by Ned Bellavance and Chris Hayner
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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🇺🇲
Publishing Since
3/22/2022
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April 29, 2025
<p>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 crazy enough to work. Find out if the Slate could be your future ride. <a href="https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a64564869/2027-slate-truck-revealed/">https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a64564869/2027-slate-truck-revealed/</a></p><p>Next, Microsoft tries to fix a patch with a patch... and somehow makes it worse. 🛠️ Instead of solving a vulnerability properly, they decided to shove a folder named "inetpub" onto everybody’s system drive. Surprise! It doesn’t fix the issue and now Windows Update can break entirely. We break down the hilariously bad workaround and why Microsoft might want to actually fix Windows Update rather than apply yet another bandage. <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/24/microsoft_mystery_folder_fix/">https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/24/microsoft_mystery_folder_fix/</a></p><p>Then, we tackle the privacy horror show brewing over at Perplexity.AI. 🕵️♂️ They’re launching a new browser called Comet and, shocker, the CEO basically admitted it’s built to harvest your data for hyper-personalized ads. If you thought Chrome was bad, get ready for round two. Plus, find out why Perplexity has their sights set on buying Chrome if Google is forced to break it up. <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads">https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads</a></p><p>Finally, we revel in Comcast’s very public meltdown. 📉 During their Q1 earnings call, Comcast admitted they’re losing broadband customers left and right — and it’s definitely not because they’ve been awful for decades. Nope, it’s the customers’ fault for wanting reasonable prices and transparency. We stand in admiration at their "woe is us" attitude and explain why competition is finally sending Comcast packing. <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/after-losing-customers-comcast-admits-prices-are-too-confusing-and-unpredictable/">https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/after-losing-customers-comcast-admits-prices-are-too-confusing-and-unpredictable/</a></p>
April 24, 2025
<p>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 advertising company formerly known as a search engine became the shady overlord of your digital life.</p><p>We also take a good, long look at alternatives. Not just “use Bing” (come on now), but actual viable swaps like Kagi, StartPage, and DuckDuckGo. Need to break free from Gmail? Hello, Proton Mail. Curious about workspace alternatives that don’t hand your docs to Big Brother? Meet CryptPad. And for the content creators out there, we give the rundown on Nebula, PeerTube, and other non-Google places you can still host your rants and videos without being part of the algorithm’s human farm.</p><p>Then we shift gears to cloud services. We walk through smaller, boutique hosting options—from Linode to Fly.io to EU-based Scaleway—that won't charge you an arm and a leg. If you’ve ever wanted to ditch Big Tech but didn’t know where to start, grab your tinfoil hat (or at least a solar panel) and let’s talk freedom, baby.</p><p>👇 LINKS</p><p>Google reads all your stuff: <a href="https://policies.google.com/privacy/archive/20221215-20230701">https://policies.google.com/privacy/archive/20221215-20230701</a><br>Kagi is pretty great: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/web/631636/kagi-review-best-search-engine">https://www.theverge.com/web/631636/kagi-review-best-search-engine</a><br>Cryptpad looks like Office: <a href="https://cryptpad.org/">https://cryptpad.org/</a><br>Photopea, like Zootopia: <a href="https://www.photopea.com">https://www.photopea.com</a><br>Hetzner auctions server costs: <a href="https://www.hetzner.com/sb/">https://www.hetzner.com/sb/</a><br>Alexander Samsig did a breakdown of EU CSPs: <a href="https://asamsig.com/blog/picking-a-european-cloud-provider">https://asamsig.com/blog/picking-a-european-cloud-provider</a></p>
April 21, 2025
<p>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 😅).</p><p>💣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:\inetpub` folder, your April updates break. Microsoft says it's a security thing, not to worry about it, and please don’t mess with it even if IIS isn’t running. Honestly, it feels like a plot twist nobody asked for. <a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-windows-inetpub-folder-created-by-security-fix-dont-delete/">https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-windows-inetpub-folder-created-by-security-fix-dont-delete/</a></p><p>🟢 Google is officially a monopoly—again. A federal court ruled they violated antitrust laws in their ad exchange and publisher ad server businesses. The ruling doesn’t touch their ad network (for now), but the whole thing is a masterclass in how internet advertising works, and it’s kind of wild. There's potential for fines, restructuring, or even a breakup of Google. So, you know, big stuff. <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/google-loses-ad-tech-monopoly-trial-faces-additional-breakups/">https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/google-loses-ad-tech-monopoly-trial-faces-additional-breakups/</a></p><p>🤖 Cursor, an AI-powered coding assistant, accidentally gaslit its users with a hallucinating AI support agent named "Sam." Sam made up a fake policy, confidently delivered it to a paying customer, and got exposed when people dug into the nonexistent policy. Leadership at Cursor shrugged, slow-rolled a response, and didn't apologize. This is the AI future we were warned about. <a href="https://fortune.com/article/customer-support-ai-cursor-went-rogue/">https://fortune.com/article/customer-support-ai-cursor-went-rogue/<br></a><br>🛡️ Chris Krebs (not Brian), formerly of CISA and SentinelOne, resigned to keep fighting a very political attack from the Trump administration. They're coming after him for basically doing his job and telling the truth about election security. Now his employer's being targeted too. Krebs stepped down to spare them the drama, and we salute the guy for standing firm. <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/chris-krebs-who-debunked-2020-election-lies-vows-full-time-fight-against-trump/">https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/chris-krebs-who-debunked-2020-election-lies-vows-full-time-fight-against-trump/</a></p>
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