Weekly Tech Cocktail – Issue #8

Each week we handpick content about technology, APIs, generative models and the future of work in software engineering and information technology. Yes, by «hand» we mean a part of an actual human.

Let's start with some art in the style of XKCD #936 passphrases, also known as Correct Horse Battery Staple. Just for inspiration.

This week, Claude Opus 4.1 and GPT-5 came out (here is a little GPT 5 vs. Opus 4.1 coding the same music app). Less seriously, you can let different models fight in a versus battle game.

Meanwhile, the AI industry holds its breath risking the biggest class action lawsuit ever. The lawsuit, initiated by three authors, threatens to potentially "financially ruin" AI companies by challenging their training data practices. But is the argument "let me massively steal copyrighted work otherwise I'll file for bankruptcy" really a valid one?

A postmortem for drawafish was published (if you missed it, you can find it in last week's newsletter), highlighting technical and operational challenges encountered.

#tech

• Postgres as a backend for async tasks.

• CSS supports nested selectors now!.

• A fast, growable array with stable pointers in C.

• React-is-Awful – learn react in a trollesque tone

#apis

• Read the RFCs That Built the Internet: A developer has created a web-based platform that allows users to progressively explore Request for Comments (RFCs) documents that were fundamental in building the internet's infrastructure.

#genai

• Even if you're vibe-coding (and especially if), don't forget to read your code!

• How far can we push AI autonomy in code generation?

• Should we let AI review its own code for security?

• Knuth on ChatGPT (2023).

#tools

• A Python CEL implementation (written in Rust)

• claude-code-subagents-collection: Claude Code Subagents & Commands Collection + CLI Tool (also a web UI, looks non-commercial)

• document-mcp: MCP server to access local documents

• KittenTTS-rust: rust based lightweight text-to-speech model

• dotproductxyz/claudespace: isolated git worktree-based environments for claude code

• runtime: desktop tool designed to automate browser tasks using small, reusable "skills"