Category: 3-SometimeTechTalk

Amy Crawford, Director of Market Planning at LexisNexis Risk Solutions to discuss the increasing fraud in government benefits programs and reveal results from the latest True Cost of Fraud™ Study for SNAP Agencies & Integrated Eligibility Systems (IES). We also talk about the need for legacy service delivery modernization & early fraud detection PLUS what state and federal agencies can do today to fight fraud while optimizing efficiency and experience. 

Austin Vance grew up in Oklahoma, but takes residence outside of Denver, Colorado now. He is a father of 3 boys, who are also 3 in under - so he's quite busy. He loves woodworking, and teaching his oldest son how to ski. When it comes to food, he loves all of it in general - but has been drawn to asian fusion lately. And he enjoys reading business books, and sci fi - of which, Blade Runner was mentioned number one.

Austin had several experiences with consulting firms, where they operated under traditional "land and expand" models. IE, increasing the footprint of their teams. He felt passionate about building a services company that was designed to deprecate itself - starting with the wide world of DevOps.

This is the creation story of Focused.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://focused.io/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinbv/

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Diffblue Cover is an AI agent for testing complex Java code at scale. Check out their docs to get started automating unit tests today.

This article will help you understand the difference between Diffblue Cover and Copilot.

Find Animesh on LinkedIn.

Stack Overflow user Keet Sugathadasa earned a Populist badge by answering a question in the CI/CD Collective: Gitlab CI CD variable are not getting injected while running gitlab pipeline.

Topics covered in this episode:

• httpdbg
• PyPI Now Supports iOS and Android Wheels for Mobile Python Development
• Arcade Game Platform goes 3.0
• PEP 765 – Disallow return/break/continue that exit a finally block
• Extras
• Joke

See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/421

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Satya Nadella's criticism of AI benchmark hacking 2) Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's new Thinking Machines Lab startup 3) There are too many AI startups 4) Why foundation models have commoditized 5) Did Google 'DeepSeek' itself? 6) Grok3 arrives 7) How do you evaluate whether models are good? 8) Grok3 at the top of Chatbot arena 9) Benedict Evans on Deep Research 10) Does using AI tools make our brains atrophy? 11) Amazon's incoming Alexa upgrade 12) Actually, voice AI helps during marital disputes 13) RIP Humane Pin

Join the Big Technology Discord here: https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/lets-talk-deepseek-ai-etc-on-big

CLEAR is an identity company trying to take the friction out of air travel (such as with TSA PreCheck, available through CLEAR), stadium events, and other experiences that require security screening. 

Find Caitlin on LinkedIn. 

Shoutout to Stack Overflow user Patrick Pijnappel, who earned a Populist badge with their answer to Redirect all output to file using Bash on Linux?. It’s helped 230,000 people and counting.

This episode features an engaging conversation with Rob Bergman, Chief Investment Officer at Unicorn Factory, exploring the nuanced intersection of digital infrastructure investment and internet connectivity ecosystem development across Africa. Episode overview: Andile Masuku engages with Bergman to unpack his 12-year journey in African investment, examining how Unicorn Factory's distinctive two-pillar approach combines operational expertise with strategic advisory and deal brokering services to accelerate digital infrastructure development across the continent. Bergman reflects on his transition from traditional M&A in Europe to impact-driven infrastructure investment in Africa through Unicorn Factory, a family office and permanent capital vehicle focused on long-term investments across four main business segments, including digital infrastructure and communication technologies. He advocates passionately for his firm's vision for a highly-collaborative and mutually-beneficial carrier neutral setting for digital transformation in African markets. Key topics: - Carrier-neutral infrastructure development - Ecosystem-driven investment strategies - Digital infrastructure value chain dynamics - Market liberalisation and regulatory frameworks - Infrastructure financing models - Sustainable profitability versus charitable approaches Notable points: 1. The strategic importance of carrier-neutral infrastructure in African markets 2. Unicorn Factory's two-pillar business model combining operations and advisory 3. The catalytic role of WorkOnline as an IP transit provider 4. Current advisory mandates approaching $900 million for continental infrastructure 5. South Africa as a case study for successful market liberalisation Image credit: Unicorn Factory

Maxwell Shuftan, Director of Mission Programs at SANS Institute joins the show to discuss the state of the government cybersecurity workforce and methods for recruiting some of the best talent into the public sector. We also discuss training initiatives that can be a game-changing strategy to unlock a hidden workforce and the national security implications that these roles have on our country.