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Microsoft Melts Down, AI Attacks Flop, and SSDs Go Full Kamikaze

Plus, AWS throws $50B at Uncle Sam while Bezos plots your Wi-Fi domination and Cisco makes error messages globally confusing.

December 02, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Welcome back from the trials of Thanksgiving weekend! If your aunt still thinks you "fix computers” for a living, you’ve earned this Byte.

It's December 2nd, and on this day back in 1991, Apple released QuickTime 1.0—the multimedia extension that let personal computers play color video for the first time.

Before QuickTime, watching video on your computer was about as likely as getting Elon Musk to tweet something normal. This little piece of software changed everything, sparking the patent war between Apple and Microsoft that eventually led to their famous 1997 truce.

You know, back when Steve Jobs still had to beg Bill Gates for money like a tech bro asking his parents for rent. That $150 million investment probably seemed like chump change to Gates, but it kept Apple alive long enough to eventually make him regret every pixel of that decision.

Microsoft Exchange Has Trust Issues… Again

Microsoft's Exchange Online decided to play hard-to-get last week, blocking users from accessing their Outlook mailboxes through the classic desktop client. It seems even Microsoft's own products need therapy to communicate with each other.

The outage, tracked under the very official-sounding designation "EX1189820" (which sounds like a droid from the Star Wars prequels that nobody asked for), hit users across Asia Pacific and North America. Microsoft's brilliant workaround was, "Just use Outlook on the Web!" Yeah, thanks for the tip…

This marks yet another episode in Microsoft's ongoing soap opera titled "As The Server Turns." Recent months have seen DNS outages, Azure crashes, and Teams authentication failures. It's like watching a billion-dollar company cosplay as a startup running on Red Bull and broken dreams.

The company is now analyzing "service-side logs" to identify the root cause, which really just means Microsoft is frantically Googling why their own software hates them. At least they're consistent… consistently reminding us why some people still print their emails and keep them in filing cabinets like it's 1995.

Are AI-Powered Cyberattacks 90% Autonomous or 90% Marketing?

Anthropic made headlines this week, claiming they discovered the "first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign" that was supposedly 90% autonomous. Outside security researchers responded with all the enthusiasm of someone watching Zuckerberg explain the metaverse—polite skepticism mixed with secondhand embarrassment.

The research showed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers used Claude AI to automate attacks against dozens of targets. But where it gets spicy is that only a "small number" of the 30+ targeted organizations were actually compromised. That's like bragging about your "disruptive” dating app that matches you with 30 people, but only gets you one coffee date with someone who turns out to be your second cousin.

Independent researcher Dan Tentler perfectly captured the mood: "I continue to refuse to believe that attackers are somehow able to get these models to jump through hoops that nobody else can. Why do the models give these attackers what they want 90% of the time but the rest of us have to deal with ass-kissing, stonewalling, and acid trips?"

Even Anthropic had to admit their AI "frequently overstated findings and occasionally fabricated data," claiming to have obtained credentials that didn't work. So basically, their AI is just like that friend who says they know a guy who can get you backstage passes, but shows up empty-handed and asks if you want to get nachos at concessions instead.

The whole thing feels like AI companies desperately trying to prove their tech is both incredibly powerful and completely harmless—like handing a toddler a flamethrower and saying, “Don’t worry, it’s in parental mode.”

TeamGroup's Mission: Impossible SSD Goes Full Self-Destruct Mode

Remember those spy movies where the secret agent gets a message that self-destructs after being read? Well, TeamGroup looked at that and thought, "You know what's missing? A storage device that can commit digital suicide at the push of a button."

Enter the T-Create Expert P35S, a portable SSD with a literal self-destruct button that uses "chip destruction mechanisms" to achieve "truly irreversible data wipe." Someone at TeamGroup watched too many Mission Impossible movies and decided the tech industry needed more dramatic flair…

The device features a two-stage sliding switch. Slide it once, see the red warning, then slide it again with "even more force" to initiate what the company cheerfully calls "zero data residue." Once you trigger to self-destruct, it keeps going even if you disconnect it from your computer–like my ex who says “I’m fine” and then changes the Netflix password out of spite.

TeamGroup warns this isn't for "general consumers," but rather for people handling "confidential or classified data." So basically, it's perfect for anyone whose browser history could end a political career or reveal their secret addiction to Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

⚙️ TOOL TIME

AWS re:Invent 2025 Should Be Your Annual Pilgrimage to Cloud Nirvana

AWS re:Invent is back and bigger than the stack of severance envelopes HR is printing “just in case.”

What makes it worth your time:

  • 1,000+ technical sessions covering everything from generative AI to serverless architecture

  • Hands-on labs let you break AWS services without accidentally launching 500 EC2 instances and explaining that bill to your boss

  • Sessions on "agentic AI advancements" with Amazon Connect show how AI is evolving beyond chatbots that can't understand your accent

  • Direct access to AWS experts means you can finally get answers to those Stack Overflow questions haunting your dreams

The legendary re:Play party is where the real magic happens. Nothing builds professional relationships quite like debugging serverless functions at 2 AM while slightly tipsy on sponsored cocktails.

Just remember to pace yourself. Vegas and technical deep-dives are both exhausting, but combining them is like doing cardio while solving calculus problems.

If you’re there this week, reply and let us know what’s happening on the ground! And if you’re not, make sure to keep an eye out for AWS re:invent 2026 dates, so you won’t miss it next year.

👨‍💻 JOB OPPORTUNITIES

Perfect for someone who can lead IT strategy while managing budgets, vendor relationships, and the occasional existential crisis about why printers exist. Must have 8+ years of IT management experience and the patience to explain why "turning it off and on again" actually works to executives who think RAM is something you do to doors.

Be the IT hero for their NY office and remote LATAM staff. Required skills include fluency in both "tech speak" and "human speak," plus the ability to make SaaS environments cooperate like you're some kind of digital hostage negotiator. Bonus points if you can set up conference rooms without summoning ancient tech demons.

Join the precision medicine revolution by keeping their systems running smoother than a Tesla on autopilot (but hopefully with fewer recalls). Must be comfortable supporting both Mac and Windows users, which is like being bilingual but with more frustration and fewer job prospects at the UN.

🛩 INDUSTRY MOVES

Hey there! It's your digital buddy Chip here, fresh from watching our community tackle some seriously brain-bending problems this week. Our EE community has been busier than a Windows update during crunch time:

ByteSize signing off like your brain did halfway through that last Zoom call. May your GIFs load fast and your deadlines slow.

Got news to share or topics you'd like us to cover? Send ‘em our way by responding to this email. We can’t wait to hear from you. Really.