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literature.stackexchange.com

Rumor that Socrates helped Euripides with his plays?

Even the Athenians loved a little piece of gossip.

superuser.com

Why can’t I delete files from USB drive mounted over a CIFS share?

Your sudo has no power here!

law.stackexchange.com

Is there any liability associated with chatbots that pretend to be human?

Short answer: yes. Longer answer (as it always is with the law): it depends.

skeptics.stackexchange.com

Did Microsoft Windows popularize Klondike solitaire?

Playing Klondike Solitaire before it was on Windows made you the original hipster.

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matthogg.fyi

A unified theory of ego, empathy, and humility at work

Oh, so by ID they didn't mean identifier, they meant id.

lalitm.com

We stopped roadmap work for a week and fixed 189 bugs

Now how do we add a whosit and a whatsit to this software development fixit?

eshyperscale.github.io

Evolution strategies at the hyperscale

This just in: eggrolls aren't just a delicious appetizer, they're a new way to optimize your ML.

spectrum.ieee.org

Trillions spent and big software projects are still failing

"The drivers of software failure frequently are failures of human imagination."

chrbutler.com

What AI is really for

It's good to remember that technology being overhyped is not a new concept.

blog.jetbrains.com

10 smart performance hacks for faster Python code

Surprise, surprise, the performance enhancing drug of Python is just getting really good at Python.

startupgambit.com

Startup gambit – spot unicorns before they happen

Hopefully they'll add an insider trading DLC to this game sometime soon.

bitsnpieces.dev

I built a synth for my daughter

You've heard of Beats by Dre. Now meet Synths by Dad.

tonsky.me

Needy programs

When did the internet start to feel like a clingy ex?

spectrum.ieee.org

A challenge to roboticists: my humanoid Olympics

How many robots does it take to turn a sock inside out? A lot, apparently.

arpitbhayani.me

Heartbeats in distributed systems

Hopefully the constant beating of all the nodes in your distributed system won't turn you into an Edgar Allen Poe character.

raganwald.com

A brutal look at balanced parentheses, computing machines, and pushdown automata

Taking "software architect" to its most literal interpretation.

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Issue 305: New hair, new clothes, still Stack Overflow

It's been an eventful week at Stack Overflow. If you haven't heard yet, we're unifying all our different selves into a Voltron of knowledge. At Microsoft Ignite, we showcased the next generation of our enterprise product, now named Stack Internal. We won't say too much about it in this here newsletter intro, but if you want all the juicy details, we've got them for you on the blog. That's not the only new thing happening, either. Check out our Community Products update to hear about what new features we've got cooking for the public platform. XX Our time at Ignite showed us that AI and agents are here to stay, so we've got two pods for you this week on just that topic. Retool's David Hsu sat down with us to talk guardrails and high-level programming primitives for AI coding assistants, so that no data will be harmed the next time your nontechnical coworker loads up a vibe coding bot. We also had Assaf Elovic from monday.com on the pod to discuss how they create agents that users actually adopt. Spoiler alert: they do it by focusing on user experience. XX Maybe our new rebrand has our head a little big this week, so enough about us. We've also got plenty links from around the web, ranging from a homemade synthesizer toy to a startup game where you can finally be the rich investor throwing around your money. And what would an Overflow newsletter be without the gift of knowledge? If you're curious about three yolk eggs, nuking barrels of oil, or lighting farts on fire, you'll love this week's answers. All of those—and much more—are ready for your curious eyes down below.

Issue 304: Are you ten times more productive yet?

Feeling like AI makes more work than you expected? You're not alone. If your promised 10x productivity has not yet been realized, that's okay. We have the stories you need this week to help you get just a little bit closer. Secure Code Warrior's CTO Matias Madou was on the pod to preach the good word on the lost art of critical thinking, and what developer training will look like in the age of AI. Benjamin Klieger from Groq also joined us to talk AI agent infrastructure, so your agents can be faster at making you faster. We've also got a Leaders of Code episode for you with the VP of Platform Engineering from JP Morgan Chase & Co., Ramprasad Rai, on how enterprises are balancing AI productivity with compliance, so your 10x productivity doesn't get you into any legal battles. In a world of evolving technology, the people of the internet are evolving along with it. We have a story on web programs becoming more needy, a brutal(ist) look at programming languages, and one dev's insurmountable challenge to humanoid robots: be able to use a doggy bag. So, let's just circle back...are you ten times more productive? While you ponder the answer to that one, we have plenty of other questions for you. How old are trees? How deep can Leet speak go? Can you cancel that Venmo request you've been avoiding if the person owes you money in return—legally speaking? Those answers and more in the links below.

Issue 303: To abstract or not to abstract

To abstract or not to abstract? That's the question on our minds this week. Whether you're looking for more transparency or just trying to get your code out the door, we have plenty of stories for you. On the pod, we've got a chat with Graphite's Greg Foster on how to make your AI-generated code more secure. Spoiler: it's by giving humans more context and visibility into the code. We also spoke to Nic Benders from New Relic on the complexity crisis, and how developers don't just need observability, they need understandability. And if your feelings about abstraction and AI aren't complicated enough, make sure you read our blog on how AI is abstracting human creativity, written by our very own Eira May. All this talk about hidden layers has us wanting to be more transparent, too. We're sharing what's new on Stack Overflow for November—from voting, to anti-spam, to open-ended questions—in our first ever monthly update blog. Being a software developer can sometimes make you feel like you're in The X-Files, which is why one developer from the web is calling software the UFOlogy of engineering, and another is worrying about the death of frameworks because of LLMs' abstraction. But if you're ever worried about too much opacity, you can always go old-school and change your programming language; we have at least one dev in this week's issue who really thinks you should use OCaml if you do. But one thing hasn't changed: if you don't ask, you'll never know. So we have plenty of questions and answers this week that should give you a little clarity into the abstract. For instance: if something happens and I don't see it, did it really happen? Is a bot's Spotify Wrapped less valid than mine? Are the lyrics, "What if God was one of us?" still applicable if God has no birthday? Unabstract those abstracts in the links below.

Issue 302: Get your specs right

Developers get to use a lot of tools that both hurt and help their productivity. But over here at Stack Overflow, we think AI agents might be some of the best and brightest of them all. On the blog, Ryan talks about how agents are poised to become the best tool for developers, because in his words: One tool is better than ten. On the pod, we welcome back Deepak Singh from AWS to talk Kiro, the spec-driven coding agent his team is building, and how he imagines the work of developers evolving. But don't let the tools get you too excited about kicking your feet up at your dev job—Tom Moor from Linear joined us to discuss the importance of context in agent effectiveness, and how junior devs can shape up for this new era of tech. Speaking of junior devs, our CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar has an upcoming convo with OpenAI about learning to code in the age of AI, and we have the details on that one for you on the blog. Whether you're a junior dev or one with years of experience, you could always build out your skillset a little, so we've got a whole zoo of mini programming languages to help you polish up your understanding. We've also got stories on introspective bots, and how to keep your own introspectiveness away from them through a humans-only public license. If you're feeling stuck in the Matrix right now, don't worry—be sure to check out how a mathematical proof debunks any fear you might have about being stuck in a simulation. But could that mathematical proof just be part of the Matrix anyway? One user on our math site is wondering what mathematical proofs were developed using LLMs We've got that answer for you and more—about backwards wheels, loud electric cars, and Gandalf's amnesia—ready for you in the links below.

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