697: Office of Defects

697: Office of Defects

Author: Jason DeFillippo & Brian Schulmeister with Dave Bittner May 17, 2025 Duration: 1:17:16
This week on Grumpy Old Geeks: Trump hawks crypto for $2 million a plate; Elon tunnels into taxpayer wallets; NFTs get nonprofit’d into irrelevance; Microsoft axes more staff while Metaverse washouts DoorDash from trailers; Klarna backpedals on AI; the Pope targets robots; Elon’s Copyright coup crashes; YouTube bans fake trailers; Jamie Lee Curtis slashes at Zuck; Tesla implodes again; the universe might peace out early; Murderbot lands May 16; NIN spawns a new fest; Star franchises get nostalgic; Jessica Jones and Nobody return; Dave’s customer support tales go full Kafka; and yes, there’s a haunted Mickey, cat toilets, and birthday botched florals—because reality is optional now.

There’s a certain flavor of chaos that defines the technology industry each week, and Grumpy Old Geeks serves as your brutally honest guide through the wreckage. Hosted by Jason DeFillippo, Brian Schulmeister, and Dave Bittner, this isn't a polite roundtable discussion. Instead, it feels like grabbing a drink with friends who have seen it all and have absolutely no patience left for corporate spin or broken promises. They pick apart the biggest tech news stories with a seasoned, cynical eye, always asking the messy questions about what actually went wrong and who should be held accountable. Listening to this podcast is like getting the unfiltered post-mortem from veterans who remember when the internet felt different. The tone is sharp, often funny, and deliberately irreverent-picture a conversation that’s equal parts informed critique and cathartic venting about the state of digital life. You’ll hear them dissect the moves of figures like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg not as distant celebrities, but as players in a ongoing saga of power and missteps. It’s a weekly ritual for anyone who loves technology but is deeply frustrated by the direction it often takes, offering analysis that’s as informed as it is impatient. If you’re tired of sanitized tech commentary and want a take that pulls no punches, this is the place.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Grumpy Old Geeks
Podcast Episodes
674: Welcome to DOGE! The Department of Grumpy Entertainment [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:42
In this episode of Grumpy Old Geeks, we break down the latest chaos in tech, pop culture, and humanity’s never-ending quest to out-stupid itself. Hackers are raiding Ticketmaster accounts (again), and Chegg is circling t…
672: Elon or Not? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:12:04
Cash App class action; Tesla camera-based FSD questioned; Trump Media stock swings; standing desks are the new eggs; Dropbox layoffs; OpenAI Whisper invents parts of transcriptions, frequently; ChatGPT search; post scarc…
671: Lorum Ipsum Is My Sister [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:07:34
San Fran embracing self-driving cars; not-Bitcoin creator in hiding; i h8 ai; anti-AI artist open letter; X updates their policies; more people leave OpenAI; SynthID; 23andMe and your genetic data; no more fake online re…
670: Just Buy the Thing! [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:11:34
More Wordpress & WPEngine shots fired; hate mail; European road organizations reject the Cybertruck; EU fines against X; civil rights commission pans FART (facial recognition technology); FCC looking into broadband caps;…
669: HamFest [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:13:55
The beginning of the end for Wordpress; open source, or not; police Cybertrucks; Apple Intelligence rolling out; dystopian AI text summaries; X sends money to the wrong bank, argues that Twitter ceased to exist; Internet…
668: Weaponized Puffery [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:17:57
OpenAI training data, dynamic pricing & digital IDs; Elon's good week; dockworkers strike over robots averted, for now; more AI models; some AI training techniques make AI better at deceiving humans; weaponizing DMCA tak…
667: Nuclear Recall [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:01
Sam Altman stands alone at OpenAI; Gen Z employees not impressing bosses; X complies with Brazil's Supreme Court, but kill blocking; former FTX Exec given light sentence; Microsoft to reopen Three Mile Island nuclear pla…
666: The Episode of the Beast [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:30:29
Fun 666 Facts; Notebook AI follow up; Moviepass fraud; 23andMe settlement, disappearing board; Elon's deleted tweet; AI laws in California; Trump cryptocurrency; Amazon returns to work 5 days a week; new Moderna cancer v…
665: Human Referees [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:17:42
Gaiman & Good Omens; Waymo means Uber drivers are cooked; local muggers; EU not messing around with Apple, Google; DOJ after Google as well; another genetic testing company with security breach disasters; META scraping A…