e443 — In the Stone

stone chimney, Pisgah National Forest, NC
Photo by Michael Martine, Pisgah National Forest, NC October 2018

Published 4 December 2023

Back at full co-host strength, Andy, Michael and Michael get together to have a fantastic discussion on AI, 3D printing, retro gaming and emulation solutions.

With the regulations, philosophy and laws dealing with AI evolving so rapidly, it’s a good thing that there is a podcast with real human cohosts to deal with it all.  The first article deals with generated sports articles from Sports Illustrated purported to have been written by real humans.   Next up is a detailed post from Cory Doctorow with many detailed links to other posts & articles dealing with the conflict between “Effective Altruism” and “Effective Accelerationism”.  Then, the cohosts discuss the ramifications of a ruling in the Sarah Silverman case.  A reminder: Andy, Michael and Michael are not attorneys, barristers, judges, solicitors or other members of the legal profession.  Shifting to LLMs, the team take on a couple of articles dealing with ScienceGPT and the attention organizations like Hugging Face have received in the wake of the Sam Altman situation from the past week and a half.

Next up, two Hackaday articles are stacked up against one another – the first dealing with the deconstruction of the first 3D printed house in Iowa.  The concept of 3D printing houses is not new to the podcast. It was something that was discussed in 2014 in e81!  Even more fun was the juxtaposition of another Hackaday article.  This one dealt with an autonomous vehicle that uses computer vision to assemble stone walls.  This reminds Andy of the stone walls across the UK and Michael M of the stone walls in Chapel Hill (slightly more recent than those in the UK!).

The team winds up with a few stories about retro games with DOS_deck, Whisky and Wine.

What retro game would you most like to play?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (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.

Selected Article Links

AI

Futurism article: Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers

Games at Work e426: Barbenheimer Chic

Pluralistic post from Cory Doctorow: The real AI fight (27 Nov 2023)

NiemanLab article: The legal framework for AI is being built in real time, and a ruling in the Sarah Silverman case should give publishers pause

Games at Work e424: What’s AI got to do with it?

TechRadar article: The GPT to rule them all: Training for one trillion parameter model backed by Intel and US government has just begun

CNBC article: OpenAI rival Hugging Face says it’s seeing more client interest after Sam Altman fiasco

Large Stone Model Demolition & Construction

Hackaday article: Iowa Demolishes Its First 3D Printed House

Games at Work e81: One Step Beyond

Hackaday article: Autonomous Excavator Builds Stone Wall Algorithmically

These Old Stone Walls by Phillips Russell

Retro Gaming

Terence Eden’s Blog post: What would happen if computers never got any faster?

Ars Technica article: DOS_deck offers free, all-timer DOS games in a browser, with controller support

DOS_deck

Whisky

Wine

And Cheese

Wallace and Gromit

e442 – Giving Thanks (with tech)

Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash

Published 27th November 2023

Andy flies the airship solo, whilst the Michaels enjoy a Thanksgiving weekend with their families. It’s a short and deep (in places) episode featuring AI and gaming.

Starting off with the rapid burst of drama surrounding Sam Altman’s brief ousting at OpenAI. Andy talks about what it might mean for the future of that organisation, and the AI industry’s push to move faster with less oversight. Are the safety levers disabled?

Switching over into games, Andy covers the recent 25th anniversary of Half-Life, and how Valve really leaned in to celebrating this landmark game. There’s a brief discussion of other ways to do retro gaming on the Mac or on Steam Deck. Andy has also been exploring the new Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR game on the Quest 2, and provides a short review of the experience.

In the media and gaming hardware side of things, there’s a look at the very expensive new Kodak Super 8 film camera, followed by a brief chat about spatial or 3D video capture on the Quest 3.

For your delight and fun, the show wraps up with Brickception – can you win two games of Breakout simultaneously? Give it a try!

What are you thankful for? What have you been playing lately? Have your GPT contact our GPT via the Fediverse @gamesatwork_biz@botsin.space, or leave a comment here on the blog. See you next time!

Selected article links

OpenAI drama

OpenAI Kill Switch https://www.ft.com/content/8279eb63-395a-4ff2-99c3-250409e03941

The Jeff Jarvis take https://buzzmachine.com/2023/11/19/artificial-general-bullshit/

Gaming

How to do game preservation right (Half-Life at 25) https://mastodon.macstories.net/@viticci/111428877243213598

Retrogaming on the Mac https://www.cultofmac.com/837333/emulate-old-video-games-computers-on-mac/

… and on Steam Deck https://linuxmatters.sh/12/

Assassin’s Creed VR, VR https://www.wired.co.uk/article/assassins-creed-nexus-vr-virtual-reality-review

Changing the channels

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/21/23971398/flipboard-x-twitter-mastodon-quitting

Hardware stuff

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/22/23972513/kodak-super-8-film-camera-lcd-screen-price-release-date-specs-features

https://hackaday.com/2023/11/24/quest-3-vr-headset-can-capture-3d-video-some-tampering-required/

A Fun Thing!

https://brickception.xyz/

e441 — Snake in a Tube

A series of tubes.
Photo by Moritz Mentges on Unsplash

Published 20 November 2023

Michael and Michael get together to talk tech while Andy is away.  They have an amazing episode, with many twists & turns.  The first turn begins with the traffic laws of the UK related to roundabouts, shared by friend of the podcast, Ian Hughes.  

Next, is the first of a series of stories with legs – a snake in a tube controlling legs.  While there was a serious temptation to bring up the movie Snakes on a Plane, or the ZZ Top song Legs, there’s another ZZ Top song that fits the bill.  Check out the 2018 Rolls Royce post about a snake robot that would deploy smaller robots into engines for diagnostics from e204 in the show notes below.  An article by The Verge touches on Microsoft Team’s use of Mesh for 3D meetings, which, much like earlier iterations of Meta’s VR environment uses legless avatars.  The Swedish startup Minesto gets a look for it’s tidal power generation underwater kites.

Michael and Michael then take a couple of minutes to talk about the Humane AI Pin in a little more detail.  Continuing the conversation from last week’s episode, Michael M expresses his interest in the new human to computer interface that the AI Pin presents.  The idea of having both hands free when working with the AI is very intriguing, as is the concept of not having apps – just having an AI.  The show notes below contain a smattering of the press that the announcement video has generated in the past few days.  There’s also a YouTube of the product announcement video.

After the AI Pin, the co-hosts turn their attention to games, starting with the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, available for free for those with an Amazon Prime membership.  The description of Downpour games to allow people to more easily compose & assemble their own games reminded Michael M of the Twine choose your own adventure game he wrote some years ago about being a podcast host.  

Wrapping up this week’s episode is the second Swedish company Einride with their robotic trucks, and the 2023 LEGO advent calendars.

Will you get an AI Pin and ask it to write you a game?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (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.

Selected Article Links

The Highway Code – Roundabouts (UK)

She’s Got Legs!

Rolls Royce SWARM robots (2018 post)

Games at Work e204: Hot to Trot Bots

The Verge article: Microsoft Teams is about to go 3D with VR meetings

Hackaday article: Underwater Kites Buoying the Prospect of More Tidal Power Generation

Minesto

AI Pin’s got legs

Hu.ma.ne

Cult of Mac article: Even more reasons Humane’s Ai Pin is a total bust

Boy Genius Report article: Humane officially unveils the Ai Pin, a device that aspires to replace your smartphone

The Verge article: Humane’s AI Pin: all the news about the new AI-powered wearable

Ars Technica article: The Humane AI Pin is a bizarre cross between Google Glass and a pager

Six Colors post: I’ll pin my hopes on AI assistants

Leggy Games

Tom’s Guide article: The best Star Wars game ever made is free for Black Friday — here’s how to claim

Downpour.games

Games at Work Podcast Game

Games at Work e35: Pirates of Pizzaz

LEG-O

The Verge article: Einride’s drone truck has its first full-time job moving GE appliances around

LEGO Advent Calendars

e440 — Elendil or Edronax?

Bag End, Hobbiton
Photo by Thandy Yung on Unsplash

Published 13 November 2023

Michael and Michael get together to talk tech and cover an ocean of topics, including denial of service with Flipper Zero and the similarly named 1960s TV show, plethoras of popups, roundabouts, automotive data privacy, fun games, a 1m tall 3D printer and much more.

The co-hosts dive in for this episode with a denial of service story using the Flipper Zero.  This sparks a conversation about the 1960s TV show about a dolphin named Flipper, and thankfully, Michael M refrains from singing the theme song.  If you want to hear the song, a YouTube video is helpfully included in the show notes below.

After overing a couple of Apple stories about the upcoming spatial video capture capabilities of iOS 17.2 and the multitude (plethora?) of security popups in MacOS, Michael and Michael take an automotive turn.  Briefly signaling their interest in the Waze feature that highlights where accidents have occurred in the past, they turn their attention to roundabouts.  Then, the co-hosts open a conversation about garage doors.  The Chamberlain Group, the parent company that owns the MyQ smart garage door controller, has discontinued Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit integration and announced it will shut off unauthorized access to its APIs.  An interesting discussion continues on users accessing their own private data in their own home without the need for additional subscriptions.  This continues with a decision in Washington state where a judge dismissed a class action claim that automakers have inappropriately collected driver data, including text messages.  Andy and Michael R had a related conversation on the Mozilla Foundation’s findings for automotive privacy in September.  Links are included below.  

Switching to the last topics for this episode, Michael and Michael enjoy the Antidepressant or Tolkien character game, though neither had perfect scores.  Michael R shares his thoughts on the new RoboCop game, and Michael M gives a shout out to Risk of Rain.  The pair, missing Andy for this week, wrap up with a big 3D printer kickstarter that is over 1m tall.

Do you use your turn signal in a roundabout?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (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.

Selected Article Links

Flipper

The Verge article: This little tool can crash an iPhone running iOS 17

Games at Work e368 – Chaos Agent Without Pants (Flipper Zero discussion)

Flipper Zero

Flipper on IMDB

Apple

The Verge article: The iPhone 15 Pro is getting spatial video capture in iOS 17.2

Six Colors article: A picture is worth a thousand permissions requests

Automotive

Ars Technica article: Waze will now warn drivers about crash dangers using historical data

North Carolina Department of Transportation: Roundabouts

The Verge article: This smart garage door controller is no longer very smart

The Verge article: Your car can keep collecting your data after a judge dismissed a privacy lawsuit

Games at Work e432 – Monitoring Pirated Cars

Mozilla Privacy Not Included article: It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy

Games

Antidepressants or Tolkien

Kotaku article: RoboCop: Rogue City: The Kotaku Review

Risk of Rain

3D printing

CNet article: Elegoo Has Launched a Glorious 3D Printer That’s 1 Meter Tall

Kickstarter: ELEGOO OrangeStorm Giga: Gigantic Volume Fast FDM 3D Printer