Daily Reading List – August 18, 2025 (#611)

I felt my age this weekend. Busy days of sports and chasing kids left me WORN OUT. But, lots of fun and memories. I’m on vacation the next two days while I take a kid to college, so the reading list will be back on Thursday.

[article] Harsh truths to save you from ChatGPT psychosis. It’s definitely dangerous to treat AI like some sentient, all-knowing partner. That said, Forrest is wrong on points 1 and 4, partially right on 2 and 3.

[blog] 14 ways Googlers use AI to work smarter. How are we using AI within Google? Most of us are using it every day for different parts of our job. This offers a wide range of scenarios.

[blog] You Can Build Better AI Agents in Java Than Python. Rod teased it last week, and proved it today. Yes, this JVM-based agent framework looks simpler and more production-ready than a well-known Python option.

[blog] How Google does it: Your guide to platform engineering. This isn’t a product pitch, but more of a philosophical look at how to think about platform engineering.

[article] Diagnosing Your Company’s Strategy Problem. Figure out what’s going wrong with your strategy efforts and how to get back on track.

[blog] Scalable AI starts with storage: Guide to model artifact strategies. Great advice here in an area I haven’t seen much written about.

[blog] The Great SSL Certificate Panic. I didn’t know about these new fast-expiring certs. Kate gets us smarter on it and how it might impact you.

[blog] URL context tool for Gemini API now generally available. This is such a powerful feature of the Gemini API. Augment the static knowledge of an LLM with ingesting content from a URL. I like that it now supports PDFs, images, and data files.

[article] Your Company Needs to Focus on Fewer Projects. Here’s How. Any of you feel like you’re doing too few projects right now? Anyone? Bueller? No, most of us know there’s too many competing priorities. This is a good read on how to narrow your focus.

[article] Why software developers burn out, and how to fix it. Constant interruptions are killing your folks. That, and vague requirements are combining to burn out some great folks.

[article] The Top AI Tool for Devs Isn’t GitHub Copilot, New Report Finds. Surveys are surveys, but there’s signal here. It’s amazing to see how fast developer preferences evolve.

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