Chaos Lever Podcast

Apr 17 2025 234 ep. 30 mins 41

Chaos Lever Podcast artwork

Chaos Lever examines emerging trends and new technology for the enterprise and beyond. Hosts Ned Bellavance and Chris Hayner examine the tech landscape through a skeptical lens based on over 40 combined years in the industry. Are we all doomed? Yes. Will the apocalypse be streamed on TikTok? Probably. Does Joni still love Chachi? Decidedly not.

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Avoiding FAANG's Poison | Chaos Lever

Apr 17 2025 42 mins

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

Oracle Breach Cover-Up and Git Turns 20 | Tech News of the Week

Apr 14 2025 11 mins

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 Linu

Why Your AI Assistant Still Sucks (And How MCP Might Help) | Chaos Lever

Apr 10 2025 35 mins

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 wit

Fast Flux DNS Threats, TikTok Faces EU Fury, NGINX Exposed | Tech News of the Week

Apr 07 2025 9 mins

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

Women Who Built the Future (and Got None of the Credit) | Chaos Lever

Apr 03 2025 27 mins

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 wel

Microsoft Azure Is Retiring Your Admin Access | Tech News of the Week

Mar 31 2025 11 mins

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 comp

OpenAI’s Freedom Salad and the Two-Page Apocalypse | Chaos Lever

Mar 27 2025 33 mins

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 g

Facebook’s Legal Meltdown & Google’s $32B Power Move | Tech News of the Week

Mar 24 2025 10 mins

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

Thor, Thumb Drives, and Terrible Tech: Blackhat 2015 | Chaos Lever

Mar 21 2025 41 mins

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 r

Apple AI Fail, Quantum Hype & SUSE’s Bold Move | Tech News of the Week

Mar 18 2025 9 mins

🚀 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