Cover Story — August 2026

Credential Scanners Are Wearing Crawler Costumes

Dominic Plouffe · Aug 14, 2026 · 7 min read

71.9 percent of traffic claiming to be Googlebot was hunting for .env files. Of 13,670 credential probes wearing a named crawler user agent, zero came from a verified vendor IP.

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AI Tools

Shortcut scored 5.9, Claude scored 5.5, both failed

A reader asked which spreadsheet agent to buy. The honest answer is a 0.4-point gap on a 10-point test where both tools landed under 60%, plus a $996 annual price…

Dominic Plouffe · 6 min
Uncategorized

The 28,000 Jobs a Month Nobody Can Pin on AI

Two American sectors are shedding 28,000 jobs a month while the rest of the economy hires. The payroll data is solid. The…

Dominic Plouffe · 5 min Aug 4, 2026
AI Strategy

The EU’s New AI Disclosure Rule Is Not a 7% Fine

Everyone reported a 7% fine. The real ceiling for the EU AI Act's new disclosure obligations is 3% of global turnover, and…

Dominic Plouffe · 6 min
Enterprise AI

41 percent of workers use AI, 18 percent of firms adopted it

The Federal Reserve counts workers using AI. Deloitte counts firms governing it. Neither survey can see the biggest deployment in most companies,…

Dominic Plouffe · 5 min Aug 3, 2026
AI Marketing

Does Claude understand your audience better than you think?

47 million business presentations are now generated with AI every month, and the median build time has dropped from 4.2 hours in…

Dominic Plouffe · 15 min Apr 9, 2026
Software Development

Is Vibe Coding’s $12B Market Built on Broken Foundations?

Usage is exploding. Trust is not. 92% of US developers use AI coding tools daily. 41% of global code is now AI-generated.…

Dominic Plouffe · 13 min Apr 7, 2026

Analysis

04

Does OpenClaw Really Work for Non-Programmers? The Truth Hurts

AI Tools · Dominic Plouffe · 13 min · Apr 6, 2026
05
06

AI Financial Modeling Battle: Shortcut vs Claude vs ChatGPT Performance Data (2026 Analysis)

Financial Technology · Dominic Plouffe · 14 min · Apr 2, 2026
07
08

Real-World ROI Battle: How Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini Stack Up for Mid-Market Sales Analytics in 2026

AI & Business Intelligence · Dominic Plouffe · 15 min · Apr 1, 2026
09
10

The State of LLMs in Business Today: What’s Working, What’s Not, and What Comes Next

Business Intelligence · Dominic Plouffe · 11 min · Mar 31, 2026
11

Agent design patterns for production

Agentic AI · Dominic Plouffe · 3 min · Mar 16, 2026