Episode 326 — 11 Hot Dawgs

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11 hot dogs
11 hot dogs – Photo by Rich Smith on Unsplash

Microsoft’s Windows 11, UGA podcasters, remote controlling thermostats, tiny urban forests, concerts in Sims & Fortnite, Mountain Dew and

Andy, Michael and Michael start things off with all things Windows 11, barely resisting to make the expected Spinal Tap joke.  OK, so the joke does make it into the podcast.  You knew it would.  So much news about the newest release of the operating system, focused on the consumer market.  See the extensive Verge links in the show notes for many more details.  

Then the co-hosts turn to the University of Georgia, where Michael R did his undergraduate work, and an article about all of the amazing alumni podcasters from the university – just missing one important podcast host that’s been recording this fine podcast for just a few episodes!  Plus it was great fun teaching Andy how to pronounce dawgs properly for the episode title.

Next up, remote controlled thermostats in Texas, and the challenges that IOT systems bring, especially when people who install the smart metering devices don’t read the fine print and understand what they’ve agreed to.  

Tiny urban forests loom large in the next set of stories and then things get incredibly interesting with “Operation Soda Steal” — an engineering story from 2008 for how a user decided to take advantage of the free refills at Taco Bell to enjoy Mountain Dew Baja Blast from the comfort of his home.  The link in the show notes is worthwhile just to see the MS Paint graphics.  By the way, MS Paint remains in Windows 11!  

Other topics in this episode include virtual concerts in The Sims (in Simlish) and Fortnite, AI fighter jet pilots, hackers using gamers to become “crypto-rich” and this weekend’s LEGOcon! 

Selected Links

The Verge article: Here are the visual changes Microsoft showed off in Windows 11 — https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548895/windows-11-ui-visual-change-roundup-microsoft-upgrade 

Microsoft’s Windows 11 event — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/event 

The Verge article: Microsoft wants Steam to be part of its new Windows 11 app store — https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/25/22550103/microsoft-new-windows-app-store-steam-welcome 

The Verge article: Windows 11’s Intel-powered Android apps will run on AMD and Arm processors, too — https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22549303/windows-11-intel-bridge-android-apps-amd-arm-processors 

Microsoft Windows Developer Blog post: What Windows 11 Means for Developers — https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/06/24/what-windows-11-means-for-developers/ 

The Verge article: Microsoft’s Panos Panay on building Windows 11 during a pandemic, Android, and the leak — https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/25/22550134/microsoft-windows-11-panos-panay-interview 

Nathan W. Pyle — https://www.nathanwpyle.art 

University of Georgia, UGA Today article: Talking Dawgs — https://news.uga.edu/talking-dawgs/ 

Ars Technica article: Texans regret opting in to power plan that remotely raises thermostat temps — https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/texans-regret-opting-into-power-plan-that-remotely-raises-thermostat-temps/ 

The Verge article: This VR remake of Myst is also coming to the Mac and PC this fall — https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/22/22545252/myst-vr-pc-mac-cyan-worlds 

The Sims is getting an in-game music festival with Simlish songs — https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548640/the-sims-4-sessions-music-festival-concert-bebe-rexha 

TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com 

National Geographic article: Why ‘tiny forests’ are popping up in big cities — https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/why-tiny-forests-are-popping-up-in-big-cities 

Tuiny Forest najaar 2021 from sprinklr — https://www.sprinklr.co/products/tuiny-forest-najaar-2021 

Aforestt methodology — https://www.afforestt.com/methodology 

Kotaku article: The True Crime Story Of A GameFAQs User Who Just Wanted More Mountain Dew — https://kotaku.com/the-true-crime-story-of-a-gamefaqs-user-who-just-wanted-1847161600 

Laptop Magazine article: Microsoft Paint and Notepad get a ‘Fluent Design’ overhaul in Windows 11 — https://www.laptopmag.com/uk/news/microsoft-paint-and-notepad-get-a-fluent-design-overhaul-in-windows-11 

Mountain Dew Baja Blast — https://www.mountaindew.com/products/mtn-dew-baja-blast/ 

Mountain Dew Code Red — https://www.mountaindew.com/products/mtn-dew-code-red/ 

The Verge article: Fortnite’s new virtual concert might be its trippiest yet — https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/25/22550240/fortnite-easy-life-concert-o2-arena 

Schneier on Security article: AI-Piloted Fighter Jets — https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/06/ai-piloted-fighter-jets.html 

Slashfilm article: ‘Q-Force’ Trailer: Netflix Introduces the First All-Gay Spy Team — https://www.slashfilm.com/q-force-trailer/ 

BBC article: Crackonosh: How Hackers are using gamers to become crypto-rich — https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57601631 

LEGO Con — https://www.lego.com/en-us/lego-con 

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Episode 325 — Talking Heads

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Games At Work cohosts talking heads
Together Mode – Games at Work cohosts, June 2021

WWDC21 in review, code documentation, lossless & spatial audio, AR autos, VR ads, Windows 10 (& 11), Flight Simulator buzzing the LEGO House in Billund.

The cohosts are reunited!  Starting off with a review of the announcements from , covering all manner of updates, from security, to code documentation, to universal keyboard shortcuts and more. The team takes a pause to consider the upgraded audio from Apple Music, and Michael M shares the 1970s kick he’s been on for the past few days, with tunes from Yes and Rush.  

An AR article describes how the technology could be used in both driving and visualizing a new vehicle in your driveway.  Another article highlights how ads could permeate VR, reminding the cohosts of how every surface could become a place for an ad.  After checking out the Portal between Vilnius and Lublin, the team discusses Microsoft Windows 10 and the possibilities of 11.  

A Fast Company article about a Talking Heads song from 1978 seems to predict TikTok.  The cohosts enjoy using Skype’s new Together Mode to be talking heads themselves during the episode recording.  And the team winds up this episode with the LEGO House in Billund, Denmark making an appearance in the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator update.  

Where would you like to fly in the MSFS virtual world?  And what lossless tunes would you play on your virtual airplane’s stereo system?

Selected Links

Doxygen — https://www.doxygen.nl/index.html 

The Elements of Programming Style — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Programming_Style 

The Elements of Style — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style 

TechCrunch article: 7 new security features Apple quietly announced at WWDC — https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/12/7-new-security-features-apple-quietly-announced-at-wwdc/ 

Six Colors article: Think Globally: The iPad’s new universal keyboard shortcuts — https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/06/think-globally-the-ipads-new-universal-keyboard-shortcuts/ 

iMore article: Forget Apple’s Spatial Audio playlists – listen to this one instead — https://www.imore.com/forget-apples-spatial-audio-playlists-listen-one-instead 

iMore article: Best DACs for your Mac in 2021 — https://www.imore.com/best-dacs-your-mac 

CNET Road/Show article: Augmented reality will change the way we buy and drive cars — https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/augmented-reality-will-change-buying-and-driving-a-car/ 

TechCrunch article: Facebook will begin beaming advertisements into virtual reality — https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/16/facebook-will-begin-beaming-advertisements-into-virtual-reality/ 

FastCompany article: This magical portal connects people across two cities — https://www.fastcompany.com/90647761/this-magical-portal-connects-people-across-two-cities 

The Verge article: Microsoft to end Windows 10 support on October 14th, 2025 — https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/14/22533018/microsoft-windows-10-end-support-date 

Fast Company article: This eerily prescient 1978 Talking Heads song predicted TikTok — https://www.fastcompany.com/90647436/david-byrne-talking-heads-tik-tok 

TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/en/ 

the brothers brick article: Get a bird’s-eye view of the LEGO House with Microsoft Flight Simulator’s latest update — https://www.brothers-brick.com/2021/06/18/get-birds-eye-view-of-the-lego-house-with-microsoft-flight-simulators-latest-update-news/

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Episode 324 — With Glorious Purpose

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Cape Fear River, Southport NC 2017
Cape Fear River, Southport NC – Picture by Michael Martine, 2017

SlothBot in ATL, row-bots in AMS, silly stringing drones, new functionality and iPad drops at , AI SlothBot in ATL, row-bots in AMS, AI discovers art with potential NFT monetization, NetHack, silly stringing drones, new functionality and iPad drops at , playdate, and a new old LEGO typewriter for glorious purpose.

Andy and Michael start off the show in a slow deliberate way with a discussion about SlothBot.  SlotBot conserves energy by moving slowly only to recharge the batteries via solar panels on its back, and therefore does not spook the wildlife it observes.  Moving from the SlothBot in Atlanta, the co-hosts then virtually visit Amsterdam, where AI-controlled electric vehicles are being tested in the canals.  

Sticking with AI, the team considers a story about the painter Modigliani, who like many of his peers, reused canvases, painting over their artwork.  AI systems are able to recreate what the underlying art looked like — something that has been more and more common in recent years.  This sparks an interesting idea about who owns the newly discovered old artwork, and whether NFT (non functional tokens) could be used to monetize the newly discovered works.  

Games have often been used to test AI systems – famous examples such as chess and go spring readily to mind.  There have been examples of AI learning to play video games that uncover unexpected win conditions (see example of Q-bert discussed in episode 225).  Andy and Michael talk about the Facebook AI team’s investigation of NetHack/Rogue.  They consider whether the AI may determine that the win condition for this unending generated dungeon game might be to never go downstairs and “stay in the village” so to speak.  Will be interesting to see what NetHack teaches the Facebook AI team as it learns the game.  

The pair discuss a simple and non-lethal way to down a drone with a silly string-like substance and a speculative article about Facebook watch with two cameras.  Of course, this reminds the co-hosts of the Dick Tracy 2-Way Wrist TV.

While Andy and Michael M are reserving most of the WWDC commentary to when all the co-hosts have reassembled next week, there were a couple of intriguing things to discuss.  The new Digital Legacy functionality to provide your next-of-kin the ability to access your content is no foreign subject to the Games At Work team.  In episode 247, a Wirecutter article prompted a good discussion on preparing ones’ digital accounts.  This may spark an interesting discussion for ownership of artwork, come to think of it.  The second piece of Apple news was a song & video made by the artist Jonathan Mann featuring a remix of Apple’s Craig Federighi’s WWDC21 keynote presentation.  

Winding things up for this episode, Andy and Michael talk about the playdate gaming device, drop in a reference to the Disney+ show about Loki and hit the carriage return on an awesome LEGO Ideas implementation of an old fashioned typewriter.  Give this episode a listen and check out the show notes.

No iPads were harmed in the making of this podcast. 

Selected Links

Popular Mechanics article: This Lazy ‘SlothBot’ Could Change Conservation Forever — https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a36356683/slothbot-conservation-robotics/ 

GA Tech News Center article: ‘SlothBot in the Garden’ Demonstrates Hyper-Efficient Conservation Robot — https://news.gatech.edu/2020/06/16/slothbot-garden-demonstrates-hyper-efficient-conservation-robot 

The Guardian article: How a ghostly outline revealed the secret of Modigliani’s lost lover — https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jun/06/modigliani-lost-lover-beatrice-hastings?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1 

Amedeo Modigliani — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedeo_Modigliani 

Microsoft News article: A NFT for the ‘Nyan Cat’ GIF fetched nearly $500,000 (number of the day) — https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/a-nft-for-the-nyan-cat-gif-fetched-nearly-500000-number-of-the-day/ar-BB1dWDVM 

Non-fungible token — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token 

TechCrunch article: Decades-old ASCII adventure NetHack may hint at the future of AI — https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/09/decades-old-ascii-adventure-nethack-may-hint-at-the-future-of-ai/ 

NetHack — https://www.nethack.org 

NetHack by Future Shock Software on iOS — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/inethack2/id962114968 

Rogue — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game) 

Rogue by gandreas software on iOS — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rogue/id298113808 

Games At Work episode 225 — Ah ha — it’s AI! — https://gamesatwork.biz/2019/01/29/episode-225-ah-ha-its-ai/ 

Popular Mechanics article: America’s New Drone Killer Blasts Targets With Stringy Pink Stuff — https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a36664341/darpa-drone-killer-mobile-force-protection/ 

Silly String — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_String 

Fast Company article: A Facebook wristwatch with cameras?  Hard pass.  — https://www.fastcompany.com/90645576/a-facebook-wristwatch-with-cameras-hard-pass 

Dick Tracy 2-Way Wrist TV — https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/2-Way_Wrist_TV 

iOS 15 adds an iPhone feature you might never use – but you should set it up anyway — https://bgr.com/tech/iphone-icloud-access-digital-legacy-ios-15-wwdc-2021-5930590/ 

Michael Rowe’s WWDC21 blog post — https://michaelrowe01.com/index.php/2021/06/07/wwdc-2021-day-1/ 

Cult of Mac article: Craig Federighi’s impressive WWDC iPad catch gets set to toe-tapping music — https://www.cultofmac.com/744572/craig-federighis-impressive-wwdc-ipad-catch-gets-set-to-toe-tapping-music/ 

The tiny Playdate handheld gets a price bump but double the games — https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/4/22466184/panic-playdate-handheld-price-double-season-one-games-update-preorder 

playdate — https://play.date 

Time Variance Authority — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Variance_Authority 

The Washington Post article: ‘Loki’ is a dark and tricky delight that continues Marvel’s success at Disney Plus — https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/06/08/loki-review-disney-plus-marvel/ 

Kotaku article: Lego’s Vintage Typewriter Is A Work Of Art — https://kotaku.com/lego-s-vintage-typewriter-is-a-work-of-art-1847064925 


LEGO Ideas Typewriter — https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/typewriter-21327

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Episode 323 — Bots & Bricks

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Photo by Pascal Bernardon on Unsplash

Netflix as the Netflix of gaming services, robots for logistics & loneliness, AI image creation, all-online WWDC21 & LEGO Con.

Michael and Michael get together for an abbreviated recording session dealing with robots, AI, games and conferences a-plenty!  Starting things off with a story about how Netflix intends to be the Netflix of subscription-based gaming, Michael and Michael then turn to robotics.  DHL is poised to put into service 2,000 Locus Robotics units.  On a much smaller scale, a recent New Yorker article goes deep on how robots can stave off loneliness on an individual level.  

Going very local (for Michael and Michael), researchers at NC State University have made intriguing advancements in the field of AI.  You can check out the source code from the show notes below to see how robots could use this functionality to ‘imagine’ what a completed task should look like.

Michael R is very excited about his upcoming participation in Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, starting on 7 June.  He shares some of his experiences as a user of he 2021 Apple Design Award winners.  Michael M shared the news of the upcoming LEGO Con, likewise coming to a browser near you on 26 June.  Between these two conferences, it’s a sure bet that everything will be awesome.  

See something that you think is awesome too?  Drop us a link over on @Gamesatwork_biz and the co-hosts could bring it into a future episode.

Selected Links

Firstpost article: Netflix planing to enter the gaming industry with subscription-based gaming service — https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/netflix-planning-to-enter-the-gaming-industry-with-subscription-based-gaming-service-report-9681531.html 

TechCrunch article: DHL will deploy 2,000 Locus Robotics units by 2022 — https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/02/dhl-will-deploy-2000-locus-robotics-units-by-2022/ 

Locus Robotics — https://locusrobotics.com 

The New Yorker article: What Robots Can — and Can’t — Do for the Old and Lonely — https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/what-robots-can-and-cant-do-for-the-old-and-lonely 

WRAL TechWire article: NCSU researchers report breakthrough in creating images through artificial intelligence — https://www.wraltechwire.com/2021/06/03/ncsu-researchers-report-breakthrough-in-creating-images-though-artificial-intelligence/ 

IEEE Xplore publication: Learning Layout and Style Reconfigurable GANs for Controllable Image Synthesis — https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9427066 

GitHub iVMCL / LostGANs — https://github.com/iVMCL/LostGANs 

TechCrunch article: Indivisible is training an army of volunteers to neutralize political misinformation — https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/01/indivisible-truth-brigade/ 

Skittish blog post: May Updates: Text Chat, Event Privacy, Channel Zones, and More — https://new.skittish.com 

MacRumors article: MBUX now with Apple Music — https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/04/apple-music-coming-to-mercedes-mbux/ 

2021 Apple Design Awards — https://developer.apple.com/design/awards/ 

Apple’s all-online Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off June 7 with keynote address — https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/apples-worldwide-developers-conference-kicks-off-june-7/ 

LEGO Con is coming — https://www.lego.com/en-us/lego-con 

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