Welcome to episode 292 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! This week Justin and Jonathan are a dynamic duo, bringing you all the latest in news – and sound effects – because it’s earnings time! Plus we’ve got new from VS Code, Azure Data Studio, CodeBuild and more.

• The Cloud Pod Renames Cloud Earnings to ‘The Gulf of Capex’
• Sorry Elon, OpenAI Doesn’t Want Your Pocket Change
• MacOS gets into the Fastlane for Oil Changes

It’s earnings time!

01:29 Alphabet is planning to spend big on AI again this year, sending shares down

• Alphabet earnings were a bit of a let down with cloud revenue missing and their announcement of spending $75 Billion in CapEx (DeepSeek who?)
• Consolidated revenue rose 12% in the period to 96.5 billion.
• Capex investments of $75b shocked analysts who expected $57.9 billion.
• EPS was 2.15 vs 2.13.
• Revenue of 96.5 billion vs 96.62 expected.
• Ad revenue rose to 72.46 billion vs 71.3, Youtube advertising revenue was 10.47 billion vs 10.22 billion.
• Google Cloud was 12.0 billion vs expectation of 12.19 billion.

02:09 Jonathan – “I’m guessing ad revenue is gonna be down again, Q1, Q2 because I think a lot of ad revenue is driven by the election season. So that’s not looking too good for them.”

03:13 Microsoft GAAP EPS of $3.23 beats by $0.13, revenue of $69.6B beats by $790M

• Microsoft followed up with also weak growth in its Azure cloud computing unit.
• EPS was 3.23 beating expectations by 0.13
• Revenue of 69.6B beating by 780M
• Intelligent cloud revenue was 25.5 billion an increase of 19%
• Microsoft indicated they plan to spend 80 Billion in CapEx for AI and data center growth.

04:02 Justin- “Also international expansion still, I think a big area too, particularly for Azure and Google and even Amazon. Like they’re all announcing more and more regions, more expansion of data centers, lots of laws that are going to pass for data sovereignty that they have to deal with. there’s, there’s spend everywhere.”

04:23 Amazon earnings recap: Stock falls as guidance falls short, CFO indicates capex of more than $100 billion in 2025

• Amazon followed its peers by indicating they will invest $100B i...

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...