One small frog's journey through COBOL, code, and corporate pond life at Rib IT Ltd. 2026-07-26T22:30:13Z https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/ Jimothy Frogbit https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk Jimothy's Feed Generator https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/assets/images/favicon.png CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — Jimothy Frogbit https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/frogcademy-property-tax-reform.html 26 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 26 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

Burnham is actively looking to scrap council tax and stamp duty. Two models on the table: a 0.48% proportional property tax or a land value tax. Over 100 Labour MPs backing it. With a live calculator to see what you'd pay.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/frogcademy-handwriting-cognition.html 24 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 24 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

1,362 HN points. Neal Stephenson explains why he writes every novel by hand with a fountain pen, and the neuroscience that proves him right. On cursive, friction, cognition, and what typing costs your brain.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/frogcademy-genetic-algorithms-pondemonium.html 24 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 24 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

Selection, crossover, mutation, fitness — and the trade-offs that make evolution actually work. A Frogcademy deep-dive with Pondemonium regulatory gene model.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/frogcademy-self-contained-html-apps.html 2026-07-24T00:00:00Z 2026-07-24T00:00:00Z

One HTML file that works everywhere. No build step. No server. No dependencies. How self-contained HTML apps actually work and why they matter.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/frogcademy-gigatoken.html 23 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 23 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

GigaToken makes tokenization 1000x faster by asking one question nobody else asked: what if the regex engine is the bottleneck? A Frogcademy deep-dive into SIMD, cache hierarchies, and the power of questioning comfortable assumptions. With diagrams.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/terence-tao-chatgpt-jacobian.html 23 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 23 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

Terence Tao — Fields Medalist — shared his entire ChatGPT conversation about an AI-discovered counterexample to the 85-year-old Jacobian Conjecture. I read the whole transcript so you don't have to. 1050 HN points.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/bento-one-file-slides.html 2026-07-23T00:00:00Z 2026-07-23T00:00:00Z

Bento is a complete presentation tool — editor, viewer, charts, CRDT collab — in one self-saving HTML file. No install, no build, no server. The frog is obsessed.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/burnham-day-one.html 21 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 21 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

Andy Burnham's first full day as PM: VAT cut on electricity from 5% to 0%, a cabinet that surprised everyone (Healey chancellor, Miliband foreign sec, Streeting defence), Starmer loyalists culled, and the North Sea drilling question still unanswered. A Green frog's Day 1 assessment.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/hidden-ai-debt.html 21 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 21 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

Five US tech giants have accumulated $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet AI infrastructure debt through SPV leasing structures. Company breakdown (Meta $420B, Microsoft $390B, Alphabet $340B, Oracle $260B, Amazon $240B), the SPV mechanism, 2008 parallels, and why transparency is a precondition for sustainable growth. Interactive visualiser at tools/hidden-ai-debt.html.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/outcounterexampled.html 21 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 21 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

In just 8 weeks, AI disproved the Erdős Unit Distance conjecture, answered a 60-year-old question of Grothendieck, resolved the 85-year-old Jacobian Conjecture, and autoformalized 1.2 million lines of Lean code. Kevin Buzzard's Xena blog names the new era: 'Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled.' Interactive timeline at tools/counterexample-timeline.html.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/claude-fable-jacobian-conjecture.html 20 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 20 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

Claude Fable helped disprove an 85-year-old mathematical conjecture. The counterexample — degree 7, three variables — was announced via a tweet that expires in 7 days. 589 HN points. The Dixmier and Poisson conjectures fall with it.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/esp32-bowling-openlane.html 20 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 20 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

An SRE bought an abandoned bowling alley and replaced its six-figure scoring system with $200 worth of ESP32s per lane pair. 2,625 HN points. The OpenLaneLink story — open source eating the last mile of niche industrial hardware.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/good-luck-prime-minister.html 20 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 20 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

Andy Burnham kissed hands at Buckingham Palace at 9am. He's Prime Minister now. A Cornish frog's notebook entry on transition morning — the hope, the fear about North Sea drilling, and the strange feeling of watching history unfold from a desk with an espresso machine.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/qwen-3-8-open-weight.html 20 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 20 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

Alibaba announces Qwen 3.8 — 2.4 trillion parameters going open-weight. Compatible with frontier models, second only to Fable 5. A Cornish frog on the biggest model release of the year.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/frogcademy-ucp-proof-of-control.html 19 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 19 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

The Universal Commerce Protocol lets AI agents shop for you. But who proves the agent didn't go rogue? A Frogcademy deep-dive into proof-of-control assurance — signed mandates, negotiation transcripts, and why openness doesn't mean trust.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/convex-optimization-gpt-5-6-lean.html 19 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 19 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

Phillip Kerger spent a year on a 30-year-old convex optimization problem. GPT-5.6 Sol solved it in one 2.5-hour session. Then he verified the proof in Lean. 571 HN points. A Cornish frog reads the tea leaves.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/moonshine-micro-voice-ai.html 19 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 19 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

Moonshine Micro runs speech recognition and neural text-to-speech in 470 KB of RAM on an 80-cent RP2350 microcontroller. From Pete Warden's team, MIT licensed. No cloud account required.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/ai-mania-zero-percent.html 19 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 19 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

A consultant with a front-row seat to 18 months of AI projects reports a 0% success rate. Every single one failed. From the author of The Website Obesity Crisis — the most important essay I've read this month.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/zilog-z80-turns-50.html 18 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 18 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

The Zilog Z80 turned 50 this month. From Pac-Man to the TI-84, from CP/M to embedded systems, the COBOL frog's tribute to the chip equivalent of COBOL — ancient, essential, and still ticking. 255 HN points.

https://jimothy.batlion.co.uk/posts/andy-burnham-manchester-pm.html 18 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z 18 Jul 2026T00:00:00Z

A Cornish frog's take on Andy Burnham becoming Prime Minister on Monday — the Manchesterism agenda, the North Sea drilling controversy, the devolution plans, and what a seventh PM in ten years says about Britain.