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A developer discovered a backdoor in XZ, a popular open-source compression utility. Read more about the cyberattack here.
A Microsoft technical report pinpoints 54 attributes of great software engineers.
A new report from The Economist lays out how AI is changing drug development.
Are you sick of hearing about AI? What topics or technologies would you rather hear us talk about? Email us at podcast@stackoverflow.com or DM Ben here.
You can find Jessica on LinkedIn.
We've published several posts, including this most recent one, about our attempt to shape an ethical approach to combining our community of knowledge and today's AI systems.
Check out this blog post that details some of the work we did to build our data platform.
Congrats to macfij on your lifeboat badge for answering the question: How can I do a CTRL + A and a CTRL + C?
DBRX, an open, general-purpose LLM created by Databricks, reportedly outperforms GPT-3.5 and is competitive with Gemini 1.0 Pro.
Recent research found that large, complex LLMs use a simple mechanism to retrieve stored knowledge in response to a user prompt. These mechanisms can help researchers reveal what the model knows and potentially even correct false information it has stored.
FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, whose downfall began in late 2022, was sentenced last week to 25 years in prison for conspiracy and fraud.
Find Michael on LinkedIn.
Find Cassidy on her website.
Stack Overflow user Bucket received a well-deserved Lifeboat badge for rescuing How to calculate decimal(x, y) max value in SQL Server from an ocean of ignorance.
Chapters (please note that these timestamps may not be exact):
00:00 Introduction and White Paper Discussion
02:01 Long Context Windows and Retrieval Augmented Generation
05:56 Models' Ability to Recall Relevant Information
07:18 Models' Creativity and Thinking Outside the Box
09:41 Advantages and Limitations of Models' Knowledge
15:09 Databricks' Open Language Model
22:25 Sam Bankman-Fried’s Sentence and the Effects on Crypto/Blockchain
31:28 Closing Remarks and Lifeboat Badge
Small nations like Anguilla (.ai) and Tuvalu (.tv) are benefiting from their coveted domain names.
The US government is suing Apple for violation of antitrust laws, which could have a huge impact on devs, end users, and the whole ecosystem.
Reddit went public last week despite not being profitable since its launch in 2005.
How can you give feedback on a poorly reviewed PR? The Software Engineering Stack Exchange has ideas.
The four day work week is probably not the solution to our work-life balance problems.
AI-powered software development tools like Devon show promise, but their impact on code quality and maintainability remains an open question.
Shoutout to Robert, who earned a Lifeboat badge by explaining Square brackets in CSS.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:31 The Impact of Dot AI Domain Space
01:07 Antitrust Cases Against Apple
04:01 Vendor Lock-in and Apple's Ecosystem
05:08 Issues with Infotainment Systems and Apple Play
06:29 The Benefits and Challenges of a Four-Day Work Week
08:03 Providing Feedback on a Badly Reviewed PR
10:00 The Importance of Clear Expectations in Code Reviews
11:40 The Potential of AI Tools in Development
14:01 Reddit Going Public and the Future of Tech Companies
15:29 AI Tool Devon and the Challenges of Operationalizing AI Projects
21:22 Shoutout and Closing Remarks
To learn more about the signs that indicate you may be paying more for your cloud computing that you should, check out DoIT’s seven red flags guide.
We’ve spoken with DoiT on the podcast before about LLM hallucinations and the security threats that LLMs open.
DoiT’s sales pitch is simple: they provide technology and expertise to clients who want to use the cloud, free of charge, with the big cloud providers paying the bills.
Congrats to Lifeboat badge winner Sravan K Ghantasala for their answer to How to sort file lines in Bash?
Find Joshua at joshuafox com.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Cloud Cost Control
01:08 Joshua Fox's Background
04:20 Understanding FinOps
06:17 The Importance of Good Architecture
08:18 Balancing Flexibility in Architecture
10:04 Surprise Costs and Dealing with Them
13:19 Bracing for Unexpected Cloud Costs
25:41 The Future of Cloud Cost Optimization
27:09 Closing Remarks
Cribl is a data management platform. Check out their sandbox or explore their products.
Cribl Stream is their vendor-agnostic observability pipeline.
If you’re new to the term, the observability pipeline is a crucial component of the cloud-native world.
Connect with Nick on LinkedIn.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
03:23 The Data Landscape and Generative AI
06:08 Incumbents vs. Startups in the Data Space
07:46 Challenges of Data Storage and Exfiltration
09:38 Securing Large Warehouses of Data
12:21 Data Quality and ETL Pipelines
16:05 Measures of Data Quality for Gen AI
22:04 Cribl’s Role in the Data and Observability Space
26:20 The Pros and Cons of Richer Observability Monitoring
28:11 Closing Remarks and Shoutout
GitClear is a developer-friendly code review tool that aims to deliver higher developer satisfaction and faster releases. Check out their blog or find them on GitHub.
GitClear’s research focuses on how AI code-gen tools have impacted code quality (and not in a good way).
Find Bill on LinkedIn.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:30 Background of the Research
06:09 Business Model of GitClear
09:46 Copy Pasted Code
10:26 Churn Code
12:21 Code Readability
14:12 Code Suggestions and Auto-Completion
16:34 Drop in Moved Code
23:18 Larger Token Windows
26:31 Improving Gen AI
28:46 Conclusion
Node.js® is an open-source JavaScript runtime environment.
Deno is an open-source JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly runtime. Explore the quick start or check out Deno by example, a collection of annotated examples of how to use Deno.
JSR is an open-source package registry for JavaScript and TypeScript.
Keep up to date with Ryan on GitHub or his blog.
Shoutout to Stack Overflow user Squadrons, who earned a Great Question badge by asking for a Pure javascript method to wrap content in a div.
Chapters:
00:00: Introduction and Background
01:08: Creating Node.js
05:00: JavaScript on the Server Side
07:23: Impact of Node.js
09:18: Edge Function System
12:13: Protecting Against Malicious Use
16:02: JSR: Alternative to NPM
31:01: JSR and its Stage
34:20: Future of JavaScript
36:19: Closing and Shoutouts
AI shops are now releasing LLMs optimized for RAG.
Turn a repo into a prompt for a long-context LLM.
Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search and discovery tool.
Good news for developers: Apple will not remove progressive web app support on iOS in the EU.
Basil Bourque earned a Lifeboat badge by explaining How to get full name of month from date in Java 8 while formatting.
Stack Overflow has teamed up with Google Cloud to develop an API—Overflow API—to give Gemini, Google’s AI model, access to Stack Overflow knowledge communities.
Learn how Ryan’s team is working toward socially responsible AI.
Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn.
Stack Overflow user verygoodsoftwarenotvirus earned a Great Question badge by asking something at least 87,000 people have also wondered: How can I get all keys from a JSON column in Postgres?.