5 April 2026 • 5 min read
ZYMP Tech News — 5 April 2026
NVIDIA Neural Texture Compression Reduces VRAM from 6.5 GB to 970 MB
HARDWARE
NVIDIA has demonstrated a new neural texture compression technology capable of reducing video memory consumption from 6.5 GB down to just 970 MB — an 85 per cent reduction — with no perceptible loss in visual quality. The technique uses neural networks to compress and decompress textures in real time, potentially allowing games and creative applications to run on GPUs with significantly less VRAM than currently required.
Intel has also shown its own competing texture set neural compression technology, claiming up to 18 times smaller texture sets. The parallel developments from both major GPU manufacturers signal that neural compression could become a standard feature in next-generation graphics pipelines, fundamentally changing how memory budgets are allocated in game development and content creation.
LinkedIn Secretly Scanned Browsers for Over 6,000 Extensions, Report Reveals
PRIVACY
A security report dubbed “BrowserGate” has revealed that LinkedIn was secretly injecting code into visitors’ browsers to scan for over 6,000 installed Chrome extensions and harvest hardware data, all without user knowledge or consent. The findings, first reported by Cybernews and corroborated by Tom’s Hardware and The Next Web, have triggered widespread privacy concerns across the professional networking platform’s user base.
The scripts were reportedly designed to detect which extensions users had installed, potentially enabling LinkedIn to build detailed profiles of user behaviour and tool preferences. Security researchers noted that the scanning was particularly concerning because LinkedIn, as a Microsoft-owned platform handling professional data, holds a higher duty of transparency. Neither LinkedIn nor Microsoft has issued a formal response addressing the specific claims at the time of publication.
Google Launches Gemma 4 Open AI Model Under Apache 2.0 Licence
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Google has released Gemma 4, its latest family of open AI models, under the widely used Apache 2.0 licence — a significant shift from the more restrictive custom licence applied to previous Gemma versions. Google describes Gemma 4 as “byte for byte, the most capable open model” it has released, with variants powerful enough to run frontier-level AI on a single GPU.
The move to Apache 2.0 gives developers far greater freedom to use, modify, and distribute the models in commercial applications without the licence concerns that previously limited enterprise adoption. AMD has also announced day-zero support for Gemma 4 across its processors and GPUs, ensuring the models are immediately accessible across a broad hardware ecosystem. The release positions Google as a more serious competitor to Meta’s Llama series in the open-weight model space.
Microsoft Says Copilot Is for Entertainment Purposes Only
BIG TECH
Microsoft’s own terms of service now describe its Copilot AI assistant as intended for “entertainment purposes only,” advising users not to rely on it for important advice or decisions. The disclaimer comes despite the company spending years aggressively pushing Copilot to both consumers and enterprise customers as a productivity tool integrated across Windows, Office 365, and its broader software ecosystem.
The unusual positioning has drawn criticism from industry observers who note the disconnect between marketing Copilot as a transformative business tool while legally classifying it as entertainment. Reports from The Next Web and Tom’s Hardware suggest the classification may be a liability mitigation strategy as adoption has reportedly slowed, with enterprise customers questioning the return on investment of AI features added at premium subscription tiers.
Samsung Messages to Be Discontinued in July as Google Messages Takes Over
SOFTWARE
Samsung has officially confirmed that its Samsung Messages app will be discontinued in July 2026, completing a transition that has been under way since the company began shifting users to Google Messages as the default messaging client on newer Galaxy devices. Users currently relying on Samsung Messages will have approximately 12 weeks to migrate their conversations and settings to Google Messages.
The move consolidates the Android messaging ecosystem further around Google’s RCS-based platform and eliminates one of the last remaining Samsung-specific alternatives to Google’s core services. Industry analysts view the discontinuation as part of Samsung’s broader strategy to reduce duplication with Google’s apps and focus resources on its own differentiated services, including the Galaxy AI features now central to the Galaxy S26 lineup.
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