📢 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 ac...
Mar 03, 2025•10 min•Ep. 221
Fifth-generation programming languages? Generations don’t even matter anymore. We’re basically at iPhone generation 16-and-a-half, and at some point, people are just making stuff up. Speaking of making things up, today’s episode of Chaos Lever is all about NAT (Network Address Translation), a necessary evil—or maybe just evil—that helped shape the internet as we know it. To break it all down, we’re joined by the legendary Ivan Pepelnjak, a CCIE Emeritus, BGP wizard, and all-around networking gur...
Feb 27, 2025•49 min•Ep. 220
Welcome back to Tech News of the Week, where Chris and I break down the biggest and weirdest stories in tech. We're a week behind because Chris decided to lose power—how selfish! But we’re back, and we’ve got four spicy news stories to dive into. Let’s go! 🧠 **Meta Wants ARM-Made Chips** ARM might start making its own chips, and Meta is reportedly first in line to buy them. This is a big shift for ARM, which has historically just designed and licensed chip architectures rather than manufacturin...
Feb 24, 2025•9 min•Ep. 219
What happens when you mix cryptography, heists, social engineering, and a dash of early '90s tech paranoia? You get **Sneakers**—a movie that might be more relevant today than it was in 1992. In this episode, we break down the film’s tech, its realism (or lack thereof), and the undeniable truth that **people are always the weakest security link**. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about the tech—it’s about **People, Process, Technology**, in that order. Along the way, we take some delightf...
Feb 13, 2025•45 min•Ep. 218
Welcome back to another jam-packed episode of Tech News of the Week! Chris and I are diving into four big stories that caught our attention this week. From sketchy ISP routers to OpenAI’s latest security fail, let’s break it all down. 🔹 **Stop Using Your ISP Router—Seriously** If you're still using the router your internet provider gave you, it's time for an upgrade. Not only are ISP-provided routers outdated and full of security holes, but they might also be spying on you—and, in some cases, e...
Feb 10, 2025•8 min•Ep. 217
Can you feel the enthusiasm radiating from this episode? No? Well, Chris is already singing *The Lion King*, so we’re off to a strong start. Today, we’re diving headfirst into the world of AI with DeepSeek, the latest generative AI model out of China that’s supposedly shaking up Silicon Valley. Is it really the *Sputnik moment* some are claiming, or is it just another overhyped step forward? Spoiler: It’s not Sputnik. We break down DeepSeek’s origins, its connection to a high-frequency trading h...
Feb 06, 2025•42 min•Ep. 216
Welcome back to another episode of *Tech News of the Week!* This week, we dive into some fascinating developments in quantum computing, corporate drama at Meta, a potential shake-up in the networking industry, and security vulnerabilities in Apple Silicon chips. Buckle up—it's going to be a wild ride. 🔬 **Photonics for Quantum Computing** Quantum computers are finicky beasts, usually requiring extreme cold to keep their delicate qubits from falling apart. But what if we could use *light* instea...
Feb 03, 2025•11 min•Ep. 215
Welcome to another episode of Chaos Lever, where we take a deep dive into the tech abyss and come out slightly more confused than when we started. This week, we're talking about the OG of directory services: X.500. Before Active Directory, before LDAP, there was this ambitious yet painfully cumbersome attempt to organize networked systems into a structured directory. Was it elegant? No. Was it practical? Also no. But did it lay the groundwork for everything we use today? Absolutely. Along the wa...
Jan 30, 2025•34 min•Ep. 214
Welcome to this week’s **Tech News of the Week**! 📰 Chris and Ned dive into four fascinating stories from the tech world that made us scratch our heads, laugh, and maybe even fear the AI overlords just a little. Let's break it down: ✨ TikTok’s Secret Sauce Want to know how TikTok seems to know you better than you know yourself? We explore a research paper that gives us a peek into TikTok's game-changing algorithm and why it's so eerily accurate. Spoiler: It's all about keeping you glued to your...
Jan 27, 2025•11 min•Ep. 213
Welcome to the Chaos Lever podcast! In this episode, we're sharing some of our favorite (and most cringe-worthy) disaster recovery stories as Chris and I relive our days in the IT trenches. From accidentally shutting down a whole data center with the push of a button to a missing utility server derailing an entire cloud migration, we’ve seen it all. If you’ve ever wondered how NOT to handle DR or just need a good laugh, you’re in the right place. 😅⚡ We’ll talk about lessons learned the hard way...
Jan 23, 2025•40 min•Ep. 212
🎈 Farewell to FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, whose leadership made significant strides in broadband access, net neutrality, and cybersecurity initiatives. Her final acts defended free speech, but concerns loom with her likely successor. https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/headlines/read-jessica-rosenworcels-farewell-message 🤖 Microsoft is cramming AI into everything, but at a cost—literally. With Copilot features now included in subscriptions, expect prices to jump by 40%. Plus, they’...
Jan 20, 2025•10 min•Ep. 211
🌀 Hello, Alleged Humans! This week on Chaos Lever, we return to the fascinating world of cryptography, focusing on the Enigma Machine and its role in World War II. The Enigma Machine was an engineering marvel of its time, used by Germany to encode sensitive military communications. But even the most secure systems can have flaws, and Allied codebreakers—led by brilliant minds like Alan Turing—exploited those weaknesses to gain a decisive edge in the war. 🎙️ Did you know the Enigma started as a...
Jan 16, 2025•36 min•Ep. 210
Welcome to this week’s Tech News of the Week! Join us as we break down the most fascinating and sometimes ridiculous tech stories making headlines. Let's dive in! 🎙️ 🚨 **Cyber Trust Mark Labels** Starting in 2025, new "Cyber Trust Mark" labels will appear on IoT devices, supposedly ensuring better security standards. But will this label actually mean anything, or is it just marketing fluff? Introduced by the FCC in 2023 and overseen by UL Solutions, this program outlines six key security capab...
Jan 13, 2025•10 min•Ep. 209
Welcome to our 2025 Predictions episode! This week, we dive into the future of tech with bold forecasts on RISC-V, AI advancements, cloud innovations, and the evolving landscape of tech giants. From potential Google breakups to OpenAI's sustainability challenges, we’re covering it all. And yes, things might get a bit chaotic—this *is* Chaos Lever, after all! 🌐💡 We’ll talk about why RISC-V could disrupt the chip market, whether Microsoft will finally adopt S3 API support, and why the future of ...
Jan 09, 2025•36 min•Ep. 208
Welcome to another week of tech news! Let’s dive into the biggest stories making waves: 📢 OpenAI promised a data opt-out tool for creators all the way back in May 2024... and where is it? Nowhere to be found! Despite pledging to let creators keep their work out of AI training, no tool has emerged. Critics argue that opting out shouldn't even be the creator's job—data collection should require explicit consent upfront. And while the online ad industry says, "That would destroy us!" many are sayi...
Jan 06, 2025•11 min•Ep. 207
🐶 Dogs don’t care about your sleep schedule, and apparently neither does AI, the metaverse, or the global cloud industry. Welcome to our annual Predictions Review Episode, where we celebrate how *mostly wrong* Ned was about everything (as usual) and how Chris continues to coast on vague predictions like an AI-enhanced Nostradamus. Here’s what we covered this week: 🎯 Reviewing bold predictions about cloud revenue, AI lawsuits, and the elusive metaverse 📈 Why CXL, PCIe 6, and RISC-V didn’t exac...
Dec 26, 2024•40 min•Ep. 206
This week on Tech News of the Week, Chris and I dive into four fascinating stories from the world of tech: from the limits of human brains to the rise of WebAssembly. Plus, we get philosophical about the ephemeral nature of the internet and marvel at the future of coding with AI. Don't forget to complete our listener survey at https://chaoslever.com/survey It takes just a few minutes, and your feedback helps us make this podcast even better—or at least gives us something to ignore with flair. He...
Dec 23, 2024•12 min•Ep. 205
Get ready for an electrifying ride through the history and evolution of supercomputers! From the groundbreaking Cray-1 to today’s mind-blowing El Capitan, we cover it all—with tangents about Interstellar, floating-point math, and why your iPhone is basically a mini-supercomputer. Join Ned and Chris as they unleash chaos on computing history! 🤖💻✨ What’s Inside: 📚 Seymour Cray: The genius who made supercomputers... and left his own companies 🔥 From mega-flops to exa-flops: Explaining performan...
Dec 19, 2024•41 min•Ep. 204
Welcome to another episode of Tech News of the Week, where we break down the hottest stories in technology with a dose of snark and insight. This week, we’re diving into Google’s AI extravaganza, GM’s retreat from robo-taxis, quantum computing milestones, and Microsoft’s push for eco-friendly data centers. Grab your coffee and let’s get into it! Google’s AI Blitzkrieg 🚀 Google is doubling down on artificial intelligence, unveiling a slew of announcements including Gemini 2.0, a next-gen model w...
Dec 16, 2024•9 min•Ep. 203
Welcome to another episode of Chaos Lever, where Ned and Chris explore the history, intrigue, and occasional absurdity of cryptography! 🤖🧠 This week, it’s Part Two of our deep dive into codes and ciphers, from ancient Rome’s Caesar cipher to Napoleon’s overly optimistic battlefield encryption. Discover how cryptography evolved to outwit spies, soldiers, and codebreakers, setting the stage for the digital cryptography we know today. Plus: existential robots, live skeeting, and crunchy peanut bu...
Dec 12, 2024•30 min•Ep. 202
Welcome back to Chaos Lever, where we sift through the latest in tech news so you don’t have to. Please take our listener survey! https://chaoslever.com/survey This week’s episode covers everything from Meta's nuclear ambitions to Broadcom's sudden change of heart. Let’s break it down: --- 🧠 Meta Joins the Nuke AI Club Meta is doubling down on AI by exploring nuclear power to meet its growing data center demands. They’ve issued an RFP for 1-4 gigawatts of nuclear power, focusing on Small Modula...
Dec 10, 2024•10 min•Ep. 201
Get ready for another delightful descent into tech chaos, historical intrigue, and the occasional bout of existential questioning! This week, we mark (almost) three years since we started this podcast, and Ned is still totally not a robot. We also take a fascinating trip through the history of cryptography, from ancient Egyptian secrets to Julius Caesar's favorite ciphers and the tragic tale of Mary, Queen of Scots. Along the way, there’s talk of quantum computers, beer kegs with secret compartm...
Dec 05, 2024•35 min•Ep. 200
The Not-So-Hostile Takeover of iMessage Technology Originally Published on 12/21/2023 The Dreaded Green Bubble It's the shake-up of the century, or at least… it's pretty big news. It seems that pretty soon, non-Apple devices will be able to support iMessage technology. So how is this even possible? In order to answer that question, Ned walks us through the history of text messaging technology, from SMS to BBM to MMS and beyond. If you've ever wondered if phone carriers have been ripping you off,...
Nov 29, 2024•33 min•Ep. 199
Welcome to another episode of Tech News of the Week where we dissect the latest tech news with equal parts wit and snark. This week’s topics are as juicy as ever, from the DOJ taking a swing at Google to Apple’s embarrassing security scramble. Dive in below for more details and links to the full stories! !!!Take the audience survey here!!! https://pod.chaoslever.com/survey/2024-listener-survey/ DOJ Calls for Google Breakup The Department of Justice is not mincing words about Google’s dominance, ...
Nov 25, 2024•11 min•Ep. 198
Step into the Wild World of Telephones! 🛠️📞 In this episode of Chaos Lever, we’re dialing up a fascinating exploration of telephony with special guest Sarah Autumn! Sarah, a volunteer engineer at the Connections Museum in Seattle, takes us on a journey through the evolution of telephone systems, from the quirky mechanical marvels of the early 20th century to the legacy technology that still shapes our communication today. Spoiler: it’s as much magic as it is science. 📌 Highlights from this we...
Nov 21, 2024•44 min•Ep. 197
From AI's stumbling progress to groundbreaking tools and cyber threats, here’s what you need to know for this week: All The Major AI Models Continue To Lose Money AND Stop Advancing: Is the golden age of AI innovation already behind us? Reports from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic suggest that we may have hit a plateau. With increasing costs and diminishing returns, the financial and technical outlook for large AI models is looking bleak. Can ChatGPT 5—or any model—break through the ceiling? Or ar...
Nov 18, 2024•9 min•Ep. 196
Ah, passwords—the not-so-secret keys to our digital world. In this episode, we dig into the fascinating (and flawed) history of passwords, from their Roman origins to their debut in 1960s computing, and the constant struggle between ease and security ever since. Why are we still relying on passwords that can be hacked in seconds? And what are the latest recommendations from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to make our digital identities safer? Join us as we cover: 🔒 How...
Nov 14, 2024•39 min•Ep. 195
In this episode of Chaos Lever, we dig into the latest tech updates and industry moves, from Amazon's ambitious push to rival OpenAI to Qualcomm’s plans for ARM-powered Windows laptops. We’ll also explore MacOS’s tricky approach to app sandboxing and debate whether Notepad really needs AI. *Amazon to Invest in Anthropic AI to Compete with OpenAI—But There's a Catch* Amazon is making a big move into the AI arena by deepening its investment in Anthropic, aiming to challenge Microsoft-backed OpenAI...
Nov 11, 2024•11 min•Ep. 194
In today’s episode, we’re diving into one of IT’s murkiest topics: Attack Surface Management, or ASM. Can ASM be fun? Maybe. Is it critical for modern security? Absolutely. If you’ve ever wondered what ASM actually does, or why it’s more than just the latest buzzword, we’ve got answers (and helping handfuls of snark). We explore how ASM helps businesses stay on top of their digital perimeters—those tricky-to-manage spaces outside the traditional data center walls. From spotting exposed IPs and m...
Nov 07, 2024•42 min•Ep. 193
In this week’s *Chaos Lever Tech News*, we’re diving into groundbreaking—and sometimes just plain weird—developments in the tech world. Gene Therapy + Data Storage : Remember the days of 3.5" floppy disks with 1.44MB capacity? Today’s microSDs blow that out of the water, but there’s a limit to how much data we can fit on silicon. Enter DNA as a storage medium, where a single gram theoretically holds 215,000TB. Scientists are inching closer with "epi-bits," though the read/write speeds are still....
Nov 04, 2024•10 min•Ep. 192
