Posts

Takeaway from Uber AI deployment

The story of Uber depleting its entire 2026 AI budge in just 4 months has been making the rounds and while there are certainly some distinctions to be made (speed vs efficiency, output vs outcomes) I guess he moral of the story, at least for me, is that you should never roll out a usage-based priced SaaS without any cost monitoring. With monitoring in place, you can tolerate inefficiency (acceptable) while keeping an eye on runaway costs (unacceptable) and you figure out how to connect usage to outcomes.

Flat or Hierarchical Organization? It depends

Interesting take on how one of the most regarded teams in the world (US Navy SEALs) use a dynamic hierarchy depending on the desired outcome: The US Navy SEALs offer a compelling example of how teams can dynamically shift their hierarchy. In the field, SEAL leaders employ strict, hierarchical, top-down command and control to ensure a unified front and clear delivery of their objectives. However, in after-action reviews on base, those same SEALs will deliberately flatten their team’s hierarchy, even going so far as to remove their stripes and insignia, to encourage open discussion and reflection uninfluenced by rank. Original article:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/londonschoolofeconomics/2026/03/12/the-most-successful-teams-dont-stay-flat-or-hierarchical-for-long/

Pressure is a privilege

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Via Farnam Street :

Looking at the bright side: Claude Code found a 23yo vulnerability in Linux Kernel

News broke recently that Claude Code found a 23yo old vulnerability in the Linux Kernel NFS driver . If, for one second, we stop with the fear mongering we can realize that this opens up lots of interesting opportunities for a better (more effective) approach to security testing. Instead of relying on outdated models like pentesting, we could "just" feed the application source code to an LLM and have it find vulnerabilities. This is enabled by the fact that understanding a large code base (or any code base for that matter) is more difficult (and practically impossible) than applying known attacks to the external surface area. LLM suddenly make the former convenient enough and actually cheaper than a pentest. Cyber Security consultancies need to update their business model. 

Excel and compliance

 More proof that we're stuck in the past: https://www.reddit.com/r/embedded/comments/1s1agqo/why_is_bom_management_still_stuck_in_excel_in_2026/ every hardware team I’ve worked with ends up with the same setup… some giant excel or google sheet for the BOM everyone complains about it, but no one really replaces it you get random versions, people overwriting stuff, no idea who changed what, etc but at the same time whenever I look at “proper” tools they feel heavy or just not worth the switch so yeah genuinely curious, what are you all actually using day to day? My latest talk about Continuous Compliance is about moving on from xls (to lower cognitive load): https://www.incontrodevops.it/talk/continuous-compliance/

First impressions on IDI2026

After a 7 year break, I returned to  IDI - Incontro DevOps Italia  and it was a blast. Here are my first impressions: AI dominated conversations. It is clear that team or organization-level guidance is important and software development and operational best practices like small PRs, and low MTTR are crucial. Sprints could/should be made shorter (1w or less). Question is: how to keep a healthy ceremony-to-work ratio with shorter sprints? Spec-driven development helps capture the details of the work being done, which is also useful for later rework/inspection but might also be important for compliance reasons 🤔 Finally someone using Backstage (to build self-service ops). List of sessions I attended: Leveraging the edge for observability GitOps, Observability e AI: come chiudere il ciclo dell’AIOps Don’t fear the bot: mastering AI tools before they master you (most fun and engaging) Scaling DevOps Without Scaling Ops: Our Platform Engineering Journey sshlogin: securely authentic...

Attention to detail

I wish, one day, to have the dedication to pursue designs like the former Apple Sleep Indicator Light: the animation was designed to mimic human breathing at 12 breaths per minute  Just amazing. Via:  https://unsung.aresluna.org/just-a-little-detail-that-wouldnt-sell-anything/

[Link] Sales for nice people

I've been following Martin Stellar for some time and I find his material has made me a much better Product person. His writing is simple, clear and engaging, especially his free academy material . I thoroughly recommend you follow Martin Stellar on LinkedIn and read his materials.