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Issue 281: Deterministic simulations

This week, we're thinking safety first. Hear about how to defend your mobile app when the attacker controls your compiled code and the device it runs on. Find out how time travel debugging works in a deterministic simulation. Check out the banking engineering org that went all in on serverless. And a safe bet: the Developers Survey is open for your input. XX

You'll still find a little bit about AI here too (certainly more in the links). Read about how real businesses are integrating AI agents into their workflow and getting those sweet sweet productivity gains. If you're out there building AI on Snowflake, we've partnered with them to make our public site data easier to integrate for everyone. XX

As promised, there are a couple of dueling AI takes in the roundup. "AI skeptics are crazy" vs. "no measurable productivity gains from AI". Two takes enter, a million takes leave! Other ponderables include the perils of a Magic: The Gathering monoculture and a how one human learned the frustrations of machine learning.

From the blog

Banking on a serverless world

Kathleen Vignos, VP of Software Engineering at Capital One, sits down with Ryan to explore shifting to 100% serverless architecture in enterprise, deploying talent for better customer experience, and fostering AI innovation and tech advancements in a regulated banking environment.

The 2025 Developer Survey is still open!

There's still time to add your voice to this year's developer survey! Take the survey now.

If an attacker can edit your mobile code, how do you defend your app?

Ryan is joined by Jan Seredynski, Mobile Security Researcher and Pentester at Guardsquare, to talk about how you protect your app when the attackers control the code and the device it runs on.

In a deterministic simulation, you can debug with time travel

Will Wilson, CEO and co-founder of Antithesis, joins Ryan and Stack Overflow senior director of engineering Ben Matthews on the podcast to discuss deterministic simulation testing, the pitfalls of chaos testing in an AI-driven world, and how testing can help developers deal with technical debt.

Stack Exchange knowledge is for everyone (and now available on Snowflake Marketplace)

Snowflake customers can now easily enrich their AI applications and agentic systems with some of the most trusted, highest-quality data available while respecting our community members who provide this content with proper attribution.

Integrating AI agents: Navigating challenges, ensuring security, and driving adoption

Positioned at the intersection of automation, decision intelligence, and data orchestration, AI agents are quickly emerging as essential tools for aligning business outcomes with technical workflows.

Solve agent discovery and collaboration with AGNTCY OSS

AI agents are stuck in silos—no discovery, no shared protocols, no standard workflows. It’s like building the web without HTTP or TCP/IP. That's why AGNTCY is building the Internet of Agents to solve these problems. Join the collective.

Interesting questions

Why did my EV charge outlet overheat and burn the wires?

The short (ahem) answer is they torqued their nut monkey tight, not gorilla tight.

Frustration with machine learning and deep learning research

“‘It didn’t work’ is not the end—the end is knowing why it didn’t work.”

In MTG, why aren't mono-color decks optimal?

Hue will save you when you face the rainbow?

To which "lady-mathematician" is Weil referring?

The gentleman mathematician would do well to remember Mayme I. Logsdon.

Links from around the web

VC money is fueling a global boom in worker surveillance tech

The money men are betting on bossware overseas.

When memory was measured in kilobytes: The art of efficient vision

It took some clever code to implement computer vision on kBs of memory.

Study looking at AI chatbots in 7,000 workplaces finds 'no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation'

The reports of our productivity gains have been greatly exaggerated.

My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

Spice and counter spice: this take says AI is automating all the boring stuff possible.


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