e523 — Two hundred and sixty six starlings

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Photo by Pete Godfrey on Unsplash

Published 4 August 2025

e523 with Michael R and Andy, possibly arriving via carefully-arranged starlings? – stories about AI again, obviously; iPadOS 26; games, old and new; and, an innovative method of data transfer.

Andy and Michael R are back together this week, while Michael M takes a turn being away! We kick off with some AI-related topics, with ChatGPT successfully passing the anti-bot Turing test, CAPTCHA, and then some discussion of AI tools being allowed in Meta’s hiring process. Could the North Koreans be on their way?

Seamlessly gliding (almost like… liquid glass), there’s a discussion of iPadOS 26 public beta, and all the window-y goodness that’s coming to all in September.

Under the heading of games topics, the hosts cover a number of links, including the existential crisis experienced by games characters in a Matrix game, an incredible clay animated music video that revisits the 1980s and 1990s, and then, a brand new game all about the life of… a fly. Yes, a fly.

The last segment covers a different kind of flying creature, and looks at the potential for birds to become digital data carriers. Well, starlings anyway.

Are you switching to bird tech any time soon? Have your bots drop our bots a line on Mastodon at @gamesatwork_biz and let us know what you’re reading and what you’re thinking about!

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

AI

Apple

Gaming

Birds! Yes, birds! (can we pretend this is a Maker section?)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:42 — 45.5MB) | Embed

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e522 — Pointing at Doomed Fish

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fossilized fish
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Published 28 July 2025

e522 with Michael M and Andy – stories about AI in multiple forms: bees that listen, a cat that chats, and then some fun with animating fish you draw, a GameBoy you build and a whole lot more.

Andy and Michael M get things rolling while Michael R is away with a story about Amazon acquiring Bee, the wearable AI company.  After a quick reference back to earlier wearable AI examples, the co-hosts turn to Lumo, the AI cat chatbot (catbot?) from Proton.  This sparks a rich conversation on search, and the need to find that receipt or email about the upcoming event.  A 404 media article covers Google’s AI Overview, and Michael shares how he routinely passes over the sponsored links, which is where the AI Overview currently resides.  Andy noted that Google announced Web Guide this week, and the pair give that a once over.  Andy also harkened back to his SearXNG aggregator and udm14.com. 

Next up, the co-hosts show that we can still have fun things, starting off with an(other) iteration of Doom.  This is followed up with Draw A Fish, a simple and fun experience where your drawn fish is animated by the site and placed in a fishtank for you to watch and feed.  Then, a delightful experience on Pointer Pointer, where the service gives you a picture with people pointing where you have your cursor.

Andy and Michael wrap things up with another LEGO video game exemplar – this time it’s the Nintendo Game Boy, which sadly doesn’t play a game, but looks very realistic down to the custom LEGO buttons.  And of course the pair is excited to see Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues when it comes out.  

Will Spinal Tap 2 go up to 12?  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

AI

The Verge article: Amazon buys Bee AI wearable that listens to everything you say

Bee.computer

Games at Work e502: Humane Rabbits (for the Humane AI Pin, Rabbit Agent, R1 and more)

9 To 5 Mac article: Proton throws shade at Apple Intelligence privacy as it launches AI chatbot

Proton post: Introducing Lumo, the AI where every conversation is confidential

Vivaldi post: #10 Andy Yen (Proton) – For A Better Web

Search

404 Media article: Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain

SearXNG

Tedium post: One Extra Click

Google’s The Keyword post: Web Guide: An experimental AI-organized search results page

udm14.com 

We Can Have Fun Things

Draw a Fish

Pointer Pointer

The Verge article: Here is Lego’s official Nintendo Game Boy — with lenticular display

Entertainment Weekly article: Rob Reiner applauds Paul McCartney’s ‘really funny’ improv skills in first look at Spinal Tap sequel

IMDb: This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

IMDb: Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025)

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:58 — 45.9MB) | Embed

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e521 — We Like Big Drives

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inside a hard drive
Photo by benjamin lehman on Unsplash

Published 21 July 2025

e521 with Andy, Michael and Michael – stories about expressive robots (Shoggoth Mini, Apple ELEGNT, SpiRob & facehugger), newly reengineered Commodore & Sinclair computer reboots, Seagate’s 30TB drives and a whole lot more.

Andy, Michael and Michael get things rolling with a story about what went into creating the hero image for last week’s show notes.  The team then turns to the Shoggoth Mini robot, and how it uses it’s antenna so expressively.  Inspired by Apple’s ELEGNT robot lamp, and SpiRobs’s tentacle system, Matthieu Le Cauchois started building the Shoggoth Mini.  Check out the links below for the videos and images to see how this robot interacts.  After touching on a robotic instance of a facehugger from the Aliens movies, the co hosts turn back to the future.

If you are nostalgic for a Commodore 64 computer, it is your lucky day.  Newly reengineered C-64s are available in several different models, and you won’t even need a cassette recorder or a floppy disk drive to load the software.  Unless you really want to.  After touching on a new version of the classic Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the co hosts marvel at the newly announced Seagate 30TB hard drives for $600.  

Rounding out the show for this week are an article on dropped customer service calls and some 1985 retro MacPaint art.

What kind of emotion would you want your robot to show, and how would the robot express the emotion?  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

Generative Video – A How To

The Decoder post: Google’s Veo 3 video generation model launches on Gemini API with a hefty price tag

Animated by Google Veo3 July 2025 with the following prompt: rotate slowly around the sphere in the image, then dive into it as you would with Google Earth. come into focus on a clear water ocean teeming with fish, octopi and lush green plants Original photo is of Josh Simpson’s 1998 #Megaportal glass artwork, a deep glass sphere that looks like a planet with a colorful atmosphere, air pockets and land masses.
original photo by Michael Martine, Sandwich MA June 2025. Veo3 animation July 2025.

Robot Maker

Matthieu Le Cauchois blog post: Shoggoth Mini

Apple Machine Learning blog post: ELEGNT: Expressive and Functional Movement Design for Non-Anthropomorphic Robot

Arxiv paper: SpiRobs: Logarithmic Spiral-shaped Robots for Versatile Grasping Across Scales

Games at Work e500: fünfhundert smooth operator (for discussion on the Apple Pixar robotic lamp)

Wikipedia entry: Horseshoe Crab

Robotshop community forum post: the Facehugger

Technology Old And New

Sixcolors post: Commodore, Apple, and the Early Computer Days

Commodore 

Mini-ITX post: We can build your Mini-ITX PC inside a Retro Commodore 64 Keyboard Chassis…

ESP32 Rainbow post: ESP32 Rainbow ZX Spectrum Reborn

TidBITS post: Seagate Ships 30 TB Hard Drives for $600

Seagate press release: Seagate Ships 30TB Drives to Meet Global Surge in Data Center AI Storage Demand

IMDb entry: The Cannonball Run (another big drive)

The Atlantic article: That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was On Purpose

Three sample MacPaint images from the decryption.net.au blog 

Internet Archive: Zen & the art of the Macintosh : discoveries on the path to computer enlightenment 

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:35 — 41.3MB) | Embed

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e520 — Cold Fusion Gaming

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original photo, by Michael Martine, Sandwich MA June 2025. 
Animated by Google Veo3 July 2025

Published 14 July 2025

e520 with Michael, Andy and Michael – stories about AI advertising, still photo animation, anime agents, Pollen Robotics, Unity tokamak fusion reactor digital twin and a whole lot more.

Michael, Andy and Michael get things off to a fast start with an article all about AI advertising.  And how including AI inside does not correlate with positive impressions.  The Google Veo3 capability to turn still image prompts into short videos is next in focus.  The hero image for this episode was made using Veo3.  On deck next are the open source Reachy robots from Pollen Robotics newly available on Hugging Face, along with associated demo code and AI models.  Then, on Kickstarter, the co hosts consider an AI 3D character pod.  The Dipal D1 on Kickstarter trumpets itself as the “world’s first curved 3D AI Character Pod”.  The intrepid Games at Work team digs up the Gatebox example from 2017 and the associated episodes shared in the links below.  This even includes a discussion from 2018 about “cross-dimensional” human-AI agent marriages, which foreshadows the game “Date Everything” from the Wired article. 

The next article is absolutely right in the wheelhouse for Games At Work:  South Korean scientists used Unity to create a digital twin of a toroidal fusion reactor.  And using the game engine’s physics engine, these scientists may have unlocked how to unleash fusion energy.

Rounding out this episode is the upcoming LEGO launch of a new Arcade Machine.  This fun kit has a number of cool easter eggs in it, and the team’s looking forward to building it.

What is your impression on “AI inside” advertising?  How do you think game engines may be used to further science (weird or otherwise)?  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

AI

Futurism article: Something Hilarious Happens When Potential Customers See That a Product Has AI Features

Terrence Eden’s blog post: Gadget Review: Thermal Imaging Camera – Topdon TC004 Mini

Axios article: Google AI’s new trick: Turn any image into a brief video

Google’s Veo3 

TechCrunch article: Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots

Hugging Face blog post: Reachy Mini – The Open-Source Robot for Today’s and Tomorrow’s AI Builders

Hugging Face Reachy Mini Spaces

Pollen Robotics Reachy Mini

Wall-E Eve (LEGO version, of course!)

Pollen Robotics Reachy 2

Wikipedia entry: Alien: Romulus (with face hugger poster – not as bad as spiders, but close!)

Kickstarter: Dipal D1 – World’s First Curved Screen 3D AI Character Pod

Games at Work e159: Virtually Secure (for initial Gatebox discussion)

Games at Work e218: Virtually Married (for “cross-dimensional” human-AI nuptials)

Weird science through games

Popular Mechanics article:  A Video Game Engine Just Broke a Huge Barrier for Nuclear Fusion. This Could Be the Key to Unlimited Power.

Computer Physics Communication volume 309, April 2025: Development of novel collision detection algorithms for the estimation of fast ion losses in tokamak fusion device

Unity

Wired article: A Game Called Date Everything Literally Lets You Date Everything—Except People

Date Everything

I integrated my Pixels dice with Home Assistant!

If you have Home Assistant with Bluetooth support, you can install my HACS component too: github.com/jaxzin/gamewithpixe

— Brian Jackson (@brian) 2025-07-04T06:46:49.876Z

Federal Trade Commission corner

The Verge article: Appeals court strikes down ‘click-to-cancel’ rule

LEGO

The Verge article: Lego’s latest buildable arcade machine is packed full of fun hidden details

LEGO Arcade Machine 40805

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:13 — 36.6MB) | Embed

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