e442 – Giving Thanks (with tech)

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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/

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:06 — 36.2MB) | Embed

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e441 — Snake in a Tube

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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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:20 — 37.6MB) | Embed

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e440 — Elendil or Edronax?

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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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:36 — 39.1MB) | Embed

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e439 — Nuts About Sound

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Walnuts, some whole, some cracked open.
Photo by Raffaele Ravaioli on Unsplash

Published 6 November 2023

Michael and Michael get together for a lively discussion on AI, VR, Mixed Reality, a bluetooth in a nutshell, and a locked bitcoin wallet among other topics.

The co-hosts start off the episode with the video of the interactive dress.  This is right in line with the stories from the October podcasts.  Then they shift gears to AI, with several timely stories.  One deals with the problems of deepfakes.  Another focuses on the upcoming release of more information about Humane’s AI pin.  This spurs a discussion on science fiction morphing into science fact using the Star Trek communicator pin as an example predecessor of the Humane AI pin.  Further news about AI security comes from both sides of the Atlantic – the executive order from the US on labeling AI-generated content and the summit in Bletchley Park.  Michael and Michael take a moment to discuss the AI generated “new” Beatles song Now and Then.

Moving to VR and MR, the team discusses a story about how VR is helping disabled musicians play instruments.  Then, they take a look at a video of a hacked mixed reality Mario experience that allows the gameplay to incorporate both virtual and physical objects.

Speaking of hacking, Michael and Michael check out a video from Penguin DIY that constructs an amazing bluetooth speaker using a walnut shell.  Next up is a detailed and surprising story about an encrypted USB drive with a bitcoin wallet on it containing 7,002 bitcoins.  Wrapping up the episode are a few interesting tech stories including some big red buttons, a Robotech style mecha and a phone that looks much like a slap bracelet.

What game would you like to play in mixed reality?  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

Games at Work e437 Dipping into Dots

NBC News article: Scarlett Johansson demands AI app stop using her likeness in an ad without her permission

The Verge article: Humane’s Ai Pin could cost $1,000 — and require a subscription

Star Trek communicator badge

MIT Technology Review: Three things to know about the White House’s executive order on AI

The Verge article: Watermarks aren’t the silver bullet for AI misinformation

Bletchley Park news post: Bletchley Park to Host AI Safety Summit

The Guardian article: Now and Then: listen to the ‘final’ Beatles song

AR / VR / MR / XR

BBC news article: The musicians with disabilities embracing virtual reality

Inverse article: Super Mario 64 in Mixed Reality is the Best Quest 3 Demo We’ve Seen Yet

I’ve done it. Mario 64 running in mixed reality.
byu/llbsidezll inoculus

Cool Tech

The Verge article: 8BitDo’s NES buttons are a big, red, Nintendo-themed invitation to experiment

The Verge article: The Tsubame Archax is the coolest $3 million mecha on Earth — and soon, the Moon

IMDb: Robotech

The Verge article: The bendy phone is back, baby

Wikipedia article: Slap Bracelet

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:32 — 34.4MB) | Embed

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