e480 — Time to Face the Music

black and white image of over the ear headphones
Photo by Blaz Photo on Unsplash

Published 9 September 2024

Co-hosts Michael and Michael start things off by reflecting on last week’s episode with a couple of articles related to last week’s episode on music streaming royalties.   

Next up, is a listener link on MiniMax, a new text to video GenAI capability, which sparks (✨) a conversation on individualized customized entertainment.  After touching on the Brave browser, the co-hosts marvel at a mycelia powered robot – another listener link.  Michael and Michael are reminded of how trees communicate with one another – check out the links below for Pando and the book Michael M couldn’t remember at the time, The Overstory by Richard Powers.

Then, some speculation on the upcoming Apple Event next week – Ready to Glow.  Michael R points out that the Apple Watch announcement was 10 years ago, which is hard to believe.

Rounding out this episode is the announcement between Nike and LEGO which is fun to speculate on what this partnership may bring, and an MQTT / NodeRed enabled garage door home automation solution that does not require sharing data to any cloud.

What other biohybrid robots have you heard of?  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

Streaming Heist

New York Times article: The Bands and the Fans Were Fake. The $10 Million Was Real.

Ars Technica article: FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist

Games at Work e479: Listen Up, Outlaws!

ABA Journal post: Prominent 1970s musicians sue music companies for copyright infringement

AI

Tom’s Guide article: Forget Sora — MiniMax is a new realistic AI video generator and it’s seriously impressive

Games at Work e478: Doomed, I Say!

Brave

Futurism article: Scientists Grew a Mushroom Into This Robot to Act As Its Brain

Cornell Chronicle Article: Biohybrid robots controlled by electrical impulses — in mushrooms

Wikipedia article: Pando (tree)

Smithsonian Magazine article: Do Trees Talk to Each Other?

The Overstory by Richard Powers

Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard

Apple

Macworld article: Ready to Glow! iPhone, Apple Watch, and everything else to expect at Apple’s event

Sixcolors post: Apple’s September event: The delight will be in the details

Apple Events

Random Thoughts blog post: WWDC 2024 Impressions and insights

Miscellany

Nike press release: Nike and the LEGO Group Unite to Elevate the Power of Sport and Creative Play

LEGO Group press release: The LEGO Group and NIKE, Inc. unite to elevate the power of creative play and sport

acquired.fm season 13, episode 1: Nike

Ars Technica article: I added a ratgdo to my garage door, and I don’t know why I waited so long

Ratgdo

e479 — Listen Up, Outlaws!

Photo by Ruth Durbin on Unsplash

Published 2nd September 2024

Andy and Michael R. spend the show discussing advertising, AI, and games.

First up, there’s a shocking story from the excellent 404 Media that covers “the pitch deck” that Cox Media Group (CMG) uses to sell their clients on hyper targeted advertising using audio from our personal smart devices. Michael goes on to encourage us all to disable Automatic Content Recognition on our smart TVs with the help of a story from ZDNet.

In the AI segment, the co-hosts consider Midjourney’s move into hardware. Andy mentions a recent blog post of his own that looks at the good and bad ways that LLMs can be used. Bad folks are farming plays on Spotify and stealing revenue from real artists. And, why play a game that originally required a 33MHz i386 CPU with 4Mb of RAM, when you can use AI and burn megawatts of power to generate small parts of a new level?

To round things out, Michael and Andy talk the latest Star Wars game, a paper version of Oregon Trail, Dungeons and Dragons, and Michael’s desire to get a group together to play games in Demeo in VR.

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  Since we post this sentence every week it does look a bit automated, though. Anyway! That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

Advertising

404 Media article: Here’s the Pitch Deck for Active Listening Ad Targeting

How to turn off ACR

AI

Midjourney makes Hardware

Andy’s post AI-ngels and Demons

Fake bands on Spotify

AI makes DOOM

Gaming

Star Wars Outlaws

Oregon Trail Book

D&D Revolution

Demeo

e478 — Doomed, I Say!

Games at Work in Doom font from https://c.eev.ee/doom-text-generator/

Published 26 August 2024

Co-hosts Michael, Michael and Andy start things off on a fun note – a website that creates text in Doom, Minecraft and other fonts. 

Next up, the team turns to Ian Hughes for two intriguing posts over the Feeding Edge.  First up is Ian’s blog and video showing the power of midjourney.com, runway.ml and luma.ai .  The second post deals with Ian feeding his two novels Reconfigure and Cont3xt into a local copy of Nomic.ai on his MacBook and conversing with his protagonist.  The Games at Work cohosts are all hoping that this jumpstarts the writing of third book.  Ian himself imagines how a generated metaverse could be created following the ingestion of the novels.

Sticking with the theme, the team then turns to the symbolism used by many firms to signify the application of AI.  According to the Wall Street Journal, sparkles ✨ are used by Google, Slack and more.  This sparks (heh!) a discussion on the power of such symbolism, and Andy shares a recent blog post he wrote on the subject, with a specific focus on a symbol for the Fediverse, specifically the asterism ⁂ unicode2042.  This reminds Michael M of the symbol for therefore ∴ unicode2234.

Then, the co-hosts discuss the SAG-AFTRA agreement to partner with Narrativ for the use of audio voice replicas, and the arrangement allowing the people whose voices are being used to have a significant amount of control over how and when their voices are ethically used.  Michael R points out that this may have some market limiting impacts for new voices.

Once the team completes the AI review, they spend a few moments on the world of games and gaming.  A Guinness world record of 444 consoles hooked into a single television is a marvel.  Tramsterfam is reminiscent of Townscaper.  Other games include the Smithsonian’s partnership with Crayola, the newest Sid Meyer’s CivVII and an upcoming television series called Secret Level.

What do you think about the symbolism discussed in this episode?  Do you have a favorite?  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

Doom Font Generator for Games at Work

Metaverse and AI

Ian Hughes’ The Feeding Edge blog post: A short video about Metaverse

Ian Hughes’ The Feeding Edge blog post: Talking with an AI of Roisin from my novels

Reconfigure Book

The Wall Street Journal article: How the Sparkles Emoji Became the Symbol of Our AI Future

Andy Piper’s The Lost Outpost blog post: On Symbols & Symbolism

⁂ Asterism

∴ Therefore

Procreate

Variety article: SAG-AFTRA Strikes Groundbreaking AI Digital Voice Replica Pact With Startup Firm Narrativ

The Animaniacs: Variety Speak song

Narrativ.ai 

Games

Guinness Book of World Records post: Gaming is serious business for man with 444 consoles hooked up to one TV

Tramsterdam

Townscaper

Andy Piper’s The Lost Outpost blog post: The Collage Atlas

Ars Technica article: Civilization VII hands-on: This strategy sequel rethinks the long game

The Verge article: Civilization 7 launches in February

e477 — Build Your Own AI Hardware

A wire crimper, particle IOT device, magnetic reed switch, laptop, and jumper wires at the start of an internet of things connected project
Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash

Published 19 August 2024

Co-hosts Andy, Michael and Michael start things off on a quantum note, where a particle can be two places at once.  Actually, according to the New Scientist article, the angular momentum could be disembodied from the particle.  In related news, the collapsing of the quantum field for whether a player is offsides or not in the Premier League will now be determined by a bevy of iPhone instead of VAR.  

Moving right along to the AI theme for the week, the co-hosts take a look at a build your own version of the Rabbit that the team over at Comfyspace have called the Rappit.  Then, they bring up the challenges associated with training LLMs, and the solution from ProRata.ai, which aims to compensate creators when GenAI results leverage the creator’s intellectual property.  This leads to a recent report in The Verge of ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s comments at a Stanford economics class.   

Next up are some examples of non-AI hardware, in the form of a wearable computer which takes advantage of XReal Air AR glasses and a Corne keyboard.  And there’s something just wonderful about the Carabiner Collection website.

Wrapping up this week’s episode, the co-hosts discuss the Pluralistic post about the DoJ’s decision on Google, and a browser based version of Diablo.

Do you believe that Andy’s Logitech mouse has it in for him?  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

Quantum

New Scientist article: New spin on quantum theory forces rethink of a fundamental physics law

Gizmodo article:  The Premier League Is Ditching VAR in Favor of Dozens of iPhones to Call Offsides

AI Hardware & Software

Rappit

Games at Work e464: AI Piano Man

Wired article: Generative AI Has a ‘Shoplifting’ Problem. This Startup CEO Has a Plan to Fix It

ProRata.ai

The Verge article: Ex-Google CEO says successful AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to ‘clean up the mess’

Stanford Econ295 transcript Eric Schmidt

Non-AI Hardware

hackster.io article: This Wearable Computing Rig Combines Augmented Reality, Ergonomic Keyboards, and Cardboard

XReal Air Augmented Reality Glasses

Corne keyboard

Carabiner Collection

Google

Pluralistic: Daily Links from Cory Doctorow: The paradox of choice screens (12 Aug 2024)

Games & Other Software

Diablo web