297: Save the Date So You Can Get Some Skills – In AI!

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. 

Titles we almost went with this week:

• 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

A big thanks to this week’s sponsor:

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Follow Up 

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.”

General News 

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 accelerati