Charles Botensten
I build AI-first tools and communities in public — software, real estate, faith, finish lines.
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ShinyHunters Exploits Oracle PeopleSoft Zero-Day
The ShinyHunters group exploited an unpatched Oracle PeopleSoft flaw rated 9.8 to breach 100+ organizations, targeting universities and stealing sensitive student and alumni data.
US Deficit Hits $2 Trillion in FY2026
The FY2026 federal deficit is on track for $2 trillion — up from $1.7 trillion last year and double the bipartisan 3%-of-GDP target backed by Congress.
TSMC CEO Rules Out Memory-Style Price Spikes
TSMC's CEO told shareholders he won't copy memory chip makers' sharp price hikes, even as AI demand outstrips supply and CFO Wendell Huang won't rule out some increases.
Google Signs Secret Pentagon AI Deal, Director Quits
Google signed a classified deal giving the Pentagon access to Gemini AI on secret military networks. Over 600 employees protested, and Android security director René Mayrhofer resigned in protest.
AI Is Shrinking Entry-Level Jobs in Tech and Accounting
Stanford's Digital Economy Lab and BambooHR both confirm AI is cutting entry-level roles in software development and accounting faster than any other group.
71% of Americans Oppose Local AI Data Centers
Gallup's first-ever data center poll shows 71% of Americans oppose local AI data center construction. Ohio legislators are now pushing bipartisan bills to protect consumers from rising electricity costs.
Amazon: Data Centers Used 2.5B Gallons in 2025
Amazon revealed its global data centers consumed 2.5 billion gallons of water last year, with a water efficiency rate of 0.12 liters per kilowatt hour — better than Microsoft's 0.27.
Ona: OpenAI's Acquired Cloud Agent Platform Explained
Ona runs teams of AI software engineers in the cloud — background agents that take a task and return a pull request. On June 11, 2026, CEO Johannes Landgraf announced the company is joining OpenAI.
Google Turns to Samsung for AI Chip as Fab Capacity Tightens
Google has chosen Samsung to make a future AI chip as manufacturing slots grow scarce. Samsung is spending $73 billion on chip expansion in 2026, and Google is also eyeing TSMC's U.S. 2nm capacity.
Satya Nadella: "A Lot" of Tokenmaxxing at Microsoft
At a live Hard Fork taping, Nadella admitted he tokenmaxxes too — then told Microsoft's 220,000 employees to match the AI model to the task, not the other way around.
Microsoft Blocks Claude Fable 5 Over Data Retention
Microsoft pulled Claude Fable 5 from its internal GitHub Copilot model picker after Anthropic's new retention policy raised concerns about customer and confidential data.
DiffusionGemma: Google's 4x Faster Text Generation Model
Google's DiffusionGemma generates entire blocks of text at once, hitting 1,000+ tokens per second on an H100 — up to 4x faster than standard autoregressive Gemma models.
Articles
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Architecting the Autonomous: Engineering the Loops That Drive AI Agents
The shift from prompting AI like Claude. Boris Cherny highlights this evolution, where developers manage continuous cycles that direct AI agents, focusing on architecture and to building automated loops marks a transition in software engineering toward intent-centric development.
The Economics of Token Exhaustion: Why Flat-Rate AI Subscriptions Collapsed
Subscriptions are so 2025 right, well... Trends seem to agree.
The 30-Day Head Start: Trump’s Frontier AI Executive Order
President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump has pulled a rather "radical" moves towards AI, and this week has been no different.
AI Samples, the inevitable doom of AI: AI Companies’ Relentless Hunt for Training Samples, the Privacy Minefield, and the Looming Shadow of Contamination
AI Samples - Ouroboros of AI model training.
Videos
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How I Burned Months Building a Salesforce Replacement With Claude
After $50,000 and five developers, Charles discovers Claude can scaffold a working CRM in minutes — then spends months learning why that's only half the problem.
Why Prompting Skill Beats Coding Skill in the AI Era
After 307 days of live vibe-coding, I'm convinced the sharpest competitive edge isn't writing code — it's knowing exactly what to ask the model.
China's AI Lag Is Closing — What That Means for Closed Source
China's open-weight models are closing the AI gap with the US faster than most enterprise buyers realize, and the bifurcation between closed and open source is already underway.
How I Learned to Think Objectively After 10 Years of Unlearning
Charles Botensten maps the decade-long process of moving from emotional, distraction-driven thinking to something closer to objective reality — and shows exactly where most people get stuck.
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