Just because you can build it doesn’t mean you should. In this episode, Ahmed Bebars, Principal Engineer at The New York Times, joins Corey Quinn to talk about real-world cloud decisions, Kubernetes complexity, and the constant trade-off between building your own solutions and buying existing ones. From home labs to enterprise architecture, they unpack what actually works, and what engineers often get wrong.

Show Highlights:
(00:19) Intro
(01:09) From Imposter Syndrome
(06:34) Honest Community Feedback
(09:29) EKS Versus ECS Debate
(21:32) Home Lab Reality Check
(22:40) Build vs Buy Long Game
(28:04) Focus on Core Business
(34:35) Uptime Tradeoffs and Standards
(39:41) Networking and IPv6 Debate
(41:28) Wrap Up and Where to Find

Links:
Ahmed's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmedbebars

Sponsored by:
duckbillhq.com

What happens when cloud economics meets the messy reality of business, AI, and human behavior?

Corey and J.R. Storment unpack why cloud cost management is less about math and more about psychology, the real difference between FinOps for AI vs. AI for FinOps, and why automation still struggles with edge cases (despite all the hype). Along the way, they explore multi-cloud complexity, the rise of consumption-based pricing, and how businesses are navigating massive, unpredictable spend across cloud, SaaS, and AI platforms.

If you’ve ever wondered why your cloud bill feels like chaos, or how to actually get value from it, this episode pulls back the curtain.

Show Highlights:
(00:00) FinOps Royalty Reunion

(03:06) Origin Stories and Naming FinOps

(06:32) AI for FinOps vs FinOps for AI

(11:05) Automation Hype and Human Psychology

(22:16) Contracts Multi Cloud and Commitments

(24:26) Context Beats Optimization

(26:06) Trust and Billing Clarity

(28:14) Focus Standard Flywheel

(30:11) SaaS Coverage and Conformance

(34:06) Contracts Multi-cloud and Wrap Up

Links:
FinOps: https://www.finops.org/

Sponsored by:
duckbillhq.com

In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, host Corey Quinn sits down with Roi Lipman, CTO and co-founder of Falco DB, to unpack the evolving role of graph databases in a world overflowing with data stores. Roi shares his journey from building RedisGraph at Redis to spinning it out into Falco DB, along with his enduring love of the C programming language (dad jokes included). The conversation explores why graph databases remain niche, but powerful, especially for pathfinding problems like supply chains and access management, how vector search became a feature rather than a standalone database, and what AI-assisted development means for modern engineering. Along the way, they tackle open source sustainability, Rust rewrites, AI-generated pull request chaos, and the looming question of where the next generation of senior engineers will come from.

Highlights:

(00:00) C Language

(00:27) Welcome

(01:18) Database Landscape Overview

(03:17) Why Graph Databases Matter

(07:25) AI Built Apps and Data Choices

(10:29) How FalcoDB Fits In

(12:20) Vector Search as a Feature

(16:48) FalcoDB Origin Story

(19:54) Open Source Business and Rust Rewrite

(25:23) Toy Graph Problems and Closing Thoughts

Sponsored by:
duckbillhq.com