e430 — that’s no moon, it’s the Moon!

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photo of Moon over Hatteras, NC, June 2011
photo by Michael Martine, Moon over Hatteras, NC, June 2011

Published 28 August 2023

Michael Andy and Michael get together for an out of the world show, starting with the Earth’s Moon.  They celebrate the successful landing of Chandrayaan 3 on the Moon and hope for the discovery of water.

Moving from the extraterrestrial to the virtual world, the co-hosts turn to a couple of articles about the state of development with Apple’s Vision Pro headset.  Developers have been invited to participate in expanding their iOS, iPadOS and MacOS apps in a dynamic and spatial computing manner.  The post about the Vision Pro Labs gives some tremendous insight into what those initial experiences have been like for these developers taking their existing code and seeing how it fits into the Vision Pro (virtual) world.  A 9 to 5 Mac article explores how a recent patent which details a “small, portable physical object for use in an extended reality system.” may be used.  After imagining a digital version of a golf ball marker which could be a physical representation of an AR object, the team also discusses the Star Wars holoprojector concept.

Switching gears, the co-hosts then discuss a blog post by Gergely Orosz on how games are built.  They continue with a couple of stories on the Kinect the new HDMI version of the Atari 2600+ and a handcrafted wooden computer.

Closing out this week’s episode is a new song by TenaciousD called Video Games and excitement about the 4K version of Star Wars:Dark Forces coming up.

What games do you want to play on your HDMI-enabled Atari 2600+?  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 Moon

Ars Technica article: India becomes the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon

Wikipedia article: Chandrayaan-3

space.com article: See 1st photos of the moon’s south pole by India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander

Vision Pro

Apple Developer post: Inside the Apple Vision Pro labs

Fantastical

Slack

Wasted Time

9 to 5 Mac article: Intriguing Vision Pro accessory described by Apple: a digital ‘stone’

Golf Digest article: 25 ball markers that aren’t poker chips

Star Wars Holoprojector

Games and Machines that Play Them

Pragmatic Engineer post: How Games Typically Get Built

The Verge article: Microsoft kills Kinect again

Microsoft blog post: Microsoft’s Azure Kinect Developer Kit Technology Transfers to Partner Ecosystem

Atari 2600+

The Verge article: A visit to the one-man computer factory

Entertainment

Games at Work e192 – PVP-Y

Polygon article: A 4K remaster of Star Wars: Dark Forces is coming out later this year

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:57 — 33.7MB) | Embed

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e429 — Promptly Engineering

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computer keyboard
Photo by Chris J. Davis on Unsplash

Published 21 August 2023

Michael Andy and Michael get together for a show full of metaverse, AI and 3D topics.  After noting the metaverse team at Disney disbanding, the team switches gears to a couple of stories about large language models for summarization and rating.  A fun prompt engineering website from lakera.ai captures the co hosts’ attention.  What level can you reach?  Then, a story about the NYT and GPT takes center stage with licensing and LLM training implications.  A couple of 3D software capabilities from Kaedim and Feather prompt a conversation about how such software can help create new models faster.

Rounding out this episode, Michael M shares that he was interviewed for the Instructional Insider podcast.  Also there are cool technology examples of a song reconstructed from brainwaves, and an animatronic Muppet-esque robot driving around the city playing Vanessa Carlton’s famous song.

What kind of prompt engineering games could you imagine?  Do you have a better algorithm to parse reviews and star ratings?  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

Metaverse

Disney exits the metaverse

August 8, 2023
web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=disne

— web3 is going just great (@web3isgreat) 2023-08-10T17:03:49.759Z

Axios article: Gen Con gives Indianapolis first look at Disney Lorcana game

AI

CBS News article: Amazon is using AI to summarize customer product reviews

The Verge article: Amazon tests new star ratings that are even harder to read

Ars Technica article: Microsoft AI suggests food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot in Canada

The Gandalf prompt engineering game — https://gandalf.lakera.ai/ 

Ars Technica article: Report: Potential NYT lawsuit could force OpenAI to wipe ChatGPT and start over

3D

Kaedim

Feather 3D Sketchbook

The Verge article: 3Doodler Pro Plus is a refined version of the 3D-printing pen — https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/28/21539083/3doodler-pro-plus-pen-3d-printing-update-features 

Games at Work e295: Car Speakers

Bonus Links

Dr. Morgan Pittman’s Podcast Instructional Insider: Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum at NCSSM-Morganton

Science article: Hear a classic Pink Floyd song reconstructed from listeners’ brain waves

Ben Howard’s post: Vanessa The Robot

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e428 — Is you is, or is you AIn’t my AI?

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"Artificial Intelligence" printed on a piece of paper inserted in a typewriter.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Published 14 August 2023

Andy, Michael and Michael get together for a show full of generative AI: audio, bucket lists, books and agents.  Andy starts things rolling with a Nvidia follow on article from last week, and a throwback to e156 from 2016.  Then things start to get exciting with a number of generative AI examples, beginning with Meta’s AudioCraft, an open source example of generative audio.  Next up is Söka, a new app that allows you to create your own bucket list, with the help of generative AI to provide suggestions.  Each of the co-hosts gave this a whirl and share their interesting results.

Then, continuing with open source, Michael M brings forward an update from an April discussion during e412 where the generative agents that are essentially non-player characters (NPCs) that interact with one another powered by a large language model.  The Smallville environment is now open source, so you can give this experience a try yourself.

Next is a disturbing development where author Jane Friedman noticed that AI generated counterfeit books were being sold online and attributed to her.  In her blog post, Jane shares her experience in what it took to correct Amazon and Goodreads, and what other authors have experienced.

This leads to a discussion about Benji Smith’s prosecraft.io service which was taken down last week.  Check out the discussion in the podcast, and see what Benji wrote about the experience from the links in the show notes below.

Andy takes a moment to step up on the soapbox and share his thoughts on the meaning of AI.  And concludes the episode with a fun reference to a keycap that is designed to run Doom.  Check out the show notes for this below.

What are you thoughts about AI, generative AI and algorithms overall?  What would you generate for your bucket list(s)?  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

Follow ons from last week

TechCrunch article: Nvidia CEO: We bet the farm on AI and no one knew it

Games at Work e156: AI for All

AI: Generative Audio, Lists, Books & Agents

Meta article: Open sourcing AudioCraft: Generative AI for audio made simple and available to all

Söka: The easy way to manage your bucket lists and discover new goals

ARXIV paper: Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior

Open Source Smallville https://github.com/joonspk-research/generative_agents 

Games at Work e412: 3D or not 3D

Ars Technica article: Author discovers AI-generated counterfeit books written in her name on Amazon

Jane Friedman blog post: I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires)

TechDirt article: The Fear Of AI Just Killed A Very Useful Tool

Gizmodo article: Fiction Analytics Site Prosecraft Shut Down After Author Backlash

prosecraft.io

Benji Smith’s The Shaxspir blog post: Taking Down prosecraft.io

Doom!

Hackaday article: Running Doom in a Keycap Takes Careful Work

Bonus links

Security & Privacy

Security Now! e934 Revisiting Global Privacy Control

Wired article: Leaked Yandex Code Breaks Open the Creepy Black Box of Online Advertising

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:49 — 39.3MB) | Embed

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e427 — DeepBarbie Fakery

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35mm film negatives - the kind that required a great deal of skill to deepfake
Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

Published 6 August 2023

Michael and Michael get together for a show full of intrigue and deepfakes – pictorially and in text.  While Andy was not available to record this episode, he was a guest on the TechGrumps podcast recently, and you can check that out in the show notes below.

Staying with the Barbie theme, Michael and Michael begin this episode with a fantastic plastic representation of you called B-ai-rbie.  Through this site, you can create a Barbie or Ken doll representation from your uploaded photograph.  This example reminded the co hosts of a deepfake example that would create a portrait of an uploaded photo in the style of a famous artist.  Links to that episode and MIT Tech Review story are included below.

Hiding in plain sight is one of the oldest camouflage tricks in nature, and the next story for this episode leverages this concept.  To protect against deepfakes, tools like PhotoGuard and Glaze allow for an easy way for people to view visual content, but the images are rendered in a way to confuse AI models from using the images.  Michael and Michael talk about the cat & mouse ways that these technologies will continue to evolve, and how encryption services like PGP could also be brought to bear.

Another example of hiding in plain sight is designed specifically for machine learning algorithms to pick up on the hidden text.  The Schneier on Security article references a story from the Washington Post where job applicants are attempting to take advantage of the machine reading of their resumes by including additional keyword text in white font on a white background.  So, instead of the human seeing something that the machine cannot, the human disguises text to be specifically read by the machine and not by a human.

It is an out of the ordinary thing to talk about the Unreal Engine when it comes to IRL automotive companies.  For this episode, there is a story about how Ford is using the Unreal Engine to power their 2024 Mustang dashboard, allowing for the retro throwback dashboard of the Fox-body in the new vehicle along with further driver customizations.

Michael and Michael wrap up with stories about the upcoming second season of Loki and a link to 3D print your very own Futurama brain slug.

What do you think about protecting visual content via solutions like Glaze or PhotoGuard?  If you could customize your car’s dashboard, what would you add or subtract?  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

Andy on TECHGRUMPS 3.06: CELLULAR, MODULAR, INTERACTIVODULAR!

Deepfakes

BaiRBIE.me

Games at Work e240: Game of Life

MIT Technology Review article: Turn selfies into classical portraits with the AI that fuels deepfakes

MIT Technology Review article: These new tools could help protect our pictures from AI

arXiv paper: Raising the Cost of Malicious AI-Powered Image Editing

Github: photoguard

Glaze

(more) AI

Wired article: A New Attack Impacts Major AI Chatbots — and No One Knows How to Stop It

Schneier on Security article: Hacking AI Resume Screening with Text in a White Font

Washington Post article: Job applicants are battling AI résumé filters with a hack

Nvidia has started asking large GPU buyers who their end users are (per The Information): theinformation.com/articles/in

Their focus seems to be on picking favorites in a crowded market, but this could actually be an interesting hook for "know your customer" diligence to prevent horrific abuses of AI, if they cared to do that.

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) 2023-07-31T20:42:38.083Z

The Verge article: Meta’s AI ‘personas’ might launch next month

Unreal Engine in 2024 Ford Mustang

USA Today article: 2024 Ford Mustang goes back to the ’80s in salute to a hero from Detroit’s darkest days

Entertainment

Mashable article: ‘Loki’ Season 2 trailer: Ke Huy Quan joins in on the time-travel fun

Printables post: Futurama Brain Slug

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:24 — 35.4MB) | Embed

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