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.
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 (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.
e534 with Michael, Andy and Michael – AI and ML training data, camouflage, ppen source Zork, Deadpool VR, NPH movies and a whole lot more.
Michael, Andy and Michael start things off with with an intriguing AI analysis of the heist from the Louvre. The Ars Technica article takes the examples of mathematical machine learning and human psychology to show how both were defeated what was considered to be ordinary versus suspicious. This is a terrific reminder on the importance of the training data sets used for AI models and how the “performance of normality became the perfect camouflage”. Michael R highlights the On Intelligence book, and Michael M brings up visual pattern recognition of the human form which ghillie suits help disguise.
Switching to a hackster.io article, the die is cast – or rather the die is 3d printed. Andy shares his thoughts on this bluetooth enabled die, and mentions how dice have featured prominently in the the podcast over the years. E132 from 2016 appears to be the earliest reference to dice in the show notes.
Next up is Microsoft’s announcement to open source the Zork family of text based adventure games from Infocom. Zork is another favorite of the podcast, and e78 from 2014 is the earliest reference! Then the team discusses the Deadpool VR game. The Kotaku article mentions that Neil Patrick Harris does the Deadpool voice acting in the game. This leads the cohosts down the rabbit hole of NPH acting with a number of movies and TV shows.
Oh, and the reason for the “I don’t want a McRib” part of the show title was because the Kotaku article kept serving up McDonalds McRib ads to Michael M, while Michael R with his PiHole does not get such ads.
What is your favorite NPH movie or tv show? 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.
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.
Andy, Michael and Michael start things off with a 400 year old ring that unfolds into an astronomy tool. Check out this amazing technology in the show notes below. If you want to have such a ring of your own, the design team from Black Adept have them available for sale! Sticking with the theme, the next powerful ring follows the Tron Master Control Disk concept. This interesting design expression reminded Michael M of the Mini circular dashboard display.
Next up is a great way to repurpose an old TV. The team explores an article with instructions for making a smart mirror using two way glass and a Raspberry Pi. You may want to ensure that the TV has the automatic content recognition features turned off. Andy remarks on the continuing evolution over the years of the Magic Mirror software that enables this to work. After talking about the bright idea of using the circuity of a smart lightbulb to serve as a Minecraft server, the cohosts look La Machine.
Then the team takes a look at the recent announcements from Valve. New Steam hardware has captured their imagination. The Steam Machine, Steam Frame and a new Steam controller provides great excitement for the platform. Wrapping up the episode, Michael R takes a look at the World of Warcraft new in game currency used for building houses. The blog post announcing this from Blizzard has 2,817 replies when these show notes were written!
What legacy hardware would you most like to have again? 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.
