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

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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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e519 — Clippy Kittens

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orange kitten on a bed
Photo by Mike Stimpson on Unsplash

Published 30 June 2025

e519 with Michael, Andy and Michael – stories about AI conversations with pets and people, LLM data retention, AI slop, Clippy-esque prompts, AI workloads in space and a whole lot more.

Michael, Andy and Michael begin with an AI story about the possibility for translating what your pet has to say.  There have been similar stories, and certainly it is only a matter of time before there is a breakthrough to help humans talk to the animals. 

Next up, a video from John Oliver on AI slop for the masses, that interestingly enough starts off with cats.  The team then moves on to what LLMs know about those that use them.  A couple of articles from Schneier and Geeky Gadgets illustrate the challenges emerging with current data retention policies.  Andy asked ChatGPT to write his bio back in 2023, and the hallucinations from that experience is in the show notes below.

After a conversation on the future of Computer Science, the team considers AI workloads in space using the Syntilay example of designing shoes.  Then, a Mastodon post on the newest prompts from Microsoft Word reminds the cohosts of the fan favorite Clippy.  Next, there’s an AR example of advertising popup blockers where the cure may be worse than the disease of the number of ads and their content.

Wrapping things up for this episode, Andy, Michael and Michael take a look at the Microsoft Xbox branded Meta VR headset and The Confrontation LoTR tabletop game.  

What is your favorite AI slop example?  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

Boy Genius Report article: AI could finally help us talk to our cats

Games at Work e495: Personal Planetarium for translating animal communications

Mashable article: John Oliver finds a creative way to get revenge on AI spam

Schneier on Security post: What LLMs Know About Their Users

Geeky Gadgets article: OpenAI’s ChatGPT Data Retention Policy Explained : Is Your Data at Risk?

Games at Work e406: AI Lemmings (for multiple versions of Andy’s bio)

Andy’s fun with ChatGPT from 2023 – multiple versions of his bio

The Atlantic article: The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting

Coolest Gadgets article: Reebok Co-Founder’s Startup to Design AI-Generated Shoe in Space

Syntilay AI designed shoes

me: there’s nothing worse than opening a blank document

microsoft word: hold my beer

— Hadas Weiss (@HadasWeiss) 2025-06-27T09:12:48.909Z

PC Gamer article: Software engineer creates a real-life ad block using Snapchat’s AR smart glasses, but ultimately ends up making something far more distracting than ads

VR

The Verge article: A week in Xbox VR with Microsoft and Meta’s new $399 headset

Tabletop Gaming

Wargamer article: This special edition Lord of the Rings board game comes with its own damn table

Gamefound: The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation Ultimate Edition

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: 27:56 — 39.0MB) | Embed

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e518 — The Old Ones Are The Best

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Atari Flashback console playing Asteroids connected to a portable television in front of a skateboard
Photo by Boris Langvand on Unsplash

Published 23 June 2025

e518 with Andy, Michael, and Michael – stories about Atari adjacent AI, a new Emotiv experience, Midjourney video magic, Bondi blue, visionOS persona improvements, the Nex Playground and a whole lot more.

Andy, Michael and Michael begin with a couple of Atari AI stories.  First up, there’s a Hackaday article dealing with randomly generating Atari games, replete with a link in the notes below to the Github repo to check out.  Next is a Futurism article detailing how ChatGPT loses to the computing might encompassed by an Atari 2600 console.  Continuing on the ChatGPT theme, the co-hosts check out a post on the recent ChatGPT worldwide outage, and what happened as a result.  

Then, the team turns to a discussion on the recent Emotiv kickstarter, the MW20 Neuro Earphones, and are reminded about the Emotiv Insight.  Rounding out the AI section, Michael, Andy and Michael enjoy Ian Hughes’ Midjourney experiment to create a short video of Roisin Kincade from his book Reconfigure. 

After considering a cute iMac G3 inspired Apple Watch charging stand, the team charges into a conversation about the recent updates to visionOS 26, paying special focus to the Persona function.  Michael Rowe has a nice before-and-after view of his Persona posted in his blog, and Michael M finds the AI generated Dutch master painting of Michael from back in e240.  Check out the links below to see for yourself!

A new to the cohosts gaming console called Nex Playground (not Next – that was a different company!) has a modular form factor, and makes use of a camera for the gameplay.  The Creative Bloq article references Homecourt as the origin for the Nex Playground — “the eye in the sky does not lie!” is a common refrain from sports analytics enthusiasts.  It is intriguing how sophisticated the AI motion detection has come in this consumer space.

What games can you imagine playing where your body is the controller?  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

Hackaday article: Randomly Generating Atari Games

Finite Atari Machine GitHub repo

Futurism article: ChatGPT “Absolutely Wrecked” at Chess by Atari 2600 Console From 1977

Robert Caruso’s LinkedIn Post: 🧠🤖 Atari 2600 Pulls Off the Upset!!

Wikipedia article: TRS-80 Color Computer

ChatGPT goes down — and fake jobs grind to a halt worldwide

pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/11/cha – text
youtube.com/watch?v=889fSJTRZl – video

— David Gerard (@davidgerard) 2025-06-11T15:59:42.031Z

Pivot to AI post: ChatGPT goes down — and fake jobs grind to a halt worldwide

Kickstarter post: Emotiv MW20 Neuro Earphones: Hi‑Fi Audio + Brain Insights

Emotiv

Games at Work e37: Sticky Games (for Emotiv reference – perhaps the first?)

IMDb: Minority Report

Loving midjourney new video generation. Ran the opening still from reconfigurebook.co.uk through it and Roisin really came to life. I last did this in 2023 with Runway. As I wrote feedingedge.co.uk/blog/2023/07

— Epredator (@epredator) 2025-06-18T23:02:57.523Z

Feeding Edge post: Reconfigure – The Movie, nearly

Midjourney post: Introducing Our V1 Video Model

Apple

The Verge article: Charge your Apple Watch on this tiny iMac G3 replica

Wikipedia article: iMac G3

iColorpaltte Bondi blue

Six Colors article: visionOS 26 keeps pushing Apple’s newest platform toward the future

Random Thoughts post: WWDC 2025 – Liquid Glass (for the AI Dutch master version of Michael Rowe in the initial visionOS)

Games at Work e240: Game of Life (for Michael R’s generated portrait)

Games

Creative Bloq article: Nex Playground review: an Apple-like active games console for the family

Nex Playground

Homecourt.ai

Games at Work e327: Virtually Athletic

Nintendo Wii Sports

CNET article: I Downloaded Crazy Taxi on My iPhone for Free Before Sega Discontinues It

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: 32:19 — 45.0MB) | Embed

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