Grumpy Old Geeks – Episode 713: "Ourovibeos"

Release Date: September 12, 2025
Hosts: Jason DeFillippo & Brian Schulmeister
Guest: Dave Bittner

Episode Overview

This episode dives into a chaotic week for tech, dissecting controversies and failures in AI, big tech maneuverings, copyright lawsuits, the decline of the open web, and the ongoing proliferation of corporate bullshit and AI-generated junk. The hosts and guest bring their classic unfiltered, sarcastic, and grumpy style, offering both technical insight and memorable rants.

Key Discussion Points & Segments

1. Tesla’s EV Market Share Collapse & Elon Watch

Timestamps: 00:47—01:34

• Tesla’s dominance in the US EV market drops to 38%, its weakest in nearly eight years.
• Jason quips about “Little Nazi mobiles” and speculates people are buying them for the expiring $7,500 federal credit.
• Quote:
  • Jason: “Everywhere I look I see Teslas with new dealer plates and I’m like, what the—Still. Little Nazi mobiles. But I guess they want that $7,500 credit.” [01:15]

2. Oracle’s AI Bubble & OpenAI’s Massive Cloud Deal

Timestamps: 02:04—05:40

• Oracle’s market surge: Despite missing earnings, AI hype (specifically rumors of a $300B OpenAI cloud deal) sends shares rocketing.
• Larry Ellison overtakes Elon Musk as richest person, thanks to Oracle stock.
• OpenAI’s cloud ambitions: Skepticism about OpenAI’s ability to spend $60B annually on Oracle compute from 2027—none of these figures are grounded in OpenAI’s actual finances.
• Microsoft and OpenAI partnership: Microsoft inexplicably agrees to renegotiate its deal, potentially bailing OpenAI out.
• Hosts’ consensus: “The only way this dumpster fire keeps going is if OpenAI goes public.”
• Quote:
  • Jason: “If you just have stock, seriously, liquidate it and put it under your pillow… there’s going to be one day when people wake up and go: I should have sold yesterday.” [05:45]

3. Anthropic’s Record Copyright Settlement—Then the Judge Steps In

Timestamps: 06:17—09:36

• Anthropic (maker of Claude AI) agrees to $1.5B settlement with authors for copyright violations; authors would get $3,000 per work.
• Host skepticism: The sum is both paltry (“I want my $2!”) and procedurally problematic.
• Judge Alsop rejects the settlement—concerns class members are railroaded, processes aren’t defined, wants better notice and opt-in/out for affected authors.
• Anthropic claims it never used pirated works for public AI models—hosts call BS.
• Meta-comment on repeated patterns: more such lawsuits surely coming.
• Quote:
  • Brian: “The class members get the shaft in a lot of class actions once the monetary settlement has been established and the lawyers stop caring.” [08:45]

4. Apple Sued for AI Training & The Futility of 'Open Standards' for AI Scraping

Timestamps: 09:50—13:00

• Apple sued by authors for using pirated books to train their (frankly unimpressive) AI—hosts ridicule both Apple’s AI and the legal “shadow libraries.”
• New “Really Simple Licensing Standard” (RSL) proposed to tell AI what they can/can’t scrape; everyone mocks its futility, given robots.txt is already ignored by crawlers.
• Quote:
  • Brian: “Points for somebody trying to come up with a solution, but this is dead on arrival. It’s not even on arrival, it’s just dead.” [12:35]

5. Google Admits the Open Web’s in Decline (and is Making it Worse)

Timestamps: 13:03—17:08

• Google court filings reference the “rapid decline” of the open web, try to walk it back to just “advertising.” But reality: advertisers are fleeing, and Google is now putting ads into AI responses, bypassing web publishers.
• Hosts lament the death of the web, draw parallels to losses like Twitter, and recall the “hand-curated Yahoo” days.
• Google’s AI search output is confidently wrong, generating fictitious government agencies (“Doge” agency); company gives no real explanation—“this AI overview is clearly incorrect.”
• Quote:
  • Brian: “Google has killed search, killed the web, replaced it with its Google AI responses… and all the shit that they return is fucking false.” [15:50]

6. AI Scraping & Lawsuits – YouTube, Creators, and ‘Vibe Coding’

Timestamps: 18:07—27:58

• 15 million YouTube videos scraped for AI training without creators’ consent—companies involved include Microsoft, Meta, ByteDance.
• Creators may soon compete with AI-generated ripoffs built directly from their own work.
• The “Boring Company” still exists (!), but not much to show for its tunnels—plus workplace fatalities.
• Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg are teaming up on mixed reality goggles for the U.S. Army, after Microsoft’s AR failures.
• Meta/VR child safety scandal continues: Reports of whistleblowers being ignored, repeated cycle of regulatory hearings, and Meta PR’s “bullshit” denials.
• AI in the workplace: Census finds AI adoption at big firms actually dropping, with nearly all adopters seeing “no new revenue”—plus AI-coding assistants introduce far more security vulnerabilities.
• Emergence of a new industry: “Vibe Code Fixers” cleaning up rushed and buggy AI/LLM-generated software; entire Fiverr economy developing.
• Key quote:
  • Jason: “This is like creating a Y2K problem, like daily… We fucking told you so.” [28:19]

7. Media Candy: Pop Culture, MTV VMAs, and More TV Binging

Timestamps: 28:25—43:54

• Jason watched the 2025 MTV VMAs “as a favor to a friend”—only Ricky Martin’s performance stood out.
• Comment that MTV's median viewer age is now 56, and “they haven't shown a video in 20 years.”
• Series wrap-ups reviewed:
  • Wednesday (“stuck the landing—can't wait for years-delayed S3”) [31:30]
  • AKA Charlie Sheen—Jason appreciates the redemption arc (“if you lived in Hollywood, nothing is shocking in here”) [32:14]
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S3 finale divides the hosts: Brian calls it “fantastic”; Jason found it “mediocre and rushed.” Commentary on Trek tonal shifts and studio politics. [33:28]
• Notable Quote:
  • Brian: “Pre social media Internet is what I miss.”

8. AI-Generated Music Flooding Streaming Services

Timestamps: 37:10—39:42

• Deezer: 30,000 fully AI-generated tracks uploaded DAILY; now 28% of their track delivery, most removed from algorithmic recs/playlists, but still present. First major platform to explicitly tag AI music.
• Amazon Music launches AI-generated playlists (“Empowerment Anthems”)—hosts scoff.
• All agree Amazon Music is a service “for people that don’t like music.”
• Quote:
  • Brian: “This shit is for people that don't like music.” [37:48]

9. AI Content Mills, Spam Podcasts & the Coming Flood

Timestamps: 62:18—71:18

• New startup Inception Point AI claims to publish 5,000+ AI-generated podcasts weekly (3,000+ episodes/week), “characters” like Nigel Thistledown (garden expert), raking in downloads—host skepticism that audiences are real (“Bots watching bots?”).
• “Podcasting equivalent of spam.”
• Dave Bittner observes it’s “just churn, churn, churn.”
• Hosts worry about easier access to podcasting tools and data scraping lowering the bar for scammers and driving “carpetbaggers” into the space.
• Philosophical debate: “If someone enjoys an AI podcast… is that bad?”
  • Brian: “What happens when they start getting better and training their data on us now? Do we get our $3,000?” [70:06]
• Jason checks: Yes, these shows do appear on regular podcast platforms, not just Instagram.
• Cautionary note: as generative AI improves, it’ll be trained on existing shows (“Are they training their data on us?”).

10. Apple Event & Product Gripes

Timestamps: 71:18—76:15

• AirPods Pro 3 & iOS 26/Tahoe: New features but ugly UI (“the vibe is just left of center”).
• Camera claims debunked: Apple touts “8x optical-quality zoom,” but actual tech is a digital crop from a 4x lens.
• Blackmagic’s new gen-lock adapter lets iPhones be used in multi-cam studio setups—impressive, but strange times.

11. Personal Moment: Don't Postpone Joy

Timestamps: 76:15—78:27

• Dave Bittner shares a personal moment after losing a close friend, reflecting on the importance of not delaying happiness or connection.
• “Don't postpone joy”—buy the thing, eat the ice cream, call your friend.
• Quote:
  • Dave Bittner: “It’s so easy to put things off… eat the ice cream, buy the thing you want to buy, and call your friend. Tell the people you love that you love them.” [77:36]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI Hype:

  • Jason: “All I could think of this week was the word obscene. Because these are obscene amounts of money.” [16:25]

• On cracking down on tech monopolies:

  • Brian: “No, let’s not. Why would we tax the mega rich? Why would they have to innovate?” [03:24]

• On Google’s decline & misinformation:

  • Brian: “Google has killed search, killed the web, replaced it with its Google AI responses … and all they return is fucking false.” [15:50]

• On lawsuits over AI scraping:

  • Jason: “All of them are doing it. Same shit. Same shit. Same shit.” [10:30]

• Brutal meta-comment on the industry:

  • Brian: “We can actually just put up the same goddamn podcast every week.” [22:34]

• On AI code assistants:

  • Jason: “You’re creating technical debt at a fucking… just at a scale we’ve never seen before.” [26:36]

Additional Highlights

- Big Tech Back-pedaling & Cozying Up to Power

Timestamps: 23:48—24:41

• Hot mic catches Zuckerberg giving Trump an inflated estimate of Meta’s future spending; execs praise Trump at dinner.
• Quote:
  • Jason: “Everybody at that dinner is a coward. The stance is on your knees, blowing him, you assholes.” [24:36]

- Personal Tech, Hobbies & Tariffs

Timestamps: 57:34—62:18

• Discussion of how new tariffs are impacting niche hobbies, especially importing from China.
• General inflation is noted: “How many things that used to be under $10 are over $10 now?” [60:23]

- Guest Segment – “The Dark Side With Dave”

Timestamps: 50:58—80:10

• Dave Bittner joins for banter on:

  • Rewatching The Princess Bride (“everything a movie should be—no notes, except the synth-heavy soundtrack”)
  • The creep of AI podcasts and media
  • More on tech and generational change

• Closing heartfelt reflection from Dave on grief and making intentional, joyful choices.

Episode Structure & Flow

• Opening Banter: Tech vs. geopolitical dystopia
• News, Lawsuits, and Rants: The meat of the show—case after head-shaking case, running gags on corporate tech culture, AI crimes and mistakes, and the slow death of the old web.
• Media Reviews: Pop culture takes, old and new shows, generational perspectives.
• Guest Segment With Dave Bittner: Broader reflection, including nostalgic movie talk and a personal moment.
• Listener Feedback, Patreon Shoutouts, and Closing: Interspersed with wit and gratitude.

Conclusion

Another relentless, insight-dense, and sarcastic episode, “Ourovibeos” is as much a lament for what’s broken in tech (and culture) as it is a cathartic group vent for the hosts and their audience. The through-lines: AI and the internet have been overtaken by superficiality, greed, and carelessness—meanwhile, the old joys and the open web are slipping away. The overarching grumpy—yet weirdly affectionate—tone remains unmatched.

For more details and links, visit: GOG Show 713

“Stay grumpy.”