Open Source Initiative

Google is suspending part of its bug bounty programme covering open source projects. The company, which pays researchers for reporting security vulnerabilities, is halting rewards for a segment of the initiative. The move is drawing attention from security researchers and developers, who are questioning what prompted the decision and what it means for independent vulnerability reporting in widely used open source software.

A developer has built Podium, an open-source tool that analyses a user's reading of a speech and compares it against a renowned delivery of the same text. Built with Python and machine learning, it flags flaws in pacing and delivery, though the creator notes the detector initially produced dozens of false alarms per minute. Early reactions on Mastodon are modest but curious.