@djangowebstudio
Hi, I am Gerald, CEO of Django Web Studio. We are specialists in the web framework Django, hence the name, but more importantly we help companies manage their SaaS platforms. From helping design product roadmaps to user support, and the other way round!
That AI is a disruptive force is acknowledged across generations. Case in point: Both Bernie Sanders (85) and Dwarkesh Patel (25) realise that AI is going to cost jobs big time. But their response is quite different.
That Atlassian was laying off workers gave me a bit of a fright.
Atlassian is a task management system that is the core of our software company, as it is for many others. Our workflow is centred around it.
Today came the news that Atlassian was letting go more than 10% of their workers. But why?
Within attention grabbing headlines about Agentic AI enabling solo founders, there’s a grain of truth. Using orchestration systems like OpenClaw it’s possible to replicate a complete team.
What if that becomes the norm?
Entrepreneurs going solo, making anyone at a desk redundant?
For the Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand, the Blood Moon seen as an omen, a time to be careful, and to look out for one another.
This week: the fastest boy, now we’re really going to space, why everyone is so sad, the problem with the new oil is that it too will pass, and what’s in the papers today.
In the past week, we’ve seen the US administration kick back at Anthropic for daring to show some moral backbone. Which leads me to entertain the thought of US AI companies with morals moving to the EU.
Would that ever happen? COULD that ever happen?
We’re heavily invested in working with AI coding agents to further increase our productivity. We see gains of at least 3 times. Probably much more.
Should we then charge our clients 3 times more?
We've a better idea. Having the productivity gains help our clients' businesses will help both of us.
In this week's Good News Sunday: storytelling was never gone but it's back, if you want a dog but don’t really, good things going right, the Ralph Loop, Lea Ypi on reforming the EU, HTML for the real world, and what's in the EU newspapers this Sunday, on the first of March, in the year of 2026 AD.
As a small software company, we’ve invested heavily into using coding agents in our productive work. But we’re facing the problems many have told of when using AI: the context window is limited, the AI always forgets.
We’re working our way through solutions, even if they may be partial.
Copyright, patents, and IP. Made for different, far slower times. There are billions of us now, information travelling at the speed of light, innovation like never before. Seems it’s time to reconsider, align the old ways to a much, much faster future.
Today we remember and commemorate the day it started, now four years exactly, when the war came back to Europe.
We’ve grown to respect the Ukrainian resilience and defiance, their adaptability and their courage.
The Russian bear must be stopped. We must help Ukraine with all our might.
This week's Good News Sunday includes: UK banks and Visa, NZ’s golden visa gets a ‘she’ll be right’ makeover, scientists want forever data & China’s green rush leaves farmers in the dust.
Plus: a Kiwi AI expert drops truth bombs—uncanny, important, & weirdly Fonterra-adjacent.
(Helped by Le Chat)
Workers in the early 20th century lived precarious lives. Workers in the early 21st century no less. After the hardware industry, it’s now the service industry which is under threat.
Because it does tasks in far less time and never needs a lunch break, AI will be taking jobs away at scale.
Have you heard? It's now OK to have your AI write your articles for you. It's no longer the case that form will define if your pieces are read. The measure is the truth that rings through.
People are always on about startups but apparently, startups fail far more often than they succeed.
We’re not a startup. We’re just a hard-working software company that makes a point of listening to what our users have to say, and to hear our leads even if they turn down our offer.
This week: how mental health treatment doesn’t need all those categories, the best painters of female nudes are females, you CAN eat well in Antartica, Paul Simon in the South Africa of the eighties, Via Mardot on TikTok. And, new recurring item: the headlines of the EU on Sunday.
Today it was US Secretary of State Rubio’s turn to bash the EU for respecting democracy, human values and the environment.
Such rants are set to weaken the already precarious world order.
But maybe “world order” isn’t that fragile: we're building a cathedral that can withstand the test of time.
The Philosopher’s Stone is a mythical substance that has transformative properties. Yes, it can turn lead into gold, which is obviously very helpful to attract investors seeking an easy buck. But also cure disease and ensure longevity.
And of course, it’s not real. However, in some ways, it is.
In this week's Good News Sunday: China’s dubious green energy transition, who’s in Europe’s headlines today (not Trump), Paul Krugman’s eclectic taste in music, and the EU spends vastly less securing their leaders than the USA.
Working with AI coding agents is challenging in many ways. In the last several months, individual software developers have integrated agents into their personal programming style.
But that leaves one important challenge open, how to get agents to fit into your company workflow.
We’ve become accustomed to using AI coding agents for our production work as a software company. Lead time exceeds expectations, but now Project Managers are feeling the squeeze of a new bottleneck.
Reviewing tickets is taking a factor x longer than the coding agent needs to do them.
At our small software company, we’re acutely aware of the dangers of the internet. While we’re endowing our developers with the superpower of AI coding agents, cybercrime is becoming super-powered as well.
This week, the EU again bypassing the US, protectors the environment have won a battle against the spread of motorways in the Netherlands, New Zealand’s not falling for Trumps “peace” plan for Gaza, and how to help EU talent escape the lure of US dollars.
I wish every day was a Good News Sunday!
We tend to keep US tech at arms length.
But things US creep in. We used to self-host our email, then we switched to GSuite. That was when we still thought that Google were the good guys.
The US has gone from unpredictable to worse. Times have changed.
In the EU, we're shaking ourselves loose.
AI is the hottest tech in town. It’s true. Billions are being poured into its development, companies are spending millions to integrate it into their work processes.
But is it a real paradigm shift like the smartphone, the internet? Will it have the deep, profound impact of the printing press?
Many say AI is a paradigm change. I agree. But many say also that companies that invest in AI are failing to make a difference. Why?
Because they are unable to see through the data and information. To take advantage of the paradigm shift, they should invest in gaining insight. Read the classics.
In this week’s Good News Sunday: more people keeping axolotls means more axolotls, TikTok made a deal with the devil, for an anti-ICE song but you’d do better to have Jesse Welles on your playlist, cats can swim but not very well, after Avatar, now James Cameron is coming to New Zealand.
Enjoy!
At our company, our developers are getting really comfortable working with AI coding agents. But we want to do more. We want to integrate coding agents into the complete development cycle.
It's not going to be simple. But we're taking baby steps.
Trump's disgust of Europe’s democracies came over load and clear in Davos. I fear the world as we know it is dying tiny deaths every day.
But then I skim through the AI section of the outstanding newsletter TLDR and I realise that US innovation is still very much alive.
So difficult to rhyme.
