Two posts about AI on machines that sit under a desk took 32,440 of the 55,416 visits that shashi.co logged between October 11 and October 17, which is 59 percent of the week. The first covered Adobe’s release with NVIDIA that brings data center speed to a creative’s workstation, and it drew 17,811. The second covered the open weights for Meta’s Muse Spark model, which runs on two or four linked M5 Ultra Mac Studios, and it drew 14,629.
The next three posts on the list, from Workday, a second one on Meta and one on Microsoft’s Maia silicon, bring the top five to 78 percent of all visits.
Readers wanted to know where the work runs
Adobe sells creative software and Meta trains models, and their posts drew the same reader for the same reason. Each answered a question a technology buyer carries into every budget meeting this year: which machine does the work, and who owns it. A model release that needs two or four linked M5 Ultra Mac Studios arrives with a hardware purchase order attached.
On October 16, the Adobe post took 17,811 of the day’s 18,618 visits, or 96 percent. Microsoft’s Maia post, fifth on the list at 2,847, covers the same question from the supply side. Microsoft puts its own silicon first for inference, which ties a buyer’s cloud contract to whose chips run the job. Cisco and NVIDIA’s plan for a plug that moves four times more data in the same-sized module, tenth at 903, carries the question to the network between the machines.
Four of the top ten posts were about where companies place compute.
Five vendors shipped agent controls, and each chose a different layer
ServiceNow, Kiro, NinjaOne, Palo Alto Networks and Workday each announced a way to control AI agents this week, and each put the control in a different place:
- ServiceNow signs credentials that limit what an agent can do at each step.
- Kiro, from Amazon Web Services, puts kernel-enforced limits on every command the agent runs on a developer’s machine.
- NinjaOne keeps a human technician approving the fix that its AI technician proposes.
- Palo Alto Networks added runtime protection for Claude Enterprise.
- Workday opened its human resources and finance rules to any agent that speaks Model Context Protocol and agreed to buy a company to govern those agents.
A buyer who runs agents from more than one of these vendors needs five separate controls to agree on one policy, and each of this week’s posts covers one layer.
Readers split on them. Workday’s post drew 4,230 visits, and the other four drew between 157 and 321 each. The gap suggests readers ask which agents can reach payroll and the ledger before they ask how a vendor restrains an agent that is already running.
A $22.6 billion deal drew about a third of the readers a Snowflake security add-on did
Schneider Electric’s agreement to buy PTC for $22.6 billion drew 574 visits. Upwind’s security launch for Snowflake drew 1,774. Proofpoint’s $6.3 billion cash offer for Varonis drew 248.
The two security posts at the top of that group hand the reader a task for this week. Upwind’s puts data access in your security queue. The Palo Alto Networks post on blocking threats at the Domain Name System checkpoint inside Amazon Route 53, which drew 1,354, tells you to audit your own records. A deal post asks the reader to judge a vendor’s strategy, and that judgment has no deadline attached.
The quietest posts carry the practitioner view
Nine of the 29 posts drew fewer than 200 visits, and 16 drew fewer than 500. Several of the quiet ones came from direct experience: the Uber Reserve ride from Dulles and its companion post on simple rules, the two Malbek posts, and the Claude dashboard post. They sit at the bottom of the ranking below.
Most of what ends up here starts in briefings, conferences, analyst days, emails, news alerts and my own searches. I love learning as I write, and I try to translate geek into English for the reader who has to decide. The pace of technology keeps rising, and I am happy to have been there from the beginning of the Internet.
The dashboard counts visits, and some of them likely come from crawlers, so the ranking shows direction more than a headcount.
- Adobe Launches New NVIDIA Speedups That Bring Data Center Power to the Creative’s Desk 17,811 visits · Oct 16
- Meta Releases Open-Weight Muse Spark Model That Runs on Linked Mac Studios 14,629 visits · Oct 17
- Workday Launches Headless HR and Finance for Any Agent, Agrees to Buy C1.ai to Govern Them 4,230 visits · Oct 13
- Meta Launches Muse, and Its Trust Case Depends on Your Settings 3,857 visits · Oct 13
- Microsoft Scales Maia to Multi-Gigawatt and Puts Own Silicon First for Inference 2,847 visits · Oct 12
- Upwind Launches Snowflake Security and Puts Data Access in Your Security Queue 1,774 visits · Oct 11
- Microsoft Launches 30 New CRM Skills That Bring Customer Context to Where Sellers Already Work 1,769 visits · Oct 11
- Palo Alto Networks Launches DNS Threat Blocking Inside Amazon Route 53, So Audit Your Own Records 1,354 visits · Oct 11
- Palo Alto Networks Ships Cortex XCOR to Diagnose Alerts in Under Three Minutes 1,087 visits · Oct 17
- Cisco and NVIDIA Plan a Plug That Moves Four Times More Data in the Same-Sized Module 903 visits · Oct 13