The Cloud Pod | Weekly AI & Cloud News on AWS, Azure & GCP
The Cloud Pod delivers weekly cloud computing and AI news for engineers, architects, and technology leaders. Join Justin Brodley, Jonathan Baker, Ryan Lucas, and Matt Kohn as they break down the latest from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud — covering new services, platform updates, FinOps strategies, and the AI innovations reshaping the industry. Stay ahead of the cloud landscape with one of the longest-running cloud computing podcasts available.
Amazon’s Coding Bot Bites the Hand That Runs It
Welcome to episode 344 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin is out of the office at a World of Warcraft Tournament (not really), and Ryan is pursuing his lifelong dream of becoming a roadie for The Eagles (maybe?), so it’s Jonathan and Matt holding down the fort this week, and they’ve got a ton of cloud news for you! From security to AI assistants, we’ve got all the news you need. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
Zero Bus, All Gas, No Kafka Brakes AI Coding...AWS CloudWatch Finally Hits Snooze
Welcome to episode 343 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Ryan, and Matt are in the studio this week bringing you all the latest in Cloud and AI news, including some of the smaller clouds like Cloudflare and Crusoe Cloud, as well as announcements from the big guys like Google’s Gemini DeepThink, Anthropic’s big pay day, and Microsoft’s Notepad problem. We’ve got all this plus Matt screwing up his outro AGAIN, so let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
Chrome’s WebMCP Protocol: Teaching AI Agents to...Eight Minutes to Midnight: When AI Helps Hackers Speed Run Your AWS Account
Welcome to episode 342 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Ryan, and Matt are in the studio today to bring you all the latest in cloud and AI news this week. How do you feel about ads? How do you feel about ads while using AI? We’ve got options! We’ve got a round-up of tech Super Bowl ads, AI ads, Earnings reports (who frankly need the ad revenue), and a plethora of Opus 4.6 announcements, plus more. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
ChatGPT Goes Full Mad Men...AWS Layoffs: Scaling Down Instead of Scaling Out
Welcome to episode 341 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Matt & Ryan are picking up Justin’s slack this week while he’s traveling for work, but don’t worry, because they have plenty of news! We’re talking about those mass layoffs over at AWS, a major security breach over at Notepad++, and some new slight of hand over at Elon’s companies. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get into it!
Titles we almost went with this week
Finally, a Chatbot That Actually Knows Where Your Data Lives **Anthropic Micr...Azure releases a new SQL AI Assistant… Jimmy Droptables
Welcome to episode 340 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! It’s a full house (eventually) with Justin, Jonathan, Ryan, and Matt all on board for today’s episode. We’ve got a lot of announcements, from Gemini for Gov (no more CamoGPT!) to Route 52 and Claude. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
Claude’s Pricing Tiers: Free, Pro, and Maximum Overdrive GitHub Copilot Learns Database Schema: Finally an AI That Understands Your Joins SSMS Gets a Copilot: Your T-SQL Now Writes Itself While You Grab Coffee Too Many Cooks i...Just-in-Time Secrets: Because Your AI Agent Can't Keep Its Mouth Shut
Welcome to episode 339 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin and Matt are in the studio today to bring you all the latest in cloud and AI announcements, including more personnel shifts (and it doesn’t seem like it was very friendly), a new way to get much needed copper, and Azure marketplace advertising 4,000 different models. What’s the real story? Let’s get into it and find out!
Titles we almost went with this week
US-EAST-1: Still the Least Reliable Friend You Keep Inviting to Parties **OpenAI 0⃣ From Zero to Inference: BigQuery...T5Gemma Says “AI’ll be Back”
Welcome to episode 338 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Ryan, Matt, and Jonathan are in the studio today to bring you all the latest in cloud and AI news, including a bit of a buying spree (inlcuding whole power companies) Veo 3.1, Cowork, and more – today in the cloud!
Titles we almost went with this week
Snowflake’s Ironic Timing: Buying Downtime Prevention Tool While Experiencing Downtime Flexera Buys ProsperOps and Chaos Genius, Promises Less Chaos and More Prosperity Flexera Goes Shopping: Two FinOps Acquisitions to Prosper and Reduce Chaos Token of Apprec...AWS Discovers Prices Can Go Both Ways, Raises GPU Costs 15 Percent
Welcome to episode 337 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Matt, and Ryan have hit the recording studio to bring you all the latest in cloud and AI news, from acquisitions and price hikes to new tools that Ryan somehow loves but also hates? We don’t understand either… but let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
Prompt Engineering Our Way Into Trouble The Demo Worked Yesterday, We Swear It Scales Horizontally, Trust Us Responsible AI But Terrible Copy (Marketing Edition)General News
00:58 Watch ‘The Thinking Ga...
We Were Right (Mostly), 2026: The New Prophecies
Welcome to episode 335 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Welcome to the first show of 2026, and it’s a full house, too! Justin, Jonathan, Ryan, and Matt are all here to reflect on 2025, plus bring you their predictions for 2026.
Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
SQL Me Maybe: AlloyDB Gets Chatty With Your Database **OpenAI SELECT * FROM natural_language WHERE accuracy LIKE ‘100%’ **Anthropic etcd You Were Worried About Database Limits: CloudWatch Has Your Back CSV You Later: Looker Adds Drag-and-Drop Data Uploads AWS Spots an Opportunit...EKS Network Policies: Now With More Layers Than Your Security Team's Org Chart
Welcome to episode 335 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! This pre-Christmas week, Ryan and Justin have hit the studio to bring you the final show of 2025. We’ve got lots of AI images, EKS Network Policies, Gemini 3, and even some Disney drama.
Let’s get into it!
Titles we almost went with this week
From Roomba to Tomb-ba: How the Robot Vacuum Pioneer Got Cleaned Out **OpenAI From Napkin Sketch to Production: Google’s App Design Center Goes GA Terraform Gets a Canvas: Google Paints Infrastructure Design with AI Mickey Mouse Ta...AWS Makes Kubernetes Conversational
Welcome to episode 334 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! This week, we’re bringing you a jam-packed recap of re:Invent! We’ve got all the news, from keynotes to announcements. Whether you were there live or catching up on all the news, Justin, Matt, and Ryan are here to break it all down. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
EKS Gets Chatty: Natural Language Replaces Command Line Nightmares Harvest Now, Decrypt Later: Why Your RSA Keys Need a Quantum Makeover Before 2026 NAT So Fast: AWS Helps You Fin...The Cloud Pod Goes Nano Banana
Welcome to episode 333 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Ryan, and Matt are taking a quick break from re:Invent festivities. They bring you the latest and greatest in Cloud and AI news. This week, we discuss Norad and Anthropic teaming up to bring you Christmas cheer. Wait, is that right? Huh. We also have undersea cables, some Turkish region delight, and a LOT of Opus 4.5 news. Let’s get into it!
Titles we almost went with this week
Boring Error Pages Not Found Claude Goes Native in Snowflake: Finally, AI Th...2025 Re:Invent Predictions Draft – May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor
Welcome to episode 332 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! It’s Thanksgiving week, which can only mean one thing: AWS Re:Invent predictions! In this special episode, Justin, Jonathan, Ryan, and Matt engage in the annual tradition of drafting their best guesses for what AWS will announce at the biggest cloud conference of the year. Justin is the reigning champion (probably because he actually reads the show notes), but with a reverse snake draft order determined by dice roll, anything could happen. Will Werner announce his retirement? Is Cognito finally getting a much-needed overhaul? And just...
Claude Gets a $30 Billion Azure Wardrobe and Two New Best Friends
Welcome to episode 331 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Jonathan, Ryan, Matt, and Justin (for a little bit, anyway) are in the studio today to bring you all the latest in cloud and AI news. This week, we’re looking at our Ignite predictions (that side gig as internet psychics isn’t looking too good) undersea cables (our fave!), plus datacenters and more. Plus Claude and Azure make a 30 billion dollar deal! Take a break from turkey and avoiding politics, and let’s take a trip into the clouds!
Titles we almost went with this...
AWS Proves the Internet Really Is a Series of Tubes Under the Ocean
Welcome to episode 329 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy (and if you’re in California, rainy too!) Justin and Matt have taken a break from Ark building activities to bring you this week’s episode, packed with all the latest in cloud and AI news, including undersea cables (our favorite!) FinOps, Ignite predictions, and so much more! Grab your umbrellas and let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
Fastnet and Furious: AWS Lays 320 Terabits of Cable Across the Atlantic No More kubectl apply –pray: AWS Backup Takes the Stress Ou...Azure Front Door: Please Use the Side Entrance
Welcome to episode 329 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Matt, Jonathan, and special guest Elise are in the studio to bring you all the latest in AI and cloud news, including – you guessed it – more outages, and more OpenAI team-ups. We’ve also got GPUs, K8 news, and Cursor updates. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
Azure Front Door: Please Use the Side Entrance – el -jb Azure and NVIDIA: A Match Made in GPU Heaven – mk Azure Goes Down Under the Weight of Its Own Configuration – el GitHub Turns Yo...Shhh… It’s a Secret Region!
Welcome to episode 328 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Ryan, and Matt are on board today to bring you all the latest news in cloud and AI, including secret regions (this one has the aliens), ongoing discussions between Microsoft and OpenAI, and updates to Nova, SQL, and OneLake -and even the latest installment of Cloud Journeys. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
CloudWatch’s New Feature: Because Nobody Likes Writing Incident Reports at 3 AM DNS: Did Not Survive – The Great US-EAST-1 Outage of 2025 404 DevOps Not Found: The AWS...AWS Finally Admits Kubernetes is Hard, Makes Robots Do It Instead
Welcome to episode 327 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Matt, and Ryan are here to bring you all the latest news (and a few rants) in the worlds of Cloud and AI. I’m sure all our readers are aware of the AWS outage last week, as it was in all the news everywhere. But we’ve also got some new AI models (including Sora in case you’re low on really crappy videos the youths might like), plus EKS, Kubernetes, Vertex AI, and more. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with...
Oracle Discovers the Dark Side (And Finally Has Cookies)
Welcome to episode 326 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin and Ryan are your guides to all things cloud and AI this week! We’ve got news from SonicWall (and it’s not great), a host of goodbyes to say over at AWS, Oracle (finally) joins the dark side, and even Slurm – and you don’t even need to ride on a creepy river to experience it. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
SonicWall’s Cloud Backup Service: From 5% to Oh No, That’s Everyone AWS Spring Cleaning: 19 Se...Db2 or Not Db2: That Is the Backup Question
Welcome to episode 325 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin is on vacation this week, so it’s up to Ryan and Matthew to bring you all the latest news in cloud and AI, and they definitely deliver! This week we have an AWS invoice undo button, Sora 2, and quite a bit of news DigitalOcean – plus so much more. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
AWS Shoots for the Cloud with NBA Partnership Nothing But Net: AWS Scores Big with Basketball AI Deal From Courtside to Cloud-side: AWS Dun...Databricks One: Because Seven Eight Nine
Welcome to episode 323 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Matt and Ryan are in the studio tonight to bring you all the latest in cloud and AI news! This week we have a close call from Entra, some DeepSeek news, Firestore, and even an acquisition! Make sure to stay tuned for the aftershow – and Matt obviously falling asleep on the job. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
When One Key Opens Every Door: Microsoft’s Close Call with Cloud Catastrophe Bedrock Goes Qwen-tum: Alibaba’s Models Join the AWS...Clippy’s Revenge: The AI Assistant That Actually Works - Sort Of
Welcome to episode 324 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Ryan, and Jonathan are your hosts, bringing you all the latest news and announcements in Cloud and AI. This week we have some exec changes over at Oracle, a LOT of announcements about Sonnet 4.5, and even some marketplace updates over at Azure! Let’s get started.
Titles we almost went with this week
Oracle’s Executive Shuffle: Promoting from Within While Chasing from Behind Copilot Takes the Wheel on Your Legacy Code Highway Queue Up for GPUs: Google’s Take-a-Number Approach to AI Computi...Did OpenAI and Microsoft Break Up? It’s Complicated…
Welcome to episode 322 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! We have BIG NEWS – Jonathan is back! He’s joined in the studio by Justin and Ryan to bring you all the latest in cloud and AI news, including ongoing drama in the Microsoft/OpenAI drama, saying goodbye to data transfer fees (in the EU), M4 Power, and more. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
EU Later, Egress Fees: Google’s Brexit from Data Transfer Charges The Keys to the Cosmos: Azure Unlocks Customer Control Breaking Up is Hard to Do...The Cloud Pod is in Tears Trying to Understand Azure Tiers
The Cloud Pod is in Tears Trying to Understand Azure Tiers
Welcome to episode 321 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Ryan, and Matt are all on hand to bring you the latest in cloud and AI news, including increased metrics data (because who doesn’t love more data), some issues over at Cloudflare, and even bigger issues at Builder.ai – plus so much more. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week
Lost in Translation: Google Helps IPv6 Find Its Way to IPv4 BigQuery’s Soft Landing for Ha...AWS Cost MCP: Your Billing Data Now Speaks Human
Welcome to episode 320 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Matt, and Ryan are coming to you from Justin’s echo chamber and bringing all the latest in AI and Cloud news, including updates to Google’s Anti-trust case, AWS Cost MCP, new regions, updates to EKS, Veo, and Claude, and more! Let’s get into it.
Titles we almost went with this week:
Breaking Bad Bottlenecks: AWS Cooks Up Faster Container Pulls The Bucket List: Finding Your Lost Storage Dollars State of Denial: Terraform Finally Stops Saving Your Passwords Three Stages of Azure Gr...AWS Cost MCP: Your Billing Data Now Speaks Human
Welcome to episode 319 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Matt, and Ryan are in the studio to bring you all the latest in cloud and AI news. AWS Cost MCP makes exploring your finops data as simple as english text. We’ve got a sunnier view for junior devs, a Microsoft open source development, tokens, and it’s even Kubernetes’ birthday – let’s get into it!
Titles we almost went with this week:
From Linux Hater to Open Source Darling: A Microsoft Love Story 20,000 Lines of Code and a Dream: Microsoft’s Open Source...One Extension to Rule Them All (And in the VS Code Bind Them)
Welcome to episode 318 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! We’re going on an adventure! Justin and Ryan have formed a fellowship of the cloud, and they’re bringing you all the latest and greatest news from Valinor to Helm’s Deep, and Azure to AWS to GCP. We’ve water issues, some Magic Quadrants, and Aurora updates…but sadly no potatoes. Let’s get into it!
Titles we almost went with this week:
You’ve Got No Mail: AOL Finally Hangs Up on Dial-Up Ctrl+Alt+Delete Climate Change H2-Oh No: Your Gmail is...I Got 99 Problems, But a Hallucination Ain’t One
Welcome to episode 317 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Matt, and an out-of-breath (from outrunning bears) Ryan are back in the studio to bring you another episode of everyone’s favorite cloud and AI news wrap-up. This week we’ve got GTP-5, Oracle’s newly minted AI conference, hallucinations (not the good kind), and even a Cloud Journey follow-up. Let’s get into it!
Titles we almost went with this week:
Oracle Intelligence: Mission Las Vegas AI World: Oracle’s Excellent Adventure AI Gets a Reality Check: Amazon’s New Math Teacher for H...Microsoft’s New AI Agent Has Trust Issues (With Software)
Welcome to episode 316 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! This week we’ve got earnings (with sound effects, obviously) as well as news from DeepSeek, DocumentDB, DigitalOcean, and a bunch of GPU news. Justin and Matt are here to lead you through all of it, so let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week:
Lake Sentinel: The Security Data Monster Nobody Asked For Certificate Authority Issues: When Your Free Lunch Gets a Security Audit Slash and Learn: Gemini Gets Command-ing DigitalOcean Drops Anchor in AI Waters with Gradient Platform The T...EC2's New Shutdown Shortcut: Because Sometimes You Just Need to Pull the Plug
Welcome to episode 315 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Your hosts, Justin and Matt, are here to bring you the latest in cloud and AI news, including news about AI from the White House, the newest hacker exploits, and news from CloudWatch, CrowdStrike, and GKE – plus so much more. Let’s get into it!
Titles we almost went with this week:
SharePoint and Tell: Government Secrets at Risk Zero-Day Hero: How Hackers Found SharePoint’s Achilles’ Heel Amazon Q Gets an F in Security Class Spark Joy: GitHub’s Marie Kondo Approach to App Devel...Focus on Value: How FinOps Transformed from Cost Cops to Business Enablers
For this special edition of TCP Talks, Justin Brodley is joined by four distinguished guests from the FinOps Foundation following the recent FinOps X conference in San Diego. Rob Martin, Mike Fuller, Graham Murphy, and the TCP team dive deep into the evolution of FinOps from pure cloud cost management to the broader “Cloud Plus” world, the rapid adoption of Focus 1.2, and how AI is transforming both what we manage and how we manage it.
About Our Guests
Rob Martin has been with the FinOps Foundation for four years, currently focusing on the AI working grou...
Vector? I Hardly Know Her! S3's New AI Storage Play
Welcome to episode 314 of The Cloud Pod, where your hosts, Matt and Ryan, are holding down the fort in Justin’s absence and bringing what’s left of our audience (those of you still here after the last time they were left in charge) the latest and greatest in cloud and tech news. We’ve got undersea cables, vector storage, and even some hobos – but not the kind on trains. Plus, AWS S3 gets its Vector Victor. Let’s get started!
Titles we almost went with this week:
S3 Gets Direction: AWS Points to Vector Storage Vector? I H...The Gartner Guide to Breaking Things on Purpose
Welcome to episode 313 of The Cloud Pod, where your hosts, Matt, Ryan, and Justin, are here to bring you all the latest in Cloud and AI news. This week we’ve got an installation of Cloud Journey featuring Gartner and chaos AND an aftershow! We’ve got acquisition news, new tools, an undersea cable, and even a little chaos, all right now in the cloud. Let’s get into it!
Titles we almost went with this week:
From Vibe Check to Production Spec Node More Mr. Nice Guy: AWS Locks Down Access Until You Ask Nicely Grok’s...TCP Talks: The David vs. Goliath of Cloud Storage: Chris Opat from Backblaze on Challenging Hyperscalers
For this special edition of TCP Talks, Justin Brodley and Matthew Kohn are joined by Chris Opat, SVP of Cloud Operations at Backblaze, to discuss how the cloud storage innovator is reshaping the industry landscape. From their origins as a consumer backup company to becoming a major player in enterprise cloud storage, Chris shares insights on AI workloads, the true cost of egress fees, and why your data doesn’t have to live in a walled garden.
About Backblaze
Backblaze started in 2007 with a simple mission: make storage so affordable it’s almost free. The comp...
Azure Firewall Finally Learns to Spell (FQDN Edition)
Welcome to episode 312 of The Cloud Pod, where your hosts, Matt, Ryan, and Justin, are here to bring you all the latest in Cloud and AI news. We’ve got security news, updates from PostgreSQL, Azure firewall and BlobNFS, plus TWO Cloud Journey stories for you!
Thanks for joining us this week in the cloud!
Titles we almost went with this week:
Git Happens: Why Your Database Pipeline Keeps Breaking PostgreSQL and Chill: Azure’s New Storage Options for Database Romance NVMe, Myself, and PostgreSQL Canvas and Effect: AWS Paints a New Picture for E-comme...The Crawlers are Running the Asylum
Welcome to episode 311 of Two Old Men Yelling at Cloud – aka The Cloud Pod, featuring Matt and Ryan who absolutely, definitely did NOT record an aftershow.
This week, they’re talking about Cloudflare’s new Pay Per Crawler, a new open-source Terraform provider from mkdev, and lots of fabric news that Ryan doesn’t understand – plus so much more. Let’s get into it!
Titles we almost went with this week:
(Show Editor note: There are more show titles than emojis. I give up.)
FSx and the City: When File Systems Meet Object Storage T...CI You Later, Manual Testing
Welcome to episode 310 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! Matt, Ryan and Justin are here to bring you all the latest and greatest in cloud and AI news.
Literally.
All of it.
This week we have announcements from re:Inforce, Manual Testing, GuardDuty, Government AI (what could go wrong?) Gemini 2.5 and, in a flash from the past, MS-DOS Editor. All this and more, this week in the cloud!
Titles we almost went with this week:
ACM Finally Lets Its Certificates Leave the Nest Breaking Free: AWS Certif...Microsoft tries to give away cloud services for free, sadly, it's only SQL
Welcome to episode 308 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin and Matt are on hand and ready to bring you an action packed episode. Unfortunately, this one is also lullaby free. Apologies. This week we’re talking about Databricks and Lakebridge, Cedar Analysis, Amazon Q, Google’s little hiccup, and updates to SQL – plus so much more! Thanks for joining us.
Titles we almost went with this week:
KV Phone Home: When Your Key-Value Store Goes AWOL When Your Coreless Service Finds Its Core Problem Oracle’s Vanity Fair: Pretty URLs for Pretty Penn...SCC: Security Command Center or Super Cool Capabilities?
Welcome to episode 308 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Matt and Ryan are in the house today to tell us all about the latest and greatest from FinOps and SnowFlake conferences, plus updates from Security Command Center, OpenAI, and even a new AWS Region. All this and more, today in the cloud!
Titles we almost went with this week:
I Left My Wallet at FinOps X, But Found Savings at Snowflake Summit Snowflake City Lights, FinOps by the Sea The Two Summits: A Tale of FinOps and Snowflakes Crunchy on the Out...The AI Assistant That Finally Understands Your Kubernetes Cluster (We are Doomed)
Welcome to episode 307 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! Who else is at a conference? Justin is coming to us this week from sunny San Diego where he’s attending FinOps – so we have that news to look forward to for next week. Matt and Ryan are also on hand today to share the latest news from Kubernetes, Salesforce acquisitions, and the strange case of Azure making AWS more cost effective.
