Is it really "savage?"

The article was posted long after business hours at IBM. You posted your comment long before business hours at IBM.

It might amaze certain types of people to believe that IBM doesn't have a fleet of PR people sitting around at midnight the week before Christmas to respond to rando online articles.

It's entirely possible that El Reg submitted its query to IBM a week ago and waited for a response that never arrived. But considering the state of internet "journalism" these days, usually they send a Twitter DM and if they don't get a response in the time it takes to finish a Starbucks, they consider it unanswered.