OpenAI Throws Shade, Microsoft Plays Guard, and Hackers Want Bread

It's February 4th, and HOT DAMN – are we serving up a double feature of tech history.

Facebook turns 20 today! (Still can't buy and down a Coors light, though). In 2004, a hoodie-wearing Harvard sophomore named Mark Zuckerberg launched "TheFacebook," from his Harvard dorm room, forever changing how we respond to 300 messages of "is this available?" when selling an old couch on FB Marketplace.

But that's not all – on this same day in 1997, Apple acquired NeXT for $427 million, bringing Steve Jobs back to the mothership.

Talk about a day that changed everything… erm, except maybe our productivity levels.

OpenAI Claims Someone Stole Their Stolen Data

This… feels like a soap opera written by ChatGPT: OpenAI is furious that DeepSeek might have stolen data that OpenAI originally... checks notes... stole from everyone else. It's like watching a pickpocket complain that someone lifted the wallet they've stolen.

DeepSeek managed to create a language model that matches OpenAI's capabilities while spending far less money and using older hardware.

Microsoft and OpenAI are now investigating whether DeepSeek improperly trained their R1 model on OpenAI's outputs, which is a bit like complaining someone copied your homework that you copied from someone else.

The irony is thicker than a stack of GPU servers, folks. OpenAI, a company that's been hoovering up data from across the internet without asking, is now upset that someone might be doing the same to them. It's almost poetic justice, if poetry was written by a neural network trained on corporate complaints.

Microsoft Edge Finally Gets Scareware Protection

Microsoft is rolling out a new “scareware blocker” for Edge that uses computer vision to detect those annoying pop-ups telling you your computer has 47,392 viruses (it doesn't). The tool, TechCrunch reports, specifically targets those full-screen panic-inducing pages that make your less tech-savvy relatives call you at 3 AM. When it spots potential scareware, it automatically kills the audio (goodbye, blaring alarm sounds), exits full-screen mode, and gives you a choice to proceed or nope right out of there.

The feature uses machine learning trained on thousands of real-world scam samples, and all analysis happens locally on your machine — no data sent to the cloud. Think of it as a TSA agent for your browser – but one that actually spots real threats (fake Windows error messages) instead of confiscating your water bottle. And no, the irony of Microsoft using AI to protect us from fake Microsoft warnings is not lost on us.

Want to help make it better? They're asking users to test it out and report any sneaky scams that slip through.

French Ransomware Gang Demands Payment in Baguettes

This is the most French cybercrime ever. It's so stereotypical French, it's borderline offensive.

The Hellcat ransomware group demanded Schneider Electric pay them $125,000 worth of baguettes. You read that right – baguettes.

After stealing 40GB of compressed data, these boulangerie-obsessed criminals decided to add a dash of humiliation to their extortion recipe. And they didn't stop there — they've since been on quite the spree, targeting government agencies, educational institutions, and energy sectors worldwide. Their most recent exploits? Trying to sell root access to a US university's server (with $5.6B in revenue) for a mere $1,500, and attempting to hawk access to an Iraqi city government's servers for just $300.

Here's the final kicker: According to the Register, they gained access to Schneider Electric through a zero-day vulnerability in their Atlassian Jira system — a reminder that even French-inspired humor can't mask the serious security implications.

It's unclear if Schneider Electric paid the ransom, but we'd love to see how one transfers 125,000 baguettes worth of cryptocurrency. Would that be on the painchain? (sorry, not sorry for the French bread pun.) Au revoir!

While our writer caffeinates for the next segment… Our friends at 1440 would love a word. Think of it as the perfect side dish to your ByteSize main course...

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⚙️ Tool Time

We recommend Obsidian.

This markdown-based note-taking app is like having a private Wikipedia that actually respects your privacy – your notes stay on your device, encrypted and offline-accessible, making it perfect for those "I definitely can't store this in the cloud" work projects.

Think of it as your personal knowledge Death Star, but instead of destroying planets, it helps you organize your thoughts.

Here's where it gets cool: It creates a visual graph of how your notes connect. Imagine if "A Beautiful Mind" met "Mr. Robot" but for your documentation needs. With over 200 community plugins and themes, you can transform it from a simple note-taking app into your personal mission control center.

Want a Kanban board? Done. Need a calendar widget? You got it. Want to write documentation that would make Linus Torvalds jealous? It's got you covered.

For those tired of having their notes scattered across seventeen different platforms (looking at you, combination of Notepad++, random .txt files, and that one OneNote notebook from 2019), Obsidian is your salvation. It uses plain text Markdown files, so your notes are future-proof and portable.

No proprietary formats, no vendor lock-in, no "please subscribe to access your own thoughts" nonsense. Plus, it's free for personal use, which is refreshing in a world where everything wants to subscribe you to a premium tier just to change the font color.

Do yourself a favor, and run – don't walk – over to download Obsidian.

👨‍💻 Job Opportunities

Senior AWS Cloud Engineer @ Genpact LLC (Remote)

Are you the Mother/Father of Dragons, but for cloud services? Can you command AWS resources like Daenerys commands her scaly children? Genpact needs your powers.

Part Time Technical Help Desk @ SAIC (Remote)

Are you basically Keanu Reeves in 'The Matrix' but for helping people find the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys? SAIC needs someone to work weekends and be the chosen one who can explain why the computer needs updates.

Senior Software Engineer @ DriveTime (Remote)

If you treat complex problems and API development like Sherlock treats mysteries and have 5+ years of making .NET your Watson, this role is elementary, my dear developer.

 🛩 Industry Moves

AI Haters Build Digital Tar Pits for CrawlersALT: How to Train Your AI (By Making It Very, Very Lost)

Independent developers are fighting back against aggressive AI crawlers with a deliciously devious new weapon called "Nepenthes" — digital tar pits designed to trap and poison AI crawlers that ignore robots.txt files. These traps feed the crawlers endless mazes of gibberish data, potentially increasing training costs and wasting AI companies' resources.

But here's where it gets wild: Only OpenAI's crawler has managed to escape these traps so far, while other major crawlers get stuck thrashing around for months. The creators are sharing their tools openly (so awesome), inspiring others to join the resistance against unauthorized data scraping.

TL;DR: It's like Home Alone for web crawlers — if Kevin McCallister was an 8-year-old with a computer science degree and a grudge against AI companies. We're here for it.

UK Says AWS and Microsoft Are Cloud Market Party Poopers

In "Things Everyone in Tech Already Knew But Now It's Official" news… The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has dropped a new report calling out AWS and Microsoft for their iron grip on Britain's £9 billion cloud market. (In other news, water is wet.)

Each company controls about 40% of UK customer spending, with the market growing 30% annually. The CMA says this duopoly is leading to higher costs, reduced innovation, and poorer service quality. Even Google, sitting in third place, can't get enough market share to make it a real three-way race. Technical and commercial barriers make it nearly impossible for customers to switch providers or for new players to enter the market.

TL;DR: It's like the cloud computing version of Westeros, with AWS and Microsoft as the Lannisters who won't let anyone else sit in the Red Keep's Small Council table.

💽 Data Upload

One more thing… The 21st Annual Expert Awards just dropped over on Experts Exchange! We’re really proud of all the tech experts who spend their time helping people solve tough problems - go check them out!

…And that's a wrap for this week's tech drama! In a world of AI drama and carb-based cybercrime, at least we can say we were here to witness it. Keep being awesome, keep being safe, and keep your breadboxes locked... just in case?

Enjoyed the news? Discuss over on Experts Exchange.

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