Also: VCF 9.1 prefers private cloud for AI, the McGroc analyst trap, and the bank that lost the pope’s account.
Related to your interests
- VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 - a roundup of it all.
- Broadcom Announces VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 - “A preview of Broadcom’s Private Cloud Outlook 2026 report reveals private cloud continues to be the preferred platform for production AI. More than half of organizations surveyed (56%) are running or planning to run production inferencing in a private cloud. More importantly, public cloud use for production inference was 41%, down 15% year over year. Additionally, 62% of IT leaders reported being very or extremely concerned about generative AI infrastructure costs while 36% report AI is driving new requirements for data protection, privacy, security controls and risk management.”
- 🤖 Google Is A Full Stack AI Player, And Is Playing Well - Google Cloud’s full-stack AI integration from TPUs through Gemini is finally paying off, with Q1 2026 revenue up 63 percent and operating income tripling. The original “abstract the infrastructure” vision customers rejected a decade ago is now exactly what GenAI buyers want.
- Anthropic and OpenAI are both launching joint ventures for enterprise AI services - “The overall logic of the two ventures is the same, raising money from alternative asset managers to create new channels for enterprise AI deals. The ventures will presumably get preferred sales access to their investors' portfolio companies, while the investors will capture more value from any resulting contracts.”
- 🤖 We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. - “Data center electricity demand was flat from 2005 to 2017 thanks to efficiency gains, but AI-specific hardware doubled consumption by 2023, and data centers now eat 4.4% of all US electricity. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projects that by 2028, AI alone could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of US households.”
- Do Americans really hate AI?
- Apple to Pay $250 Million to Settle Class Action Over Delayed Siri Features - as someone else said, $25 in apologies for at $800 phone is weird.
- The Organization Is the Bottleneck
- Cloudflare to fire 1,100 staff whose jobs just aren’t AI enough - “To rub salt into the wounds of sacked staff, the email went out not long before Cloudflare announced quarterly results that included 34 percent year-over-year revenue growth and guidance for 30 percent future growth.”
- IREN Announces Acquisition of Mirantis to Strengthen AI - Mirantis!
- Is feedback really a gift? - “Have you ever gotten _actually useful _technical feedback? Ultimately all the feedback was really ‘write more code.'”
- Datadog’s stock jumps 31% on crushing earnings beat, showing there’s still hope for software - There’s always money in the monitoring stand.
- The McGroc Trap: Why Most Analyst Briefings Get Stuck Talking About Product - Influencer Relations - How to make an analyst briefing more interesting: have a unique view of “the market,” talk about a dramatic result at a customer, use silence to get the analyst engaged and talking. // “The vendor came with a point of view about where the market was heading, shared evidence from customer outcomes, and invited the analyst to challenge or build on those observations.”
- 🤖 Life During Class Wartime - Tim Bray argues we’re losing a class war to an emerging hereditary aristocracy and that a modest annual wealth tax is the obvious, achievable counter-move. Uses the Whitecaps sale to a billionaire heir as a vivid illustration of inherited-money power.
- 🤖 The 1960s Art School Experiment That Redefined Creativity - “…problem-finding draws on something more holistic than reason - a searching, uncertain state that may be where the creative process actually begins.”
- 🤖 Long ago, a Houston company’s art graced the walls of America’s stoners - “this is the visual record of a subculture whose members didn’t write books and whose work doesn’t hang in museums”
Wastebook
- “Tinkerslop” - as they used to say “I feel seen.” Here.
- “I want to carry my ereader, mesh radio or two, wallet, headphones, keys, pens, battery pack, and usually a manga.” Bag Watch.
- “Need a whole lotta milk-ahhh.” Meanwhile, in the hall.
- “The bank did not want to lose the account of the pope. They changed the number.” Here.
- farrago - a confused mixture or a jumble of different things
- “basically one guy controlling every knob.” Claude describes My Bloody Valentine.
- “a managerial memento mori” Claude’s take on “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
- “Incidentally, GTA6 is coming out in November and apparently it cost $1 billion to make.” Here.
- Asymmetric slop, via.
- “Here’s one we built earlier.” Blue Peter, I’m told.
- “When I became a magician at the age of 40, I took it very seriously, and it has transformed my life.” Alan Moore
ICYMI
- Laws, anecdotes, and other shit people say - an attempt to gather up all the “laws,” anecdotes, and folklore in tech and management talk.
- Always taste the digital transformation while you’re making it - use iterative transformation.
- History is not a story - applying a narrative to history is a problem.
- Treat AI as a stoner
- The Enterprise Dunbar number - Software Defined Talk #571 - “This week, we discuss AI labs driving cloud revenue, hyperscalers laying off instead of building, and kids defeating age verification. Plus, Brandon has too many thoughts on Workday.”
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