Companies are rushing to integrate AI into their customer support workflows, generating a lot of interest in the latest models. However, the power of the model is only truly unlocked if the if system architecture around it is right — how you deliver context, handle private knowledge, and adapt over time are all key factors in building a successful AI customer support system.

Every organization today is drowning in unstructured data: support messages, internal chats, user feedback, call transcripts. As our ability to collect more unstructured data within organizations grows, the need to understand that data in a scalable, cost-effective way is outpacing our ability to handle it.

François Chollet recently introduced a new version of the ARC AGI benchmark during his talk at Y Combinator’s Startup School. It’s one of the more thoughtful discussions on evaluating AI systems — and well worth watching.

As smart pet devices become more common, many of us have come to depend on them without a second thought. Unfortunately, that reliance may be premature, as we’re beginning to understand their limitations over time.

TL;DR: We recently began seeing intermittent SSLHandshakeException errors when calling Microsoft login endpoints from our Java service. The root cause turned out to be missing root certificates in the Temurin Java images — even in recent versions. Microsoft had rotated their TLS chain, and the new root wasn’t bundled. We built a tool to dynamically extract the cert chain and patch the JVM truststore during our Docker build.

Over the past decade, I’ve spent most of my time in and around startups — from early-stage teams through IPOs in Silicon Valley to tech communities in New York. Along the way, I’ve picked up on a lot of the quirks, inside jokes, and shared language that tend to follow founders around. There’s something genuinely special about that environment — the energy, the optimism, the unwaivering desire to do something impactful and to change the world. I wanted to capture and preserve a bit of that spirit in a simple, tangible way.

I’ve recently taken an interest in vintage watches—specifically those from lesser-known brands. While many collectors focus on amassing collections of flagship models from the likes of Rolex, Omega, and JLC, the watches produced by smaller Swiss brands in the mid-20th century often offer extremely good value and the chance to own something truly unique.