SCOOP: 404 Media placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it. What did we find? It ended up at an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. Yes. This is literally the logo outside the Amazon warehouse door. Read now:

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.

404media.co

Friday night’s aurora!

VICTORY! Government to open up the Land Registry - bringing to an end a thousand years of secrecy shrouding who owns England. I’ve been campaigning for this for ten years: the new Land Use Framework, published later today, makes it government policy. 1/ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Government to lift paywall from large parts of the Land Registry

Exclusive: finding out who owns land will become simpler under plans to make the best use of green spaces and hit net zero targets

theguardian.com

Let's do this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9...

You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

YouTube video by Technology Connections

youtube.com

Beyond proud to see Heatly as a case study in the Warm Homes Plan, especially our AR Room Scanner which I worked on! 🎉 You can find us on page 141 amongst some other great companies pushing forward the transition 🍃

Andrew Sissons@acjsissons.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The full Warm Homes Plan is now out. It's a 152 page whopper... www.gov.uk/government/p...

The press release for the Warm Homes Plan - the long-awaited Warm Homes Plan! - is out www.theguardian.com/environment/...

No ban on gas boilers in UK warm homes plan but heat pumps get £2.7bn push

Government opts against phasing out new boilers by 2035 in effort to cut energy bills by as much as £1,000 a year

theguardian.com

Delighted to publish this personal essay by me and John: Getting Britain out of the hole. We wanted to write something quite readable that covers the big picture of the UK’s economic struggles. Hopefully we’ve managed at least one of those! @johnspringford.bsky.social getting-out-of-the-hole.uk

Getting Britain out of the hole

A plan for the UK economy

getting-out-of-the-hole.uk

John Springford@johnspringford.bsky.social · 10mo ago

New essay out today by me and @acjsissons.bsky.social - ‘Getting Britain out of the hole: a plan for the economy’. You can read the whole thing here getting-out-of-the-hole.uk A chart mega-thread follows 🧵

The UK’s first National Emergency Briefing on the #Climate & Nature crisis was held on the 27th November. Sign an open letter to Keir Starmer on the climate crisis. www.nebriefing.org/open-letter-...

National Emergency Briefing

An unfiltered assessment of the latest threats to UK food supply, health and national security from eight leading experts to an invitation-only audience - also covering positive solutions. Westminster...

nebriefing.org

Climate News@climatenews.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Please watch this important new video from Youtube channel “Just Have a Think”.

Heat pumps news! DESNZ is expanding the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to cover air to air heat pumps and heat batteries. Both will be eligible for a £2,500 grant if it fully replaces a gas or oil boiler… www.businessgreen.com/news/4521952...

Boiler Upgrade Scheme: Government set to expand scheme to include air conditioning heat pumps

Government expands heat pump scheme to include heat batteries and 'air-to-air devices' that can cool homes in summer, despite speculation over budget cuts

businessgreen.com

I know it's not the coolest thing to bring up and not many people seem to care, but my website is hosted in a local datacenter powered entirely by wind energy and certified under ISO-14001. So my #gameassets are a good choice if you care about the environment 🌲

We sneaked out support for Gaussian Splats using the very groovy three.js plugin Spark: icosa.gallery/view/ZTLkNjE...

gs_Shelter by andybak on Icosa Gallery

Check out "gs_Shelter" and more work by andybak on Icosa Gallery

icosa.gallery

Wow, @openbrush.app name dropped by @valvesoftware.com in this interview as already working with Steam Frame! 🥳 Please still send us dev kits… www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-...

The Steam Frame is here: 'a new way to play your entire Steam library'

Wireless connectivity, improved optics, new controllers and a chip all of its own, the Steam Frame looks to be worth the wait.

pcgamer.com

Announcing: New @steampowered.com Hardware, coming in 2026: Steam Controller Steam Machine Steam Frame.  Watch our jazzy announcement video and wishlist now: steampowered.com/hardware

Steam Hardware

The Steam Hardware family officially expands in early 2026.

steampowered.com

It is with shock and genuine sadness that I learn of the passing of my good friend, long time colleage and just a really kind man, Quentin Willson. He will be sorely missed by many who knew and worked with him.

Further exploration of some topics I pondered in the recent Almost Breaking News episode. llewellyn.substack.com/p/two-ideas-...

Two Ideas At Once

Can we manage to hold them both?

llewellyn.substack.com

Igalia is excited to announce a new commission from the Sovereign Tech Fund to advance the Servo web engine. www.igalia.com/2025/10/09/I...

Igalia, Servo, and the Sovereign Tech Fund | Igalia

Igalia is an open source consultancy specialised in the development of innovative projects and solutions. Our engineers have expertise in a wide range of technological areas, including browsers and cl...

igalia.com

Evolution (abridged)

KA-KAWWW! In case you missed out on our booth at PAX West, our company has taken up bird watching... kinda. Peep Birdseed, a cozy nature-focused VR game where your goal is to snap the rarest birds in the most majestic (or wacky) poses. Learn more about Birdseed ➡️ buff.ly/VDJqFxG #gamedev #indiedev

Announcement! I've been working on Unity support for the new OpenXR Spatial Entities extensions, and today we shipped a public native API in OpenXR Plug-in 1.16.0-pre.1: docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com... This API is a pure C# port of the OpenXR spec, currently limited to spatial entities.

Yes, I finally got all the software I need to be a VR developer!

I did a bigger write-up on linked-in but I can finally go public with what I've been working on for the past 3 or so months. OpenXR 1.1.49 adds the much awaited spatial entities extension. Thanks to funding from Khronos, Godot will support this API "today". github.com/godotengine/...

I can finally talk about this in the open, HURRAY! OpenXR 1.1.49 dropped today and one of the two big things I've had a small hand in is Spatial Entities support. Watch this space for more news soon! www.khronos.org/blog/openxr-...

OpenXR Spatial Entities Extensions Released for Developer Feedback

The Khronos® OpenXR™ Working Group has released a groundbreaking set of OpenXR extensions that establish the first open standard for spatial computing, enabling consistent cross-platform support for p...

khronos.org

Guess who is now live in the Meta Horizon Store? 👉😂🌱👈 www.meta.com/en-gb/experi... #VR #Vivarium #MetaQuest #VRgames #VirtualReality

Multiplayer painting is now live! Collaborate, chat, draw with friends, show off or just allow others to explore your worlds. Cross platform, free and open source forever. Get it on Steam, Meta, Itch and other stores. #vr #vrart #tiltbrush #openbrush

Teaser... Coming soon: docs.openbrush.app/alternate-an... It's very cool and expands the features of Open Brush in a lot of interesting ways. We just want to get multiplayer officially released before we hit you all with this :-)

Feature: Plugin Scripting | Open Brush Docs

docs.openbrush.app

In light of this, I’m happy to announce I’ve received funding from my old employer, SideQuest, to expand my OpenXR Unity extension plugin further! Let’s all move away from vendor SDKs and make OpenXR truly cross platform. github.com/mikeskydev/u...

GitHub - mikeskydev/unity-openxr-extensions: Cross-platform OpenXR extensions for Unity. No vendor bloat.

Cross-platform OpenXR extensions for Unity. No vendor bloat. - mikeskydev/unity-openxr-extensions

github.com

UploadVR@uploadvr.com · 2y ago

Meta will recommend developers use the built-in OpenXR support of Unity & Unreal from next week. The news comes after developers complained that Meta's integrations blocked other PC VR headsets:

Promising, but I’ll reserve judgement until I see the changes they’ve made. In the meantime, I’m still working on my plugin to deploy a single binary for all VR headsets. H/T to @uploadvr.com, @kentbye.com, Guy and Matthieu for their work bringing this to light developers.meta.com/horizon/blog...

Meta's Unity and Unreal "OpenXR" SDKs block other PC VR headsets, going against the spirit of the standard, and developers aren't happy about it:

Meta's Unity & Unreal "OpenXR" Integrations Block Other PC VR Headsets

Meta's Unity and Unreal "OpenXR" SDKs block other PC VR headsets, going against the spirit of the standard, and developers aren't happy about it.

uploadvr.com

I dig into the allegation Meta has been deliberately undermining the @openxr.org standard by blocking apps on PCVR that are non-Meta HMDS or if they're not using Oculus Link. Virtual Desktop's Guy Godin corroborates many of the claims first made by Matthieu Bucchianeri voicesofvr.com/1526-allegat...