719: Uniquely Devoid of Feeling
Grumpy Old Geeks
Jason DeFillippo & Brian Schulmeister with Dave Bittner
4.8 • 6.1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2025
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We open with a sobering follow-up: the future is less about AI toast (though Red Dwarf predicted it) and more about a soul-stripping "infrastructure of meaningless" after an AWS outage proved how fragile the internet is. Corporate overlords, like Elon Musk, are taking note: he finally addressed Starlink's use by Asian scam syndicates, but his attention is mostly on superintelligence, which Wozniak, Prince Harry, and 800 others want banned. Meanwhile, Meta, despite pouring $27 billion into data centers, suddenly cut 600 AI jobs, and Amazon is preparing to automate a half-million warehouse positions, offering drivers AR spy glasses and suggesting a new "Help Me Decide" AI tool to automate the exhausting micro-decision of which air fryer to buy. This dystopian fever dream peaked when Suzanne Somers' widower revealed he built a full-on robotic AI twin of the late actress. Predictably, Tesla stock tumbled, and the crypto grift continued with the pardoning of Binance founder Zhao, leaving SBF to ponder his failed check-bounce in jail.
Speaking of soul-crushing, Disney's latest nostalgia raid, Tron: Ares, tanked harder than anticipated, proving not every Gen-X intellectual property is a worthy cash cow. But fear not, there's still great TV to be had: we recommend the clever dramas Slow Horses and The Diplomat Season 3, the high-stakes culinary nightmare Knives Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars, and the surprisingly excellent Gen V (which you must watch before the next season of The Boys). We also got our fix with the Pluribus trailer, Bullet Train, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and the deliciously low-stakes reality shows Come Dine With Me, Hotel Costiera, and The Celebrity Traitors UK/Canada. Sadly, we must mourn the end of Food Network’s The Kitchen. Yet, no matter how good the show, you still have to deal with Ticketmaster, which is still lying about "fighting bots" while cornering the secondary market.
In the world of Apps & Doodads, OpenAI dropped its "Anti-Web" browser, ChatGPT Atlas (a data mule in disguise), and a new app now fakes your vacation photos (perfect for burned-out users). X is poised to sell "rare" usernames for millions (with a terrible subscription catch), while some clever hacker figured out a $60 mod to disable the privacy light on Meta's Ray-Ban spy glasses. Fellow podcast host Dave Bittner joined us to agree that the new Hall of Presidents format is better without the political posturing and confirmed the joy of old-school, purple-ink-smelling Spirit Duplicators (and we checked out a Star Wars fan film trailer for the AT THE LIBRARY section). Don't forget your Tilly Hat! Finally, R.I.P. Soft Cell's musical force Dave Ball, aged 66; the hits still hit.
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Show notes at https://gog.show/719
FOLLOW UP
Does Anyone Want Any Toast? | Red Dwarf | BBC
A Tool That Crushes Creativity
IN THE NEWS
Amazon's AWS outage knocked services like Alexa, Snapchat, Fortnite, Venmo and more offline
SpaceX disables 2,500 Starlink terminals allegedly used by Asian scam centers
Yelp is getting more AI, including an upgraded chatbot
Steve Wozniak, Prince Harry and 800 others want a ban on AI ‘superintelligence’
Suzanne Somers’ Widower Built “AI Twin” of Late Actress
Meta Cuts 600 AI Roles From Its Superintelligence Labs After $27 Billion Data Center Deal
New report leaks Amazon's proposed mass-automation plans
Amazon Rolls Out New AI Tool to Help You Decide What to Buy: The Great Mental Outsourcing continues.
Amazon unveils AI-powered augmented reality glasses for delivery drivers
Tesla reports revenue growth after two down quarters. Why the stock is falling
Trump pardons convicted Binance founder Zhao, White House says
Crypto billionaire pardon is insane by Coffeezilla
MEDIA CANDY
‘Tron: Ares’ Is an Even Bigger Bomb Than We Thought
Food Network’s The Kitchen to End After 40 Seasons
Knifes Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars
Pluribus — Official Trailer | Apple TV
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Ticketmaster Is Going to Have to Do Better Than That
APPS & DOODADS
OpenAI's AI-powered browser, ChatGPT Atlas, launches on macOS today
ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web By Anil Dash
Too burned out to travel? This new app fakes your summer vacation photos for you
X's handle marketplace will sell some 'rare' usernames for millions of dollars
A $60 Mod to Meta’s Ray-Bans Disables Its Privacy-Protecting Recording Light
THE DARK SIDE WITH DAVE
Firefly | The World's Smallest Pro-Audio Microphone
Spirit Duplicators: Copies Never Smelled So Good
STAR WARS ENTRENCHED: Fan Film TEASER 2
CLOSING SHOUT-OUTS
Soft Cell's musical force Dave Ball dies, aged 66
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.co. |
| 0:05.4 | That's audible.co.ukesl-wondery. |
| 0:13.9 | Grumpy old geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DePhilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the |
| 0:21.2 | internet and who's to blame. |
| 0:27.7 | Welcome to Garumpy old geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schoemister. The real Brian |
| 0:32.7 | Schoelmeister. Please stand up. Please stand up. Not the southern one. No, not the, Not your southern cousin. So thanks Donovan for taking over last week. That was awesome. So appreciate it. Yeah, much appreciated. I think it was a good show. You did a great job. I was listening somewhere over the Atlantic. So, yeah. Okay. It was my, I listened on the flight home. So you published it like right before I got to the airport, which was nice. Yeah. All right. So how was, how was lay for, I guess we'll talk about late Disney after. Yeah, we'll save that for the Dave thing. But yeah, the trip was good. No complaints. You know, London is London. I love London. And Paris is probably not so |
| 1:12.8 | appealing to a nine-year-old boy. How are those jewels, though? Yeah, well, you know, we came back a little |
| 1:19.4 | richer, which is nice. No, I have to say, I'll be riding the mic mute today because I came back |
| 1:25.1 | with a Parisian cough. You know, people smoke. |
| 1:28.7 | Not so much. |
| 1:29.3 | Not in L.A. |
| 1:30.3 | That ended a long time ago and so did my smoking. |
| 1:33.4 | But people smoke in London a bit, not as much. |
| 1:37.8 | But oh my God, Paris. |
| 1:39.9 | Really? |
| 1:40.5 | Oh, my God. |
| 1:41.1 | It was like stepping back into 1980. |
| 1:44.1 | I mean, restaurants have ashtrays. People are smoking left, right, and center. We all came, you know, we all just started hacking because we're just not used to it and still got a bit of what I'm dubbed the Parisian cough. So I'll be riding the mute. Oh, I appreciate that so much. I appreciate that. |
| 2:02.8 | So I just have one little bit of follow-up here from last episode. Donovan talked about |
| 2:07.5 | nobody wants AI toast. Well, we got multiple, multiple people writing in that we apparently |
| 2:12.9 | don't watch Red Dwarf because there's a whole bit about AI toast. There'll be a link in the show notes. |
| 2:17.9 | So thank you, SMY and Mason Bueller for pointing out the AI toast. Were you a Red Dwarf guy? |
... |
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