Welcome to episode 291 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Jonathan, and Ryan have battled through the various plagues and have come together to bring you all the latest in cloud news, including Kro, DeepSeek, and CoPilot.

• In Shocking News China Steals US IP
• The Cloud Pod is Now Supported in Gov Cloud
• Microsoft Goes Open Source No SQL… and Hell Hasn’t Frozen Over
• Zombie Buckets Receive How Much Traffic?!?
• AWS, GCP and Azure eat KRO
• Github Copilot for Free, so You Can Win at Coding Interviews
• Customized Best Practices… I don’t think you know what best practices are
• TheCloudPod Leverages Deep Understanding to Make a Nuanced Decision on adopting Copilot

01:23 Is DeepSeek really sending data to China? Let’s decode

• One of the early concerns about DeepSeek was its privacy implications, starting with their privacy policy.
• Allegations are significant but reality is if the open source model is hosted locally or orchestrated via GPUs in the US the data does not go to China.
• But if you’re using the DeepSeek app it clearly states in the privacy policy that the data will be stored in China. Data hosted on Chinese servers can be seized by the Government at any time.
• Maybe rethink using the native DeepSeek websites and mobile apps and just host them locally in LM studio.

02:21 Jonathan – “They’re collecting some weird data. I get collecting conversational data, because that is the business they’re in, but they’re also doing some weird stuff, like they fingerprint users by looking at the patterns of the way that they type. Not just what they type, but how they type, like the timing between hitting different letters – things like that.”

8:06 OpenAI Believes DeepSeek Was Developed Using OpenAI Models

• Listener Note: paywall article
• OpenAI says they have found evidence that the Chinese firm behind DeepSeek developed the AI using information generated by OpenAI’s models.
• This is prohibited by the OpenAI terms of service, and is a practice known as AI model distillation.
• With distillation, the developer asks existing AI models lots of questions and uses the answers to develop new models that mimic their performance.
• This shortcut results in models that roughly approximate state-of-the-art models but don’t cost a lot to produce
• OpenAI said last year it would sell access to its models directly to customers based in China, while MS has continued to resell OpenAI models through its Azure cloud service to Chinese customers.

09:15 Justin- “Oh, you mean the company that stole all the internet data in...

Welcome to episode 290 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! It’s a full house this week – and a good thing too, since there’s a lot of news! Justin, Jonathan, Ryan, and Matthew are all in the house to bring you news on DeepSeek, OpenVox, CloudWatch, and more.

• The cloud pod wonders if azure is still hung over from new years
• Stratoshark sends the Cloud pod to the stratosphere
• Cutting-Edge Chinese “Reasoning” Model Rivals OpenAI… and it’s FREE?!
• Wireshark turns 27, Cloud Pod Hosts feel old
• Operator: DeepSeek is here to kill OpenAI
• Time for a deepthink on buying all that Nvidia stock
• AWS Token Service finally goes cloud native
• The CloudPod wonders if OpenAI’s Operator can order its own $200 subscription

01:29 Introducing the GenAI Platform: Simplifying AI Development for All

• If you’re struggling to find that AI GPU capacity, Digital Ocean is pleased to announce their DigitalOcean GenAI Platform is now available to everyone.
• The platform aims to democratize AI development, empowering everyone – from solo developers to large teams – to leverage the transformative potential of generative AI.
• On the Gen AI platform you can:
  • Build Scalable AI Agents
  • Seamlessly integrate with workflows
  • Leverage guardrails
  • Optimize Efficiency.
• Some of the use cases they are highlighting are chatbots, e-commerce assistance, support automation, business insights, AI-Driven CRMs, Personalized Learning and interactive tools.

02:23 Jonathan – “Inference cost is really the big driver there. So once you once you build something that’s that’s done, but it’s nice to see somebody focusing on delivering it as a service rather than, you know, a $50 an hour compute for training models. This is right where they need to be.”

04:21 OpenAI: Introducing Operator

• We have thoughts about the name of this service…
• OpenAI is releasing the preview version of their agent that can use a web browser to perform tasks for you.
• The new version is available to OpenAI pro users.
• OpenAI says it’s currently a research preview, meaning it has limitations and will evolve based on your feedback.
• Operator can handle various browser tasks such as filling out forms, ordering groceries, and even creating memes.
• The ability to use the same interfaces and tools that humans interact with on a daily basis broadens the utility of AI, helping people save time on everyday tasks while opening up a new engagement opportunity for business
• Operator is powered by a new model called Computer-Using Agent (CUA). Combining GPT-4o’s vision capabilities with advanced reasoning through reinforcement learning, CUA is trained to in...

Welcome to episode 289 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Ryan, and Matt are here this week to bring you a riveting podcast on EU regulations! Are you asleep yet? No? Ok great. We promise it will be a good show – despite the title.

• Stargate: We’re not saying its Aliens, but its $500 Billion
• AWS: Now with extra sessions
• EC2 Flex: Bigger, Badder and Probably still expensive
• SNS FIFO: So fast, it’ll give you whiplash
• Azure: Now with added Legalese (Thanks, EU)
• OpenAI’s Stargate: From Chatbots to Interdimensional Travel (maybe)
• GCP’s Biochar Initiative: Turning Waste into… Well, Less Waste (hopefully)
• AWS Console Multiple Sessions: So you can prove you dropped those databases from multiple accounts
• Amazon still adds new features to SNS and the cloud pod is impressed
• AWS tries to kill chrome profiles

01:47 Announcing The Stargate Project

• Open AI announced a joint investment of $500 billion dollars over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the US, with the intent to deploy $100B immediately.
• This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefits for the entire world.
• The initial equity funders in stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX.
• Softbank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with Softbank having financial responsibility, and OpenAI having operational responsibility.
• Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners.
• The buildout is currently underway starting in Texas, and they are evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as they finalize definitive agreements.
• As part of Stargate, Oracle, Nvidia and OpenAI will closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system. This builds on a deep collaboration between OpenAI and NVIDIA going back to 2016, and a newer partnership between OpenAI and Oracle.
• This also builds on the existing OpenAI partnership with Microsoft. OpenAI will continue to increase its consumption of Azure as OpenAI continues its work with Microsoft with this additional computer to train leading models and deliver great products and services.
• “All of us look forward to continuing to build and develop AI—and in particular AGI—for the benefit of all of humanity.” This quote TOTALLY didn’t terrify us…
• Our conversations back in December about OpenAI trying to figure out their ownership model makes a lot more sense now.

07:22 Justin – “…it’s interesting that SoftBank is investing so much money into it considering, you know, the trade issues with China and SoftBank, you know, being mostly Chinese owned and invested in. Yeah. It’s one of the things abo...