If now is the time of AI, I want a personal AI running on my personal cloud. There is zero reason for us to all become subservient clients to American corporations. The model can change. 100% this. Great post.

2026 was the best ❤️

I've watched The Grinch (Jim Carrey) and Elf in the last two nights. Two of my favourite Christmas films. Somehow, the CGI is 'better' than it was however many years ago. Not an anti AI post, but are we getting too digital?

chris evans shouts "no! i won't go back, you can't make me. i said i was out!" from all around him, a disembodied voice booms ɪᴛ ɪꜱ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴅᴇᴄɪꜱɪᴏɴ ɴᴏ ʟᴏɴɢᴇʀ evans screams and clutches at his arm where his mickey mouse tattoo suddenly burns. ʏᴏᴜ ᴀᴄᴄᴇᴘᴛᴇᴅ ᴍʏ ʙʀᴀɴᴅ ɪɴ ᴇxᴄʜᴀɴɢᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ ɪᴍᴍᴏʀᴛᴀʟɪᴛʏ

Study of over twenty five million people over almost four years finds that COVID vaccines reduced COVID deaths by 74% and increased all-cause deaths by zero. I don’t know how much clearer it can get than that. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

"Coding is no longer the bottleneck". So what you're saying is that NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

@jameseastham.co.uk and I are back again talking about software engineering! This time, we dive into API-first design - what it's good for, and how you can get started with it. Let us know what you think! www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-R...

And nobody was shocked... arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

My yearly retrospective and planning time is I think one of the most impactful things I've started doing over the last few years. What went well, what didn't, and thinking about thematic ideas for the year 🔥

Building event-driven systems? Let's chat metrics! In this video, I break down the essential ones you need to care about if you're building event-driven systems. Bonus tip, I'll also show you the simplest way to generate them from your exisiting telemetry. youtu.be/CvgvXzLLZ2Y

I'm giving some IT training to the staff at my local foodbank tomorrow and want to demonstrate to them the pitfalls of AI. Does anyone have any good examples of prompts or things to ask that almost force a hallucination, or that demonstrate the downsides?

Something I've been thinking about over the last 24 hours, is a potential outcome of AI generated coding a split in the 'types' of software built. One being the hyperscale, big, gnarly systems that are complex and take teams of people to operate and understand. Much like software today. Two...

Gross

Sam Altman: hey I made a machine that stole literally all your stuff in order to make CSAM of your child actors, sometimes it encourages people to kill themselves Disney: Holy shit here's a billion dollars Altman: the machine loses more than that each week but thank you. Soon it will become god.

Disney selling out to OpenAI makes me very very sad

My grandkids will get to experience the 2nd coming of on-paper, hand drawn animation For the next 20 years we’ll be dealing with companies maximizing existing IP in the lowest budget ways possible deadline.com/2025/12/disn...

New course alert 🎉 It's taken me over 2 years of creating courses to finally go back to my roots. Want to learn how to build .NET apps on #AWS? This is the course for you. In it, you'll learn about the core services you need to care about to build on AWS. #dotnet dometrain.com/course/getti...

This is a great post about AI by @mastroianni.bsky.social I especially love the idea that humans are "usefully stupid" which I identify as www.experimental-history.com/p/bag-of-wor...

That’s also why I see no point in using AI to, say, write an essay, just like I see no point in bringing a forklift to the gym. Sure, it can lift the weights, but I’m not trying to suspend a barbell above the floor for the hell of it...... www.experimental-history.com/p/bag-of-wor...

Imagine changing your car’s engine while driving it down the motorway. Tricky, right? That's what it can feel like evolving event systems. In this video I'll show you the easiest way to evolve your event-driven systems. youtu.be/jZyMtk8OWQ0

That's fair - there's plenty in this set of principles that can apply to software that has nothing to do with LLMs/AI

Cool! This wording with _friction_ is exactly how my internal monologue goes. Especially with e.g. learning things - without actual friction - without struggle (cuz you're outsourcing your brain) - you're not growing.

Fantastic article on the Guardian about Spotify Wrapped and 'removing critical thought about things'. Particularly this little section here. I'm not bashing Spotify Wrapped by the way, it can be surprising. But it does show 'thinking' is being automated a way. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/d...

Ever had to change the structure of an event? Wondered how to do that in a safe way that doesn't break all the consumers? Luckily, I have the video for you. I cover how you should think about versioning, and how to depreceate events in your event-driven system safely. youtu.be/pXMvi0-RB1I

Now we're getting to the exciting stuff. AWS Lambda now support durable executions. This is one of my favourite features in Cloudflare, and having this available natively in Lambda is nice. Some caveats around using versions. But a brilliant release. #serverless aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/bu...

Setting up an RSS feed aggregator on my home server and doing all my 'internetting' through an RSS reader app has improved my general enjoyment of the internet tenfold. Hyper specific feeds, no ads or bullshit. It's great.

Yeah, this feels like a boundary that is better off not getting blurred. If you need to prescribe hardware specifics there’s already ECS / EC2

Fascinating Monday night reading. static1.squarespace.com/static/65c9d...

Ever scratched your head trying to get consistent telemetry across all your event-driven systems? You're not alone. In my latest video, I dive into how semantic conventions can standardize your telemetry for your messaging systems. youtu.be/JPvcdqzHUcA

Lambda now supports managed instances. Honestly not sure how I feel about this release. Yes, I can see why the Lambda team have built it. But this blurs the line even more between Lambda & ECS and COULD make things more confusing. #serverless #aws #lambda aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in...

Well well well, the Zig foundation leaving GitHub. ziglang.org/news/migrati...

I'm old. If you're not, listen to this. Get a guitar or some drums, or a trumpet. Pick up a brush, a pencil, some clay or a welder. Just make shit. It doesn't have to be good (eventually it will be) just make music, art or write or whatever. It's literally never been more important.

Wait, when did Aurora DSQL add an in-console query editor?

I've used event storming a bunch over my career, a great way to tease out the flow of your system. And yes, it's still useful even if you're not building an event-driven system.

@jameseastham.co.uk and I have released the inaugural _second episode_ (coughs loudly) of our video series on modern software development - this time on James' favourite thing, **Event Storming** - a great tool to dive into a domain you're about to build something in!

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them" Frank Herbert calling it all the way back in 1965. Feels like a pretty accurate description of current times. #ai

Fil from Wings of Pegasus captured this sentiment in his latest video about Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga. The rampant auto-tuning of performances takes the humanity out of them.

I came across an AMA on Reddit last night with Benedict Cumberbatch. He pretty perfectly captures my current view on the slop filled world we are heading for.

Re CDK: L1 constructs for now. Not ideal, but it's something at least!

Ever wondered how to better understand your event-driven systems? In my latest video I unpack span links. The unsung heroes of asynchronous system tracing, providing clarity without the chaos. Watch and learn how they can improve your understanding of your systems! youtu.be/M3ACALGCp6E

Somehow managed to miss this announcement, but a cool new addition to Amazon ECS with express mode. Give ECS a container image, and it'll run it incorporating a bunch of best practices. Does this spell the end of AppRunner? Who knows. aws.amazon.com/about-aws/wh... #aws #serverless

Congrats! If you're working with OpenTelemetry in Lambda, this may be interesting: github.com/streamfold/r.... Rust OTel collection with very fast cold start times.

Good old Woz. Good for him.

Rust on AWS Lambda is now GA 🎉🎉 To celebrate @loige.co and me put together a short newsletter and talked about what's next for the next two chapters of the Rust on Lambda book. And some details on the next release.... news.rust-lambda.com/p/from-exper... #serverless #rust #rustlang

Yes I've just spent 90 minutes debugging a docker build inside GitHub actions, because a path couldn't be found. I thought it was some weird Javascript path resolution error.... The files didn't exist in GitHub.... I hate software engineering sometimes.

I've been critical of AWS for taking their eye off the ball and focusing too much on AI. I've seen several releases recently that have given back some faith. - Lambda tenant isolation - DynamoDB composite key - API Gateway portals - ALB JWT validation And much more to come.... #serverless #aws

Ever wish your system would document itself? It'd be lovely wouldn't it! In this video, I walk you through how you might start to build a self-documeting system using your events, your telemetry and the #OpenTelemetry SemConv. youtu.be/vP768bw_t2s#OpenTelemetry #software #architecture #observability

The 2025 State of Rust Survey: Which unimplemented (or nightly only) features are you looking for to be stabilized? Me: YES www.surveyhero.com/c/state-of-r...

Ever stared at logs for hours and still felt blind to your system? Distributed tracing should be the game-changer you need. Dive into my latest video where I'll show you why it's the first thing to think about in observability for asynchronous systems. youtu.be/aSr2sRRH3ls