Explaining Photonics Integrated Circuits (PICs) as "chip similar to electronic chips, but instead of electricity they work with light" works for quite a few people at a party. But such a strongly simplified description can lead to questions like "When they replace electronic chips?" and "Is that an alternative to quantum computers?". Neither are completely off, but again tricky to answer while keeping it simple. The goal of this talk is therefore to give an thorough introduction to PICs and the ecosystem surrounding them. To answer what they are, how and where they are manufactured, what they are used for and how are they related to electronic chips and the semiconductor industry in general. To go beyond the usual simplifications give an overview of an exotic sounding topic and to show that PICs are already way more present in our live than one would expect.

For a long time I have done Application Security and Penetration tests and wanted to know how secure an app written by AI really is and how helpful AI can be in identifying and fixing bugs. Instead of relying on yet another "damn-vulnerable" app, I built and published a real app (web+mobile) by following spec-driven development, including security best practices. I wrote the specifications together with AI: the requirements, architecture, and design while the code itself was 100% AI-written. Then I tried to break it and I turned AI on the result: Strix as an autonomous pentester, run with both local and frontier models, and Burp AT as a hands-on pentest co-pilot. With a budget of €50, I tracked what each pentest approach actually cost and how mature and efficient this loop of "build-break-fix-with-AI" really is.