Episodes

This week we get into Facebook's ongoing saga of being the actual worst, a massive Google acquisition, some shady AI data scraping, and why the FCC is basically handing over rural America’s internet to the wolves. Buckle up. 📘 Facebook is Literally the Worst, Part One: Leadership Edition Mark Zuckerberg tries to suppress a former Facebook exec’s memoir, *Careless People*, and accidentally Streisand-effects the entire thing. From board game tantrums to predatory ad targeting of teens, this segme...

We’ve got bruised shins, sketchy USB drives, and a surprisingly judgmental cat—so you know it’s a classic Chaos Lever episode. This week, Chris walks us through the wonderfully terrible 2015 movie *Blackhat*, a film that tried really hard to be tech-savvy and instead gave us Thor doing cybercrimes. Ned’s never seen it, which is great, because now he gets to be appalled in real time. Join us as we unravel: 🎬 A plot powered entirely by bad computer graphics 🖥️ Ankle bracelet hacking and thumb dri...

🚀 Welcome back to Tech News of the Week, where Chris and I break down the biggest, weirdest, and occasionally most questionable tech stories from the past week. 🧪 **D-Wave’s Dubious Quantum Supremacy Claim** D-Wave is back at it again, this time claiming "quantum supremacy" (insert dramatic echo here). They say their quantum chip solved a complex magnetic field simulation in 20 minutes—something they claim would take a classical supercomputer 200 years. But some researchers aren't buying it. Te...

This week on Chaos Lever, we explore a heartwarming yet launch into an in-depth (and completely correct, don’t question us) discussion about quantum computing and the hardware solutions behind a qubit. 🧠⚛️ Google, IBM, Amazon, and even Microsoft have been making big moves in quantum tech, each promising advancements that may or may not totally destroy encryption as we know it. Superconducting qubits, quantum tunneling, and the mysterious Majorana zero modes—it’s all here, and it’s all *probably...

Welcome to another round of tech news! This week, we're diving into the resurrection of a once-popular social media site, the EU's big bet on RISC-V, fresh zero days for VMware, and Broadcom's bold money-making moves. 🎯 **Reddit's Co-Founder Wants to Fix Social Media... With More Social Media?** Alexis Ohanian, one of Reddit’s original creators (the one who *doesn’t* suck), is teaming up with the founder of Digg to bring it back from the dead. Digg was a big deal in the mid-2000s before it coll...

The Internet: it was never supposed to work this well, and yet, here we are. This week, we’re diving into how we went from isolated, room-sized computers to a global, decentralized network that somehow (mostly) functions. We break down the early days of networking, when computers had to physically dial each other up, and how we eventually arrived at the distributed, self-healing, packet-switching magic that powers everything today. Along the way, we cover the different network models—centralize...

📢 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 acq...

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...

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...

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 delight...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 w...

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...

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...

🎈 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’r...

🌀 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 ...

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 capabi...

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 W...

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...

🐶 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 exactl...

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. ...

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 performance ...