Robert Tinney, the artist whose airbrushed cover paintings defined the look of Byte magazine, died on February 1 at the age of 78, according to a memorial posted on his official website. Simultaneously, the tech world is abuzz with developments, including the rise of a new AI assistant, NanoClaw, and a campaign urging users to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions.
Tinney was the primary cover artist for Byte from 1975 to the late 1980s, and he created over 80 covers. He gave a visual language to the abstract world of personal computing, translating concepts like artificial intelligence and programming into vivid paintings.
In other tech news, the rapid adoption of Austrian developer Peter Steinberger's open-source AI assistant OpenClaw has caused excitement among enterprises and indie developers, according to VentureBeat. OpenClaw, released in November 2025, offers a powerful means of autonomously completing work using natural language prompts. However, its "permissionless" architecture raised security concerns. This led to the creation of NanoClaw, a lighter, more secure version, which debuted under an open-source MIT license.
Meanwhile, a "QuitGPT" campaign is gaining traction, urging users to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions. Alfred Stephen, a freelance software developer in Singapore, subscribed to ChatGPT Plus in September but grew frustrated with the chatbot's coding abilities and replies, according to MIT Technology Review. The campaign, highlighted on Reddit, also pointed out a contribution by OpenAI president Greg Brockman to a super PAC and the use of a ChatGPT-4 powered tool by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Finally, despite some initial concerns, Heroku is not dead, according to a post on Hacker News. The author, a former tech lead at Salesforce Heroku, stated that after speaking with friends still working there, the platform remains active.
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