Paid

Interest income on bank deposits is back in focus in Russia. Sber has launched a new savings deposit, and experts are calculating how much money savers need to deposit to earn around 30,000 rubles a month in interest. At the same time, banks have started withholding personal income tax on interest payments, with guidance circulating on how the 2025 tax on deposit interest is calculated and when it must be paid.

A developer paid people to attempt to follow a project's README, documenting where the installation instructions confused them or broke down. The experiment highlights how documentation that makes sense to its author often fails new users, a common pain point in open source software. Readers are sharing their own experiences of writing instructions they could never follow cold, and debating whether paid usability testing of docs is worth it.

A GitHub project called free-claude-code by developer Alishahryar1 is trending. It claims to let users access Claude Code, Codex, and other coding assistants for free from a terminal, IDE, phone, or browser, advertising over 1.3 billion free tokens across multiple models and harnesses. The Python repository is drawing attention from developers interested in free access to paid AI coding tools.

Part of central Ulan-Ude was left without electricity after work by a third-party organization damaged the supply, local reports say. Separately, Russian media report that residents in some regions may be charged around 2,000 rubles per hour for bear protection services in forests. Both stories are drawing attention in the region.

A Bay Area chef says SpaceX has failed to pay him roughly $70,000 for catering or restaurant services, despite the company being valued at around $2 trillion. The dispute, reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, is drawing attention because of the contrast between the huge sum involved for a small food business and SpaceX's enormous valuation.

Doory, a new open-source design tool positioned as an alternative to Canva, has been released on GitHub by developer shaongitbd. The project lets users create visual designs without subscription costs or vendor lock-in, and it is drawing attention in developer communities, with early reactions focused on how viable a free, self-hostable design editor can be against established commercial platforms.

The BBC profiles three friends navigating student loan repayment: one has cleared their debt entirely, another is steadily paying it down, and a third is watching their balance grow. The piece highlights how the same system can produce sharply different outcomes depending on earnings, repayment plans and circumstances, with personal stories behind the figures.

HoopsHype has published a ranking of the 30 most overpaid players in NBA history, measuring each player's actual on-court value through its Real Value metric against the salaries they were paid. The list includes active stars as well as a Golden State Warriors legend, and is prompting debate among basketball fans about which big contracts have been worth the money.

A hands-on review of free, open-source alternatives to Adobe's creative software is drawing wide attention, asking whether tools like GIMP, Inkscape, Krita and others are genuinely usable replacements for Photoshop, Illustrator and similar paid apps. The verdict-style test has struck a chord with users frustrated by Adobe's subscription pricing, sparking discussion about whether open-source options are now practical for everyday creative work.

A developer has released free open-source alternatives to Microsoft's Word, Excel and PowerPoint, offering office tools that anyone can download, use and modify at no cost. The project challenges the paid dominance of Microsoft Office, and interest is focused on how closely the clones match the original applications and whether they could attract users looking to avoid subscription fees.

Carlo Conti has paid tribute following the death of L'Olandese Volante, a beloved figure of Italian radio, saying "Lui era la radio" — he was the radio. Italian media and listeners are sharing memories of the broadcaster, with tributes appearing across La Nazione and other outlets.

Country singer and reality TV personality Jessie James Decker has drawn widespread support for her parenting approach of not giving her children an allowance. Coverage by Good Housekeeping highlights that many parents side with her stance, saying chores should be a family responsibility rather than something rewarded with money. The debate has reignited a familiar conversation about paying kids for household tasks.

Australian researchers are proposing that employees be paid to exercise during working hours, arguing the cost of physical inactivity to Australia exceeds $2 billion a year. A study is tracking health outcomes for workers who take part in paid exercise programmes, and the idea is drawing attention as a possible way to cut long-term healthcare and productivity costs.

The developer behind free open-source clones of Adobe software has unveiled replications of Microsoft Office's core applications, including Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. Reports indicate Autodesk tools and other subscription-based services could follow. The project targets expensive subscription software with free, open alternatives, a move likely to draw attention from both budget-conscious users and the major software vendors whose products are being replicated.

A Republican US senator who is up for re-election has paid off a debt owed to a bakery that had reportedly been outstanding for six years. The Guardian reported the settlement, which comes as the senator campaigns to keep the seat. Details about the size of the debt, the bakery involved and how it was resolved were not given, and it is not clear whether the unpaid bill had become an issue in the campaign.

A new guide explains why users need ETH to send USDT on Ethereum: USDT is a balance recorded by a smart contract, and every transfer is an Ethereum transaction whose fee must be paid in ETH. The guide covers what gas is, what a transfer actually costs, and the common trap of holding USDT without any ETH to pay the fee.

A retired worker in Oklahoma City received a $20,000 retention bonus from his former employer after the company relocated to Texas, prompting Social Security to examine when the bonus was actually earned. The case highlights how the timing of post-retirement payments can affect benefits, raising questions about whether such bonuses count as wages in the year paid or the year earned.

The XRP Ledger has fixed a critical bug that could have allowed an attacker to create 18 trillion XRP, and paid a $250,000 bounty to the person who reported it. The flaw posed a severe risk to the ledger's fixed supply, a core feature of the XRP token. Security analysts are highlighting the payout as a strong example of a well-handled responsible disclosure in the crypto industry.

Texas Public Radio's Texas Matters program takes an inside look at the plasma-for-cash economy in the United States, where people are paid for donating blood plasma. The report explores how the industry operates and what it means for the Texans and others who rely on compensation for their plasma.