April 11, 2025

Functionally Useless, But Undeniably Cool

42 minutes

Welcome back to the FAIK Files!

In this episode:

Mason fills in for Perry as best he can, with a mix of topics that all fall under the broad umbrella of "functionally useless, but cool". Well... except the last segment; that one is inarguably kind of un-cool.

We play a little bit of a 100% AI-generated rendition of Quake 2, and discuss how it works under the hood - as well as the general reaction to it.

A software engineer named Alex Chan created a PDF file that is larger than the observable universe, and we break down how that was possible.

Bullethead, a member of our discord, sent us a Language Diffusion model to check out: the recently released Dream 7B!

Finally, Mason pontificates a bit about the highly aggressive noncompete clauses that Google has been pushing on their AI staff.

===== Learn more about the upcoming OFFENSIVE CYBER DECEPTION MASTERCLASS (Las Vegas, August 2-5, 2025) please visit this link: https://tinyurl.com/5ytpvjv7 =====

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*** NOTES AND REFERENCES ***

AI Generated Quake 2:

Play the demo: https://copilot.microsoft.com/wham?features=labs-wham-enabled

Xbox Wire article about Muse: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/02/19/muse-ai-xbox-empowering-creators-and-players/

Azure AI Foundry Muse page: https://ai.azure.com/labs/projects/muse

Techcrawlr Article: https://techcrawlr.com/microsofts-ai-powered-quake-2-demo-gets-mixed-reactions-online/

A PDF Bigger than the Universe:

Alex (the creator)'s Blog about it: https://alexwlchan.net/2024/big-pdf/

BigThink Article: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/the-worlds-largest-pdf-is-bigger-than-the-universe/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=BigThink/magazine/Big+Think

Dream 7B - A New Diffusion Model for Language

Try it out: https://huggingface.co/spaces/multimodalart/Dream

Read the paper: https://hkunlp.github.io/blog/2025/dream/ – blog

Autoregression Explained: https://spotintelligence.com/2023/10/25/autoregressive-ar-models/

Diffusion Explained: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/understanding-diffusion-models-an-essential-guide-for-aec-professionals/

AI Dumpster Fire of the Week: Google's Aggressive Noncompete Contracts

The Business Insider article: https://archive.is/20250409121528/https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-ai-talent-war-aggressive-noncompetes-2025-4

Noncompete legality: https://frostbrowntodd.com/the-non-compete-agreement-landscape-in-2025

Microsoft VP of AI & Former Deepmind Director's Tweet: https://xcancel.com/NandoDF/status/1904818330143273222

*** THE BOILERPLATE ***

Check out Perry & Mason's other show, the Digital Folklore Podcast:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-folklore/id1657374458

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2v1BelkrbSRSkHEP4cYffj?si=u4XTTY4pR4qEqh5zMNSVQA

Other: https://digitalfolklore.fm

Want to connect with us? Here's how:

Connect with Perry:

Perry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/perrycarpenter

Perry on X: https://x.com/perrycarpenter

Perry on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/perrycarpenter.bsky.social

Connect with Mason:

Mason on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mason-amadeus-a853a7242/

Mason on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/wickedinterest.ing

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By Perry Carpenter | N2K Networks

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