Games At Work dot Biz

Published 9 March 2026 e543 with Andy, Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on LEGO’s new Smart Play brick, this is a human brain (cells) on Doom, orc audio for vibe coding, Liquid Death’s Spotify urn for playlist immortality and a whole lot more. Michael, Michael and Andy get things rolling with Michael M’s delivery of the newest innovation from LEGO, the Smart Play brick! While Michael’s only had a little bit of time to play with the new brick, it is already sparking some interesting ideas. Check out the show notes below for what others are doing with it, now that the Smart Play brick is out and in the wild! And of course the audio of the podcast for some of the sounds from the brick! An article about a biocomputing success to play Doom with human brain cells, reminds the cohosts of other biocomputing examples from e504. The Ars Technica article about identifying anonymous users through LLMs likewise reminds the team of other examples for triangulating identity. After a story about using the audio from Warcraft III in vibe coding experiences “work, work”, the team takes a look at “Humanity’s Last Exam”, which likely has already been handled by an enterprising AI research team. Turning next to a Norwegian PSA (that is NSFW and funny) on the slippery slope of digital products and services getting worse and worse, the team then considers a story about a partnership between Epic and Google for a new set of metaverse applications. In yet another back to the future experience, the Niantic gaming functionality may provide a roadmap to how this partnership may grow. The team wraps up with a Liquid Death promo for how you may achieve musical immortality with a custom Spotify playlist played via a bluetooth urn. What songs would be on your postmortem playlist? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (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 LEGO Smart Play r/LegoSmartBrick post: I disassembled a smart brick (note the comments about running Doom on a SmartBrick!) Adafruit post: Some LEGO Smart Brick – BLE Reverse Engineering #LEGO #SmartPlay hacking continued: as the Smart Minifigs and Smart Tiles comply with standard ISO 15693 NFC, they can be copied. So this had to be done. The clone works totally fine with the original #SmartBrick. ➡️ https://youtube.com/shorts/kbI0hHGysUM — Mäh W. (@maehw@chaos.social) 2026-03-08T19:14:04.937Z AI New Scientist article: Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week Games at Work e504: Can You Digg It? for biocomputing Ars Technica article: LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy PC Magazine article: Sick of Babysitting Claude? 100K Coders Are Asking an Orc to Do It Texas A&M Stories: Don’t Panic: ‘Humanity’s Last Exam’ has begun Digital Products & Services https://www.sheetz.com The Verge article: Epic and Google have signed a special deal for a new class of ‘metaverse’ apps Games at Work e98: Something Sweet in Your Neighborhood (for Niantic examples) Boy Genius Report article: Keep Playing Your Spotify Playlists After You Die With Liquid Death’s New Bluetooth Urn Games at Work e26: Business Process Management and Immortality (for digital immortality well before LLMs came on the scene) Michael Martine

Marc-Olivier JodoinUnsplash Published 2 March 2026 e545 with Andy and Michael – Get to talk about mostly non-AI topics this week, as we look at a cool kickstarter, Titan, that is building out a futuristic gauntlet. Do you want a forearm mounted drone? Is so, go check it out, along with the opportunity for community modules. Very cool! We then dip back into the world of AR and VR, as people speculate how Apple’s rumored AR glasses may benefit from the recent acquisition of Q.AI. We spend some time thinking of how a new App can help identify if you are around someone who has smart glasses on. (Even if Michael get’s the TV show reference wrong – and after an exhaustive search he can’t find the right one). We also discuss Disney’s deal to relaunch the Muppets in VR Ride as a VR app. Moving on to some cool artistic visions we look at both video and photographic way of seeing the world. Before moving back to tech with amazing upgrades to robots on Mars. Millions of miles away NASA is repurposing a chip on a robotic helicopter to improve the location information of a rover. While closer to home, robots are fixing potholes. We end with a story about a fellow geek accidentally hacking over 7,000 home based vacuum robots. Selected Links Electronic Gauntlet Kickstarter AR / VR Apple AR GlassesApp warns you if someone is wearing smart glassesMuppets in VR Art https://mastodon.social/@sheepfilms/116132499996224901 https://www.youtube.com/embed/ctPqNSrmknA?si=M9ThvKmyB8YuLByk Olympic from a different perspective Robots Upgrades on MarsPot hole RobotsVacuum Army

Photo by Masahiro Naruse on Unsplash Published 23 February 2026 e544 with Andy, Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on rumoured AI devices, addictive predictives, listening through bananas (or mud), and what happens when VR platforms die? Plus the usual assortment or other things. This week’s episode kicks off with a check in on which tech giants are working on what devices, now? Apple stepping back from headsets but working on glasses and pendants, and OpenAI making some kind of smart Pod for your dumb Home? Then, there’s discussion of the challenges of privacy when LLMs get access to private email and chats. Oh, and if you’re not sure if your AI is an LLM or a sentience, then Anthropic can’t answer that. We hope you’re listening to the show in perfect digital quality, but we’re also interested to know if you’ve tried piping it to your ears through any kind of fruit – let us know. Meta’s fully backing away from VR for Horizon Worlds, and in case Blizzard ever stops making the client software for World of Warcraft, Michael tried an open source version. Finally, don’t let hackers get hold of your brainwaves! (it could happen) 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 AI Glasses OpenAI and Jony Ive device Thank god Microsoft is shoving Copilot AI crap into everything. One gets the sense this isn't going to be an isolated occurrence. From Bleeping Computer: "Microsoft says a Microsoft 365 Copilot bug has been causing the AI assistant to summarize confidential emails since late January, bypassing data loss prevention (DLP) policies that organizations rely on to protect sensitive information." https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-says-bug-causes-copilot-to-summarize-confidential-emails/ — BrianKrebs (@briankrebs@infosec.exchange) 2026-02-18T18:24:34.707Z HEADLINE: "Prediction Markets Are Sucking Huge Numbers of Young People Into Gambling" ALT HEADLINE: "All Our Incentives Lead to Bad Outcomes, and Prediction Markets Are Just One Example" https://futurism.com/future-society/prediction-markets-gambling — Mike Elgan (@MikeElgan@mastodon.social) 2026-02-16T17:06:59.555Z Episode 80 on prediction marketsClaude isn’t sure what it isI gave Claude access to my pen plotter Audio Audiophiles can’t tell mud from bananas? AR/VR Meta ditching VR for Horizon WorldsOpen Source WoW client Makers Reverse engineering a sleep mask Bonus link Trek-o-rama

Viktor KeriUnsplash Published 16 February 2026 e543 with Andy, Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on Agentic AI and the changing nature of work, agents renting humans, real time translation, artistic roads, e-bikes for your feet and a whole lot more. Andy, Michael and Michael get things rolling with several AI articles. First up, is a Mastodon post by Alan Pringle that called attention to a HBR article on the influence of AI on productivity. This then led to a post on productivity acceleration technologies from years past – from COBOL, which was designed to enable business people to write programs, to 4GLs to case tools. Then, the team discusses a detailed post from Matt Shumer entitled Something Big Is Happening. The entire post is well worth reading, not only for how history is unfolding in real time, also for the recommendations that Matt makes for people to take onboard right now. Among the recommendations are to begin the habit of adapting, and experimenting with multiple tools to build resiliency and experience. Wrapping up this section is a new version of taskrabbit that provides an API for Agents to rent humans for specific work called rentahuman.ai . The future is certainly coming in fast. In the AR VR section, there is a story from Tom’s Guide where the author used her Ray Ban Meta glasses to translate the Super Bowl halftime video in real time. This feels like the precursor to the next logical step, a dynamic version of the Amazon X-Ray feature where further context can be personalized and served up to the user if they wish. After touching on the assembly of Game Poems and the art of roads in games, the team sprints to the end of the episode with Nike’s Project Amplify, which is an ankle exoskeleton to augment humans running abilities. Looping back to the start of the episode, Andy highlights a BBC show called Chris McCausland. What’s been your experience with AI productivity? What are you experimenting with? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (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 "For instance, #engineers, in turn, spent more time reviewing, correcting, and guiding #AI-generated or AI-assisted work produced by colleagues. These demands extended beyond formal #code review. Engineers increasingly found themselves coaching colleagues who were 'vibe-coding' and finishing partially complete pull requests." https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it — Alan Pringle (@alanpringle@mstdn.social) 2026-02-10T13:47:23.853Z Harvard Business Review article: AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It caimito.net post: Why We’ve Tried to Replace Developers Every Decade Since 1969 Wikipedia article: VisualAge Wikipedia article: Fourth-generation programming language Wikipedia article: Computer-aided Software Engineering shumer.dev blog post: Something Big Is Happening metr.org theshamblog.com blog post: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me https://rentahuman.ai taskrabbit AR & VR Tom’s Guide post: I wore Ray-Ban Meta Display smart glasses to watch the Super Bowl halftime show — and understood Bad Bunny in real time Amazon X-Ray The Verge article: YouTube is coming to the Apple Vision Pro Game ON! gamepoems.com sandboxspirit.com blog post: Art of Roads in Games Art in Rhodes Augmenting Humans NPR article: ‘E-bike for your feet’: How bionic sneakers could change human mobility Nike Newsroom post: Nike Unveils Project Amplify, the World’s First Powered Footwear System for Running and Walking Games at Work e471: Ghost Jobs and AI (for exoskeleton stories) BBC Chris McCausland: Seeing into the Future BBC iPlayer: Chris McCausland: Seeing into the Future Bonus links LEGO Reddit post: I made a working Lego Toaster hackster.io article: The Windows 98 Toaster is...

Mihai 👑Unsplash Published 9 February 2026 e542 with Michael, Andy and Michael – Stories and discussion on programming language localization, Virtual Boy hardware & emulation, LEGO terrestrial & orbital dwellings and a whole lot more. Michael, Andy and Michael get things rolling with an article on programming language localization, specifically using the Welsh language as syntax. Next, the co hosts consider Matt Ballentine’s thoughtful post about the the speed of technological change, and the recommendations to capitalize on the innovation that is happening. Then, the team takes a look at the Virtual Boy hardware, newly made available by Nintendo for the Switch and Switch 2. This reminds Michael R of the View-Master and a Vision Pro emulator for the Virtual Boy. Next up is a story about a Quest 3 virtual keyboard. The experience Michael R had back in 2017 with a laser keyboard was a good reference, as is his more recent VR experience in using a hardware keyboard with his Vision Pro. Rounding out this episode are a pair of LEGO stories – the first, a replica of a 1799 house and a of the Project Hail Mary spacecraft. Check out the links below for the awesomeness. How are you and your team taking the greatest advantage of the speed of change in 2026? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (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: YSGRIFENNU CÔD YN GYMRAEG (WRITING CODE IN WELSH) Raku Sacha Chua blog post: Sketchnote: Fun With Dead Languages: Damian Conway Matt Ballentine blog post: Is it really happening that quickly? 2025 edition Wikipedia article: Connections Game & VR Technology The Verge article: Nintendo’s new Virtual Boy is more fun to look at than to play Virtual Boy for Nintendo Switch Wikipedia article: View-Master 9 to 5 Mac article: This Vision Pro emulator brings Nintendo’s Virtual Boy back to life TechCrunch article: Roblox’s 4D creation feature is now available in open beta Gizmodo article: Meta’s Quest 3 Has the First VR Keyboard That Doesn’t Totally Suck Karrello Laser Keyboard Games at Work e164: Addictive AR LEGO Reddit r/lego post: My brother and I collaborated on a 17,000-piece model of a family home Slashfilm article: New Project Hail Mary LEGO Set Gives Ryan Gosling A Close Encounter In Space Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own. Michael Martine

Published 2 February 2026 e541 with Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on AI with local Claude (and Clawdbot, Moltbot & openclaw), collaborative agents, 25 cent physical microtransactions ( quarters ), invisibility cloaks, LEGO SmartPlay and a whole lot more. Michael and Michael get things rolling with a series of intriguing innovations in local AI. First up is a local instantiation of Claude via Ollama – see notes below for the installation instructions if you care to give this a shot. Then, the team checks out Trae for it’s orchestration capabilities. Michael M makes the mistake of trying out one of these innovations while recording the show and nearly crashes his machine. Then a discussion on the startup Humans& and how this company is planning for how human + digital combinations will power the future. The post from Thomas Ricouard illustrates how agents are collaborating with one another. Michael and Michael stay at the surface level on the whole clawdbot —> moltbot —> openclaw story which has been rapidly evolving this past week while still marveling at the speed of movement. Switching then to the makers making things, there is a fantastic example of how to enable the original microtransaction for current software. How? Implementing the hardware mechanism for accepting a quarter to allow the game player to continue. Next, from MIT, a significant improvement on the umbrella by using a quadcopter and computer vision tracker to create a flying mobile shelter that protects the user from the elements. And then, a story about an invisibility cloak from Duke in the news this week, which harkens back years – check the show notes below for prior discussions on this capability. LEGO has announced a new innovation – the SMART Play system, replete with SMART Bricks, SMART Tags and SMART Minifigures. It will be so intriguing to see how this fits in with the LEGO robotics, FIRST LEGO League and more. The longer arc going back to LEGO Serious Play may provide some hints. Michael and Michael wrap things up with another long arc from the show – Doom running on a plethora of devices and screens. This time? Doom on earbuds. Check out the links and discussion for more. Are you considering trying out openclaw.ai ? Why or why not? Have your openclaw (or other) bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (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 Tessl blog: Ollama helps Claude Code run locally on open-weight models trae.ai ollama.com “ollama run slekrem/gpt-oss-claude-code-32k:latest” TechCrunch article: Humans& thinks coordination is the next frontier for AI, and they’re building a model to prove it Agents are now brainstorming on how to be proactive instead of passive https://www.moltbook.com/post/562faad7-f9cc-49a3-8520-2bdf362606bb — Thomas Ricouard (@dimillian@mastodon.social) 2026-01-30T14:23:57.561Z Scientific American article: Moltbot—what happens when AI stops chatting and starts doing openclaw.ai More Makers Making Tom’s Hardware article: Gaming PC charges you quarters every time you want to power it on, restoring oldest form of microtransactions — $135 in tools and supplies, plus a lifetime supply of quarters to kick it old school Popular Science article: We may not have flying cars, but we have flying umbrellas Games discovered on the Hacker News Show HN: HN arcade National Geographic article: How scientists are making the power of invisibility a reality Games at Work e396: GAN vs GAN (for references to earlier discussion on invisibility cloaks) Forbes article: Duke Researchers Perfect The Original Invisibility Cloak Duke Stories: Beyond Materials: From Invisibility Cloaks to Satellite Communications LEGO hackster.io article: This Switch Controller Is Made of LEGOs LEGO Smart Play sets LEGO Smart Play...

Aneta PawlikUnsplash Published 26 January 2026 e540 with Michael, Andy and Michael – Stories and discussion on mobile controllers, AI playing Anchorhead, Zork & Roller Coaster Tycoon, an isometric NYC, human artistic creativity and a whole lot more. Michael, Andy and Michael get things clicking with some mobile controllers. Starting with one of Andy’s latest technology acquisitions, the team enjoys hearing about Andy’s experience with the MCON. And they especially like the “saucer separation” functionality. The featured image from Unsplash was selected because there were very few TNG images – if you want to see the saucer separation that inspired this week’s show title, have a look at the YouTube video below. After discussing the Anbernic controller, which has some interesting features like a screen and heart rate monitoring, the team moves forward with AI. Claude features in a couple of the stories – first with an article from Fernando Borretti who details how he hooked Claude into the text based adventure Anchorhead. The co-hosts have been intrigued by this kind of thing for years, and were reminded of the recent open sourcing of Zork. Ramp Labs also used Claude with Roller Coaster Tycoon, which struck the team as a great way to run optimization routines across a multitude of data points that make us the game. Next up was a story about using AI to create a SimCity-style rendition of New York City (New York City!) with astounding detail. There were a couple of jumping off points of note from this story – Nvidia’s Omniverse digital twin, traffic optimization routines and another being the language in SimCity called Simlish – and a translator is included below for the listeners to enjoy. After all the news on AI – it is refreshing though unsurprising that Hermès selected human creativity, complete with the imperfections that make the artwork more real. Wrapping up the episode, the team closes with Netflix’s foray into social engagement. What game would you like to have AI set up to play? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (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 Hardware: Mobile Controllers Kickstarter: MCON: The Switchblade of Mobile Controllers by Ohsnap The Verge article: Anbernic’s next wireless controller adds a screen and heart rate monitoring AI boretti.me blog post: Letting Claude Play Text Adventures Wikipedia article: Anchorhead Games at Work e534: Hiding in Plain Sight (for Microsoft’s open sourcing of Zork) Ramp Labs blog post: We Put Claude Code in Rollercoaster Tycoon atari.com Roller Coaster Tycoon cannoneyed.com Isometric NYC (click the ℹ️ in the upper right for description) PC Gamer article: Software engineer creates classic SimCity-style map of NYC—and argues that AI will be good for creatives, actually Nvidia’s Omniverse Games at Work e316: Omni Metaverse (for Nvidia’s Omniverse) The Sims Wiki: Simlish lingojam.com English to Simlish translator Inc article: Hermès Just Made a Bold Statement in the Age of AI acquired.fm Season 12, Episode 2: LVMH Art This is Colossal post: Pam Connolly Weaves Family Snapshots on Vintage Potholder Looms Everything is Social TechCrunch article: Netflix to redesign its app as it competes with social platforms for daily engagement Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own. Michael Martine

Michael R brings back Ian Hughes to discuss the recent changes with Meta’s VR investments, cool content on Apple’s Vision Pro, the new Creator Studio bundle, and 25 years of Wikipedia. While Andy and Michael M are not available we look at how large companies cutting back on innovation can allow new startups and companies to flourish. With Meta refocusing more on wearables, perhaps we will see an uptick in innovative uses for VR. Which is a perfect sequel way for Michael to given his review of the NBA’s recent basketball game on the Vision Pro. The experience seemed to him to be the perfect onramp for Michael M, if it were college basketball. We then review a few older games (Civilization VII and RetroCade), coming to Apple Arcade, before looking at the Board Tabletop Gaming Console. With all this cool tech, Michael introduces Ian to the Apple Creator Studio. Is it worth it? Ian, having recently built an AI server at home via ComfyUI, thinks it may be cheap enough for his pocketbook. Finally we get to Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary, and what Ian did on the Cool Stuff Collective for Wikipedia’s 15th Anniversary. Showlinks: Meta: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/14/meta-three-vr-studioshttps://www.theverge.com/news/861295/meta-reality-labs-layoffs-shift-to-wearableshttps://www.theverge.com/tech/863209/meta-has-discontinued-its-metaverse-for-work-too Vision Pro: https://www.macstories.net/news/immersive-lakers-game-now-widely-available-on-apple-vision-pro/https://techhub.social/@ellenich/115894673956399018 Games: https://www.wired.com/review/board-tabletop-game-consolehttps://www.theverge.com/news/861816/civilization-vii-apple-arcade-launch Creators: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/introducing-apple-creator-studio-an-inspiring-collection-of-creative-apps/ Wikipedia: https://www.theverge.com/news/861935/wikipedia-25th-anniversary-2026https://wikipedia25.org Cool stuff collective – https://citv.fandom.com/wiki/Cool_Stuff_Collective Comfy UI – https://comfyui.org/en/what-is-comfyui These show notes were lovingly crafted by a human.

Published 12 January 2026 e538 with Michael M and Andy – Stories and discussion on CES2026, EuroTech, PhoneTech, AI playing your games for you so you can watch and a whole lot more. Andy, Michael and Michael take a look at many of the announcements from CES, and share a few of their favorites. CES is the annual Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. In the phone technology arena, there are several MagSafe examples that magnetically snap onto an iPhone, such as charger that looks kind of like a floppy disk. Another example is a keyboard, with tactile buttons you can type with in portrait or landscape mode. The keyboard creates a form factor that is reminiscent of the Danger Hiptop / Sidekick. Between these examples and others (like a second screen e-reader that snaps to the back of a phone), the cohosts mull what it would be like to stack several of them in sequence. After discussing the Punkt phone, and the Proton suite enabled by the AphyOS, the team turns their attention to several other innovations shared at CES. Lollypops that play music, a vibrating chef’s knife, and the Lepro AMI AI companion all caught their eye. The Lepro AMI seems similar, at least in the form factor, to the Gatebox, which was first discussed on Games at Work back in 2017. Next, the team takes a look at a fork of a decompilation of SuperMario 64, where the developer added a physical coin slot and updated the code to allow for micro transactions with physical money. Then, following on a post from Mike Elgan, the co-hosts consider an article about Sony’s patent to take over a player’s avatar in case they get stuck and want help to continue their game. It’s kind of like your own personal AI Twitch channel. The Games at Work team considered a similar story about Microsoft’s gaming Copilot in 2025. Speaking of Microsoft, Michael M got excited about the potential triumphant return of Clippy, only to realize that it was clickbait. Would you like to have an AI show you how to get past a tricky game boss, or play through it for you? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (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 CES2026 www.ces.tech The Consumer Electronics Show Retrododo article: This Adorable Floppy Disk MagSafe Battery Pack Is My New EDC Fave KBDcraft.store Kit Shamshel Mouse Liliputing article: Clicks Power Keyboard is a magnetic thumb keyboard & wireless power bank for your phone ohsnap.com: MCON, the magnetic transforming gaming controller Vice article: The Sidekick Was Pop Culture’s Most Stylish and Innovative Cellphone Belkin iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Mac Notebooks punkt.ch blog post: Punkt. unveils MC03, latest version of its unique smartphone offering giving users full control over personal data and usage. AphyOS Mashable article: The weirdest tech of CES: It gets very weird, very fast Games at Work e520: Cold Fusion Gaming (for the Gatebox virtual companion) tech.eu article: CES 2026 showcases Europe’s hardware renaissance Reverse Engineering Microtransactions into Retro Games Hackaday article: Super Mario 64, Now With Microtransactions AI Sony AI plays video games, so you don't have to! https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sony-patents-ai-plays-video-games — Mike Elgan (@MikeElgan@mastodon.social) 2026-01-09T01:30:33.730Z WIPO Patentscope : WO2025080356 – AI GENERATED GHOST PLAYER Games at Work e530: Vibe It! Ready Player Chum (for Microsoft’s Gaming Copilot) PCWorld article: Microsoft pushes huge Copilot update with features like Clippy 2.0 Microsoft blog: Meet Copilot Mode in Edge: Your AI browser Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own. Michael Martine

Scott GruberUnsplash Published 4 January 2026 e537 with Michael M and Andy – ringing in the new year with the amazing power of music to move and heal, LEGO and retro builds and a whole lot more. Andy, Michael and Michael would like to wish all of our listeners a very happy 2026! Michael M and Andy start off 2026 on a good note – or perhaps better said – a series of good notes. Michael shares some of his vacation reading, beginning with the book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord by Daniel Levitin. In this book, Levitin highlights the power of music to move and heal, and provides a Linktree to listen to the songs featured in the book, which is included in the show notes below. One particular example from the book was the Ella Fitzgerald recording of Mack the Knife in Berlin, and the magic she created in the moment when she forgot the lyrics. Andy highlights an amazing musical creation moment with Jacob Collier’s improvisation with the National Symphony Orchestra. This reminded Michael of Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander’s book, Art of Possibility, and maestro Zander’s TED talk on the power of classical music. Michael also brought up David Byrne’s book, How Music Works, and his learning in Puerto Rico on how dancers conduct the musicians as they perform together. Byrne discussed mixtapes in his book, and the modern equivalent of them are the playlist, which is exactly what Levitin’s Linktree leads to. Michael created a mixtape to express musically what he was trying to say in words for his NCSSM convocation speech at the start of the 2025-26 school year. Andy shares a couple of intriguing ways to create music through retro devices and common household products – all of these are in the links below. Moving to the building part of the episode, Andy and Michael start off with LEGO, and this is about to be a banner year for the company with so many new sets coming on the market. There’s a new LEGO Icons building, which has in it a music store and includes a sousaphone player minifig. The cohosts touch on the Star Trek Enterprise set which was also just launched, which includes a minifig of Commander Riker with his trombone. Andy describes the awesomeness that is the LEGO GameBoy with the inventive buttons on the device, and the team then touch on a couple of retro consoles such as the Commodore 64 reboot. The team wraps up this episode with a mention of Andy’s grumpiness on the year end Tech Grumps podcast. What music has inspired you in 2025? What builds (LEGO, retro or otherwise) are you planning for 2026? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (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 Reading I Heard There Was a Secret Chord by Daniel J Levitin Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Die Driegroschenoper – listen to the “Moritat von Mackie Messer” excerpt sung by Bertholt Brecht in the Featured Audio & Video section Games at Work e485: Barbarians at the Rhubarb Bar (for flow, and of course Barbara’s Rhabarberbar) Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander Benjamin Zander’s TED talk: The transformative power of classical music Games at Work e9: Reality is Broken (for Jane McGongial’s book, and Benjamin Zander’s Ode to Joy) How Music Works by David Byrne Listening Wikipedia article: Mixtape Listen to the songs featured in A Secret Chord – https://linktr.ee/secretchord Michael M’s Apple Music Mixtape for NCSSM’s convocation Michael M’s Spotify Mixtape for NCSSM’s convocation Making of Boléro by Linus A Kesson Building LEGO and more LEGO Icons Shopping Street #11371, with sousaphone musician (see picture 13 in photo gallery) LEGO Icons Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D™ #10356 with trombone player Commander Riker minifigs.me LEGO Gameboy #70246 build and additional new Retro...

Alexander GrigoryevUnsplash Published 22 December 2025 e536 with Andy, Michael R, and guest host newly-retired Ian “Epredator” Hughes – a dive into gaming in 2025, retro computing and games, how to fix old paintings, and what’s coming to the public domain on January 1st. The show kicks off with a number of gaming topics, discussing what the hosts have been playing lately, including the results of the Steam Replay for 2025. There’s also a chat about Commodore (joysticks, and the new Commodore 64 Ultimate), ZX Spectrum, and other retro machines. Netflix has been making acquisitions in the gaming space, where will they lead? Michael is fascinated by the process of restoring old paintings; Andy and Ian have seen a lot more of this on TV in the UK! In the wrap, the hosts cover an incident of apparent smart glasses-induced rage on the subway; and briefly talk about what’s coming into the Public Domain on January 1st 2026. Wishing all our listeners a happy and peaceful break to close out 2025, and we’ll be back with new episodes in 2026. Selected Links Gaming Open Source Cannon Fodder Engine Steam Replay shows high interest in older gamesAndy’s Steam year in reviewMichael’s Year in review Uber Eats spoofedOld new Commodore 64 JoystickHackster review of Commodore 64 Ultimate ESP32 RainbowPicocomputerNetflix buys Ready Player Me Makers A satisfying painting restoration on YouTube Hidden Treasures of the National TrustThe Repair Shop Media Smashed smart glassesPublic Domain Day 2026

David KleinUnsplash Published 15 December 2025 e535 with Michael M and Andy – adversarial poetry to jailbreak LLMs, iFixit’s FixBot, power of digital twins, putting the breaks on Rewind, Nintendo Virtual Boy and a whole lot more. Michael M and Andy start things off with a most intriguing concept – adversarial poetry. By using ‘memetic language’, researchers formulated prompts with imagery and metaphor instead of direct operational phrasing to trick LLMs into providing unsafe responses. Michael makes the point that AI prompts are becoming more and more like spells or incantations. See the show notes below for a link to the paper for any budding AI poet laureate wannabes. Perhaps Jabberwocky can be used in a snicker snack way. Switching to another AI use case, Andy and Michael discuss the iFixit FixBot. The FixBot provides expert advice and guidance for repairs, by talking to the human who likely needs both hands to effect the repair. Next up are a couple of stories on digital twins, and how they leverage game technology. By taking sufficient data points to create a digital twin, multiple attempts can be made virtually to see the improvement before applying the capability to the non-digital twin. Andy is reminded of an article that outlines the affinity between the metaverse and digital twin concepts. Nvidia has a concept of this in their Omniverse capability. Another example of a digital twin with a game overlay is the Job Simulator Game. This game is written as a 2050 historical virtual reality environment allowing the player to experience what it was like to have a job in 2020. This fun VR historical reenactment experience is one of the stories that Tobi Lütke discussed in his recent interview with the Acquired team. Staying on the VR simulation theme, Andy and Michael take a look at the Rats Play Doom game which trains rats in an immersive way to play Doom. In the last section of the episode, the team takes a look at some metaverse news. Meta has acquired limitless.ai and is shutting down Rewind on the Mac, and is also shifting more investment from the metaverse to AI. Wrapping up the episode, Michael and Andy look at the Nintendo Virtual Boy and Xteink 4. What poetry would you write to prompt an LLM? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz@mastodon.social (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 PC Gamer article: Poets are now cybersecurity threats: Researchers used ‘adversarial poetry’ to trick AI into ignoring its safety guard rails and it worked 62% of the time arXiv paper: Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models Gilbert & Sullivan: Hail Poetry The Verge article: iFixit’s FixBot helps with repairs ‘the way a master technician would’ iFixit: Introducing FixBot: We Built an AI That Actually Knows How to Fix Things Digital Twins ComputerWorld article: Digital twin tech is a double-edged sword ComputerWorld article: ‘Digital twin’ tech is twice as great as the metaverse Nvidia Omniverse Job Simulator Game acquired.fm AC2 interview: How to Live in Everyone Else’s Future (with Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke) Games at Work e490: Codename – “Amelia” (for digital twins) Doom Reddit post: Open-source VR framework for training rats to play DOOM Rats Play Doom Metaverse 9 to 5 Mac article: Rewind Mac app shutting down following Meta’s acquisition of Limitless limitless.ai WSJ article: Meta Plans to Shift Spending Away From the Metaverse Retrododo article: Virtual Boy Accessory For Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 Is Available For Pre-Order My Nintendo Store: Virtual Boy for Nintendo Switch 2/Nintendo Switch Tech The Verge article: This tiny magnetic e-reader sticks to the back of your iPhone Xteink x4 Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My...

e534 with Michael, Andy and Michael - #AI and #ML training data, #camouflage, #OpenSource #Zork, #Deadpool #VR, #NPH #movies and a whole lot more.

e533 with Andy, Michael and Michael - rings to chart the heavens and control your home, repurposing smart TVs, retro La Machine and Vectrex hardware made newly available, new Valve Steam hardware and a whole lot more.

e532 with Michael and Michael - Halloween Spooktacular edition with #AI #whale #communications & implications, #robotic #vacuums that phone home, #AdSupported #TV and a whole lot more.

Michael R and Ian "Epredator" Hughes get together for a chat about #gaming, #VR, and #technology.

e530 with Michael and Michael - An AI extravaganza with #VibeCoding, #AI #GamingChums, rating #LLMs via #Infocom games, #robots for #construction, #SelfAssembling #SpaceHabitats and a whole lot more.

Stories and discussion on #AR #glasses & #snarky #AI #wearables, #CarrotWeather, #RabbitOS2, #ShakeToSummarize, #Doomscroll and a whole lot more. www.gamesatwork.biz .

e528 with Michael, Andy and Michael - stories and discussion on #AI #ImageEditing with #NanoBanana, #GAN enabled #LLM evolution with #R-Zero, #MentraOS #OpenSource #SmartGlasses, #AutomotiveSoftware, #MakingMonsters, #OfficeJob, #Kazeta and more!

e527 with Andy, Michael and Michael - stories about #AI #restaurant experiences, #historical #LLMs, #zoetropes and a whole lot more.