Published 26 May 2025

e515 with Andy, Michael and Michael – the Fortnite Darth Vader NPC, IO, both from Google and Open AI, AI hardware, an intriguing Vision Pro use case, infrared contact lenses, Car Play Ultra, Microsoft’s GamePass set of retro classic games (Pitfall said to be coming!), and a Warhammer typing game.

Andy, Michael and Michael start off with stories about Darth Vader in Fortnite.  One article deals with how players have gotten the Darth Vader NPC AI (non-player character) to say questionable things and another on the rights Fortnite secured to do so.

The team then turned to a summary of the top 15 announcements from Google’s I/O 2025.  The cohosts were impressed by the fact that Google created a NotebookLM from the content of the conference.  Less impressive was how interacting with the NotebookLM did not create the personalized results expected.  Moving along to a different IO; the OpenAI acquisition of Jony Ive’s company, the cohosts note that reimagining what it means to use a computer (AI or otherwise) is an enormous undertaking. 

Rethinking how spatial computing could be used, Michael R walked Andy and Michael through a  use case to see through walls, floors and ceilings in an intuitive and easy way.  Another example of superhuman visual powers are contact lenses that provide the wearer with infrared vision.  According to the article, these lenses work even better when the wearer closes their eyelids to help block out more of the (previously) visual spectrum to allow for the infrared to be more easily discerned.

Rounding out this episode, the cohosts take a slightly deeper look at Car Play Ultra beyond the Aston Martin experience described last week, enjoy the Microsoft Game Pass offering for retro classic games, as well as the Warhammer typing experience.  Perhaps some of these user experience and interaction mechanisms from such games will surface in the IO AI computing device. 

What do you think is the next computing paradigm – both in hardware and software?  How will the user experience become so transparent, that all that is left is creativity, augmented in the flow of the creative process? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Wired article: Fortnite Players Are Already Making AI Darth Vader Swear

Kotaku article: Fortnite In Legal Trouble After Adding AI Darth Vader

The Verge article: The 15 biggest announcements at Google I/O 2025

Google I/O: About I/O

Google created a NotebookLM notebook with everything they announced at Google I/O. So instead of slogging through thousands of hours of video and other content, you can just ask NotebookLM questions, listen to a podcast, or get a FAQ, etc. https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/953b658a-579b-4b3c-b280-43b3781babf3

Wall Street Journal article: What Sam Altman Told OpenAI About the Secret Device He’s Making With Jony Ive

OpenAI post: Sam and Jony introduce io

Cafe Zoetrope – where the io introduction video was made

HP IQ

Games at Work e371: Legacy Games & New UX (for early discussion on Humane in 2022)

Reddit post: How I use my Apple Vision Pro to retrofit Unifi Access Points in finished homes

The Guardian article: Seeing infrared: scientists create contact lenses that grant ‘super-vision’

The Verge article: Microsoft adds over 50 ‘Retro Classics’ to Game Pass

The Verge article: Warhammer’s free new game makes typing grimdark

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Published 19 May 2025

e514 with Michael R and Andy – generative ads & LEGO, Aston Martin x Apple CarPlay Ultra, new Vision Pro UX, an Internet Roadtrip, Leroy Jenkins and so much more.

While Michael M is away, Michael R and Andy start off with some generative AI topics: advertisements and LEGO.  Per the Ars Technica article, Netflix has announced it has created GenAI advertising that it will show during streaming video in 2026.  And some exciting news in the GenAI space for LEGO – a model that generates stable (not diffuse!) LEGO structures from text prompts.

Next up: several Apple stories, starting with Aston Martin working with Apple’s CarPlay Ultra, which combines data and visualizations from the car as well as from the iPhone. Then, some articles on Apple’s Vision Pro, since the launch, and new capabilities allowing scrolling in a new way.

Then, Michael R and Andy share a cornucopia of fun.  A website with the first few of 10,000 drum machines.  A fixer of broken QR codes.  A web-based team driving game called Internet Roadtrip, reminiscent of Twitch Plays Pokemon, and a little like Desert Bus too.  And especially a reflection on the 20th anniversary of Leroy Jenkins.  Do check out the article in the show notes  below, and see also the embedded story from 20 years ago.

What’s your favorite Leroy Jenkins story?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Netflix will show generative AI ads midway through streams in 2026
Netflix is trying to grow ad revenue quickly.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/netflix-will-show-generative-ai-ads-midway-through-streams-in-2026/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Ars Technica article: Netflix will show generative AI ads midway through streams in 2026

PC Mag article: LegoGPT Eliminates AI Weirdness, Creates Brick Designs You Can Actually Build

arXiv paper: Generating Physically Stable and Buildable LEGO Designs from Text

Huggingface: LegoGPT Demo

Wall Street Journal article: They Paid $3,500 for Apple’s Vision Pro. A Year Later, It Still Hurts.

Bloomberg article: Apple Readies Feature That Lets Vision Pro Users Scroll With Their Eyes

The Verge article: Apple will let the Vision Pro ‘see’ for you

10k Drum Machines

HumanQR

Adafruit blog post: Need to get away? Take an Internet Roadtrip!

Neal.Fun Internet Road Trip

Games at Work e77: (Hive)Mind Blowing for multiplayer Pokemon

NPR All Tech Considered article: Here’s What Happens When Thousands Play Pokemon Together

Desert Bus Express 2025

PC Gamer article: WoW’s Leeroy Jenkins, one of the internet’s oldest memes, turns 20 years old—and after looking back on what we wrote in 2005, I feel like we’ve failed Leeroys everywhere

Rock Paper Shotgun article: Doom: The Dark Ages review

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Published 12 May 2025

e513 with Michael and Michael – Clippy + LLMs, social AI, first person video, Duck, Pong & other games, and so much more.

While Andy is away, Michael and Michael start off this episode with good friend Clippy, the Microsoft Office Assistant from the early 2000s.  Felix Reiseberg has made a version of Clippy that can use a variety of LLMs while retaining the look and feel of the 2000s user experience.  Meta has enabled or borrowed – you pick your favorite – the capability of making user interactions with it’s AI app public, in much the same way you can browse other people’s exchanges on Venmo.  And for the sports fans, there is a new AI capability that produces play by play and color commentary.  This example highlights the thrill of victory in a match of Pong.

The Games at Work switches gears to the automotive world, where an article examines the (triumphant) return of the Yugo.  Michael R remembers the Adobe parody from Saturday Night Live, and also shares news of the return of the Karman Ghia with Michael M.  The story of the return of physical buttons from Wired reminds the cohosts of an earlier Games at Work episode where this comeback has been in the making since at least 2023.

A comedic triumph turns 50 years old this year – Monty Python’s Holy Grail, and somehow, we’re not quite sure how, Michael and Michael refrain from going through all of the quotable quotes from the movie.  After this amazing restraint, the pair turn to the Apple Vision Pro Adventure series, with an in-depth article about the making of these feats of moviemaking.  Michael R has experienced them on the Vision Pro, and describes how he felt while viewing them.  The Pike’s Peak race takes Michael M back to a 1972 film about a race through the streets of Paris called C’etait un Rendezvous.

After a discussion about the games of Duck, Eco Dolphin, and Minecraft removing support for VR, the co-hosts reflect on a Wired article about how industry is keeping the metaverse and 3D Internet dream alive through digital twinning.  

The team wraps up this episode with a reflection on the end of support for Windows 10 – or is that really the case?

Clippy, the Yugo, the Holy Grail and Windows 10 are among the things that are not dead yet.

Are you more excited about the return of the Yugo or the Karman Ghia?  Is there a vehicle you would dearly love to see come back in a new form?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Clippy

Wikipedia entry: Office Assistant (Clippy)

Business Insider article: Meta has a new stand-alone AI app. It lets you see what other people are asking. I’m confused.

Garbage Day article: Meta has a cool new slop feed

Venmo article: Who can see my Venmo payments?

Hackaday article: AI Brings Play-By-Play Commentary to Pong

Google NotebookLM

Motortrend article: The Yugo—One of the Worst Cars Ever—Is Attempting a Comeback

Wired article: Rejoice! Carmakers Are Embracing Physical Buttons Again

Games at Work e415: Pushing Our Buttons

Wall Street Journal article: Coconuts Still Clopping, ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ Turns 50

IMDb: Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Digital Camera World article: “I very much believe that the future of entertainment will be immersive!” – We speak to award-winning filmmaker and series director of Apple TV’s ‘Adventure’, Charlotte Mikkelborg

AppleTV Press release: Apple Original Films announces groundbreaking new documentary event “Bono: Stories of Surrender,” premiering globally on May 30 on Apple TV+

RadioEins Global Solutions Summit – World Policy Forum interview with Felix Hlatky, Finanzvorstand der Social Plattform Mastodon

Duck, the game

Duck, the North Carolina Outer Banks town

Go, the game

DuckDuckGo, the search engine and browser

Polygon article: Ecco the Dolphin is getting two remasters and one new title from its original creators

The Verge article: Minecraft’s VR support is now gone

Wired article: The Dream of the Metaverse Is Dying. Manufacturing Is Keeping It Alive

End of 10

0Patch

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Published 5 May 2025

e512 with Andy and Michael – E Ink monitors, Agent run companies & towns, winning arguments with AI assistants, pixellating reality and much more.

While Michael R is away, Andy and Michael start off this episode continuing the E Ink theme from last week before shifting to AI and wrapping up with several cool makes.  

It seems that there was a great deal of discussion on E Ink in the past couple of days, and the team touch on the BOOX Mira and Dashing Paperlike displays.  Andy also mentions being on a recent episode of the Bootloader podcast, where he talked about Glance – see the links below for more.  

Moving along to AI, the co-hosts talk through the multiple themes embedded in the TechCrunch article dealing with Perplexity, the divestiture of Chrome, and the business of advertising.  Andy brings up a phrase giving a different name for AI, namely, Computational Text Generation Devices, and Michael shares a link to the Crystal Knows service he heard about during a recent interview.  Then, the co-hosts have a spirited, while still family friendly, conversation spurred on by an automobile journalist’s frustrating experience with a car’s assistant.  Next up was an article about how Carnegie Mellon professors staffed a virtual company solely with AI agents, which reminded Michael about Smallville – check out e428 and e412 from 2023 for more on AI agent interaction in a town setting.  Then, Andy touches on the Meta Ray-Bans story from Gizmodo.

Wrapping up the show for this week, Andy and Michael take a look at a couple of really intriguing makes: PixLens for pixellating reality using a specifically machined acrylic lens, a cassette emulator, and a Sony Watchman brought back to life by a Raspberry Pi.

What would you like to pixellate with the PixLens?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

The Verge article: Boox launches its first color E Ink monitor

BOOX Mira Pro E Ink Monitor

Liliputing article: Dasung Paperlike 13K is a 13.3 inch E Ink color monitor

Dasung Paperlike 13K E Ink Monitor

The Bootloader podcast, e19 Welcome Andy Piper for Glance

Glance

TechCrunch article: Perplexity CEO says its browser will track everything users do online to sell ‘hyper personalized’ ads

Amardeep Singh blog post: Humanities AI in 2025: Brief Reflections After a Conference

CrystalKnows.com 

USA Today article: Scolded by a car? My battle with an EV assistant going rogue

Futurism article: Professors Staffed a Fake Company Entirely With AI Agents, and You’ll Never Guess What Happened

Games at Work e428: Is you is, or is you AIn’t my AI? For Smallville

ARXIV paper: Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior

Games at Work e412: 3D or not 3D also for Smallville and NPCs

Gizmodo article: Meta Is Turning Its Ray-Bans Into a Surveillance Machine for AI

AdaFruit blog post: PixLens: Reality into 8-bit

PixLens

I've adorned my cassette emulator device with a hand whittled label. The top panel has some bumps from through-board solder pads, so nothing I can do about that. But overall it's alright, if you don't look too closely and/or judge too harshly.

#ZXSpectrum

hackster.io post: A Sony Watchman Lives Again as the Display for a Dinky Raspberry Pi 3 Cyberdeck

Wikipedia article: Sony Watchman

GOG Dreamlist

The Verge article: GOG is adding some classic Star Wars games to its preservation program

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Published 28 April 2025

e511 with Michael, Andy and Michael – Vibe coding with the Vision Pro, E Ink, ePaper, multi and single player MMORPGs, Minecraft London and much more.

Michael, Andy and Michael get things off to a fast start continuing the vibe coding conversation.  The Vision Pro features prominently, with the idea that Siri was intended to allow for calling virtual objects into being in the Vision Pro environment without requiring the user to write code.  Then, the team discusses the different algorithms used by quantified self devices such as the Oura Ring and Apple Watch.  Next up, an intriguing concept of storing deleted data, with timestamps and user information for future potential use.

Then the co-hosts take the Figment E Ink hardware and run with it on a journey of other E Ink devices.  While the Kindle provides an easy launch point, other E Ink / ePaper devices such as the Daylight computer, the ePaper Name Badge, the Remarkable 2, Air Lab, the Poem/1 (hail poetry!) and even grocery store price displays get their proverbial day in the sun.

Switching gears to massive multi (and single) player games, Andy shares a story about the Minecraft digital twin of London built over the past 5 years.  In an MMORPG twist, the co-hosts discuss the simulated players in Erenshor, a single player version of an MMO.  

Wrapping things up for the week, the team concludes with a couple of Nintendo stories repurposing older GameBoy and Wii hardware for fun experiments.

If you could have a Windows enabled GameBoy, what would you most like to run on it?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

9 to 5 Mac article: Apple wanted people to vibe code Vision Pro apps with Siri

The Information article: Apple Devising Software to Help Anyone Build AR Apps, to Drive Headset Sales

Tom’s Guide article: I wore my Oura Ring vs Apple Watch 10 to track my steps for a week — and this device was way off

Scott Antipa blog post: YAGRI: You are gonna read it

Wikipedia article: YAGNI

Liliputing article: Figment is another E Ink handheld game console made for text adventures (and maybe more)

Games at Work article: e467- Total Recall for the Daylight computer and slow computing

Daylight Computer

Terrence Eden blog post: Gadget Review: 6-Colour ePaper Name Badge

Remarkable 2

CrowdSupply post: Air Lab – A playful and portable air quality measuring device

Kickstarter project: Poem/1: AI rhyming clock

Poem/1 AI rhyming clock

Wikipedia article: E Ink

Games at Work e453 – Vision Pro a Pro-Pro for the Poem/1

BBC article: Minecraft: ‘We’ve spent five years rebuilding London’

Build the Earth

GamesRadar article: “I’ve had this idea for 25 years”: Solo dev behind single-player MMO with fake simulated players insists “I do not plan to add multiplayer” as it soars on Steam

GamesRadar article: Erenshor, the ‘MMORPG’ with fake players that’s not actually an MMO at all, gets an imminent release date

Erenshor on Steam

Time Extension article: Someone Has Created A Version Of Windows For Game Boy, And Yes, It Includes Minesweeper

Alex Haydock blog post: This blog is hosted on a Nintendo Wii

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Published 21 April 2025

e510 with Andy, Michael and Michael – AI stories ranging from privacy, dolphin communication, open source models for robots, Game Transfer Phenomenon and much more.

Andy, Michael and Michael get things off to a fast start with all things AI with a Bloomberg article reporting on Apple “analyzing data on customer’s devices in a bid to improve its artificial intelligence platform”.  Apple shares a deeper take on the differential privacy and how it is employed to improve on the synthetic data used to train Apple Intelligence.  Then, the team turns to a different way of training LLMs without forcing human language, which they found to be much more efficient, and potentially may unlock new chain of reasoning operations.  Andy’s “autocomplete for stuff” description of AI is amazing.  Next, is an intriguing AI model being developed to better understand dolphin communications.  The chain of thought from this article leads to the camera only recently recovered from Loch Ness, Star Trek, Star Wars and of course, Douglas Adam’s fictional treatment of dolphins.  After discussing open source AI robots and the challenges / benefits posed by AI geolocation sophistication, the team turns to OpenAI’s work on a social media platform.  

After an article on Game Transfer Phenomenon, which describes how games and gameplay leak into the real world, the co-hosts wrap up with a PICO-8 demake of Warcraft III and a hearty endorsement of the Mythic Quest tv show.  Both Michael R and Andy have watched the entirety of Mythic Quest, and Michael M has put it on the list to watch.

What do you expect the dolphins have to say to each other, and to humankind?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Bloomberg article: Apple to Analyze User Data on Devices to Bolster AI Technology

Apple’s Machine Learning Research Blog post: Understanding Aggregate Trends for Apple Intelligence Using Differential Privacy

Quanta Magazine article: To Make Language Models Work Better, Researchers Sidestep Language

ZD Net article: Google is talking to dolphins using Pixel phones and AI – and the video is delightful

BBC article: Camera set up to catch Loch Ness Monster discovered

Games At Work e495: Personal Planetarium for use of AI in translating animal communications

The Hitchhiker’s Wiki entry: Dolphins

The Hitchhiker’s Wiki entry: Mice

IMdB: Star Trek: Lower Decks (dolphin navigators)

Wookipedia entry: Purrgil (space whales)

Wired article: An Open Source Pioneer Wants to Unleash Open Source AI Robots

Huggingface: closed-vs-open-arena-elo

ChatGPT's o3 model can pinpoint a location from a photo, and give a pretty good deduction as to the point the photo was taken from. It's no Rainbolt, but any photos taken at or near your home, even with stripped metadata, are no longer safe
https://flausch.social/@piegames/114352447253793517

Reuters article: OpenAI is working on X-like social media network, the Verge reports

BBC article: Health bars and power ups: The ‘freaky and unpleasant’ world when video games leak into the physical realm

Taylor and Francis Online article: Prevalence and Characteristics of Game Transfer Phenomena: A Descriptive Survey Study

lexaloffle.com blog post: Picocraft – demake of Warcraft III

itch.io Top Rated Games tagged Demake and PICO-8

Wikipedia article: PICO-8

The Verge article: Apple’s Mythic Quest has come to an end

IMdB: Mythic Quest

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Published 14 April 2025

e509 with Michael and Michael – stories and discussion all around AI, LLMs, llamas, generated Quake, grokking, generalization and much more.

Michael and Michael get things rolling while Andy is away with a series of AI stories, beginning with Siri, continuing on to the latest iteration of Meta’s Llama 4 models, Scout and Maverick.  Following on the llama theme, Michael R is reminded of the intro credits from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  After reflecting on an AI generated version of Quake, Michael and Michael turn to an article from the MIT Technology Review, which explores how models would all of a sudden be able to complete a task without a clear explanation as to why.  This made Michael M think about a Ted Talk describing how some polyglots acquire languages – check out Lýdia Machová’s talk below for more.

The team touches on the latest app from IconFactory called Tapestry.  Tapestry allows users to follow people across a multiplicity of social services, and eliminate duplicate posts.  Then, they consider the AR capabilities of the Zeiss Holographic Transparent Display technology.  Last up, is the Busy Bar, a device to help others know that you are not in an interruptible state.  Check out the bonus links below to find the Rube Goldberg marbles-powered device that influenced the name of the episode.

What information would you most like to see in your airplane window?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

9 to 5 Mac article: Craig Federighi’s leadership has already resulted in this major Siri pivot, per report

Visual Studio IDE: AI-assisted development in Visual Studio

The Verge article: Meta got caught gaming AI benchmarks

Intro Credits from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

The Verge article: Microsoft has created an AI-generated version of Quake

Wikipedia article: Quake

MIT Technology Review article: Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

arXiv paper: DEEP DOUBLE DESCENT: WHERE BIGGER MODELS AND MORE DATA HURT

arXiV paper: UNDERSTANDING DEEP LEARNING REQUIRES RE-THINKING GENERALIZATION

Boy Genius Report article: This is the difference between how humans and AI ‘think’

OpenReview: Evaluating the Robustness of Analogical Reasoning in Large Language Models

:tapestry_app: Tapestry 1.1 brings a host of great new features: Follow individual accounts & lists on Bluesky & Mastodon, automatically remove duplicates from the timeline with Crosstalk, and quickly switch your timelines with Tapestry’s redesigned navigation.

Learn more about these features plus dozens of other improvements in today's FREE update of Tapestry – Your personal timeline app.

https://blog.iconfactory.com/2025/04/tapestry-whats-new-no-deja-vu/

#TapestryApp #Fediverse #OpenWeb

Iconfactory blog post: Tapestry: What’s New? No Déjà Vu!

Popular Science article: Smart glass windows would beam in-flight info over scenic views

Busy Bar

The Verge article: Samsung is finally releasing Ballie

The Verge article: You can build these marble runs and connect them to your smart home over Wi-Fi

Wikipedia article: Rube Goldberg

The Verge article: 22 years later, modders are keeping SimCity 4 alive

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Published 7 April 2025

e508 with Michael, Andy and Michael – stories and discussion on AI Conversational Swarm Intelligence, the Pokétax game and numerous Nintendo stories and much more.

Michael, Andy and Michael get things started with a story about how large groups, well beyond the research ideal of 4-7 people, may have a simultaneous conversation with one another, sharing and evolving ideas.  Drawing inspiration from how schools of fish communicate with one another, a Carnegie Mellon and unanimous.ai paper illustrates the architecture behind Conversational Swarm Intelligence.  AI agents track groups of 7 humans for novel ideas and pass along those ideas to other groups of humans in order to more quickly propagate the evolution of ideas through an accelerated wisdom of the crowd manner. 

Then, the co-hosts turn their attention to the experiences of the Wikimedia Foundation.  They note that there have been huge spikes in bandwidth for serving up multimedia files – not from humans seeking information, rather from scraper bots.  

After an AR segue to look at a slingshot mechanism to change lighting colors (check out the video in the show notes), the team switches (see what we did there?) to all things Nintendo.  A story somehow escaped the Games at Work team back in 2012, when the Louvre museum replaced their audio guides with Nintendo 3DS consoles.  Well, that story is coming to an end, and those 3DS systems will be replaced by something new.  Continuing on the Nintendo theme, the accounting firm Open Ledger has created a game called Pokétax to make filing your taxes fun and exciting with a Pokémon experience.  Then, Andy, Michael and Michael talk about the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2.  Last, the team reminisces about playing Tetris on the Nintendo Game Boy, in discussing an article about how Tetris is a hack for people to get better at their jobs.

Wrapping things up for this episode, the team continues the Nintendo theme a little more with 3d printed musical fidget toys that play classic Mario (and other) video game tunes.  Check out that video below for an example.

Would you like to play a tax game?  Or maybe a round of Tetris to improve your problem solving?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

VentureBeat article: I asked an AI swarm to fill out a March Madness bracket — here’s what happened

ARXiV paper: Large-scale Group Brainstorming using Conversational Swarm Intelligence (CSI) versus Traditional Chat

Unanimous.ai 

Thinkscape.ai

The Register article: Wikipedia’s overlords bemoan AI bot bandwidth burden

Rachel Lee Nabors – https://toot.cafe/@rachelnabors 

https://techhub.social/@ellenich/114279691712148125

The Verge article: The Mona Lisa is saying goodbye to the Nintendo 3DS.

Games at Work e54: She Blinded Me, With Science!

Retrododo article: Accounting Firm Releases ‘Pokétax’ Game To Make Filing Your Tax Fun

The Pokétax Challenge

Open Ledger

Ars Technica article: Nintendo unveils Switch 2 ahead of June 5 launch

Nintendo Switch 2 – How to buy 

Business Insider article: The Weird New Work Hack

Hackaday article: 3D Print (and Play!) the Super Mario Tune as a Fidget Toy

Your eyes are not deceiving you… I got an Apple TV 1st Gen, the only x86 based model (it uses a Pentium M as its CPU) booting Windows XP Service Pack 3! For reals!

This was possible through a small security flaw in the Apple TV's firmware and boot process… while the Apple TV looks for a boot.efi file on its boot partition and has it load a Mach-O binary to be able to boot, it doesn't actually care about the actual contents of the file! So by that note, you can wrap a kernel or bootloader from another OS into a Mach-O file and name it mach_kernel, and the Apple TV won't care and will happily boot it! So after this little escapade of cursed computing, you know Linux is next! 😁

More deets are in this video, along with a link to grab a premade disk image from the Internet Archive!
https://youtu.be/v2w5MmiRHUo

The entire project was done by distrohopper39b, who chronicles his work on the project from beginning to end here:

https://youtu.be/YkjrEXtZoWM

#HackThePlanet #CursedComputing

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Published 31 March 2025

e507 with Michael, Andy and Michael – stories and discussion on AIs training humans, non-serindipious searching, doomed VR gaming, playlist portability and much more.

Michael, Andy and Michael get things started with a couple of AI articles dealing with how AI is training humans, and AI search results are impacting serendipity.  Michael R points out that search engines used to bring people to you – and now, search engines are summarizing to the point where there’s not a need to bring users to the content.  

After touching on a few of the Indy games from GDC2025, the cohosts talk about the latest article declaring that VR gaming is doomed.  And not Doom – doomed.  There are plenty of examples to the contrary, such as Civilization 7.

The team discusses the new LEGO Lord of the Rings set for Bilbo Baggins birthday party.  It should be noted that there will be a designer signing event at the London flagship LEGO store at Leicester Square, next Saturday, 5 April for anyone who happens to be in town.

For the last main topic of this episode, the co-hosts unpack some stories on music sharing and playlist portability.  First up is Napster, and the news that it will enable concerts in the metaverse.  Andy noted that in 506 episodes, we have not ever brought up Napster (or at least tagged or put in the show notes).   Last, the team discusses a couple of methods for moving your playlist from one streaming service to another.

Is your search history an accurate representation of you?  Would you go to a concert in Napster?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

The New Yorker article: Your A.I. Lover Will Change You

IMDb: Her

Wikipedia article: Replicas

https://replika.com

Paul Stamatiou blog: Browse No More

Ask Jeeves

The Verge article: 7 cool indie games from GDC 2025

IMDb: Everything Everywhere All at Once

The Verge article: MainFrames is a charming platformer that takes place inside computers

Retrododo article: Prince Of Prussia Is A Free To Play Tribute To Wolfenstein & Jordan Mechner’s Prince Of Persia

PC World article: Game developers are losing faith in VR as a gaming market

Joseph Simpson, VisionPro blogger on Mastodon

Civilization VII VR coming in Spring 2025 announcement

Slashfilm article: New Lord Of The Rings LEGO Set Builds A Brick Version Of The Shire (And The Dragon Firework)

Brickfanatics article: LEGO Icons The Shire designer signing event re-confirmed

Ars Technica article: Napster to become a music-marketing metaverse firm after being sold for $207M

Wikipedia article: Napster

Obdura’s Playlisty

Games at Work e357: Real Reality, or Something for music portability

Last.FM Track My Music by scrobbling 

Fireside Fedi e7: Andy Piper – Mastodon (audio version)

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Published 23 March 2025

e506 with Andy and Michael M – stories and discussion on the attention economy, focus, pirated data used in training LLMs, snarky software and much more.

Andy and Michael M get things rolling with an intriguing article dealing with focus and attention.  Part of their reaction was that there are so many competing sources for attention.  And that the pressure to respond with speed to these competing sources compounds the challenge.  The conversation reminded Michael of a memo that Steve Jobs wrote to his team at NeXT 39 years ago imploring them to have time of uninterrupted individual work.  Check that out in the show notes below.  Michael and Andy give a couple examples of what they suggest to bring balance and creativity back to the fore.

Continuing on to the advances made with large language models, Andy and Michael take up the discussion on the data needed to train the LLMs.  The Atlantic article on the use of pirated books to train AI also includes LibGen, their search tool The Atlantic created for their analysis of the Library Genesis data set.  This subject has cropped up in earlier episodes – such as the discussion on the Sarah Silverman example.  Next, the team turns to an AI coding assistant named Cursor.  After a developer had spent an hour of vibe coding with Cursor, the AI reportedly gave feedback to the developer that he should complete the work himself to ensure he understands the logic and can maintain the code.  Computer applications with snark are nothing new – take Carrot Weather or the Talking Moose for example.  Cursor’s reply echos practically every geometry teacher who insists that going through the mathematical proof is crucial to understanding why A^2 + B^2 = C^2 is true.  Not necessarily a bad idea, yet surprisingly comes from an AI assistant.  

After a surprising article about speed runner successes on aging and accelerating Super Nintendo hardware, Andy and Michael reflect on games embedded inside of other games from a How to Geek article.  This appeals greatly to Andy’s love of game preservation, and strikes Michael’s fancy for how art echos through the years, sharing a prior incarnation of this topic with paintings having paintings in them.

Then, a story about the LEGO x Pokémon teaser.  The team wraps up this episode with a couple of stories about the challenges indy software developers face.

What suggestions and techniques do you have for recapturing your time and attention?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Wikipedia article: Daylight Savings Time

ploum.net blog post: A Society That Lost Focus

Games at Work e67: Free Bitcoins! for the attention economy

Wikipedia article: Battle Chess

Edward Tufte

The Atlantic article: The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem

The Atlantic article: Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Games at Work e443: In the Stone for the Sarah Silverman discussion

Wired article: An AI Coding Assistant Refused to Write Code—and Suggested the User Learn to Do It Himself

Cursor

404 Media article: Super Nintendo Hardware Is Running Faster as It Ages

How to Geek article: These 15 Games Have Other Games Hidden Inside Them

Daily Art Magazine article: Paintings Within Paintings: Time to Go Meta in the Art World

The Verge article: This watch has Pong and Missile Command instead of apps

Ars Technica article: Sobering revenue stats of 70K mobile apps show why devs beg for subscriptions

Gamesradar article: “Valve knows it, I know it, and you need to know it”: Steam expert tells indie devs to “give away” demos, because actually playing a game beats all other marketing

Oh hello, what do we have here? 👀

#pokemon #lego #leak
https://retrododo.com/pokemon-lego-set-reportedly-leaked-by-lego-mexico/

Retrododo article: Pokémon LEGO Set Reportedly Leaked By LEGO Mexico

Lego Germany Pokémon 

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine