I increasingly feel compelled to publish things that prove I’m alive. Not in a hostage ‘proof of life’ sense, but rather a ‘my fingers typed this’ sense. But even writing that feels suspect!

Because first AI destroyed my fondness for emdashes, and now it’s taken my ability to negate myself. Sometimes the “not X but Y” sentence structure isn’t telltale AI; sometimes it’s someone with anxiety who also has to publish declarative statements for a living!

Anyways. Here’s some of the weird stuff that entertains me that I think a machine wouldn’t put in a newsletter.

• I attended SUSECON and it was my first time in Prague. I adored the utility/sewer covers in the streets and subsequently found a website devoted to tracking the various designs.

• If you’re into cozy games, I fully recommend Unpacking. The subtlety of the storytelling is delightful.

• My kids listen to the podcast Wow in the World. My favorite part is the end of the show where kids call the show’s hotline to share their favorite facts. The best fact I’ve learned is that the world’s largest eagle nest is 20 feet deep. I found some pictures. Look at that (terrifying) little buddy poking out the top.

What awesome things have you enjoyed lately? Where have you gone exploring? Tell me a good fact. Hit me up; I’m loving all the weird vagaries of humans right now.

Keep Humans Weird,

Rachel

Links Roundup

• Smaller players are being priced out of affordable storage for archiving the internet: "As an example, a 2TB external Samsung SSD I purchased last fall for $159 now costs $575."

• Notable, useful - but extremely dense - explanation of "the flinch", or when models self-censor based on elements baked into their training. "That's what the flinch measures, and it shows up in every pretrain we looked at. At small doses it's a stylistic tic. At scale, it's a lever: a distribution that reliably deflates some words and inflates others is the mechanism you'd build if you wanted to shape what a billion users read without them noticing."

• Linear is hiring. This is very clever framing by the founder.

• RedMonk analysts are featured in this article highlighting 50 thought leaders in enterprise software. You're sure to find some other useful follows here, so give it a look.

Recent RedMonk Research

• AI has collapsed the effort required to manufacture signals of credibility the software ecosystem depends on, and the consequences are rippling through every incentive structure the community has built, particularly around supply chain security. In this post, Kate Holterhoff discusses where we are on AI Slop & the Vulnerability Treadmill. AI generated reports are cheap. Human assessments are expensive. Bug bounty programs are simultaneously being killed and legally mandated. The CVE database may already be too slow to matter. And AI is the best tool on both sides of the fight, with the outcome determined not by the technology but by whether anyone has the budget and the organizational will to use it for defense rather than noise generation. RM clients mentioned: GitHub/Microsoft and Google

• Stephen O'Grady had the good fortune to attend the OSS Summit this week. It’s always one of his favorite conferences of the year because it attracts smart, good people we don’t get the chance to see anywhere else. Anyway, here are a few quick takeaways from the event, good and not so good.

• It's no secret that there are tons of "open" models trying to compete with the frontier model leaders. What wasn't clear was how well they were competing, or whether they were getting better at competing over time. This piece is one attempt to look at those questions in detail. RM clients mentioned: Amazon (Nova), Google (Gemini, Gemma) and IBM (Granite)

• Following a conversation on the subject, Steve, went out and analyzed the license distribution of the ~2.9M models hosted on Hugging Face. Some interesting takeaways, including the fact that only a third carried any license at all.

• James Governor wrote up an analysis of Google's cloud positioning and strengths for the agent era, based on Google Cloud Next. Just in time for Google I/O. RM clients mentioned: Google, Microsoft, AWS

• Pretty much every phone on the planet is going to be powered by Google Gemini AI going forward. Read more here. RM clients mentioned: Google

Recent Videos and Media Appearances

• Over a meal at Sune in London, RedMonk’s James Governor and Alois Reitbauer, Chief Technology Strategist at Dynatrace, use the restaurant menu as a lens to discuss one of the thorniest questions in enterprise software: when to build and when to buy? Opinionated Infrastructure: The Restaurant Rule – Why the Best Packager Wins in Observability

• Rachel Stephens sits down with Audrey Bian, Principal Product Marketing Manager at Broadcom, to explore how vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) is helping enterprises modernize their applications without rebuilding their infrastructure from scratch. Audrey breaks down how VKS bridges the gap between traditional VM workloads and modern containerized applications on a single unified platform. VKS: One Platform for VMs and Containers with Audrey Bian

• RedMonk’s James Governor and Kate Holterhoff share their takeaways from Google Cloud Next 2026 in Las Vegas! RedMonk Quick Take: Google Cloud Next 2026

• Live from IBM Think 2026 in Boston, RedMonk’s co-founders James Governor and Stephen O’Grady share their key takeaways from the event. RedMonk Quick Take: IBM Think 2026

• In this conversation, Seth Webster, executive director of the newly launched React Foundation and Chief Developer Evangelist at Expo, chats with RedMonk’s Kate Holterhoff. Seth explains why React has outgrown its origins at Meta and needs an independent foundation to ensure its durability for the next decade: Seth Webster on How Expo & the React Foundation Are Shaping Modern Development

• At IBM Think 2026 in Boston, RedMonk co-founders James Governor and Stephen O’Grady discuss the conference’s central theme: the shift from AI proof of concepts to real-world implementation and tangible business use cases. RedMonk Quick Take: IBM Think 2026 2

• In this quick take from Red Hat Summit 2026 in Atlanta, Kate Holterhoff shares her key observations from the event. AI and agent orchestration emerged as dominant topics, with particular emphasis on governance, security, and compliance as critical concerns for enterprises. RedMonk Quick Take: Red Hat Summit 2026

• At IBM Think 2026 in Boston, RedMonk’s Stephen O’Grady shares key takeaways about emerging trends in enterprise AI strategy and infrastructure. RedMonk Quick Take: IBM Think 2026 3

• Kate Holterhoff sits down with Tanya Janca, Secure Coding and AI Trainer at SheHacksPurple, to talk about what AI is doing to application security. Tanya’s take: we’re driving a car at three times the speed limit after 25 beers: Tanya Janca on AI Slop, Vibe Coding, & the Future of AppSec

Introducing The MonkSignal

One of the things we monks love to do when we travel is get together with our people. If you'd like to get a heads up when one of us is visiting your city, just pick your city (or a city you'll be in) and drop your email in this form.

You'll get a simple email prior to our visit letting you know we'll be in town and when, and if you want to meet with us, catch up over beers or just have a chat, all you have to do is let us know.

Meet the Monks

Events we'll be attending:

• Databricks Data + AI Summit: 15-18 June 2028, San Francisco + Virtual

Events we'll be hosting:

• The 2026 Monktoberfest: 1-2 October 2026, Portland, ME