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The biggest April Fool's joke? Using AI to generate more output quicker instead of reshaping the flow of value in teams and systems.
Multi-billion dollar joke...
🤡🤡🤡
CircleCI's analysis of 28 million CI workflows confirms the same picture the DORA data shows. While feature branch activity's up significantly, the median impact on *main* (i.e. release) branch activity's net-negative 7%.
Only the top 5% of teams saw significant gains. The top 10% flatlined at 1%.
For the average team, AI slows them down overall.
Told ya!
In our last issue, we shared a preview of data from our upcoming 2026 State of Software Delivery showing that the promised AI productivity boom isn’t all hype. Throughput across the CircleCI platform increased 59% year-over-year, by far the largest productivity jump we've ever recorded and a clear i
Oracle have laid off 30k employees today. They did it to personal email accounts at 6am 🫡 saying they needed the money to spend on GenAI instead. https://thenextweb.com/news/oracle-layoffs-march-2026
Oracle’s share price since they went GenAI nuts:
SILVER TIDE (2006)
Acrylic on Canvas - 60" x 36"
Painted as I was 55 turning 56 and pondering the intransigence of time. I swear I was not consciously thinking, "Time and Tide wait for no man!"
"The closure of 'tabacs' (small local café-bars in France) contributes to the progression of far-right voting... regardless of immigration, unemployment or other economic indicators...
"Symmetrically, the opening of tabacs is associated with a decline in far-right voting, suggesting that these dynamics are not irreversible.
"No other commercial closure produces a comparable effect. The specificity of tabacs lies in their function as a place of socialisation... The effects are three times stronger in rural communities, where these establishments often constitute the last place of sociability...
"When places of sociability disappear, politics becomes a face-off between atomised individuals and national media narratives."
@GeofCox Thanks for sharing this news.
One of the original report The Guardian cites about the French case links votes for the far right to the number of "bars-tabac" that have closed, not only in Paris but in every territory in France. This trend of closures is accompanied by a decline in social bounds.
Which reminds me of this sociological concept : the strength of weak ties (Mark Granovetter) which are pivotal for both social networks and flows of information.
We need cafés, bars and all kind of social places !
Jason Gorman
Chris Oldwood
Kevin Beaumont
The Penguin of Evil
Pavel A. Samsonov
Michael Whelan
GeofCox
Sara Teinturier
Eberhard Wolff