📣 Headlines

• Enterprise AI infrastructure is maturing as orchestration startup Kovant launches globally with $1.5M in pre-seed funding while storage giant NetApp raises its full-year outlook on surging AI data demand.

• Cybersecurity continues to attract capital and consolidate, with AI-powered vulnerability fixer Clover Security raising $36M in a round backed by top tech execs and Irish MSSP Integrity360 acquiring South Africa’s Redshift to expand across finance and telecom clients.

• Defense tech’s boom is colliding with execution risk, as funding for the sector hits a record $7.7B in 2025 even while leading player Anduril’s autonomous weapons stumble in key tests and combat evaluations.

• Space manufacturing and Earth-observation are edging toward commercialization, with Varda Space Industries proving in-orbit drug production and planning to commoditize reentry services and Tokyo-based Axelspace rolling out next-gen microsatellites for high-frequency, high-res imaging.

• AI-generated music inches toward legitimacy as Warner Music signs a licensing deal with AI song generator Suno, letting artists opt in and funding new models after earlier lawsuits give way to a broader “artist-friendly” partnership.

• Fully driverless ride-hailing moves from demos to real service as Uber and WeRide launch a robotaxi service on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi with no safety drivers on board and expand this into Uber’s first fully autonomous offering in the UAE.

• Three years after ChatGPT, the AI platform race remains unsettled, with OpenAI, Google’s Gemini and China’s DeepSeek locked in shifting competition even as MIT Technology Review’s “AI Hype Index” shows consumers drowning in low-value AI-generated content.

• For founders relying on international talent, immigration remains a structural risk as Vox highlights how the broken H-1B system hampers startups’ ability to attract and retain high-skill workers—and lays out potential reforms.

💸 Startup Capital & Markets

Investing in the Red Zone: Commercial Open Source and the Bear Market (heathermeeker​.com). COSS investments thrive in downturns as open source projects minimize capital and leverage community feedback

Case Study: Loveable (aiacceleratorinstitute​.com). Loveable in Stockholm enables rapid, full-stack app building from natural language via multi-agent vibe coding, backed by UK/European VC and Accel investors

Bodegas Aren’t Going Anywhere; Degen Economics is Hollowing Out Society; the New Electric Tech Stack; and more++ [link blog] (hunterwalk​.com). Explores bodegas, immigrant economy, capital fabric, and the electric tech stack shaping society and startups

Letter #307: Scott Shleifer and Hani Enaya (2022) (aletteraday​.substack​.com). Tiger Global’s Scott Shleifer and Hani Enaya discuss global internet bets, penetration-driven growth, and MENA opportunities at the Riyadh FII conference

Brazil vs. Colombia: Where Should You Hire Remote Software Developers in 2025? (beontech​.wpengine​.com). Compare Brazil and Colombia for nearshore software hiring: costs, talent, time zones, compliance, and engagement models

🌍 Remote & Independent Work

Inside being a freelancer in web development (helloanselm​.com). Freelance web developer shares onboarding, feedback, cross-company insights, and strategies to accelerate projects and improve team effectiveness

A New Era for ScreenCred (samwarnick​.com). ScreenCred becomes a web app using SvelteKit, moving from iOS to web, with node adapter and self-hosting

Remote Work Revolution: Navigating the New Frontier of Tech Communication and Culture (eliza-ng​.me). Explores remote work vs. office culture, communication evolution, imposter syndrome, and trust in tech teams using modern tools like Slack and Teams

👔 Tech Career Paths

5 years at Grafana Labs (vtorosyan​.github​.io). Reflections on five years at Grafana Labs: growth, evolution, people, diplomacy, community, and the realities of scaling in a remote, human-centric culture

Product management really does matter (hydrick​.net). Product management links customer needs to usable software, highlighting a social media integration case and Solid's data pods

Joining Eventual (five-eights​.com). Joining Eventual: a distributed systems engineer’s path from Honeycomb to Eventual and building a scalable data-processing product

Reflections on my 5 years at HackerOne (devansh​.bearblog​.dev). Five-year journey at HackerOne from Product Security Analyst to Team Lead (Technical Services), with gratitude to peers and hackers

"Courage to quit" matters more for seniors, less for juniors (til​.andrew-quinn​.me). Courage to quit matters more for seniors than juniors in tech hiring and project choices

The Broken Job Search: Why Applying to Big Tech is a Trap (webdev-sb​.blogspot​.com). How startup funding and hiring practices affect job searches, with tips to target Series B/C startups and seek referrals

🧩 AI Product Strategy

Essential ingredients for enterprise AI success (stackoverflow​.blog). Data quality drives enterprise AI success, with focus on RAG, agentic AI, MCP servers, and human validation

The thinking machine, or machine that makes machines (metrics​.blogg​.gu​.se). AI and Generative AI hype, industry use, CUDA origin, Nvidia success, and reflections by Miroslaw Staron on software engineering

How Product Leaders Should Use AI, with Webflow CPO Rachel Wolan (news​.aakashg​.com). Webflow CPO Rachel Wolan discusses agentic Chief of Staff with Claude Code, AI adoption via Builder Days, and shipping AI-native features

A Whole New World (annievella​.com). Explores AI engineering shifts, non-deterministic systems, and the AI application layer with Gen AI, LLMs, and modern tooling

Building an AI-native engineering team (developers​.openai​.com). AI agents speed up the SDLC by planning, designing, building, testing, reviewing, and deploying with Codex across multi-step workflows

🤖 AI Coding Workflows

Bluesky Thread Viewer thread by @simonwillison.net (simonwillison​.net). Bluesky Thread Viewer in JavaScript with Claude Code, showcasing a thread renderer and API vibes using Claude/ChatGPT integrations

The whole product team can use coding agents (therealadam​.com). Coding agents empower the entire product team using Claude Code and prompts to explore, prototype, and validate ideas

Playing with Claude skills (val​.demar​.in). Paolo Valdemarin experiments with Claude skills to capture why software components are built, creating reusable, contextual prompts and Spritz agents for demos and learning

Go from prompt to production using a set of AI tools, or just one (Google Antigravity) (seroter​.com). AI-driven, agent-first tooling (Google Antigravity, Gemini suite) to build, code, and deploy an app end-to-end from prompt to Cloud Run

Shipping little apps anywhere, anytime (jakemccrary​.com). Small, AI-assisted single-page apps using Codex for rapid ideas, tweaks, deploying to jake.in/experiments

Seventeen years ago, I built a tool for the open Web. This weekend, I modernized it using Synthesis Coding with Claude Code AI (rajiv​.com). Blogroll Links revival using Synthesis Coding with Claude Code AI, WordPress, ActivityPub, and the Fediverse

Polyrepo Synthesis: Synthesis Coding Across Multiple Repositories with Claude Code in Visual Studio Code (rajiv​.com). Polyrepo Synthesis in VS Code using Claude Code across RagBot, RaGenie, and ragbot-data with CLAUDE.md context mesh

📜 Software History & Lessons

Weakly Link 25/48 (beny23​.github​.io). Discussion of supply chain attacks in npm/Posthog, plus UI tooling and a nostalgic take on programming UX and Advent of Code

A Series of Vignettes From My Childhood and Early Career (jasonscheirer​.com). Reflections on early software engineering, evolution of tools like IDEs and refactoring, automation, data ethics, and the dot-com era's impact on practice

How IT Managers Fail Software Projects (notes​.jim-nielsen​.com). IT management, Agile/DevOps, and AI vibes in software projects; quotes from Robert Charette, Ethan Marcotte, John Gruber, Alex Russell, Damon, and more

Cloudflare’s Uptime and Scale (notes​.jim-nielsen​.com). Cloudflare uptime, software project failures, AI, frontend trends, and industry voices from Gruber to Rupert and Russell

Programming peaked (functional​.computer). Reflections on 2025 programming: JavaScript with types, npm, React, Electron, Kubernetes, and a nostalgia for Java and traditional deployment

How good engineers write bad code at big companies (seangoedecke​.com). How large tech firms produce sloppy code due to turnover, ‘old hands’, and working on unfamiliar systems

Old Hacker (neuronetch​.com). Observational piece on a real-estate software built in Visual Basic, hacker ethos, and practical, utilitarian coding across years

⚙️ Socio-Technical Flow

Mediations #30: Increasing Efficiency and Effectiveness with Psychology & Economics - Part I (candost​.blog). Explores socio-technical systems, Institutional and Evolutionary Economics to boost organizational efficiency and innovation in software teams

Minimum viable testing, good interviews, and growing engineers 💡 (refactoring​.fm). Minimum viable testing, interview design that mirrors work, and growing engineers with AI-focused mentorship and code reviews

The Other Production (differentshelf​.com). Internal engineering platforms are production: source control, CI, shared services shape user experience and require reliability

Want to Invite Culture Change? Combine Metrics and Stories, Part 1 (jrothman​.com). Culture change through team experiments, flow efficiency metrics, and Deming’s cycle to drive agile product innovation

Mediations #30: Increasing Efficiency and Effectiveness with Economics & Psychology - Part I (mediations​.candost​.blog). Explores socio-technical systems, institutional and evolutionary economics to boost organizational efficiency in software engineering

SAG 2025 - Socio-Technical Evolution: Growing an Architecture and Its Organization for Fast Flow (microservices​.io). Growing a fast-flow socio-technical architecture with organizational structure and software patterns like microservices, Saga, API Composition, and CQRS