Screaming in the Cloud

AI agents are moving fast,  but the infrastructure behind them is still catching up. In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, Corey Quinn sits down with Paper Compute CEO Brian “B Dougie” Douglas to explore building telemetry for AI agents, open-source infrastructure, token economics, and what it takes to create developer tooling in the AI era. From local-first observability to agent runtimes and the future of AI workflows, this conversation dives into what’s next for AI-powered development.

Show highlights: 
(00:00) Open Source Trust Signal
(00:16) Show Intro and Sponsor
(01:07) What Paper Compute Builds
(01:55) Telemetry for Agents Explained
(04:10) Local First Data and Sharing
(06:18) Second Time Founder Story
(09:06) Token Costs and Pricing Psychology
(14:20) Stereos VM and Safer Runtimes
(20:34) Open Source Strategy and Vibe Coding
(24:54) Whats Next and Wrap Up

About Brian: 
Brian is the founder of the Paper Compute Company, a distributed systems primitives for AI agents.
Brian previously founded Open Sauced, a company dedicated to increasing knowledge and insights of open-source communities. In 2024, Open Sauced joined the Linux Foundation, further solidifying Brian’s commitment to advancing open-source initiatives. With a passion for open source, Brian has consistently supported and mentored new contributors through Open Sauced, empowering developers to excel in the open-source ecosystem.
Previously, Brian also led Developer Advocacy at GitHub, where he fostered a community of early adopters through content creation showcasing the newest GitHub features. His experience spans across notable companies in the tech industry, including Netlify, where he worked as an advocate. Brian’s dedication to open source extends beyond his professional endeavors. He currently hosts two podcasts Open Source Ready and The Secret Sauce: A podcast focusing on developer insights and experiences.
Through these platforms, Brian continues to share valuable knowledge and promote open-source culture within the developer community.

Links: 
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/brianldouglas
Website: https://b.dougie.dev

Sponsored by:
duckbillhq.com

What happens when you stop trying to serve everyone, and start focusing on the right customers?
In this episode, Corey Quinn sits down with Corey Quinn (yes, really) to talk about specialization, scaling service businesses, and the power of saying no. From growing a digital agency from $20M to $200M to escaping founder-led sales, this conversation dives into practical lessons for founders, marketers, and leaders looking to scale with intention.
Show highlights: 
(00:00) Specialization Mindset
(00:21) Show Intro and Sponsor
(01:18) Two Corey Quinns
(02:39) Guest Background and Book
(04:41) Scaling a Service Agency
(06:28) Inbound Limits and Outbound Shift
(10:21) Cookie Gifting Breakthrough
(12:12) Making Gifting Work
(19:09) Retention Through Specialization
(25:20) Founder Bottlenecks and Wrap Up

Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyquinn/

Sponsored by:
duckbillhq.com

Just because you can build it doesn’t mean you should. In this episode, Ahmed Bebars, Principal Engineer at The New York Times, joins Corey Quinn to talk about real-world cloud decisions, Kubernetes complexity, and the constant trade-off between building your own solutions and buying existing ones. From home labs to enterprise architecture, they unpack what actually works, and what engineers often get wrong.

Show Highlights:
(00:19) Intro
(01:09) From Imposter Syndrome
(06:34) Honest Community Feedback
(09:29) EKS Versus ECS Debate
(21:32) Home Lab Reality Check
(22:40) Build vs Buy Long Game
(28:04) Focus on Core Business
(34:35) Uptime Tradeoffs and Standards
(39:41) Networking and IPv6 Debate
(41:28) Wrap Up and Where to Find
Links:
Ahmed's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmedbebars

Sponsored by:
duckbillhq.com

What happens when cloud economics meets the messy reality of business, AI, and human behavior?
Corey and J.R. Storment unpack why cloud cost management is less about math and more about psychology, the real difference between FinOps for AI vs. AI for FinOps, and why automation still struggles with edge cases (despite all the hype). Along the way, they explore multi-cloud complexity, the rise of consumption-based pricing, and how businesses are navigating massive, unpredictable spend across cloud, SaaS, and AI platforms.
If you’ve ever wondered why your cloud bill feels like chaos, or how to actually get value from it, this episode pulls back the curtain.

Show Highlights:
(00:00) FinOps Royalty Reunion
(03:06) Origin Stories and Naming FinOps
(06:32) AI for FinOps vs FinOps for AI
(11:05) Automation Hype and Human Psychology
(22:16) Contracts Multi Cloud and Commitments
(24:26) Context Beats Optimization
(26:06) Trust and Billing Clarity
(28:14) Focus Standard Flywheel
(30:11) SaaS Coverage and Conformance
(34:06) Contracts Multi-cloud and Wrap Up

Links:
FinOps: https://www.finops.org/
Sponsored by:
duckbillhq.com

In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, host Corey Quinn sits down with Roi Lipman, CTO and co-founder of Falco DB, to unpack the evolving role of graph databases in a world overflowing with data stores. Roi shares his journey from building RedisGraph at Redis to spinning it out into Falco DB, along with his enduring love of the C programming language (dad jokes included). The conversation explores why graph databases remain niche, but powerful, especially for pathfinding problems like supply chains and access management, how vector search became a feature rather than a standalone database, and what AI-assisted development means for modern engineering. Along the way, they tackle open source sustainability, Rust rewrites, AI-generated pull request chaos, and the looming question of where the next generation of senior engineers will come from.

Highlights: 
(00:00) C Language
(00:27) Welcome
(01:18) Database Landscape Overview
(03:17) Why Graph Databases Matter
(07:25) AI Built Apps and Data Choices
(10:29) How FalcoDB Fits In
(12:20) Vector Search as a Feature
(16:48) FalcoDB Origin Story
(19:54) Open Source Business and Rust Rewrite
(25:23) Toy Graph Problems and Closing Thoughts
Sponsored by:
duckbillhq.com