Welcome to Tech Beat, your daily look at the stories shaping the digital world.
A new study is throwing cold water on AI productivity claims, and the numbers are striking. Developers reported feeling around twenty percent faster when working with AI coding tools, but objective measurements told a different story — they were actually nineteen percent slower. The gap between perception and performance raises real questions about how we evaluate these tools in the first place.
On the security front, a story out this week is almost too strange to believe. Hackers reportedly offered to shovel snow for a company, used that physical access to plug into the network, and walked away with administrative credentials. It's a reminder that the most sophisticated threat actors don't always come through the firewall — sometimes they come through the front door with a shovel.
And Supermicro is having a difficult week, which is becoming something of a pattern. The server manufacturer had to publicly clarify that Taiwanese police did not raid its offices, while separately appearing to have been targeted by fraudsters in Singapore. The company is cooperating with authorities, but the stream of unwanted attention is unlikely to reassure customers already watching closely.
Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
