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froggleston.carpentries.org
froggleston
@froggleston.carpentries.org
1.5K followers 270 following 120 posts
Director of Technology @thecarpentries, @froggleston@mstdn.science, open source advocate, heavy metal lover, he/him/they, @docfrogs coffee, @antididact guitarist, noob
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Reposted by froggleston
simonwillison.net
Short musings on "cognitive debt" - I'm seeing this in my own work, where excessive unreviewed AI-generated code leads me to lose a firm mental model of what I've built, which then makes it harder to confidently make future decisions simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/15/...
How Generative and Agentic AI Shift Concern from Technical Debt to Cognitive Debt
This piece by Margaret-Anne Storey is the best explanation of the term cognitive debt I've seen so far. Cognitive debt, a term gaining traction recently, instead communicates the notion that …
simonwillison.net
February 15, 2026 at 5:22 AM
Reposted by froggleston
katemckean.bsky.social
Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick
February 11, 2026 at 7:56 PM
Reposted by froggleston
astrokatie.com
My doomer-worry about AI is not that the LLMs become omnipotent and take over the world but that the wealthy and powerful use it as a means to consolidate power and marginalize or lay off skilled workers and also everything about our technological and political and social life gets worse
February 11, 2026 at 8:20 PM
Reposted by froggleston
edzitron.com
Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon paying influencers $400k-$600k to post months of AI hype content. Absolutely busted, failed industry, embarrassing era
www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/g...
Google and Microsoft offer lucrative deals to promote AI, but even $500,000 won't sway some creators
Tech companies including Google and Microsoft are paying influencers hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote AI products.
www.cnbc.com
February 11, 2026 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by froggleston
benkuchera.bsky.social
Infosec used to be serious
February 11, 2026 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by froggleston
chrislhayes.bsky.social
I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.
February 4, 2026 at 7:41 PM
Reposted by froggleston
auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social
Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.

This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.

Auschwitz took time.
A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.
January 27, 2026 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by froggleston
softwaresaved.bsky.social
🟥 We are pleased to announce that the call for Expressions of Interest (EoIs) for Round 2 of the Research Software Maintenance Fund is now open until 25 February 2026, 16:00 GMT.

Find out more at www.software.ac.uk/news/rsmf-ro...
January 28, 2026 at 10:00 AM
froggleston.carpentries.org
UK government teaming up with Meta is looking great.
techmeme.com Techmeme @techmeme.com · 18d
Court filings: Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions (Jeff Horwitz/Reuters)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink
January 27, 2026 at 8:15 PM
Reposted by froggleston
iahawks101.bsky.social
Dave Matthews and Tim Ryenolds playing Neil Young’s Ohio last night and ends with some Rage Against the Machine.
January 24, 2026 at 11:35 PM
froggleston.carpentries.org
Really interesting thread!
add-hawk.bsky.social C. Thi Nguyen @add-hawk.bsky.social · 23d
Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out.

As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class.

Here's what happened:
January 23, 2026 at 4:18 PM
Reposted by froggleston
edzitron.com
Tomorrow's premium newsletter - The AI Bubble Is A Time Bomb, with every hyperscaler facing $10bn-$20bn a quarter in depreciation in the next two years and AI startups draining all that's left of venture capital.

Here's $10 off annual.
edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...
AI labs have no path to profitability, and have to work out a way to keep raising money or dump themselves onto the public markets, and even then face the same problem of their services costing way more to provide than they bring in. AI startups have no path to profitability, and in many cases have no real way to reduce costs other than to switch model providers or sink their own money into training their own models, which will in turn be unprofitable. Neoclouds like CoreWeave and Nebius, burdened by billions in debt, ballooning capital expenditures and negative margins must find a way to muddle through until either NVIDIA makes a magical profitable GPU, or model providers find ways to become profitable. To put it simply, everybody is sitting around waiting for somebody else to solve their problems. OpenAI and Anthropic are waiting for Amazon or Google or NVIDIA or Cerebras to invent that magical profitable GPU, and for venture capital (or private debt) to plug the holes in their business models. AI startups are sitting around waiting for OpenAI or Anthropic to make models that consumers will pay more for or that will cost less to run, and for venture capital to feed them the money to keep the hounds of Hell from dragging them into the ground. Neoclouds are waiting for NVIDIA to do something that makes GPUs profitable, and for debt or venture capital to keep them alive. Even hyperscalers are sitting around waiting for somebody to wipe their ass. Crybaby loser and CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella complained this week at Davos that it AI was at “risk of becoming a speculative bubble” if it didn’t spread, per the FT, “spread beyond big tech companies and wealthy economies”: “For this not to be a bubble by definition, it requires that the benefits of this are much more evenly spread,” said Nadella. He noted that a “tell-tale sign of if it’s a bubble” would be if only tech groups were benefiting from the rise of AI, rather than companies in other sectors. Satya, that’s your job! You’re the one who’s meant to be spreading it! Yet even hyperscalers — who until recently funded expansion using cashflow, but have now turned to over a hundred billion dollars in debt — have their own time bomb waiting in the form of all those fucking GPUs. In the space of four years, these companies have gone from asset-light, high-cashflow money printers to cretinous, fiscally obese GPU holding firms, and while they might be profitable for now, each of them have added at least $90 billion in PP&E (Property, Plants and Equipment) in that time period, slowly breeding a depreciation parasite that sits on their income statements, slowly growing every quarter, eating away at net income, and their plan appears to be to buy more of the fucking things. To make matters worse, these services are incredibly expensive to run, unpopular with customers, and do not seem to be getting “better” in any way that can make up for what, in some cases, anywhere from $4.9 billion (Meta) to $13 billion (Microsoft) cuts to net income every single quarter for the next three to five years. I’ll lay it out real simple: every time a hyperscaler buys a new GPU and installs it in a data center (this is a crucial distinction, it must be operational), said GPU begins “depreciating” on a cycle of five to six years, adding a depreciation cost to their earnings rather than an up-front cost. While there is nothing wrong with this, it is, in and of itself, a time bomb. Every hyperscaler keeps buying GPUs, and because those GPUs take anywhere from six to twelve months to install, depreciation never really comes down because of the constant cycle of new stuff entering the flow of cash. As this happens, AI services stubbornly refuse to generate a profit, meaning that these depreciation costs are burning a hole in these companies’ cashflows. Nevertheless, these companies continue to buy more GPUs and build (or lease) more data centers, which means that the depreciation cost is always growing, on top of the operating expense of running AI services, on top of all the other costs of running the company. It doesn’t matter if they’re buying GPUs from NVIDIA or building their own Silicon with Broadcom — these costs continue to balloon, and they exist regardless of whether the AI boom is real or not. As I’ve said in the past, hyperscalers are not making any profit on AI (or even that much revenue, not that they’re actually disclosing those numbers). While this isn’t a problem right now (as existing revenue streams like Meta’s ads division or Microsoft 365 continue to grow), the second that growth begins to stumble, the only guarantee that these companies have is that depreciation costs are going to continue to rise to meet them. And there are only two ways to get rid of that cost: sell the items in question, or wait for the end of a depreciation cycle, something which Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta all extended (in some cases multiple times) as a means of boosting their net revenue and hiding the ruinous cost of AI. Every single part of the AI bubble is operating on…
January 23, 2026 at 1:50 AM
Reposted by froggleston
hagman.bsky.social
So excited to see these new lessons in development from @carpentries.carpentries.org for open #qualitative research.

librarycarpentry.github.io/lc-qualitati... for Taguette
librarycarpentry.github.io/lc-qualitati... for QualCoder
January 22, 2026 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by froggleston
step-up.bsky.social
Free online intro training: Shell, Git & Python for research workflows.
16-18 Feb 2026 via #STEPUP.
For PhD students, researchers & tech professionals developing software or processing data. Software Carpentries lessons.
Register: tinyurl.com/ycxndkz8
#RSE #dRTP #UKRI
@carpentries.carpentries.org
STEP-UP Software Carpentry workshop: Introductory Shell, Git, and Python for Research
Developing a Strategic TEchnical Platform for University technical Professionals
tinyurl.com
January 21, 2026 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by froggleston
kelseyhightower.com
I'm starting my next book which is set to be released in 2030.

"How to write and deploy software without prompts"
January 22, 2026 at 1:36 AM
Reposted by froggleston
felipegaonar.bsky.social
Open AI loses copyright case in Germany.

Judge Elke Schwager summarized the case saying that if you want to build something and need components, "then you purchase them and do not use the property of others."
Blow for OpenAI in Germany as court rules song lyrics used illegally
A German court ruled on Tuesday that OpenAI violated copyright on nine popular songs in a lawsuit that marked another attempt to prevent the free use of artists' content online. The Munich Regional Co...
www.yahoo.com
November 14, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by froggleston
hypervisible.blacksky.app
“Women and girls are far more reluctant to use AI. This should be no surprise to any of us. Women don’t see this as exciting new technology, but as simply new ways to harass and abuse us and try and push us offline.”
Use of AI to harm women has only just begun, experts warn
While Grok has introduced belated safeguards to prevent sexualised AI imagery, other tools have far fewer limits
www.theguardian.com
January 14, 2026 at 1:09 PM
Reposted by froggleston
groundgamela.bsky.social
Delete Spotify
umaw.bsky.social UMAW @umaw.bsky.social · Jan 15
In April 2024, Spotify implemented a new scheme: songs with less than 1k streams per year would no longer receive royalties.

The data for 2025 was just released via Luminate, and 88% of songs have been demonetized.

Read it again: 88% of songs on Spotify have been demonetized.
January 16, 2026 at 4:16 AM
Reposted by froggleston
carpentries.carpentries.org
Have you ever wished there was something like a Carpentries workshop but for qualitative research tools and skills? If so, join next week's discussion session, Qualitative Research Lessons with The Carpentries.

🗓️ Tue, 20 January
⏰ 17:30 UTC

Sign up on Pretix: pretix.carpentries.org/community-ev...
Qualitative Research Lessons with The Carpentries
Tue, Jan. 20th, 2026
pretix.carpentries.org
January 14, 2026 at 10:09 AM
froggleston.carpentries.org
The main goal of capitalist LLM use is to take the work of others and pass it off as their own because "meritocracy" and "productivity".
January 13, 2026 at 11:28 AM
Reposted by froggleston
emilyriederer.bsky.social
Last 2025 post, on @python.org & @carpentries.carpentries.org values, a great @posit.co conf session feat @mchow.com @richmeister.bsky.social @davisvaughan.bsky.social, the magic of #rstats #python dev cultures sharing best practices, and random #rstats history

www.emilyriederer.com/post/py-rgo-...
R + Python: From polyglot to crosspolination | Emily Riederer
A combined reflection on 2025, posit::conf(2025), and the necessity of diversity in open source
www.emilyriederer.com
December 30, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Reposted by froggleston
ediparolev.bsky.social
“Uruguay did what most nations still call impossible: it built a power grid that runs almost entirely on renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. The physicist who led that transformation says the same playbook could work anywhere—if governments have the courage to change the rules.”
Uruguay’s Renewable Charge: A Small Nation, A Big Lesson For The World
Uruguay built a power grid that runs 99% on renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. Here’s how its bold energy overhaul became a global model.
www.forbes.com
January 10, 2026 at 8:29 AM
Reposted by froggleston
louisehaighmp.bsky.social
I call on my party and my government to remove themselves entirely from X and communicate with the public where they actually participate online and can be protected from such illegality.
January 8, 2026 at 12:31 PM
froggleston.carpentries.org
A great opportunity at a fantastic and supportive research institution
earlhaminst.bsky.social Earlham Institute @earlhaminst.bsky.social · Jan 7
📣 Applications have just opened for a Lead Architect to join the @biofair.bsky.social Hub at Earlham Institute.

Blending systems architecture and solutions architecture, this role will guide the design of a national, federated research ecosystem. #FAIRdata #DataSystems
BioFAIR Lead Architect
buff.ly
January 7, 2026 at 2:13 PM
froggleston.carpentries.org
Anyone still running an account on X is now complicit in normalising Elon Musk's Sexual Abuse Website.
January 7, 2026 at 11:25 AM