Category: 3-SometimeTechTalk

Praveen Ghanta recently turned 47 and started to look at the things he wanted to do - but potentially couldn't do in the future. He's married with 3 teenage kids, and has been into running for quite some time. So much so, that he attempted to run a 5 minute mile... and almost made it. Also, he recently signed up for soccer classes, after having been beat by some eighth grade kids, who helped him realize he needed training in his ball handling skills.

In his prior startup, Praveen and his team stumbled upon a new approach to hiring that fueled the building of this startup, all the way through exit. After that success, he decided to make this approach available to others, and form a business around this very thing - fractional talent for your startup.

This is the creation story of Fraction and DevHawk.

Sponsors

• Vention
• CodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://www.hirefraction.com/
• https://www.devhawk.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/pghanta/

In this episode of Leaders of Code, Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar chats with Ramprasad Rai, VP of Platform Engineering at JPMorgan Chase & Co., about the unique challenges of implementing AI in an enterprise environment. They discuss how organizations can balance AI-driven productivity with strict compliance and security requirements by leveraging a community-driven knowledge system that grounds probabilistic AI tools in internal, trusted expertise.

The discussion also:

• Explores why AI models often hallucinate in enterprise environments due to a lack of internal context. 
• Highlights how Stack Overflow’s structured Q&A data provides ideal fine-tuning material for the next generation of AI models.

Notes

• Connect with Ramprasad Rai on LinkedIn.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mustafa Suleyman is the CEO of Microsoft AI and the head of the company’s new superintelligence team. Suleyman joins Big Technology to discuss Microsoft’s push toward “humanist superintelligence” and what changes after its latest OpenAI deal. Tune in to hear whether LLMs can get us there, how self-improving systems might work safely, and what power, data, and memory advancements mean for progress. We also cover Microsoft’s strategy shift to AI self-sufficiency, the economics of frontier models (including price pressure and commoditization), world-model and robotics questions, and the rise of personalized AI companions. Hit play for a candid, technical, and forward-looking conversation about where Microsoft—and AI—are headed next.

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Today, we are another episode in our series, sponsored by our good friends at Railsware. Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap, Coupler and TitanApps, while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it.

In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering and development. In particular, we will cover relevant topics to not only highlight their expertise, but to educate you on industry trends alongside their experience.

In today's episode, we are speaking with Nika Tamayo Flores, Product Lead at Railsware, specifically for the Coupler product. She's been leading complex data-driven products for over eight years, and will enlighten us on conversational analytics, and how they can change a data focused product.

Questions:

• Before we jump to the topic, let’s define what exactly conversational analytics is. How does it differ from traditional dashboard-based data analysis?
• You’ve been integrating AI capacities into Coupler, Railsware’s product focused on data analytics. How would you describe data analytics in pre-AI and AI era?
• What were the key challenges to embedding conversational analytics into Coupler?
• And what’s the result? You’ve already released AI Insights – how do they transform user experience for data exploration?
• How do you ensure conversational analytics provides accurate and reliable insights?
• How does conversational analytics change who can be a "data user" in an organization?
• What's the learning curve like for organizations adopting conversational analytics?
• Where do you see conversational analytics heading - will it eventually replace traditional BI tools, or complement them?

Links

• https://railsware.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-tamayo-flores/
• https://coupler.io

Chris Wallis lives in London, and grew up on a farm in the UK. He was the kid running around the countryside climbing trees - until his parents bought a computer when he was 15. Past that point, he didn't leave the house much, learning to code and digging into ethical hacking. Outside of tech, he is into tennis, swimming, alpine skiing and surfing. He finds himself in phases with these sports, and rotates them often.

In the past, Chris was an ethical hacker, and spent a long time busting into big name systems. Eventually, he moved into one of those companies - and he realized that the tooling out there to discover attack surface weaknesses were lagging. He decided to build a platform that got the job done.

This is the creation story of Intruder.

Sponsors

• Vention
• CodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://www.intruder.io/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-wallis/

• httptap
• 10 Smart Performance Hacks For Faster Python Code
• FastRTC
• Explore Python dependencies with pipdeptree and uv pip tree
• Extras
• Joke

About the show

Sponsored by us! Support our work through:

• Our courses at Talk Python Training
• The Complete pytest Course
• Patreon Supporters

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: httptap

• Rich-powered CLI that breaks each HTTP request into DNS, connect, TLS, wait, and transfer phases with waterfall timelines, compact summaries, or metrics-only output.
• Features
  • Phase-by-phase timing – precise measurements built from httpcore trace hooks (with sane fallbacks when metal-level data is unavailable).
  • All HTTP methods – GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS with request body support.
  • Request body support – send JSON, XML, or any data inline or from file with automatic Content-Type detection.
  • IPv4/IPv6 aware – the resolver and TLS inspector report both the address and its family.
  • TLS insights – certificate CN, expiry countdown, cipher suite, and protocol version are captured automatically.
  • Multiple output modes – rich waterfall view, compact single-line summaries, or -metrics-only for scripting.
  • JSON export – persist full step data (including redirect chains) for later processing.
  • Extensible – clean Protocol interfaces for DNS, TLS, timing, visualization, and export so you can plug in custom behavior.
• Example:

Brian #2: 10 Smart Performance Hacks For Faster Python Code

• Dido Grigorov
• A few from the list
  • Use math functions instead of operators
  • Avoid exception handling in hot loops
  • Use itertools for combinatorial operations - huge speedup
  • Use bisect for sorted list operations - huge speedup

Michael #3: FastRTC

• The Real-Time Communication Library for Python: Turn any python function into a real-time audio and video stream over WebRTC or WebSockets.
• Features
  • 🗣️ Automatic Voice Detection and Turn Taking built-in, only worry about the logic for responding to the user.
  • 💻 Automatic UI - Use the .ui.launch() method to launch the webRTC-enabled built-in Gradio UI.
  • 🔌 Automatic WebRTC Support - Use the .mount(app) method to mount the stream on a FastAPI app and get a webRTC endpoint for your own frontend!
  • ⚡️ Websocket Support - Use the .mount(app) method to mount the stream on a FastAPI app and get a websocket endpoint for your own frontend!
  • 📞 Automatic Telephone Support - Use the fastphone() method of the stream to launch the application and get a free temporary phone number!
  • 🤖 Completely customizable backend - A Stream can easily be mounted on a FastAPI app so you can easily extend it to fit your production application. See the Talk To Claude demo for an example of how to serve a custom JS frontend.

Brian #4: Explore Python dependencies with <code>pipdeptree</code> and <code>uv pip tree</code>

• Suggested by Nicholas Carsner
  • We have covered it, but in 2017 on episode 17.
• pipdeptree
  • Use pipdeptree --python auto to allow it to read your venv
• uv pip tree
  • Also check out uv pip tree and some useful flags
    • --show-version-specifiers to show the rules
    • --outdated notes packages that need updated

Extras

Brian:

• Lean TDD 0.1.1 includes an updated intro and another chapter, “Essential Components”
• VSCode Peacock Extension - color code your different projects

Joke: Sure Grandma

Ryan is joined by Secure Code Warrior’s co-founder and CTO Matias Madou to discuss the  implications of LLMs’ variability on code security, the future of developer training as AI coding assistants become more popular, and the importance of critical thinking—especially for junior developers—in the age of AI.

Episode notes: 

Secure Code Warrior upskills development teams to help companies stay protected against potential cybersecurity threats.

Connect with Matias on Linkedin. 

Shoutout to Lifejacket badge winner Sergey Kalinichenko, who won the badge for their answer to K&R Code for getting an int.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar's comments about a government backstop for its financing 2) Why these statements matter 3) Does OpenAI need financial discipline 4) Do we want to be the discipline police? 5) Should we build a national compute reserve? 6) Why OpenAI is getting so much scrutiny lately 7) OpenAI's ambitious financial plans 8) Elon's $1 trillion pay package gets approved 9) Amazon sues Perplexity 10) Ilya's deposition revealed 11) Farmer insights

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Suzanne Boyd, CEO of Anthro-Tech and a pioneer in human-centered design joins the show to share her journey from growing up in a family of entrepreneurs to founding Anthro-Tech in 1997, by blending her love of anthropology with technology to improve lives through thoughtful design. We unpack the evolution and institutionalization of human-centered design, its impact on government and private sector organizations, and the importance of inclusivity and accessibility from the start of any project.