The Biden presidential administration might be winding down but thre are still some things that are making news. Yesterday the president proposed a new framework for the export of chips used to developer AI. The rules seek to limit exports of the chips to some 120 countries, including Mexico, Israel, and Switzerland. The rules appear to be aimed at protecting US national security and the undercurrent in the order is aimed squarely at China. The administration says this is designed to close some of the loopholes in currently existing regulations on chip exports. NVIDIA released a statement calling the rules “misguided” due to the fact that they could impact the largest AI hardware company in the world. This and more on the Rundown.
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1:16 – Cohesity’s CERT Service Boosted by Added Partners
Cohesity is boosting their Cyber Event Response Team (CERT) service by adding incident response partners. The goal is to help customers get rolling on starting incident response as soon as possible when it’s detected. The new partners include Palo Alto’s Unit 42, Arctic Wolf, Sophos, Fenix24, and Semperis. CERT can automatically upload logs and reports to these partners to respond to attacks as quickly as possible to prevent further damage and contain the malicious software. CERT is included as a part of the Cohesity subscription.
Read More: Cohesity adds malware incident response partners to CERT service
3:43 – Building GenAI Apps Creating Headaches
AI enabled applications are the only way companies are going to get back the money invested in building generative AI models and all the supporting infrastrcture. The problem is that an IBM study revealed that AI expertise in software developers is a long way behind the same expertise in data scientists. Developers find that there is a steep learning curve to understand AI application development and a lack of end-to-end tools leading to developers needing to learn a dozen new tools to build the first use-case.
7:01 – Eutelsat’s 2-Day Outage and Resiliency
Launching rockets is hard. So is remembering what day it is. Eutelsat is a company that operates a fleet of 35 geostationary satellites called OneWeb that provide services to customers such as Hughes Network Systems. On December 31 they had an outage that affect their customers. The reason? There was a bug in the receiving stations on the ground that didn’t realize that 2024 was a leap year, so on December 31 they thought it was 2025 already and shut off. Eutelsat worked to get the systems back online, however four of the gateways are still not operational and are not expected to be online until mid-2025. The life expectancy of their first satellites is also coming up soon in 2026 and the company is expected to launch more soon to replace the ones that are expected to power down.
Read More: What Eutelsat’s 2-Day Outage Says About LEO Satellite Service Resiliency
10:52 – Web Apps Exposed by AWS Configuration
The shared responsibility security model in AWS means that customers are free to misconfigure how they use services and cause themselves security problems. It seems that a few customers were unintentionally taking this freedom with the Application Load Balancer leading to security bypass and unintended information disclosure. AWS realized they need to do a better job of describing the secure configuration.
Read More: An AWS Configuration Issue Could Expose Thousands of Web Apps
14:28 – Oracle to battle for JavaScript Trademark
It’s time for Legal Corner on The Rundown. This week Oracle refused to voluntarily release the trademark on JavaScript, which means the case is headed to court for real. Oracle has claimed a trademark on the term since they purchased the remnants of Sun Microsystems back in 2009. The current provider of JavaScript, Deno Land, had asked the company to abandon the trademark to prevent any legal issues with a term that has been genericized to the point of being unenforceable. Oracle tried to file a renewal of the trademark back in 2019 but the screen capture they submitted referenced Node.js, which isn’t associated with Oracle in any way. The trial process is expected to go on for the rest of the year unless a settlement can be reached.
Read More: Oracle refuses to yield JavaScript trademark, Deno Land says
20:03 – An IT Exodus is Happening
If it feels like everyone in tech is looking for a job you’re not wrong. According to career site Dice, 47% of surveyed IT workers said they are actively looking for new roles. Some of the stated reasons include reduced benefits, meager salary increases (unless you’re working on AI), and even less flexibility in work locations, such as remote. Only 36% of those surveyed received a merit increase in salary last year and others noted that companies are no longer offering training and education benefits as well. Overall it seems like the tech industry is tightening the belt as the rise of AI threatens roles.
23:46 – NVIDIA Comments on AI Diffusion
The Biden presidential administration might be winding down but there are still some things that are making news. Yesterday the president proposed a new framework for the export of chips used to developer AI. The rules seek to limit exports of the chips to some 120 countries, including Mexico, Israel, and Switzerland. The rules appear to be aimed at protecting US national security and the undercurrent in the order is aimed squarely at China. The administration says this is designed to close some of the loopholes in currently existing regulations on chip exports. Nvidia released a statement calling the rules “misguided” due to the fact that they could impact the largest AI hardware company in the world. Al, where do we even start here?
Read More: NVIDIA Statement on the Biden Administration’s Misguided ‘AI Diffusion’ Rule
Read More: Biden’s administration proposes new rules on exporting AI chips, provoking an industry pushback
32:56 – The Weeks Ahead
The Weeks Ahead:
AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30
Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14
Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20
Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20
Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.
The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
