2025 Year in Review

·1 hr 10 min·5 clips

Cote asks if it's rude to ask a dinner host for their leftover bones to make broth, sparking a cultural debate.

The episode begins with a lighthearted discussion about making broth from leftover bones, where Cote asks if it's rude to request bones from a host, leading to banter about cultural differences in broth availability between the US and Netherlands. The hosts then transition to reviewing their 2024 predictions for 2025, starting with AI. They note that AI use cases remained largely unchanged, focusing on chatbots, coding assistants, and call centers, with models becoming indistinguishable and benchmarks meaningless. They discuss NVIDIA's continued growth and the lack of breakout AI applications beyond self-driving cars. Antitrust issues around Chrome are mentioned as largely unresolved. The conversation shifts to platform engineering, with Cote questioning if it peaked in 2024, as AI dominated discussions at events like KubeCon. Remote work is deemed a settled debate, with companies and employees having fixed stances. Wearable tech like Meta Ray-Bans and Apple Vision Pro are dismissed as non-mainstream. Social media federation efforts like Threads and Mastodon are considered failures. DeepSeek is discussed as a symbol of AI commoditization. The hosts review major acquisitions, including IBM buying HashiCorp and Confluent, and Wiz being acquired by Google. Predictions for 2026 include whether the AI bubble will burst, with Matt forecasting volatility but no crash, and whether Anthropic or OpenAI will go public. They speculate on new AI use cases, with hopes for creative tools and improved integration. The episode ends with personal hopes, such as Europe gaining broth access, and announcements for upcoming conferences like Configuration Management Camp and DevOps Days LA.

As heard by us

Chicken broth, Matter, and old smart-home scars anchor the year-end banter.

Software Defined Talk opens with chicken broth and ice-tray hacks before settling into the stubbornly fragmented world of home automation. That everyday lead-in gives the discussion a grounded feel, and the run through Matter, Zigbee, Home Assistant, Apple, Google, and Lowe's…

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Why you'd press play

You get broth, home automation angst, and another argument about standards that never quite standardize.

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