Cows, IoT, and ML

On this week’s Software Defined Interviews, Whitney and I talked with my friend Saad. We mostly talked about the irresistible topic of monitoring cows, which he did at his previous startup:

In this episode, Whitney and Coté speak with Saad Ansari, a product manager at Databricks, about his fascinating journey from working at Microsoft to co-founding a startup focused on creating sensors for monitoring cow behavior. They go over the challenges and rewards of transitioning from large corporations to startups and back, the differences in company scales, and the various lessons learned along the way. Saad shares some stories about developing technology for dairy farming, tackling supply chain issues, and the importance of passion in one’s work. The conversation also touches on the unique cultural aspects of dairy farming around the world, managing imposter syndrome, and the value of hands-on experience.

Check out the video, above, or the traditional podcast episode. I hope you already subscribe to it or will subscribe if you don’t already.

Relative to your interests

• The AI coding trap - The AI as a junior engineer theory. Related: “These tools do not replace programmers. They allow us to apply our expertise at a higher level and amplify the value we can provide to other people.”

• Claude Sonnet 4.5 is probably the “best coding model in the world” (at least for now) - Generate and execute code in Claude’s web app, also pull from GitHub and package managers. What else can you have it do and install in the containers(?) it’s running?

• How AI Data Centers Are Sending Your Power Bill Soaring - Ben Thompson recently noted that these prices are spiking, and the AI companies are about to get blamed for it.

• The D&D Blueprint: How Role-Playing Engines Can Guide Next-Gen AI - Others doing D&D with AI. Looks more structured than what I piddle around with.

• Your employees are already AI-augmented. Your enterprise isn’t. Here’s why that matters - “Your business processes are tribal knowledge passed down through email chains and hallway conversations. Before an AI can handle expense reports or customer inquiries autonomously, you need to document, standardize, and make machine-readable every workflow. That’s a multi-year project.” Related:

• IT leaders aren’t ready for AI autonomy - more AI value accruing to individuals instead of enterprises.

• AI loves an em dash — writers in the US, on the other hand, aren’t so keen - The poor semicolon.

• spring-ai-community/mcp-security: Spring Security Configuration for MCP - As the kids say: 👀 ”This repository provides Authorization support for Spring AI integrations with the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It covers both MCP Clients, MCP Servers, and Spring Authorization Server.”

• JFrog SwampUp 2025: The Agentic Development Era Emerges From The Swamp - ‘JFrog Fly is the company’s agentic developer platform and an MCP server that works with multiple IDEs, including VS Code and Cursor. Integrated with GitHub and observability, Fly provides a chat interface that allows users to query, promote, and roll back existing releases based on specifics of the code (e.g., “Which features were added to this release?” or “Deploy the release that added styling to the user field”). Fly includes an audacious reimagining of the software development process, making versioning automatic and version names obsolete. This makes for a slick demo but may introduce confusion for JFrog clients who don’t want to give up their semantic versions or who need to support back-level software.’

• Empowering Platform Engineers with native Kubernetes Multi-Cluster Management in VMware Cloud Foundation - For those who prefer Kubernetes instead of a PaaS, there are good options that your organization likely already has.

• Minimum Viable Sovereignty: A Smarter Path For Tech Leaders Minimum Viable Digital Sovereignty: A Practical Guide For Tech Leaders - ”Prioritize sovereignty where it matters most. Not every workload requires sovereign infrastructure — and overengineering can be costly and inefficient. Focus on areas where sovereignty is critical: AI workloads, sensitive data, and operations in regulated industries. Use edge computing to process data locally and reduce compliance risks. Localized cloud options, including sovereign clouds and regional vendors, can help meet legal requirements without compromising agility. A surgical approach to sovereignty ensures strategic alignment and cost-effectiveness.”

• Eclipse Foundation Survey Shows Jakarta EE Surpasses Spring in Enterprise Java Adoption - ”The survey, conducted between March 18 and June 5 with more than 1,700 participants, found that 58% of respondents reported using Jakarta EE compared with 56% for Spring. The milestone marks the first time Jakarta EE has surpassed its long-time rival in adoption among developers building cloud-native applications.”

• Senate report accuses DOGE of flouting law, oversight - Move fast and leak things.

Wastebook

• “Solo Toxic Neon Lord.” DriveThruRPG.com

• “He often categorizes knowledge by geography and culture (as per his rule, every person is interesting if you know something about their,” ChatGTP on Tyler.

• ‘the code’s use of a “taste-driven development (TDD) paradigm.”’ Microsoft touts ‘Vibe Working’ in Office apps

• “You only live once. And then you end up dead.” Ben.

• “Kargo will tell Argo…”

• ‘When we say, “I love my job,” we really mean, “My job pisses me off, but in an enchanting way.”’ Thank you for being annoying

Conferences

Cloud Foundry Day EU, Frankfurt, October 7th, 2025, speaking. AI for the Rest of Us, London, October 15th to 16th, London, speaking. SREDay Amsterdam, November 7th, speaking.

I’ve got a 20% off discount for AI for the Rest of Us: SDI20. You should go the conference if you can, it’ll be good!

Logoff

Usually, I recommend sticking with one brand for hotel and flights when you’re a business travel. However, now that I have lifetime platinum status with Marriott, I’m more free to stay at other hotels. What to choose? Well, based on the recent shit-selection from Marriott hotels in London, I’m staying at Accor hotels for the next few trips. In Europe, there are always many Accor hotels available. I was at an Ibis last night and I’d judge it as a Moxy+, not exactly a Court Yard. The breakfast was fine, nice plump English breakfast sausages. Tragically, Accor doesn’t seem to have a status match, so I’ll be scrambling up the ladder.

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If you’re into slides, here are the slides I presented at Civo Navigate London yesterday. Hanna Foxwell gave a great talk in the morning. Hopefully it was recorded, but who knows with these things.