This week, we discuss Google being found to be a monopoly, OpenAI’s “offer” to buy Chrome, and some hot takes on JSON. Plus, is it better to wait on hold or ask for a callback?
Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhUxUPJv5g4) 516 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhUxUPJv5g4)
Runner-up Titles
Just Fine
The SDT “Fine” Scale
Callback
Asynchronous Friendship
I would love to get to know you better…over text
Send you Jams to the dry cleaners.
JSON
Take it xslt-easy!
Rundown
OpenAI
OpenAI in talks to pay about $3 billion to acquire AI coding startup Windsurf (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/16/openai-in-talks-to-pay-about-3-billion-to-acquire-startup-windsurf.html)
The Cursor Mirage (https://artificialintelligencemadesimple.substack.com/p/the-cursor-mirage)
AI is for Tinkerers (https://redmonk.com/kholterhoff/2023/06/27/ai-is-for-tinkerers/)
Vibe Coding is for PMs (https://redmonk.com/rstephens/2025/04/18/vibe-coding-is-for-pms/)
OpenAI releases new simulated reasoning models with full tool access (https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/04/openai-releases-new-simulated-reasoning-models-with-full-tool-access/)
Clouded Judgement 4.18.25 - The Hidden Value in the AI Application Layer (https://cloudedjudgement.substack.com/p/clouded-judgement-41825-the-hidden?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=56878&post_id=161562220&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2l9&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email)
OpenAI tells judge it would buy Chrome from Google (https://www.theverge.com/news/653882/openai-chrome-google-us-judge)
The Creators of Model Context Protocol (https://www.latent.space/p/mcp?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)
Judge finds Google holds illegal online ad tech monopolies (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/17/judge-finds-google-holds-illegal-online-ad-tech-monopolies.html)
Intuit, Owner of TurboTax, Wins Battle Against America’s Taxpayers (https://prospect.org/power/2025-04-17-intuit-turbotax-wins-battle-against-taxpayers-irs-direct-file/)
Relevant to your Interests
Switch 2 Carts Still Taste Bad, Designed Purposefully To Be Spat Out (https://www.gamespot.com/articles/switch-2-carts-still-taste-bad-designed-purposefully-to-be-spat-out/1100-6530649/)
CEO Andy Jassy’s 2024 Letter to Shareholders (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-2024-letter-to-shareholders)
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says AI costs will come down (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/10/amazon-ceo-andy-jassys-2025-shareholder-letter.html)
Happy 18th Birthday CUDA! (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-2024-letter-to-shareholders)
Honeycomb Acquires Grit: A Strategic Investment in Pragmatic AI and Customer Value (https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/honeycomb-acquires-grit)
Everything Announced at Google Cloud Next in 12 Minutes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OpHbyN4vEM)
GitLab vs GitHub : Key Differences in 2025 (https://spacelift.io/blog/gitlab-vs-github)
Old Fashioned Function Keys (https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/04/11/old-fashioned-function-keys/)
Fake job seekers are flooding U.S. companies that are hiring for remote positions, (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/08/fake-job-seekers-use-ai-to-interview-for-remote-jobs-tech-ceos-say.html)
NetRise raises $10M to expand software supply chain security platform (https://siliconangle.com/2025/04/15/netrise-raises-10-million-expand-software-supply-chain-security-platform/)
Mark Zuckerberg’s antitrust testimony aired his wildest ideas from Meta’s history (https://www.theverge.com/policy/649520/zuckerberg-meta-ftc-antitrust-testimony-facebook-history)
How Much Should I Be Spending On Observability? (https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/how-much-should-i-spend-on-observability-pt1)
Did we just make platform engineering much easier by shipping a cloud IDP? (https://seroter.com/2025/04/16/did-we-just-make-platform-engineering-much-easier-by-shipping-a-cloud-idp/)
Google Cloud Next 2025: Agentic AI Stack, Multimodality, And Sovereignty (https://www.forrester.com/blogs/google-next-2025-agentic-ai-stack-multimodality-and-sovereignty/)
iPhone Shipments Down 9% in China's Q1 Smartphone Boom (https://www.macrumors.com/2025/04/18/iphone-shipments-down-in-china-q1/)
Exclusive: Anthropic warns fully AI employees are a year away (https://www.axios.com/2025/04/22/ai-anthropic-virtual-employees-security)
Synology requires self-branded drives for some consumer NAS systems, drops full functionality and support for third-party HDDs (https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/nas/synology-requires-self-branded-drives-for-some-consumer-nas-systems-drops-full-functionality-and-support-for-third-party-hdds)
Porting Tailscale to Plan 9 (https://tailscale.com/blog/plan9-port?ck_subscriber_id=512840665&utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=[Last%20Week%20in%20AWS]%20Issue%20#418:%20Another%20New%20Capacity%20Dingus%20-%2017270009)
CVE Foundation (https://www.thecvefoundation.org/)
The Cursor Mirage (https://artificialintelligencemadesimple.substack.com/p/the-cursor-mirage)
There's a Lot of Bad Telemetry Out There (https://blog.olly.garden/theres-a-lot-of-bad-telemetry-out-there)
Gee Wiz (https://redmonk.com/rstephens/2025/04/04/gee-wiz/?ck_subscriber_id=512840665&utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=[Last%20Week%20in%20AWS]%20Issue%20#418:%20Another%20New%20Capacity%20Dingus%20-%2017270009)
Nonsense
Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons hacked to imitate Musk, Zuckerberg's voices (https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/14/silicon-valley-crosswalk-buttons-hacked-to-imitate-musk-zuckerberg-voices/)
A Visit to Costco in France (https://davidlebovitz.substack.com/p/a-visit-to-costco-in-france)
No sweat: Humanoid robots run a Chinese half-marathon (https://apnews.com/article/china-robot-half-marathon-153c6823bd628625106ed26267874d21)
Metre, a consistent measurement of the world (https://mappingignorance.org/2025/04/23/150-years-ago-the-metre-convention-determined-how-we-measure-the-world/)
Conferences
DevOps Days Atlanta (https://devopsdays.org/events/2025-atlanta/welcome/), April 29th-30th.
KCD Texas Austin 2025 (https://community.cncf.io/events/details/cncf-kcd-texas-presents-kcd-texas-austin-2025/), May 15th, Whitney Lee Speaking.
Cloud Foundry Day US (https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cloud-foundry-day-north-america/), May 14th, Palo Alto, CA, Coté speaking.
Fr (https://vmwarereg.fig-street.com/051325-tanzu-workshop/)ee AI workshop (https://vmwarereg.fig-street.com/051325-tanzu-workshop/), May 13th. day before C (https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cloud-foundry-day-north-america/)loud (https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cloud-foundry-day-north-america/) (https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cloud-foundry-day-north-america/)Foundry (https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cloud-foundry-day-north-america/) Day (https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cloud-foundry-day-north-america/).
NDC Oslo (https://ndcoslo.com/), May 21st-23th, Coté speaking.
SDT News & Community
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Recommendations
Brandon: Dope Thief (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/dope_thief) on Apple TV (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/dope_thief)
Coté: Check out the recording of the Tanzu Annual update (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1QZXzJcAfQ), all about Tanzu’s private AI platform. Next, watch Coté’s new MCP for D&D video (#4) figures out something cool to do with MCP Prompts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEtYBznneFg), they make sense now. And, a regret-a-mmendation: Fields Notes annual subscription (https://fieldnotesbrand.com/limited-editions).
Photo Credits
Header (https://unsplash.com/photos/a-telephone-sitting-on-top-of-a-wooden-shelf-2XnGRN_caHc)