Howard Cohen, former Senior Advisor at the Department of Defense's Defense Media Activity and current strategist at CX Studios joins the show to unpack the power of non-kinetic capabilities in modern defense strategy. From web consolidation and cost-saving at scale to safeguarding national security through strategic communications, he shares insights from his work leading digital modernization across the Department of Defense. Together, they explore why public-facing websites are more than just digital real estate—they're mission-critical infrastructure in the information age.
array(3) { [0]=> string(64) "https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/f2cfwf72r3kyubeh/Cohen_Final.m4a" [1]=> string(0) "" [2]=> string(8) "38549999" }Big Technology Podcast - Grok’s AI Lovebot, Aqui-Hire-Sition Backlash, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent Debuts
Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Can Zuck and Elon buy their way into the AI race? 2) Will scaling laws turn AI progress over to the biggest tech 3) Grok's new AI avatars - Rudy and Ani 4) Grok's Ani AI bot gets steamy quickly 5) Why AI companies are counting on companion/love bots 6) The backlash to Aqui-Hire-Sitions after Windsurf, Scale, etc. 7) Did Big Tech antitrust backfire? 8) OpenAI announces ChatGPT Agent 9) Is Perplexity's Comet browser a player 10) Kimi K2 wows with coding availability 11) Can AI industry apply lessons from coding elsewhere? 12) One last word from Ani
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Talk Python To Me - #514: Python Language Summit 2025
Episode sponsors
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Links from the show
Seth on Twitter: @sethmlarson
Seth on Github: github.com
Python Language Summit 2025: pyfound.blogspot.com
WheelNext: wheelnext.dev
Free-Threaded Wheels: hugovk.github.io
Free-Threaded Python Compatibility Tracking: py-free-threading.github.io
PEP 779: Criteria for supported status for free-threaded Python: discuss.python.org
PyPI Data: py-code.org
Senior Engineer tries Vibe Coding: youtube.com
Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #514 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/514
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm
Developer Rap Theme Song: Served in a Flask: talkpython.fm/flasksong
--- Stay in touch with us ---
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The Stack Overflow Podcast - How to do your job happier
Read more findings from the Developer Success Lab here.
Find John at his website and connect with him on LinkedIn.
Congrats to user Matthieu M. who won a Populist badge for answering the question struct with 2 cells vs std::pair?.
Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S11 Bonus: Evan Henshaw-Plath (aka Rabble), Rabble Labs & Verse
Evan Henshaw-Plath, also known as Rabble, was born in Berkeley while his Mom was a student. His parents were hippies, and he grew up near Silicon Valley, which gave him access to work with startups as early as High School. He founded Odeo, which eventually became Twitter. He got the name Rabble cause it was founded by three Evan's, which didn't work - so he went with his online nickname. He has a cool track record of working not only on Twitter, but Flickr, Palm, and other big names. He lives in New Zealand, enjoying all the outdoor activities, and participates in activism in digital rights and environmentalism. Being a Vegetarian, he admits that his comfort food is Mexican cuisine, which he doesn't get a lot of in the land of the Kiwis.
Rabble was disappointed when Twitter shut down its open app capabilities. He wanted something like Twitter, but built to where someone couldn't take away his access. He started to dig into protocols, and eventually landed in San Francisco to tell his friends that he was going to make social media work like email and messaging.
This is the creation story of Rabble Labs & Verse.
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Big Technology Podcast - Condoleezza Rice: U.S. Tech at Risk Amid University Cuts
Condoleezza Rice is a former U.S. Secretary of State and current director of Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Rice joins Big Technology to discuss whether the United States can hold its technological edge as China races ahead in AI, batteries, and advanced manufacturing. Tune in to hear her candid take on the U.S.–China tech arms race, the ripple effects of chip export controls, and why she believes democracies are safer stewards of frontier technologies. We also cover the squeeze on university research funding, immigration-driven talent pipelines, and tuition-fueled class divides. Hit play for a data-rich, no-fluff conversation on the special sauce for the U.S. tech industry and the risks it faces in our current political environment.
Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S11 E8: Jesse Pollak, Base & Coinbase
Jesse Pollak grew up in Washington, DC, attending a Quaker school through graduating in high school. He played competitive soccer, which was a huge part of his life. Eventually, he moved to SoCal to attend school at Berkley. He got the bug to start a company, and only lasted 2 years at school - before he ventured out on his own. Eventually, his company got acquired by Coinbase, which opened up a whole new world for him. Outside of tech, he is married with a 4 month old boy. He doesn't drink caffeine, but daily, enjoys a decaf cappuccino.
In December 2021, Jesse and his team were wondering in the desert for a while, trying to figure out what was next on-chain. After considering what AWS and Heroic was for Web 2.0, they figured out that in order to go build the apps that companies like Coinbase had, they needed a foundational layer in the ecosystem to fuel that development.
This is the creation story of Base.
Sponsors
- Paddle.com
- Sema Software
- PropelAuth
- Postman
- Meilisearch
- Mailtrap
- .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Links
Our Sponsors:
* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORY
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Python Bytes - #440 Can’t Register for VibeCon
- * Switching to direnv, Starship, and uv*
- * rqlite - Distributed SQLite DB*
- * Some Markdown Stuff*
- Extras
- Joke
About the show
Sponsored by PropelAuth: pythonbytes.fm/propelauth77
Connect with the hosts
- Michael: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
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Brian #1: Switching to direnv, Starship, and uv
Last week I mentioned that I’m ready to try direnv again, but secretly, I still had some worries about the process. Thankfully, Trey has a tutorial to walk me past the troublesome parts.
direnv - an extension for your shell. It augments existing shells with a new feature that can load and unload environment variables depending on the current directory.
Switching from virtualenvwrapper to direnv, Starship, and uv
- Trey Hunner**
Trey has solved a bunch of the problems I had when I tried direnv before
Show the virtual environment name in the prompt
Place new virtual environments in local
.venv
instead of in.direnv/python3.12
Silence all of the “loading”, “unloading” statements every time you enter a directory
Have a script called
venv
to create an environment, activate it, create a
.envrc
file
- I’m more used to a
create
script, so I’ll stick with that name and Trey’s contents
- I’m more used to a
A
workon
script to be able to switch around to different projects.
- This is a carry over from “virtualenvwrapper’, but seems cool. I’ll take it.
Adding
uv
to the mix for creating virtual environments.
- Interestingly including
--seed
which, for one, installspip
in the new environment. (Some tools need it, even if you don’t)
- Interestingly including
Starship
- Trey also has some setup for Starship. But I’ll get through the above first, then MAYBE try Starship again.
- Some motivation
- Trey’s setup is pretty simple. Maybe I was trying to get too fancy before
- Starship config in toml files that can be loaded with direnv and be different for different projects. Neato
- Also, Trey mentions his dotfiles repo. This is a cool idea that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.
See also:
Michael #2: rqlite - Distributed SQLite DB
- via themlu, thanks!
- rqlite is a lightweight, user-friendly, distributed relational database built on SQLite.
- Built on SQLite, the world’s most popular database
- Supports full-text search, Vector Search, and JSON documents
- Access controls and encryption for secure deployments
Michael #3: A Python dict that can report which keys you did not use
- by Peter Bengtsson
- Very cool for testing that a dictionary has been used as expected (e.g. all data has been sent out via an API or report).
- Note: It does NOT track d.get(), but it’s easy to just add it to the class in the post.
- Maybe someone should polish it up and put it on pypi (that person is not me :) ).
Brian #4: Some Markdown Stuff
Textual 4.0.0
adds Markdown.append which can be used to efficiently stream markdown content
- The reason for the major bump is due to an interface change to Widget.anchor
- Refreshing to see a symantic change cause a major version bump.
html-to-markdown
Converts html to markdown
A complete rewrite fork of markdownify
- Lots of fun features like “streaming support”
- Curious if it can stream to Textual’s Markdown.append method. hmmm.
The Stack Overflow Podcast - Where we’re going, we don’t need fossil fuels
Realta Fusion is making fusion real and tackling today’s clean energy issues with innovative technology. Follow them on LinkedIn.
Connect with Kieran on LinkedIn.
Shoutout to Lifeboat badge winner zathura, who was awarded the badge for answering Type of triangle in MySQL.
Big Technology Podcast - Big Technology @ Five Years
Big Technology Podcast is five years old. Today, we share a quick update with 1) Gratitude for our listeners 2) A change in ad network and what our ads will sound like next 3) Our editorial philosophy 4) How you can help.
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