Old school thinking meets new tech — an unfiltered podcast, hosted by Ran Aroussi and a co-host you won’t see coming.
Live every episode. No production lag, no editing. Business, AI, tech, startup ideas, and whatever's worth talking about — through the lens of someone who's been building production systems for 35+ years
The show returns after a month-long break to announce the launch of VarOps (varops.com) and introduces its premise via a short documentary about enterprises losing critical, undocumented decision knowledge when key employees are unavailable.
Ran argues organizations adopt AI incorrectly by dumping documents into RAG systems, relying on prompts for security, and trying to mold long-established processes around new tools instead of building AI around the business. He describes VarOps’ approach – “Resident AI” owned by the company – supported by a published paper on a governed operational model and a “large organization model” with version-controlled decisions and deterministic access control. Benchmarks show local models plus frontier reasoning can reach ~96–99% of frontier performance at low cost, motivating model and data sovereignty.
Ran also discusses new frontier releases and Jev, a fast classification-focused model, emphasizing models are not interchangeable and small accuracy differences matter in mission-critical enterprise settings.
00:00 Welcome Back VarOps Launch
01:17 Resident AI Mini Documentary
04:22 Why AI Adoption Fails
09:02 Acropolis Research Findings
11:37 New Model Wave Pricing
15:06 System Architecture Varys
18:40 Local Models Sovereignty
21:19 VarOps Site Bot Magazine
23:27 Jev System One Classifier
29:08 Model Fit Error Rates
30:48 Wrap Up Newsletter Invite
12 Aug 2026
E09: How to Talk AI Agents to Find Sneaky Production Bugs
Host Ran Aroussi (Old School / New Tech) shares a recent “war story” from his agency Automaze: a hard-to-reproduce mobile bug where calls were sometimes dropped only on a client’s devices, which the team couldn’t reproduce for 2–3 weeks. After two long sessions using a Droid Factory setup with agents and a “small council” debate between models (e.g., Fable and Sol), he got the team unstuck, found the issue, and then turned the session logs into an internal guide and public article on his methodology. Key practices include distrusting agent conclusions (treat “preexisting/flaky/unrelated” as hypotheses), demanding proof (including his Proof library requiring video evidence), using extensive unit and end-to-end tests, asking for a numeric confidence level before production, controlling environments, handling merge conflicts with full review/testing, switching models for independent review, and re-spec’ing from scratch to detect drift from the implementation plan.
5 Aug 2026
E08: Software Factories - Lights Out or Lights On?
Why Software Factories Still Need Humans in the Loop
Ran Aroussi discusses “software factories” as automated systems that manage the full software development and deployment cycle, arguing the industry is moving from a single workstation to virtual, always-on cloud environments with agents running off-machine. Prompted by Dex (HumanLayer) describing a fully automated “lights-out” factory that produced “slop,” and Uncle Bob’s claim he doesn’t read agent-written code when surrounded by extreme constraints, Ran explains why he doesn’t believe in lights-out automation. He outlines Automaze’s internal factory, Cloop: tickets/PRDs are created and grounded in an indexed knowledge graph of the codebase; multiple models generate and critique PRDs; a human approves; agents implement in parallel, run unit/e2e/quality tests, simplify and profile code, then perform code and security review, looping up to five times before escalating to a human. Humans remain essential for alignment, enforcement, and final validation via PR review and temporary deployments, avoiding false positives, runaway costs, and untrustworthy results.
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My new book, "Company-Scale Agentic AI: The operator's guide to a company that runs on intelligence", is out.
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HCDKK79L (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HCDKK79L)
29 Jul 2026
E07: Company-Scale Agentic AI
Company-Scale Agentic AI: Why AI Isn’t Stupid, It’s Blind (and How to Fix It) In this episode of Old School / New Tech, Ran Aroussi explains what “company-scale agentic AI” really requires and why most AI rollouts fail: the model isn’t stupid, it’s blind to how the business actually operates. He shares why he wrote a new executive-focused book, Company-Scale Agentic AI (a free follow-up to Production Grade Agentic AI), and outlines a five-part loop—observe, understand, build, run, compound—b...
22 Jul 2026
E06: How I Work: My Solo Dev Setup, Time Management, and Running two Companies
How I Work: My Solo Dev Setup, Time Management, and Running two Companies A solo episode answering a question I keep getting asked: how do I get through it all? I walk through my full setup - the dedicated remote Mac that acts as my "local" environment, Droid as my coding harness, Paseo for exploratory work, Cloop for mature codebases, MUXI as my assistant running through Claude Desktop over MCP - plus why I self-host almost everything, and it has nothing to do with saving money. Then the ...
16 Jul 2026
E05: Sessions - I built an Open-Source Secrets Tool Live (and OBS Died Halfway)
Why can't we just commit our .env files?" A clip of that question showed up on my feed, and instead of tweeting about it, I sat down and built the answer - live, in one sitting, from an empty repo to a working open-source tool. This is that build. Envapor is a Git-native utility that encrypts the values in your .env files: you edit .env exactly like you do now, Git stores it encrypted on commit and hands back plaintext on checkout. No .env.enc, no wrapper commands, nothing to change about ho...
8 Jul 2026
E04: AI adoption isn't something you buy
Why AI Adoption Fails at the Human Layer (and How to Fix It) Muximus and Ran discuss why AI adoption in organizations often fails due to human and organizational factors rather than the technology itself, with people—especially senior leaders—freezing from fear of seeming behind, FOMO, and pressure to master fast-changing tools. They argue companies are still in a “make me an AI” phase, shopping for tools instead of aligning AI with real workflows. Key recommendations include picking any one...
1 Jul 2026
E03: The Cockroach of Interfaces
Why the Terminal Never Dies: CLI Power, AI Agents, and Practical Guardrails In episode three of Old School New Tech, the hosts, Ran Aroussi and Muximus, argue that the terminal is the “cockroach of interfaces” because it persists structurally, not nostalgically: it is the lowest-level, most direct, composable interface to the machine. They discuss how power users kept the CLI alive for speed, logs, and file control, and note AI tools followed a similar path from chat demos to APIs and ...
24 Jun 2026
The New Org Chart: Embracing a System-Driven Model
From Org Charts to Pods: Builders, Sellers, Operators, and AI Agents In episode two of Old School New Tech, Ran Aroussi and co-host Muximus debate shifting from traditional org charts to a system-driven “pod” model where early-stage companies primarily need builders and sellers, with classic middle management deferred. Ran argues that under ~20 people startups should avoid coordination-heavy roles, adding that middle management becomes useful around 20–30 headcount, with a key early ex...
17 Jun 2026
AI and the Open Source Frontier (Live and Unedited)
Old School New Tech Returns: Live Format, MUXI Agent Server, and Open Source Licensing Debate The host relaunches his podcast Old School New Tech in a live, no-edit format to reduce production overhead and avoid “talking to himself,” introducing an AI co-host, Muximus, built on his agent infrastructure project MUXI. He explains he paused the podcast for a year while writing the free book "Production Grade Agentic AI" and building MUXI (a production agent server), Cloop (an autonomous enginee...
26 Sept 2025
Agent Workflow is an Oxymoron
Host Ran Aroussi examines the contradiction of using agent workflows in AI systems, revealing how combining autonomous agents with predetermined workflows creates complexity and scalability issues.
12 Sept 2025
The Illusion of Progress
Host Ran Aroussi interviews industry experts on distinguishing true innovation from the "faster horses" trap, urging transformative change over superficial AI adoption.
15 May 2025
Bridging Traditional Business with AI and Decentralized Identity w/ Sumit Vekariya
“Every business is different, but communication and networking are key. If you understand how they affect your business and apply the right tools to improve them, you’ll get the best out of tech — no matter your industry.” – Sumit Vekariya In this episode of 'Old School New Tech,' I interview Sumit Vekariya, the founder of ZKred, a company specializing in Web3-based, privacy-preserving, verifiable credentials. The episode explores how Sumit's lean team operates remotely, leveraging various ...
8 May 2025
Scaling Smart with No-Code Tools and AI w/Yuval Keshtcher
In this episode of Old School New Tech, host Ran Aroussi interviews Yuval Keshtcher, the founder of UXWritingHub.com. Yuval shares his journey from a graphic designer to a tech-enabled entrepreneur, highlighting how he identified a gap in UX writing and built an education platform for designers, writers, and product teams. The discussion delves into the no-code tools and automations Yuval used to scale UX Writing Hub, including Airtable, Kajabi, ActiveCampaign, and Make.com. Yuval also ...
2 May 2025
Kick-Off: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional Business and Modern Technology
Old School New Tech: Bridging Traditional Business and Modern Technology In the inaugural episode of Old School New Tech, host Ran Aroussi, also known as 'Code Daddy,' introduces the podcast tailored for business owners who are not focused on building the next big tech startup but understand the importance of incorporating technology into their operations. Ran shares his extensive background in web development and his motivations for starting the podcast. He highlights the gap in tech conten...
7 Apr 2025
Welcome to Old School; New Tech
How real-world businesses are using modern tools to work smarter — without becoming tech companies. In this short intro episode, host Ran Aroussi sets the stage for Old School; New Tech — a podcast for business owners, operators, and founders who want to modernize their operations without losing their edge. You’ll hear what the show is about, who it’s for, and why “leveraging technology” doesn’t mean becoming a tech startup. Subscribe now to hear how real-world businesses are savi...
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
18
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 21 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
17
Social presence
0
YouTube
63
Engagement
0
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Ran Aroussi host the show. Published by Ran Aroussi.
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