Eventually, software is very hard to change. There are numerous reasons for this, and they often don’t even involve the software. The systems that run the software are old, regulators don’t let you change things, security controls, people have just forgotten how to program COBOL. There is so much code that it’s hard to know what the code does.
So when you want to change it, you don’t know what to do.
“Oracle’s predicament is more acute than the hyperscalers’. Its business is smaller, its pockets shallower and its lot hitched more tightly to the fate of a single customer, OpenAI, which accounts for over half its $500bn in pledged revenue.”
Recently in the Netherlands:
The group of people experiencing anxiety or depression has grown over the past ten years. In 2014, it was 36 percent, and last year almost 44 percent. The increase is particularly noticeable among young people and women.
More than half of Dutch renters ages 18 to 34 fear they will not find a rental home because of high rents and growing competition among house-hunters, as the supply of available housing continues to shrink.
🔗 Over 40% of Dutch have anxiety or depression; 1 in 20 receive mental health treatment
“The question that actually determines success is simpler—and almost never asked: Are we ready to operate a private cloud as a product for the next 3–5 years?”
“a new AI-infested economy”
“Let’s say one person forgot to pick up groceries or didn’t accurately recall a conversation; the other would say, ‘Oh, you’re gaslighting me. This is psychological abuse,’” he said. “But they weren’t. They were just having what I would consider pretty normal miscommunications.”
Use yours secrets to get generative AI ROI
From an article by my colleagues and me:
For generative AI (GenAI) apps to deliver real business value, they need access to your company’s proprietary data. Without it, models default to the public data they were trained on–meaning you get the same generic ideas as your competitors. If everyone is starting with the same new ideas, competitive advantage disappears. This is exactly like hiring an outside consultant and refusing to show them how your business actually operates.
A great platform as a product paper, and a fun platform philosophy thereof
I like this platform as a product paper a lot. You should check it out if you’re into DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, whatever. It’s also available in O’Reilly if you have that subscription and don’t want to lead-in yourself.
Here’s some fun parts:
Adopting a product mindset starts with continually evaluating the business context to manage “build versus buy” decisions. Contextual factors such as scale, compliance requirements, or the diversity of the workforce skill base and technology stacks often require organizations to opt out of an off-the-shelf solution and instead invest in a set of integrated capabilities designed for its specific needs.
Sometimes, you accidentally delete a paragraph of text and it’s not in the undo buffer for some reason. And most of those times, it’s good to think: I probably didn’t need that anyhow.
How shit actually works versus how you wish it worked
A discussion of messy dichotomies from the robot:
Thus spoke 🤖 :
Exploratory vs Normative — Quick Reference A compact reference for thinking about how a framework is operating: discovering reality vs prescribing order.
Exploratory vs Normative (academic, but precise)
Exploratory: investigates what exists in the real world; derives insight from practice Normative: asserts what should exist; defines correct structure and behavior Key question:
Exploratory → “What’s going on?