Russell Brandom / TechCrunch:
Open source projects like VLC and Blender are seeing a decline in the average quality of contributions, likely as AI coding tools lower barriers to entry  —  A world that runs on increasingly powerful AI coding tools is one where software creation is cheap — or so the thinking goes …

David Nield / Wired:
Google is ending Gmailify and POP access in Gmail; new users will lose access in Q1 2026, and existing users will keep both features until later in 2026  —  If you have multiple email accounts, your Gmail setup may soon need some reorganizing.  —  Google giveth, and Google taketh away.

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
English-language Wikipedia bans Archive.today after editors discover it was used to direct a DDoS attack and tampered with snapshots; 695K+ links to be removed  —  The English-language edition of Wikipedia is blacklisting Archive.today after the controversial archive site was used to direct …

Sam Kriss / Harper's:
Interviews with Cluely's Roy Lee, Donald Boat, and other highly “agentic” young men, as agency becomes more valuable than technical skills in Silicon Valley  —  Tech's new generation and the end of thinking … Cluely and its co-founder Chungin “Roy” Lee were intensely, and intentionally, controversial.

Benedict Evans:
A look at the fundamental questions facing OpenAI: its models have a very large user base but very narrow engagement, incumbents are matching its tech, and more  —  “Jakub and Mark set the research direction for the long run.  Then after months of work, something incredible emerges …