Welcome to episode 290 of The Cloud Pod – where the forecast is always cloudy! It’s a full house this week – and a good thing too, since there’s a lot of news! Justin, Jonathan, Ryan, and Matthew are all in the house to bring you news on DeepSeek, OpenVox, CloudWatch, and more.

• The cloud pod wonders if azure is still hung over from new years
• Stratoshark sends the Cloud pod to the stratosphere
• Cutting-Edge Chinese “Reasoning” Model Rivals OpenAI… and it’s FREE?!
• Wireshark turns 27, Cloud Pod Hosts feel old
• Operator: DeepSeek is here to kill OpenAI
• Time for a deepthink on buying all that Nvidia stock
• AWS Token Service finally goes cloud native
• The CloudPod wonders if OpenAI’s Operator can order its own $200 subscription

01:29 Introducing the GenAI Platform: Simplifying AI Development for All

• If you’re struggling to find that AI GPU capacity, Digital Ocean is pleased to announce their DigitalOcean GenAI Platform is now available to everyone.
• The platform aims to democratize AI development, empowering everyone – from solo developers to large teams – to leverage the transformative potential of generative AI.
• On the Gen AI platform you can:
  • Build Scalable AI Agents
  • Seamlessly integrate with workflows
  • Leverage guardrails
  • Optimize Efficiency.
• Some of the use cases they are highlighting are chatbots, e-commerce assistance, support automation, business insights, AI-Driven CRMs, Personalized Learning and interactive tools.

02:23 Jonathan – “Inference cost is really the big driver there. So once you once you build something that’s that’s done, but it’s nice to see somebody focusing on delivering it as a service rather than, you know, a $50 an hour compute for training models. This is right where they need to be.”

04:21 OpenAI: Introducing Operator

• We have thoughts about the name of this service…
• OpenAI is releasing the preview version of their agent that can use a web browser to perform tasks for you.
• The new version is available to OpenAI pro users.
• OpenAI says it’s currently a research preview, meaning it has limitations and will evolve based on your feedback.
• Operator can handle various browser tasks such as filling out forms, ordering groceries, and even creating memes.
• The ability to use the same interfaces and tools that humans interact with on a daily basis broadens the utility of AI, helping people save time on everyday tasks while opening up a new engagement opportunity for business
• Operator is powered by a new model called Computer-Using Agent (CUA). Combining GPT-4o’s vision capabilities with advanced reasoning through reinforcement learning, CUA is trained to in...