David Cassel

Oakland

Contributing Reporter at The New Stack

Contributing Technology and Culture Reporter for @TheNewStack

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Articles

Duolingo Grapples With Its 'AI-First' Promise Before Angry Social Mob

3 weeks ago | thenewstack.io | David Cassel

“Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.”That’s what Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn probably wanted to say as they’d filmed him, held “hostage” by his own social media team, for an angry grilling on TikTok. What happens when you publicly proclaim an “AI-first” corporate policy — and then face a massive, potentially brand-killing backlash? What can you do in response?
Stack Overflow's Plan to Survive the Age of AI

1 month ago | thenewstack.io | David Cassel

Stack Overflow has a plan… For starters, last month the company resurrected chat on all Stack Overflow (And its other 180 Stack Exchange sites), wrote CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar, “in the spirit of fostering even more connections between our community members in an increasingly AI-driven world.” Though historically it hasn’t been featured prominently on the site, the company now sees chat as “an immediate avenue for engagement beyond our typical Q&A format.” The flagship site of the larger...
How the World Is Celebrating Open Source Maintainer Month

1 month ago | thenewstack.io | David Cassel

It’s time to celebrate! May 2025 is the fifth annual Maintainer Month, marked with discounts, events, educational resources and a general celebration of everyone who keeps our favorite projects running.
Curl Fights a Flood of AI-Generated Bug Reports From HackerOne

1 month ago | thenewstack.io | David Cassel

Earlier this month, Curl maintainer Daniel Stenberg complained on LinkedIn about a flood of “AI slop” bug reports that had been coming in. “That’s it. I’ve had it,” he wrote. “I’m putting my foot down on this craziness.”The project was “effectively being DDoSed,” he wrote. And the culprit was volunteers for the bug bounty site HackerOne. Stenberg’s LinkedIn post drew over 250 comments — and over 600 reposts.
Incidents From Generative AI Cloud Services Hit Different

1 month ago | thenewstack.io | David Cassel

Generative AI (GenAI) cloud services are unique in their intense demands on hardware — as well as the computational resources running on top of it. Yet despite the need for reliability, there’s been almost no research on it, or on how cloud GenAI incidents are being managed.
GitHub CEO on Why We'll Still Need Human Programmers

1 month ago | thenewstack.io | David Cassel

In March, GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke joined Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in Seoul, South Korea, for a stop on the “Microsoft AI Tour.” The event promised in-depth skilling sessions to help attendees learn the Copilot AI Stack. That initiative is just one way Dohmke has been promoting GitHub’s commitment to our AI-powered future — while still affirming GitHub’s deep allegiance to programmers. Speaking from Seoul, Dohmke sat for an interview with the YouTube channel for EO Media.
Be Creative: ThePrimeagen's Five-Hour Interview With Lex Fridman

1 month ago | thenewstack.io | David Cassel

It was almost historic: an epic five-hour interview with the programming world’s livestreaming developer sensation, “ThePrimeagen.”Known for his popular channels on Twitch and YouTube (plus his quick, lively personality), ThePrimeagen (AKA, Michael Paulson) sat for a kind of free-wheeling summit with popular programmer-turned-podcaster, Lex Fridman. The rollicking interview quickly attracted 1.4 million views (along with 3,021 comments).
Linus Torvalds Reflects on 20 Years of Git

1 month ago | thenewstack.io | David Cassel

It was 20 years ago that Linus Torvalds wrote the Git distributed version control system — April 7 2005 was he made the first commit. So in early April, GitHub celebrated. GitHub staff software engineer Taylor Blau conducted an interview with Torvalds, which GitHub then shared on YouTube (where the git-based service’s channel has 467,000 subscribers). But the first question provided some crucial context. Did Torvalds still expect to be using and talking about Git 20 years later?
TLA+ Creator Leslie Lamport: Programmers Need Abstractions

2 months ago | thenewstack.io | David Cassel

The 84-year-old Leslie Lamport is a legend.
Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and the Code That Started Microsoft

2 months ago | thenewstack.io | David Cassel

In 1968, a 13-year-old Bill Gates told his friend Paul, “Maybe we’ll have our own company someday.”More than half a century later, a 69-year-old Bill Gates took a moment to reflect on how it all played out.