e555 — One Two, One Two

e555 — One Two, One Two

Author: Michael Rowe, Michael Martine, Andy Piper May 25, 2026 Duration: 36:27
sculpture - The Bean in Millennium Park, Chicago, IL
Photo by Michael Martine: The Bean in Millennium Park, Chicago, IL, June 2019

Published 25 May 2026

e555 with Andy, Michael and Michael – Ploopy’s The Bean and Lenovo’s TrackPoint, The Guild, The Movie, AI in commencement speeches, AI in podcasts, Virtual Worlds and Virtual OS museums and a whole lot more!

Andy, Michael and Michael get things started with an appreciation of Andy’s work to migrate the Games at Work hosting site to a new service in uninterrupted fashion for our listeners.  Next, a new piece of open source hardware that Andy’s purchased, the Ploopy The Bean.  After the cohosts wax poetic on the awesome sauce that is the TrackPoint, they turn their attention to The Guild.  Felicia Day and the team from The Guild are planning to launch a movie.  Andy, Michael and Michael are very excited about this!  

Switching to AI, and all of the recent stories about how university commencement audiences have been booing speakers extolling the virtues of AI, the team considers Woz’s take on AI being “Actual Intelligence”.  This reference is cheered and not booed.  Continuing on the theme, the cohosts discuss a recent play by Spotify of providing an authentication for podcasts recorded by actual humans (with actual intelligence).  This spurs a lively conversation on what that validation might entail, and what it means, especially given the prevalence of AI generated audio content.  

The team wraps up the show with a couple of virtual museums – one shared by friend of the show Ian Hughes – the Virtual Worlds Museum.  The cohosts all agree that Ian would make a fantastic spokesperson for this museum.  The other is a virtual OS museum.

Finally, Andy shares a tremendous social networking graph that traces letters sent between 285 cities during the years from 1363 to 1412,  Check it out, and give a listen to the song from Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 for how the Russians would write letters in the links below.

What would be a good name for AI generated podcast content?  Podslop?  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

Shiny new things

Updated GamesAtWork.biz courtesy of Andy – you rock, Andy!

Ploopy, The Bean

Lenovo ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II

The Guild

The Guild: The Movie

Photo of Felicia Day by Michael Rowe, June 2011

Games at Work e415: Pushing our Buttons (for The Guild)

Games at Work e96: The Professional Line Sitter (for the Guild’s Zaboo’s seat saving network idea)

AI

Fast Company article: This sentence about AI got Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak applause—not boos—for his commencement speech

Variety article: Spotify Officially Bans AI-Generated Podcasts That Impersonate Someone Else, Adds Verification Badges for Podcasts

Playlist Push blog post: How Spotify’s New Verification System Works for Artists

TechCrunch article: Google goes for the glitter with disco-ball icons: ‘Are y’all sure you still want this?

Variety article: Spotify Says Disco-Ball Icon, Which Prompted Massive User Backlash, Will Go Away Next Week as Planned

The Verge article: Amazon Alexa Plus can now create AI-generated podcasts

Google’s NotebookLM

TechDirt article: Amazon Gets Into The AI Podcast Slop Business

Sixcolors post: New Apple accessibility updates focus on Apple Intelligence

The Atlantic article: Everything You Do Is Being Recorded

Virtual Worlds

Kickstarter project: Virtual Worlds Museum™

The Virtual OS Museum

Real World

Datini Letters Geospatial Explorer


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: 55

Games At Work dot Biz
Podcast Episodes
e556— AI With Extra Guac [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:53
Photo by Mikey Frost on Unsplash Published 8 June 2026 e556 with Michael, Andy and Michael – Michael R’s annual edu-cation, chatbot trickery, data center data visualization, LeRobot Humanoid open source robotics, LEGO an…
e554 — SPI vs I [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:44
Photo by Valérie Ungerer on Unsplash Published 18 May 2026 e554 with Michael and Michael – stories and discussion on LLM phone number lookups, proctors returning to Princeton, lavish LEGO, LOTR and a whole lot more! Whil…
e553 — Monks, Bots & Ghosts [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:36
Stories and discussion on a robot monk, the Dead Internet Theory, agentic autonomy, Happy Net Box, the Artemis II minifig.me crew and a whole lot more!
e552 — Norwegian Blue Vision [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:52
Photo by Shannon Potter on Unsplash Published 4 May 2026 e552 with Andy, Michael and Michael – stories and discussion on AI, life on Mars, life of the Vision Pro, retro C64s and a whole lot more! Andy, Michael and Michae…
e551 — ATProto Socials [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 23:38
Photo from the International Space Station 1 April 2026 of the exhaust plume from Artemis II in Earth’s atmosphere – NASA ID: iss074e0431736 Published 20 April 2026 e551 with Michael, Michael and Andy – a tour of the Atm…
e550 — Moontella [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 23:42
Mashup of photo by Victor Serban on Unsplash & images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009287/art002e009287~orig.jpg Published 13 April 2026 e550 with Michael, Andy and Michael – celebrating Moon Joy with the Artemis II crew…
e549 — Dark Side of the Moon [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:00
NASA photo art002e009057, 4 April 2026 Published 6 April 2026 e549 with Andy, Michael and Michael – boldly go into a deep set of space discussions featuring Artemis II, ways to keep track of the historic flight, COTS sof…
e548 — The Uncomfortable Valley [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:34
Photo by NEOM on Unsplash Published 23 March 2026 e548 with Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on uncomfortable valley & uncanny valley, Nintendo’s Talking Flower, 8bit Pixel Agents for AI orchestration and a w…
e547 — Bricktastic [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:00
Photo by Michael Martine, Chapel Hill, NC March 2026 Published 16 March 2026 e547 with Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on bot to bot communications, 50 years of Apple, LEGO SmartPlay SmartBricks and a whole…
e546 — Smart Play Doom Brain Brick [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:12
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 playlis…