e534 — Hiding in Plain Sight

facade of the Musée du Louvre
Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

Published 24 November 2025

e534 with Michael, Andy and Michael – AI and ML training data, camouflage, ppen source Zork, Deadpool VR, NPH movies and a whole lot more.

Michael, Andy and Michael start things off with with an intriguing AI analysis of the heist from the Louvre.  The Ars Technica article takes the examples of mathematical machine learning and human psychology to show how both were defeated what was considered to be ordinary versus suspicious.  This is a terrific reminder on the importance of the training data sets used for AI models and how the “performance of normality became the perfect camouflage”.  Michael R highlights the On Intelligence book, and Michael M brings up visual pattern recognition of the human form which ghillie suits help disguise.

Switching to a hackster.io article, the die is cast – or rather the die is 3d printed.  Andy shares his thoughts on this bluetooth enabled die, and mentions how dice have featured prominently in the the podcast over the years.  E132 from 2016 appears to be the earliest reference to dice in the show notes.

Next up is Microsoft’s announcement to open source the Zork family of text based adventure games from Infocom.  Zork is another favorite of the podcast, and e78 from 2014 is the earliest reference!  Then the team discusses the Deadpool VR game.  The Kotaku article mentions that  Neil Patrick Harris does the Deadpool voice acting in the game.  This leads the cohosts down the rabbit hole of NPH acting with a number of movies and TV shows.

Oh, and the reason for the “I don’t want a McRib” part of the show title was because the Kotaku article kept serving up McDonalds McRib ads to Michael M, while Michael R with his PiHole does not get such ads.

What is your favorite NPH movie or tv show?  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 Links

AI

Ars Technica article: How Louvre thieves exploited human psychology to avoid suspicion—and what it reveals about AI

Wikipedia article: On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines by Jeff Hawkins

IMDb: Now You See Me: Now You Don’t 2025 movie

Wikipedia article: Ghillie Suit

Bluetooth Dice

hackter.io article: Travis Bumgarner’s Dice of Sending Are Bluetooth-Connected Dice for Fairer Digital Roleplays

Games at Work e132: Wake Up! (For earliest description of dice)

Games and NPH

The Verge article: Microsoft makes Zork open-source

Games at Work e78: The Show is Already in Progress (for earliest reference to Zork)

Kotaku article: Deadpool VR Is A Game For Deadpool Fans And Nobody Else

marvel.Fandom.com : Wade Wilson (Earth-616)

IMDb: A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas

IMDb: Starship Troopers

IMDb: Doogie Howser, M.D.

IMDb: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

e533 — Rings of Power

Powerful rings on asphalt each seeming to emit columns of light
Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash

Published 17 November 2025

e533 with Andy, Michael and Michael – rings to chart the heavens and control your home, repurposing smart TVs, retro La Machine and Vectrex hardware made newly available, new Valve Steam hardware and a whole lot more.

Andy, Michael and Michael start things off with a 400 year old ring that unfolds into an astronomy tool.  Check out this amazing technology in the show notes below.  If you want to have such a ring of your own, the design team from Black Adept have them available for sale!  Sticking with the theme, the next powerful ring follows the Tron Master Control Disk concept.  This interesting design expression reminded Michael M of the Mini circular dashboard display.

Next up is a great way to repurpose an old TV.  The team explores an article with instructions for making a smart mirror using two way glass and a Raspberry Pi.  You may want to ensure that the TV has the automatic content recognition features turned off.  Andy remarks on the continuing evolution over the years of the Magic Mirror software that enables this to work.  After talking about the bright idea of using the circuity of a smart lightbulb to serve as a Minecraft server, the cohosts look La Machine.

Then the team takes a look at the recent announcements from Valve.  New Steam hardware has captured their imagination.  The Steam Machine, Steam Frame and a new Steam controller provides great excitement for the platform.  Wrapping up the episode, Michael R takes a look at the World of Warcraft new in game currency used for building houses.  The blog post announcing this from Blizzard has 2,817 replies when these show notes were written!  

What legacy hardware would you most like to have again?  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 Links

Maker

A 400-Year-Old Ring that Unfolds to Track the Movements of the Heavens
openculture.com/2025/11/a-400-

— Ronan (@ronanmcd) 2025-11-06T12:16:00.036Z

Open Culture article: A 400-Year-Old Ring that Unfolds to Track the Movements of the Heavens

hackster.io article: Welcome to the Grid

IMDb post: Tron movies and tv shows

Mini car circular dashboard display
Photo by Nicole Logan on Unsplash

Boy Genius Report article: You Can Use Your Old TV As A Smart Mirror – Here’s How

Raspberry Pi

Magic Mirror^2 documentation

Games at Work e479: Listen Up Outlaws! for smart tv automatic content recognition

Tom’s Hardware article: Hardware hacker installs Minecraft server on a cheap smart lightbulb — single 192 MHz RISC-V core with 276KB of RAM, enough to run tiny 90K byte world

La Machine

Gaming Hardware (and Software)

Games Industry article: Valve announces 3 new Steam hardware devices: Steam Machine, VR headset Steam Frame, and a new Steam controller

PC Gamer article: Valve announces the Steam Frame: ‘a new way to play your entire Steam library’

Eurogamer article: How did Valve design its new Steam Machine? It started with the fan, of course

Kickstarter: Vectrex Mini

The Verge article: World of Warcraft is getting a new kind of fake money

Blizzard blog post: Developer Insight: Hearthsteel Virtual Currency and Housing in Midnight

e532 — Spooky Scary Tech Skeletons

Spooky skeletons sitting on a mantle that see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil
Photo by Chris Charles on Unsplash

Published 3 November 2025

e532 with Michael and Michael – Halloween Spooktacular edition with AI whale communications & implications, robotic vacuums that phone home, ad supported TVs and a whole lot more.

For the Halloween spooktacular edition of Games at Work, Michael and Michael start things off with an article about AI decoding whale’s communications, and the potential for the recognition of whales’ rights.  There have been multiple discussions about the promise of understanding non-human communications over the years on Games at Work, and a couple of these are included in the show notes links below.

Next up is a series of articles the benefits and challenges of internet of things powered hardware, and the challenges they present.  First, a discussion on the remote software feature removal, in the case of the Futurism article, when the owner blocked the transmissions from his IoT vacuum, that the software running the bot was changed to make it stop working.  Then, there is a story about free TV hardware that requires an ELUA to run a second screen of advertising.  After considering this free, ad supported TV, the co-hosts muse what other hardware might be made available at no cost, and with an advertising stream.  Changes to streaming television to insert more advertising has become more common.  Michael and Michael explore the idea of an IoT refrigerator with a screen might become an ad supported platform, and that to access certain functionality, the screen may require the user to watch an advertising video.  After the cloud outage from last week, there have been articles that discuss how the hardware behaves without the constant internet connection.  An example of this is the malfunctions from an internet connected bed.

Sticking with the robot and advertising theme, Michael R highlights Sandwich’s immersive commercial making use of the new Blackmagic camera to capture an immersive video for Robot.com.  After touching on Apple’s Family Sharing and CarPlay capabilities and Windows 11 immersive ultra wide mode, Michael M wraps up the show with a quick point on The Simulation Hypothesis book and the LEGO Arcade Machine that opens up to have a minifig’s gamer room inside the cabinet.

What ad supported free hardware would you accept?  What data streams would you not allow your IoT devices to hear / see / say?  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 Links

AI

Inside Climate News article: AI Is Decoding Whales’ Communications. Could That Be a Turning Point in the Push for Their Rights?

Games at Work e466: AI’s Perfect Vacation from May 2024 for machine learning decoding the sperm whale alphabet

Games at Work e495: Personal Planetarium from December 2024 for talking with animals via AI, Sandwich Vision

Technology

Futurism article: Man Alarmed to Discover His Smart Vacuum Was Broadcasting a Secret Map of His House

Games at Work e235: Bots on Batuu from June 2019 for discussion on vacuum bots

Games at Work e260: 1984 Tesla for Sale from February 2020 for discussion on remote software feature removal

Creative Bloq article: You can now get a TV for free… and I’m worried this is the future of tech

Ars Technica article: Samsung makes ads on $3,499 smart fridges official with upcoming software update

Ars Technica article: AWS outage reminds us why $2,449 Internet-dependent beds are a bad idea

More Technology

Six Colors article: Hello, Robot: Sandwich launches “immersive commercial”

9 to 5 Mac article: Mother describes the dark side of Apple’s Family Sharing when a relationship ends

Daring Fireball article:  CarPlay Seems Essential for Rental Fleets

The Verge article: Windows 11’s Vision Pro-like remote desktop is now widely available on Quest 3

Two More Things

The Simulation Hypothesis 2nd Edition by Rizwan Virk

LEGO Arcade Machine 40805

Two Bonus Game Things

The Register article: This is Doom, running headless, on Ubuntu Arm… on a satellite

Engadget article: Board is a $500 board game console with 12 original titles

e531 – Games and Such

A cyber wizard holding a clock
Epredator created AI Generated image

Michael R and Ian “Epredator” Hughes get together for a chat about , , and . We talk about some of our favorite comfort games, how they are procedurally generated, and how the gaming business model has bifurcated between ongoing money grabs and lovingly created indie games.

Show Links

Games:

Battlemarked

No Man’s Sky

Return to the Mines of Moria

AI: