DECENTRALIZATION
Session: The Messenger Regimes Fear Most
Iran's regime blacked out the internet for 90M on Jan 8, 2026, targeting Session messenger with DNS spoofing. Decentralized, no-phone-number chats evaded control, proving why tyrants fear it.
Philip Gjørup
Philip Gjørup is Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief of Open Source Press, covering the intersection of open technology and decentralization. Send tips through Signal to philip.353 or Session ID: phil.
MESSAGING APPS
Uganda's Youth Embrace Bitchat as Election Approaches
Bitchat, a Bluetooth mesh messaging app, is surging in Uganda as citizens brace for a possible election internet blackout. After Nepal and Indonesia, over 1% of Ugandans have downloaded Bitchat, showing how “freedom tech” is redefining communication under government censorship.
AI
We Need to Talk About Grok
Grok's lax guardrails enable public harassment, from digitally undressing women to detailed stalking plans, sparking scrutiny of xAI's investors, Pentagon partnership, and school integrations amid growing ethical concerns.
OPEN-SOURCE
PearPass: The Password Manager With No Servers to Hack
PearPass is 100% P2P: your passwords stay on your devices, with encrypted direct sync and no third parties touching your data.
AI
How to Build a Successful Bittensor Subnet: Lessons from Top Builders
Why do Bittensor subnets fail? We spoke with leading builders who revealed the hard‑earned do’s and don’ts of designing incentives, attracting miners, and turning a subnet into a real business
OPEN-SOURCE
Open Source Becomes Strategic for Japanese Enterprises
The Linux Foundation’s “State of Open Source Japan 2025” report shows 69% of Japanese organizations gaining increased business value from open source, but also reveals major gaps in governance and security, highlighting the need for OSPOs, clear OSS strategy, and stronger risk management.
BLOCKCHAIN
What Is Ethereum Fusaka? 2025 Upgrade Explained
Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade launches December 3, 2025, introducing PeerDAS to scale Layer 2 capacity by up to 8x. The upgrade reduces validator storage by 88%, cuts rollup costs, and enables enterprise privacy applications through improved data availability sampling across 12 new EIPs.
MESSAGING APPS
Vitalik Buterin Backs Privacy Messaging with $500K Donation
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated 256 ETH to privacy-focused messaging apps Session and SimpleX Chat, advancing encrypted communication beyond Signal. The projects address metadata privacy and decentralized user accounts in the face of global surveillance challenges.
AI
Score's Vision: Making Every Camera Intelligent
Score's Vision AutoML revolutionizes video analysis by making every camera intelligent. Their AI processes footage at a fraction of traditional costs, unlocking visual intelligence across sports, manufacturing, retail, and more.
OPEN-SOURCE
How Eddy Xu Open-Sourced the Future of Robotics
Eddy Xu manufactured hardware, deployed it across 85 factories, and released 10,000 hours of robotics training data for free. His dataset hit #1 on Hugging Face, beating trillion-dollar companies.
AI
This Youtuber Just Taught Millions How to Build Their Own AI
Six months after teaching millions to escape Google's surveillance, PewDiePie is back with something more radical: showing his 110 million subscribers how to build and run their own AI models. With a $20K rig in rural Japan, he's proving you don't need OpenAI's permission, or monthly fees
OPEN-SOURCE
Extropic Unveils THRML: Open Source Software for a Thermodynamic Future in AI
Extropic’s new open source library, THRML, empowers developers to simulate and train energy-efficient generative AI models on thermodynamic hardware.