"Subscribed for quick summaries of topics. Saves time. Googling and Youtube and collating info isn't convenient."
— RB
Making practical sense of software and AI.
What’s an inference provider?
How the rise of open source AI models is fueling the growth of a new infrastructure category.
I Let Claude Code Autonomously Run Ads for a Month
Applying the Ralph Wiggum loop to things other than writing code.
How AI content detectors work
Learn how AI detectors work
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)
RLHF is the final training step that turns a knowledgeable but rambling AI into the helpful assistant you know and love.
Token
A token is the basic unit of a Large Language Model's vocabulary.
LLM
Large Language Models take in a prompt and generate text.
Post-training
LLM post-training turns a model from a knowledgeable blob that produces rambling answers, into a helpful assistant.
Databricks is apparently worth $100B. What do they even do?
What we should really be asking is “What does Databricks not do?”
What does Alteryx do?
Alteryx is a group of tools that helps business teams get insights out of their data, without needing to write any code.
What's a Data Migration?
Data migration is about transferring information (data) from one place to another.
Data lake
A Data Lake is an unstructured place to put data. It’s usually meant for long term storage and infrequent querying.
A/B Testing and Experimentation
Experimentation is one of the ways that companies understand if their product efforts are working, and ipso facto, what they should be spending time on.
Segment
Segment helps teams track their product and marketing data and send it to whichever tools it needs to go to.
dbt Labs
dbt (no capitals) is a tool for transforming and organizing data in your warehouse.
Metadata
Metadata is data about data (🤯).
Blockchain
A blockchain is just another way to store data, exactly like a database.
MongoDB
MongoDB is a highly popular unstructured, NoSQL document database for powering your applications.
Confluent
Apache Kafka is a framework for streaming real time data, and Confluent offers Kafka as a managed service.
A Beginner’s Guide to Bring Your Own Cloud
The profitable but challenging deployment model sweeping the nation.
What's documentation?
How companies like Stripe win by writing better product docs, and where platforms like GitBook can help.
Developers hate this one thing (all about code reviews)
A deep dive into why code reviews take so long, how AI tools like CodeRabbit are speeding them up, and what great teams do to ensure clean code.
Server
Server is a catch all term for any sort of application backend.
Version control
Version control lets you track and manage changes to your code in a more sophisticated way than you’re used to.
Postman
Postman is a suite of tools that helps developers build, test, and use internal and external API endpoints.
Splunk
Splunk is a tool for storing and searching logs, specifically focused on security.
VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) lets you route your internet access through a specialized server that keeps your sensitive information private.
Tokenization
Tokenization is one of the ways that backends protect sensitive information, like credit cards or social security numbers.
Snyk
Snyk helps developers make sure that the code they're writing is secure.
Okta
Okta is an enterprise-focused identity provider: they take care of managing usernames, passwords, and permissions.
"Technically has allowed me better bridge the gap between user problems and how our system works under the hood."
— Adelaide Hallowell
Should I ship something myself, or call in engineering help?
Sarah Krasnik BedellHow the rise of open source AI models is fueling the growth of a new infrastructure category.
Will RaphaelsonApplying the Ralph Wiggum loop to things other than writing code.
The profitable but challenging deployment model sweeping the nation.
Will Raphaelson
What are prediction markets and how much revenue is Kalshi really making?
Sam Schneider
And why is every startup around following the Palantir model?
Sung Won Chung
What actually goes on inside the buildings propping up the US economy.
Will RaphaelsonWhat their products actually do and why they're so valuable.
Quick explanations of the concepts you see every day.

Kalshi just raised a new round at an $11B valuation. How much revenue does their prediction market really make?
Sam Schneider
What's the forward deployed engineer role, and why is every startup hiring them?
Sung Won ChungCurated collections of foundational articles to guide you through the basics of getting more technical at work.
How to understand and work effectively with AI and ML models and products.
Breaking down what ChatGPT and others are doing under the hood
How AI models learned to stop being weird and start being helpful.
GPT-3 is a Machine Learning model that generates text.
Data Science Notebooks help data teams explore data with code.
The products and business models of leading software companies.
What we should really be asking is “What does Databricks not do?”
Snowflake sells a powerful cloud data warehouse for analytics and data science teams.
OpenAI is the most popular provider of generative AI models like GPT-4.
dbt (no capitals) is a tool for transforming and organizing data in your warehouse.
How to make positive contributions to your product roadmap.
Engineering and code basics that can make you a better PM to work with.
Code is step by step directions, but for computers.
A network of computers all connected to each other and sharing information.
Cloud is how companies rent infrastructure over the internet.
You've outgrown Excel, but you've got to put that data somewhere besides your parents basement.
There are 300+ databases; what do they all do?
If you’re not a data scientist but you have questions, you want to know SQL.
Why that schema change is going to take your engineers two weeks.
Why your feature is held up by a migration and why this is actually good.
How do these things actual work under the hood? What does it mean to train one? Is it more like going to the gym, studying for a test, or sleeping?
How computers learn patterns from data: the foundation for everything from stock price prediction to ChatGPT.
Breaking down what ChatGPT and others are doing under the hood
A deep dive into how models like ChatGPT get built.
Unlike an onion, hopefully these neural network layers won't make you cry.
How to make positive contributions when working with analytics and data science teams.
Product analytics is how teams instrument and analyze data about their product usage.
A deep dive into all of the tools that data teams use to do their work.
If you’re not a data scientist but you have questions, you want to know SQL.
The new set of tools data teams use to get their jobs done.