e440 — Elendil or Edronax? – Games At Work dot Biz

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.

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