Category: 3-SometimeTechTalk

watsonx.ai is an enterprise-grade AI studio. Developers can get started in the watsonx Developer Hub.

We published a technical behind-the-scenes look at watsonx, as well as a Q&A on why it’s business-ready. 

Find Maryam on LinkedIn. 

Congrats to Stack Overflow user Michael Kolber, who earned a Lifeboat badge with a straightforward and effective answer to Is it possible to download a website’s entire code, HTML, CSS and JavaScript files?.

Jay Shah, former Chief Operating Officer of Octo and now Strategic Advisor at Technomile joins the show to explore how small and mid-sized companies can scale effectively and thrive amid federal market shifts. We also unpack his personal journey from helping build Octo from the ground up to navigating multiple acquisitions and get his candid perspective on the evolving landscape of government contracting, particularly the increasing focus on performance-based acquisition, innovation, and the rising expectations for industry to deliver differentiated value. Finally we dive deep into how tools like Technomile’s platform are equipping businesses to capture growth opportunities with precision, optimize resource alignment, and meet the moment of generational disruption in federal procurement.

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI has another new top executive structure 2) What is Sam Altman's role now? 3) Who is Fidji Simo, OpenAI's new CEO of Applications 4) OpenAI abandons total for-profit conversion 5) Microsoft's demands on OpenAI 6) Could Apple replace Google as the default search with AI? 7) Is it an either or decision? 8) Could Apple make AI companies bid for the default search position? 9) Everyone is cheating using ChatGPT in college 10) Do people need to change or does the education system need to change?

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Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com

Alembic is an AI platform that helps organizations see how marketing spend connects to revenue so they can illuminate blind spots and make more informed business decisions.

Connect with Abby on LinkedIn.

Stack Overflow user krishnan muthiah pillai earned a Lifeboat badge with a top-notch answer to How to forget a wireless network in android programmatically?.

In this episode of Leaders of Code, Dan Lines, cofounder and COO of LinearB; Ben Matthews, Senior Director of Engineering at Stack Overflow; and host Ben Popper talk about why velocity should be a diagnostic tool, not the primary goal of engineering teams. They also touch on the need for cross-disciplinary collaboration to align engineering with business objectives. 

They also discuss:

• AI's potential to automate repetitive tasks, allowing engineers to focus on more complex work.
• The challenges of scaling organizations and the importance of centralized developer experience teams to improve productivity.
• How non-technical staff can contribute to engineering tasks through the democratization of technology, enabling more innovation.

Episode notes:

• Connect with Dan Lines on LinkedIn.
• If you're looking to improve productivity for your engineering organization, check out LinearB.

Gary Marcus is a cognitive scientist, author, and longtime AI skeptic. Marcus joins Big Technology to discuss whether large‑language‑model scaling is running into a wall. Tune in to hear a frank debate on the limits of “just add GPUs" and what that means for the next wave of AI. We also cover data‑privacy fallout from ad‑driven assistants, open‑source bio‑risk fears, and the quest for interpretability. Hit play for a reality check on AI’s future — and the insight you need to follow where the industry heads next.

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Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice.

Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b

Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com

Anurag Goel grew up in New Delhi, but moved to Boston after college for his first job. He worked at Stripe, as the 8th employee, before eventually moving on and launching his current venture. Outside of tech, he is married, living in San Francisco. He likes to read science fiction, especially prior to bedtime. He also enjoys eating Thai food on the regular, though he mentioned he could eat pizza every day.

Post leaving Stripe, Anurag decided to work on an ambitious problem, and he started doing this by building a bunch of stuff in many different domains. After noticing a common problem in building out Kubernetes, he decided to start a new business to abstract these problems, and allow builders to focus on the differentiating factors to their solutions.

This is the creation story of Render.

Sponsors

• Mailtrap
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://render.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuragoel/

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORY


Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations

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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Orkes is a developer-first enterprise workflow orchestration platform. Explore the developer edition or dive into the docs.

Before cofounding Orkes, Jeu was an architect at Uber and Netflix. Find him on LinkedIn.

Shoutout to Stack Overflow user Alex Stiff, whose answer to Bash - Sort a list of strings earned them a Lifeboat badge.

Topics covered in this episode:

• pirel: Python release cycle in your terminal
• FastAPI Cloud
• Python's new t-strings
• Extras
• Joke

Watch on YouTube

About the show

Sponsored by NordLayer: pythonbytes.fm/nordlayer

Connect with the hosts

• Michael: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
• Brian: @brianokken@fosstodon.org / @brianokken.bsky.social
• Show: @pythonbytes@fosstodon.org / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)

Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too.

Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.

Michael #1: pirel: Python release cycle in your terminal

• pirel check shows release information about your active Python interpreter.
• If the active version is end-of-life, the program exits with code 1. If no active Python interpreter is found, the program exits with code 2.
• pirel list lists all Python releases in a table. Your active Python interpreter is highlighted.
• A picture is worth many words

Brian #2: FastAPI Cloud

• Sebastián Ramírez, creator of FastAPI, announced today the formation of a new Company, FastAPI Cloud.
• Here’s the announcement blog post: FastAPI Cloud - By The Same Team Behind FastAPI
• There’s a wait list to try it out.
• Promises to turns deployment into fastapi login; fastapi deploy
• Side note: announcement includes quote from Daft Punk: Build Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
  • I just included this in a talk I’m gave last week (and will again next week), where I modify this to “Build Easier, Better, Faster, Stronger”
  • Sebastian and I are both fans of the rocket emoji.
• BTW, we first covered FastAPI on episode 123 in 2019

Brian #3: Python's new t-strings

• Dave Peck, one of the authors of PEP 750, which will go into Python 3.14
• We covered t-strings in ep 428
• In article
  • t-strings security benefits over f-strings
  • How to work with t-strings
  • A Pig Latin example
    • Also, I think I have always done this wrong
    • Is it the first consonant to the end? or the first consonant cluster?
    • So… Brian → Rianbay? or Ianbray?
    • BTW, this is an example of nerdgassing
  • What’s next once t-strings ship?
• On thing that’s next (in Python 3.15, maybe, is using t-strings in shlex and subprocess)
  • PEP 787 – Safer subprocess usage using t-strings deferred to 3.15

Michael #4: zev

• A simple CLI tool to help you remember terminal commands.

• Examples:

  # Find running processes
  zev 'show all running python processes'
  # File operations
  zev 'find all .py files modified in the last 24 hours'
  # System information
  zev 'show disk usage for current directory'
  # Network commands
  zev 'check if google.com is reachable'
  # Git operations
  zev 'show uncommitted changes in git'
  

• Again, picture worth many words:

Extras

Brian:

• Holy Grail turns 50
• nerdgassing

Michael:

• Transcripts are a bit better now.
• Zen is better now

Joke: Can my friend come in?