SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " software " 1,111 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Apple Seeds Second iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5 Betas to Developers
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming two weeks after Apple released updated first betas. Registered developers can download the betas from the Settings app on the iPhone or iPad by going to the General section and selecting Software Update. iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5 do not include new Siri capabilities, suggesting any Siri updates are being held until iOS 27.
One UI 9 leak suggests Samsung is listening to our software complaints
Leaked One UI 9 changes point to smarter photo edits, a simpler 'About phone' section, and fluid animations.
UNM College of Population Health Celebrates 10 Years
Friday, April 17, 2026, The University of New Mexico’s College of Population Health (COPH) will proudly celebrate its 10-year anniversary, marking a decade of measurable impact, substantial growth and future ambition. Founded in 2016, COPH became the...
Samsung to fix Adaptive Clock glitch in One UI 8.5 update
Adaptive Clock has a glitch on One UI 8.5 devices, and Samsung is working on a fix. The problem has been acknowledged by a community moderator, who promised the addressal with the next Beta software update. It’s already a big day for Samsung users, thanks to One UI 8.5 rollouts. Whether it’s new Beta releases […]
Anthropic's Claude for Word is a new challenge to Microsoft's empire
Anthropic launched a beta version of Claude for Word. It's another challenge to Microsoft's software empire, and a bid to appeal to lawyers.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
Samsung says it has a One UI 8.5 device plan for ‘later’
Samsung has announced that the company will release a One UI 8.5 device plan once the software is ready for rollout. However, there are a couple of things you should know about this new statement. This statement comes after a wide user-based criticism of Samsung’s new feature limitation to the Galaxy S26 series. Users alleged that the company […]
Unique X, Imagica Entertainment Media Services Partner to Transform Japanese Cinema Advertising Business
Digital cinema software provider Unique X and Imagica Entertainment Media Services (Imagica EMS), the market leader in Japan for post-production and media services, today announced the signing of a full long-term agreement, building upon their original Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). This strategic partnership establishes a robust framework for an exclusive collaboration aimed at transforming and […]
GlassWorm Campaign Uses Zig Dropper to Infect Multiple Developer IDEs
GlassWorm uses a fake WakaTime VS Code extension to infect IDEs, deploy RATs, and steal data, prompting urgent credential rotation.
Apple Releases macOS Tahoe 26.4.1 With Bug Fixes
Apple today released macOS Tahoe 26.4.1, a minor update to the macOS Tahoe operating system that came out last September. macOS Tahoe 26.4.1 comes two weeks after Apple launched macOS Tahoe 26.4. Mac users can download the new software by opening up the System Settings app and navigating to the Software Update section. Mac users can download the new software by opening up the System Settings app and navigating to the Software Update section.
US software stocks fall as Anthropic's new AI model revives disruption fears
U.S. software shares tumbled on Thursday after Anthropic held back the wide release of a powerful AI model over concerns it could expose hidden cybersecurity vulnerabilities, deepening investor fears about the threat to traditional software firms.
Samsung is expanding AirDrop to these Galaxy devices, but only if you install this update
Samsung is officially expanding AirDrop over Quick Share support to more Galaxy devices, but it requires a specific software update...
Samsung expands One UI 8.5 beta to even more Galaxy phones
Samsung is expanding the One UI 8.5 Beta Program to even more Galaxy phones so that more users can test the new software version.
Galaxy S25 and S24 users get AirDrop and 3 new camera filters
With new One UI 8.5 Beta updates, Samsung has fresh perks for the users of Galaxy S25 and S24 series: AirDrop sharing and three new camera filters. Samsung just dropped One UI 8.5 Beta 9 and Beta 2 updates for the S25 and S24 series, respectively. Changelog of both updates carry exact the same content, […]
WireGuard VPN developer can't ship software updates after Microsoft locks account
The popular open source VPN maker is the second high-profile developer to say Microsoft locked his account without notifying him and are blocking their ability to send software updates to users.
Form Bio: The Operating System for Science
Ben Lamm (left) and George Church (right) pose in front of a woolly mammoth. By Futurist Thomas Frey When Colossal Biosciences launched in 2021, one of the first things Ben Lamm did was sit down with his team and map out all the software they would need to actually do the work. The list came […]
Developer of VeraCrypt encryption software says Windows users may face boot-up issues after Microsoft locked his account
The maker of the popular open-source file encryption software VeraCrypt said Microsoft locked his online account, which may prevent device owners from booting up their computers.
As Job Stability Shifts, AI Platforms Aim to Remove the Barriers to Business Ownership
Skills that have made someone successful in a corporate career can certainly translate to work as an entrepreneur, but owning a business is a separate challenge entirely. Costly start-up fees, overhead, marketing, managing multiple software systems and expensive staff are some of the many reasons st
Computer Science Students Compete in Software Hackathon - University of the Ozarks
A group of University of the Ozarks computer science students took part this past weekend in HogHacks, a 24-hour collegiate hackathon held at the University of Arkansas. Hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) at the U of A, the event is an overnight software engineering competition among area college students that takes place […]
Salesforce, Microsoft new products, pricing in new era for software
Salesforce and Microsoft envision an AI future in which businesses still need their platforms — they just use them differently.
Samsung updates One UI software rollout roadmap
On March 6, Samsung shared its April 2026 software rollout roadmap. It’s important information for every Galaxy device user. The company has made some notable changes in this month’s roadmap, compared to March 2026. Current Models for Monthly Security Updates Samsung offers new security updates to premium Galaxy phones and foldables on a monthly basis. […]
Software from tech startup Leto helps caseworkers connect clients with community resources
Leto Tech PBC has launched software developed by Purdue researchers that helps social service agencies and other organizations more efficiently connect their clients with community resources.
Meta salaries revealed: How much engineers, researchers made in 2025
See how much Meta paid in 2025, with software engineers earning as much as $450,000. Salary data shows pay ranges across over 5,000 roles.
Galaxy S26 gets new software update with possible camera improvements
Samsung has released a new software update to the Galaxy S26 series. It includes the April 2026 security patch and camera improvements.
Pocket-Sized E-Ink Gets A Firmware Upgrade
Not so long ago, e-ink devices were rare and fairly pricey. As they have become more common and cheaper, some cool form-factor devices have emerged that suffer from subpar software. [Concretedog] p…
GMB Management Software for Multi Location Business
GBPPromote GBPPromote Indore, Madhya Pradesh, April 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GBPPromote, a fast-growing Google Business Profile (GBP) management software, is gaining strong traction among agencies, franchises, enterprises, and individual businesses looking for a simpler and more scalable way to manage their local presence on Google. Adopted widely by franchises, agencies, and enterprise teams for multi-location GMB management, the platform is built to handle the kind of operational work that
Mastery of sex offender registry attracts major investment in Mandeville small business
Mandeville-based Watch Systems makes OffenderWatch and other software solutions to track the sex offender registry and help law enforcement agencies ensure compliance with evolving state laws.
LinkedIn Hidden Code Secretly Searches Your Browser for Installed Extensions
Every time you open LinkedIn in a Chrome-based browser, hidden JavaScript silently scans your computer for installed software without your knowledge, without your consent, and without a single word in LinkedIn's privacy policy.
Gemma 4 and what makes an open model succeed
Having written a lot of model release blog posts, there’s something much harder about reviewing open models when they drop relative to closed models, especially in 2026. In recent years, there were so few open models, so when Llama 3 was released most people were still doing research on Llama 2 and super happy to get an update. When Qwen 3 was released, the Llama 4 fiasco had just gone down, and a whole research community was emerging to study RL on Qwen 2.5 — it was a no brainer to upgrade. Today, when an open model releases, it’s competing with Qwen 3.5, Kimi K2.5, GLM 5, MiniMax M2.5, GPT-OSS, Arcee Large, Nemotron 3, Olmo 3, and others. The space is populated, but still feels full of hidden opportunity. The potential of open models feels like a dark matter, a potential we know is huge, but few clear recipes and examples for how to unlock it are out there. Agentic AI, OpenClaw, and everything brewing in that space is going to spur mass experimentation in open models to complement the likes of Claude and Codex, not replace them. Especially with open models, the benchmarks at release are an extremely incomplete story. In some ways this is exciting, as new open models have a much higher variance and ability to surprise, but it also points at some structural reasons that make building businesses and great AI experiences around open models harder than the closed alternatives. When a new Claude Opus or GPT drops, spending a few hours with them in my agentic workflows is genuinely a good vibe test. For open models, putting them through this test is a category error. Something else to be said about open models in the era of agents is that they get out of the debate of integration, harnesses, and tools and let us see close to the ground on what exactly is the ability of just a model. Of course, we can’t test some things like search abilities without some tool, but being able to measure exactly the pace of progress of the model alone is a welcome simplification to a systematically opaque AI space. Share The list of factors I’d use to assess a new open-weight model I’m considering investing in includes: Model performance (and size) — how this model performs on benchmarks I care about and how it compares to other models of a similar size. Country of origin — some businesses care deeply about provenance, and if a model was built in China or not. Model license — if a model needs legal approval for use, uptake will be slower at mid-sized and large companies. Tooling at release — many models release with half-broken, or at least substantially slower, implementations in popular software like vLLM, Transformers, SGLANG, etc due to pushing the envelope of architectures or tools. Model fine-tunability — how easy or hard it is to modify the given model to your use-case when you actually try and use it. The core problem is that some of these are immediately available at release, e.g. general performance, license, origin, etc. but others such as tooling take day(s) to week(s) to stabilize, and others are open research questions — with no group systematically monitoring fine-tunability. In the early era of open models, the days of Llama 2 or 3 and Qwen pre v3.5, the architectures were fairly simple and the models tended to work out of the box. Some of this was due to the extremely hard work of the Llama, Qwen, Mistral, etc. developer teams. Some is due to the new models being genuinely harder to work with. When it comes to something like Qwen 3.5 or Nemotron 3, with hybrid models (either gated delta net or mamba layers), the tooling is very rough at release. Things you would expect to “just work” often don’t. I’ve been following this area closely since we released Olmo Hybrid with a similar architecture, and Qwen 3.5 is just starting to work well in the various open-source tools that need to all play nice together for RL research. That’s 1.5 months after the release date! This is just to start really investing more into understanding the behavior of the models. Of course, others started working on these models sooner by investing more engineering resources or relying on partially closed software. The fully open and distributed ecosystem takes a long time to get going on some new models. All of this is lead-in for the most important question for open models — how easy is it to adapt to specific use-cases? This is a different problem for different model sizes. Large MoE open-weight models may be used by entities like Cursor who need complex capabilities in their domain, e.g. Composer 2 trained on Kimi K2.5. Other applications can be built on much smaller models, such as Chroma’s Context-1 model for agentic search, built on GPT-OSS 20B. The question of “which models are fine-tunable” is largely background knowledge known by engineers across the industry. There should be a thriving research area here to support the open ecosystem model. The first step is to understand characteristics of different base and post-trained models to understand what they look like. The second step is to tune pretraining recipes for open models so they’re more flexible. Interconnects AI is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe For The ATOM Project and other Interconnects endeavors, we’ve put in substantial effort to measuring adoption trends in the open ecosystem. Everything takes a long time to unfold after a model is first publicly available — and adaptability is why. What we know for sure now, when Qwen has been going from strength to strength with its releases, is that technical staff across the industry has gotten comfortable working with Qwen models. Countless research methods and datasets were made to work with Qwen. It’ll take patience for any other model family to get to this point — a patience I’m not sure many open model builders have. This takes us to Gemma 4, Google’s latest open models. Gemma 3 was released more than a year ago, in March of 2025, and is a bit underrated. Gemma 4 comes in 4 sizes for now, with a bigger, MoE model of over 100B total parameters rumored but not released yet. The models we have today come in sizes of ~5B dense, 8B dense, 26B total 4B active MoE, and 31B dense. I’m most excited that they’re finally adopting a standard Apache 2.0 open source license. This’ll massively boost adoption. The standard of better licenses for strong open-weight LLMs was set by mostly Chinese open model labs in the last 1-2 years, and now U.S. companies are following suit. I will personally be so happy if the horrible Llama licenses and Gemma terms of service were an ~18-month transient dynamic of the industry being nervous about releasing strong open models. The Gemma 4 scores look very solid, the small models have incredible benchmark scores (especially in general domains like LMArena) and the 31B model rivals the recent Qwen 3.5 27B, which is the leading member of that class. The ~30B size range is an important one, as it’s accessible both to researchers and to enterprises looking to deploy the model in real use-cases. Where the 7B model scale is the default for tinkering and research, a 30B model is the default for seeing if an open model can unlock substantial value in your specific workflow — a good mix of intelligence, low price, tractability for downstream training, etc. This takes us back to the above adoption criteria I mentioned for open models and the bigger question — do I think Gemma 4 will be an overwhelming success? Previous Gemma models have been plagued by tooling issues and poorer performance when being finetuned. Gemma 4’s success is going to be entirely determined by ease of use, to a point where a 5-10% swing on benchmarks wouldn’t matter at all. It’s strong enough, small enough, with the right license, and from the U.S., so many companies are going to slot it in. I’m cautiously optimistic that Gemma 4 is going to work better here. Winds are shifting for open models built in America. We saw GPT-OSS go through a bumpy launch to become an overwhelming success. There’s a collective energy around the likes of Reflection, Arcee, Nemotron, Gemma, Olmo, and peers that show substantial demand for building new stacks around open models. There’s capital to be spent on AI stacks across the economy by those who want more ownership of everything, including the model. After launching The ATOM Project 240 days ago, the conversation is shifting into the next stage. Summer of 2025 was a crisis moment where the U.S. AI scene realized it can’t wait and figure out open models after building AGI. The two markets will capture different areas and proceed in parallel. Now that more companies in the U.S. are releasing strong models, we need to improve the ecosystem so that these models are easy to use, understand, and build value around. It’s the hard work to build another inflection point in these adoption plots I’ve been updating consistently, but that’s the work to be done. Join me in it. More data coming soon! Here’s a sneak peek:
Computer Science faculty has article published
An article by Dr. Shahin Mehdipour Ataee presenting a software method to automatically detect periodicity in video footage was published.
Grief causes our emotional software to glitch. This simple tip can help
We need to treat emotional health "as something we practice, not something we address only in crisis," KD Hall writes.
Artemis II Astronauts Have ‘Two Microsoft Outlooks’ and Neither Work
In space, no one can hear you scream at Microsoft’s legacy software.
Steam on Linux reaches 5.33% in March Steam Survey, highest share on record
Steam Survey: Linux climbs to 5.33%, more than double macOS Valve’s March 2026 Steam Hardware & Software Survey puts Linux at 5.33% of surveyed users,
UNM to host national leader in sports medicine for community lecture on concussions
The University of New Mexico Department of Neurology will host a community lecture featuring Dr. Brian Hainline on Tuesday, April 15 from 6 to 8 p.m., at the Physics and Astronomy Interdisciplinary Science (PAIS) Auditorium on the Albuquerque...
KPMG trains tax professionals to build software in six-week pilot
In a six-week pilot program, KPMG US tax staffers used vibe coding to create software tools the firm said it now uses with clients.
Pokemon Home 4.0.0 update released, support for Pokemon Legends: Z-A and Pokemon Champions added
As previously announced, Pokemon Home has received a version 4.0.0 update. Users should be seeing the update roll out now on mobile and Nintendo Switch devices. Keep in mind that the app’s servers are currently undergoing maintenance, making the software unusable until 5 AM PT / 8 AM ET / 1 PM in the UK / 2 PM in Europe....
Apple to Issue Rare iOS 18 Software Update for DarkSword Exploit
Apple on Wednesday will issue software updates to devices still running iOS 18 to protect them from an exploit called DarkSword, which can silently take over an iPhone if it visits a website infected with the malicious code.
Microsoft facing CMA probe of its business software portfolio
The regulator will commence its investigation in May, examining concerns emerging from its cloud market probe.
North Korean hackers bug software used by thousands of US companies in potential crypto heist attempt
Suspected North Korean hackers have bugged a software package that has been used by thousands of US companies in a major supply-chain attack that could take months to recover from, security experts said Tuesday.
Contract for license plates readers 'automatically renewed,' Troy mayor says
the contract for the Flock license plate-reading cameras and software was "automatically renewed," Mayor Carmella Mantello said.
Oracle laying off thousands of workers to cut costs amid AI push: report
Oracle is reportedly moving forward with layoffs as the software giant looks to restructure its workforce amid an investment in building out AI infrastructure.
Google may put another annoying limitation on Pixel 10 users with an upcoming update
Tinkering with your Pixel 10 could become more difficult with a Google software update.
Cardi B and Steph Curry earn Webby Award nominations, along with Sydney Sweeney's bathwater
f s e media-and-entertainment-industry software podcasts sports technology language celebrity politics internet business entertainment | KMBZ
Cardi B and Steph Curry earn Webby Award nominations, along with Sydney Sweeney's bathwater
f s e media-and-entertainment-industry software podcasts sports technology language celebrity politics internet business entertainment | KNX News 97.1 FM
Microsoft hit with UK competition regulator probe over software business
The U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority had "concerns around Microsoft's licensing practices in cloud", Chief Executive Sarah Cardell, said.
UK to launch antitrust probe into Microsoft's business software
Britain's competition regulator said on Tuesday it would launch a new investigation into Microsoft's business software ecosystem in May, including its use of software licensing in the cloud market.
Microsoft Business Software Ecosystem Faces UK Competition Probe
Microsoft Corp.’s business software ecosystem faces a UK antitrust probe starting in May to decide whether licensing practices for products such as Word, Excel and AI app Copilot need tighter regulation.
I pivoted from software engineering to welding after layoff; happier
A former software engineer in Oklahoma transitioned to welding after a tech industry layoff, finding stability and job satisfaction in her new career.
Following 9 key steps for a lifetime of eating well can support heart health
Statement Highlights: Sustaining lifelong healthy eating patterns may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and other chronic health issues, according to the latest updated dietary guidance offered in a new scientific statement from the American...
Ramp economist on how over 50,000 businesses are spending on software and AI
Ramp economist on how over 50,000 businesses are spending on software and AI
watchOS 27 to reportedly offer two main Apple Watch upgrades
watchOS 27 is the next major Apple Watch software update, and ahead of its unveiling at WWDC, Mark Gurman reveals what to expect.
Fulghum prepares for her next role after UNM — and passing the ADVANCE torch
Julia Fulghum has held a variety of positions at The University of New Mexico during her over 20-year tenure here. A professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, she has been a faculty member in two separate colleges. She served as an...
Too much sitting is taking a toll on heart and brain health
DALLAS, March 30, 2026 — Too much sitting has quietly become one of the most common threats to heart health in the United States. Research shows that prolonged sedentary time is linked to higher risks of heart disease, stroke and poorer mental health,...
Release Engineer Completes Data Science Online Courses
This spring a release engineer completed three Coursera Data Science courses from Johns Hopkins and the Software Carpentry instructor training, each roughly four weeks long. The courses covered The Data Scientist's Toolbox, R Programming, and Getting and Cleaning Data, and required substantial external reading to finish programming assignments. The training emphasized R, GitHub, reproducible research, and evidence-based teaching methods applicable to managing distributed systems.
How one business owner is using AI during tax season
Small business owner Kyle Ray uses a handful of AI and software tools. For tax questions, though, he turns to ChatGPT.
Apple says no one using Lockdown Mode has been hacked with spyware
The tech giant's claim that it has not seen any successful spyware attacks targeting Apple devices with Lockdown Mode enabled comes amid a leak of hacking tools targeting users running devices with older software.
Apple Now Sending Critical Security Alerts to iPhones Running iOS 17 and Earlier
Apple has begun pushing Lock Screen notifications to iPhones and iPads running older versions of iOS and iPadOS, warning users of active web-based attacks. The alerts, which appear as a "Critical Software" notification from the Settings app, warn that Apple "is aware of attacks targeting out-of-date iOS software, including the version on your iPhone," and urge users to install a critical update to protect their device.
Wayfound.ai CEO transforms engineers into AI managers
Wayfound.ai, led by CEO Tatyana Mamut, uses AI agents to transform software development, challenging the traditional SaaS model.
Sensitive patient health information leaked in Texas third-party software breach
Multiple Texas home health care providers are notifying patients of a data breach at Doctor Alliance, a third-party software platform, that exposed sensitive medical and personal information.
JPMorgan issues new goals for engineers to boost productivity with AI
Internal JPMorgan documents reviewed by Business Insider spell out the goals software engineers are expected to meet using the firm's AI tools.
Private Equity firm says
Thoma Bravo's Holden Spaht said the popular narrative around AI and software is incorrect, and not all software makers are equally exposed to disruption.
Two Argonne scientists elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Argonne National Laboratory scientists Brian Toby and Carlos Wagner have been elected AAAS Fellows for advances in crystallography and particle physics, recognizing their influential research, software and instrumentation development, and mentorship.
tvOS 26.4 Adds These New Features to Your Apple TV
Apple this week released tvOS 26.4, and the software update includes a handful of new features and changes for the Apple TV. tvOS 26.4 is compatible with all Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD models released since 2015. To update your Apple TV, open the Settings app on the device, navigate to System → Software Updates, and select Update Software. Below, we have recapped what is new in tvOS 26.4.
‘Project Hail Mary’ is science fiction novel with emphasis on SCIENCE
By Sophia Monastra “Project Hail Mary”, software engineer and self-proclaimed space nerd Andy Weir’s third novel, released in 2021. Since its release on my local online library service, it has been…
New Galaxy S26 update that brings AirDrop expands globally
Samsung has released a new software update for the Galaxy S26 series outside of South Korea. It brings AirDrop to the new phones.
8 new emojis arrive in Apple iOS 26.4 update for iPhone users
Along with eight new emojis, the latest Apple iPhone and iPad software update includes new Apple Music features such as AI-generated playlists.
Apple Plans AI Reboot With Siri App, New Look and ‘Ask Siri’ Button in iOS 27
Apple Inc. is testing a standalone app for its Siri voice assistant alongside a new “Ask Siri” feature that will work across the company’s software, part of a broader artificial intelligence overhaul.
Apple releases new updates for old versions of iOS, macOS, watchOS, more
Apple debuted new software updates today for old iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and watchOS versions, including iOS 18.7.7 and more.
Apple releases iOS 26.4 with 8 new emoji and 12 more changes to your iPhone
Apple has released iOS 26.4, bringing 13 enhancements to your iPhone. The new software update includes 8 new emoji characters,...
Ford recalls more than 254,000 SUVs due to software issues
Ford is recalling more than 254,000 SUVs in the U.S. after a software defect was found to impact rearview cameras and key driver-assistance safety systems.
Oracle reworks its finance, procurement apps for AI agents
Oracle is revamping its cloud-based financial software used by large companies to work with artificial intelligence agents, with a goal of having humans ask the system business questions and letting AI figure out how to find the data.
What’s the new 'Background Security' on the iPhone? What we know.
Apple's new Background Security Improvements operate between software updates, providing "lightweight security releases."
Inaugural Health Care by Food research award honors excellence in food is medicine science
DALLAS, March 23, 2026 — At a time when American dietary patterns are facing renewed attention, the American Heart Association has announced its inaugural Health Care by Food™ Most Impactful Food Is Medicine Research Award, honoring the year’s most...
Inaugural Health Care by Food research award honors excellence in food is medicine science
DALLAS, March 23, 2026 — At a time when American dietary patterns are facing renewed attention, the American Heart Association has announced its inaugural Health Care by Food™ Most Impactful Food Is Medicine Research Award, honoring the year’s most...
Companies Aren’t Ripping Out Business Software for AI. Here’s What They’re Doing Instead.
Tech leaders at large corporations say that, for now, they’re vibe-coding their own small, custom apps, and putting pressure on their software vendors.
Business investment in the era of digital transformation
The weak performance of business investment across the OECD since the Global Financial Crisis holds back potential growth. However, it masks a strong investment dynamic in digital assets such as hardware, software, and databases. This column describes how this divergence between digital and non-digital assets has intensified from the mid-2010s. The strong investment performance of the US relative to the rest of the OECD is almost exclusively a digital phenomenon. A ‘digital divide’ is emerging, where laggard countries are accumulating digital capital per worker more slowly than those with higher initial starting levels.
iPhone 18 Pro camera may come with pro software, Apple considered buying Halide
Two months ago, Halide cofounder and designer Sebastiaan de With made a surprise announcement that he was joining Apple’s design...
1 Clear Signal to Buy International Business Machines Stock Right Now
IBM has sold off because investors are worried about its software ties, but AI is more likely to help than hurt.
Samsung is bringing AirDrop to Galaxy phones soon
Starting with the Galaxy S26, AirDrop compatibility is coming to Samsung phones, rolling out through software updates. Samsung’s mobile boss Choi Won-joon just confirmed it publicly at a press briefing in Japan. AirDrop has always been the ecosystem glue that people actually feel. People stick with iPhones because their friends all tap a button for […]
Albuquerque The Magazine Recognizes 7 UNM Health ‘Top Docs’ for 2026
UNM Health recognizes over 1,000 dedicated physicians who create advancements in medical care as they educate and develop the next generation of health care professionals and scientists. This year, UNM Health honors seven physicians recognized as 2026...
Figma stock sinks after Google 'vibe design' tool gets update
Google's Stitch AI tool is the latest shot across the bow of software makers, as AI companies roll out features directly challenging their products.
Cycle Nova: Villanova students unite to honor a legacy and advance heart health
Villanova, Pa., March 17, 2026 — Beat for Good, Villanova University’s student‑run organization dedicated to supporting individuals and families affected by cardiovascular disease, hosted its inaugural cycling fundraiser, Cycle Nova, on Saturday, March...
Meet The Small Business Claiming To Have Cracked AI Software Testing
Sauce Labs says its approach to testing, based on business intent, can help enterprises break the logjam caused by the need for quality assurance in software development
Galaxy S25 series starts getting a new software update
Samsung has started rolling out the March 2026 security update to the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Apple: iPhone users should update software amid hacking campaigns
Russian intelligence, Chinese cybercriminals and others are hacking phones that haven't installed September's update, researchers say.
Here Are Apple's Release Notes for iOS 26.4
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate versions of iOS 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4, which means we're going to see a public launch as soon as next week. The RC versions of the software include Apple's official release notes, giving us final details on what's included in the update.
iOS 26.4 Fixes iPhone Keyboard Accuracy Bug
The iOS 26.4 update that Apple plans to release as soon as next week includes improvements for the built-in iOS keyboard. In its notes for the software, Apple says iOS 26.4 offers "improved keyboard accuracy when typing quickly". There was a bug in iOS that caused some characters to be missed when a user was typing quickly. The character appeared to be tapped in the keyboard, but was ultimately not inserted.
Researchers uncover iPhone spyware capable of penetrating millions of devices
A powerful software exploit capable of penetrating and stealing information from potentially hundreds of millions of Apple iPhones was planted on dozens of websites in Ukraine in recent weeks, researchers said on Wednesday.
That major MediaTek security flaw may have affected more Android phones than initially reported
Security firm Trustonic has pushed back on claims that its software is vulnerable on MediaTek chips.
Apple acquires video editing software company MotionVFX
The move could help Apple better compete with Adobe Premiere Pro, and the Adobe Creative Cloud suite.
Sony Confirms PlayStation 5 Pro PSSR Upgrades for Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Even Former Xbox Console Exclusive Hellblade 2
Sony has confirmed an array of games set to benefit from PlayStation 5 Pro's upgraded PSSR visual boost, which launches more broadly via a new system software update available later today.
Galaxy A37 and A57 unboxing and hands-on leak ahead of launch
Samsung hasn’t unveiled the Galaxy A37 and Galaxy A57 yet, but someone has already unboxed the phone and had hands-on experience. Galaxy A37 and A57 unboxing and hands-on videos leak on TikTok (via @VerdeSelvans/X). The clips expose the design of both phones and first look at the software. The retail box features the model name […]
Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas agrees that Computer Science is gradually returning to the domain of…
Tech News News: Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, added his weight to a growing conversation about what AI is doing to software engineering. On March 13, he quo.
Parallels Desktop creators say MacBook Neo does indeed have enough muscle to run Windows apps
The company’s virtualization software is functional on Apple’s cheapest laptop.
Parallels Confirms MacBook Neo Can Run Windows in a Virtual Machine
Parallels Desktop virtualization software is compatible with the new MacBook Neo, according to an update from the company – but Windows VM performance will depend on your intended use case. From Parallels' updated knowledge base article: Parallels Desktop runs on MacBook Neo in basic usability testing. The Parallels Engineering team has completed initial testing and confirmed that Parallels Desktop installs and virtual machines operate stably on MacBook Neo.
Parallels shares update on MacBook Neo and running a Windows virtual machine
Last week, Parallels cautioned that its Parallels Desktop for Mac software was not yet tested for MacBook Neo. Following the...
Watch Atlassian CEO explain AI-driven layoffs in video message
Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes explained the company's 1,600 layoffs in a four-minute video as the software firm pivots more heavily toward AI.
macOS 26.4: Four new features are coming to your Mac
macOS Tahoe 26.4 is coming soon as the next software update for your Mac. Here are four new features included in macOS 26.4.
Best Bookkeeping Software for Small Business (2026): Sage Awarded for Streamlined Recordkeeping by Better Business Advice
Better Business Advice has recognized Sage in its 2026 assessment of the best bookkeeping software for small business, highlighting the platform's structured approach to digital recordkeeping, automation, and financial visibility.
Ford launches new AI to grow multibillion-dollar Pro commercial business
Ford CEO Jim Farley last month said diversifying Pro's revenue — specifically in software — is a crucial growth area for the company.