This week, @brandonwhichard.com, @cote.io and @mattray.dev review our 2025 predictions, discuss the big stories, and speculate on 2026. Plus, Coté dives deep into the EU broth market. https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/553

Assuming The Algorithm" is working (showing people things they will watch and they verify this by watching more), this is some revealed preference in action. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/27/more-than-20-of-videos-shown-to-new-youtube-users-are-ai-slop-study-finds

Some people create constantly. What's their secret? When @cote.io and I asked how our guest Russell Davies stays so prolific, his answer surprised me: "I have quite low standards." Yet, by any measure, Davies has a wildly successful career. Listen and learn: softwaredefinedinterviews.com/112

Garbage Chairs of Amsterdam, North Texas edition.

Keep track of things you've done each day so you realize you're doing a good job. It will make you happier. https://www.oliverburkeman.com/donelist

Eventually, you just revert to the command line. https://vercel.com/blog/we-removed-80-percent-of-our-agents-tools

Java Developers Get Multiple Paths To Building AI Agents https://thenewstack.io/java-developers-get-multiple-paths-to-building-ai-agents/

"Brutalist buildings celebrate the collective good over the individual, they say" https://economist.com/united-states/2025/12/24/donald-trump-has-it-in-for-brutalism?giftId=ZWVhNjZjZGMtMzU4My00OGQyLTk0OWUtZmE3OTdmOWRiMjcz&utm_campaign=gifted_article

Thinking AI means you need Python? Using your existing Java and Spring infrastructure is the most efficient and least risky path to AI success. By @cote.io, thanks to @vmwaretanzu.bsky.social

Pondering on a year of coding full-blown AI style. https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2025/12/22/a-year-of-vibes/

The $2.50 spam filter. I bet it will work. https://www.joanwestenberg.com/why-my-newsletter-costs-2-50/

"Skills describe the workflow. MCP provides the runner." https://block.github.io/goose/blog/2025/12/22/agent-skills-vs-mcp

Garbage Chairs of Amsterdam. Amstelveen edition.

Platform Plumbing, AI Ads That Work (But People Hate), and D&D Characters Drawn by Robots // Plus, more strange and fun finds from the World Wide Web // today's newsletter episode: newsletter.cote.io/p/platform-p...

Get help making Apple Music playlists with ChatGPT, also get educated about the music you like. // My results were very mixed. https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/17/chatgpt-apple-music-integration/

Cross silo ROI is not legible.

The new mid-life crisis is reading Proust.

AI generated ads are more effective, but people don't like them. // Some good old revealed preference. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5638311

Good actionable pondering on coming up titles that people will click on and word-of-mouth spread. https://taylor.town/how-to-title

How NOT to take care of your "most valuable assets." https://www.ithoughtaboutthatalot.com/2025/the-things-i-want-to-say-to-my-boss

Showing potential ROI and downside for "nudges." https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/news/how-vanguard-uses-behavioral-nudges-customer-experience/808051/

Full on management-by-magazine phase in effect. https://www.forrester.com/blogs/welcome-to-jr-high-genai/

These five lines of code are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Less click-bait-y, this is a super fast overview to putting up compliance gates for your apps, from my co-worker DaShaun Carter www.youtube.com/shorts/Gi3L9...

I don't know, man. This feels like living in the future. The only problem is, that's not, like, my aesthetic. But, when in YouTube, do as the YouTubers do...? cote.io/2025/12/17/m...

Riker Googling: turn off passkey on computer.

We spend an excruciating amount of time talking about how platform engineers add new services/middleware/whatever to internal developer platforms. It's great if that's relative to your interests. www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6vQ...

Cross silo ROI is not legible.

There's a fine line between "charming" and "annoying."

Come hang out with Tony McCulley and me tomorrow where we'll talk doing the platform engineering stuff for adding AI and MCP to your internal developer platforms. www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6vQ...

How Broadcom uses MCP: cote.io/2025/12/15/a...

Oracle and the hard truths about software https://apple.news/AwESU4ZQZRP6Ja-35JnIOnw

It is hard to keep up with American corporate smile-energy.

As I get older, I need to do less "let's see what happens."

"The question that actually determines success is simpler—and almost never asked: Are we ready to operate a private cloud as a product for the next 3–5 years?" https://thectoadvisor.com/blog/2025/12/12/before-you-build-a-private-cloud-ask-this-one-question/

"a new AI-infested economy" https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/14/copywriters-reveal-how-ai-has-decimated-their-industry/#atom-everything

This week, @brandonwhichard.com, @cote.io and @mattray.dev discuss how Netflix is disrupting media, IBM’s Confluent acquisition, and Anthropic buying Bun. Plus, an important discussion on fonts and typography. https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/550

What you're putting off now is not going to get any easier or less boring to do in the future. So, try to just do it now and gift yourself future self the lack of that bullshit.

About 80% of the time, most made up a percentages of something studies have abounded "80%" as the default majority number and are now using "70%" about 30% of the time.

Use ChatGPT as a front-end for some Adobe products. Seems useful! https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/10/adobe-apps-in-chatgpt/

Is vibe coding the new gateway to technical debt? https://www.infoworld.com/article/4098925/is-vibe-coding-the-new-gateway-to-technical-debt.html

"The Creative View: Artists are not using AI to make art. They use it as an 'Admin Shield' to handle invoices, emails, and code so they have more time for the actual creative act." https://dejan.ai/blog/report-ai-workplace/

Forrester's highlights from re:Invent, including things that are not AI. https://www.forrester.com/blogs/what-we-saw-at-aws-reinvent-2025/

Your aging brain stops being a people-please. But: "The same directness that would be called “no-nonsense” in a man gets called 'abrasive' in a woman over 40." https://www.blog.lifebranches.com/p/aging-out-of-fucks-the-neuroscience?ref=carolinecrampton.com

Guess what the CFO priority is…you go to, spending less money. This also in: survey says the sun will rise tomorrow. www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/...

"snorkeling in the shit-infused shallow end of the Dunning-Kruger pool" https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/115695378743310960

The PowerPoint Guru. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGdaK1rGp/

Create and manage self-service catalogs on your platform. Do all the self-service platform engineering stuff with your own, thrilling middleware! https://blogs.vmware.com/tanzu/tanzu-platform-10-3-service-publishing-the-innersource-marketplace/

These are all still pretty good. That outcomes one went a little long. And the audio editing got soupy. But, hey, the outcome was achieved despite synergy headwinds. www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Those Gemini slides and infographics are OK. What would be awesome is deciding as a civilization that we don't want to make slides and infographics anymore, and just let the AIs make them based on the documents we write and give to the AIs to make their bad-ass vaporware slides.

Broadcom ‘Doubles Down’ on Open Source, Donates Kubernetes Tool to CNCF https://thenewstack.io/broadcom-doubles-down-on-open-source-donates-kubernetes-tool-to-cncf/