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Maude-HCS from RTX (formerly Raytheon) helps model and validate hidden communication systems

A software toolkit built for DARPA to test and validate covert communication networks is now open source, and it could help orgs who want to experiment with new kinds of secure, anonymous communications tools. …

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's Gemini AI models have improved by leaps and bounds over the past year, but you can only use Gemini on Google's terms. The company's Gemma open-weight models have provided more freedom, but Gemma 3, which launched over a year ago, is getting a bit long in the tooth. Starting today, developers can start working with Gemma 4, which comes in four sizes optimized for local usage. Google has also acknowledged developer frustrations with AI licensing, so it's dumping the custom Gemma license. Like past versions of its open-weight models, Google has designed Gemma 4 to be usable on local machines. That can mean plenty of things, of course. The two large Gemma variants, 26B Mixture of Experts and 31B Dense, are designed to run unquantized in bfloat16 format on a single 80GB Nvidia H100 GPU. Granted, that's a $20,000 AI accelerator, but it's still local hardware. If quantized to run at lower precision, these big models will fit on consumer GPUs. Google also claims it has focused on reducing latency to really take advantage of Gemma's local processing. The 26B Mixture of Experts model activates only 3.8 billion of its 26 billion parameters in inference mode, giving it much higher tokens-per-second than similarly sized models. Meanwhile, 31B Dense is more about quality than speed, but Google expects developers to fine-tune it for specific uses. The other two Gemma 4 models, Effective 2B (E2B) and Effective 4B (E4B), are aimed at mobile devices. These options were designed to maintain low memory usage during inference, running at an effective 2 billion or 4 billion parameters. Google says the Pixel team worked closely with Qualcomm and MediaTek to optimize these models for devices like smartphones, Raspberry Pi, and Jetson Nano. Not only do they use less memory and battery than Gemma 3, but Google also touts "near-zero latency" this time around. The Apache 2.0 license is much more flexible with its terms of use for commercial restrictions, "granting you complete control over your data, infrastructure, and models," says Google. Clement Delangue, co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, called it "a huge milestone" that will help developers use Gemma for more projects and expand what Google calls the "Gemmaverse."

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Source code with a side of Vidar stealer and GhostSocks

Tens of thousands of people eagerly downloaded the leaked Claude Code source code this week, and some of those downloads came with a side of credential-stealing malware.…

Terms admit it is for entertainment only and may get things wrong

A recent surge of interest in Microsoft's Terms of Use for Copilot is a reminder that AI helpers are really just a bit of fun.…

Even on NASA's Artemis II mission around the moon, astronauts apparently still have to deal with broken Microsoft Outlook. One of the crew members, Reid Wiseman, jokingly reported that he had "two Microsoft Outlooks" and neither worked. 404 Media reports: On April 1, four astronauts from the U.S. and Canada embarked on a 10-day flight to loop around the moon. Spotted by VGBees podcast host Niki Grayson on the NASA livestream of live views from the , around 2 a.m. ET, mission control acknowledges an issue with a process control system and offers to remote in -- yes, like how your office IT guy would pause his CoD campaign to log into Okta for you because you used the wrong password too many times. One of the astronauts, Reid Wiseman, says that's chill, but while they're in there: "I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working." Astronauts are trained for decades in some of the most physically and mentally grueling environments of any career. They're some of the smartest people on the planet, and they have to be, before we strap them to 3.2 million pounds of jet fuel and make them do complex experiments and high-stakes decisions for days on end. And yet, once they get up there, fucking Outlook is borked.

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Tie-up aims to widen Big Blue’s access to power-efficient compute

IBM and Arm are working together on getting software developed for Arm chips to run on Big Blue's enterprise systems, with an eye on future AI and data-intensive workloads.…

Nvidia has begun rolling out a beta feature that automatically compiles game shaders while a PC is idle. It won't eliminate shader compilation the first time a game runs, but Ars Technica reports it could help reduce those repeated wait times. From the report: Nvidia's new Auto Shader Compilation system promises to "reduc[e] the frequency of game runtime compilation after driver updates" for users running Nvidia's GeForce Game Ready Driver 595.97 WHQL or later. When the feature is active and your machine is idle, the app will automatically start rebuilding DirectX drivers for your games so they're all set to roll the next time they launch. While the feature defaults to being turned off when the Nvidia App is first downloaded, users can activate it by going to the Graphics Tab > Global Settings > Shader Cache. There, they can set aside disk space for precompiled shaders and decide how many system resources the compilation process should use. App users can also manually force shader recompilation through the app rather than waiting for the machine to go idle. Unfortunately, Nvidia warns that users will still have to generate shaders in-game after downloading a title for the first time. The Auto Shader Compiler system only generates the new shaders needed after subsequent driver updates following that first run of a new title.

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Meanwhile, Collabora splits from LibreOffice Online amid claims TDF ejected 'all Collabora staff and partners'

European outfits Ionos and Nextcloud have launched Euro-Office, a fork of the OnlyOffice cloud-based productivity suite aimed at orgs with qualms around sovereignty, provoking an angry response from the original developer.…

In space no one can you scream, at Microsoft

Many a frustrated user has sworn they'll launch Microsoft Outlook into space, but NASA has actually done it – on a journey around the Moon, where it's now causing problems for astronauts.…

Valve's March 2026 Steam Survey shows Linux gaming usage jumping to a record 5.33% share -- more than double macOS's 2.35%. Phoronix reports: Steam on Linux was never above 5% and easily an all-time high for the Linux gaming marketshare, especially in absolute numbers. It was a massive 3.1% spike in March while macOS also jumped surprisingly by 1.19% to 2.35%. The Steam Survey numbers show Windows losing 4.28%, down to 92.33%. Part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers. Month over month they report a 31.85% drop to the Simplified Chinese language use and English use increasing by 16.82% to 39.09%. Other languages also showed gains amid the massive decline in Simplified Chinese use. The latest numbers for March show around a quarter of the Linux gamers are running Steam OS. Due in part to the Steam Deck APU being a custom AMD product and the popularity of AMD hardware on Linux for its open-source nature, AMD CPU use by Steam on Linux gamers remains just under 70%.

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The chatbot will be a doorway to the company's other services

Opinion Salesforce has begun to position Slack, its business collaboration platform, as the interface through which users can access and act on data in enterprise applications from rival vendors.…

Name is a joke but the project is real, said main engineer

The world's most popular CMS has been remade with the help of AI. Cloudflare has released EmDash version 0.1, described as a rebuild of the WordPress CMS (content management system) but using TypeScript rather than PHP. …

Patch Tuesday often gets blamed when a reboot merely exposes damage already done, according to Chen

It's not me, it's you. Five words that signify the end of a relationship with a toxic partner, or an ill-timed riposte to users tired of broken Microsoft updates.…

Supplier will need to look after networks, email, tech support, tools and more – plus find cost savings

The BBC is looking for a supplier to provide IT for all its workforce and help automate parts of the corporation through a contract apparently named after a dog.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: OpenAI hasn't been shy about spending money lobbying for favorable laws and regulations. But when it comes to its involvement with child safety advocacy groups, the company has apparently decided it's best to stay in the shadows -- even if it means hiding from the people actually pushing for policy changes. According to a report from the San Francisco Standard, a number of people involved in the California-based Parents and Kids Safe AI Coalition were blindsided to learn their efforts were secretly being funded by OpenAI. Per the Standard, the Parents and Kids Safe AI Coalition was a group formed to push the Parents and Kids Safe AI Act, a piece of California legislation proposed earlier this year that would require AI firms to implement age verification and additional safeguards for users under the age of 18. That bill was backed by OpenAI in partnership with Common Sense Media, which proposed the legislation as a compromise after the two groups had pushed dueling ballot initiatives last year. But when the coalition started to reach out to child safety groups and other advocacy organizations to try to get them to lend support to the bill, OpenAI was apparently conveniently left off the messaging. The AI giant was also left out of the marketing on the coalition's website, according to the Standard. That reportedly led to a number of groups and individuals lending their support to the Parents and Kids Safe AI Coalition without realizing that they were aligning themselves with OpenAI. As it turns out, OpenAI isn't just one of the members of the coalition; it is the group's biggest funder. In fact, the Standard characterized the Parents and Kids Safe AI Coalition as being "entirely funded" by OpenAI. While it's not clear exactly how much the company has funneled to this particular group, a Wall Street Journal report from January said OpenAI pledged $10 million to push the Parents and Kids Safe AI Act. Gizmodo notes that OpenAI's backing of the Parents and Kids Safe AI Act "could be self-serving for CEO Sam Altman," who just so happens to head a company called World that provides age verification services.

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We must design expecting much of what we publish will be reinterpreted by 'systems we don't control'

Those who rely on artificial intelligence to summarize official material may get a misleadingly narrow or incomplete version of it, a senior designer for the UK government has warned.…

And of course the Orion toilet malfunctioned

Toilet trouble, telemetry problems, and an issue with the flight termination system have not marred the Artemis II mission to the Moon, which launched yesterday.…

And other handy tools that could save your data in a crisis

The latest update to the handy SystemRescue is here with a new kernel. There's also a new GParted Live, and some other handy utilities.…

Connected devices can leave an otherwise secure network vulnerable

Pwned Welcome to Pwned, The Register's new column, where we highlight the worst infosec own goals so you can, hopefully, protect against them. Caffeine is an essential tool for most IT defenders, so, on balance, we're sure it has protected against a lot more exploits than it has caused. But in this case, the desire for everyone's favorite stimulant led to a massive breach.…

Scientists say extreme March heat caused an unusually rapid collapse of snowpack across the American West that's leaving major basins at record or near-record lows. "This year is on a whole other level," said Dr Russ Schumacher, a Colorado State University climatologist. "Seeing this year so far below any of the other years we have data for is very concerning." The Guardian reports: [...] The issue is extremely widespread. Data from a branch of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which logs averages based on levels between 1991 and 2020, shows states across the south-west and intermountain west with eye-popping lows. The Great Basin had only 16% of average on Monday and the lower Colorado region, which includes most of Arizona and parts of Nevada, was at 10%. The Rio Grande, which covers parts of New Mexico, Texas and Colorado, was at 8%. "This year has the potential of being way worse than any of the years we have analogues for in the past," Schumacher said. Even with near-normal precipitation across most of the west, every major river basin across the region was grappling with snow drought when March began, according to federal analysts. Roughly 91% of stations reported below-median snow water equivalent, according to the last federal snow drought update compiled on March 8. Water managers and climate experts had been hopeful for a March miracle -- a strong cold storm that could set the region on the right track. Instead, a blistering heatwave unlike any recorded for this time of year baked the region and spurred a rapid melt-off. "March is often a big month for snowstorms," Schumacher said. "Instead of getting snow we would normally expect we got this unprecedented, way-off-the-scale warmth." More than 1,500 monthly high temperature records were broken in March and hundreds more tied. The event was "likely among the most statistically anomalous extreme heat events ever observed in the American south-west," climate scientist Daniel Swain said in an analysis posted this week. "Beyond the conspicuous 'weirdness' of it all," Swain added, "the most consequential impact of our record-shattering March heat will likely be the decimation of the water year 2025-26 snowpack across nearly all of the American west." Calling the toll left by the heat "nothing short of shocking," Swain noted that California was tied for its worst mountain snowpack value on record. While the highest elevations are still coated in white, "lower slopes are now completely bare nearly statewide."

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