Chaos Lever Podcast

Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 11/02/2026. This week we are covering: Proton's awkward AI pivot, Google's orbital data center satellite, GitHub's agentic infrastructure challenges, and much more. 🔒 Privacy Focused Email and VPN Company Makes an Awkward as Fuck Pivot Into AI Development … And I Don’t Know How To Feeeeeeeelllllllll Proton faced significant backlash and ultimately canceled pla...

Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 10/26/2026. This week we are covering: OpenAI launching managed cloud agents and cutting Pro usage allowances, Microsoft finally pulling the plug on Publisher, Anthropic leaking an ominous S-1 IPO filing, and much more. 🤖 OpenAI Flatters Meta with Dots OpenAI announced managed cloud agent instances called Dots alongside a 50% cut to Pro subscription usage allo...

Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 09/28/2026. This week we are covering: Meta's Muse AI zero-day vulnerability, Anthropic's legal battle with the DoD, unpermitted datacenter generators in New Jersey, blazing fast EV charging in China, and much more. Facebook’s Muse AI Already Has Serious 0-Day Vulnerability Security researchers discovered an easy-to-exploit zero-day flaw in Meta's newly launche...

Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 09/21/2026. This week we are covering: Meta's new AI assistant Muse taking over social media handles and topping the App Store charts, TypeSafe AI launching its lightning-fast System 1 decision-making model Jev, Apple releasing OS 27 alongside Siri AI, and much more. Everybody Wants To Kick Mark Zuckerberg Meta launched its new personal AI assistant Muse, takin...

Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 09/14/2026. This week we are covering: OpenAI releases its new flagship model Astra, Apple introduces hardware alongside a new CEO, VMware brings back vSphere Standard, and much more. Open AI Releases Astra OpenAI has officially launched GPT-6 Astra, showcasing top benchmark results and fueling the ongoing debate over the path to AGI. 🔗 https://openai.com/inde...

Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 08/31/2026. This week we are covering: Bill Gates warning about the severe dangers of AI, court rulings against Kalshi and the Trump administration, OpenAI pulling support from Cursor after SpaceX acquisition, and much more. AI Is The Worst Thing Ever, Says Man Who Thought AI Was A Panacea 18 Months Ago Bill Gates has reversed his earlier optimism on artificial...

Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 08/24/2026. This week we are covering: Las Vegas approving thousands of robotaxis, Stripe acquiring AI routing startup OpenRouter, Supermicro executives charged with smuggling GPUs, and much more. 🔹 One More Reason to Avoid Las Vegas Nevada transportation regulators have approved permits allowing Tesla, Waymo, and Uber to operate commercial robotaxi fleets in...

Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 08/17/2026. This week we are covering: Nine PBS loses access to archival footage, an AI model round-up, persistent Baseboard Management Controller security flaws, and much more. St. Louis PBS Station (At Least Temporarily) Loses Access to 50TB of Archival Footage Nine PBS is currently suing Iron Mountain to regain access to 50 terabytes of archival data that wa...

Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 08/10/2026. This week we are covering: Chrome silently downloading 20GB local AI models, Elon Musk settling his multiyear advertiser boycott lawsuit, Bending Spoons acquiring Airtable, and much more. --- Chrome Wants 20GB of Your Time Google Chrome is automatically downloading up to 20GB of local AI models onto eligible user devices unless disabled in browser s...

Welcome to the debut of Chaos Lever After Dark ! Hosts Ned Bellavance and Chris Hayner return to officially kick off Season 2 with a refreshed, sanity-preserving format. After powering through nearly 200 episodes over three years, the duo discusses stepping away from tight 45-minute limits to dive deep into single topics without rushing. In this loose, late-night style opening episode, Ned and Chr...

Ned and Chris are back for one final ramble before they vanish into the summer ether like a Wi-Fi balloon over Cádiz. No, seriously—Ned might actually be in a balloon. This episode is one part announcement, one part ice cream therapy, and all parts Chaos Lever. We're talking podcast hiatus, upcoming plans, and a truly tragic story involving strawberry ice cream and social awkwardness. 🍦 We reflec...

Spinning rust is still not dead. Despite what some all-flash evangelists want you to believe, hard drives have a lot of life left—and yes, we’re still talking about tape too. While Chris and I enjoy a week off, we’re revisiting one of our favorite topics: storage tech and the slow demise that never quite comes. Spoiler: if you thought 2028 would be the funeral for HDDs, you may want to reschedule....

🔥 The world may be on fire, but at least we’ve got s’mores and dark chocolate (just not 98% cacao, thank you). In this episode, we dunk on tech billionaires with the finesse of a flaming marshmallow and explore the dramatic saga of WordPress—from its humble GPL beginnings to the ego-fueled chaos of its current overlord. Yes, Matt Mullenweg, we’re talking about you. 🧩 We dive into how WordPress b...

Welcome to Tech News of the Week! Here's what caught our eye in the past seven days: Scammers are out in full force this summer with hyper-detailed (but totally fake) DMV texts warning about traffic violations. Chris reads one of these gloriously absurd attempts to scare Pennsylvanians into paying fake fines. Spoiler: no, you're not going to lose your license on June 3rd. But you might lose your d...

Welcome back, fellow humans (and bots in disguise)! This week on Chaos Lever, Chris and Ned dive into the dusty archives and slap us with a two-by-four of cybersecurity déjà vu. We’re talking legendary hacks that should have taught us better—and yet, here we are. From Emacs-enabled espionage in 1986 to Equifax’s honor-system security policies, it's a masterclass in how not to protect your data. 🧠...

Chaos is inevitable—especially on Patch Tuesday. This week, Chris and I dive into four juicy stories that highlight just how strange, scary, and downright ridiculous the world of tech can be. Buckle up. 🪟 Microsoft is now rolling out a Windows Update framework for third-party apps. That’s right—your janky software updater might get replaced with a system that actually works… or works too well. Im...

What happens when a Google engineer thinks his chatbot has developed a soul? Three years ago, we covered the LaMDA saga, and now it's back—because someone forgot to turn off the AI. In this rebroadcast episode, Chris and Ned re-examine the wild story of Blake Lemoyne, who believed his creation had achieved sentience. It... uh, didn't. 🤖 The duo digs deep into what AI really is, why self-awareness...

Chris and Ned are joined this week by Colin Lacy, a senior software engineer at Cisco, recovering architect, and food photographer in a past life—yes, really. What starts as a detour into food photography quickly becomes a deep dive into everything wrong with technical interviews in tech today. From debugging Java on paper to AI in assessments, Colin doesn’t hold back. 🛠️ Colin unpacks his hiring...

Another week, more tech news chaos. This week: 🧠 Students are getting salty over professors using ChatGPT while banning it in their own assignments. One Northwestern University student even tried to get a refund over it. Nice try Margot. https://fortune.com/2025/05/15/chatgpt-openai-northeastern-college-student-tuition-fees-back-catching-professor/ 💸 Microsoft posted a whopping $70.1B in revenue...

🎙️ In this episode of Chaos Lever, Chris and Ned dive deep into the murky waters of IT Certifications. Are they still relevant? Are they just money grabs? Or do they actually help you land that dream tech job? The snark is strong in this one as they discuss the good, the bad, and the brain dumps that come with navigating the world of certifications. 🧠 The conversation also veers into the history...

Welcome back to Tech News of the Week! Today, we're diving into some of the most interesting stories shaking up the tech world right now. 📰 Wikipedia vs. the UK Government: Wikipedia is going head-to-head with the British government over the newly passed Online Safety Bill. This massive 250-page legislation aims to increase online safety but at the cost of privacy and censorship. Wikipedia is pus...

In this episode, Ned and Chris dive headfirst into the chaotic world of technical interviews. From absurd coding tests to multi-hour marathons that seem more like hazing rituals, they break down just how broken the hiring process is in tech. Plus, you'll hear the incredible (and incredibly dystopian) story of Roy Lee, the college sophomore who turned cheating on interviews into a full-blown busine...

Another week, another tech reckoning! In this episode of Tech News of the Week, we dive into Microsoft's AI coding claims, password security doomscrolling courtesy of Hive Systems, Meta's courtroom drama, and Apple getting absolutely obliterated (again) in the Epic Games case. It's a smorgasbord of corporate shenanigans and judicial sass. 👨‍💻 Satya Nadella says up to 30% of Microsoft’s code is A...

Welcome back, fellow alleged humans 👋 In this episode of Chaos Lever, we jump headfirst into the ad-tech cesspool to answer one burning question: how did we go from banner ads to full-blown surveillance capitalism? Spoiler: it involves Google being a monopoly (confirmed!) and Facebook being... Facebook. Yes, it’s as bad as you think. This isn’t just a rant (though it’s a good one)—we walk through...

The legendary Blue Meanie is back, and so are we! 🎙️ This week on Tech News of the Week, we dive into four wild stories that you need to hear about. First up, Chris rants (in the best way) about the new Slate electric truck — a throwback to the good old days where your car was a car, not a giant, glitchy computer on wheels. Manual windows? No speakers? Starting around $20K with tax credits? Sounds...