From the archive
AI tools help people write software, search information, create content and automate parts of their work. Find news on developer tools, coding assistants, open-source projects and software for running AI locally. Our coverage explains what each tool does, how access and pricing work, and which practical limits or security considerations matter before you add it to a workflow.
Lead story
37signals has released Hot Cell v1.0, a tool that moves Rails file-attachment processing into a separate, restricted container. The aim is to limit the damage if image-processing software is compromised, and the company says Hot Cell is already running across Basecamp, HEY and Fizzy.
Read the report & discussion ↗Watch Desk
IBM says it has tuned NVIDIA Nemotron models for IBM Bob, its self-hosted AI coding assistant, giving organisations a way to run agentic software development on infrastructure they control. The practical draw is local deployment for sensitive or air-gapped environments, alongside IBM’s claim of up to four times…
Watch Desk
Reflection says its forthcoming Beam model has 501 billion parameters and is designed to give businesses and governments another open-weight AI option. The founders’ account makes the story about more than a model launch: Reflection is betting that open access can coexist with a business selling the infrastructure…
AWS AI Watch
AWS has introduced a skill that lets compatible coding agents help benchmark and configure generative AI inference on SageMaker. Developers can ask an agent to measure an endpoint, compare deployment options or generate executable code, with real workload measurements rather than estimates at the centre of the process.
AMD Watch
AMD has published new AI benchmarks for its Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495, pitching Gorgon Halo as a rival to Nvidia’s coming RTX Spark devices. The headline advantage is memory: AMD’s system can be configured with up to 192GB of unified memory, but more room for a model…
Watch Desk
Together AI has launched Together Link, a way to use open-source coding models inside tools developers already use, including Claude Code, Claude Desktop and Codex. Its pitch is simple: let the harness choose a model for the task, then show what that choice costs.
Watch Desk
New York City lawmakers are set to debate proposals for outside review of AI systems, human-operated shut-off controls and cash rewards for whistleblowers. A hearing reported for Monday brings those ideas into a live argument over how far a city should go in regulating AI companies.
Watch Desk
Many software developers are using AI coding tools while remaining wary of them. A Stack Overflow survey reported by CNN found that 65% of respondents use coding assistants or agents, while six in ten tech workers surveyed said they try to avoid AI.
Cohere Watch
Cohere has launched North 2, an enterprise AI platform that lets businesses use models from rival providers and set spending limits for staff and teams. It also offers pre-built agents for workplace tasks, giving companies a way to organise AI work without making Cohere’s own models the only…
Watch Desk
People can dislike the AI industry’s relentless push and still find chatbots useful enough to keep coming back. A new MIT Technology Review essay argues that public scepticism may be aimed less at AI itself than at the companies’ insistence that it is inevitable.
Watch Desk
Jev AI’s API returns a credit-use figure for each request, giving teams a way to estimate the cost of an AI workflow before opening the traffic taps. A Hugging Face community guide shows how to turn that figure into a working budget, including retries, human review and safe…
Moonshot AI/Kimi Watch
Moonshot AI says its new open-source Kimi K2.6 model can coordinate agent swarms of up to 300 sub-agents across 4,000 steps at once, a substantial increase on K2.5. It is also pitching longer-running coding work as a strength, with examples that put the model through thousands of tool…
NVIDIA Watch
NVIDIA is adding a 64GB unified-memory option to its DGX Spark AI workstation, with sales through partner manufacturers due to begin on 23 October. The useful twist is that two systems can be linked to pool 128GB of memory, giving local AI developers room to try larger workloads…
LocalAI Watch
LocalAI 4.11.0 brings several new capabilities to the local AI project, including speaker-labelled transcription, sound detection alongside speech, a Decisions API, model failover and text-to-animation with Kimodo. For people running AI workloads themselves, this is a release with several things to try, not just a version number doing…
Watch Desk
A new class of AI models is being built to handle the quick, structured decisions around larger language models: routing requests, checking outputs and choosing what an agent should do next. The potential payoff is faster, cheaper routine checks, with a more capable model called in when the…
OpenAI Watch
OpenAI’s “Sign in with ChatGPT” lets users of participating third-party apps authorise AI requests against their existing Plus or Pro usage allowances. The change could make it easier to try compatible tools without setting up separate API keys, while leaving users to manage how much of their plan…
DeepSeek Watch
DeepSeek Harness version v0.2.1-alpha.1 is testing compatibility with Claude Code Mods, opening a possible route for extensions to work across AI coding tools. The bridge is experimental, not a plug-and-play way to move Claude’s mods over.
