Daily Reading List – August 9, 2023 (#139)

Today’s reading list has some light material, and a few denser topics. If you only click on two links, take a look at the paper on technical debt and read about production-grade software.

[article] Survey reveals divisions among Americans when it comes to AI use and trust. Plenty of excitement and fear about AI right now. This survey shows which groups are embracing it more than others. It also closes with worrisome stats about loneliness in our tech-heavy world.

[article] 10 ways generative AI upends the traditional database. There are many benefits generative AI is bringing to DBAs and database users. Interesting times ahead.

[article] DARPA launches two-year competition to build AI-powered cyber defenses. Good effort to help identify and fix software vulnerabilities with the help of AI. Many companies participating, including Google.

[paper] Defining, Measuring, and Managing Technical Debt. Seriously, click the link and go read this short paper right now. It’s free, no paywall or anything. It offers ten categories of technical debt, among other useful information.

[blog] Introducing new SQL functions to manipulate your JSON data in BigQuery. Instead of a bunch of complex prep and post processing of JSON data in your data warehouse, now you can use built-in functions. Very nice.

[blog] What Is “Production-Grade” Software? Do you have a checklist that confirms whether your software is “production-grade”? Here are some things you’d want to include in that list.

[blog] Improved cost visibility and 60 percent price drop for Managed Service for Prometheus. Our managed Prometheus service—used by many Kubernetes folks for metrics infrastructure—is now cheaper and does more things.

[blog] Introducing Project IDX, An Experiment to Improve Full-stack, Multiplatform App Development. This is some cool work from others at Google who want to make app development better.

[blog] Scaling the Instagram Explore recommendations system. A bit of a dive from Meta into how they use ML in their critical recommendation system.

[blog] Advances in document understanding. It’s likely confirmation bias, but I feel like we’re seeing an explosion of fresh research thanks to the mainstreaming of generative AI.

##

Want to get this update sent to you every day? Subscribe to my RSS feed or subscribe via email below: