Chaos Lever Podcast

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...

If your Gmail inbox is older than your adult children and you're just now wondering if it's been reading your diary all along—congrats, this episode is for you! In part two of our “Living Life Without Being Poisoned by FAANG” series, we deep-dive into the world's most insidious search bar: Google. From ads masquerading as results to docs that double as AI training material, we unpack how the adver...

Here's another Tech News of the Week for y'all! Stay tuned for our weekly full episode where we'll big talking about how you can ditch Google for something better (and no the irony of publishing this on YouTube is not lost on me 😅). 💣Microsoft drops a suspicious folder on your C drive and tells you not to touch it. Sounds totally normal and not ominous at all. Turns out, if you delete the new `C...

Are your bones creaking? Is your back mysteriously acquiring new joints just to ache in fresh and exciting ways? Welcome to adulthood—and welcome back to Chaos Lever. In this episode, Ned and Chris dive into the literal pain of aging and the metaphorical pain of living under the digital thumbs of FAANG companies. We’re talking Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google—and how to maybe, just may...

In this week’s episode of *Tech News of the Week*, we’re talking about source control history, cyber cover-ups, licensing shenanigans, and encryption for the quantum future. It’s a spicy lineup, and we’re here for all of it. 🧑‍💻 Git just turned 20! That’s right, the tool most developers have a love-hate relationship with hit the big two-oh. Originally built by Linus Torvalds after he got fed up...

This week’s main dish? Agentic AI and the Model Context Protocol (MCP). What the heck do those mean? Why are they being compared to USB-C? And why should you care unless you’re an executive with a robot butler? Ned breaks it all down while Chris offers the occasional therapy check-in. Spoiler alert: MCP is the plumbing behind smarter AI assistants, but whether we trust them with our calendar (or o...

This week we talk lawsuits, leaks, and legacy code—all wrapped in Kubernetes vulnerabilities and good ol' DNS doom. It's everything you didn't know you needed to hear, and more. Let's dive in: 🧠 TikTok is getting slammed with a €500 million fine from the Irish Data Protection Commission for casually throwing GDPR into the sea. The Tok (yes, we're calling it that now) has been caught red-handed sh...

This week on Chaos Lever, we take a detour through a moldy book, moldy cheese, and somehow land at a celebration of women in tech history. Because that’s how this show works. We kick things off with a hot take on Who Moved My Cheese? and an uncomfortably enthusiastic ode to Gorgonzola, then accidentally spiral into a cinematic sadness spiral featuring Robin Williams. You’re welcome? From there, it...

It's a wild week in tech and we're taking you on a ride through the most ridiculous and revealing stories from the digital frontier. Buckle up. 🎵 Remember Napster? Of course you do. It was the soundtrack to many of our teenage years, sneaking MP3s over college Ethernet networks and dodging Metallica-shaped lawsuits. Well, guess what? It's back... again. Sort of. Another Web3 company has paid *$20...

Biden’s executive order on AI safety was 111 pages of not-terrible ideas like protecting privacy and creating AI guidelines. Naturally, big tech was *not* a fan. Because when you ask Meta and Google to behave responsibly, they act like you just insulted their mom. Meanwhile in Europe: The EU held its AI Action Summit in Paris, making it clear they’re not messing around with AI governance. Public i...

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 Streis...