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!

• 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 Takes Off the Gloves: Disney vs Google AI Showdown
• From Data Silos to Data Solos: Google Conducts the Integration Orchestra
• No More Thread Dread: AWS Brings AI to JVM Performance Troubleshooting
• MCP: More Corporate Plumbing Than You Think
• GPT-5.2 Beats Humans at Work Tasks, Still Can’t Get You Out of Monday Meetings
• Kerberos More Like Kerbero-Less: Microsoft Axes Ancient Encryption Standard
• OpenAI Teaches GPT-5.2 to PowerPoint: Death by Bullet Points Now AI-Generated
• MCP: Like USB-C, But Everyone’s Keeping Theirs in the Drawer
• Flash Gordon: Google’s Gemini 3 Gets a Speed Boost Without the Sacrifice
• Tag, You’re It: AWS Finally Knows Who to Bill
• Snowflake Gets a GPT-5.2 Upgrade: Now With More Intelligence Per Query
• OpenAI and Snowflake: Making Data Warehouses Smarter Than Your Average Analyst
• GPT-5.2 Moves Into the Snowflake: No Melting Required

01:06 Meta’s multibillion-dollar AI strategy overhaul creates culture clash:

• Meta is developing Avocado, a new frontier AI model codenamed to succeed Llama, now expected to launch in Q1 2026 after internal delays related to training performance testing.
• The model may be proprietary rather than open source, marking a significant shift from Meta’s previous strategy of freely distributing Llama’s weights and architecture to developers. We feel like this is an interesting choice for Meta, but what do we know?
• Meta spent 14.3 billion dollars in June 2025 to hire Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang as Chief AI Officer and acquire a stake in Scale, while raising 2026 capital expenditure guidance to 70-72 billion dollars.
  • Wang now leads the elite TBD Lab developing Avocado, operating separately from traditional Meta teams and not using the company’s internal workplace network.
• The company has restructured its AI leadership following the poor reception of Llama 4 in April, with Chief Product Officer Chris Cox no longer overseeing the GenAI unit.
• Meta cut 600 jobs in Meta Superintelligence Labs in October, contributing to the departure of Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun to launch a startup, while implementing 70-hour workweeks across AI organizations.
• Meta’s new AI leadership under Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman has introduced a “demo, don’t memo” development approach, replacing traditional multi-step approval processes with rapid prototyping using AI agents and newer tools.
• The company is also leveraging third-party cloud services from CoreWeave and Oracle while buil...