The Stack Overflow Podcast

Keeping the lights on for open source

Ryan sits down with Chainguard CEO Dan Lorenc to chat about how his team is keeping the foundation of the internet—open source projects—alive by forking archived but widely-used repos to provide security maintenance and dependency upgrades. They also discuss open source’s sustainability problems when it comes to funding, security, and maintainer burnout, and how trusted stewardship can reduce risk when maintainers step away. Episode notes:  Chainguard [https://www.chainguard.dev/] provides secure-by-default open source artifacts for the modern software stack, keeping important open source projects maintained instead of archived. Chainguard just announced a whole bunch of new stuff at their user conference, Assemble [https://assemble.chainguard.dev/event/2991fca2-5be2-48cb-a8b9-132ab575cd51/summary].  Connect with Dan on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/danlorenc/]. Congrats to user Andreas Grapentin [https://stackoverflow.com/users/885605/andreas-grapentin] for winning a Lifejacket badge for their answer to Nested if-statement in loop vs two separate loops [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12224132/nested-if-statement-in-loop-vs-two-separate-loops]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/03/17/keeping-the-lights-on-for-open-source/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

Open source for awkward robots

Ryan is joined by Jan Liphardt,  CEO and co-founder of OpenMind, to chat about the rapidly evolving world of humanoid robotics and what it means for humans, why OpenMind is building an open source operating system for robots that processes logic in natural language, and how putting Asimov’s Laws on the blockchain might be the key to robotics guardrails. Episode notes:  OpenMind [https://openmind.com/]’s OM1 is an open source OS for robots that allows robots to perceive, adapt, and act within human environments.  Connect with Jan on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-liphardt/] and GitHub [https://github.com/jliphard]. This week’s shoutout goes to user Sean [https://stackoverflow.com/users/5351721/sean], who won a Lifejacket badge for their answer to Creating the simplest HTML toggle button? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76837048/creating-the-simplest-html-toggle-button]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/03/12/open-source-for-awkward-robots/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

Even the chip makers are making LLMs

Ryan welcomes Kari Briski, NVIDIA’s VP of Generative AI Software for Enterprise, to the show to explore how a chip manufacturer got into the model development game. They discuss NVIDIA’s co-design feedback loop between model builders and hardware architects, share insights on precision model training and memory management systems, and take a look at the roadmap and development of NVIDIA’s fully open-source Nemotron.  Episode notes:  Nemotron [https://developer.nvidia.com/nemotron] is a family of open models with open weights, training data, and recipes for building specialized AI agents.You can learn more on their Hugging Face [https://huggingface.co/collections/nvidia/nvidia-nemotron-v3] page or at NVIDIA GTC [https://nvda.ws/3NVv7OT] on March 16-19.  Connect with Kari on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karibriski/]. Congrats to user The4thIceman [https://stackoverflow.com/users/2038801/the4thiceman] for winning a Populist badge on their answer to How to Center Text in Pygame [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23982907/how-to-center-text-in-pygame]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/03/10/even-the-chip-makers-are-making-llms/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

Building brains for bulldozers

Ryan chats with Kevin Peterson, CTO of Bedrock Robotics, about the evolution of self-driving technology and why robotics is now advancing; how real data is still relevant but simulation becomes essential for scale; and the future of robotics in addressing labor shortages and enhancing productivity. Episode notes: Bedrock Robotics [https://bedrockrobotics.com/] creates technology that upgrades existing heavy equipment, enabling autonomous operation for construction machinery.  Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-peterson-a783612/] and Twitter [https://x.com/kevinmpeterson1].  Congrats to user charlie [https://stackoverflow.com/users/20734823/charlie] for winning a Necromancer badge [https://stackoverflow.com/help/badges/17/necromancer] on their answer to Linking Rust application with a dynamic library not in the runtime linker search path [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40602708/linking-rust-application-with-a-dynamic-library-not-in-the-runtime-linker-search]. TRANSCRIPT [https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/03/06/building-brains-for-bulldozers/] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

AI-assisted coding needs more than vibes; it needs containers and sandboxes

SPONSORED BY DOCKER In this sponsored episode, Ryan chats with Mark Cavage, President and COO of Docker, joins the show to dive into hardened containers and agent sandboxes. They discuss what it means for a container to be hardened, how agents are starting to look a lot like microservices, and where containers fit into agentic workflows now and in the future.  Episode notes Docker Hardened Images [https://www.docker.com/products/hardened-images/] are minimal and secure containers. They’re free and available for most applications in the Docker registry.  Docker for AI [https://www.docker.com/solutions/docker-ai/] provides an easy way to build, run, and secure AI agents.  Connect with Mark on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcavage/].  Congrats Populist badge winner humblebee [https://stackoverflow.com/users/4859404/humblebee] for answering How to open/run YML compose file? [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44364916/how-to-open-run-yml-compose-file/44365895#44365895]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].