Month: September 2026

  • Don’t Disarm the Blue Team: Why Open-Source AI Is the Key to Real Cybersecurity Safety

    Paul Roetzer asked over on Xitter: “I desperately want to understand how open-source absolutists believe open versions of this type of agent ability is safe. I get that open-weight models may be critical for defenses, but how does putting this capability in bad actors hands with no oversight work? Honest question. No ulterior agenda than…

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  • You Ask, I Answer: How to Build a Cheap AI Sidekick Box?

    Summary In today's episode, I break down how to choose between building a cheap local AI inference box and setting up a low-cost orchestration computer that hands the heavy lifting to a cloud provider. Here's what this means for you. You'll get a clear framework for matching your budget, power budget, and privacy needs to…

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  • State-of-the-Art AI Just Got 95% Cheaper: Run Top Models Locally

    Another week, another Pareto distortion in AI. Two new AI models came out on the scene this week, Qwen3.8-Flash-Next and zAI GLM-5.3-Flash. Both of these are Flash models, meaning that they’re smart but optimized for speed. Both of them score higher on Artificial Analysis independent benchmarks than Claude Sonnet 5 and Opus 4.7. They’re both…

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  • You Ask, I Answer: Where Is the AI Workplace Surveillance Line?

    Summary In today's episode, I explore where to draw the line between a helpful proactive internal AI assistant and a surveillance tool that makes employees uncomfortable. Here's what this means for you. You gain a practical framework for deciding whether AI monitoring belongs in your workplace at all. You'll also learn these concepts: why disclosure…

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  • Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Creating A Keynote Speaker Second Brain (2026-09-13)

    _Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Creating A Keynote Speaker Second Brain (2026-09-13) :: View in Browser_ The Big Plug ✍️ Enroll in my new course, AI for Writers and learn how to make AI write better. Content Authenticity Statement 75% of this week’s newsletter was made by me, the human. There’s a purely AI-generated glossary of…

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  • Five New AI Models Compared: Why Qwen 3.8 Is the Only One Worth Your Time

    Five new AI models hit the field this week, and only one of them is probably worth your time. Let’s take a look. Contender 1: Muse Glimmer. This is Meta’s newest open weights model, a 30 billion parameter dense model. It’s fast, it’s cheap, and it’s slightly smarter than Claude Haiku. If you have nice…

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  • So What? Nontraditional Podcast Analytics

    Summary In today's episode, I break down why traditional podcast analytics miss the mark and how to measure the entire content ecosystem around your show. Here's what this means for you. You gain a framework for tracking performance across every platform your podcast touches so you can stop making decisions based on incomplete download data…

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  • You Ask, I Answer: Does A/B Testing Survive AI Personalization?

    Summary In today's episode, I tackle whether traditional A/B testing becomes obsolete in an era of AI-generated hyper-personalized landing pages. Here's what this means for you. You'll discover that effective evaluation still requires guardrails, consistency in offers, and robust tracking of what visitors actually see. You'll also learn these concepts: why business constraints prevent truly…

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  • Transform Your Marketing Data with Generative AI at MAICON26: Workshops, Podcasts & Networking

    In 48 days – 7 weeks – I and a bunch of other folks are making our annual pilgrimage to Cleveland for #MAICON26, the SmarterX Marketing AI Conference. What’s on tap this year? Katie Robbert and I will be recording an episode of our In-Ear Insights podcast live from the show floor on Wednesday, 14…

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  • You Ask, I Answer: How to Standardize AI Evaluation Rubrics?

    Summary In today's episode, I explain how to build a blended scoring rubric by combining different stakeholder definitions of quality so AI can balance competing objectives like marketing appeal, technical depth, and legal safety. Here's what this means for you. You'll learn to push stakeholders into quantifying what success looks like rather than relying on…

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