This podcast episode is a new format where I introduce everyone to my go-to brain trust to chat new technologies with. This episode can be consumed end to end or you can jump to specific categories that particularly interest you (timestamped below).

Alex Mackenzie is a Partner at Tapestry VC and Ian Livingstone is a Team Lead at Snyk. In this day and age, there’s a new technology that seems to capture the interest of the ecosystem (particular tech Twitter) every month. When I need to dive into these technologies or have them explained, I go to Alex & Ian for help understanding why they are interesting. In this episode, we cover a variety of areas and purposefully go deep enough to understand why they’re interesting but not as deep as we could’ve gone to cover the most surface area.

We cover the following areas: Javascript Runtimes & Frameworks (Next.js, Bun, Deno), Edge Computing, Emerging Programming Languages (Zig, Typescript), Observability (Open Telemetry, eBPF), Encryption (Secure Enclaves, Multi-Party Computation), & AI (LLMs, Agents, Embeddings, WebGPU).

Where to Find Alex:

* Twitter: https://twitter.com/alex__mackenzie

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-mackenzie-6aa80ab4/

* Blog: Why Now

Where to Find Ian:

* Twitter: https://twitter.com/ianlivingstone

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irlivingstone/

* Podcast: Yet Another Infra Deep Dive

Where to Find Shomik:

* Twitter: https://twitter.com/shomikghosh21

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shomik-ghosh-a5a71319/

* Software Snack Bites Newsletter: https://www.shomik.substack.com

* Software Snack Bites Podcast: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google.

In this episode, we cover:

(01:18) - Javascript Runtimes (Bun, Deno)

(09:31) - Javascript Frameworks (Next.js, Gatsby.js)

(12:45) - Edge Computing

(21:03) - Emerging Programming Languages (Zig, Typescript, Dart, Mojo)

(28:53) - Observability (eBPF, Open Telemetry, Open Policy Agent)

(36:20) - Encryption (Secure Enclaves, Multi Party Computation, Federated Learning, Homomorphic Encryption)

(45:22) - AI (LLMs & Agents, Observability for LLMs)

(52:59) - AI (Fine Tuning & Inference)

(56:39) - WebGPU

(58:42) - How Higher Fidelity in Data Maps to Security Trends

(60:00) - Godot

Show Notes:

* Going Beyond Transformer Architectures for LLMs - Alex’s write up explaining the Hyena Hierarchy Architecture

* Zig - Why is Zig an exciting programming language

* How Will the World Run on GPUs - Ian’s podcast about GPU hosted clouds

* Is Front End Eating the Whole Stack - Ian’s podcast deep diving into front end developments that were mentioned in the beginning of this podcast

How to Subscribe:

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google.