Technology News

Thoughtworks unveils AI/works™, a platform designed to assist its consultants in AI-driven software development, while a developer raises concerns about the surprisingly high energy consumption of AI coding tools. Meanwhile, experts ponder how AI will reshape software development practices, emphasizing the need for increased rigor and evaluation.

Leading technologists explore how Large Language Models (LLMs) impact the fundamental feedback loop between defining what software should do ('What') and how it's implemented ('How'). The conversation highlights how LLMs can accelerate initial development but underscores the continued importance of human insight for crafting maintainable and adaptable systems. Discover how this interplay shapes software design and impacts long-term cognitive load.

In today's rapidly evolving tech landscape, teams often find themselves polarized between prioritizing rapid adaptation and rigorous optimization. Agile pioneer Jim challenges this binary thinking, advocating for a dynamic approach that balances both modes to achieve true efficiency. Learn how to manage the inherent tension between exploration and exploitation to maximize speed and minimize costly handoffs.

One music aficionado shares their top six album picks from 2025, showcasing a diverse range of genres from Balkan brass to Ethio-jazz fusion. Ditching streaming services for curated digital albums, this deep dive offers a glimpse into unique sonic landscapes and surprising collaborations. Get ready to expand your musical horizons with these hidden gems.

As AI code generation tools rapidly advance, some developers are experiencing a sense of loss, questioning their future role and the satisfaction derived from crafting code. This piece delves into the emotional and practical implications of AI taking over a significant portion of software development, exploring the potential shift in skillsets and the very definition of "being in the zone."

Cloudflare, a leading content delivery network (CDN), experienced its second significant outage in under a month, impacting nearly a third of its HTTP traffic. The root cause, similar to the previous incident, stems from a flawed global configuration change, raising concerns about reliability and the need for backup CDN strategies. This latest incident underscores the inherent risks in rapidly deploying changes across vast, distributed networks.

Instagram is now requiring employees to return to the office five days a week, signaling a potential shift away from the hybrid work models embraced by many tech giants. This move, driven by a belief in the benefits of in-person collaboration, raises questions about the future of remote work and its impact on employee satisfaction and the competitive tech landscape.

The irony wasn't lost on anyone: during a significant Cloudflare outage in November 2025, Downdetector, the very service meant to track such disruptions, also went dark. This incident exposed Downdetector's reliance on Cloudflare for critical services and sparked a conversation about the practical realities of managing upstream dependencies, especially when balancing cost and performance.

In a surprising move, a Mongolian startup, Nasha Tech, translated 'The Software Engineer's Guidebook' to empower its team and contribute to the local tech ecosystem. The initiative highlights the global demand for accessible technical knowledge and the innovative approaches companies are taking to foster growth. This unexpected partnership underscores the importance of language accessibility in democratizing tech education.

A recent six-hour Cloudflare outage brought down thousands of websites, underscoring the internet's reliance on content delivery networks (CDNs). Cloudflare's swift and unusually detailed postmortem reveals a database permissions change that cascaded into a system-wide failure, offering valuable lessons for developers and infrastructure teams.

Aspiring tech authors, take note! One software engineer's four-year journey to publishing a bestselling book reveals the often opaque world of tech publishing, offering a candid look at royalties, pitching strategies, and the key players to know. From securing an advance to understanding ebook revenue splits, this behind-the-scenes account provides invaluable guidance for navigating the path to publication.

Amazon's recent announcement of 14,000 job cuts has sent ripples through the tech world, sparking debate about the underlying cause. Is the online retail giant streamlining operations to fuel its massive AI investments, or is it bracing for a potential economic slowdown signaled by shifts in consumer spending?

Navigating the gauntlet of Big Tech interviews is a challenge many engineers face. A Principal Software Engineer candidate, Puneet Patwari, recently shared his experiences from over 60 interviews at 11 companies, offering a rare glimpse into the hiring processes of tech giants like Meta and Atlassian.

Steve Ballmer's tenure as Microsoft's CEO is often overshadowed by the company's resurgence under Satya Nadella. However, a closer look reveals that Ballmer laid crucial groundwork, making significant long-term investments and strategically positioning Microsoft for future success despite facing considerable criticism at the time. Was the narrative of a failing Microsoft under Ballmer simply inaccurate?

About eight years ago, I was playing a game of Codenames where the game state was such that our team would almost certainly lose if we didn't correctly guess all of our remaining words on our turn. From the given clue, we were unable to do this. Although the game is meant to be a word guessing game based on word clues, a teammate suggested that, based on the physical layout of the words that had been selected, most of the possibilities we were considering would result in patterns that were "too

There've been regular viral stories about ML/AI bias with LLMs and generative AI for the past couple years. One thing I find interesting about discussions of bias is how different the reaction is in the LLM and generative AI case when compared to "classical" bugs in cases where there's a clear bug. In particular, if you look at forums or other discussions with lay people, people frequently deny that a model which produces output that's sort of the opposite of what the user asked for is even a bu

A decade after the FTC decided against pursuing antitrust action against Google, newly released internal memos paint a concerning picture. The documents suggest a significant disconnect between FTC economists' understanding of the tech industry and the realities on the ground, potentially influencing a pivotal regulatory decision.

In 2017, we looked at how web bloat affects users with slow connections. Even in the U.S., many users didn't have broadband speeds, making much of the web difficult to use. It's still the case that many users don't have broadband speeds, both inside and outside of the U.S. and that much of the modern web isn't usable for people with slow internet, but the exponential increase in bandwidth (Nielsen suggests this is 50% per year for high-end connections) has outpaced web bloat for typical sites, m

The conventional wisdom is that tech giants are best equipped to combat spam, fraud, and harmful content due to their vast resources. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that these platforms often struggle more than smaller entities, highlighting the diseconomies of scale when it comes to content moderation and user support.

On large platforms, it's impossible to have policies on things like moderation, spam, fraud, and sexual content that people agree on. David Turner made a simple game to illustrate how difficult this is even in a trivial case, No Vehicles in the Park. If you haven't played it yet, I recommend playing it now before continuing to read this document. The idea behind the site is that it's very difficult to get people to agree on what moderation rules should apply to a platform. Even if you take a muc

This is a set of notes on the Quinn Emanuel report on Cruise's handling of the 2023-10-02 accident where a Cruise autonomous vehicle (AV) hit a pedestrian, stopped, and then started moving again with the pedestrian stuck under the bottom of the AV, dragging the pedestrian 20 feet. After seeing some comments about this report, I read five stories on this report and then skimmed the report and my feeling is that the authors of four of the stories probably didn't read the report, and that people wh

Despite the rise of blogs, newsletters, and in-depth articles, platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram continue to thrive. This isn't just about shorter attention spans; it's a complex interplay of engagement, community, ease of creation, and monetization that keeps creators and consumers flocking to microblogging and video platforms.

Are search results getting worse? One tech expert puts Google, Bing, and alternative search engines to the test, alongside ChatGPT, to uncover the truth about search quality in the age of SEO farms and AI-generated content. The findings reveal a landscape rife with scams, misleading information, and the prioritization of revenue over relevance.