• Michael is investigating Liberating Structures
• Mark doesn't know what a Clementine is
• Alison gets in on the ground floor on a new FinOps project

Subscribe to our new Newsletter! Stay informed about new episodes, and get beautiful news and recommendation links.

Who is Alison McIntyre?

IT support -> Scottish Parliament -> Lloyds Bank -> Capgemini, with some stories along the way!

Quickfire Questions:

• What is one FinOps practice you take into your personal life?
• What is the most likely offender of unnecessary spend in your experience?
• Which roles are most receptive to the introduction of FinOps concepts?
• What is one memory that sticks out from interviewing Michael?
• What is the biggest misconception about FinOps?
• What is the most memorable reaction you’ve seen when you’ve shown someone the cloud spend their team is accountable for?
• What is FOCUS?
• What is Cloud Plus, and Scopes?

Breaking Prod

Alison will happily unplug your network cables for you

Big Topic: FinOps

• The term ‘unit economics’ comes up in all the literature, what does it mean
• What is the structure of that team? What sort of roles exist in a team like this when a company decides to have one?
• If you have an internal developer platform, does chargeback need to include the cost of the team developing that platform?
• What if other teams internally aren’t willing to eat that cost? Can they reject the Internal Developer Platform and do it themselves?
• Is there a lot of tooling provided by the hyperscalers?
• Is it significantly harder to track consumption with on-premise infra?

News

We cover the 2025 State of FinOps report
We get hot takes from our expert.

"Workload optimization and waste reduction is the top priority by a clear margin"
"In the next 12 months, governance and optimization are top for future priorities"
"“Organizational Alignment” still the top way to achieve priorities but “Investment and Tooling” has risen significantly"
"Practitioners are increasing effort in many capabilities while reducing effort in very few"

Recommendations

FinOps

• FinOps Foundation website
• Cloud FinOps book, by J. R. Storment and Mike Fuller (O'Reilly)
• FinOps Weekly podcast

Books

• Unlearn audiobook (audible)
• 1984 Audiobook, featuring Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy

TV & Film

• A Real Pain, Drama film on Disney+
• The Studio, Comedy series on Apple TV
• White Lotus, Drama series on Sky
• MobLand, Crime Drama on Paramount+

Music

• Cultdreams - Love Won't Let Me Go & Death Consumes Me :: Indie Rock :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube

Technology

• Arc browser
• Crossplane

If you've enjoyed the show, recommend it to a friend! Or leave us a rating/review on apple/spotify to help others find us.
Subscribe to our new Newsletter! Stay informed about new episodes, and get beautiful news and recommendation links.

GIVE US FEEDBACK! Do this form, it will take 4 mins

Special Guest: Alison McIntyre.

• Mark has been fiddling around with Kit and automation for emails for our newsletter.
• Chris is says you can only last a week without a dishwasher
• Michael calls people Rain Man. Hasn't even seen it.

Subscribe to our new Newsletter! Stay informed about new episodes, and get beautiful news and recommendation links.

Who is Chris Knight?

Chris has a very unusual story of how he eventually landed into his senior role. Buckle in!

Quickfire Questions:

• What’s one thing that’s certain to distract you, when you’re working?
• When are you at your most focused?
• Do deadlines help or stress you out?
• What’s something neurotypical people often get wrong about neurodivergence?
• One app or tool you couldn’t live without?
• You meet someone new at work, and although they haven’t come out and said “I’m Neurodivergent”, you can just tell. What sort of things are you noticing?
• What does time management look like for neurodivergent people?

Breaking Prod

Chris is breaking records in style, with an email whoopsie to all customers

Big Topic: Neurodiveristy

• What sort of stigma comes with being neurodivergent?
• Have you tried during your career did you pretend you weren't neurodivergent, by “masking”?
• Did you ever tell yourself, or have other people tell you, “you need to try harder”, even though you felt you were already giving it your all?
• When’s the right time to tell your boss/employer?
• From the corporate side, what does good support look like from your employer?
• In some ways, your Neurodivergence makes things more difficult – are there any ways in which it’s your superpower?
• What's your take on medication?
• What should parents know about neurodivergence? How do you support your daughter?

News

• TikTok Misinformation Is Warping Young People's Understanding of ADHD (sciencealert.com)

  “of the top 100 most-viewed TikTok videos tagged for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) content, fewer than half matched the professional diagnostic criteria for the condition.”
  “using the top 100's five most accurate and five least accurate videos, as judged by clinical psychologists. These 10 clips were then shown to 843 undergraduates taking an introductory psychology course, who were asked to rate them based on their perceived educational value. While the best five videos scored an average of 3.6 from psychologists for accuracy, they only got a score of 2.8 from the students. The worst five videos for accuracy scored 1.1 from psychologists, but 2.3 from students.”

• Wes Streeting: there is overdiagnosis of mental health conditions. Health secretary says too many people are being ‘written off’ and that is driving ministers’ changes to welfare (The Guardian)

  From Wes Streeting: “Here’s the other thing, mental wellbeing, illness, it’s a spectrum and I think definitely there’s an overdiagnosis, but there’s too many people being written off and, to your point about treatment, too many people who just aren’t getting the support they need. So if you can get that support to people much earlier, then you can help people to either stay in work or get back to work.”

  • Neurodiverse staff well suited to a changing world (The Times, paywalled) > "People with conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyspraxia and dyslexia bring unique skills to the workplace"

Recommendations

Neurodivergence

• NHS Website
• ADHD Love, YouTube Channel
• How to ADHD, by Jessica McCabe

TV

• LOL: Last One Laughing, reality comedy on Amazon Prime
• Gangs of London Action Drama from Sky

Music

• Why? - The Well I Fell Into :: Alternative :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube
• HHY & the Kampala Unit :: Electronic Jazz :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube
• Wilkinson :: Electronic, Drum 'n' Bass :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube

If you've enjoyed the show, recommend it to a friend! Or leave us a rating/review on apple/spotify to help others find us.
Subscribe to our new Newsletter! Stay informed about new episodes, and get beautiful news and recommendation links.

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Special Guest: Chris Knight.

Subscribe to our new Newsletter!. Stay informed about new episodes, and get beautiful news and recommendation links.

• Michael has been feeling old
• We're using Vault and wondering about building kubernetes operators

Who is Dave McNeill?

• How did you first get into computers?
• How did you get your first job in tech?
• Where are you working now, What does your day to day job look like?

Quickfire Questions

• Vim, VSCode, or vibe coding in cursor?
• You can only code in one language for the rest of your life, what do you pick?
• Personal texting – preferred platform? Why? Why not whatsapp?
• Biggest user crime of making container images?
• Oldest piece of untouched software you’ve seen running in production?

Breaking Prod Leaderboard

Surely someone in Ops has seen something go wrong... with account balances?

Big Topics

Hot Takes, and what Dave thinks of them:

• "SRE is just re-branded Ops"
• "DevOps is Dead, Long Live Platform Engineering"
• "Programming Languages will become obsolete, English is the new programming language"
• "Disaster recovery training is just something google wrote in a book and nobody does it"

News

• * More supply chain attacks (wiz.io blog)
• Google Acquires Wiz for $32 Billion (helpnetsecurity.com)
• Amazon removing privacy options from Alexa (techspot.com)
• BYD have a car that charges in 5 minutes (The Guardian)

Recommendations

DevOps, Platform Eng, SRE

• The SRE Handbook (Free google book)
• A Tour of Go website
• Release It! (pragmatic prorammer bookshelf)
• Platform Engineering, Camille Fournier (O'Reilly)
• Wardley Mapping (YouTube)

Music

• Truthpaste :: Manchester Indie Pop :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube
• Sharon Van Etten - Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory :: American singer-songwriter Alternative Album :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube
• The Bug Club :: Welsh indie energetic garage and punk :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube

TV

• Adolesence (Netflix)
• School Swap: UK to USA (Channel 4)

Podcast

• Steering Engineering

If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a recommendation, subscribe to our new newsletter, but most importantly, tell a friend!

Special Guest: Dave McNeill.

Subscribe to our new Newsletter!. Stay informed about new episodes, and get beautiful news and recommendation links.

• Michael is still pale after a weekend in the sun. He didn't shed a tear after being in the Spa's floation tank
• Mark dropped a treadmill on his foot.
• Raxit had a good job interview
• You only need one server, given it is sufficiently powerful...

Quickfire Questions

• Your opinion of Agile, in one word.
• Personal preference: Public sector or private sector work?
• What’s the biggest crime against Jira?
• Worst excuse you’ve ever heard for missing a sprint goal or PI goal, or just not having a bit of work done?
• Longest you’ve ever seen a story carried over in the next, and the next, and the next sprint?
• You join a team, day 1, they show you their organisation stuff, and they do all planning in excel. Do you go with the flow, or immediately advocate something else? Why?
• Biggest red flag that someone isn’t really agile?
• What’s a task you dread doing throughout the PI increment?
• Most valuable certifications?

## Breaking Prod Leaderboard
We have a new winner! With 3 distinct stories!

Big topic for the week

• How would you describe to a new developer, the definition of modern agile software development? What’s it all about?
• You’ve done a scrum master / agile lead type role before. How does a department know when it’s ready to start thinking about a scaled agile framework?
• What sort of problems might they notice first that agile hasn’t seemed to solve for them, even though they’re doing scrum and/or kanban well?
• If 5 or so teams have identified the problem, how do they get business buy-in to get someone in to help with a scaled agile framework?
• Have you seen a scaled agile implementation fail? What are the biggest mis-steps in scaled agile failing? How would you even know it’s failing?
• What sort of stuff gets measured? Are there KPIs?
• Does it make any impact on individual contributors? Or is this just something that helps their managers and product owners be better organised?
• Do top software companies do this?
• Are there any scenarios you’ve seen people implement this, and it was just the wrong idea?

News

• Google chrome sale from DOJ (MacRumors)
• Google donates to Trump inauguration (CNBC)
• Artists release album “Is This What We Want?”, protesting AI (The Guardian)
• HR managers creates 22 fake employees and cashes their pay check for 10 years (TownFlex.com)

Recommendations

SAFe & Scaled Agile

• Scaled Agile Website
• The Art of Avoiding a Trainwreck (Abe Books)
• Learning Agile (O'Reilly)

Tech

• Ghostty vs. Warp, and oh-my-posh

Music

• Courting - Lust for Life, Or: 'How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story' :: British Alt Rock album :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube
• Mercury Rev :: American Rock Band :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube
• Fat White Family - Champagne Holocaust :: British Alt Rock album :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube
• The Limiñanas :: French Rock band:: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube
• DJ Counselling - Caring EP :: House album :: Apple Music · Spotify · YouTube

TV

• Drive to Survive (Netflix)
• Zero Day (Netflix)
• Daredevil: Born Again (Disney+)

Special Guest: Raxit Ramani.

• Michael prepares for putting together an event on developer experience
• Sam helps merge 2 companies together
• RIP duolingo bird

Who is Sam Jones?

loosely...

Frontend Dev
-> Team Lead @ gamesys
---> Eng. Manager @ Monzo
-----> Director of Eng. @ Benifex

Quickfire Questions

• One to ones, all in one day or evenly spread throughout the week?
• Best new joiner swag you’ve ever had?
• Scrum or Kanban?
• Longest probation period you’ve ever heard of?
• Ever failed someone’s probation? Ever failed probation yourself?
• Interviewing off camera – yay or nay?
• Best team building activity?
• Slack or Teams?

Breaking Prod

The near miss that could've topped our leaderboard, working on trading systems

Big Topic

• How do you get into it? What does training look like, for an engineering manager?
• Skip levels – do you do these? How often?
• Best way you’ve improved your abilities as an engineering manager?
• The danger zone! What it is and how to work through it?
• Is AI coming for your job?
• How do you see signs of burnout in people you’re managing?
• What are your KPIs as an engineering manager?
• Stack ranking employees – necessary evil?
• How do you make the jump from managing engineers, to managing managers?

## News

1. Alphabet drops a longstanding ban on AI being used for developing weapons (BBC)
2. ELON MUSK act (TechCrunch). The proposed bill is called the ELON MUSK Act, which stands for “Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy”
3. Asahi Linux Hector Martin project leads resigns – maintainer burnout (The Register)
4. Apple Lamp - Expressive and Functional Movement Design for Non-Anthropomorphic Robot research paper (Apple)
5. Hauwei release tri-folding phone (Youtube - Marques Brownlee)

Recommendations

Engineering Management Books

• Resilient Management, Lara Hogan
• Management 3.0
• The Manager's Path, Camille Fournier (O'Reilly)
• An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management, Will Larson (Stripe Press)
• Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager (Good Reads)
• Managing Humans: Biting and Humourous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, Michael Lopp
• Scaling People, Claire Hughes Johnson (Stripe Press)

Non Engineering Management Books

• The Staff Engineer's Path (O'Reilly)
• Platform Engineering, Camille Fournier (O'Reilly)

Music

• I Love You, Honeybear - Father John Misty (Apple Music). Royal Albert Hall Event

Movies

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (IMDb)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (IMDb)

Miscellaneous

Canada vs. USA ice hockey match, 3 fights in first 9 seconds of play (YouTube)

Next Time

Rax talks about Scaled Agile frameworks

Listen to the end to hear this episodes bloopers!

If you've enjoyed the show, please recommend us to someone else who would like it, leave us a rating/review, or give us some feedback.

Give us your feedback about the podcast

Special Guest: Sam Jones.

• Michael's office refurb continues, as he trades signed music memorabilia for music speakers
• The great rebrand is in the works
• Lenny steals a lunch
• Nikki shows off her BAFTA

Quickfire Questions

1. Mac or PC?
2. Greatest gaming console ever?
3. Greatest game ever?
4. Most addictive game on your phone?
5. Yorkshire or East Anglia?
6. Morris Ring, Morris Foundation, or Open Morris?
7. Spend a day doing Freelance work, or a day doing your permanent job?
8. Do you version control your code?
9. Is big tech fundamentally evil?
10. Death of Flash – sad or not sad?

Breaking prod?

Well that won't earn you a BAFTA! Nikki does her homework.

Big Topic: Tech for good, making games for kids

• Tech for good – conscious choice or something you walked in to?
• Do you worry about screen time?
• Would you / have you ever taken a role you feel morally ambiguous about?
• How close do you get to the end user of your product?
• What’s a kid’s first interaction like with the games your company makes?
• Does it show demonstrable results in treatment?
• Do you make any games in your spare time?

Research from Dylan Yamada-Rice on Exploring Children's attitides towards notions fo the digital good through hybrid arts

News

1. Are noise cancelling headphones causing health problems?
2. Children’s views on AI will form the manifesto for world leaders
3. AI to help us understand animal’s emotions
4. Sri Lankan grid taken out by monkeys

Recommendations

Music

This is Classic Club playlist, dance anthems (apple music)
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - Fear is on our Side album, Alternative (apple music)
Saafi Brothers - Mystic Cigarettes album, electronic (apple music)

Podcasts

Cloud Dialogues podcast from our guest on episode 7, Georgia Smith

Books

The Power of Bad and How to Overcome it

TV

Am I being unreasonable? (BBC iPlayer)

If you've enjoyed the show, please recommend us to someone else who would like it, leave us a rating/review, or give us some feedback.

Give us your feedback about the podcast

Special Guest: Nikki Stearman.

GIVE US FEEDBACK! Do this form, it will take 4 mins

Chris Hunter

Working in government on a project with other consultancies also contributing. Are they in competition?
Lovely personal github readme

Quickfire Questions

1. Hurling, GAA, or other?
2. Most used terminal command at the moment?
3. Dev or Ops, pick one for the rest of you life.
4. Dream Industry to work in?
5. Least enjoyable technologies you've worked with?
6. Michael's weirdest habbit?
7. How scared are you AI will take your job?
8. What's your "getting down to write code" music?

Breaking Prod

Clean sheet, but has seen a team unable to deploy to prod for over a month!

Big Topics

Changing Careers

You’ve had a big career change.

• What made you decide you wanted to change careers?
• Were you frustrated with the day-to-day job, or environment? Lack of variation? Lack of opportunities?
• Presumably you were on at least alright money, was it worrying taking a pay cut?
• Did you have to build a financial buffer to finance the change?
• Do you wish you had done it sooner? Or timed it right?
• How did you go about skilling up?

Coding Bootcamp, at Le Wagon

• All in person, or online?
• What sort of topics did you cover?
• Anything you loved or hated? You had a few months gap after the coding bootcamp, before your job.
• Was that nerve wracking? To think you’d spent a few months of time/money, and not yet got a job?
• Were you already warmed up to the idea that finding work might just take a while?
• Did you get guidance on how to go about getting a job?
• Has the content you learned then all been useful? Any cruft?
• How is the pay now, relative to your previous role?
• Was it a great investment?
• Any advice for anyone considering a career change into tech?

News

1. AI sensors used in homes of vulnerable people
2. Ontario responds to Trump tariff by pitching Starlink deal into the trash
3. EU's AltStore Gets First Native iOS Pornography App
4. Irish AI minister has never used ChatGPT
5. Australia bans DeepSeek on government devices
6. Abandoned S3 buckets and the potential to do harm on a SolarWinds+ scale
7. Elon Musk lies about gaming ability

Recommendations

Music

• The Long Forever, Elephant Tree & Lowrider
• Studio Ghibli, Anime Music

Podcast

• Search Engine: The New Zuckerberg

Movies

• Dune 2
• The Brutalist

GIVE US FEEDBACK! Do this form, it will take 4 mins

Special Guest: Chris Hunter.

• Michael is on the super stouts
• Marie is doing dry "couple-of-days"
• What's a plosion? Michael has over-researched micophones
• Is Feng-Shui a load of nonsense? Or Real?
• Marie rubbishes Mark's new years resolution

Who is Marie Wigmore?

• Independent contractor for over 3 decades, currently engaged at BT
• Jira-avoidance wizard
• Graduate of the Youth Training Scheme, proud achiever of 5 O-Levels
• Driving Licence holder
• There will be a quiz at the end!

Quickfire questions

1. Inside or Outside IR35?
2. Microsoft Project Planner or Jira?
3. AI - scared or not scared?
4. If you were in charge, what's your RTO policy?
5. Do you prefer to consult for public sector, or consult for private sector?
6. Sports Car or SUV?
7. Most Expensive Dress you've ever worn?
8. One fashion tip for Mark?
9. Cat person or dog person?

Breaking Production Leaderboard

Clean Sheet, or Big Bang?
Marie has a podcast exclusive for us, on the post office scandal. Bloody toffee-crisp eaters!

Big Topics

Contracting

• How has it changed?
• Are the good times behind us?
• How have the big 4 influenced government policy?
• Have you ever had any contracts go bad, mid-way through?
• In the past, you’ve got a contract coming to an end, it’s not getting renewed, you’ve got bills to pay. What’s the game plan for landing you next gig?

Starting a consultancy

• What’s the gameplan for launching a new company?
• What are you gonna sell?
• How will you get clients?

News for the week

1. Experts urge caution over use of Chinese AI Deepseek (The Guardian)
2. James Howells suing Newport council again, after partner binned bitcoin wallet, and they won't let him dig up landfill (BBC)
3. Microsoft to acquire tiktok? (The Guardian)
4. Google maps renaming, after Trump renaming (The Register)
5. Amazon prime air to launch in Darlington (Tech Crunch)
6. AWS & Microsoft CMA investigation (Computer Weekly)

Old news, but relevant:

• Chinese major hardware hack uncovered (The Guardian)

Recommendations

Music

• Justice – Cross, electro/dance
• Underworld - Second toughest in the infants, electro
• Sonny Federa, DJ, House

TV

• Mr McMahon, wrestling documentary
• Traitors: Uncloaked finale, with Claudia Winkleman
• Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, documentary
• Girl You Know It's True, music movie about Milli Vanilli, who had one of the biggest scandals in music history
• The White Lotus, drama, comedy
• Gangs of London, Crime Drama

Books

• Feng Shui Modern, by Cliff Tan (Guardian Bookshop)

Podcasts

• Designated Driver, the podcast for fans of Adam Driver (Podbean)

Jokes

1. What do you call a Hippo on One Leg?
2. Change your nickname on iOS (YT video)

Next Time:

Chris Hunter joins us talking about coding bootcamps

Follow us, like & subscribe

Leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts/Spotify etc..
Find the trailers wherever you are:

• Instagram
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Reddit
• BlueSky
• Our Website, where you'll find our breaking prod leaederboard and nationalities of guests and more.

Special Guest: Marie Wigmore.

James is dropping tables like it's hot... in the first week

Big Topic

Data. Big Data. HUGE Data.

What's it like to leave after more than 10 years at one company? Why the change? Why not sooner?

News

1. Instagram hides search results for Democrats
2. UK digital driving licences
3. BT scraps EV charging scheme, having only installed... one.
4. Gotta be over 18 to watch porn in the UK from July
5. AI drugs are on the way "Eventually you could imagine personalized medicine where it's optimized, maybe overnight, by an AI system for your personal metabolism"
6. Is Melania Trump's autobiography written using ChatGPT?
7. Hulk Smash Muck and Zuck
8. AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830,000
9. Excel World Championships with 7.5 hour live stream
10. Working from home is “not proper work”, according to Lord Rose, of M&S and Asda

Recommendations

Movies

• Civil War

Music

• The Middlenight Men - Issue 2, rock
• Justice - Cross, electronic dance

TV

• Mr. McMahon wrestling, on Netflix
• The Day of the Jackal on Sky/NowTV
• Severance season 2, Apple TV
• Traitors is finishing this weekend, BBC iPlayer

Podcasts

• The rest is Entertainment
• Here comes the guilotine, by Frankie Boyle

Special Guest: James Balloch.

CES 2025 has come and been

• Michael thinks about persuading his cats to come to work
• I want to charge my phone in 5 econds

Are we dry January-ing? No.

Resolutions:

• Mark will play more darts
• Michael will listen to political podcasts and 2 new albums a week
• Georgia will go to places where people will help us meet goals

What's it like being a Consultant Strategist?
Companies are going full on RTO - why? Are governments pressuring big business back into the office?

Breaking Prod

Georgia wastes 50k on unnecessary cloud spend, currently ranked about 2nd on our "Breaking Prod" leaderboard.

Is the future of relationships just dating a robot?

Big Topic

Georgia has been involved in the disability and age care space. Some of the problems we've encountered, and how we can tackle them.
How does Georgia fit it all in?

In the News

1. Tiktok ban looking likely
2. LG’s creepy air purifiers
3. Apple Intelligence notification summaries not quite good enough
4. Facebook ditching fact checkers
5. Facebook has AI profiles
6. JP morgan 5 days RTO
7. Ghostty terminal emulator release, from Mitchell Hashimoto

Recommendations

Books

• Mark read (listened to) Nuclear War: A Scenario
• Mark has a potential contender for equally grim (because it’s true), Alexei Navalny’s Patriot

TV:

• Black Doves Spy Drama with Keira Knightly and Ben Whishaw
• Game of Throws and Dart Kings on Sky for documentaries about darts now and then.
• Severance Season 2 is out on Friday.
• Silo season 2
• Traitors season 3
• Mr. MacMahon on Netflix

Music

• Cahill Costello

Michael recommends getting a Stanley Cup

Next time...

We're hoping to have Sam Jones on, talking about burnout, journalling, and plenty more fun stuff.

Special Guest: Georgia L. Smith.

• Lenny Visits Wayde
• Michael finishes the last Espresso Martini Mouse
• JP sipps a duvel, not a duv-elle

We've got some quickfire questions for JP on all things recuitment.

• Does github activity matter?
• How many interviews is too many interviews?
• What's your go-to interview question?

Big Topics

Recruitment

• Michael and Mark get a CV review from the professional.
• Comparison of job platforms, LinkedIn meets Otta
• Most memorable interviews

Starting a new Venture

• Starting your own business! JP talks about his new venture, Torch, how he developed the idea, what does the MVP do?
• How JP found a technical founder, and started talking to clients about it.
• Michael and I talk about team moves and what the process looks like.

In the News

1. Broadcom Triples software revenue, somehow. What a mystery.
   
2. Starlink competitor IRIS launching in Europe – 290 satellites
3. Tom Hanks is forever young
4. Online Safety Act comes into effect in 3 months
5. A look at why OpenAI’s K8s server got overloaded and they got locked out
6. Aqua finds 336,000 Prometheus servers and exporters are wide open, uses them to get system info and cause dos attacks
7. Even Krisy-Kreme aren’t safe! Why are people attacking a donut company?!

Recommendations

TV

JP also recommends The Day of the Jackal

Books

Michael has finished Nuclear War: A Scenario

Out and About

Hidden City - a real-world texting adventure to help James Bond

Special Guest: Jean-Paul Ashby.

• Ian gives us his tooling preferences and why.
• Cynic to advocate for public cloud
• The phones are ringing off the hooks, thanks to Ian Reeves!
• What do we think of DHH?
• Should you run your own stuff, or pay for SaaS?
• Kim Jung Un's inner SuperHero

Big Topics

Data Center Repatriation.
Why DHH moved 37signals from public cloud to on-prem, here's his blogs on How it started vs. How it's going.
Is this reverting back to on-premise becoming commonplace?
Has the sales pitch for public cloud shifted?

In the news

1. Broadcom is making some major changes to stop VMware exodus
2. Indonesia squeezes apple even harder for $1Bn
3. New openAI model is pen tested for reasoning, and subversion. Can it act in its own interests to deceive the user? This is absolutely fascinating
4. Landlords Are Using AI to Raise Rents—and Cities Are Starting to Push Back
5. OpenAI releases Sora
6. Is AI hitting a wall?
7. Are AI Leaders overly optimistic?

Recommendations

Music

• Everyday is Christmas, Sia
• A keen follower told us that the Mark Lanegan tribute gig is on YouTube
• It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land, Soulsavers
• Try out Teddy Swims for some soul/pop
• Synthwave Goose's Blade Runner 2049 single and Hacker music album fit for Mr. Robot

Books

• Nuclear War, A Scenario by Annie Jacobson
• Bill Bryson's A Really Short History of Nearly Everything

TV

True Detective on Sky/NowTV

Special Guest: Ian Reeves.