Michael R and Andy start things off for this edition of Games at Work with a follow up story about smart appliances, this time in the form of comics. Multiple comics. Check them out in the show notes below. Then, the team turns to Cory Doctorow’s recent blog post on the combination play of lock-in, high switching costs or platform exploitation, an example of which is actually the subject of one of the comics from the Marketoonist article.
Next up, is an article about how Interpol is learning how to police crime in the metaverse. How are they doing this? Well, for a start, Interpol has built a VR version of it’s headquarters for training. Andy and Michael also consider the word soup article from VentureBeat dealing with all things metaverse, including the concept of “metanomics”.
Wrapping up the episode for this week are a couple of AI articles dealing with AI based voice acting and ChatGPT being asked to draw itself via DALL-E. Of course, the latest LEGO LoTR announcement of the Rivendell set truly captures the imagination!
What appliances do you want to connect (or disconnect!) from the Internet? 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. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
Comments Off on e403 — Smart Appliances Dumb Companies
Photo by Engin Akyurt
Published 6 Feb 2023
Michael and Michael start things off for this edition of Games at Work with some follow up stories about smart & connected appliances, as there was a flurry of articles on this topic in the prior week. First up, is an article from The Atlantic, where the author explores the idea of subscription services for ink, and how this changes the nature of the purchase of the printer to something that is no longer owned, to pages as a service. Then, there’s a post by Dan Goodin on a self-driving automobile with no safety driver that was causing problems for firefighters in San Francisco.
Then, turning to all things AI, Michael and Michael launch in with a New York Post article about AI driven Armageddon. Next up is a story about companies decoding your brainwaves, which causes Michael R to reminisce about the Emotiv headset, and Michael M to remember cameras being used to identify micro expressions (both of which were part of e361, link below!) There are additional articles about GAN networks for determining vulnerabilities, concerns with uses of ChatGPT that may train the corpus with corporate secrets, ChatGPT word problem problems and running large language models on the new Apple M2 MacBook Pro.
Quite a big episode on AI – with a few links that Michael and Michael did not get a chance to cover in the podcast. Meta testing members only Horizon Worlds metaverse experiences, a superb jigsaw puzzle web app (thanks, Andy!) and a Super Mario infused random text generator.
What appliances do you want to connect (or disconnect!) from the Internet? 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. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
Self-driving automobiles are a solution in search of a problem. People don't want them, but companies like Uber, Amazon, Cruise and Waymo keep pushing them because there's so much money to be made. I hate the way these companies are compromising our safety and the way government regulators aren't pushing back.
Firefighters were battling a major house fire near the intersection of Hayes and Divisadero streets early in the morning of Jan. 22 when a Cruise vehicle with no safety driver started to creep its way into the emergency scene.
Two firefighters stood in front of the car to prevent the vehicle from driving over hoses used to douse the growing inferno, but that didn’t work. As the car continued to inch forward, one firefighter took quick action and smashed the vehicle’s front window, finally bringing the car to a stop. First responders contacted Cruise, who sent workers to move the vehicle out of the way.
UPDATE: I have already walked back the statement above that no one wants this. Fair enough. Many of you want this.
Lots of you pointed out the number of accidents human drivers have. There is zero evidence that self-driving cars will have a better safety record. And anecdotal evidence like the dangerous incidents in the very limited San Francisco trials suggests AVs may be less safe.
If you want AVs, you should volunteer to have your city be the guinea pigs for this potentially fatal tests. San Francisco ought to ban AVs until there's data they are safe.
Amazon Begs Employees Not to Leak Corporate Secrets to ChatGPT
This issue seems to have come to a head recently because Amazon staffers and other tech workers throughout the industry have begun using ChatGPT as a "coding assistant" of sorts to help them write or improve strings of code, the report notes.
Andy, Michael and Michael start things off for this edition of Games at Work with stories about the fediverse and the metaverse. The IT Web article predicts that the fediverse may eclipse the metaverse, and the cohosts use this as the springboard for their conversation.
Then the co-hosts discuss internet-enabled appliances, starting with an article from Ars Technica. According to the article, a great many wifi-enabled appliances are not connected to the internet. Andy shares a story about his IoT dishwasher.
What do you think will be bigger in 2023, the fediverse, the metaverse, or some other ‘verse? 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. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
Michael and Michael start things off for this edition of Games at Work with an announcement that a new logo / podcast icon will be coming soon to a podcast with over 400 episodes. Then, things get rolling in earnest with an article about the forthcoming Open Metaverse Foundation, and the open source software and standards that the Linux Foundation has put into place. The co-hosts are reminded of a recent discussion on the Metaverse Standards Forum from episode 372.
Next, an intriguing blog post on not believing the hype of ChatGPT by Iris Van Rooij takes center stage. Michael and Michael also discuss their experiences with OpenAI’s Whisper.
Then, the pair talk about the new HomePod 2nd generation as well as the newly enabled capabilities of the HomePod minis. Staying on the audio theme, Michael and Michael take a look at the visualizations of the sound from dialup modems. Amazing that this article is over a decade old!
Closing out this episode, the co-hosts talk about software, from the new Ice Cubes and Ivory Mastodon clients to a 3D printing innovation: a transplant of a living 3D printed ear.
What are your favorite memories of dial up modems? 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. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
New Early Access website is up which shows our current roadmap. It’s not a comprehensive list, but it will give you an idea of where our main focus is. We will update the list as we go.
