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The Stack Overflow Podcast
For more than a dozen years, the Stack Overflow Podcast has been exploring what it means to be a software developer and how the art and practice of programming is changing our world. From Rails to React, from Java to Node.js, join the Stack home team for conversations with fascinating guests to help you understand how technology is made and where it’s headed.
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Maximum Glitch: How to break Tetris

Maximum Glitch: How to break Tetris

Willis Gibson, 13, closed out 2023 by becoming the first person to officially beat the original Nintendo version of Tetris. Here’s how he did it.Want to understand the code that caused the ultimate killscreen? Watch this great explainer from HydrantDude.The 2023 film Tetris is based on the true story of the legal battle to license the game.Is the era of the robot butler upon us? Mobile ALOHA is a low-cost and whole-body teleoperation system for data collection. Check out some of what it can do.Explore the questions and answers on the Mathematics Stack Exchange.
18:1709/01/2024
How long till we run out of fresh data to train the AI?

How long till we run out of fresh data to train the AI?

Will AI fundamentally change software development or just add some efficiencies around the edges?  Surveys from Stack Overflow and Github find north of 70% have probably already tried using it and many incorporate it into their daily work through a helper in the IDE. It's also worth reflecting a bit on the technology sectors that didn't have as great a 2023: crypto, VR, and quantum computing still seem far from mainstream adoption. We dive a little into the half-life of skills, which seem to be shrinking, especially in IT. Got any resolutions to learn something new this year?And what about the data we use for training? We highlight a comment from Kian Katanforoosh, a lecturer who helped create Stanford's Deep Learning course with Andrew Ng, who says we'll run out of high quality data as soon as 2030.A big thanks and congrats to Stack Overflow user  Corn3lius for helping to answer a question and being awarded a life boat badge: How can I create spoiler text?
21:3205/01/2024
He created Stanford's Deep Learning class. Programmers will need to learn faster

He created Stanford's Deep Learning class. Programmers will need to learn faster

Along with his work at Stanford, Katanforoosh is a founding member of deeplearning.ai and co-created the Deep Learning Specialization on Coursera. He believes the rapidly expanding capabilities of AI will mean that humans, and especially programmers, will need to learn new skills faster than ever. This doesn't mean machines are going to take our jobs. Rather, with the assistance of AI, humans will become far more capable, learning faster and mastering more domains. Not surprisingly, Katanforoosh has built his business with the goal of addressing this issue. Workera aims to help companies identify where their employees lack skills and provide them with personalized instruction that can quickly bring them up to the next level.You can find Kian on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Stanford's website. Thanks to Stack Overflow user PaxDiablo, who was awarded a Life Boat badge for providing a great answer to the question: Given  a month in numeric form, how do you find the first month of its respective quarter?  
23:2203/01/2024
Netlify CEO Matt Biilmann explains what we'll see with UI 2.0

Netlify CEO Matt Biilmann explains what we'll see with UI 2.0

Biilmann says we can't ignore the impact GenAI is having on developer productivity.  One of their engineers created a  GPT that automatically generates stories for React + TypeScript components, and after seeing how successful it was internally, Netlify made it open source for the public.We also chat over the results of their recent State of Web Development survey. The key takeaway is below: The 80% of developers that have integrated AI into their workflow are quickly reaping the benefits. Seventy percent report using AI to automate manual and repetitive tasks and 42% are using it to improve internal knowledge sharing and increase productivity, freeing up more time for impactful work and enabling faster launch times. Over 50% of developers also realized new opportunities that AI created, such as generating new web projects with a single prompt or reading API documentation.However, AI experimentation is not without its own unique challenges. Developers are concerned about receiving incorrect answers and information (65%), security issues and leaking confidential information (52%), a lack of regulation (48%), and a decrease in code quality (45%).So much opportunity, but plenty of risk as well. Last but not least, Biilmann tells us what he's looking forward to in the near future, specifically apps that can reformat their UI on the fly to be more customized to each user. He calls this UI 2.0, and it sounds a bit like what Google showed off in its recent Gemini demo. Congrats to our lifeboat winner of the week, Petrus Theron, who answered the question: How can I make a public struct where all fields are public without repeating `pub` for every field?
24:2222/12/2023
From prompt attacks to data leaks, LLMs offer new capabilities and new threats

From prompt attacks to data leaks, LLMs offer new capabilities and new threats

SPONSORED BY DOITThe broken nose in jail scam is on the rise. With AI improvements, it’ll get harder to spot. OWASP, a non-profit dedicated to software security, tracks the top ten security risks for LLMs.We’ve spoken with DoiT on the podcast before about LLM hallucinations. 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.
24:1720/12/2023
A tax change is hurting startups and developers

A tax change is hurting startups and developers

On today’s home team episode, Ben and Ryan discuss the implications of a lapse in section 174 of the tax code. Here’s a great explainer on how it’s affecting startups and software firms, threatening jobs and potentially bankrupting some struggling companies. Video game employees are exploring a union and Microsoft recently announced it will stay neutral in the process. What’s the difference between a bad game, a low effort developer, and shovelware? Our game development Stack Exchange has some thoughts.Today’s lifeboat badge winner is “that_other_guy”, who explained: What is the difference between kill and kill -9? Hint, you want to terminate your process, not brutally murder it, ok! 
16:3219/12/2023
Can an AI get depressed?

Can an AI get depressed?

Does ChatGPT have seasonal depression?AIs aren’t building apps on their own, at least not yet—but they are helping developers build them. Read Isaac Lyman’s article about the three types of AI-assisted programmers.ICYMI: Listen to our interview with linguist Gašper Beguš, director of the Berkeley Speech and Computation Lab, about how LLMs and humans acquire language. Shoutout to Stack Overflow user nhgrif, who earned a Lifeboat badge by rescuing Store only date without time in a database from the ash heap of history.
17:5815/12/2023
Bringing context to alerting and incident management

Bringing context to alerting and incident management

SPONSORED BY FIREHYDRANTWhile FireHydrant is mostly known for their incident management software, they’re introducing Signals to modernize alerting and consolidate it with incident management. FireHydrant was born out of an incident where a database was dropped at 5:30pm on a Friday right before network maintenance started. It also led to Robert’s social media handle, Bobby Tables. This one time…at band camp…Robert got paged in the middle of trumpet practice…on his sabbatical.Congrats to Great Question badge winner timdim for asking How can I flush GPU memory using CUDA (physical reset is unavailable)?. 100 people thought it was worth voting for.
22:2813/12/2023
What Gemini means for the GenAI boom

What Gemini means for the GenAI boom

Gemini, Google’s new AI model, is great at competitive programming, among other things.AI Explained is a YouTube channel that covers the latest developments in AI.One problem with regulating AI is that the technology evolves (much) faster than regulators can.Wikifunctions is an open repository of code that anyone can use or contribute to.Did we need another study to tell us that longer commutes are bad for mental health? Probably not, but here’s one anyway.Are governments spying on you through push notifications? Sounds like it! In fact, push notifications are a privacy nightmare.
21:1312/12/2023
One weird trick for teaching users your software

One weird trick for teaching users your software

CommandBar is a user assistance platform (UAP). Their flagship product, Copilot, is an embedded user assistant agent that companies can configure to help their users with on-demand help, including interactive walkthroughs and personalized responses. Read James’s article about why CommandBar built Copilot, then get started with their docs.Follow James on LinkedIn and Twitter.Follow CommandBar on LinkedIn and Twitter.If you’ve ever wondered Why "Yarn 2" is Yarn 3.0.1, Lifeboat badge winner Ilias Karim has your answer.
30:1608/12/2023
Are LLMs the end of computer programming (as we know it)?

Are LLMs the end of computer programming (as we know it)?

Do LLMs herald the end of computer programming (as we know it)? A Harvard lecture weighs in on this contentious topic.An epic hardware bug story.Question from the academic trenches: How bad will it look to prospective employers if you refuse to defend your PhD? (Answer: Pretty bad.)Another intriguing question: Were postal pneumatic tubes in Berlin really cleaned with wine?The Jetsons misled us about many aspects of the future, from flying cars to the role of pneumatics, but they were onto something with the series of tubes.Before influencers and social media algorithms, there were coolhunters.Congrats to Stack Overflow user tjati, who earned a Lifeboat badge by answering What does 'HTML is escaping' mean?.
22:0705/12/2023
Will developers return to hostile offices?

Will developers return to hostile offices?

As the year winds to a close, some big employers are facing lower-than-expected attrition rates—in other words, fewer people than expected are quitting. What a difference a year or two makes.People have strong opinions on the return-to-office conversation. Read Eira’s article and let us know how you feel.We are just beginning to explore the effects of prompting on the capabilities and performance of LLMs.The Humane AI pin can be described as a cross between two of humanity’s most beloved technologies: Google Glass and the pager.People are using low-cost drones, 3D printers, and private satellites to preserve irreplaceable cultural heritage sites before they are destroyed or lost to time. (Stay tuned while Eira figures out how to apply this tech as a cemetery tour guide.)Stack Overflow user FlipperPA earned a Lifeboat badge with their answer to The 'Black' formatter - Python.
18:2501/12/2023
Can GenAI 10X developer productivity?

Can GenAI 10X developer productivity?

Bito AI is an AI coding tool that helps developers work more productively with features like code completion within the IDE and personalized answers drawn from your codebase. Get started with their docs here.ICYMI: Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) is a way of addressing LLM hallucinations and outdated training data.Listen to our recent episode about how an original architect of Jira is rethinking meaningful engineering metrics.Connect with Anand on LinkedIn or Twitter.com. Shoutout to Stack Overflow user Jan Kardaš, whose answer to Go: Retrieve a string from between two characters or other strings earned them a Lifeboat badge.
32:1028/11/2023
Cloudflare Workers have a new skill: AI inference-as-a-service

Cloudflare Workers have a new skill: AI inference-as-a-service

Cloudflare is a cloud provider used by almost 20% of all websites. Developers new to Cloudflare can get started here.Cloudflare recently launched Workers AI, an open, pay-as-you-go AI inference-as-a-service platform that lets developers run machine learning models on the Cloudflare network from their own code. Developers can get started here.On a related note, read Ryan’s article exploring the infrastructure and code behind edge functions or check out his conversation with Vercel CTO Malte Ubl.Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) is a strategy that helps address both LLM hallucinations and out-of-date training data.Connect with Rita on LinkedIn.Connect with Cassidy through her website.Shoutout to Stack Overflow user Bamieh, whose answer to What does the function call app.use(cors()) do? earned them a Lifeboat badge.
25:1521/11/2023
The AI assistant trained on your company’s data

The AI assistant trained on your company’s data

Sana automates user enrollment, training reminders, and other manual/admin tasks associated with onboarding and learning. Sana AI, their AI assistant, is trained on a company’s data so employees can self-serve the knowledge they need.On a related note, listen to our interview with Gašper Beguš, director of the Berkeley Speech and Computation Lab, about his research into how LLMs and humans acquire language.You can also read about how Stack Overflow implemented semantic search.Connect with Joel on LinkedIn.Stack Overflow user Donagh Hatton received a well-earned Lifeboat badge with their answer to Why is StringBuilder much faster than String?.
28:3217/11/2023
Build vs. buy doesn't matter. Tool adoption does.

Build vs. buy doesn't matter. Tool adoption does.

SPONSORED BY CHRONOSPHEREEpisode notes:Chronosphere is introducing Lens, a cloud-native observability tool to view data flows between services. At Uber, Rob created M3, an open-source metrics engine compatible with Prometheus.  Congrats to Lifeboat badge winner, ralf htp, for their answer to How to read an image in Python OpenCV. If you want to meet Rob and the Chronosphere team, they’ll be at AWS re:Invent  from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1.
27:1515/11/2023
Trust as a service for validating OSS dependencies

Trust as a service for validating OSS dependencies

ICYMI, listen to part one of this conversation.Craig is the cofounder and CEO of Stacklok, which helps developers and open-source communities build safer software, secure the supply chain, and choose safer dependencies. Stacklok’s free-to-use service, Trusty, employs a statistical analysis of author/repo activity and a package’s source of origin to assess its trustworthiness.Craig cofounded the Kubernetes project, an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.Craig is on LinkedIn.Stack Overflow user mprivat earned a well-deserved Lifeboat badge by answering Abstract class extending concrete classes.
12:4914/11/2023
How the cocreator of Kubernetes is helping developers build safer software

How the cocreator of Kubernetes is helping developers build safer software

Stacklok helps developers and open-source communities build safer software, secure the supply chain, and choose safer dependencies. Trusty is their free-to-use service that employs a statistical analysis of author/repo activity and a package’s source of origin to assess its trustworthiness.Craig cofounded the Kubernetes project, an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.He is also the former VP of Research and Development at VMWare.Follow Craig on LinkedIn.Congrats to Stack Overflow user netcorefan, who earned a Lifeboat badge with their answer to Need a workaround to access ReadOnlySpan inside a function that returns an IEnumerable.
16:0610/11/2023
He helped create Jira. Now he's searching for meaningful engineering metrics

He helped create Jira. Now he's searching for meaningful engineering metrics

Sleuth helps engineering teams systematically improve efficiency by tracking speed and release quality, preventing slowdowns and bottlenecks, and removing toil and unnecessary friction. Try it for free or see how teams are using Sleuth. Interested in the automations they offer for teams, check out their public marketplace.Dylan was an original architect on JIRA, so he’s not exactly new to issue- and project-tracking software.DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) is a research program that tries to understand what drives successful software delivery and operations performance. According to Dylan, one thing the best development teams have in common is their culture of continuous learning.Connect with Dylan on LinkedIn.
28:4907/11/2023
Tomasz Tunguz: From Java engineer to investor in eight unicorns

Tomasz Tunguz: From Java engineer to investor in eight unicorns

Tomasz is a general partner at Theory Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage software companies.He coauthored the book Winning with Data, a deep dive into how big data has changed business best practices and organizational culture.Find Tomasz’s writing here.Follow Tomasz on LinkedIn or Twitter.com.In honor of Tomasz’s early career, we’re shouting out Johnny Hujol’s answer to What exactly is a container in J2EE and how does it help?.
19:3903/11/2023
Why Stack Overflow is embracing Svelte

Why Stack Overflow is embracing Svelte

Giamir is the tech lead for Stacks, Stack Overflow’s design system.Svelte is a tool for building web apps. Delve into their docs or, if you’re brand-new to Svelte, start with this interactive tutorial.More than 90,000 devs responded to our 2023 Developer Survey where Svelte was ranked the second-most admired web framework.  Connect with Giamir via his website or LinkedIn. Today we’re shouting out a topical question asked by Félix Paradis, who (like 73,000 others) wanted to know How to pass parameters to on:click in Svelte?.
28:0231/10/2023
Zero trust with zero problems

Zero trust with zero problems

Alex and cofounder/CTO Paul Querna started ConductorOne because they saw that traditional identity governance (IGA) and privileged access management (PAM) needed to be rethought for cloud-forward companies.Before he cofounded Conductor One, Alev Bovee was a senior director of product management for zero trust and security at Okta.Read Ben’s article about how Computers are learning to decode the language of our minds.Would you trade an iris scan for some crypto? Sure, what could go wrong?Connect with Alex on LinkedIn.Stack Overflow user Matthew Watson earned a Lifeboat badge for helping more than 32,000 people by answering Checking if an array is null or empty.
24:0227/10/2023
Forget the 10X engineer—it’s about building a 10X culture

Forget the 10X engineer—it’s about building a 10X culture

Find out why others have joined Shell. Wondering what it’s like to be a developer at one of the world’s biggest energy companies? They’re hiring.Behavior-driven development is a conceptual approach to software development that calls for collaboration and alignment between developers, testers, and domain experts.One of the new technologies James and Tristan helped introduce at Shell is Kafka, an open-source distributed event streaming platform. Check out their docs here.Engineering teams at Shell use Stack Overflow for Teams to capture and share information. Get started for free here.Congratulations to David Snabel, winner of a Stellar Question badge for How do I see which version of Swift I’m using?.
31:4425/10/2023
Composable architecture

Composable architecture

At Netlify Compose 2023, Biilmann announced their new composable web platform. This isn’t Netlify’s first rodeo—we talked to them for episodes 588 and 456.You can find Matt Biilmann on X or LinkedIn (and perhaps elsewhere). Today’s shoutout goes to Dick Lucas who asked a topical question, How to prevent Netlify from treating warnings as errors because process.env.CI = true?, viewed by over 84,000 people.
28:4524/10/2023
Forget "No Code." Adios "Low Code." Say hello to "Yes Code!"

Forget "No Code." Adios "Low Code." Say hello to "Yes Code!"

The company says v0 is intended to author the first draft of your site or app, then help you iterate quickly. It won't mean the end of junior web developers, says Lee, as a polished final draft still requires a human touch. And it's not a low code no code approach, as the system allows you to switch easily between the GenAI approach and the actual code.You can learn more about v0 here and head over here to join the waitlist.You can find Lee on LinkedIn or his website.Congrats to Stack Overflow user Jonathon Reinhart, who earned a Lifeboat badge for answering the question: How can I import a static library in Python? 
31:3920/10/2023
The company making it easier to turn your coffee machine into a robot

The company making it easier to turn your coffee machine into a robot

Listen to our previous episodes with Eliot here and here.Viam is a software platform for building, monitoring, and managing data from smart machines, including industrial robots, autonomous vehicles, smart home appliances, and IoT devices. Get an overview of the Viam platform or dig into their docs.Connect with Eliot on LinkedIn.Three cheers for Stack Overflow user mattl, who won a Great Question badge with How to remove all contents of a directory using Golang?.
24:0317/10/2023
Chatting with the GM of CodeWhisperer, an AI-powered pair programmer for AWS

Chatting with the GM of CodeWhisperer, an AI-powered pair programmer for AWS

CodeWhisperer is an AI coding companion trained on Amazon and open-source code that gives you coding suggestions in real time. In addition to being general manager for CodeWhisperer, Doug is also the GM for Amazon CodeGuru Security, which uses machine learning to detect security policy violations and vulnerabilities. Connect with Doug on LinkedIn.Asked and answered: user Manodnya B won a Lifeboat badge for answering Cannot find the Start Button under CodeWhisperer in AWS Toolkit.
23:5413/10/2023
No one likes meetings. Let's reduce their blast radius.

No one likes meetings. Let's reduce their blast radius.

Clockwise is a time orchestration platform that optimizes schedules to create more time in your day. Clockwise AI, their new GPT-powered scheduling assistant, is launching in beta. Join the waitlist here to get early access. (They’re also hiring!)Ryan wrote a recent article about whether meetings are making developers less productive.Cal Newport’s instant classic Deep Work is about learning to tune out distractions and focus on cognitively demanding tasks.Speaking of classics, Paul Graham of Y Combinator wrote about maker’s vs. manager’s schedules back in 2009.Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.Kudos to Stack Overflow user Joe Caruso, who won a Great Question badge with Get current time in hours and minutes.
25:1710/10/2023
Subatomic speed, math misadventures, and the biggest fraud trial in history

Subatomic speed, math misadventures, and the biggest fraud trial in history

California is trying to transform how math is taught. How’s that going?Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for work that allows scientists to see how electrons move by mapping their positions in an atom. Learn more here and here.As Ben says, speaking of things that are difficult to observe and don’t make a lot of sense, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is on trial for a historically huge amount of fraud. Follow the live trial blog from Wired or check out their explainer.Starting next year, Unity is charging developer fees. We explore the back and forth as they try to find a solution that works for the company and the community.Shoutout to user vasco, who earned a Lifeboat badge by answering How to test abstract class in Java with JUnit?.
17:4706/10/2023
How an algo raver stays in key(boards)

How an algo raver stays in key(boards)

If you want to hear more of her work, check out Alexandra’s Instagram. She uses Tidal Cycles and Supercollider to make algorithms that get people to dance. Interested in algoraves? You may be able to find one near you or run your own. Check out Alexandra in her ad for Logitech, then check out her favorite keyboard. 
29:4104/10/2023
USB-C for all, PHP 4EVA, and what do LLMs actually know (if anything)?

USB-C for all, PHP 4EVA, and what do LLMs actually know (if anything)?

Ben is watching AI Explained, a YouTube channel that covers the latest AI developments and their implications. Read Ryan’s article ​​Do large language models know what they are talking about?.Is language really unique to humans? New research suggests maybe not.Not for the first time, Ryan recommends the work of Noam Chomsky: Why Only Us: Language and Evolution, an evolutionary account of language acquisition in humans written with Robert C. Berwick.OverflowAI search is now available for alpha testing. Learn more here.Good news for your cable clutter: Apple is switching to USB-C charging ports. Here’s when.The WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike ended with an agreement that “allows for artificial intelligence as a tool, not a replacement,” but the arguments about creativity, copyright, and AI are far from over.If you’re interested in working with PHP, head over to the PHP Collective and check out conversations like Most useful new PHP features for version 8?.
18:0303/10/2023
How to write high-performance SQL for your Postgres database

How to write high-performance SQL for your Postgres database

pgnanalyze helps users deliver consistent PostgreSQL performance and availability at any scale. Get started with a free trial or explore their docs. You can also find them on YouTube, where Lukas posts a weekly show called 5mins of Postgres.Lukas was a founding engineer of Citus Data. Citus is an open-source extension to PostgreSQL that was eventually acquired by Microsoft. Find them on GitHub.If you’re new to the topic, SQL (Structured Query Language) is a language for querying databases, introduced in the 1970s. Find Lukas on LinkedIn, Twitter, or GitHub.
24:4429/09/2023
Being creative with math: The immersive artist who traded a sketchpad for a keyboard

Being creative with math: The immersive artist who traded a sketchpad for a keyboard

Check out Luyang’s work at his website or in this Youtube playlist. To make these animations, Luyang uses Processing, a 20-year-old language that started out as a visual way to teach programming but evolved into a professional development tool. Logitech selected Luyang as one of the ambassadors to show off what you can do with their MX Keys S Combo. Shout out to George Profenza for dropping a top answer on Position of a vector in coordinate system (Processing/p5.js).
23:4827/09/2023
Like Python++ for AI developers

Like Python++ for AI developers

If you missed the first part of our conversation with Chris, listen to it here.Modular’s new programming language, Mojo, is built for AI developers. Check out their docs or find them on GitHub.Connect with Chris on LinkedIn. Shoutout to user DanielGibbs, who earned a Lifeboat badge by answering what is the difference between getType() and getClass() in java?.
17:0826/09/2023
Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C

Modular built a new programming language, Mojo, for AI developers. Explore their docs or find them on GitHub.Chris is on LinkedIn. Congratulations to user Shengyuan Lu, whose answer to Priority queue ordering of elements merited a Lifeboat badge.
19:3722/09/2023
Forget AGI. Let’s built ADI: Augmented Developer Intelligence

Forget AGI. Let’s built ADI: Augmented Developer Intelligence

If you missed the first part of this conversation, listen to it here.Replit is a browser-based IDE (integrated development environment). Check out their blog or start coding.ICYMI: Stack Overflow recently implemented semantic search, allowing users to search using natural language.Explore Stack Overflow Labs to learn more about OverflowAI and other projects.Amjad Masad is on LinkedIn, Twitter, and GitHub.Congratulations to Stack Overflow user macxpat, whose answer to How to install Linux packages in Replit earned a Lifeboat badge.
17:1919/09/2023
Multiplayer programming on mobile: a chat with Replit CEO Amjad Masad

Multiplayer programming on mobile: a chat with Replit CEO Amjad Masad

Replit is a browser-based IDE (integrated development environment). See what they’re up to on their blog or just start coding.RIP Google Wave, one of the greats.Find Amjad on LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, or via his website.
22:5415/09/2023
Founder vs Investor: What VCs are really looking for

Founder vs Investor: What VCs are really looking for

After founding two companies, including StrongDM, a dynamic management access platform (explore their docs here), Elizabeth took a “break” by co-authoring a book. Founder vs Investor: The Honest Truth About Venture Capital from Startup to IPO is about what she learned as a founder and executive about the founder-investor relationship. Order it on Bookshop or Amazon.Elizabeth’s co-author is investor and advisor Jerry Neumann, managing director of Neu Venture Capital.One option for your next weekend outing: a ride and tie.Connect with Elizabeth on LinkedIn.Connect with Jerry Neumann on LinkedIn.Nice work: User Reap’s answer to Get String Name from Enum in C# earned them a Lifeboat badge.
25:2112/09/2023
Computers are learning to read our minds

Computers are learning to read our minds

Gašper’s work combines machine learning, statistical modeling, neuroimaging, and behavioral experiments “to better understand how neural networks learn internal representations in speech and how humans learn to speak.”One thing that surprised him about generative adversarial networks (GANs)? How innovative they are, capable of generating English words they’ve never heard before based on words they have.Read about how AI is restoring a stroke survivor’s ability to speak.Universal grammar proposes a hypothetical structure in the brain responsible for humans’ innate language abilities. The concept is credited to the famous linguist Noam Chomsky; read his take on GenAI.AI expert Yoshua Bengio recently signed an open letter asking AI labs to pause the training of AI systems powerful enough to pass the Turing test. Read about his reasoning.Find the Berkeley Speech and Communication Network here.Find Gašper on his website, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Or dive into his research.Congratulations to Lifeboat badge winner and self-proclaimed data nerd John Rotenstein, who saved How can I delete files older than seven days in Amazon S3? from the ignominy of ignorance.
30:0608/09/2023
You can’t spell Zapier without API

You can’t spell Zapier without API

Zapier is a no-code automation platform that allows users to create custom workflows for their critical work apps. Learn how it works, peruse the blog, or sign up to try beta AI features.Check out Reid’s article about how to write more effective AI prompts.Zapier built a natural language actions (NLA) API to enable AI models to independently use natural language to complete Zapier actions.You know the doge, but do you know the dog? RIP Balltze.Find Reid on LinkedIn and the social network formerly known as Twitter.Find Kyle on LinkedIn, GitHub, and text-based social media.
30:5001/09/2023
Job description:  professional workplace bestie

Job description: professional workplace bestie

Stack Overflow’s Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) focus on aspects of employees’ personhood, “who you are outside of your role, who you bring to every single room that you enter,” Joey explains. Among our ERGs are Black and Brown, LGBTQ+, MIND (mental illness and neurodiversity), and a group for caregivers and parents. Interested in learning more about our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, plus more about what it’s like to work at Stack Overflow? Start here.Members of Stack’s MIND ERG contributed invaluable perspective, insights, and feedback that helped us write our two-parter on ADHD and neurodiversity: Developer with ADHD? You’re not alone and What developers with ADHD want you to know.Joey is on LinkedIn.Natasha is also on LinkedIn.Kyle is on Linked, GitHub, and text-based social media.Stack Overflow user apostofes earned a Great Question badge for their query How do I get the value of a tensor in PyTorch?, which has helped 175,000 people and counting.
28:5129/08/2023
Fighting comment spam at Facebook scale

Fighting comment spam at Facebook scale

Rockset is a real-time search and analytics database. Explore their docs and developer tools here.We here at Stack Overflow recently implemented our own vector search. Here’s a technical deep dive into how we did it. Louis is on LinkedIn.Three cheers for Lifeboat badge winner user7610, who rescued C++ application terminates with 143 exit code. What does it mean? with a solid answer.
32:4425/08/2023
Medical research made understandable with AI

Medical research made understandable with AI

Sorcero uses a mix of natural language processing, generative AI, and even more old school symbolic AI, where they craft their own ontologies, to try and ingest that river of new medical data and make it easier to search and comprehend. Less than 0.2% of the global population can read a medical paper! AI can help make these dense works up to 700x more readable. Medical Affairs Teams are the groups inside big pharmaceutical companies that helps surface the right information to health providers. It’s hard for them to keep up with the thousands of new articles and research papers being published each month, much less unpack that information. Connect with Dipanwita Das and Hellmut Adolphs on LinkedIn. Congrats to Lifeboat badge winner John Carrell for saving the question Self join vs. inner join with an excellent answer. 
27:2322/08/2023
Semantic search without the napalm grandma exploit

Semantic search without the napalm grandma exploit

Last month, we announced the launch of OverflowAI from the stage of WeAreDevelopers. To learn more about AI-driven products and features in the works, check out Stack Overflow Labs. Among the projects Alex works on is a semantic search API and the new search experience on Stack Overflow for Teams.LLMs can be vulnerable to jailbreak attacks like the napalm grandma exploit.Kyle is on GitHub, Linked, and text-based social media.Michael is on LinkedIn.Alex is on LinkedIn.Shoutout to Lifeboat badge winner Pushpendra, who scooped Error: Invalid postback or callback argument from a churning ocean of ignorance. 
29:3918/08/2023
Making event-driven development predictable with Discover

Making event-driven development predictable with Discover

SPONSORED BY DISCOVER FINANCIAL SERVICESGo deeper into Technology at Discover. If your interested in working on an event-driven architecture that uses domain-driven design within a financial organization, check out jobs.discover.com.Connect with Paul on LinkedIn.. 
26:3316/08/2023
Want better answers from your data? Ask better questions

Want better answers from your data? Ask better questions

The mission of Night Shift Development is to democratize data analytics to help organizations and users of all skill levels understand their data. Their flagship product, ClearQuery, is a data intelligence and analytics platform designed for nontechnical users. ClearQuery has a free version that lets you try out the full array of features. Learn how it works and register here to get started, gratis.Learn how Stack Overflow implemented semantic search to allow users to search using natural language.Read about why self-healing code is the future of software development.Tim is on LinkedIn. Thanks and congrats to Lifeboat badge winner Boann, whose answer to Sort four numbers without an array has been viewed 23,000 times and counting.
25:0115/08/2023
Why everyone should be an AppSec specialist

Why everyone should be an AppSec specialist

27:2211/08/2023
Understanding SRE

Understanding SRE

Vlad is Head of Research and Development at Siemens Healthineers, the healthcare arm of tech conglomerate Siemens. He wrote about SRE on our blog here.His book, Establishing SRE Foundations: A Step-by-Step Guide to Introducing Site Reliability Engineering in Software Delivery Organizations, is available now. Site reliability engineering (SRE) applies a software engineering approach to IT operations and infrastructure, with the goal of building scalable, reliable systems capable of handling constant updates from dev teams. SRE is closely related to DevOps.ICYMI, we talked with Chef cofounder Adam Jacob about how he’s creating a new-and-improved approach to infrastructure automation. Listen to that conversation here.Connect with Vlad on LinkedIn, where you can also read snippets of his book on SRE.Lifeboat badge winner Abbas Galiyakotwala’s answer to How do I split a comma-separated string? filled a void of ignorance with a little extra knowledge.
25:0808/08/2023
The fine line between product and engineering

The fine line between product and engineering

Twilio is a customer engagement platform whose communication APIs for voice, text, chat, email, and video are used by millions of developers. See what’s happening on their blog, dig into their docs, or check out their Stack Overflow Collective.This summer, Twilio announced CustomerAI, which applies the power of LLMs to the rich troves of customer data that flows through Twilio’s platform. Learn more here.ICYMI: From the stage of WeAreDevelopers, Stack Overflow announced a roadmap for integrating GenAI into our public platform and paid offerings. Check out Stack Overflow Labs to see what we’re working on.Also ICYMI: Listen to our conversation with Jody about his path from physics to sales to programming and what drew him to working at Stack Overflow.Register for SIGNAL 2023, Twilio’s customer and developer conference, happening virtually and for free on August 23, 2023. Attendees can expect a deep dive into AI and how it’s revolutionizing customer experience technology.Connect with Kathryn on LinkedIn or the social network formerly known as Twitter.Connect with Jody on LinkedIn. Three cheers for Lifeboat badge winner blackgreen, who swooped in to save How can I write a generic function that accepts any numerical type? from the howling void of ignorance.
22:3904/08/2023
How engineering teams at a large org can move at startup speed

How engineering teams at a large org can move at startup speed

Find out why others have joined Shell. If you want to experience being a developer at one of the world’s largest energy companies, they’re hiring.Amber Webb is on LinkedIn.Naresh Kumar is on LinkedIn.Congrats to Tomasz Kula, today’s Lifeboat badge winner, for dropping some knowledge on Multiple components binding with the same reactive form control update issue and saving it from ruin. 
33:1802/08/2023