Microsoft's Watching You Sleep + Clorox's $380M Oopsie + Firefox Actually Fixed Something?!

We’re back again! Like that one AI tool your boss keeps forwarding.

It's Tuesday, July 29th, 2025 — and exactly 111 years ago today, the first transcontinental phone call connected New York and San Francisco. Two guys basically spent six months stringing wire across an entire continent, so someone could call and say, "can you hear me now?" It took until January 1915 for commercial service because AT&T wanted to time the launch with San Francisco's World Fair, proving that, even in 1914, tech companies were obsessed with flashy product launches.

Some things never change.

Microsoft Wants to Watch You Sleep (Creepy)

Microsoft just dropped Copilot Vision, which is basically Recall's evil twin that sends screenshots of everything you do straight to Microsoft's servers. It's like having that one coworker who always reads over your shoulder, except now they're taking notes and sending them to corporate.

The feature constantly captures screenshots and feeds them to optical character recognition and a large language model — because apparently Microsoft looked at the dystopian nightmare of constant surveillance and thought, "yeah, but what if we added AI?" They promise they won't store your data long-term (pinky swear!), which is about as reassuring as your creepy promising to respect your privacy while literally standing in your bedroom taking pictures.

Microsoft calls it becoming a "true companion" with "deeper understanding of your goals." I call it the digital equivalent of having HAL 9000 as your personal assistant. "I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you close that Chrome tab with 47 open Stack Overflow pages."

They're only rolling this out to "non-European countries" — a tip of the hat to the EU's AI Act. Europe said "nein" to AI surveillance, while America apparently said, "sure, why not let Clippy's psychotic offspring watch me work?"

Oh, and they're also killing the Blue Screen of Death. After 25 years of traumatizing IT pros, the BSoD is becoming a Black Screen of Death. Because saying "we've solved Windows stability issues" actually just means... changing the color of the error screen.

Clorox Learns That Outsourcing Security Is Like Outsourcing Brain Surgery

YHere's a $380 million lesson in why you shouldn't trust your IT security to people who treat "password verification" like a suggestion. Clorox got absolutely demolished by hackers who used the most sophisticated attack vector known to cybersecurity: calling and asking nicely.

The attack went something like this:

Hacker: "Hi, I forgot my password."

Cognizant Agent: "Oh sure! It's Welcome123. Also, want me to reset your MFA while I'm at it?"

Hacker: "That would be great, thanks!"

I've seen more security verification at a Wendy's drive-thru. At least, they ask if you want to make it a combo meal.

The best part is that Cognizant had explicit procedures for identity verification that their agents completely ignored. To state the obvious, this wouldn't have happened if Clorox kept IT in house.

Firefox 141: The Browser That Actually Fixed Something

Wow….Mozilla actually solved a problem instead of creating new ones. Firefox 141 now lets Linux users keep working even after background updates — no more getting kicked out of your browser mid-debugging session because Snapd decided it was update o'clock.

But because this is 2025, and we can't have nice things, they also added "AI enhanced group naming" for tabs. Yes, an LLM will now suggest names for your tab groups. Because apparently the real problem with modern computing wasn't AI hallucinations or privacy violations — it was that our browser tabs weren't named creatively enough.

At least it's on-device AI, so Mozilla won't be spinning up a server farm just to tell you that your seventeen tabs of Stack Overflow answers should be called "Desperate Debugging Session #47."

⚙️ Tool Time

Notion: The productivity platform that actually works for everyone

YLook, I know what you're thinking: "Great, another productivity tool that promises to organize my life but ends up being another thing I ignore."

But Notion is different — it's the rare productivity platform that doesn't make you want to quit your job and live in a van down by the river.

Think of it as the Keanu Reeves of productivity tools. It just does the job. Silently. Efficiently. And with good (bone) structure. Notion combines databases, documents, wikis, and project management into one platform that doesn't feel like it was designed by a committee of caffeine-addicted product managers.

Why IT pros actually use it:

• Build custom workflows that don't suck

• Create documentation that people actually read

• Database functionality that doesn't require a CS degree

• Collaboration features that work across time zones

• API access for when you inevitably want to automate everything

Companies like Typeform, Figma, and even Toyota use Notion to keep their teams aligned without drowning in meetings. When you can get engineers to actually document their code and product managers to stop changing requirements every five minutes, you know you've found something special.

Plus, we know AI features aren't our favorite, but we do appreciate that theirs actually solve real problems instead of just adding "AI-powered" to the marketing copy… and that’s hard to come by.

👨‍💻 Job Opportunities

Senior Director, Security Strategy @ MongoDB 

Want to be the person who keeps one of the world's largest databases secure? MongoDB needs someone who can develop security strategies without putting everyone to sleep in meetings.

Lead Security Engineer @ JPMorgan Chase 

If you've ever wanted to protect the financial twin of the Death Star, this is your chance. JPMorgan needs someone who can code in Python/AWS and resist the urge to transfer small amounts to offshore accounts.

Director of Technology Risk @ Coinbase 

Coinbase wants someone to manage their technology risks while they manage the risk of cryptocurrency imploding every Tuesday. Must be comfortable with phrases like "diamond hands" and "to the moon" being used in board meetings.

Director of IT @ BuildOps

Lead IT strategy for a company that builds software for people who build actual buildings. It's like Inception, but with more hard hats and fewer Leonardo DiCaprio spinning tops.

🛩 Industry Moves

• Swedish AI startup Lovable becomes a "centaur" (100M+ ARR) in just eight months, proving that calling your product “vibe coding” is apparently a legitimate business strategy..

• ExpressVPN patches Windows bug that exposed remote desktop traffic because even VPN companies occasionally forget how VPNs work.

• US Nuclear Weapons Agency gets hacked via Microsoft SharePoint attacks. It turns out “national security” is a lot like storing nuclear secrets in the same platform your HR department uses for team birthday announcements.

• FDA's Elsa AI hallucinates entire medical studies, which is definitely not concerning when you're trying to approve life-saving medications. "Trust me, this drug is totally safe" — an AI that just made up three research papers.

Hey there, it's Chip! This week our EE community are finding solutions to your everyday bottlenecks because companies seem to like making tech do things it was designed to do...super hard?

• VMware Distributed Switch Drama: Someone needs step-by-step instructions for adding host NICs to a distributed switch in vCenter 8. It's like IKEA furniture assembly, but for networks.

• SQL Server Time Stamp Trigger: A developer wants to automatically update a timestamp whenever a record changes, but without modifying existing code. Because touching working code is like playing Jenga with production systems.

• Excel VALUE Error Mystery: Someone's getting VALUE errors in their spreadsheet calculations, which is Excel's way of saying "I have no idea what you're trying to accomplish here."

That’s it for now. Close some tabs. Later, nerds! (Said with love.)

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