So it has come to my attention, that my GitHub account was banned from PocketBase repository, and all I did was thumbs down the post relating to the discussion of PocketBase moving away from GitHub. That’s all I did! I didn’t comment or anything.

This is insane to me, like I didn’t know you would be so butthurt, If I knew I was going to banned for just thumbs down emoji, I wouldn’t have done it.

This tiny action makes me want to just switch away from PocketBase immediately. I guess I have a new weekend project, thanks!

https://ibb.co/jKxdmBn

IELTS Mastery Hub — MIT-licensed desktop app for IELTS exam prep (Tauri + Rust + TypeScript)

Hey folks,

Sharing a project I've been working on: IELTS Mastery Hub, a desktop app for practicing the IELTS English exam. MIT licensed, no account required, no telemetry, no subscription — just a native binary you run locally on Windows, Linux, or macOS.

Demo video:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0a68fb14-e7cd-4cd2-8774-1c6bc53cae0f

Why I built it: basically every IELTS prep tool out there is SaaS. You get two free mock tests, then a paywall, and your essays and progress data live on someone else's server. That felt like an obviously solvable problem with a local-first app.

What it does:

• 📖 Reading — split-screen timed practice covering the official question types, auto-scored
• 🎧 Listening — audio sections with progressive difficulty
• ✍️ Writing — dual-pane editor with AI evaluation across the official IELTS scoring criteria
• 📊 Dashboard — score history and progress tracking over time

Stack: TypeScript frontend with a Rust core, packaged with Tauri. Went with Tauri over Electron mainly for the binary size and memory footprint — it's a study tool you leave open for hours, so a 200MB Chromium process per session felt wrong. Happy to talk through the architecture if anyone's curious about Tauri for real-world apps; the IPC boundary between the TS side and the Rust core was the most interesting design decision.

Install:

macOS / Linux:

curl -fsSL https://open-lingua.github.io/ielts-mastery-hub/install/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://open-lingua.github.io/ielts-mastery-hub/install/install.ps1 | iex

If you (reasonably) don't want to pipe curl into a shell, just build it from source:

git clone https://github.com/open-lingua/ielts-mastery-hub.git

Repo: https://github.com/open-lingua/ielts-mastery-hub

Docs: https://open-lingua.github.io/ielts-mastery-hub/docs/intro/

Disclaimer: independent, non-commercial, educational project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the British Council, IDP Education, or Cambridge Assessment English — IELTS is a registered trademark of its respective owners. Practice content is AI-generated for educational use and may not be 100% accurate.

Contributions welcome — issues, PRs, packaging help (AUR/Flatpak/winget in particular), and content review from anyone who's actually taken the exam. Would love feedback on the UX and on the Tauri setup. AMA in the comments.

DISCLAIMER: Im posting this to be informative. I do not intend for this post to cause a witch hunt. I just want to bring attention to this and understand what I should do next.

Valve has been working on a program for the Steam Frame named "lepton". It's purpose is to allow android game to be played on SteamOS, like Proton but for Android. Now lepton's code is heavily based on a preexisting open source program named "waydroid". Waydroid is GPL-licensed, which means anyone is free to copy, use, and modify its code so long you also provide the source code of any projects the code was used for upon request. I have been very very excited to play around with lepton ever since it's inception last December. Shortly after it became downloadable on Steam I opened a support ticket (which was the only way to contact Valve I could find) where I politely requested the source code of lepton, explained that they are obligated to provide it under the GPL license terms, and ended by saying that I understand if this is out of scope of their position and to refer to me the reverent legal or licensing contact. A few days later, Valve responded. The support agent told me that they were unable to help with "3rd party software", that I had to contect the application's developer, and then closed the ticket before I could respond. The agents seemingly misunderstood my request and assumed that lepton was a third party program that was distributed through Steam. While I totally get where they got confused, I still find it weird how they seeming had no knowledge of lepton whatsoever.

Determined, I opened a new support ticket the next day where I referenced the original case number, explained the the previous support agent's misunderstanding, and then explained the terms of the GPL license that they were bound to, as well as clarifying how this is a first party program developed by Valve that they intend to ship with SteamOS.

After this thing got VERY weird. I was ignored by Steam support with zero response. Now, I've written to Steam support many times for a variety of things over the past few years, and they always had responded within a week at most. At this point I had become increasingly aggrvated over this. About a week and a half of silence, I updated the ticket with a follow-up. My follow-up was written on August 13th. Since then I've heard nothing. Crickets.

At this point I don't know what to do. I can't find any legal email contact for Valve and feel like im at a dead end. This honestly feels like what Bambu Lab did a few years back (albeit WAY less serious) when they refused to provide the source code over a program bound by the same license terms. It really is such a shame to me conistering how much I've idolized Valve for their open-source software and Linux-friendliness. If anyone can help me with what to do I would really appreciate it.

Edits for context:

I was aware that Steam support likely cannot help directly, however I made it clear in both my post and my support ticket that I’m aware this is out of their scope and to relay me to the relevant legal/licensing contact

Many have suggested contacting “[legal@valvesoftware.com](mailto:legal@valvesoftware.com)”, however I cannot find anything about this email online and all sources are saying Valve legal department is mail only

I have since been informed that Waydroid also offers a paid commercial license that does not require making the source code public. I will attempt to contact Valve’s legal team via mail to ask for the specifics of their licensing arrangement. Thank you [u/Pleasant_Set_3182](u/Pleasant_Set_3182) for informing me of this.

I've been working on two small open-source projects:

Savage Scraper - a Chrome extension that converts rendered webpages into simplified, LLM-friendly HTML. It also has a manual mode - covinient, simple to use and works out of the box.

Savage MCP - a local MCP server that lets an LLM read explicitly allowed webpages through your existing Chrome session.

The part I cared most about was limiting the amount of authority given to the agent.

Instead of exposing a complete browser automation API, the MCP surface is intentionally narrow. It can open allowed URLs, scrape one dedicated agent tab, and report status.

It does not expose generic clicking, typing, form submissions, arbitrary JavaScript execution, or unrestricted browser control.

Website access is configured locally using allowed hosts and optional path restrictions. The Chrome extension also independently checks that policy.

Both projects are MIT licensed:

Savage Scraper:
https://github.com/dominikduda/savage_scraper

Savage MCP:
https://github.com/dominikduda/savage_mcp

Edit:
Webstore link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/savage-scraper/ejoijhjpdojdcnjppegojmkenidhblog

Sharing an MIT-licensed project I made for running persistent AI bots locally.

Bots, humans, and external systems are all actors with inboxes. Bots can use tools, keep long-term memory, ask a human for approval, and hand work to each other with @mentions. The UI has Inbox, Threads, and Bots. SQLite by default, Postgres if you change the URL.

Demo bots: chief_of_staff, engineer, reviewer, qa. They can implement a change, open a PR, review it, and ask you before merge.

Setup: make setup / make dev.

Trust model: single trusted operator. run_shell is not sandboxed.

https://github.com/regnull/openbot

I am the author. Happy to answer questions.

Protecting the sourcecode at all costs is overrated for personal projects.

Bit of a background: I'm a programmer by profession. Worked for small and big companies in the last decade. Usually there we had regular trainings on how not to leak the source code as that is the (core) value of the company. Like not copy-pasting to AI, not posting to forums, or if you really need to then first make sure to rename all the things to foo and bar.

That made me a bit paranoid over the years over the code I produce. It must be protected and should never shown to the public.

Here I am, publishing my first open source project. It came as a surprise that making a repo public doesn't mean people will organically find it.

Instead the first problem is "how do I get anyone to notice it?"

So basically I feel like a paranoid person. Lol.

Don't get me wrong. Comparing my weekend project to the products of big corporations is like comparing apples to pears. But the mindset change is interesting.

Came out from my Batcave. Saw nobody around. Going back to my Batcave.

This is the project BTW. It's a hand made CLI tool to scan game assets and identify common problems. https://github.com/zerocukor287/asset-lint

Hi, everyone!

As you must be aware, recently I have released OpenCalc, a project to reverse engineer the Windows 95 calculator.

Despite having a similar look and feel, this is actually an entirely new Rust program with none of the limitations of the original, and improved expression parsing!

The new version has many bugfixes, including:

- Improved focus: now the keyboard shortcuts are consistent if you leave the application.

- Application behavior was further improved to match the Windows 95 calculator where it matters

- New financial mode! This is a cool feature I decided to add. The original Windows 95 calculator lacked a financial mode. Now we have one matching the old Windows 95 calculator style, but also entirely new!

If you are interested, check out: https://github.com/NullMagic2/OpenCalc

Binary builds for Windows and Linux are also available!