OpenAI is buying Astral https://openai.com/index/openai-to-acquire-astral/

1. I'm happy Astral got their exit (which we all knew was the end goal)
2. I'm glad no one will accuse me of trying to kill the company anymore by working on standards or saying there are other workflow tools
3. I'm taking a wait-and-see view (e.g. Astral already said more AI is coming to their tools https://blog.pamelafox.org/2026/03/learnings-from-pyai-conference.html#:~:text=Astral%20is%20also%20re%2Dprioritizing%20based%20off%20the%20move%20towards%20100%25%20agentic%20coding%2C%20with%20less%20emphasis%20on%20tools%20that%20would%20be%20used%20solely%20by%20a%20developer%20who%20is%20manually%20typing.)
4. I'm going to continue to work on standards for a baseline workflow experience to make my kid happy someday

The conda steering council recently approved a set of CEPs (conda enhancement proposals) that effectively standardize the conda ecosystem. This is a big milestone worth celebrating! 🎉

Full details at https://conda.org/blog/2026-03-11-conda-standards-ceps

So someone dropped code to decrypt proprietary #ltspice models. That allows you to use them with #ngspice and #kicad

https://github.com/jtsylve/spice-crypt

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore"

The number of people I know who have given of their time and energy and brainpower to #python and yet didn't get @pycon travel grants, while the modern AI companies built on Python are taking multi-billion rounds, is disgusting.

This is not @ThePSF's fault, this is the fault of the sponsor community.

Next week begins my social media name-and-shame campaign, starting with blowing up my linkedin.