My main job on the Utopian.io Open Source Radio Show on MSP Waves (aired live weekly on Wednesdays at 6PM UTC) is causing mayhem is bringing in the freshest and most interesting news from the open source world, and (when possible) adding some commentary to each new item.
When on the air, I usually find myself rushing through the news items on my list and leaving many of them out in the chaos that is live radio. To ensure you still get your weekly dose of what's moving and shaking in the open source ecosystem, I post a weekly digest of open source news included or (unfortunately) left out in my news segment on the show.
This week we had:
- Uber considering open source over Google maps
- Mycroft, an open source AI assistant
- EA vs open source
- The trouble with open source guns
- Open source updates and new products from Microsoft and Google
- Inexpensive 3D bioprinter
- NASA's rovers on GitHub
Uber may shun Google Maps for open source ones: Report
With Google Maps raising their prices for apps using the service, Uber's plans to develop self-driving cars, and their long-known habit of buying up mapping startups, it's really not surprising to hear the company is experimenting with open source maps instead. According to reports, the company has readied plans to contribute to the open source mapping application and roll out a pilot in India.
Mycroft: Open Source Alternative to Alexa, Siri and Google Home
If you don't trust Alexa, Siri or Google to listen in on your conversations, then perhaps you should keep an eye on Mycroft, an open source alternative currently reaching out to investors to help develop and market Mycroft.
Mycroft is an open source, open hardware product built upon the popular Raspberry Pi platform, with the company also offering some basic hardware for you to experiment with.
EA Kills "Open Source" Version Of SimCity 2000
Electronic Arts (EA) are not known for their tolerance toward copyright infringement. This week, they quietly and without warning removed the GitHub repository containing a reverse-engineered open source version of SimCity 2000, still (apparently) sold on the company website.
According to reports, the art assets used in OpenSC2K were lifted straight from the 1993 original, so EA have filed a DMCA request against the project that led to its removal. Considering the fact that one of the coolest features of the game was the ability to design one's own buildings, it's very likely the code will be re-posted, just with original open source art instead of the copyrighted visual assets.
State Attorneys General File To Block Open Source Information - Because The Info Is A Printed Gun
This Wendsday, Defense Distributed, an Austin, Texas, gun design company, will supposedly share new blueprints for building 3D-printed guns, after a long battle with US authorities that forced the company to remove the open source instructions from the web in 2015. The state attorneys are still trying to stop him.
While it is important to keep open source open, this case raises an important question: is it ethical to give pretty much anyone the ability to print a gun metal detectors cannot detect? If so, would it be as ethical to release an open source virus structure or genetically altered animals?
Feel free to start a discussion in the comments to this post!
Open Source Releases from Microsoft & Google
The tech giants are making their technologies available for community contributions and applications at a rate that is almost hard to track. In the past two weeks, Google released Istio, an open platform to connect, manage, and secure microservices and Google Cirq: a Python Open Source Library for Quantum Computing, while Microsoft released TypeScript 3.0, the latest edition of the open source programming language that provides a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript with the addition of optional static typing.
Researchers Build Inexpensive Open Source Bioprinter for 3D Printing Branching, Hydrogel-Based Vascular Constructs
Having a 3D printed heart or blood vessels sounds very futuristic, but thanks to researched in the University of Toronto, we're now much closer to printing complex structures on multiple length scales within a single construct at minimal costs.
(3d bioprinter hardware)
Build Your Own NASA Rover
Even ff you're not planning to explore Mars remotely, you can still have some fun with code developed by NASA's finest with the rover github repository. According to the NASA website, constructing this Earthly version of the Curiosity rover should cost under $2,500.
(CAD drawing of the baseline Open Source Rover, as available through GitHub)
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