Rumors of the ongoing death of software development — that it’s being slain by AI — are greatly exaggerated. The work of a software developer is much more than just writing lines of code.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/02/1114134/the-machines-are-rising-but-developers-still-hold-the-keys/
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Notes (20)
Today, a nonprofit focused on bringing governance to open source projects announced the launch of a new security fund that will pay those who responsibly disclose security vulnerabilities that affect fediverse apps and services.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/02/a-new-security-fund-opens-up-to-help-protect-the-fediverse/
Mozilla will soon unveil a new set of "professional" services designed to enhance the basic email management features of its free, open-source email client, Thunderbird.
https://www.techspot.com/news/107366-thunderbird-email-client-venturing-new-pro-tier-commercial.html
Today, unless you go totally off-grid, you'll never have the privacy people took for granted at the end of the 20th century.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/31/privacy_dead_opinion
Akamai announced a multi-year partnership with the Linux Kernel Organization to provide critical infrastructure support for the development & distribution of the Linux kernel, ensuring uninterrupted access for its global developer network.
https://opensourcewatch.beehiiv.com/p/akamai-becomes-the-official-distributor-of-the-linux-kernelw-post
Author, journalist, and long-time Internet freedom advocate Doc Searls wants us to stop asking for privacy from websites, services, and AI and start telling these things what we will and will not accept.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/doc-searls-myterms-aims-to-offer-user-first-privacy-contracts-for-the-web/
Unlike chatbots, AI agents operate outside of a chat window, navigating multiple applications to execute complex tasks in response to simple user commands. How much control are we willing to surrender? At what cost?
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/24/1113647/why-handing-over-total-control-to-ai-agents-would-be-a-huge-mistake/
Cloudflare has created a bot-busting AI to make life hell for AI crawlers by letting them in and using generative AI to create junk content for them to devour in what Cloudflare has termed an “AI Labyrinth.”
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/21/cloudflare_ai_labyrinth/
Duck[.]ai is DuckDuckGo’s latest AI feature, letting users chat with multiple AI models while keeping their interactions private. Duck[.]ai does not track, log, or store conversations.
https://www.techradar.com/pro/what-is-duck-ai-everything-we-know-about-duckduckgos-privacy-focused-ai-chatbot
The Linux Foundation's executive director has proposed developing a decentralized trust system to help users assess the trustworthiness of open-source projects based on factors like contributor verification and project history.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-foundations-trust-scorecards-aim-to-battle-rising-open-source-security-threats/
In iOS 18, Apple spun off its Keychain password management tool into a standalone app called Passwords. A serious HTTP bug left Passwords users vulnerable to phishing attacks for nearly three months.
https://9to5mac.com/2025/03/18/apples-passwords-app-was-vulnerable-to-phishing-attacks-for-nearly-three-months-after-launch/
Every day, Signal, iMessage, and WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption by default to keep data private. But despite the technology’s mainstream rise, long-standing threats to weaken encryption keep piling up.
https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-era-of-attacks-on-encryption-is-starting-to-heat-up/
Recent data from Surfshark uncovered that Google Gemini is the most data-intensive AI chatbot app. DeepSeek, however, comes in fifth out of the 10 most popular applications.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/worried-about-deepseek-turns-out-gemini-collect-more-user-data/
Tor Browser users on versions older than 13.5.11 legacy should update to the latest available version for their OS, currently 14.0.7 stable or 13.5.13 legacy, to avoid the sudden disabling of the built-in NoScript extension tomorrow.
https://blog.torproject.org/old-tor-browsers-breakage/
Enterprises understand the value of passkeys for workforce sign-ins. 87% of decision makers report deploying passkeys at their companies. Of these, 47% report rolling out a mix of device-bound passkeys and synced passkeys.
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2025/03/12/enterprise-passkey-adoption/
A native Android Linux Terminal app is now widely available for Pixel users running the March 2025 update. The Debian-based environment allows users to carry a fully fledged Linux instance with them.
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-linux-terminal-app-available-3532999/
In non-SBR news, ChatGPT on macOS is about to become more useful for coding. ChatGPT can now edit code directly within an IDE — no need to copy and paste. Find the full list of supported IDEs on OpenAI's website.
https://www.engadget.com/ai/chatgpt-for-macos-can-now-directly-edit-xcode-projects-201904659.html
Google is fully committed to incorporating AI into all its search tools, while privacy-focused DuckDuckGo allows users to decide how far into AI they want to go.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/unlike-google-search-privacy-focused-duckduckgo-takes-it-slow-with-ai/
In a surprising turn of events, Digg is attempting a comeback, backed by an unlikely alliance.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/digg-returns-to-rescue-us-from-the-social-media-swamp-what-are-the-odds/
Principle 5 of the Mozilla Manifesto states: Individuals must have the ability to shape the internet and their own experiences on it. That philosophy drives Firefox browser's approach to Manifest V3.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-manifest-v3-adblockers/