Coté
Training LLMs on books judged as fair use - “In a nutshell, the judge says that legally purchased books can be used to train AI, as long as the models do not reproduce verbatim the original copyrighted works. Pirated books, of course, are a separate issue. They are unlawfully acquired! We can’t steal a book from a store, regardless of what we planned to do with it."
Three offensive robots
Enterprise AI middleware & services with Tanzu Platform 10.2
There’s a big release for the platform as a service we make at Tanzu, Tanzu Platform 10.2. In new release, we've focused a lot on adding in AI middleware and services to the Tanzu Platform. That's both in the form of AI model brokering and hosting for any type of application (like python in the AI world), and, of course, a lot of attention to Java via Spring.
Some features of note: an AI application accelerator based on Python and Langchain, auto-generated manifests for Spring migrations, and enhanced, enterprise-grade Spring Cloud Gateway. Along with customers, we're figuring out what "enterprise AI" is. Some of the aspects this update helps with, there, are speeding up developers, lower audit risk, and provide more flexibility for AI app delivery and management.
Here’s an overview post from Darin, a focus on AI from Camille, and a look at Spring from Michelle.
Relative to your interests
Why AI and SQL Go Together Like Peanut Butter and Jelly - LLM + SQL = good.
SB Payment Service Scales Applications with VMware Tanzu Platform - “With a lean team of 20 developers and five operators, SB Payment Service has achieved remarkable success using Tanzu Platform, processing a staggering 8 trillion yen in transactions annually with zero downtime.”
Europe’s Growing Fear: How Trump Might Use U.S. Tech Dominance Against It - “A few years ago, everyone was saying, ‘They’re our trusted partners.’ There’s been a radical change.” // Last week I hear people talking about “Euro Cloud,” a very new idea of building out public cloud infrastructure in Europe that, I assume, has no US public cloud ties. Related:
Broadcom’s answer to VMware pricing outrage: You’re using it wrong - IDC’s EMEA senior research director, Andrew Buss: “All our surveys in EMEA in the past five years have shown a majority preference to run workloads in private IT foremost, with around a third of organizations being quite balanced between making use of both public cloud and private IT, about 10 percent being strongly public cloud first, and only 1 to 2 percent being public cloud only in their approach.”
Amazon bought Whole Foods eight years ago — now it’s bringing it deeper into the fold - This still seems like a weird acquisition. Amazon doesn’t seem to divest things, but this feels like it’d be on the top of the list. Returning packages there is cool, but that could just be a partnership.
Datadog DASH: A Revolving Door Of Operations And Security Announcements - This is probably a good list of the things analysts will ding you for in AI marketing: “Missing from DASH, as if nonexistent, was any conversation about AI hallucinations, the computational cost of these “intelligent” systems, and the human expertise that these tools might inadvertently deprecate.”
AI search finds publishers starved of referral traffic - so far, that AI summary Google does has been great for me. I like how they kind of were like “oh, no need to Google search anymore? Here, hold my beer.”
🤖 WSJ on Google AI crushing news-site traffic — Google’s AI answer boxes are cutting search referrals by up to 55%, forcing publishers to seek direct revenue streams.
Creating a Communications Framework for Platform Engineering - Bryan covers internal community management for platforms.
“Starting and Scaling a Platform Engineering Team,” Camille Fournier & Ian Nowland, KubeCon EU 2025 - I assume this is their standing “what is platform engineering” overview and pitch. It’s pretty good. For those pro’s out there, check out Camille’s snarky comments and eye-winking here and there.
“How platform teams can help scale generative AI application delivery,” Manjunath Bhat, Gartner, PlatformCon 2025 - get Gartner’s take on platform engineering plus what that group can do for AI.
“10 years of platform engineering at SIXT: Lessons in scaling and innovation,” Boyan Dimitrov, SIXT, PlatformCon 2025 - I think it’s ridiculous to build your own platform, but other than that, there’s some good strategic thinking in here, especially on the topic of the value of centralizing and standardizing a platform. // Plus, some rare Kubernetes in production stats for a non-tech company: 350+ Kubernetes nodes, 8,000 pods. In 2024 they did 112,000 deployments, in 2015 they did about two a month. Also, a diagram of a typical platform they've built with everything. Also, some thinking about an MCP gateway.
Don’t End The Week With Nothing - If “you have the choice between multiple jobs, all else being equal, pick the one where you are able to show what you’ve worked on.” And, they add, preferable show in public.
The Thief and the Cobbler, Recobbled Cut - pretty amazing.
🤖 Microsoft Build 2025 – agents, models, GitHub, and beast mode Windows - Microsoft is doubling down on GitHub and AI agents but faces a critical gap in owning frontier models.
🤖 Dell Tech World 2025 Delivers Real Enterprise AI — At Full Speed - Dell is scaling AI infrastructure fast and could rival cloud hyperscalers with an on-prem AI platform.
Wastebook
“And, like, maybe, have yourself another espresso.”
“SQL’s elegance lies in its intellectual purity.” Here.
“I became the funny-record guy.” Dr. Demento.
“When a person speaks a corporate language instead of regular-person language, they behave in corporate ways instead of regular-person ways.” Don’t say “learnings,” say “lessons.”
“I’ve spent 15 years burning my hands so you don’t have to - these are my 21 hottest soldering iron tips.” Here.
“For no particular reason today I remember that in the first Civilization game: if you were playing a democracy and tried to start a war, the senate would veto that decision.” R. Tang.
“[I]s this really the end of the paragraph? The twilight of the compound thought?” R. Sloan.
“I do not understand tattoos as an act of conformity.” A Virginian goes to Paris.
“Sadly, most of my friends have returned their VisionPros.” My Big Beta Weekend
“It’s not boring enough for me to make the effort to change it.” I’ll take it - an acceptable podcast review.
Conferences
Cloud Foundry Day EU, Frankfurt, October 7th, 2025. SpringOne, Las Vegas, August 25th to 28th. Explore 2025 US, Las Vegas, August 25th to 28th
Probably the biggest private cloud conference in the universe, at least Earth
Private cloud runs the apps you depend on. Learn more at Explore 2025, August 25th to 28th in Las Vegas. Elevate your private cloud potential, simplify the deployment, consumption, and management of secure, cost-effective private clouds and free up time for meaningful innovation.
If you work in IT in a large organization, this conference is probably relevant to you, so you should come to it!
Logoff
For those who enjoy Yacht Rock and lounge music, this is very adjacent.
//
SB Payment Service Scales Applications with VMware Tanzu Platform - “SB Payment Service offers multiple e-commerce merchants a centralized service that integrates various payment methods through a single API. With a lean team of 20 developers and five operators, SB Payment Service has achieved remarkable success using Tanzu Platform, processing a staggering 8 trillion yen in transactions annually with zero downtime."
Datadog DASH: A Revolving Door Of Operations And Security Announcements - This is probably a good list of the things analysts will ding you for in AI marketing: “Missing from DASH, as if nonexistent, was any conversation about AI hallucinations, the computational cost of these “intelligent” systems, and the human expertise that these tools might inadvertently deprecate."
Creating a Communications Framework for Platform Engineering - Bryan covers internal community management for platforms.
Amazon bought Whole Foods eight years ago — now it’s bringing it deeper into the fold - This still seems like a weird acquisition. Amazon doesn’t seem to divest things, but this feels like it’d be on the top of the list. Returning packages there is cool, but that could just be a partnership.
Broadcom’s answer to VMware pricing outrage: You’re using it wrong - IDC’s EMEA senior research director, Andrew Buss: “All our surveys in EMEA in the past five years have shown a majority preference to run workloads in private IT foremost, with around a third of organizations being quite balanced between making use of both public cloud and private IT, about 10 percent being strongly public cloud first, and only 1 to 2 percent being public cloud only in their approach."