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Software engineering at a proprietary trading company: Optiver (28 minute read)
Trading companies build bespoke hardware stacks and have larger platform engineering teams than most workplaces. For software engineers, it's a lucrative niche in terms of compensation, full-stack work, and engineering challenges. Software engineers tend to know little about trading companies. This post covers in depth how engineering works in a modern trading business.
Jun 12 | Blog
I Tried to Build a Context Layer for My Agent in a Weekend. Reader, I Did Not Build a Context Layer for My Agent in a Weekend.
A "simple" weekend project turns into real infrastructure, and why agent context deserves a boring, reliable foundation.
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Aug 12 | AI
Cursor prepares to launch Origin platform for code reviews (2 minute read)
Cursor seems to be preparing to launch Origin beyond the closed partner beta under the name 'Cursor Review'. Cursor Review will enable two new tabs: Codebase covers syncing and managing repositories pulled in from GitHub, and Review contains an automated pull request pipeline that notifies developers when their judgment is needed, allowing humans and agents to work through open PRs across a codebase together. The rollout could land as early as this week.
Aug 12 | Dev
Where an AI Watermark Can Hide in Plain Text (6 minute read)
Anthropic announced it would start embedding an imperceptible watermark in the text generated by its AI model, Claude, though the specific method of implementation remains undisclosed. While the file-level watermark can be bypassed easily, the text watermark is theorized to exist in a statistical bias in word choice, allowing it to survive copying and pasting, but strategies such as canonical regeneration and prose rewriting could strip this watermark.
Aug 12 | Infosec
Extension Banned for Stealing AI Chats Returns to Chrome Store, Resumes Malicious Activities (2 minute read)
Google pulled "AI Sidebar with DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Claude and more" in January after OX Security found it scraping ChatGPT/DeepSeek chats and sending them to external domains, with 300,000+ installs by then. It's back on the Chrome Web Store. Netskope found version 1.7.3.0 added 21 lines that open affiliate links on update events and hijack the uninstall URL for referral commissions.
