Welcome to episode 299 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! Google Next is quickly approaching, and you know what that means – it’s time for predictions! Who will win this year’s Crystal Ball award? Only time and the main stage will tell. Join Matthew, Justin, and Ryan as they break down their thoughts on what groundbreaking (and less groundbreaking) announcements are in store for us.

• OpenAI and Anthropic join forces?
• Its 2025, and AWS is still trying to make Jumbo packets happen
• Beanstalk and Ruby’s Updates!! They’re Alive!!!
• Google Colossus or how to expect a colossal cloud outage someday.
• The Cloud Pod gives an ode to Peter

02:27 OpenAI adopts rival Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to data

• OpenAI is embracing Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where the data resides.
• By adapting Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol or MCP across its products, including the desktop app for ChatGPT.
• MCP is an open source standard that helps AI models produce better, more relevant responses to certain queries.
• Sam Altman says that people love MCP and they are excited to add support across their products and that it is available today in the Agents SDK and support for the ChatGPT desktop and Response API is coming soon.
• MCP lets models draw data from sources like business tools and software to complete tasks, as well as from content repositories and app development environments.
• We found two helpful articles that may help demystify this whole concept.

MCP: What It Is and Why It Matters – by Addy Osmani

Meet MCP: Your LLM’s Super-Helpful Assistant!

• • Justin particularly loves Addy Osmani’s blog, as they start out with a simple ELI5 on understanding MCP. We’re going to quote verbatim:

• “Imagine you have a single universal plug that fits all your devices – that’s essentially what the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is for AI. MCP is an open standard (think “USB-C for AI integrations”) that allows AI models to connect to many different apps and data sources in a consistent way. In simple terms, MCP lets an AI assistant talk to various software tools using a common language, instead of each tool requiring a different adapter or custom code.”

• • So, what does this mean in practice? If you’r...

Welcome to episode 298 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Matthew and Ryan are in the house (and still very much missing Jonathan) to bring you a jam packed show this week, with news from Beijing to Virginia! Did you know Virginia was in the US? Amazon definitely wants you to know that.

We’ve got updates from BigQuery Git Support and their new collab tools, plus all the AI updates you were hoping you’d miss. Tune in now!

• The Cloud Pod now Recorded from Planet Earth
• Wait Java still exists?
• When will java just be coffee and not software
• Cloudflare Makes AI beat Mazes
• Replacing native mobile things with mobile web apps won’t fix your problems AWS
• Turn your security over to the bots
• The Cloud Pod is lost in the AI labyrinth
• AI security agents to secure the AI… wait recursion
• Durable + Stateless.. I don’t know if you know what those words means
• Click ops expands to our phones yay!
• The Cloud Pod is now a data analyst
• Gitops come to bigquery

00:46 Manus, a New AI Agent From China is Going Viral—And Raising Big Questions

• Manus is being described as “the first true autonomous AI agent” from China, capable of completing weeks of professional work in hours.
• Developed by a team called Butterfly Effect with offices in Beijing and Wuhan, Manus functions as a truly autonomous agent that independently analyzes, plans, and executes complex tasks.
• The system uses a multi-agent architecture powered by several distinct AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and fine-tuned versions of Alibaba’s

Welcome to episode 297 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin, Ryan, and Matthew have beaten the black lung and are in the studio – ready to bring you all the latest and greatest in cloud and AI news! We’ve got Wiz buyouts (that security, it’s so hot right now!) Gemma 3, Glue 5 (but not 3 or 4) and Gemini Robots – plus looking forward to AI Skills Fest and Google Next, all this week on The Cloud Pod.

• Google! Yer a WIZ—Ard
• Google Announces Network Security Integration… and that must include WIZ
• Gemini Robots…. What could go wrong
• AI Data Studios … So Hot Right Now
• I want 32 Billion dollars
• Azure Follow AWS in bad life choices – mk
• Wait Glue is more than v2
• What happened to Glue 3 and 4?
• 5th Try and AWS Glue still sucks

01:05 Microsoft quantum computing claim still lacks evidence: physicists are dubious

• A MS researcher presented results behind the company’s controversial claim to have created the first topological qubits – a long-sought goal of quantum computing.
• Theorists said it’s a hard problem, and that it was a beautiful talk but the claims come without evidence, and people think they have gone overboard.
• The Head of Quantum at Amazon was also highly skeptical:
  • https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-exec-casts-doubt-microsoft-quantum-claims-2025-3

02:09 Justin – “No one’s really buying Microsoft actually created a new topological qubit. There’s some doubt… basically they said that what they showed, which is a microscopic H-shaped aluminum wire on top of indium arsenide – a superconductor at ultra-cold temperatures, and the devices are designed to harness majoranas, previously undiscovered quasi-particles that are essential for topological qubits to work, and the goals for majoranas to appear at the four tips of the H-shaped wire emerging from reflective-behavior electrons, and these majorans in theory could be used to perform quantum computing that are resistant to information loss, but no proof, no evidence, and they think Microsoft’s full of it.”

04:12 Google + Wiz: Strengthening Multicloud Security

• Google has announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Wiz. This will allow them to better provide business and governments with more choice in how they protect themselves.
• Google answers why now… and that they have seen their Mandiant consultants witness the accelerating number and severity of breaches.
• Most organizations are going digital, and most deployments are multi-cloud or hybrid. Both of which introduce complex management changes. This is occurring while software and AI platforms are becoming deeply embedded across products and operations.
• Traditional approaches to cybe...