Did you know there’s an initiative to drive Open Source adoption both within the United Nations — and globally? Launched in March, it’s the work of the Digital Technology Network (under the UN’s chief executive board) which “works to advance open source technologies throughout UN agencies,” promoting “collaboration and scalable solutions to support the UN’s Read more about The UN Ditches Google for Form Submissions, Opts for Open Source ‘CryptPad’ Instead[…]

News of the offering emerged in a throwaway line in the Release Notes for version 8.0 Update 3e of the Broadcom business unit’s ESXi hypervisor. Just below the “What’s New” section of that document is the statement: “Broadcom makes available the VMware vSphere Hypervisor version 8, an entry-level hypervisor. You can download it free of Read more about VMware revives its free ESXi hypervisor[…]

[…] Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy (DSA), allows individual spacecraft to make independent decisions while collaborating with each other to achieve common goals – all without human input. NASA researchers have achieved multiple firsts in tests of such swarm technology as part of the agency’s DSA project. Managed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, Read more about NASA Demonstrates Software ‘Brains’ Shared Across Satellite Swarms[…]

[…] As a reminder, Circle to Search is an AI-powered feature Google released at the start of last year. You can access it by long-pressing your phone’s home button and then circling something with your finger. At its most basic, the feature is a way to use Google Search from anywhere on your phone, with Read more about Circle to Search now offers one-tap actions for phone numbers, emails and URLs[…]

Decentralized social network organization Mastodon said Monday that it is planning to create a new nonprofit organization in Europe and hand over ownership of entities responsible for key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components. This means one person won’t have control over the entire project. The organization is trying to differentiate itself from social networks controlled Read more about Mastodon announces transition to nonprofit structure – does what OpenAI should have done[…]

 Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative cross-industry effort developing an open source platform for Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs), has created a new Open Source Program Office (OSPO) Expert Group (EG). Led by Toyota, the OSPO EG will promote the establishment of OSPOs within the automotive industry and encourage the sharing of information and best practices between them. Read more about Automotive Grade Linux Launches New Expert Group to Help Automakers Manage Open Source Activities. Lots of Automakers are already onboard.[…]

Windows Insiders will soon get firsthand experience of Microsoft’s AI ambitions for Paint and Notepad: the image editor is getting Generative Fill and Erase and the text editor is getting a Rewrite function. We’d been hearing since January that Microsoft Notepad would get an AI makeover – and yesterday it was confirmed Microsoft will roll Read more about Things no one wants: Microsoft rolls out bloated AI-enabled Notepad[…]

[…] Many Windows 11 24H2 users, this writer included, saw a chunk of disk space occupied by “Windows Update Cleanup” after running the Disk Cleanup tool. Efforts to reclaim the space proved fruitless. The cause, according to Microsoft, is not necessarily due to a change in how the company has implemented updates in Windows 11 Read more about Windows 11 24H2 disk space hoarding a ‘reporting error’ – don’t know which is  worse though[…]

Windows 11 24H2 users are finding there is undeletable data that remains on their devices after installing the recently released feature update. The known issues list has not grown in the days since the rollout on October 15, however, for many users – this writer included – attempts to clean up the detritus after the Read more about Windows 11 24H2 hoards 8.63 GB of junk you can’t delete, blue screens with anti cheat, fingerprint sensors break, mouse cursor problems, VR glasses bricked[…]

With the perennial tensions between proprietary and open source software (OSS) unlikely to end anytime soon, a $3 billion startup is throwing its weight behind a new licensing paradigm — one that’s designed to bridge the open and proprietary worlds, replete with new definition, terminology, and governance model. Developer software company Sentry recently introduced a Read more about Some startups are going ‘fair source’ to avoid the pitfalls of open source licensing[…]

Sonos seriously stepped in it a couple of months back when it released an overhauled first-party mobile app that shipped with a number of missing features. These included core functions like sleep timers and alarms. Many of the company’s speakers would not appear as a pairing option and it became extremely difficult to precisely adjust Read more about Sonos apologized months too late for messing up its app and has offered a roadmap for fixing everything which has already slipped[…]

Several European countries are betting on open-source software. In the United States, eh, not so much. In the latest news from across the Atlantic, Switzerland has taken a major step forward with its “Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfillment of Government Tasks” (EMBAG). This groundbreaking legislation mandates using open-source software Read more about Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source. Sort of.[…]