e512 — Sounds Good, On Paper

e512 — Sounds Good, On Paper

Author: Michael Rowe, Michael Martine, Andy Piper May 5, 2025 Duration: 26:58
Cartoon renditions of Andy and Michael M with headphones and microphones, arm wrestling, generated by ChatGPT May 2025
Cartoon versions of Andy and Michael M, generated by ChatGPT

Published 5 May 2025

e512 with Andy and Michael – E Ink monitors, Agent run companies & towns, winning arguments with AI assistants, pixellating reality and much more.

While Michael R is away, Andy and Michael start off this episode continuing the E Ink theme from last week before shifting to AI and wrapping up with several cool makes.  

It seems that there was a great deal of discussion on E Ink in the past couple of days, and the team touch on the BOOX Mira and Dashing Paperlike displays.  Andy also mentions being on a recent episode of the Bootloader podcast, where he talked about Glance – see the links below for more.  

Moving along to AI, the co-hosts talk through the multiple themes embedded in the TechCrunch article dealing with Perplexity, the divestiture of Chrome, and the business of advertising.  Andy brings up a phrase giving a different name for AI, namely, Computational Text Generation Devices, and Michael shares a link to the Crystal Knows service he heard about during a recent interview.  Then, the co-hosts have a spirited, while still family friendly, conversation spurred on by an automobile journalist’s frustrating experience with a car’s assistant.  Next up was an article about how Carnegie Mellon professors staffed a virtual company solely with AI agents, which reminded Michael about Smallville – check out e428 and e412 from 2023 for more on AI agent interaction in a town setting.  Then, Andy touches on the Meta Ray-Bans story from Gizmodo.

Wrapping up the show for this week, Andy and Michael take a look at a couple of really intriguing makes: PixLens for pixellating reality using a specifically machined acrylic lens, a cassette emulator, and a Sony Watchman brought back to life by a Raspberry Pi.

What would you like to pixellate with the PixLens?  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

E Ink, continued

The Verge article: Boox launches its first color E Ink monitor

BOOX Mira Pro E Ink Monitor

Liliputing article: Dasung Paperlike 13K is a 13.3 inch E Ink color monitor

Dasung Paperlike 13K E Ink Monitor

grocery store price display for the Salisbury, North Carolina classic cherry flavored soft drink Cheerwine
grocery store price display for the Salisbury, North Carolina classic cherry flavored soft drink, Cheerwine

The Bootloader podcast, e19 Welcome Andy Piper for Glance

Glance

Who’s chatting with whom? 

TechCrunch article: Perplexity CEO says its browser will track everything users do online to sell ‘hyper personalized’ ads

Amardeep Singh blog post: Humanities AI in 2025: Brief Reflections After a Conference

CrystalKnows.com 

USA Today article: Scolded by a car? My battle with an EV assistant going rogue

Futurism article: Professors Staffed a Fake Company Entirely With AI Agents, and You’ll Never Guess What Happened

Games at Work e428: Is you is, or is you AIn’t my AI? For Smallville

ARXIV paper: Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior

Games at Work e412: 3D or not 3D also for Smallville and NPCs

Gizmodo article: Meta Is Turning Its Ray-Bans Into a Surveillance Machine for AI

Hacks & Makes

AdaFruit blog post: PixLens: Reality into 8-bit

PixLens

I've adorned my cassette emulator device with a hand whittled label. The top panel has some bumps from through-board solder pads, so nothing I can do about that. But overall it's alright, if you don't look too closely and/or judge too harshly.

— electron.greg (@electron_greg@oldbytes.space)
2025-04-29T19:51:00.721Z

hackster.io post: A Sony Watchman Lives Again as the Display for a Dinky Raspberry Pi 3 Cyberdeck

Wikipedia article: Sony Watchman

Game preservation bonus links

GOG Dreamlist

The Verge article: GOG is adding some classic Star Wars games to its preservation program


The weekly conversation hosted by Michael Rowe, Michael Martine, and Andy Piper, Games At Work dot Biz, explores the intersection where our digital play and professional lives collide. This isn't just a review show; it's a deep dive into the technology that powers our hobbies, the business behind the leisure, and the cultural news shaping both worlds. Each episode feels like pulling up a chair with three friends who are as passionate about the craft of game development and the evolution of hardware as they are about the pure joy of finding a great new title. You'll hear specific discussions on everything from the latest graphics card impacting performance to the narrative design of an indie darling, all filtered through the lens of professionals who live in the tech space. The Games At Work dot Biz podcast operates on the belief that the games we play and the tools we use are inextricably linked, offering listeners a consistently thoughtful and engaging analysis that goes far beyond a simple score. Tune in for a regular dose of insightful commentary where the serious business of technology meets the serious fun of games.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 50

Games At Work dot Biz
Podcast Episodes
e541 — Invisible Llamas [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:33
edited picture from Lars H Knudsen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-close-up-shot-of-a-llama-7845603/ Published 2 February 2026 e541 with Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on AI with local Claude (and Clawdbot,…
e540 — Saucer Separation Button [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:29
Photo by Aneta Pawlik on Unsplash 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…
e539 — Wikipedia is 25! [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:29
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 av…
e538 — MagSafe Stacking [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:47
Photo by Michael Martine, Blowing Rock, NC 2022 Published 12 January 2026 e538 with Michael, Michael and Andy – Stories and discussion on CES2026, EuroTech, PhoneTech, AI playing your games for you so you can watch and a…
e537 — Reading, Listening & Building Together [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 32:13
Photo by Scott Gruber on Unsplash 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, Michae…
e536 — Can we skip all AI this time? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:53
Photo by Alexander Grigoryev on Unsplash 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 p…
e535 — The Poetry of DOOM [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:13
Photo by David Klein on Unsplash 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…
e534 — Hiding in Plain Sight [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:22
Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash Published 24 November 2025 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 M…
e533 — Rings of Power [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 32:16
Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash Published 17 November 2025 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 new…
e532 — Spooky Scary Tech Skeletons [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:00
Photo by Chris Charles on Unsplash Published 3 November 2025 e532 with Michael and Michael – Halloween Spooktacular edition with AI whale communications & implications, robotic vacuums that phone home, ad supported TVs a…