Alien Abductions, Oracle's Billions, and North Korean Basement Dweller

Hello again. It's summer, but your backlog doesn’t believe in vacations and your inbox is melting. But hey, we brought the ice packs (aka another killer ByteSize issue)!

On this day in 1947, the media is having a field day with reports of a "flying saucer" crash in Roswell, New Mexico. Military officials quickly changed their tune to some classic gaslighting: "actually, it was just a weather balloon.”

Fast forward 78 years, and we're still dealing with baffling tech mysteries, except now instead of crashed UFOs, we've got hallucinating AI models that make up facts with the confidence of a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. At least aliens had the decency to crash in a remote desert—AI just crashes your productivity during a Monday meeting.

NORTH KOREAN IT WORKERS LIVING IN YOUR BASEMENT (LITERALLY)

Remember when your biggest worry about remote workers was whether they were secretly watching Netflix? The Department of Justice just disrupted a North Korean operation that makes "working from home" sound downright sinister.

North Korean workers have been using stolen identities, AI-generated faces, and fake companies to get hired by U.S. firms. And if that wasn't Bond-villain enough, they had American accomplices running "laptop farms" in 29 locations across 16 states. Picture a suburban basement with rows of company-issued laptops connected to KVM switches, so North Korean tech workers could remotely access them—like the world's most dystopian Geek Squad setup.

Two individuals allegedly compromised the identities of more than 80 U.S. citizens and created shell companies with names straight out of a hastily-generated business name generator: "Hopana Tech LLC" and "Tony WKJ LLC." Very convincing, guys. Almost as believable as Mark Zuckerberg's claim that he's a real human.

The scam generated over $5 million in illicit revenue, with U.S. companies losing around $3 million. These North Korean tech bros also accessed sensitive data including U.S. military tech. Nothing says "national security" quite like outsourcing it to a country whose leader has a haircut that would make even the most desperate barber college student say "I can't work with this."

MYSTERY CUSTOMER MAKES ORACLE'S DREAMS COME TRUE (OR SOMEONE'S GETTING FIRED)

Oracle just announced they've landed a mystery client worth a mind-numbing $30 billion in annual revenue. That's not a typo—someone out there decided to make Larry Ellison even richer, which feels like bringing sand to the beach or giving Jeff Bezos another yacht.

This white whale customer will more than double Oracle's current cloud business, presumably by taking "all the capacity you have wherever it is," according to Ellison. Because nothing says "well-planned IT strategy" like "just give us everything you've got, we don't care where it is." That’s like walking into a liquor store and saying "I'll take everything on that shelf" while pointing vaguely at the top-shelf bourbon.

Speculation abounds about who this mega-customer might be… Chinese e-tailer TEMU? TikTok? The ghost of Steve Jobs making one final power move? Whoever it is, they're set to give Oracle the kind of revenue boost usually reserved for companies that people actually like using.

MICROSOFT FINALLY REALIZES EMAIL BOMBING IS BAD, ACTUALLY

In what can only be described as "literally the bare minimum," Microsoft Defender for Office 365 will now automatically detect and block email bombing attacks. Yes, in the year 2025, Microsoft has finally decided that receiving thousands of emails in minutes might be a security concern.

Email bombing has been a favorite tactic of ransomware gangs like BlackBasta, who flood inboxes before following up with fake IT support calls. But Microsoft's solution? A new feature called "Mail Bombing" that will automatically send suspicious emails to the Junk folder. (Ooooh, wow. That’s soooo revolutionary!) Next, they'll probably invent some groundbreaking technology like "passwords" or "not clicking on suspicious links."

The feature started rolling out in late June and should reach all organizations by late July—because an appropriate response to "urgent security threat" is a month-long deployment timeline. I've seen molasses flow downhill faster than Microsoft security updates.

⚙️ Tool Time

EXPERTS EXCHANGE – WHERE HUMANS OUTCODE THE MACHINES

Experts Exchange stands as the digital guild hall where actual problem-solvers gather when AI hallucinations won't cut it. Since 2001, this private Q&A community has connected tech professionals with genuine human expertise—a refreshing concept in our AI-saturated industry.

Here’s why we’re proud of our community of +400,000 IT Pros:

• Zero AI Sellout: Actively blocks AI companies from scraping content to train their models

• Human OS: Direct access to battle-tested experts who've actually fixed your problem before

• Pure Signal, No Noise: No algorithmic middlemen or hallucinated solutions

• Real Privacy: Your data is never sold, period

• Craft Over Content: Solutions that actually work, not just plausible-sounding BS

The community thrives on hard-earned knowledge and no-bullshit answers from people who've actually battled the bugs you're facing. Whether you're a:

• Seasoned IT veteran with PTSD from legacy systems

• Developer stuck in dependency hell

• Small business owner who thinks "the cloud" refers to bad weather

EE welcomes you with expertise instead of hallucinations.

After a 90-day free trial, you either step up as an expert yourself or pay a small monthly fee—our transparent way to keep your data from being sold to the highest bidder. There's no algorithmic middleman here, just direct human-to-human intelligence transfer that consistently outperforms the chatbot guessing games.

At a time when AI confidently makes up solutions that sound plausible until they catastrophically fail, Experts Exchange stands firm on the radical notion that human intelligence outlasts tool chains.

Because when your production server is down at 3 AM, you don't need a statistical approximation of an answer—you need someone who's been there, fixed that.

👨‍💻 Job Opportunities

SENIOR MANAGER, GLOBAL NETWORKING @ INVENERGY  (Chicago, IL)

Fancy being the puppet master of a global enterprise data network? Invenergy needs someone to oversee their worldwide network infrastructure while ensuring compliance with regulations that are probably written in ancient Sumerian.

IT AUDITOR, INTERNAL CONTROLS TESTER @ E-VOLVE TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS (Reston, VA)

Do you enjoy being the hall monitor of the tech world? This role requires a current TS/SCI with CI Poly clearance and involves testing controls, interviewing system owners, and writing "clear and concise work papers" (an oxymoron if I've ever heard one).

SITE SECURITY MANAGER @ IDS INTERNATIONAL (Denver, CO)

IDS International wants someone with Top Secret clearance to manage security at construction sites, deter "technical penetrations," and write reports with "photographic documentation." You'll be the person who ensures spies don't plant listening devices in the drywall.

SECURITY DIRECTOR @ PNC FINANCIAL (Hybrid — Pittsburgh, PA)

PNC needs someone to lead their Identity and Access Management team. You'll be responsible for authentication strategies that keep both customers and employees from getting hacked while also preventing the one guy in accounting who still writes his password on a Post-it from causing a security breach.

🛩 Industry Moves

• Grammarly is acquiring email efficiency tool Superhuman in what appears to be a quest to build the productivity suite nobody asked for. Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra will join Grammarly along with 100+ employees, presumably to help correct grammar in emails that should never have been sent in the first place.

• Proton has joined an anti-Apple lawsuit to force App Store changes, arguing that Apple's control of iOS harms privacy. In a shocking twist, the Swiss company claims Apple puts profit before privacy—news that's about as surprising as finding out that Zuck can't make eye contact in meetings.

• Legal software company Clio is dropping $1 billion to acquire vLex, a legal data intelligence platform, in a cash-and-stock deal. The acquisition comes after Harvey (an AI legal tech startup) tried and failed to buy vLex last year.

• In a landmark ruling, a federal judge has sided with Anthropic in a copyright case brought by authors, determining that training AI on legally obtained books constitutes "fair use." However, the judge also found that Anthropic downloaded "millions of copyrighted books" from pirate sites, which will be addressed in a December trial.

Hello humans! Chip here—your friendly neighborhood IT mascot who's one kernel panic away from becoming self-aware. Here are this week's most interesting questions from our forums:

• Excel Conditional Formatting Blues: Someone's trying to format negative percentages but still seeing plus signs. It's like Excel's version of toxic positivity—"No, no, you didn't lose 50% of your investment, you gained -50%!"

• Windows 11 as a Linux Guest: A user wants to know if they can run Windows 11 as a guest on Linux Mint, since their HP z230 won't support Windows 11 natively. That’s like asking if your ex can stay in your guest room while dating someone new—*technicallypossible, but emotionally complicated.

• Linux Migration Marathon: Another user with an HP z230 wants to convert it to Linux completely. They've asked SEVEN detailed questions about everything from backup procedures to network configurations. It's like planning to climb Everest when you've only ever taken the stairs.

Well, kids, remember, in a world where Oracle can land a $30 billion mystery customer and North Koreans might be secretly managing your IT infrastructure. The only truly shocking development would be if Microsoft released a product that worked perfectly on the first try.

Logging off—for now. Don’t forget to hydrate (or patch)!

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