After France, Denmark is moving too: its Digitalisation Ministry plans to phase out Microsoft, switching to Linux and LibreOffice in the coming months. The goal is clear—reduce dependence on a handful of global tech giants and strengthen digital sovereignty.
Today's yoga session was to a track list of 90s Hip-hop and R&B - which was lovely. What was not lovely, was that it had a lot of downward dog. I'm not a fan of downward dog!
A screenshot of a white-on-black terminal depicting a 19x19 go board in ascii graphics, with empty grid intersections as periods, and black and white as Os and #s
It’s absolutely incredible that one of the largest Japanese-run Go servers, which has been running since 1992, is still accessed entirely via Telnet. And while most players use GUI clients that use Telnet under the hood, you can still connect manually and get ASCII graphics streamed to you
I consistently repeat to folks that they do not in fact ever *succeed* on their own. Sometimes the assistance is visible, often it is submerged. None of the USian billionaires *succeeded* on their own. In fact, most of them continue to benefit from your money, labor, etc....
Stop babysitting one AI at a time. Sandboxing lets them run wild safely, Git worktrees let them run in parallel. Use more tokens, get more velocity.
I was just talking to someone about the difference (and speed) between regex-ing a change vs asking AI to do something. One is very cheap and quick, the other - not so much!
AI pollution in human data samples is a hot topic.
Some great work from @andrewgordon.bsky.social et al. showing that concerns here are (generally) overblown, with the majority of platforms empirically showing low levels of AI pollution.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
New preprint out today (osf.io/preprints/ps...). We tested whether AI agents are actually infiltrating online surveys.
Spoiler alert: they aren't
Thread 🧵
[1/9]
"A state banquet? While he's bombing the hell out of Iran and people are dying all over the Middle East...?"
David Dimbleby, journalist and presenter, argues against King Charles' planned state visit to the US in April.
#Newsnight
If Brexit was when we left are we calling it Brenter to rejoin?
In spite of all the talk of Claude Code and Codex meaning the end of humans writing code, software job adverts are actually going up, according to @jburnmurdoch.ft.com's crunching of millions of job ads for this week's The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/7325...
Really pleased to hear about stacked diffs in the GitHub product update today. Excited to see the feature set on offer.
Bang on - I'm going back more and more to laptop use - Phones stress me out, it's all so cramped
Co-incidences can freak you out. This weekend I was thinking about how the cinema use to have _great_ adverts, specifically was thinking about the Sony Bravia adverts. I just opened Apple Music, and went for a random recommended playlist (not mine) - first song - Jose Gonzalez - Heartbeats.
I certainly buy into the planning/research part of your job. As a Tech Lead I get asked about feasibility _a lot_.. I could spend my days just doing that work, but getting AI to do some of the heavily lifting, enough to get a gut feel at least, is really helpful
Mitchell is one of the best engineers of our time and has zero affiliation with any vendors. It's worth understanding how he warmed up to AI tools and the very pragmatic ways he uses them (and avoids overuse,) and also the gripes he has with the tools and, in general, AI+open source
I’ll be amazed if these two Ferrari’s don’t crash into each other. Great to watch - shame they’re not racing the Mercedes more!
I like learning in the open, so here's my current set-up for integrating AI/LLM tools (Gemini CLI & Jules) into my personal coding, while keeping the fun. This will keep evolving, so I'm keen to hear your suggestions, was this helpful, or if I'm just holding it all wrong.
rowan.fyi/posts/gemini...
Wordle 1,729 4/6
🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩⬜⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
From AI cloud agents to local flows - I’ve written up the next chapter on my AI engineering flow.
benmatselby.dev/post/2026/ai...
Really good race from Hamilton. Positive stuff. Enjoyed the race too. Looked more racy and less predictable.
I was doing this last week. Couldn’t believe how painful it was to stop notifications!
Just fixed an issue for the sublime-phpcs plugin. The issue was raised 9 years ago 😬
You can now define different paths for the settings based on the OS. So if you work on the same project but on different OS's, now you can 🙏
github.com/benmatselby/...
Wednesday
Switched out ESLint+Prettier for Biome biomejs.dev
So far it's far less hassle, less dependencies. Anything for an easier life. Need to setup neovim integration next
We all know that person, who does the invisible work, who quietly coordinates and holds projects together. They sadly rarely get credit for it though. It’s hard to measure, and often overlooked. We need to find leaders who can see and reward this invisible work.
The calendar for the first three months of 2026, with today, Saturday, January 31, highlighted. February begins on Sunday and lasts for exactly four weeks, ending on Saturday.
We have a perfect Rectangular February coming up, first time we’ve had one since 2015
Maybe this is what finally closes the loop and fixes the world
