Richard MacManus

Chepstow

Founder of ReadWriteWeb and Cybercultural (https://t.co/6duOxNS9mQ). No longer on X; you can find me now on Mastodon at https://t.co/hgsU1W3nw7

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Articles

No, MCP Hasn’t Killed RAG - in Fact, They’re Complementary

1 week ago | thenewstack.io | Richard MacManus

Is RAG dead yet? That was the tongue-in-cheek question posed recently by Douwe Kiela, CEO of Contextual AI. And Kiela knows a thing or two about RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) — he led the team at Meta that introduced the technique in a May 2020 research paper. Of course, Kiela’s post was a reaction to the current hype around Model Context Protocol (MCP), which has (wrongly) been touted as a RAG-killer.
Inside Gemini Code Assist: Google’s Copilot Alternative

2 weeks ago | thenewstack.io | Richard MacManus

At today’s Google I/O, the general availability of Gemini Code Assist for individuals was announced. In the lead-up to the event, I spoke to Ryan J. Salva, a senior director of product management at Google Cloud, about this latest iteration of Gemini Code Assist — in particular, its embrace of agentic AI and its ongoing competition with Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but AI agents are the hot new thing for developers this year.
The Field CTO View: AI, Vibe Coding, and Developer Skillsets

1 month ago | thenewstack.io | Richard MacManus

With all the hype around AI, it can be difficult to know which aspects of AI technology are actually being implemented inside enterprises. To find out, I spoke with Brian Wald, who heads up GitLab’s Field CTO team and is in regular contact with enterprise IT departments. Wald described the Field CTO role at GitLab as one that provides strategic, high-level advisory support to businesses undergoing digital transformations.
Telling Lies: Bowie and Online Music Distribution in 1996

1 month ago | cybercultural.com | Richard MacManus

Online music retail was thriving by 1996, thanks to sites like Music Boulevard and CDnow. But music downloads and streaming was more of a challenge — as David Bowie discovered in September 1996. The CD version of David Bowie's online single, 'Telling Lies', 1996; via kupindo.com.
KubeCon Europe: How Google Will Evolve Kubernetes in AI Era

2 months ago | thenewstack.io | Richard MacManus

With Kubernetes and the cloud native community now 10 years old, KubeCon was a chance to both look back and look ahead for Google’s Jago Macleod, engineering director of GKE and Kubernetes at the company. In a fascinating presentation at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in London this week, Macleod explained Google’s initial motivation for open sourcing Kubernetes, how it evolved over the following decade and — most interestingly — how it plans to accommodate the changes wrought by generative AI.
A Decade of Cloud Native: From CNCF, to the Pandemic, to AI

2 months ago | thenewstack.io | Richard MacManus

This week marks my 5th anniversary of working at The New Stack. When I started, in the final week of March 2020, I had to quickly get used to the “cloud native” world. What was Kubernetes and why did everyone keep talking about it, what did “serverless” mean exactly, what did the acronym CI/CD stand for, what were “micro services”? It wasn’t as if I was a tech neophyte — I’d founded the pioneering tech blog ReadWriteWeb in 2003 and ran it until 2012.
AI-Powered Coding: Developer Tool Trends To Monitor in 2025

2 months ago | thenewstack.io | Richard MacManus

With virtually every coding tool now infused with AI, developers are increasingly asking themselves: what type of coding tool should be my default now? Do I need one of those new-fangled “agentic IDEs” or is Visual Studio Code good enough? What role does the cloud play in AI tooling? To answer these questions, I’ve surveyed the dev tool landscape and picked out some trends for developers to watch.
MCP: The Missing Link Between AI Agents and APIs

2 months ago | thenewstack.io | Richard MacManus

Last November Anthropic launched the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open source standard designed to streamline how AI models interact with APIs. As we explained earlier this month, the vision is to make MCP the universal method for AI agents to trigger external actions. MCP has drawn a lot of interest in its first few months, including from API management companies like Speakeasy. API companies see MCP as a linking mechanism to the rich ecosystem of LLMs and agentic frameworks.
GeoCities in 1995: Building a Home Page on the Internet

Mar 7, 2025 | cybercultural.com | Richard MacManus

GeoCities, known throughout most of 1995 as Beverly Hills Internet, was one of the first commercial internet services to make it easy for people to publish a home page on the World Wide Web. Beverley Hills Internet in 1995, before being renamed GeoCities. By 1995, people had begun to create their own web pages on the World Wide Web — or “home pages” as they were called back then.
Warp Launches AI-First Native Terminal App for Windows

Feb 26, 2025 | thenewstack.io | Richard MacManus

Warp, the command-line terminal app built for AI, has finally arrived on Windows. Previously it was available only on macOS and Linux, but today’s launch significantly broadens its potential user base. I spoke with Warp’s founder and CEO, Zach Lloyd, about the news. We also discuss how Warp is positioning itself among the raft of AI coding tools that have hit the market recently.