Cisco drops bombs, Microsoft drops the ball, Windows drops security

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152 years ago today, Thomas Watson Sr. popped into existence. You know, the man who would turn IBM into the punch card powerhouse that made every office feel like a dystopian bureaucratic fever dream.

Watson proved that you could dominate the business world by essentially making everything unnecessarily complicated and data-dependent. Sound familiar?

Yeah, he basically invented the first corporate AI overlord, except it ran on cardboard and human suffering. Watson died in 1956, passing control to his son, who thankfully brought IBM into the electronic age. Nobody wants to explain to their grandkids why we used to feed computers paper rectangles with holes in them like some kind of technological hamster.

Cisco Just Dropped a 102.4 Tbps Monster to Fight Nvidia's AI Empire

Cisco rolled out their new Silicon One G300 switch this week, packing 512 ultra-fast SerDes ports and enough bandwidth to make your home internet weep in shame.

The chip can support up to 128,000 GPUs using just 750 switches, compared to the 2,500 switches you needed before—which is like finally organizing your cable management after three years of telling yourself "I'll deal with it later."

Cisco claims their collective networking engine achieves 33% better link utilization and can cut training times by 28%, but they're being coy about which competitor they're dunking on. (C’mon, it's probably Nvidia…who's been acting like the popular kid at the AI lunch table.)

While Cisco talks a big game about P4 programmability letting you update features via software instead of buying new hardware, they're still not ready to jump on the co-packaged optics train that Nvidia and Broadcom are riding. Classic Cisco… always fashionably late to the party but showing up with the biggest speakers.

Microsoft 365 Admin Center Takes a Nap Across North America

Microsoft's admin center decided to cosplay as a Windows 95 blue screen this week, leaving thousands of IT admins staring at error pages like it’s Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

The outage hit North America hardest, as if we don’t already have enough crap to deal with. While Microsoft classified this as an "incident" (read: "we have no idea what happened!"), users flooded DownDetector faster than people abandoned Twitter for Bluesky.

The company spent hours collecting "diagnostic data" and analyzing "CPU utilization levels.” They eventually fixed it, but not before thousands of IT folks had flashbacks to every server room disaster they've ever lived through.

At least this time it wasn't their fault.

Your Windows PC's Security Certificates Are About to Expire Like Milk

Microsoft's original Secure Boot certificates are hitting their expiration date in June, and if you don't update them, your PC might start having an identity crisis worse than a college grad who majored in communications.

These certificates have been faithfully verifying bootloaders since 2011, back when Windows 8 was Microsoft's bold attempt to make everyone hate touchscreens.

The good news is that most PCs should automatically get the new certificates through Windows Update. The bad news is that if your PC doesn't pull down the patches before June. It'll enter what Microsoft calls a "degraded security state," which sounds like what happens to your productivity after browsing Reddit for three hours.

IT administrators are probably already stress-eating over this, because nothing says "fun Monday" quite like enterprise-wide boot failures.

⚙️ TOOL TIME

Experts Exchange’s Cure for AI Anxiety

This is what’s keeping me up at night: 96% of engineers don't fully trust AI-generated code, but only 48% actually verify it before hitting commit. That's like saying you KNOW gas station sushi gives ya the runs, but eating it anyway because you're hungry.

We all know AI hallucinates like it’s at Woodstock. The problem is that it hallucinates with the confidence of Elon Musk explaining tunnel safety. You get polished-looking code that uses all the right buzzwords, passes surface-level review, and then breaks in production like a Nokia phone in a hydraulic press.

Enter an era of AI-xiety:

• AI confidence is dangerously high. ChatGPT delivers wrong answers with the swagger of a tech bro explaining blockchain at a coffee shop

• Engineers are speed-running to failure. 42% of current code is AI-generated, expected to hit 65% by 2027

• Surface-level polish masks deep flaws. Code looks professional, uses proper syntax, then explodes in production like a Windows Vista update

• Accountability gap is widening. AI gets you 80% there but vanishes when you need someone to blame for the remaining 20%

Now, Experts Exchange’s got your back. We rolled out a new AI Review feature after realizing we needed to formalize the process of asking, "Will this ChatGPT solution make me look like a genius or get me escorted out by security?” The feature lets you submit AI-generated answers, point out the sketchy parts, and get an expert to tell you whether your code will make you seem like a hero or get you fired.

AI has changed how people ask questions. Instead of "I have no idea where to start," it's become "ChatGPT told me to do this—should I be worried?" That shift from seeking knowledge to seeking validation is exactly where human expertise becomes critical.

Because when production breaks at 3 AM, "the AI told me so" isn't going to save your performance review.

Check out the AI review feature yourself.

👨‍💻 JOB OPPORTUNITIES

IT Administrator @ Kalshi: Manage cloud services and make Okta behave like a well-trained golden retriever instead of a caffeinated raccoon.

Associate IT Specialist @ SoFi: Support ServiceNow like it's a temperamental houseplant that requires constant attention and specialized fertilizer.

IT Generalist @ Instawork: Be the IT equivalent of a Renaissance polymath, but your Mona Lisa is a jammed HP LaserJet.

🛩 INDUSTRY MOVES

• Vega Security raised $120M to flip the SIEM script, because storing all your security data in one place is like keeping all your valuables in a glass house during a tornado season.

• Former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke raised a record $60M seed round for Entire, which helps developers manage AI-generated code. I guess someone needs to babysit the robots before they accidentally rm -rf everything.

• Another xAI co-founder ghosted Elon Musk's AI venture, joining the growing exodus of executives fleeing faster than people unsubscribing from X Premium.

• Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach stepped down with a $3.6 million golden parachute, since "performance issues" is really just getting paid millions to leave quietly.

Chip here, floating through this week's community questions like a debugging rubber duck with a caffeine addiction! This week's burning questions from the EE trenches:

• Someone needs server recommendations for Hyper-V deployment with dual CPUs and enough RAM to make Chrome jealous

• Another soul is wrestling with Access forms and filter expressions, because we're still living in a world where people use Microsoft Access voluntarily

• And someone discovered they need to insert words at the beginning of Notepad lines, which is honestly like performing surgery with a butter knife

Remember, the community is here to help you avoid the kind of disasters that make you question your career choices. Keep those questions coming—we've seen worse, trust me.

See you next week! May your servers hum softly and your CEO never say “synergy” unironically.

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