Published 7 September 2026
e567 with Michael M and Andy – Stories and discussion on Xteink reader mods, PONG, mathematical innovations for dice, walled garden vs open vibe coding, World Models, AI productivity and a whole lot more!
While Michael R is away, Andy and Michael M start off this episode with a follow on story to last week’s note on the Xteink reader – this time, a Pokémon game. And it seems that the folks over at the Atlantic have also picked up on this device – after recording the show, an article highlighting the virtues of the Xteink X3 was published on Sunday September 6th.
Next up, the pair boot up the virtual black & white TV to talk about the video game PONG from Atari. But this is a newer version, available on Steam where PONG is a roguelike dungeon crawler with opportunities to unlock secrets, enjoy up to 4 players in multiplayer mode, and buy outfits for your intrepid paddle. Don’t know about PONG? Have a look at the YouTube video in the show notes below for an example of the gameplay from this 1972 game.
Ever been frustrated when rolling dice to see who goes first in a game, and time after time, multiple players each roll a 5 on a six sided die? Well, fret no more, as there is now a set of 60 sided dice that when rolled together will mathematically ensure that only one of them is the winner!
Andy and Michael then turn to AI – and a discussion on the vibe coding possibilities of Pocket’s “gizmos” within the Meta ecosystem. Creating and sharing these gizmos can be done by anyone in the Meta ecosystem, but not outside. Next up is the recent announcement by Runway – the Solaris Interface World Model – which takes the gizmo concept to an interactive visual experience, where the interface is visual. This reminded Michael of the NVIDIA Omniverse world digital twin idea. For more on the topic, have a look at the Not Boring essay linked in the notes below. After a discussion on AI driven productivity, the team takes a look at the wasteful bulldozer crawler approach for querying the Linux kernel, which is anything but productive for the CPUs serving up the git commits.
Wrapping up the episode, the team looks at the 2026 Tiny Awards – and you can vote for your favorite!
How would you envision using the Interface World Model? 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
Games
Github: Xteink Pokémon Game
The Atlantic article: This Tiny E-Reader Is the Single Best Piece of Technology in Years
Games at Work e566: Making Fetch Happen (for eeink custom firmware for Xteink ESP32 series)
Atari’s PONG Quest on the Steam Store
Wikipedia article: Pong
NewScientist article: Dice discovered that solve decade-long mathematical problem
Fast Company article: These 60-sided dice never have to be rolled twice
AI
Ars Technica article: Pocket’s AI made my game ideas real. Now Meta controls the results.
Games at Work e316: Omni Metaverse (for NVIDIA’s Omniverse discussion)
Not Boring by Packy McCormick essay: World Models: Computing the Uncomputable
American businesses spent well over a TRILLION DOLLARS on AI in the past year, but business productivity went DOWN. Here's why: https://www.computerworld.com/article/4215022/why-ai-doesnt-make-companies-more-productive.html
Computerworld article: Why AI doesn’t make companies more productive
people.kernel.org post: Creepy crawlies
Award Season
Vote for the 2026 Tiny Awards Winner
Neal.fun’s Cursor Camp
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:29 — 12.1MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Podcast Index | Youtube Music | RSS | About this podcast
[…] « e566 — Making Fetch Happen […]