaPF.pdf[01:33:00] LLMs/ Emergencehttps://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11135Person:[00:25:30] Samuel Slaterhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater[00:42:05] Masaru Ibuka (Sony)https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/SonyHistory/1-02.html

Get featured on the show by leaving us a Voice Mail: https://bit.ly/MIPVM This episode explores how Copilot supports innovation, decision making and practical AI adoption across organisations. Amal Hosni Viteri shares her journey from development and DevOps into innovation leadership, describing how AI enhances productivity, reduces operational effort and helps teams focus on their specialities. She highlights the value of context‑aware tools, ethical use of AI and making technology accessible in Spanish‑speaking communities.

Aji and Sally join forces to discuss the different ways they utilise active models in their workflows. Aji describes a new system for working with active models they've been using recently, Sally recalls a project where active models could have saved her a lot of time, before putting their heads together to think of new creative ways to utilise rails' tools toolset to build other active models. — Discover more of The Magic of Rails through Eileen Uchitelle's Keynote (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgNb2_LSMMo), or check out the GitHub repo (https://github.com/thoughtbot/administrate) mentioned in this episode. Thanks to our sponsors for this episode Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way (https://judoscale.com/bikeshed) (check the link for your free gift!), and Scout Monitoring (https://www.scoutapm.com/). Your hosts for this episode have been thoughtbot's own Sally Hall (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallyannahall) and Aji Slater (https://www.linkedin.com/in/doodlingdev/). If you would like to support the show, head over to our GitHub page (https://github.com/sponsors/thoughtbot), or check out our website (https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com). Got a question or comment about the show? Why not write to our hosts: hosts@bikeshed.fm This has been a thoughtbot (https://thoughtbot.com/) podcast. Stay up to date by following us on social media - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@thoughtbot/streams) - LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/) - Mastodon (https://thoughtbot.social/@thoughtbot) - BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/thoughtbot.com) © 2025 thoughtbot, inc.

You're winding down for the year?

Topics covered in this episode: Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%? More on Deprecation Warnings How FOSS Won and Why It Matters Should I be looking for a GitHub alternative? Extras Joke Watch on YouTube About the show Sponsored by us! Support our work through: Our courses at Talk Python Training The Complete pytest Course Patreon Supporters Connect with the hosts Michael: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org / @mkennedy.codes (bsky) Brian: @brianokken@fosstodon.org / @brianokken.bsky.social Show: @pythonbytes@fosstodon.org / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky) Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too. Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it. HEADS UP: We are taking next week off, happy holiday everyone. Michael #1: Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%? by Martin Alderson Agentic coding tools are collapsing “implementation time,” so the cost curve of shipping software may be shifting sharply Recent programming advancements haven't been that great of a true benefit: Cloud, TDD, microservices, complex frontends, Kubernetes, etc. Agentic AI's big savings are not just code generation, but coordination overhead reduction (fewer handoffs, fewer meetings, fewer blocks). Thinking, product clarity, and domain decisions stay hard, while typing and scaffolding get cheap. Is it the end of software dev? Not really, see Jevons paradox: when production gets cheaper, total demand can rise rather than spending simply falling. (Historically: the efficiency of coal use led to the increased consumption of coal) Pushes back on “only good for greenfield” by arguing agents also help with legacy code comprehension and bug-fixing. I 100% agree. #Legacy code for the win. Brian #2: More on Deprecation Warnings How are people ignoring them? yep, it's right in the Python docs: -W ignore::DeprecationWarning Don't do that! Perhaps the docs should give the example of emitting them only once -W once::::DeprecationWarning See also -X dev mode , which sets -W default and some other runtime checks Don't use warn, use the @warnings.deprecated decorator instead Thanks John Hagen for pointing this out Emits a warning It's understood by type checkers, so editors visually warn you You can pass in your own custom UserWarning with category mypy also has a command line option and setting for this --enable-error-code deprecated or in [tool.mypy] enable_error_code = ["deprecated"] My recommendation Use @deprecated with your own custom warning and test with pytest -W error Michael #3: How FOSS Won and Why It Matters by Thomas Depierre Companies are not cheap, companies optimize cost control. They do this by making purchasing slow and painful. FOSS is/was a major unlock hack to skip procurement, legal, etc. Example is months to start using a paid “Add to calendar” widget! It “works both ways”: the same bypass lowers the barrier for maintainers too, no need for a legal entity, lawyers, liability insurance, or sales motion. Proposals that “fix FOSS” by reintroducing supply-chain style controls (he name-checks SBOMs and mandated processes) risk being rejected or gamed, because they restore the very friction FOSS sidesteps. Brian #4: Should I be looking for a GitHub alternative? Pricing changes for GitHub Actions The self-hosted runner pricing change caused a kerfuffle. It's has been postponed But… if you were to look around, maybe pay attention to These 4 GitHub alternatives are just as good—or better Codeburg, BitBucket, GitLab, Gitea And a new-ish entry, Tangled Extras Brian: End of year sale for The Complete pytest Course Use code XMAS2025 for 50% off before Dec 31 Writing work on Lean TDD book on hold for holidays Will pick up again in January Michael: PyCharm has better Ruff support now out of the box, via Daniel Molnar This is from the release notes of 2025.3: "PyCharm 2025.3 expands its LSP integration with support for Ruff, ty, Pyright, and Pyrefly.” If you check out the LSP section it will land you on this page and you can go to Ruff. The Ruff doc site was also updated. Previously it was only available external tools and a third party plugin, this feels like a big step. Fun quote I saw on ExTwitter: May your bug tracker be forever empty. Joke: Try/Catch/Stack Overflow Create a super annoying linkedin profile - From Tim Kellogg, submitted by archtoad

Dive into the fascinating world of CRT technology in this episode of How CRTs Work! Discover how these iconic monitors influenced video playback and gaming, from interlaced scanning to the art of synchronization. Learn about the unique challenges of emulating CRT effects today and the lasting legacy of these early technologies. Perfect for retro tech enthusiasts and curious minds alike! Follow Us Frank: Twitter, Blog, GitHub James: Twitter, Blog, GitHub Merge Conflict: Twitter, Facebook, Website, Chat on Discord Music : Amethyst Seer - Citrine by Adventureface ⭐⭐ Review Us (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/merge-conflict/id1133064277?mt=2&ls=1) ⭐⭐ Machine transcription available on http://mergeconflict.fm