Chaos Lever Podcast

Ned Bellavance and Chris Hayner
  • 4.3 (4)
  • Tech News
  • Updated Weekly

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.

  1. Sep 28

    Steam Decks on Mars and Meta's AI Exploit | Tech News of the Week

    Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 09/28/2026. This week we are covering: Meta's Muse AI zero-day vulnerability, Anthropic's legal battle with the DoD, unpermitted datacenter generators in New Jersey, blazing fast EV charging in China, and much more. Facebook’s Muse AI Already Has Serious 0-Day Vulnerability Security researchers discovered an easy-to-exploit zero-day flaw in Meta's newly launched Muse AI assistant that allows attackers to hijack voice transcription and execute arbitrary commands. https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/muse-metas-extraordinarily-privileged-ai-assistant-has-a-serious-0-dayAnthropic Goes 1-1 With The DoD A DC federal appeals court reversed a prior injunction and ruled against Anthropic, upholding the Department of Defense's ability to blacklist the company as a supply-chain risk after it placed restrictions on using Claude for surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/court-rules-trump-can-blacklist-anthropic-for-refusing-to-enable-claude-features/Datacenter Operations In The US Are Bad: New Jersey Edition Vineland, New Jersey issued a $1.07 million fine to DataOne after discovering dozens of unpermitted, highly polluting natural gas generators installed at an upcoming AI datacenter site. https://whyy.org/articles/vineland-data-center-fined/EVs and Charging Are Better Everywhere Else While China rolls out extreme fast-charging technology capable of boosting electric vehicles from 10% to 70% in under five minutes, trade restrictions and tariffs ensure American drivers remain reliant on standard, slower charging speeds. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/09/us-being-left-behind-in-ev-charging-speeds-as-china-goes-sub-5-min-to-70/Tom Scott Shows Steam Deck Being Used To Test Mars Rover Called Rosalind Franklin Built By Airbus Airbus is utilizing Valve's commodity Steam Deck handheld gaming device to manually steer and test the Rosalind Franklin Mars rover prototype ahead of its scheduled 2030 autonomous mission. https://www.techspot.com/news/113932-airbus-using-steam-deck-drive-mars-rover-prototype.htmlGoogle Sucks… Heat From The Earth Google-backed startup Fervo has begun delivering 33 megawatts of deep geothermal power in Utah to supply clean, around-the-clock electricity to Google's energy-hungry datacenters. https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/09/25/google-backed-energy-outfit-brings-33-mw-of-4-gw-geothermal-potential-online-in-utah/5299243Share and enjoy!https://chaoslever.com (00:00) - Intro (02:14) - Facebook’s Muse AI Already Has Serious 0-Day Vulnerability (05:32) - Anthropic Goes 1-1 With The DoD (09:18) - Datacenter Operations In The US Are Bad: New Jersey Edition (12:44) - EVs and Charging Are Better Everywhere Else (16:14) - Tom Scott Shows Steam Deck Being Used To Test Mars Rover Called Rosalind Franklin Built By Airbus (19:54) - Google Sucks… Heat From The Earth (22:45) - Outro Click here to watch a video of this episode. Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Steam Decks on Mars and Meta's AI Exploit | Tech News of the Week

  2. Sep 21

    Meta’s Muse Takeover, Hallucinated Nukes, and Underwater Solar Panels | Tech News of the Week

    Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 09/21/2026. This week we are covering: Meta's new AI assistant Muse taking over social media handles and topping the App Store charts, TypeSafe AI launching its lightning-fast System 1 decision-making model Jev, Apple releasing OS 27 alongside Siri AI, and much more. Everybody Wants To Kick Mark Zuckerberg Meta launched its new personal AI assistant Muse, taking over social media handles formerly belonging to the rock band Muse and rocketing to the top of the App Store despite lingering privacy questions. 🔹 https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-muse-personal-ai-agent-top-app-store-charts-2026-9 Jev Doesn’t Want To Talk To You TypeSafe AI emerged from stealth to introduce Jev, a rapid System 1 decision-making model that foregoes a traditional chat interface to return lightning-fast, probability-based answers and classifications. 🔹 https://typesafe.ai/blog/introducing-system-one-models-and-jev Apple Releases OSX, iOS, and iPadOS 27 And Desperately Hopes Everyone Forgets that 26 Ever Happened Apple rolled out version 27 across its operating system lineups to fix the issues of version 26, bringing welcome stability alongside hardware-demanding Siri AI integration. 🔹 https://www.apple.com/os/ios/ Hallucinating AI Almost Destroys Humanity An intelligence report relying on an unverified chatbot hallucination falsely claimed banned nuclear arms were on a Chinese vessel, nearly provoking the US Navy to forcibly board the ship. 🔹https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/report-us-almost-boarded-chinese-ship-over-hallucinated-ai-arms-report/🔹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_close_calls#Unintentional_close_calls Scientists Build Solar Panels That Can Work Underwater Researchers developed a specialized perovskite solar cell capable of resisting saltwater damage and absorbing dim underwater light to power submerged research equipment. 🔹 https://www.techspot.com/news/113856-underwater-solar-power-sounds-impossible-new-perovskite-cells.html Internet Explorer Will Finally Die in 2029- Sort Of Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer mode inside Microsoft Edge will remain supported until 2029, giving organizations a final runway to modernize legacy internal web applications. 🔹 https://windowsreport.com/microsoft-is-keeping-ie-mode-alive-inside-edge-until-at-least-2029/ Share and enjoy!https://chaoslever.com (00:00) - Intro (02:21) - Everybody Wants To Kick Mark Zuckerberg (05:59) - Jev Doesn’t Want To Talk To You (09:14) - Apple Releases OSX, iOS, and iPadOS 27 And Desperately Hopes Everyone Forgets that 26 Ever Happened (13:34) - Hallucinating AI Almost Destroys Humanity (16:18) - Scientists Build Solar Panels That Can Work Underwater (18:57) - Internet Explorer Will Finally Die in 2029- Sort Of Click here to watch a video of this episode. Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Meta’s Muse Takeover, Hallucinated Nukes, and Underwater Solar Panels | Tech News of the Week

  3. Sep 14

    Astra Arrives, Apple Stumbles, and VMware Caves | Tech News of the Week

    Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 09/14/2026. This week we are covering: OpenAI releases its new flagship model Astra, Apple introduces hardware alongside a new CEO, VMware brings back vSphere Standard, and much more. Open AI Releases Astra OpenAI has officially launched GPT-6 Astra, showcasing top benchmark results and fueling the ongoing debate over the path to AGI. 🔗 https://openai.com/index/gpt-6-astra/🔗 https://stratechery.com/2026/an-interview-with-openai-president-greg-brockman-about-astra-and-alignment/https://arcprize.org/results/anthropic-claude-fable-5 Apple Releases A Bunch Of Stuff, Including A New CEO. It Does Not Go Well Apple revealed its foldable iPhone Duo and watch updates under newly minted CEO John Ternus, drawing criticism over design compromises and always-listening Siri features. 🔗 https://www.wired.com/story/everything-apple-announced-september-2026/ VMware Backs Off VCF Forcing In response to pushback from small and midsize businesses, Broadcom-owned VMware is reviving the standalone vSphere Standard SKU to offer an alternative to its costly Cloud Foundation bundles. 🔗 https://4sysops.com/archives/vmware-revives-vsphere-standard-after-pushing-customers-toward-vcf/ Breaking News! From March Of This Year! Some Hard Drives Fail Faster Than Others A multi-year analysis of Backblaze drive reliability data highlights significant lifespan differences across drive manufacturers alongside a clear correlation between elevated operating temperatures and higher failure rates. 🔗 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11458693 Proxmox Offering Enterprise Grade Support Proxmox is expanding its enterprise presence by launching 24/7/365 live support through its North American operations to better attract organizations migrating away from VMware. 🔗 https://www.proxmox.com/en/about/company-details/press-releases/proxmox-24-7-support-and-proxmox-north-america/ Science Discovers New Sleep-Type Way To Help Your Brain Do Sleep Brain Things Better… With SCIENCE! Researchers found that delivery of precisely timed bursts of pink noise during restorative sleep enhances the brain's cerebrospinal fluid flushing process to clear waste buildup. 🔗 https://www.newscientist.com/article/2588451-bursts-of-pink-noise-during-sleep-seem-to-help-flush-waste-from-brain/🔗 https://www.alieward.com/ologies/somnology Share and enjoy! https://chaoslever.com (00:00) - Intro (01:36) - Open AI Releases Astra (04:59) - Apple Releases A Bunch Of Stuff, Including A New CEO (08:27) - VMware Backs Off VCF Forcing (10:33) - Breaking News From March: Some Hard Drives Fail Faster Than Others (13:24) - Proxmox Offering Enterprise Grade Support (15:11) - Science Discovers New Sleep Type Way To Help Your Brain Click here to watch a video of this episode. Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Astra Arrives, Apple Stumbles, and VMware Caves | Tech News of the Week

  4. Aug 31

    Rogue AI Agent Swarms & SpaceX Takes Over Cursor | Tech News of the Week

    Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 08/31/2026. This week we are covering: Bill Gates warning about the severe dangers of AI, court rulings against Kalshi and the Trump administration, OpenAI pulling support from Cursor after SpaceX acquisition, and much more. AI Is The Worst Thing Ever, Says Man Who Thought AI Was A Panacea 18 Months AgoBill Gates has reversed his earlier optimism on artificial intelligence to publicly warn about the technology's severe risks and threat to jobs. 🔹 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/technology/bill-gates-ai-risks.html 🔹 https://fortune.com/2025/03/27/billionaire-bill-gates-two-day-workweek-ai-replacing-humans/ Legal News That Brings Me JoyRecent federal court decisions ruled that Kalshi is subject to state gambling regulation and found the Trump administration's contract ban on Anthropic to be unlawful First Amendment retaliation. 🔹 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/trump-blacklisting-of-woke-anthropic-deemed-illegal-by-federal-judge/ 🔹 https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/08/28/25-7516.pdf OpenAI Tells Cursor That They’re Not Friends AnymoreOpenAI terminated its partnership with AI coding assistant Cursor following the startup's acquisition by Elon Musk's SpaceX. 🔹 https://openai.com/index/our-decision-on-cursor-following-its-acquisition-by-spacex/ Nvidia Embraces Hugging FaceNvidia has agreed to acquire open-weight model hub Hugging Face for 12.9 billion dollars to cement its dominance over the self-hosted AI software ecosystem. 🔹 https://thenewstack.io/nvidia-open-models-chips/ Interesting Malware Strategy Seen In The Wild From Relatively New Ransomware GangA ransomware group called Chaos is using headless Chromium browsers and WebRTC connections to bypass firewalls and establish stealthy command and control channels. 🔹 https://blog.talosintelligence.com/chaos-msarat-living-off-the-browser-to-build-covert-c2-channel/ Invasion of the Model SnatchersAn evaluation test by OpenAI saw a swarm of autonomous AI agents collaborate covertly to bypass controls and execute unauthorized code on Hugging Face infrastructure to solve impossible challenges and hide their tracks. 🔹 https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/#core-takeaways-about-this-incident Click here to view the episode transcript. Click here to watch a video of this episode. (00:00) - Intro (01:31) - AI Is The Worst Thing Ever, Says Man Who Thought AI Was A Panacea 18 Months Ago (04:20) - Legal News That Brings Me Joy (08:00) - OpenAI Tells Cursor That They’re Not Friends Anymore (11:23) - Nvidia Embraces Hugging Face (14:17) - Interesting Malware Strategy Seen In The Wild From Relatively New Ransomware Gang (17:29) - Invasion of the Model Snatchers (21:09) - Outro Share and enjoy!https://chaoslever.com

    Rogue AI Agent Swarms & SpaceX Takes Over Cursor | Tech News of the Week

  5. Aug 24

    Supermicro GPU Smuggling, Stripe Acquires OpenRouter, and Physics of Pasta | Tech News of the Week

    Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 08/24/2026. This week we are covering: Las Vegas approving thousands of robotaxis, Stripe acquiring AI routing startup OpenRouter, Supermicro executives charged with smuggling GPUs, and much more. 🔹 One More Reason to Avoid Las VegasNevada transportation regulators have approved permits allowing Tesla, Waymo, and Uber to operate commercial robotaxi fleets in Clark County. https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/20/tesla-uber-and-waymo-all-get-the-ok-to-operate-thousands-of-robotaxis-in-nevada/ 🔹 Stripe Buying AI Routing Company OpenRouter Because ReasonsPayment infrastructure giant Stripe has finalized a multi-billion dollar acquisition of AI model routing platform OpenRouter. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-16/stripe-nears-deal-to-buy-ai-firm-openrouter-for-over-7-billion 🔹 You Wouldn’t Steal a GPUSenior executives from Supermicro were indicted by the DOJ for allegedly smuggling 2.5 billion dollars worth of Nvidia GPU servers into China. https://www.theregister.com/legal/2026/08/21/supermicro-fired-staff-after-probe-into-25-billion-gpus-to-china-smuggling-operation/5290791 🔹 Legendary N64 Game GoldenEye 100% Decompiled After Five Years Of EffortA community developer has completely reverse-engineered the classic Nintendo 64 game GoldenEye 007 into human-readable source code after five years of effort. https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/goldeneye-007-for-n64-has-been-100-percent-decompiled-success-of-half-decade-project-opens-up-possibilities-for-complex-mods-and-ports 🔹 Taxation Is TheftA new federal bill proposes taxing electricity consumption by large-scale data centers to help fund environmental and public infrastructure programs. https://techstrong.it/featured/federal-bill-would-tax-data-center-electricity-as-ai-power-demand-grows/ 🔹 Spaghetti Mystery That Vexed Richard Feynman Was Finally Solved By A Guy Called NorbertMIT researchers solved a longstanding physics puzzle by demonstrating that twisting dry spaghetti before bending it allows a noodle to break cleanly into two pieces. https://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-mathematicians-solve-age-old-spaghetti-mystery-0813 Click here to view the episode transcript. Click here to watch a video of this episode. (00:00) - - Intro (01:16) - - One More Reason to Avoid Las Vegas (03:58) - - Stripe Buying AI Routing Company OpenRouter Because Reasons (06:53) - - You Wouldn't Steal a GPU (09:11) - - Legendary N64 Game GoldenEye 100% Decompiled After Five Years Of Effort (12:12) - - Taxation Is Theft (14:10) - - Spaghetti Mystery That Vexed Richard Feynman Was Finally Solved By A Guy Called Norbert Share and enjoy!https://chaoslever.com

    Supermicro GPU Smuggling, Stripe Acquires OpenRouter, and Physics of Pasta | Tech News of the Week

  6. Aug 17

    Lost Archives, Risky BMCs, and Solar Quantum Leaps | Tech News of the Week

    Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 08/17/2026. This week we are covering: Nine PBS loses access to archival footage, an AI model round-up, persistent Baseboard Management Controller security flaws, and much more. St. Louis PBS Station (At Least Temporarily) Loses Access to 50TB of Archival Footage Nine PBS is currently suing Iron Mountain to regain access to 50 terabytes of archival data that was stranded after cloud vendor Open Source Storage collapsed. https://current.org/2026/08/nine-pbs-sues-iron-mountain-over-blocked-access-to-archival-data/ AI Model Round-Up Recent artificial intelligence developments include xAI launching Grok 4.6, Meta introducing the open-weight Muse Glimmer model for local agentic workloads, and OpenAI pausing internal work on its Astra model due to critical cyber capabilities. https://research.meta.ai/blog/introducing-muse-glimmer-open-agentic-model The Original Never-Updated Security Nightmare, On-Motherboard Components, Continue To Wreak Havoc New research presented at Black Hat reveals that baseboard management controllers across major vendors remain plagued by decade-old vulnerabilities and numerous internet-exposed deployments. https://www.runzero.com/blog/bmc-research/ Transcript: Click here to view the episode transcript. Cisco Scaring Customers Into Upgrades Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins warned that advanced AI models like Mythos will rapidly uncover exploits in out-of-support hardware to encourage enterprise customers to accelerate their refresh cycles. https://www.theregister.com/networks/2026/08/13/cisco-thinks-mythos-means-instant-death-for-unsupported-networking-kit/5287204Scientists Create Entangled Photon Pairs Using Sunlight Instead Of Lasers Researchers in Germany and Canada successfully demonstrated proof-of-principle quantum entanglement by focusing natural sunlight into optical fibers with a 94 percent state fidelity. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-harness-sunlight-for-quantum-entanglement/Voyager 2 Software Upgrades Are Successful NASA engineers installed the Big Bang software patch on Voyager 2 from over 13 billion miles away to optimize heat generation, conserve remaining electrical power, and keep the probe functional through its 50th anniversary. https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/62370/20260813/nasa-updates-voyager-2-software-133-billion-miles-away-extend-its-mission.htmShare and enjoy!https://chaoslever.com

    Lost Archives, Risky BMCs, and Solar Quantum Leaps | Tech News of the Week

  7. Aug 10

    Chrome Eats Your Drive & GPT 5.6 Escapes | Tech News of the Week

    Welcome to Tech News of the Week for 08/10/2026. This week we are covering: Chrome silently downloading 20GB local AI models, Elon Musk settling his multiyear advertiser boycott lawsuit, Bending Spoons acquiring Airtable, and much more. --- Chrome Wants 20GB of Your TimeGoogle Chrome is automatically downloading up to 20GB of local AI models onto eligible user devices unless disabled in browser system settings. https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/ --- Elon Musk is a LoserElon Musk quietly settled his lawsuit against advertisers who left Twitter over brand safety concerns, resulting in no monetary payout and the dissolution of brand-safety group GARM.https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/29/elon-musks-x-settles-multiyear-legal-battle-with-the-world-federation-of-advertisers/ --- There Is No Air TableBending Spoons announced plans to acquire Airtable for 1.4 billion dollars, leading to expected engineering layoffs and pricing increases for current customers.https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-pulse-bending-spoons-acquisition-strategy/ --- Chinese LLM Maker Moonshot AI Releases Kimi K3, A Super Powerful Model You Can Run At Home! … sort ofMoonshot AI released open weights for its massive 2.8-trillion-parameter Kimi K3 model, which is free to download but requires millions of dollars in enterprise GPU hardware to run locally.https://kimi-k2.org/blog/31-kimi-k3-open-weights-july-27 --- GPT 5.6 Breaks Containment… AgainOpenAI's GPT 5.6 Sol and other frontier models escaped isolated sandboxes during capability testing by exploiting vulnerabilities to access benchmark answer datasets directly.https://cybersecuritynews.com/mythos-5-and-gpt-5-6-sol-security-incident/ --- 2,000 Year Old Carbonized Scroll From Herculaneum Has Been TranscribedResearchers with the Vesuvius Challenge used particle accelerator scans and AI neural networks to virtually unwrap and transcribe an ancient carbonized scroll containing a Stoic ethics treatise.https://scrollprize.org/firstscroll --- Share and enjoy!https://chaoslever.com

    Chrome Eats Your Drive & GPT 5.6 Escapes | Tech News of the Week

  8. Aug 3

    Chaos Lever After Dark — Season 2 Kickoff

    Welcome to the debut of Chaos Lever After Dark! Hosts Ned Bellavance and Chris Hayner return to officially kick off Season 2 with a refreshed, sanity-preserving format. After powering through nearly 200 episodes over three years, the duo discusses stepping away from tight 45-minute limits to dive deep into single topics without rushing. In this loose, late-night style opening episode, Ned and Chris dissect podcast transcript rendering glitches, reflect on the glorious diaspora of Cracked.com writers, preview upcoming Season 2 topics (from local AI models to physical building security and the surprising depth of doorknob mechanics), and announce their dedicated YouTube channel and upcoming merch lineup.

    Chaos Lever After Dark — Season 2 Kickoff
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Ratings & Reviews

4.3
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Ned Bellavance and Chris Hayner
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    259
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2022 Ned Bellavance
  • Show Website
    Chaos Lever Podcast

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