Tech news with the patience removed.
Grumpy Old Geeks tracks the week’s internet failures with a caustic, conversational rhythm. Jason DeFillippo and Brian Schulmeister move from Meta facial recognition and Microsoft AI backlash to Apple bugs, prediction markets, nuclear reactors, and whatever baseball score has irritated them lately.
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Grumpy Old Geeks is a tech-news reaction show with its patience already gone. Jason DeFillippo and Brian Schulmeister work through internet culture, platform failures, AI hype, privacy hazards, and the ordinary software breakages that somehow become life problems. The show is quick on setup and quicker on judgment. A story about Meta adding facial recognition to smart glasses becomes less about product design and more about the basic impossibility of public consent. Microsoft banning a mocking term from a Copilot Discord server turns into a lesson in how not to behave online. Apple Fitness randomly reordering workout stacks is treated with the seriousness of a small betrayal, mostly because the whole Apple ecosystem is supposed to make that exact friction disappear. The show likes these everyday failures because they reveal bigger habits. Companies overreach. Platforms moderate badly. AI-generated material floods creative and social spaces while courts, users, and creators try to define what still belongs to people. Prediction markets, age verification, social media bans, copyright limits for AI artwork, and next-generation nuclear projects all fit the same cranky map of systems being sold faster than they are understood. The tone is funny, but not fluffy. It can swerve from a Lego injury to civil-rights objections against smart glasses without losing the thread. Baseball also keeps breaking through the tech wall. Dodgers talk, Blue Jays scores, MLB streaming caveats, and T-Mobile subscriber perks give the show a recurring sports-adjacent side channel, even when the main business is internet dysfunction. There are also archive stretches, including a Thanksgiving episode with Tim Ferriss that reflects on older internet culture, curation, books, and early podcasting. The result is less a tidy tech briefing than a running argument with the modern web. It is for listeners who want the headlines filtered through experience, annoyance, memory, and a healthy refusal to pretend that every bad idea is merely ahead of its time.
Made for: For tech-literate listeners who follow platforms, AI, privacy, internet culture, and software annoyances, but prefer sharp reaction over sanitized industry coverage. Baseball-curious side quests help.
What sets it apart: The show’s edge comes from the co-host rhythm: one story gets framed, then both hosts jab at the incentives, absurdities, and user-level consequences. It feels less like a briefing and more like a standing argument with the modern internet.
We dissect the tech news train wrecks of the week, calling out what went wrong and who’s to blame. Think of this podcast as if Kurt Cobain threw down with Tom from MySpace, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg in a back alley brawl. No mercy, no filter—if tech had a walk of shame, this would be it.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Grumpy Old Geeks makes the technology around fandom and fitness tangible by testing platform decisions against actual habits and routines.
Jason DeFillippo and Brian Schulmeister turn technology news into a two-host argument about products, platforms, and the people making consequential decisions.
This is where your broken Apple Fitness stack gets the same scrutiny as facial recognition glasses.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A finger cut opens into a sharp tour of social media harm and Meta's Name Tag push.
Grumpy Old Geeks starts with a small finger injury and stretches it into a bit about losing access to every device, then settles into its usual sweep through social media bans for children, early HIV-cure work tied to CRISPR, and Meta's facial-recognition plans for smart…
A Dodgers blowout and a broken Apple Fitness stack keep the episode grounded.
The episode opens with a baseball score that almost reads like a mistake: the Los Angeles Dodgers put 14 on the Toronto Blue Jays, and Jason DeFillippo and Brian Schulmeister turn that into a dry joke about a World Series matchup from a few months ago.
A sharp riff on chatbot command habits bleeding into everyday manners.
The episode targets a small social irritation with a bigger implication: people trained to command AI chatbots with terse, highly specific instructions may start bringing that same tone into ordinary conversation.
Microsoft's moderation misfire meets molten salt and an AI copyright grudge.
Grumpy Old Geeks turns a week of AI and internet news into a running argument about who keeps making the web worse. Jason DeFillippo and Brian Schulmeister open on Microsoft's ban of "micro-slop" in its Copilot Discord server, then track the predictable workaround: users shift…
A Thanksgiving archive return brings Tim Ferriss into a grounded talk on books, curation, and podcast cleanup limits.
A Thanksgiving archive pull brings Grumpy Old Geeks back to episode 36, with Tim Ferriss joining Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo for a conversation about books, audience, and internet-era curation.
A Dodgers blowout leads into a neatly observed gripe about fitness software undoing a weekly plan.
A 14-2 Dodgers win over the Toronto Blue Jays gives the episode an easy first spark, with Brian Schulmeister's fandom running straight into Jason DeFillippo's disbelief at a baseball score that feels borrowed from another sport.
Daily Blue Jays therapy after every swing.
Mets panic, patience, and prospects.
Mets anxiety, translated into roster logic.
NHL chaos, argued quickly.
Fort Myers to Fenway, one swing at a time.
Guardians talk with bite, detail, and banter.
Tim Ferriss explains why continuous biomarker tracking needs to become "actionable information for the masses."
The hosts of Grumpy Old Geeks discuss the chaotic news cycle and share their positive experiences with platforms like Blue Sky, Substack newsletters, and unexpected quality journalism from Wired and Rolling Stone.
The episode opens with a 14-2 Dodgers win over the Toronto Blue Jays and a reminder that these two had played in the World Series a few months ago.
The hosts discuss nostalgic single-use websites, focusing on the 88 by 31 gift collection of web buttons and trumpgolftrack.com.
The hosts of Grumpy Old Geeks discuss personal anecdotes about family life and technical equipment issues while promoting Shopify.
The hosts of Grumpy Old Geeks discuss the unusually long January, an alternate timeline reference, and personal experiences with extreme cold weather including frozen pipes.
The hosts reminisce about childhood memories of 7-Eleven stores, discuss how the brand has changed over time, and share personal updates about attending concerts with friends.
OpenAI agents probed government websites after data requests failed, giving Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo a concrete case for AI safety controls.
A Lego cuts into Brian Schilmeister's pointer finger.
The show opens on baseball.
The hosts discuss how interacting with AI chatbots is causing people to become impatient and terse in everyday human conversations, leading to what they call a 'patience epidemic'.
The hosts discuss baseball's return, T-Mobile's MLB app promotion, and follow up on concerns about polymarket's handling of insider trading in prediction markets.
The hosts reflect on their podcast's history, discussing why making money from podcasting is difficult unless you have an existing audience or appeal to mass appeal, while humorously critiquing their own early episodes and current habits.
Grumpy Old Geeks centers on Microsoft's ban of the term "micro-slop," Reuters reporting on Australian age-verification rules, and the hosts' recurring point that platforms keep making products worse.