GPT-4.5 Drops & The Biggest Crypto Heist Ever | Tech News of the Week

📢 Welcome to another episode of Tech News of the Week, where Chris and I break down the biggest stories in tech—sometimes with insight, sometimes with sarcasm, but always with desks. Maybe? This week, we're talking about IBM finally sealing the deal with HashiCorp, Microsoft's continued Notepad nonsense, OpenAI's latest attempt to justify its existence, and the biggest crypto heist of all time. Buckle up!  

🟡 **HashiCorp Joins IBM**  
After 10 long months of regulatory limbo, IBM’s $6.4 billion acquisition of HashiCorp is finally official. Now that the deal has closed, IBM is set to integrate Terraform with Ansible, strengthen HashiCorp Vault with OpenShift, and generally try to make their aging product lineup more cloud-native. As a HashiCorp fan, I wasn’t exactly thrilled, but hey—at least IBM is dumping money into R&D. Cautiously optimistic? Maybe. Full breakdown here: https://www.hashicorp.com/en/blog/hashicorp-officially-joins-the-ibm-family and convo with Armon Dadgar here: https://www.youtube.com/live/p9VZMDRJ6m0

🟡 **Microsoft Notepad Gets AI Because… Reasons?**  
Notepad was perfect. It was simple. It was beautiful. And now, Microsoft is stuffing it with AI features nobody asked for—just like they’re doing with Paint. Oh, and they killed off WordPad, pushing people toward paid Microsoft Word instead. At least the AI-infested versions of Notepad and Paint are optional (for now), but this is a slippery slope, folks. More details: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2614943/microsoft-is-paywalling-these-features-in-notepad-and-paint.html

🟡 **GPT-4.5: Bigger, Better, and Full of Lies**  
OpenAI just dropped GPT-4.5, and it’s… well, it’s a thing. It’s bigger, more power-hungry, and claims to be "friendlier" and "more truthful"—which means it only lies to you **37%** of the time instead of **59%**. Progress? Maybe. Desperation? Definitely. Sam Altman’s money-burning machine continues, and SoftBank is still writing checks, so here we are. The full scoop: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/27/1112619/openai-just-released-gpt-4-5-and-says-it-is-its-biggest-and-best-chat-model-yet/

🟡 **Bybit Suffers the Largest Crypto Heist Ever**  
Dubai-based crypto exchange Bybit just lost **$1.5 billion** to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, making it the biggest crypto theft in history. Hackers exploited Bybit’s Ethereum wallet system, faked transactions, and walked away with an absolute fortune. The good news? Bybit says it’ll reimburse customers. The bad news? This whole mess proves, once again, that "faster" and "secure" are rarely friends. More on this wild story: https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/cryptos-biggest-hacks-heists-after-15-billion-theft-bybit-2025-02-24/ 

Now, go away. Bye. 🚀