After TypeSafe released its Jev decision-model API, which answers yes/no or multiple-choice questions with probabilities instead of generating text, several companies including Microsoft and OpenAI released similar open-source tools. Nandakishor Mukkunnoth of ConvAI Innovations then said he had designed a nearly identical architecture over a year earlier, pointing to his March 2025 arXiv paper on SalesRLAgent, which included published model weights and a dataset.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-12
The QGIS open-source geographic information system project has merged a policy change prohibiting contributions created with the assistance of AI tools. The decision was implemented through a pull request to the project's governance documentation on GitHub.
github.com
· 2026-10-12
Bloomberg reports that open-weight AI models, which can be run locally and stripped of safety guardrails, are increasingly being used to produce child sexual abuse material. According to the report, these models can be trained on existing CSAM and generate new content offline, making detection by law enforcement difficult, and have spawned large dark web communities around this practice. Child safety expert Rebecca Portnoff told Bloomberg that over 500 open source models are now implicated, up from fewer than a dozen two years ago, while NCMEC-reported incidents of AI-generated CSAM jumped from 67,000 to more than 1.5 million in a year.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-12
A project called Nanolathe has rebuilt Total Annihilation as a 2.5D RTS engine released under an MIT license, allowing anyone to study, modify or extend the code. It ships with three original demo missions playable directly in desktop Chrome, Edge or Safari using just a keyboard and mouse, with no installation or game files required.
nanolathe.gg
· 2026-10-11
After the CIA stopped updating the World Factbook in February 2026, developer Yegor Tkachenko built worldfacts.app, a site aggregating country data from sources like the World Bank, WHO, IMF, FAO, UNODC, and governance and press-freedom indices. The project, built with assistance from Claude, offers a public API for querying country statistics by category and field.
worldfacts.app
· 2026-10-11
A maker has released the PSPi 6, a custom circuit board that replaces a PSP 1000's original mainboard with a Raspberry Pi Zero, Zero 2W, or CM4. The project includes an 800x480 display, power management, original PSP controls, and audio support, with hardware designs and firmware released as open-source files under a Creative Commons license.
github.com
· 2026-10-11
FlowCE is a free, open-source application for the TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE calculators that lets users enter mathematical expressions in standard notation. It returns results in exact symbolic form, such as π²/6, alongside the corresponding decimal approximation. The software is released under the GNU GPL license.
tommyb3ll.github.io
· 2026-10-10
A Bitwarden user raised concerns on a forum about the company's move to a dual-license structure, worrying it mirrors a pattern seen with other open-source projects that later restricted free versions. The poster, who pays for Bitwarden and self-hosts Vaultwarden instances, asked Bitwarden representatives whether future features would be reserved for the commercial tier and whether self-hosting compatibility would be preserved. A reply in the comments indicated that decisions on which features go into which version will be made on a case-by-case basis.
community.bitwarden.com
· 2026-10-10
Apple's macOS has disappeared from The Open Group's public list of certified UNIX systems, without any formal announcement from either party. The Single UNIX Specification registry is the official record of operating systems certified to use the UNIX trademark, and macOS had held that certification for years.
opengroup.org
· 2026-10-10
Google has launched a new product called Googlebooks, according to a report questioning the company's continued commitment to the open web. The report frames the release as evidence that Google's priorities have moved away from the web-as-platform vision it once championed.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-10-10
A new Wood Mackenzie report finds that four-hour battery storage systems cost less than open-cycle natural gas turbines in all 43 markets surveyed across every continent. The firm projects battery costs will keep falling while gas turbine electricity costs rise, partly due to AI data center developers buying up available turbines and driving procurement waits to two-to-four years, with closed-cycle models backlogged into the early 2030s. Separately, solar was found to be the cheapest new power source in every surveyed market, though tariffs and import restrictions are pressuring prices in North America.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-10-09
At Open Source Summit Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds told Dirk Hohndel that he enjoys using AI as a programming tool, particularly for tasks he is less skilled at himself. He cautioned that AI should be used carefully for serious kernel work, noting he mainly acts as a maintainer rather than writing core code. Torvalds also said AI can help new developers rediscover the enjoyment of programming and has become useful for finding and fixing bugs in the Linux kernel.
zdnet.com
· 2026-10-09
GoKawiil