e448 — Bricks (Falling and Cars)

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building facade reminiscent of Tetris bricks
Photo by Luca Nicoletti on Unsplash

Published 8 January 2024

Michael, Andy and Michael are back together to record the first episode of 2024 – and have a fantastic show on keyboard keys, a VR trackball for your feet, bricks in the form of a bricked car, the game of Tetris, the LEGO version of a Polaroid camera and a whole lot more.

This episode starts with the new Copilot keyboard key for Windows computers, which on the surface (not the Surface) sounds like a small change, but one with significant ripple effects through the computer supply chain.  Check out the show notes below for a humorous Mastodon take on this, as well as Andy’s custom escape key.  

Switching from keyboard input mechanisms to trackballs, the cohosts check out an innovation from Sony designed to provide VR navigation in small physical spaces.  This reminded the team of the Virtuix Omni One which provides the ability to walk and run in a 4 foot diameter space.

Changing gears to the automotive world, the cohosts discuss the potential for cars to become incapacitated due to software update problems, as one redditor shared.  With over the air (OTA) updates applied away from home, there is a possibility that an update causes problems operating the vehicle.  Also in the automotive space, there is a story about a Toyota engineer that designed a fake manual transmission for electric vehicles to add the experience of rowing through the gears back into driving.

A listener link focuses on the story of an Oklahoma teenager who beat the NES edition of Tetris.  This is an incredible feat that required amazing control.  Have a listen to the soothing 8bit tones of the game music from the link in the shownotes below.

The team wraps up the episode with a couple of follow on notes from the last episode – a Star Wars role playing game, and the probable Games at Work bump for Dave the Diver selling over 3 million copies worldwide.  Michael M learned that it was available for the Switch and bought a copy, so there’s at least a +1 for the Games at Work impact right there.

Have you bought a copy of Dave the Diver?  Would you drive a “manual transmission” EV?  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

The Verge article: Microsoft Copilot is now available as a ChatGPT-like app on Android

Ars Technica article: Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994

BREAKING: We obtained an exclusive photograph of the new AI assistant key on Windows keyboards

( ref: blogs.windows.com/windowsexper )

— lcamtuf :verified: :verified: :verified: (@lcamtuf) 2024-01-05T02:52:02.005Z

Andy’s keyboard with a special escape key design
Photo by Andy Piper, Jan 2024

VR

Tom’s Hardware article: Sony sticks its foot into VR — patent reveals trackball foot controller that boosts immersion for players in smaller rooms

Games at Work e412: 3D or not 3D

Virtuix OmniOne

Games at Work e368: Chaos Agent Without Pants

XR BBC Micro

Bricked Car

"Unfortunately, a recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven.

Please call customer support"

— Dan Luu (@danluu) 2023-12-25T20:49:45.707Z

Original thread on Reddit

The Manual article: EVs don’t need a multi-gear transmission as much as we do

Games (some with bricks)

NPR article: A 13-year-old in Oklahoma may have just become the 1st person to ever beat Tetris

Ars Technica article: 34 years later, a 13-year-old hits the NES Tetris “kill screen”

Slashfilm article: The Modern Star Wars Universe Owes Its Existence To An RPG Most Fans Have Never Played

Game Developer article: Dave the Diver has sold over 3 million copies worldwide

LEGO Polaroid OneStep SX-70

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e447 — 23 and Games

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Dungeons & Dragons adventure characters generated via DiffusionBee
Image by Michael Rowe with DiffusionBee, December 2023

Published 1 January 2024

Andy and Michael R are back while Michael M is away – and have a fantastic show on the DNA of 2023 in games.

This episode starts with a stroll down the beginnings of Dungeons and Dragons, with Michael R sharing a couple of links from the Internet Archive.  He found a veritable treasure trove of documents, rulebooks and more.  A couple of which are in the show notes below.  Michael R noted that AD&D was not only about dungeons and dragons, with the same rules and mechanics applied to other sci-fi genres.  An additional example of the AD&D system was used by the RPG game Toon.  

Turning next to PC (personal computer) based games, and moving forward a bit in time, Andy and Michael R start with games that were sold and distributed via (gasp!) physical media!   No cloud based games in this selection, though many of them are now available via the web and can be experienced (sort of) with modern hardware.  Andy comments that he and Michael are of the cohort that experienced the transition from analog to digital, and that experience will never be repeated because it just can’t. 

Michael R shares his enthusiasm in playing Baldur’s Gate 3, exclaiming that he now understands why everyone is so drawn in by it.  With 108 gig of content, it’s no surprise that the graphics and gameplay are such high quality.  Of course no discussion of games would be complete without World of Warcraft.  

The co-hosts also discuss several NPC (non personal computer) games such as those on the Playdate, and a large number of games on Steam.  Vote for your favorite Steam Deck games on The 2023 Steam Awards – by 2 Jan 2024 10am Pacific.  One of Andy’s particular favorites is Dave the Diver.

Andy and Michael close out the last episode recorded in 2023 with the hope that there will be many unique and valuable experiences in VR and AR beyond Beat Saber.

Michael M was also “playing a game” on the evening of 29 Dec — enjoying time in the Smith Center while the university students are away, and looking forward to hoisting up the sousaphone once more to play for the women’s basketball team on New Year’s Eve closing out the .

What games are on the top of your list to play in 2024?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

The Games at Work team wishes our friends and listeners a very Happy New Year!

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

D&D and AD&D

Internet Archive: Original Dungeons and dragons – Book 1 – Men and magic by Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson

Internet Archive: Tsr 02100 AD& D Player’s Handbook

Games at Work e400: Quadringenti

Mazes and Monsters by Ronna Jaffe

Toon – the Cartoon Role Playing Game

PC Games

PC Games article: From Diablo to Half-Life, this site brings back classic PC game boxes

Dos Deck

Baldur’s Gate 3

Polygon article: Extremely important Baldur’s Gate 3 tips that the game never tells you

World of Warcraft

Windows Central article: Is it worth playing World of Warcraft in 2023? (Updated for WoW: Dragonflight 10.2)

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor

NPC (non-PC) Games

playdate

Street Fighter 6

Chicory Game

Steam Deck collection

Steam Deck game: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge

Steam Deck game: Dave the Diver

Steam Deck game: Vampire Survivors

Steam Deck game: Placid Plastic Duck Simulator

Pineapple on Pizza

Blanc

VR Games

Beat Saber

Andy’s read: 100 Ideas that Changed the Web

Sousaphone

Michael M volunteering for the alumni band at the UNC men's basketball game 29 December 2023
Michael M’s game playing with the UNC Alumni Band 29 December

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e446 — Laser Light Show

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green lasers shining across the lake and through the trees at the Chicago Botanic Gardens #LightScapeChicago
Photo by Michael Martine, Chicago Botanic Gardens December 2023

Published 25 December 2023

Michael and Michael are back while Andy is away on holiday – and have a great show on communication, human-computer interfaces and more.

This episode starts with a story about using lasers to transmit data over long distances without a loss in fidelity.  The data in question is a video of a cat called Taters chasing a laser, all sent via laser over a distance nearly 19 million miles.  Sticking with the communications theme, Mercedes is piloting the use of turquoise colored lights to signal that their car is driving autonomously.  

Speaking of autonomous cars, a Rolling Stone article delves into the idea that humans are historically very bad performers when it comes to inattentiveness for an indeterminate period followed by a time sensitive task.  This is precisely what is required by the current set of autonomous driving vehicles that require the human to step in at a moment’s notice and become the driver instead of merely a passenger.

Then, Michael and Michael consider how right-sized LLMs (RSLMs?) could be used to speedily employ generative AI on phones.  A couple of articles and a referenced paper point to how Apple may be moving in this direction with iPhone hardware, and not leveraging the cloud for speed and privacy.  

Moving into VR, the cohosts touch on the ability of LLMs to create entire virtual worlds from a simple prompt – something that games such as No Man’s Sky and many others have done for a long time.  Another academic paper spells out how a LLM can create such an environment.  Also discussed are VR environments in Fortnite (Bonvoy) and games (Tommy Hilfiger).

Michael and Michael round out the show with an intriguing conversation on commercializing consumer behavior, including a treatment on the fediverse that includes how many capabilities originally on Craigslist have been disintermediated into companies like StubHub and AirBnB.  This spurs a thought on how marketplaces themselves might be federated (MarketPub for marketplaces?) which may in turn challenge the Amazons & Alibabas of the world.

Michael M share a bit about the Vintage Vinyl record store in Evanston, IL, which was also made famous in the movie High Fidelity.  No doubt there will be a massive increase in traffic both in the in-person store and the mail order website below from the Games at Work bump.

What will you order from Vintage Vinyl?  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

You Say ‘Lasers’, I Say ‘Taters’

CNN article: NASA laser message beams video of a cat named Taters back to Earth, and it’s a big deal

Ars Technica article: Turquoise taillights tell you this Mercedes is driving autonomously

Paper from the Proceedings of the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society 2019 Annual Meeting: Light-Based External Human Machine Interface: Color Evaluation for Self-Driving Vehicle and Pedestrian Interaction

AI

Rolling Stone article: Elon Musk’s Big Lie About Tesla Is Finally Exposed

MacRumors article: Apple Develops Breakthrough Method for Running LLMs on iPhones

Paper published on ARXIV: LLM in a flash: Efficient Large Language Model Inference with Limited Memory

Ars Technica article: Apple wants AI to run directly on its hardware instead of in the cloud

Wikipedia article: Data General

Commercialization of VR

Tom’s Guide article: The Holodeck is here — new AI can generate an entire virtual world with a single prompt

No Man’s Sky

Paper: Holodeck: Language Guided Generation of 3D Embodied AI Environments

Wikipedia article: Holodeck

@than @andypiper @gamesatwork_biz polygon.com/23998884/fortnite-

— Let The Right Hon In (@danhon) 2023-12-18T23:02:44.532Z

Polygon article: Fortnite’s Marriott Bonvoy Land is a ghost town of video game sadness

Vogue Business article: Tommy Hilfiger on AI and his new fashion game

Commercializing Consumer Behavior

The Verge article: 2023 in social media: the case for the fediverse

Games at Work e402: Which ‘verse is worse?

Schneier on Security article: OpenAI Is Not Training on Your Dropbox Documents—Today

Hush Noiseless Browsing by Joel Arvidsson

The Atlantic article: Is This How Amazon Ends?

Vintage Vinyl Mail Order

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e445 — Paper Thin Transparency

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shadowy images of vases behind a frosted or paper window
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Published 18 December 2023

Michael, Andy and Michael are back – and have a great show on transparency, AI, VR, E3, NASA and more.

This episode starts chugging out of the station with a follow on story from e444 focused on the reported bricked trains in Poland.  According to the article, the trains’ manufacturer is now threatening legal action against the hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix the trains.

Moving forward on the transparency theme, the co-hosts move into the world of materials science and consider a story about transparent wood.  According to the article, the cells of the wood provide an extremely strong structure, even stronger than carbon fiber.  Continuing on the transparency theme, an article in Nature highlights the record breaking number of retractions in scientific papers.  The conversation continues, thinking through the ramifications of a retracted paper cited by many other papers, as well as the potential uses of generative AI to create papers in the first place.

Next up is a discussion on the privacy implications of smart TVs, and the onerous steps necessary to opt out of the default settings which capture tons of data about the consumer’s viewing habits.  Michael R reminds the team that a Raspberry Pi Pi Hole would help with this.  Andy remembers the Hymm of Acxiom (see links below).

Then, moving to the VR world, the co-hosts discuss a couple of articles about Second Life’s private alpha mobile experience and how Xbox Cloud Gaming is now supported on Meta Quest headsets.  An intriguing story about one of bitHuman’s agents allows Michael M to speculate how generative AI might be used to harvest a company’s ethos in a retrieval augmented generation (RAG) fashion.  

Wrapping things up for this episode, the co-hosts touch on E3 ending (both in person and virtual) and the NASA + Johns Hopkins collaboration on Dragonfly to explore Titan.

Have you gone through the data harvesting opt out process on your smart TV?  Why or why not?  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

Trains

404 Media article: Polish Hackers Repaired Trains the Manufacturer Artificially Bricked. Now The Train Company Is Threatening Them

Games at Work e444 Glitch in the Matrix

Transparent Paper Chase

Knowable Magazine article: Why scientists are making transparent wood

Nature article: More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record

TV Knows What You Are Watching

The Markup article: Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching

Tom’s Guide article: Vienna Teng Sings about Surveillance in ‘Hymn of Acxiom’

Genius ‘Hymn of Acxiom’ lyrics

AR/VR

New World Notes post: Second Life IOS/Android App Now In Private Alpha For Premium+ Subscribers. Here’s How To Request Access!

The Verge article: Xbox Cloud Gaming is now available on Meta’s Quest VR headsets

Not So Secret Agents

VentureBeat article: BitHuman introduces lifelike AI agents for enterprises

bitHuman.io 

Wrapping Up

VentureBeat article: E3 is deader than ever

E3 homepage

Mashable article: NASA will land daring spacecraft on a world 800 million miles away

Dragonfly Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

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