May 21, 2025 • 22 mins
Major tech companies are making significant moves with mergers, acquisitions, and layoffs as the industry continues to evolve rapidly and face new challenges in the market.
• Rumors suggest Arista Networks is acquiring VeloCloud from Broadcom for nearly $1 billion, potentially strengthening Arista's SD-WAN offerings
• Charter and Cox Communications are merging to combat declining cable relevance, continuing the trend of telecom mega-consolidation
• Microsoft laid off 6,000 employees (3% of workforce) despite reporting $25.8 billion quarterly profit
• Microsoft openly stated layoffs will fund AI capital investments, with plans for continued annual cuts
• Microsoft announced it will host rival AI models in its data centers and is launching a new autonomous coding agent
• Security concerns arise as Microsoft plans to give AI agents "digital identifiers" similar to human employees
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris (00:14):
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the
fortnightly cables to cloudsnews podcast, where Tim and I
basically go through a couple ofthe news articles that have
come out over the last two weeksand discuss them.
Tim gives all the hot takes hehas, you know, those
controversial opinions on theplanet.
(00:34):
But no, before we hop into that, actually I do want to provide
a bit of an announcement.
So you know, tim and I, overthe course of this podcast, have
frequently talked about thingsto do with Aviatrix, because we
both work there and you know wewere coworkers there for a long
(00:55):
time.
But I have made a recent change, so I have actually moved
companies to Fortinet as of lastweek, so I'm three days in
drinking from the fire hose,doing all that fun stuff, um.
But just wanted to provide aquick update to the listeners,
in case you had not noticed itanywhere else, that, um, I'm I'm
(01:16):
working for a different company, so that's just a a quick,
quick side note that I'll addthere.
Tim is very upset, um, thatwe're not coworkers anymore,
but-workers anymore.
But luckily, linkedin, we'restill listed as employed at
Cables to Clouds on LinkedIn, sowe're technically still
co-workers right, Exactly.
Tim (01:33):
I mean, we don't draw a salary or anything, but yeah,
we're co-workers sure I wonder.
Chris (01:38):
We still haven't figured out who reports to who.
The org chart is still a littlehairy, but we'll figure it out.
Yeah, all right, with that outof the way, let's hop into the
news, um.
So first up we have an articlefrom channel e2ecom, um, which
this is none of this has beenconfirmed by either of the
(02:01):
vendors in play here, but it's apretty strong rumor at this
point that it sounds likeVeloCloud, which you may
remember from early SD-WAN days,was acquired by VMware several
years ago.
Sd-wan offering that then wasacquired by Broadcom in the
acquisition of VMware is nowreportedly being sold off to
(02:25):
Arista Networks.
So Arista, obviously huge, hugeplayer in the data center
networking space right now.
They've been very successful intaking a lot of that business
from Cisco and really kind ofcreating that groundswell and
creating that market there, andnow it looks like they're
looking to strengthen theirSD-WAN offering for an
(02:50):
acquisition.
This is all rumors, like I said, but it says it could be valued
nearly around a billion dollars.
From what I've heard, I wasunder the impression that
VeloCloud had kind of slowed onmarket adoption as of recent.
I don't know if that has to dowith the Broadcom acquisition.
(03:11):
Obviously, we've made somecomments about how Broadcom
treats a lot of these things onthis podcast, and maybe that it
contributes to why some peoplewould be a little bit hesitant
to transact or move to VeloCloudet cetera.
But I think this is aninteresting move.
It looks like Broadcom is kindof selling off pieces of the
(03:36):
business that it doesn't find.
I mean, just based on whatBroadcom has done in the past,
I'm assuming this is not, uh,you know what they consider
their bread and butter, uh,moneymaker type products.
Um, and I think there there'smentioned in here that they sold
off the end user computing umoption to um KKR.
(03:56):
Um, I don't even remember thatbeing announced, if I'm being
honest with you, but um, that isthat is listed in here as well.
Um, from my understanding thatArista already had an SD-WAN
product, I think it was calledlike um, pathfinder, yeah,
pathfinder, but I think like itincorporated into the Arista WAN
(04:16):
routing system type thing, andit was like this whole kind of
portfolio, as far as I know.
Tim (04:21):
Yeah.
Chris (04:22):
Yeah, exactly so it was kind of baked into there.
So I don't know if this isgoing to fit in there or what
they're going to do with it, butquite an interesting move.
I don't know if this is goingto be kind of the next evolution
for VeloCloud or maybe the endof days for VeloCloud, but yeah,
I don't know.
What do you think, tim?
Tim (04:41):
I mean this is typical PE behavior, right, which of course
Broadcom pretty much operatesas a PE, so private equity firm.
So yeah, I can't say I'msurprised in any shape that
Broadcom is divesting itself ofpretty much everything that
doesn't bring in the most moneypossible and just making what
they can by selling it.
Yeah, no, I don't have much toadd that you haven't already
(05:01):
covered.
Arista is a good.
It's probably a good fit forVeloCloud.
There's a difference betweenselling.
When a business sells off itstechnology to another business.
There's still a huge questionmark around what does
integration look like?
So I think that still remainsto be seen.
It can't just be as simple as Iguess they could simply just
(05:23):
take over VeloCloud customersand whatnot.
But if they want to integrateit into their portfolio, I'm
sure there's some work to bedone there.
And yeah, I think, just likethe whole Juniper, hp Aruba
thing, that still hasn'tobviously happened in terms of
where does the wireless fit inthose portfolios?
I think we're going to have toanswer the same question Are are
(05:43):
they just going to haveVeloCloud, to just have
VeloCloud, or are they going tointegrate it?
And if they integrate it, whatdoes it look like next to its
you know its homegrown, offeringthis Pathfinder.
Chris (05:54):
Yeah, and from what I recall, I believe there is a
VeloCloud SASE product as well,so I'm assuming this is going to
go with that.
So I mean, I don't know ifGartner is still doing Magic
Quad Horns specifically forSD-WAN or if it's kind of
evolved into SASE at this point,but that potentially puts
Arista in a good spot there withkind of the rest of the market
(06:18):
contention that they see there.
So, yeah, could be a good move,like you said.
Tim (06:21):
All right.
In other news of thingshappening in the world of tech,
it looks like Charter and CoxCommunications are merging.
So this is an article from CNBC, and the way the article reads
it actually reads less like amerger and more like Charter's
acquiring Cox Communications,because when it's all done, it
(06:42):
looks like Charter's going to bethe name that survives.
But yeah, so I mean, these aretwo huge cable companies, so
it's not unusual for you know,cable companies to merge.
But what I found particularlyinteresting about this article
is how it mentions that cablecompanies have been struggling,
(07:03):
of course, since streamingservices came out, which course
since streaming services cameout, which is, I think,
everybody knows that right, andso the big part of their
survival technique, if you will,is to roll in wireless.
So they've added like wirelessservices.
I'm sure by now everybody,probably in America, has gotten
their cable company, a cablecompany calling them, so they
have wireless services.
(07:23):
So so the big three for cablehas always been television,
internet, of course, and thenfinally wireless services.
So in this case it mentionsthat that's part of, maybe part
of what's fueling the merger isthat they're both just trying to
stay essentially relevant andmerge it together.
(07:45):
What I find interesting is thatthis isn't getting the same
scrutiny that some of the otherlarge mergers are, because, like
what is it Comcast?
Comcast is still the biggest inAmerica, I believe by a lot
right.
So maybe that's why, maybethat's why it's not getting.
But there's so many otheracquisitions out there that are
like there's a Verizon one outthere as well.
(08:06):
What were they going to buyFrontier?
They're going to buy Frontier,and that still hasn't gone
through.
So I don't know if this ispolitical.
Chris (08:13):
Because they're being investigated for DEI practices.
Tim (08:19):
Yeah, yeah, it says that.
So if they're currently beinginvestigated for DEI, does that
mean they had it?
Yeah, I don't know, or theydidn't have it.
So anyway, yeah, Charter alsorecently acquired a completely
different cable company.
So I think we're getting intothe mega consolidation wars now,
where everything's going to getmega consolidated.
(08:39):
But anyway, this isn't.
I don't know.
I don't think there's a lot tosay to this other than just to
point out the decreasingrelevance of cable, but the
increasing conglomeration of bigcompanies in the US.
I don't know How's it like?
What do you think down?
Companies in the US?
I don't know How's it like.
What do you think down there inthe underland?
Chris (08:56):
Well, yeah, I mean, things definitely operate a bit
different down here.
There's only probably a handfulof major kind of commercial
ISPs that you can choose from,but there's also the NBN network
, national Broadband Network.
But this one does hit a littleclose to home for me, because
charter was like the first jobthat I had in the technology
(09:19):
sector, so like yeah so I workedat a call center charter.
There's a huge charter callcenter in Louisville, kentucky,
where I'm from, and yeah, justlike troubleshooting commercial
internet service or not,commercial residential internet
services.
Tim (09:34):
This is crazy.
I worked at Cox as a tier twohigh-speed internet rep.
I was also one of my first techjobs, nice.
I worked at Cox Communicationsin their what is it?
Virginia in their call centeras a high-speed internet
residential internet rep.
How have we never fucking?
Talked about this this hasnever this has never come up.
Chris (09:55):
In our entire friendship over the last like 10 years nice
, yeah, it's funny, though, um,beautiful.
So, yeah, we that's you'rehearing this live on air me and
tim are discovering that we bothgot into this realm of
networking probably in the exactsame fashion, which, which is
which is crazy.
But yeah, so I worked forCharter for a few years and then
(10:16):
eventually, like that's where Igot my CCNA and was like
convinced that, like, that'swhat I needed to do, so I moved
to their NOC and things likethat.
But all that aside, one thingthat is weird is like, like you
said this, like it's weird evenhearing reference them as
Charter again, because I thought, when they went through that
(10:37):
recent acquisition where theyacquired another insanely large
telecom provider no, it was TimeWarner oh, really, yeah, so
they bought Time Warner and thenthe kind of merge of Charter
and Time Warner was supposed tobe Spectrum, that was their new
name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But now it's back to beingcalled Charter and Time Warner
was supposed to be Spectrum,that was their new name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but now it'sback to being called Charter
Spectrum again, so they'veadopted the old name.
(10:59):
So maybe they're going to havea new name for when Charter and
Cox come together.
I don't know.
Tim (11:07):
Yeah, good point, I forgot about that.
But I mean, this says it'sgoing to be Charter, so here in
Raleigh they still just like.
I get calls it's from.
I get email, I get mail likespam messages and stuff from
Spectrum.
It just says Spectrum in thelocation.
So I think it's per marketmaybe, depending on where the
market is.
Chris (11:28):
Yeah, I guess.
So I mean, maybe I don't knowif it's still a parent company
or something like that.
I mean, I think they probablydo more than just this, but yeah
.
And just to be clear, when wewere talking about wireless
services, we were talking about,like, mobile services.
Tim (11:39):
Yeah, mobile, yeah, specifically.
Chris (11:41):
Because I say that?
Because when I worked in thecall center we also provided,
like home wireless Internet andI also was responsible for
troubleshooting that.
So yeah, it's like you said,it's just kind of the super
consolidation of all this stuffjust to kind of turn a profit
again.
I think and you know this Imean, let's be honest, internet
(12:02):
connectivity has become trulycommoditized and is just
basically used as an underlayfor the applications that we
want to run on it, even from abusiness and a and a kind of a
uh, uh, uh, commercialperspective, right, um, so yeah,
it's, it's crazy.
Eventually there's just goingto be one, right?
(12:23):
They're all going to merge intoone mega corpse yeah exactly.
All right, uh, next up, anotherarticle from CNBC.
Actually, um, this was reportedon by several news outlets, but
we found this one was probablythe one that had the most info
in there.
So, as of recent and if you'vebeen on LinkedIn in the last two
weeks, you've probably noticeda bit of this but Microsoft
(12:45):
actually laid off of about 3% ofits global workforce, which I
know 3% doesn't sound like thatmuch, but for a company as big
as Microsoft, that does turn outto be about 6,000 people.
So odds are you know someonethat was directly impacted by
this.
So it's funny because thiscomes like directly on the heels
(13:07):
of their you know kind of Q1reports coming out saying that
you know they, of Q1 reportscoming out saying that they you
know they were they reportedbetter than expected results, um
, with $25.8 billion in uh,quarterly income for the
quarterly yeah, quarterly income.
So that's nearly $26 billion inone quarter.
Um, yet they needed to lay off6,000 people, um, so like better
(13:31):
than expected.
So what were you expecting?
To lay off 7,000 people and youwere able to cut that.
Like it's just like the shit'sgetting old man, like it's like
I know it's kind of like therules of the game, but like it's
, it's, it's so demoralizing, itjust keeps happening.
So yeah, I don't.
I don't know if you have anyadditional comments here,
(13:54):
specifically Tim yeah.
Tim (13:56):
So I mean in the article actually says what their, what
their reasoning was.
Basically they're they're usinglayoffs to pay for their AI
capital investment.
So there's not much more to saybeyond that.
Right at some point, you know,there's not going to be people
to buy the products that youguys are selling anymore.
(14:17):
It's a snake eating its owntail, and I've said it so many
times.
I mean, capitalism really becamecancer when you know, we
started favoring shareholdersover stakeholders, when we
started favoring shareholdersover stakeholders, and that's
(14:37):
never been more obvious as thisfreight train gains speed
towards the mountain that it'sgoing to crash into at some
point.
Yeah, best of luck to everyone.
Of course, that's been laid off.
I mean, god knows, they're in aline with 100,000 other people
and 100,000 more to come,because this thing mentioned
specifically that.
You know or maybe it was eitherthis one or a different one
there's another article I wasreading that was saying that
(14:59):
they're eyeing more like they'rethinking every year they're
going to have to lay off like10,000 more people to pay for
their expansion into AI.
Chris (15:06):
Yeah.
Tim (15:06):
Which just says volumes really.
It's insane, as they postquarterly profits that are
record.
Chris (15:14):
The thing is like AI I mean, we've said it a few times
before like AI is still thisthing where, like, no one is
making huge profits on this yet,like, yeah, there's no money
being made on it.
They're hedging their bets earlyenough to say like, oh, we need
to keep laying off thousandsand thousands of people every
year to to pump money into.
I have to assume that theexecutives are doing some kind
(15:38):
of Charlie Day type math tofigure out all this shit like
how it's going to turn a profit,but that just seems so
unnecessary at this point whenyou're making that much money
already.
It's crazy.
Tim (15:52):
I think they're just jerked around.
I think they're getting jerkedaround by shareholders that are
asking them what are you doingto capitalize on AI, and so they
feel compelled to do something.
I don't know that there's anactual payoff at the end of this
that's going to be significantto what?
they're going to expend to getto it 100%.
All right, let's close this out.
One more article.
(16:16):
Honestly, it's a fairly shortone anyway.
Microsoft has decided to offerrival AI models from inside its
own data center, so it'slaunched, and it's launching an
AI coding agent another one,basically.
So they're going to be offeringmodels from what XAI, wink,
wink, you know Grok or whatever,you know Grok or whatever, and
(16:38):
from Meta, so Olamah andEuropean startups, mistral and
Black Forest Labs, hosted in itsown data centers.
So this is obviously differentthan traditional, maybe
traditional marketplace typeoffers.
But yeah, so.
And then they're, and theyunveiled a new artificial
intelligence tool designed tocomplete software coding tasks
on its own.
(16:58):
So agent, basically likesoftware, different than Copilot
, where you're coding andCopilot is telling you what
you're doing wrong and what anidiot you are.
And here's what you shouldchange.
This is straight up give it atask and it'll go build the
software for you from scratch.
It's agentic in some way.
It's unclear yet from thearticle exactly where the line
(17:18):
is basically between how agenticit is or is it an actual agent,
um, and if it is an agent, like, what tooling is it going to
use?
Uh, so it doesn't go into that,but basically that's.
The difference is that this issomething that's going to build
software for you, versus you arebuilding software and ai is
coaching you or helping youclean it up.
So, yeah, yeah.
(17:38):
So the article specificallymentions, like GitHub Copilot
feature is a coding agent and AItool designed to help
developers with coding tasks.
Now, it's weird because Ithought an agent was
specifically autonomous, like tosome degree, would go out and
do things on its own.
But this article I don't knowif this article I mean this is
from CNBC, right, so maybe orReuters this one's from Reuters,
I apologize, this article'sfrom Reuters, so I don't know if
(18:02):
that's a interpretation by thepeople writing the article or if
I've got that wrong.
So, anyway, and OpenAI releaseda preview of a similar agent.
It's calling Codex.
So everybody's stomping on eachother now with this stuff as we
race towards agents.
And yeah, man, I don't knowthat's about it it mentions that
moving forward, agents areprobably going to actually end
(18:27):
up mixing models, because themore autonomous it gets, the
more different tooling you candraw from to build your agent.
So yeah, I don't know, man,brave new world.
Chris (18:33):
Yeah, I would say, the announcements in this one are,
you know, clear enough tojustify that you should lay off
6,000 people?
That's for damn sure.
Yeah, I mean, think about howmuch money.
Tim (18:44):
Exactly Billions and billions.
Yeah, one last thing in thearticle that is interesting
Microsoft said it was creating away for AI agents to have the
same kind of digital identifieras human employees inside of
company systems.
This, I don't know how they'regoing to do it, but this is
something I've been railingagainst for a while, which is
this idea of we talk about MCPsand agents and autonomous coding
(19:05):
tasks and exchanges of toolingwith no security right.
So this might be the first steptowards some kind of security
associated with AI workloads orAI tooling, or something which
is desperately needed.
We should move into AI securityright in time for this whole
thing, to desperately need it,as attackers are blowing
(19:28):
everything up.
Chris (19:30):
Yeah, that line also jumped out to me.
The same kind of digitalidentifier as a human employee
that just immediately sends offso many security red flags.
In your mind it's like whatdoes that mean?
Are they going to do 2FA?
Are you going to sit there andjust?
Be hitting approve and whateveron your Microsoft Authenticator
(19:53):
.
No, they're going to give thema captcha and then slide the
puzzle piece into place, exactly.
Tim (20:04):
And then the agent will be completely powerless.
Chris (20:06):
Yeah right, exactly so.
Yeah, I don't know how you dothat, but I mean not to say that
innovation can't come along anddo something cool, but, like I
don't know, it seems like a lotof these constructs are put in
place to disallow stuff likethis, either be someone else or
something digital acting on abehalf in a malicious manner.
(20:28):
I just don't see how they candisseminate what's good from
what's bad at this point, likeyou said, with the lack of
security controls that are therealready.
So you know, I think if youhave security in mind, you're
probably not going to be jumpingon this type of thing this
early.
So just hold you know, keep thehorses ready.
(20:53):
Eventually this stuff may getworked out or it may kill us all
.
We'll see.
Tim (20:59):
Yeah, the good news is you only have to wait for another
probably another 20, 30, 40,000layoffs before we get to the
point where this will be fine.
Chris (21:08):
At first I thought you were going to say what about 20,
30 years?
I was like brother, I probablywon't even be here in 20, 30
years.
All right, on that note, wewill go ahead and wrap up for
this week.
So thank you so much forjoining us.
Uh, this has been the Capusclouds.
Um.
Fortnightly news update.
Um, all these articles are putinto a word doc that's in the
(21:30):
show notes.
So if you want to check thatout, please give that a click.
Uh, what did I say that oneweek?
It was like throw a throw aclick on that link or something
like that.
I can't remember yeah, I don'tknow, yeah, but you know um, do
that, do that thing, Umsubscribe to all this stuff, Um
click on all the things, sharethis with a friend and uh, with
(21:51):
that, we will see you next week.
Goodbye, See ya.
Thanks for watching.
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the
fortnightly cables to cloudsnews podcast, where Tim and I
basically go through a couple ofthe news articles that have
come out over the last two weeksand discuss them.
Tim gives all the hot takes hehas, you know, those
controversial opinions on theplanet.
(00:34):
But no, before we hop into that, actually I do want to provide
a bit of an announcement.
So you know, tim and I, overthe course of this podcast, have
frequently talked about thingsto do with Aviatrix, because we
both work there and you know wewere coworkers there for a long
(00:55):
time.
But I have made a recent change, so I have actually moved
companies to Fortinet as of lastweek, so I'm three days in
drinking from the fire hose,doing all that fun stuff, um.
But just wanted to provide aquick update to the listeners,
in case you had not noticed itanywhere else, that, um, I'm I'm
(01:16):
working for a different company, so that's just a a quick,
quick side note that I'll addthere.
Tim is very upset, um, thatwe're not coworkers anymore,
but-workers anymore.
But luckily, linkedin, we'restill listed as employed at
Cables to Clouds on LinkedIn, sowe're technically still
co-workers right, Exactly.
Tim (01:33):
I mean, we don't draw a salary or anything, but yeah,
we're co-workers sure I wonder.
Chris (01:38):
We still haven't figured out who reports to who.
The org chart is still a littlehairy, but we'll figure it out.
Yeah, all right, with that outof the way, let's hop into the
news, um.
So first up we have an articlefrom channel e2ecom, um, which
this is none of this has beenconfirmed by either of the
(02:01):
vendors in play here, but it's apretty strong rumor at this
point that it sounds likeVeloCloud, which you may
remember from early SD-WAN days,was acquired by VMware several
years ago.
Sd-wan offering that then wasacquired by Broadcom in the
acquisition of VMware is nowreportedly being sold off to
(02:25):
Arista Networks.
So Arista, obviously huge, hugeplayer in the data center
networking space right now.
They've been very successful intaking a lot of that business
from Cisco and really kind ofcreating that groundswell and
creating that market there, andnow it looks like they're
looking to strengthen theirSD-WAN offering for an
(02:50):
acquisition.
This is all rumors, like I said, but it says it could be valued
nearly around a billion dollars.
From what I've heard, I wasunder the impression that
VeloCloud had kind of slowed onmarket adoption as of recent.
I don't know if that has to dowith the Broadcom acquisition.
(03:11):
Obviously, we've made somecomments about how Broadcom
treats a lot of these things onthis podcast, and maybe that it
contributes to why some peoplewould be a little bit hesitant
to transact or move to VeloCloudet cetera.
But I think this is aninteresting move.
It looks like Broadcom is kindof selling off pieces of the
(03:36):
business that it doesn't find.
I mean, just based on whatBroadcom has done in the past,
I'm assuming this is not, uh,you know what they consider
their bread and butter, uh,moneymaker type products.
Um, and I think there there'smentioned in here that they sold
off the end user computing umoption to um KKR.
(03:56):
Um, I don't even remember thatbeing announced, if I'm being
honest with you, but um, that isthat is listed in here as well.
Um, from my understanding thatArista already had an SD-WAN
product, I think it was calledlike um, pathfinder, yeah,
pathfinder, but I think like itincorporated into the Arista WAN
(04:16):
routing system type thing, andit was like this whole kind of
portfolio, as far as I know.
Tim (04:21):
Yeah.
Chris (04:22):
Yeah, exactly so it was kind of baked into there.
So I don't know if this isgoing to fit in there or what
they're going to do with it, butquite an interesting move.
I don't know if this is goingto be kind of the next evolution
for VeloCloud or maybe the endof days for VeloCloud, but yeah,
I don't know.
What do you think, tim?
Tim (04:41):
I mean this is typical PE behavior, right, which of course
Broadcom pretty much operatesas a PE, so private equity firm.
So yeah, I can't say I'msurprised in any shape that
Broadcom is divesting itself ofpretty much everything that
doesn't bring in the most moneypossible and just making what
they can by selling it.
Yeah, no, I don't have much toadd that you haven't already
(05:01):
covered.
Arista is a good.
It's probably a good fit forVeloCloud.
There's a difference betweenselling.
When a business sells off itstechnology to another business.
There's still a huge questionmark around what does
integration look like?
So I think that still remainsto be seen.
It can't just be as simple as Iguess they could simply just
(05:23):
take over VeloCloud customersand whatnot.
But if they want to integrateit into their portfolio, I'm
sure there's some work to bedone there.
And yeah, I think, just likethe whole Juniper, hp Aruba
thing, that still hasn'tobviously happened in terms of
where does the wireless fit inthose portfolios?
I think we're going to have toanswer the same question Are are
(05:43):
they just going to haveVeloCloud, to just have
VeloCloud, or are they going tointegrate it?
And if they integrate it, whatdoes it look like next to its
you know its homegrown, offeringthis Pathfinder.
Chris (05:54):
Yeah, and from what I recall, I believe there is a
VeloCloud SASE product as well,so I'm assuming this is going to
go with that.
So I mean, I don't know ifGartner is still doing Magic
Quad Horns specifically forSD-WAN or if it's kind of
evolved into SASE at this point,but that potentially puts
Arista in a good spot there withkind of the rest of the market
(06:18):
contention that they see there.
So, yeah, could be a good move,like you said.
Tim (06:21):
All right.
In other news of thingshappening in the world of tech,
it looks like Charter and CoxCommunications are merging.
So this is an article from CNBC, and the way the article reads
it actually reads less like amerger and more like Charter's
acquiring Cox Communications,because when it's all done, it
(06:42):
looks like Charter's going to bethe name that survives.
But yeah, so I mean, these aretwo huge cable companies, so
it's not unusual for you know,cable companies to merge.
But what I found particularlyinteresting about this article
is how it mentions that cablecompanies have been struggling,
(07:03):
of course, since streamingservices came out, which course
since streaming services cameout, which is, I think,
everybody knows that right, andso the big part of their
survival technique, if you will,is to roll in wireless.
So they've added like wirelessservices.
I'm sure by now everybody,probably in America, has gotten
their cable company, a cablecompany calling them, so they
have wireless services.
(07:23):
So so the big three for cablehas always been television,
internet, of course, and thenfinally wireless services.
So in this case it mentionsthat that's part of, maybe part
of what's fueling the merger isthat they're both just trying to
stay essentially relevant andmerge it together.
(07:45):
What I find interesting is thatthis isn't getting the same
scrutiny that some of the otherlarge mergers are, because, like
what is it Comcast?
Comcast is still the biggest inAmerica, I believe by a lot
right.
So maybe that's why, maybethat's why it's not getting.
But there's so many otheracquisitions out there that are
like there's a Verizon one outthere as well.
(08:06):
What were they going to buyFrontier?
They're going to buy Frontier,and that still hasn't gone
through.
So I don't know if this ispolitical.
Chris (08:13):
Because they're being investigated for DEI practices.
Tim (08:19):
Yeah, yeah, it says that.
So if they're currently beinginvestigated for DEI, does that
mean they had it?
Yeah, I don't know, or theydidn't have it.
So anyway, yeah, Charter alsorecently acquired a completely
different cable company.
So I think we're getting intothe mega consolidation wars now,
where everything's going to getmega consolidated.
(08:39):
But anyway, this isn't.
I don't know.
I don't think there's a lot tosay to this other than just to
point out the decreasingrelevance of cable, but the
increasing conglomeration of bigcompanies in the US.
I don't know How's it like?
What do you think down?
Companies in the US?
I don't know How's it like.
What do you think down there inthe underland?
Chris (08:56):
Well, yeah, I mean, things definitely operate a bit
different down here.
There's only probably a handfulof major kind of commercial
ISPs that you can choose from,but there's also the NBN network
, national Broadband Network.
But this one does hit a littleclose to home for me, because
charter was like the first jobthat I had in the technology
(09:19):
sector, so like yeah so I workedat a call center charter.
There's a huge charter callcenter in Louisville, kentucky,
where I'm from, and yeah, justlike troubleshooting commercial
internet service or not,commercial residential internet
services.
Tim (09:34):
This is crazy.
I worked at Cox as a tier twohigh-speed internet rep.
I was also one of my first techjobs, nice.
I worked at Cox Communicationsin their what is it?
Virginia in their call centeras a high-speed internet
residential internet rep.
How have we never fucking?
Talked about this this hasnever this has never come up.
Chris (09:55):
In our entire friendship over the last like 10 years nice
, yeah, it's funny, though, um,beautiful.
So, yeah, we that's you'rehearing this live on air me and
tim are discovering that we bothgot into this realm of
networking probably in the exactsame fashion, which, which is
which is crazy.
But yeah, so I worked forCharter for a few years and then
(10:16):
eventually, like that's where Igot my CCNA and was like
convinced that, like, that'swhat I needed to do, so I moved
to their NOC and things likethat.
But all that aside, one thingthat is weird is like, like you
said this, like it's weird evenhearing reference them as
Charter again, because I thought, when they went through that
(10:37):
recent acquisition where theyacquired another insanely large
telecom provider no, it was TimeWarner oh, really, yeah, so
they bought Time Warner and thenthe kind of merge of Charter
and Time Warner was supposed tobe Spectrum, that was their new
name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But now it's back to beingcalled Charter and Time Warner
was supposed to be Spectrum,that was their new name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but now it'sback to being called Charter
Spectrum again, so they'veadopted the old name.
(10:59):
So maybe they're going to havea new name for when Charter and
Cox come together.
I don't know.
Tim (11:07):
Yeah, good point, I forgot about that.
But I mean, this says it'sgoing to be Charter, so here in
Raleigh they still just like.
I get calls it's from.
I get email, I get mail likespam messages and stuff from
Spectrum.
It just says Spectrum in thelocation.
So I think it's per marketmaybe, depending on where the
market is.
Chris (11:28):
Yeah, I guess.
So I mean, maybe I don't knowif it's still a parent company
or something like that.
I mean, I think they probablydo more than just this, but yeah
.
And just to be clear, when wewere talking about wireless
services, we were talking about,like, mobile services.
Tim (11:39):
Yeah, mobile, yeah, specifically.
Chris (11:41):
Because I say that?
Because when I worked in thecall center we also provided,
like home wireless Internet andI also was responsible for
troubleshooting that.
So yeah, it's like you said,it's just kind of the super
consolidation of all this stuffjust to kind of turn a profit
again.
I think and you know this Imean, let's be honest, internet
(12:02):
connectivity has become trulycommoditized and is just
basically used as an underlayfor the applications that we
want to run on it, even from abusiness and a and a kind of a
uh, uh, uh, commercialperspective, right, um, so yeah,
it's, it's crazy.
Eventually there's just goingto be one, right?
(12:23):
They're all going to merge intoone mega corpse yeah exactly.
All right, uh, next up, anotherarticle from CNBC.
Actually, um, this was reportedon by several news outlets, but
we found this one was probablythe one that had the most info
in there.
So, as of recent and if you'vebeen on LinkedIn in the last two
weeks, you've probably noticeda bit of this but Microsoft
(12:45):
actually laid off of about 3% ofits global workforce, which I
know 3% doesn't sound like thatmuch, but for a company as big
as Microsoft, that does turn outto be about 6,000 people.
So odds are you know someonethat was directly impacted by
this.
So it's funny because thiscomes like directly on the heels
(13:07):
of their you know kind of Q1reports coming out saying that
you know they, of Q1 reportscoming out saying that they you
know they were they reportedbetter than expected results, um
, with $25.8 billion in uh,quarterly income for the
quarterly yeah, quarterly income.
So that's nearly $26 billion inone quarter.
Um, yet they needed to lay off6,000 people, um, so like better
(13:31):
than expected.
So what were you expecting?
To lay off 7,000 people and youwere able to cut that.
Like it's just like the shit'sgetting old man, like it's like
I know it's kind of like therules of the game, but like it's
, it's, it's so demoralizing, itjust keeps happening.
So yeah, I don't.
I don't know if you have anyadditional comments here,
(13:54):
specifically Tim yeah.
Tim (13:56):
So I mean in the article actually says what their, what
their reasoning was.
Basically they're they're usinglayoffs to pay for their AI
capital investment.
So there's not much more to saybeyond that.
Right at some point, you know,there's not going to be people
to buy the products that youguys are selling anymore.
(14:17):
It's a snake eating its owntail, and I've said it so many
times.
I mean, capitalism really becamecancer when you know, we
started favoring shareholdersover stakeholders, when we
started favoring shareholdersover stakeholders, and that's
(14:37):
never been more obvious as thisfreight train gains speed
towards the mountain that it'sgoing to crash into at some
point.
Yeah, best of luck to everyone.
Of course, that's been laid off.
I mean, god knows, they're in aline with 100,000 other people
and 100,000 more to come,because this thing mentioned
specifically that.
You know or maybe it was eitherthis one or a different one
there's another article I wasreading that was saying that
(14:59):
they're eyeing more like they'rethinking every year they're
going to have to lay off like10,000 more people to pay for
their expansion into AI.
Chris (15:06):
Yeah.
Tim (15:06):
Which just says volumes really.
It's insane, as they postquarterly profits that are
record.
Chris (15:14):
The thing is like AI I mean, we've said it a few times
before like AI is still thisthing where, like, no one is
making huge profits on this yet,like, yeah, there's no money
being made on it.
They're hedging their bets earlyenough to say like, oh, we need
to keep laying off thousandsand thousands of people every
year to to pump money into.
I have to assume that theexecutives are doing some kind
(15:38):
of Charlie Day type math tofigure out all this shit like
how it's going to turn a profit,but that just seems so
unnecessary at this point whenyou're making that much money
already.
It's crazy.
Tim (15:52):
I think they're just jerked around.
I think they're getting jerkedaround by shareholders that are
asking them what are you doingto capitalize on AI, and so they
feel compelled to do something.
I don't know that there's anactual payoff at the end of this
that's going to be significantto what?
they're going to expend to getto it 100%.
All right, let's close this out.
One more article.
(16:16):
Honestly, it's a fairly shortone anyway.
Microsoft has decided to offerrival AI models from inside its
own data center, so it'slaunched, and it's launching an
AI coding agent another one,basically.
So they're going to be offeringmodels from what XAI, wink,
wink, you know Grok or whatever,you know Grok or whatever, and
(16:38):
from Meta, so Olamah andEuropean startups, mistral and
Black Forest Labs, hosted in itsown data centers.
So this is obviously differentthan traditional, maybe
traditional marketplace typeoffers.
But yeah, so.
And then they're, and theyunveiled a new artificial
intelligence tool designed tocomplete software coding tasks
on its own.
(16:58):
So agent, basically likesoftware, different than Copilot
, where you're coding andCopilot is telling you what
you're doing wrong and what anidiot you are.
And here's what you shouldchange.
This is straight up give it atask and it'll go build the
software for you from scratch.
It's agentic in some way.
It's unclear yet from thearticle exactly where the line
(17:18):
is basically between how agenticit is or is it an actual agent,
um, and if it is an agent, like, what tooling is it going to
use?
Uh, so it doesn't go into that,but basically that's.
The difference is that this issomething that's going to build
software for you, versus you arebuilding software and ai is
coaching you or helping youclean it up.
So, yeah, yeah.
(17:38):
So the article specificallymentions, like GitHub Copilot
feature is a coding agent and AItool designed to help
developers with coding tasks.
Now, it's weird because Ithought an agent was
specifically autonomous, like tosome degree, would go out and
do things on its own.
But this article I don't knowif this article I mean this is
from CNBC, right, so maybe orReuters this one's from Reuters,
I apologize, this article'sfrom Reuters, so I don't know if
(18:02):
that's a interpretation by thepeople writing the article or if
I've got that wrong.
So, anyway, and OpenAI releaseda preview of a similar agent.
It's calling Codex.
So everybody's stomping on eachother now with this stuff as we
race towards agents.
And yeah, man, I don't knowthat's about it it mentions that
moving forward, agents areprobably going to actually end
(18:27):
up mixing models, because themore autonomous it gets, the
more different tooling you candraw from to build your agent.
So yeah, I don't know, man,brave new world.
Chris (18:33):
Yeah, I would say, the announcements in this one are,
you know, clear enough tojustify that you should lay off
6,000 people?
That's for damn sure.
Yeah, I mean, think about howmuch money.
Tim (18:44):
Exactly Billions and billions.
Yeah, one last thing in thearticle that is interesting
Microsoft said it was creating away for AI agents to have the
same kind of digital identifieras human employees inside of
company systems.
This, I don't know how they'regoing to do it, but this is
something I've been railingagainst for a while, which is
this idea of we talk about MCPsand agents and autonomous coding
(19:05):
tasks and exchanges of toolingwith no security right.
So this might be the first steptowards some kind of security
associated with AI workloads orAI tooling, or something which
is desperately needed.
We should move into AI securityright in time for this whole
thing, to desperately need it,as attackers are blowing
(19:28):
everything up.
Chris (19:30):
Yeah, that line also jumped out to me.
The same kind of digitalidentifier as a human employee
that just immediately sends offso many security red flags.
In your mind it's like whatdoes that mean?
Are they going to do 2FA?
Are you going to sit there andjust?
Be hitting approve and whateveron your Microsoft Authenticator
(19:53):
.
No, they're going to give thema captcha and then slide the
puzzle piece into place, exactly.
Tim (20:04):
And then the agent will be completely powerless.
Chris (20:06):
Yeah right, exactly so.
Yeah, I don't know how you dothat, but I mean not to say that
innovation can't come along anddo something cool, but, like I
don't know, it seems like a lotof these constructs are put in
place to disallow stuff likethis, either be someone else or
something digital acting on abehalf in a malicious manner.
(20:28):
I just don't see how they candisseminate what's good from
what's bad at this point, likeyou said, with the lack of
security controls that are therealready.
So you know, I think if youhave security in mind, you're
probably not going to be jumpingon this type of thing this
early.
So just hold you know, keep thehorses ready.
(20:53):
Eventually this stuff may getworked out or it may kill us all
.
We'll see.
Tim (20:59):
Yeah, the good news is you only have to wait for another
probably another 20, 30, 40,000layoffs before we get to the
point where this will be fine.
Chris (21:08):
At first I thought you were going to say what about 20,
30 years?
I was like brother, I probablywon't even be here in 20, 30
years.
All right, on that note, wewill go ahead and wrap up for
this week.
So thank you so much forjoining us.
Uh, this has been the Capusclouds.
Um.
Fortnightly news update.
Um, all these articles are putinto a word doc that's in the
(21:30):
show notes.
So if you want to check thatout, please give that a click.
Uh, what did I say that oneweek?
It was like throw a throw aclick on that link or something
like that.
I can't remember yeah, I don'tknow, yeah, but you know um, do
that, do that thing, Umsubscribe to all this stuff, Um
click on all the things, sharethis with a friend and uh, with
(21:51):
that, we will see you next week.
Goodbye, See ya.
Thanks for watching.
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