Dave & Gunnar Show

Hosted by David Egts & Gunnar Hellekson

Technology Society Culture NewsInterviews guests

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Episodes

277

Latest episode

Jun 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

David Egts and Gunnar Hellekson discuss privacy, security, robots, and internet ephemera.

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60 recent

June 4, 202636 min

Episode 285: Location, Location, Threat Model

This week Dave and Gunnar talk about markdown, caveman, and dark software factories! Warhammer 40,000: “In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.” Birds Aren’t Real Robot Birds Deployed by Park to Attract Real Birds - Built By High School Students Introducing Markdown for Agents Counterpoint: Why the heck are we still using Markdown?? caveman: why use many token when few do trick See also: Classical Chinese Dark Software Factories The 5 Levels of AI Coding (Why Most of You Won't Make It Past Level 2) by Nate B. Jones StrongDM Software Factory: Software Factories And The Agentic Moment The Five Levels: from Spicy Autocomplete to the Dark Factory by Dan Shapiro Freedom’s Forge by Arthur Herman I Watched 3 Companies Lay Off Their Managers. All 3 Hit the Same Wall. by Nate B. Jones Cutting Room Floor Interactive XKCD Dependency comic A Unique Property For Sale In Pennsylvania Luxurious Home in a Decommissioned Grain Elevator

March 9, 202650 min

Episode 284: Home Row Guy

This week Dave and Gunnar talk with Mike McGrath about agentic AI open source development and engineering leadership! Gunnar on abundance in D&G 273 Welcome Mike! Gemini Gems The Day Open Source Realized Code Doesn’t Matter Anymore Fedora Fedora Infrastructure Project tmux screen We Give Thanks Mike McGrath for being our special guest star! Special Guest: Mike McGrath.

February 28, 202630 min

Episode 283: We Could’ve Been Standing Outside an Olive Garden

This week Dave and Gunnar talk about AI judging photos, AI judging meeting transcripts, and hacking AI with poetry! Stranger Things! It’s good, actually! rentahuman.ai They See Your Photos Poems Can Trick AI Into Helping You Make a Nuclear Weapon D&G This Week in Controlling the Past to Control the Future: Manipulating the meeting notetaker: The rise of AI summarization optimization Cutting Room Floor DOOMBuds

February 17, 202631 min

Episode 282: He Sent Me Chicken Ramen

This week Dave and Gunnar talk about agents battling agents, electric shocks battling coffee, and Amazon Prime battling First Class mail! Gunnar is now fully agentic. Skills and the inner loop. Capital vs Labor. Capital wins again. La-Z-Boy repair tip + free parts ($16 S&H) Clawdbot → Moltbot → OpenClaw Moltbook Moltbook leaked Andrej Karpathy’s API keys MOLTBOOK EXPOSED: The New AI Scam That Fooled Everyone D&G Mailbag via Erich Morisse: The Clanker Games Fun fact: Clanker A Viral Chinese Wristband Claims to Zap You Awake. The Public Says 'No Thanks’ WAT Medical product page Postal Arbitrage We Give Thanks Erich Morisse for the Clanker Games tip!

February 13, 202630 min

Episode 281: Four Out of Five Developers Enjoy Code Reviews

This week Dave and Gunnar talk about AI for prison inmates, AI for senior citizens, and low-cost haptic exosuits! Ebird and Listers Moen update Death by Lightning An AI model trained on prison phone calls now looks for planned crimes in those calls Lonely Seniors Are Turning To AI Bots For Companionship Kinethreads: A Low Cost Haptic Exo-Suit Almost related: Four out of five developers enjoy code reviews Cutting Room Floor Anycrap: Bring Impossible Products to Life Thought-Cancelling Headphones Dave and Gunnar Show Podcast Bobble Heads Donut Hole Repair I’m Not a Robot Claude Biodome

January 12, 202633 min

Episode 280: We See You

This week Dave and Gunnar talk about diverse AI opinions and the wisdom of crowds! Trinity and Low-background Steel Hardcore History Slate Political Gabfest Google Vids! Researchers find adding this one simple sentence to prompts makes AI models way more creative D&G This Week in Bad Ideas Kalshi Becomes CNN’s Official Prediction Market Partner After Raising $1B Should an AI copy of you help decide if you live or die? Rawlsian Theory of Justice Rawlsian Theory of Justice: The Musical Cutting Room Floor Salami Advent Calendar Nap Anywhere Pillow Linux Ported to WebAssembly, Boots in a Browser Tab How a programmer got Doom to run on a space satellite and what happened next I taught an octopus piano (It took 6 months)

December 1, 20259 min

Episode 279: Live from Room 101

This week Dave and Gunnar go on a re-education off-site, and O’Brien and Winston Smith debate whether we’re in an AI bubble! Key Takeaways (The Correct Perspective): The concept of an 'AI bubble' is a persistent, troubling rumor. It is heresy. Nvidia's valuation is not speculation; it is the correct price for the tools that build order. The true return on investment for General AI is not measured in commerce or email-writing, but in compliance. The massive power consumption and centralization of the technology are not a bug, but a feature—it ensures only the Party can wield true AI. The true 'killer app' of AI is the ability to rewrite the past perfectly and instantly, changing not just the record, but the memory. A bubble is fragile. This new architecture of control is not a bubble, but the AI reality. The numbers are meaningless. The only thing that matters is the fullness and the order. Further Re-education: All corrected notes and the transcript that has now always been true can be found at dgshow.org. We Give Thanks Big Brother O’Brien and Winston Smith for filling in for us!

November 24, 202537 min

Episode 278: I Know How the Butlerian Jihad Works

This week Dave and Gunnar talk about weaponized AI and seemingly conscious AI! Virtual Customer Panels with Gemini Gems Dave vs. Ticketmaster Totally unrelated: Cool Dad Raising Daughter On Media That Will Put Her Entirely Out Of Touch With Her Generation Weaponizing image scaling against production AI systems Anthropic's Claude stocked a fridge with metal cubes when it was put in charge of a snacks business Seemingly Conscious AI (SCAI) We must build AI for people, not to be a person Microsoft’s AI Chief Says Machine Consciousness Is an ‘Illusion’ Ohio lawmaker proposes comprehensive ban on marrying AI systems and granting legal personhood Cutting Room Floor Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape How Many Phones Sport A 5 And 1/4 Diskette Drive? This One. 1990 Airstream NASA 025 Command Vehicle. A Once-in-a-Lifetime Investment Opportunity Steamed Hams but it's a Critically Acclaimed Feature Film See also: Steamed Hams but it was banned in the USSR Steamed Hams but it's a German Expressionist Film Steamed Hams but it's in Nazi Germany The Simpsons - Worker and Parasite Possible inspiration for Worker and Parasite?

November 17, 202556 min

Episode 277: Mission Accomplished

This week Dave and Gunnar are joined by Dan Walsh on the eve of his retirement! What is new in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.0: “The most significant security update is the transition from AppArmor to SELinux as the default Mandatory Access Control (MAC) framework.” Bootc Dan Walsh Red Hat Obituary SELinux Dan’s Russian Blog Cursor Podman In Action RamaLama vLLM Llama.cpp Red Hat Lightspeed Multimodal learning SELinux Coloring Book “Not for Sharing, Kindergarten fan club” We Give Thanks Dan Walsh for being our special guest star! Special Guest: Dan Walsh.

November 1, 202554 min

Episode 276: I Think I Had That Shirt

For our Halloween finale, Carolyn Ford invites two favorite “AI conjurers”, Dave Egts “Mr. X,” public-sector field CTO at Mulesoft, and Laura Klebanow, founder & chief storyteller at Show & Tell, into the Tech Transforms cauldron. Each brings a “secret AI ingredient”: Carolyn composes whimsical Suno-generated theme music (after a prompt-crafting detour through ChatGPT), Laura pushes image creation and Gemini’s career-planner for playful, practical use, and Dave reimagines Gemini’s children’s-storybook gem to craft customer-hero narratives, plus a Scooby-Doo-style Tech Transforms tale. Then we stir in the shadows: misinformation at scale, AI “rights,” bioethics (organoids/bodyoids), job disruption vs. reskilling, and how creativity can demystify AI without sugarcoating risks. The trio closes with rapid-fire “treats & tricks,” classroom-to-boardroom starter tips (talk with AI, don’t just query it; red-team your ideas), and a reminder to “find your beautiful” use the tools to clear the junk so humans can do what only humans do. Brewed takeaways: Prompt craft matters; collaborate across tools (Suno, Gemini, ChatGPT). Creative play ≠ fluff: it’s a safe on-ramp to literacy and adoption. AI will change jobs; map “jobs to be done,” automate the rote, upskill the rest. Ethics aren’t optional: teach harm awareness early (mis/dis/malinformation, bullying). Start small today: keep a running dialogue with AI and build a personal “advisory board” of model personas. Show links: Laura Klebanow: Email and LinkedIn Suno Carolyn's storybook Dave's storybook Tech Transforms Podcast We Give Thanks Thanks to Carolyn and Laura for having Dave on the Tech Transforms Podcast! Special Guests: Carolyn Ford and Laura Klebanow.