France to Swap Windows for Linux Across Government as It Ramps up Sovereignty Drive
France announced a nationwide migration from Microsoft Windows to Linux for all government computers, targeting more than 100,000 workstations and thousands of servers. The initiative, overseen by the cybersecurity agency ANSSI, aims to cut IT expenses by roughly €2.5 bn (about $2.7 bn) over the next five years. It forms part of a broader digital‑sovereignty push championed by President Emmanuel Macron’s administration. The rollout will be phased, beginning with high‑security ministries before expanding to local authorities.
Inside the Freshly Vendor-Neutral Payments Protocol Putting the 402 Status Code to Use
The Linux Foundation announced it will steward a newly created, vendor‑neutral payments protocol that operates directly at the HTTP layer. The protocol revives the rarely used HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code to enable automated, machine‑to‑machine transactions for SaaS, API, and...
Container-Sized AI 'Pods' Could Be the Answer to Dragging Data Centre Plans, HPE Says
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is mass‑producing container‑sized AI “pods” that function as miniature data centres, with a factory capable of delivering a unit in a matter of months. The modular pods bundle compute, storage, networking and cooling into a single...
France's OVH Answers Europe's Sovereignty Call with Dedicated Defence Unit
OVHcloud announced the creation of a dedicated defence unit aimed at serving European defence ministries and reinforcing data‑sovereignty initiatives. The new team will provide hardened cloud infrastructure, incident‑response capabilities, and compliance support tailored to government and critical‑infrastructure customers. OVHcloud’s move...
GOV.UK Eyes API Overhaul, GraphQL Could Do the Job
The UK government’s central digital platform, GOV.UK, is evaluating a major API redesign, exploring a shift from its legacy REST endpoints to a GraphQL‑based architecture. Officials say the change aims to deliver more flexible, robust and easier‑to‑integrate services for citizens...
Hugging Face's Safetensors, Meta's Helion Join PyTorch Foundation
The PyTorch Foundation announced that Meta’s Helion DSL and Hugging Face’s Safetensors format have joined its portfolio of open‑source AI projects. Helion provides a domain‑specific language for writing custom machine‑learning kernels, while Safetensors delivers a fast, secure tensor serialization method....
GitHub Admits It Needs "Deep Architectural Work" As Outages Persist
GitHub has experienced a series of high‑profile outages over the past few months, prompting senior leadership to acknowledge systemic reliability gaps. The company’s senior vice president of platform engineering said the platform requires "deep architectural work" to address scaling bottlenecks...
UK’s Biggest Police Force Gears up for £1 Billion ERP Overhaul, Swaps SI for SI, Oracle for Oracle
The Metropolitan Police has awarded DXC a contract worth up to £1 bn ($1.3 bn) to replace its aging ERP platform, P‑SOP, with Oracle Fusion SaaS. The legacy system, implemented in 2015, relies on 55 secondary interfaces and has already cost the...
Anthropic's Zero Day Machine "Mythos" Triggers Hype, Criticism
Anthropic announced Mythos, an unreleased frontier model it says can automatically uncover zero‑day software vulnerabilities far beyond its Opus 4.6 system. The company claims the model’s potency is so high it cannot be released publicly yet. Critics argue the assertions lack...
Google Makes It Easier for PyTorch Users to Switch to Its Own AI Chips
Google officially unveiled TorchTPU, a native PyTorch backend for its Tensor Processing Units, aiming to simplify migration from NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem. Engineering lead Lee Howes highlighted the mature compiler stack and production‑grade reliability of TPUs as key advantages. The initiative...
UK Eyes Deeper “Sovereign” Space Surveillance Capabilities
The United Kingdom is advancing its sovereign space agenda by initiating a procurement process for a new space‑surveillance radar system, with a possible deployment in Antarctica. The effort aims to bolster the nation’s ability to track low‑Earth‑orbit objects and protect...
Trump Eyes $700m Cut for Already Depleted CISA
The White House, under President Trump, is proposing a $700 million cut to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) budget, targeting its anti‑misinformation initiatives. CISA’s funding is already strained, with recent appropriations leaving the agency operating at a deficit. The...
Google's New Apache-Licensed Open Models Have Devs Excited
Google announced a suite of new large language models released under the Apache 2.0 license, marking a shift toward fully open‑source AI. The models deliver performance comparable to leading commercial offerings while allowing developers to run them on modest hardware....
Anthropic Signs Massive Deal with Google and Broadcom for More Compute as Devs Hit Limits
Anthropic has struck a multi‑year, multi‑billion‑dollar partnership with Google Cloud and Broadcom to dramatically expand its compute capacity. The deal will provision roughly 10,000 new TPUs and custom Broadcom AI chips, allowing the company to lift the recent restriction on...
Pyongyang, versus Nebraska?
North Korean state‑backed group UNC1069 infiltrated the popular Axios npm package, compromising two releases that were downloaded by millions of developers. Within three hours the malicious versions infected roughly 3% of cloud environments, according to cloud‑security firm Wiz. The breach...
STACKUP: The Stack's Weekly Tech Startups and Funding Wrap
The Stack’s weekly roundup spotlights a staggering $122 billion capital infusion into OpenAI, dwarfing even late‑stage Series G rounds. Smaller AI‑focused startups—AI SOC, orchestration platforms, and code‑review tools—also made headlines. Additionally, AI development platform Coder announced a $90 million Series C to accelerate growth....
MLPerf's New Inference Benchmarks Put NVIDIA on Top, But...
The MLPerf Inference v6.0 benchmark, released this month, evaluates AI inference workloads typical of modern data‑centre environments. NVIDIA’s Blackwell Ultra GPU emerged as the overall leader, topping the majority of the updated tests. AMD’s MI300X and Intel’s Gaudi 3 also posted...
"The Year of Surgical Refactors": $400 in Tokens Saves $500k in Annual Costs, Says Former Vibe-Code Sceptic
The article details how a new JSON query‑and‑transform language built in Go slashes latency and Kubernetes expenses. A modest $400 token purchase unlocked roughly $500,000 in annual cost savings, illustrating a high‑return refactor. The author, once skeptical of vibe‑code, now...
Kubernetes Is Finally Getting Rid of externalIPs
Kubernetes will remove the long‑standing externalIPs field in the upcoming v1.36 release, slated for the end of April. The change begins with deprecation warnings in the current version, giving operators time to adjust. ExternalIPs have been a frequent source of...
A Hitchhiker's Guide to RSAC: What You May Have Missed, From Post-Quantum to NSA Veterans
The RSA Conference (RSAC) highlighted a surge in post‑quantum cryptography initiatives, with several vendors unveiling prototype algorithms and migration roadmaps. Former NSA cyber experts presented new threat‑intel platforms that blend AI with traditional analytics, aiming to shorten detection cycles. Cloud‑native...
Google GAs New Ransomeware Protections for Drive, 14x Improvement From Beta
Google announced a new ransomware protection suite for Google Drive that leverages advanced AI to scan and block malicious files before they reach users. The service delivers a 14‑times improvement in detection rates compared with the previous beta program, while...
Nike Cuts Tech Roles, Continues IT Efficiency Drive After Finops Wins
Nike announced continued IT efficiency measures, cutting additional technology roles after a $230 million severance bill tied to recent supply‑chain and tech layoffs. The company dismissed its chief technology officer in January and placed the new chief operating officer in charge...
UK Council Halves Network Contract Cost After Four-Way Contest
One of the UK's largest local authorities is implementing a new enterprise network with a revised budget of £29 million (approximately $37 million), roughly half of its original estimate. The cost reduction was secured after a competitive four‑way tender that attracted multiple...
China's Chipmakers Are Reportedly in Triage Mode Ahead of Expected Helium Supply Cliff
China’s semiconductor fabs are entering a triage phase as helium supplies threaten to dry up by late April. The shortage stems from Qatar, which provides roughly one‑third of the world’s helium, halting output after Iranian drone attacks on the Ras...
No More Docx: Open Source Will Be the Mandatory Standard for German Gov
Germany’s federal government announced a sweeping mandate that all public‑sector software must be open source, effectively ending the use of proprietary suites such as Microsoft Office. The decree, slated for full implementation by 2027, includes a €2 billion (≈$2.2 billion) transition fund...
Europe's AI Hope Mistral Lands $830m in Debt, Days After Open-Sourcing Text-to-Speech Contender
Mistral, the French‑based AI startup hailed as Europe’s next big AI player, closed an $830 million debt financing round. The funding came just days after the company open‑sourced its new text‑to‑speech (TTS) model, signaling a shift toward a free‑model, paid‑service strategy....
'The Missing Piece' For Automating Patching Containers at Scale
Container security teams are grappling with the complexity of patching container images at scale, often stalled by tangled dependency trees and coordination across multiple teams. A new automation framework, dubbed the "missing piece," integrates vulnerability scanning, dependency resolution, and rollout...
“Sleeper Cells” In Telcos Seen Using Novel New BPFdoor Malware
Researchers have identified a novel malware called BPFdoor that exploits the Linux kernel’s eBPF subsystem to filter packets at kernel level, evading firewalls, IDS and deep packet inspection. The threat has been observed operating as “sleeper cells” within telecommunications networks,...
F5, Breached by an APT Last Year, Says BIG-IP APM Exploited
F5’s BIG‑IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vulnerability CVE‑2025‑53521 is being actively exploited, granting unauthenticated remote code execution. Attackers can disable SELinux, write in‑memory webshells, and seize control of authentication and VPN services used by Fortune 500 firms. The exploit follows a...
Anthropic Is Officially Running on Azure, Completing Its Hyperscaler Set
Anthropic, the AI startup behind Claude, announced it is now running its models on Microsoft Azure, joining Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud to cover all major hyperscalers. The move gives Anthropic access to Azure’s AI‑optimized GPU clusters and deepens...
The Cluster Management Strategy that Helped Pinterest Shave Millions Off Its Compute Bill
Pinterest reduced its compute expenses by re‑architecting how it moves workloads across Kubernetes clusters. The company built a central scheduler that dynamically shifts jobs between on‑prem, cloud, and spot‑instance environments based on real‑time demand. Predictive scaling and workload profiling let...
Copilot to Train on GitHub, Security Agents Comes Free(ish) to 365 E5
Microsoft announced that GitHub Copilot will continue training on publicly available GitHub code, but enterprise customers are excluded from contributing data to the model. At the same time, Microsoft 365 E5 subscribers will receive Microsoft’s security agents enabled by default...
Google's New Memory Breakthrough Is Moving Chip Markets - and Could Transform AI
Google introduced TurboQuant, an algorithm that dramatically reduces the working memory needed for vector quantisation while preserving model accuracy. The technique cuts inference memory requirements, leading to lower latency and energy use. Early tests show up to 40 % cost savings...
How Morgan Stanley Uses GitOps to Manage 500 Production Kubernetes Clusters
Morgan Stanley has deployed a GitOps workflow powered by Flux to operate 500 production Kubernetes clusters, hosting roughly 100,000 containers on 2,000 nodes. The bank needed a unified, auditable process to meet stringent regulatory and security mandates while scaling its...
Locals Object to $14 Billion British Neocloud Latest Plans, Nscale Pushes On
Nscale is moving forward with a £14 billion (approximately $17.5 billion) neocloud data‑centre project in the United Kingdom despite a local planning committee’s objection. The committee demanded formal assurances that the facility would not overload the regional electricity grid. Nscale has signaled...
Security Researchers Are in the Last-Chance Saloon to Save Their Jobs From AI
At the BSides security conference in San Francisco, former HackerOne chief policy officer Katie Moussouris warned that AI‑driven automation threatens the jobs of security researchers. She stressed that vulnerability detection still relies on human intuition and expertise. Moussouris, who launched...
Attackers Keep Spinning up VMs to Hide From EDR. What's the Answer?
Hackers are increasingly launching QEMU virtual machines at system startup to conceal malicious activity from endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools. Microsoft observed this method in recent attacks on exposed SolarWinds Web Help Desk instances, where a scheduled task creates...
STACKUP: The Stack's Weekly Tech Startups and Funding Wrap
The Stack’s weekly roundup highlights a surge of AI‑driven activity, featuring two startups that crossed the $1 billion valuation threshold to become unicorns. Two former Palantir engineers launched new companies, adding to the talent‑driven momentum. A flood of AI automation tools—from...
Clockwise's Team Joins Salesforce, Sunsetting Platform as They Go
Clockwise, the AI‑driven calendar assistant founded in 2016, announced its staff will join Salesforce and the service will close on March 27. Users have a one‑week window to migrate their data before the platform is sunset. The move comes a...
Oracle Pushes Emergency Fusion Middleware Patch
Oracle released an out‑of‑band emergency patch for a critical pre‑authentication remote code execution vulnerability (CVE‑2026‑21992) affecting Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Web Services Manager. The flaw, located in the Fusion Middleware REST and security components, is easily exploitable and resembles...
Checkout.com CPO on What’s Next for the Payments Company that Processed $300bn Last Year
Checkout.com processed over $300 bn in e‑commerce volume in 2025 and posted its first full‑year profit, cementing its position as a leading enterprise‑focused PSP. Chief Product Officer Meron Colbeci said the firm will now make measured bets on three growth pillars: agentic...
EU Sanctions and CISA Warnings: Iran's Cyber Attacks Are Evolving
Iran’s cyber‑espionage groups are shifting toward modular, file‑less malware and supply‑chain compromises, making detection harder. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued new alerts describing increased targeting of critical infrastructure and cloud services. Meanwhile, the European Union’s recent...
AMD Keeping Samsung Close Amid Memory Shortage
AMD has entered a strategic agreement with Samsung to secure next‑generation HBM4 memory amid a broader industry shortage. The partnership aims to lock in supply for AMD's upcoming AI‑focused GPUs, addressing concerns raised after the company warned of potential shortages...
7 Tech Companies Worth Trillions Pledge $12.5m to Open Source Security
Seven trillion‑valued tech giants—including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple, IBM, and Oracle—have jointly pledged $12.5 million to bolster open‑source security. The grant program will fund projects that help maintainers filter out low‑quality, AI‑generated bug reports and prioritize genuine vulnerabilities. By creating...
UK's New Supercomputer Is Coming 13 Months Too Late, NAO Report
The National Audit Office reports that the United Kingdom’s next‑generation supercomputer will miss its original 2026 launch by roughly 13 months, now expected in early 2027. The delay stems primarily from prolonged government funding approvals and procurement bottlenecks. The project,...
4 KVM Vendors, 9 Vulns – Including an Unfixed CVSS 9.8
Researchers at Eclypsium uncovered nine security flaws across consumer‑grade IP KVM devices from four vendors, including two critical vulnerabilities rated CVSS 9.8 and 8.8 that remain unpatched. The affected products range from single‑port, $30 units popular with homelab enthusiasts to...
Alibaba Just Launched an Enterprise Agent Platform, and a Whole Token Business Around It
Alibaba Cloud has introduced an enterprise agent platform designed to run multiple AI agents securely on real‑world workloads. The platform emphasizes document editing and workflow automation, and is paired with a token‑based business model that charges per agent interaction. Tokens...
Hackers Turned a Compromised Npm Package Into Full AWS Admin Access in 72 Hours
Security researchers reported that a maliciously altered npm package was used to obtain full AWS administrative privileges within just 72 hours. The attackers leveraged the compromised library to enumerate S3 buckets, terminate production EC2 and RDS instances, and decrypt application...
Exclusive: Nomura Appoints Tokyo-Based CIO as Patrick Eltridge Leaves
Nomura Holdings, Japan’s largest investment bank, announced that Akio Hori will assume the role of group chief information officer in April, succeeding Patrick Elridge who will leave on March 31. Hori is based in Tokyo, highlighting a shift toward domestic...
How to Defend Against Recruitment as the Attack Surface
Recruitment of software engineers is emerging as a critical attack surface, with nation‑state actors—most notably North Korea—exploiting new hires to infiltrate vulnerable systems. These insiders often receive deep privileges, allowing rapid lateral movement and data exfiltration. The article outlines a...
