1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:20,000
Music: [Music]
2
00:00:10,500 --> 00:00:15,839
Intro / Outtro: This is GamesItWork.biz, your weekly podcast about gaming, technology, and play.
3
00:00:15,839 --> 00:00:19,240
Intro / Outtro: Your hosts are Michael Martine, Andy Piper, and Michael Rowe.
4
00:00:19,240 --> 00:00:22,820
Intro / Outtro: The thoughts and opinions on this podcast are those of the hosts and guests alone,
5
00:00:22,820 --> 00:00:28,420
Intro / Outtro: and are not the opinions of any organization which they have been, are, or may be, affiliated with.
6
00:00:33,019 --> 00:00:37,620
Intro / Outtro: This is episode 561, For the Birds.
7
00:00:38,500 --> 00:00:41,079
Music: [upbeat music]
8
00:00:44,500 --> 00:01:01,640
Michael Rowe: Hello, and welcome again to another addition of games at work.biz. This is Michael Martin one of the three co-hosts and we're all here today So you get to hear from each of us happy to participate join and talk some tech as Michael Rolex to say for this short short slot in your
9
00:01:02,579 --> 00:01:05,859
Michael Rowe: Commuter whenever it is that you're listening to us. Michael. How you doing today?
10
00:01:06,500 --> 00:01:16,700
Michael Martine: I'm fine. It's for me for my bathtub, right? Because, you know, no, it's it's it's time for fun and excitement. Andy, how are you?
11
00:01:10,340 --> 00:01:12,819
Michael Rowe: Ooh well, okay
12
00:01:17,500 --> 00:01:22,379
Andy Piper: I'm doing well. It's very warm as I think, um, lots of places on the planet are unfortunately
13
00:01:23,180 --> 00:01:29,260
Andy Piper: encountering some slightly warm weather at the moment. Uh, but beyond that, I, um,
14
00:01:29,500 --> 00:01:31,939
Michael Martine: It's only there was a term for that.
15
00:01:30,539 --> 00:01:37,260
Andy Piper: I know, beyond that, I'm doing okay, and there's always some fun things to talk about when it comes to our
16
00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:41,040
Michael Rowe: make a me cop over here.
17
00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:45,480
Michael Rowe: So we're gonna start things off today with some robotics.
18
00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:48,200
Michael Rowe: We do talk about robotics every so often on the show.
19
00:01:48,200 --> 00:02:01,680
Michael Rowe: And yesterday I heard a piece and that caused me to go search it out because the Thursday edition of the Journal of Science had an article on a new robot
20
00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:09,020
Michael Rowe: from the MIT lab that has the ability to fly not only through the air, but also
21
00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:22,000
Michael Rowe: through water, and we know that maybe not everyone, but a lot of people probably know that penguins fly if you will through water. They don't fly through well in the air. They can wave their fins a bunch for that.
22
00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:37,000
Michael Rowe: And there are other sea diving birds that will do both. And this was really intriguing to hear about how the creators of this did their work to say let's create something that has battery powered.
23
00:02:37,000 --> 00:03:00,000
Michael Rowe: it is small enough to to create the lift that is necessary, that they went through the exercise of waterproofing everything around it. If I remember correctly, there was something along the lines of the wings beat about 5 times per second, while it is in flight and to come up from the water and launch out of the water, it does about 10 per second in order to go do that.
24
00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:06,000
Michael Rowe: Really incredible stuff.
25
00:03:00,500 --> 00:03:08,740
Michael Martine: What I thought was really cool about this is they modeled it after puffins, which are sea birds
26
00:03:09,699 --> 00:03:17,620
Michael Martine: that hunt in the water and live on land and fly in the air. And the key thing is it's the transition
27
00:03:18,099 --> 00:03:26,099
Michael Martine: between the mediums, which if you think about it, that is kind of the challenge in many things,
28
00:03:26,099 --> 00:03:30,500
Michael Martine: is when you transition between mediums, you build up frictions of some sort.
29
00:03:30,500 --> 00:03:40,000
Michael Martine: That can cause challenges. And I loved the fact that, you know, even the weight of the thing was was so light.
30
00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:45,000
Michael Martine: But it had these huge monstrous wings. I mean, there were three feet.
31
00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:52,400
Michael Martine: And I don't think a puff in this structured that way. I think a puff in has much smaller wings to body mass ratio difference.
32
00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:54,000
Michael Rowe: Yep
33
00:03:52,400 --> 00:03:57,500
Michael Martine: But I'm not sure. I'm not a big puffin person. But yeah, I did.
34
00:03:55,199 --> 00:03:59,280
Michael Rowe: Well, there's a there's a picture of a puffin on the post
35
00:03:57,500 --> 00:04:00,500
Michael Martine: But I know. But it's not.
36
00:04:00,500 --> 00:04:05,500
Michael Martine: I don't have scale in that picture. It's underwater, right?
37
00:04:05,500 --> 00:04:09,500
Michael Martine: So again, not being a puffin' person.
38
00:04:09,500 --> 00:04:11,500
Michael Martine: I thought it was really cool.
39
00:04:11,500 --> 00:04:17,500
Michael Martine: I loved the little video where they actually show the transition between the two media of water and air.
40
00:04:17,500 --> 00:04:28,500
Michael Martine: And the other thing that I always find interesting, and yes, we can go back to the right brothers and everybody before them too, is they invented flight that can go between these two transition modes.
41
00:04:28,500 --> 00:04:41,939
Michael Martine: modes like well, no, you invented the mechanical version of that flight, you didn't invent flight. Yeah, well, again, the right fire didn't invent flight either. They emitted mechanical flight. That's the point,
42
00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:36,000
Michael Rowe: And the right flyer doesn't go in the ocean.
43
00:04:41,939 --> 00:04:47,699
Michael Martine: not the transition. But we invent, quote, unquote, a lot of things based off of nature, and
44
00:04:50,500 --> 00:05:14,420
Andy Piper: I think exactly what you just said, the idea of taking inspiration from nature gives us these opportunities and I think really deeply looking at how biological systems have worked through evolution and applying that to mechanics is really, really interesting. Yeah, I love it. I think
45
00:05:15,699 --> 00:05:48,300
Andy Piper: the the challenges here are also as well about that that needing to waterproof every thing because it's just essentially constantly submerged. The body of the thing is constantly submerged. I think, yeah, it could be really fascinating to see where they take this and what they do with it. I think it's okay that it's not a giant robot or even a human-sized robot. It's a little thing that has got a little bit of flexibility and opportunity to move around in different places. We'll see what happens.
46
00:05:47,500 --> 00:05:51,360
Michael Martine: But could you scale it up to a large robot, right?
47
00:05:47,500 --> 00:05:53,019
Michael Rowe: So what? I don't know why not. Why not?
48
00:05:51,100 --> 00:05:59,600
Andy Piper: Well, to do that, the to do that, I think the forces are going to be the problem, right, because they're talking about the fact that they need it to flap its wings.
49
00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:52,600
Michael Martine: What would that look like?
50
00:05:54,519 --> 00:05:55,360
Michael Martine: Physics.
51
00:06:00,899 --> 00:06:13,100
Andy Piper: A significant amount of time, I think they're talking about, is it five to six times a second to maintain flight and then 10 times a second to leave the water and get into the air.
52
00:06:07,500 --> 00:06:11,500
Michael Rowe: Right? Watch.
53
00:06:13,600 --> 00:06:20,500
Andy Piper: So to be able to do that, and then deal with extra weight, exercise of the wings, extra forces you.
54
00:06:20,500 --> 00:06:24,000
Andy Piper: They need to generate the thrusts.
55
00:06:22,500 --> 00:06:30,399
Michael Martine: Yeah, it's why aren't there six foot tall ants, right? It's physics. They're certain you know levels when things scale that they break
56
00:06:31,500 --> 00:06:32,699
Andy Piper: Look, um, I--
57
00:06:31,500 --> 00:06:35,300
Michael Rowe: So what do you guys think about the use cases of such a thing, right?
58
00:06:35,300 --> 00:06:43,399
Michael Rowe: When you think about a robot that can transit between water and air like this, what do you think would be great use cases?
59
00:06:45,500 --> 00:07:03,899
Michael Martine: about a bird. Yeah, yeah. Or, or they could put little wings on penguins. So penguins could actually do this second half of the journey, right? They can get out of the water and fly up to the cliff and say jumping off the cliff to get into the water.
60
00:06:49,399 --> 00:06:52,000
Michael Rowe: Effectively consuming fish, you heard it.
61
00:07:03,500 --> 00:07:07,379
Andy Piper: Well, the article talks about what they're thinking that it could be useful for.
62
00:07:07,379 --> 00:07:15,740
Andy Piper: So the biological monitoring of algal blooms, I hear that some of those around the DC area at the moment.
63
00:07:15,740 --> 00:07:23,980
Andy Piper: And coastal erosion and other things, and I can see it's only see those as opportunities.
64
00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:18,079
Michael Martine: [laughing]
65
00:07:23,980 --> 00:07:32,620
Andy Piper: It's not going to be a deep water type thing, but it could have the right level of agility to stay with
66
00:07:33,500 --> 00:07:35,259
Andy Piper: for example. So it could be interesting.
67
00:07:34,500 --> 00:07:49,500
Michael Martine: I mean, any kind of a sensor device is really what we're talking about that needs to go into areas that are not right next to land and you're not going to drop a buoy because you can do buoys and do algae blooms, right?
68
00:07:49,500 --> 00:07:53,500
Michael Martine: And they don't need to fly because they can just transmit the data.
69
00:07:53,500 --> 00:08:03,500
Michael Martine: And so there are a lot of use cases I can come up with that I don't like, like military use cases and violent use cases.
70
00:08:04,500 --> 00:08:18,500
Michael Martine: But the interesting ones I think can you make them cheaper, more flexible, able to access different spaces than you could with something as simple as a buoy.
71
00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:22,839
Michael Rowe: Yeah, I mean, the thing that I was thinking a little bit about was aquaculture,
72
00:08:22,839 --> 00:08:25,800
Michael Rowe: you know, so that if you are doing fish farming or
73
00:08:27,399 --> 00:08:48,840
Michael Rowe: clams, oysters, that sort of thing, you could more easily monitor and inspect without being on a boat, for example, as a human, this sort of thing could be good, and then you could kind of survey the entirety of it. I also really liked when we talked about Dr. Darling and her experiences about robotics doing
74
00:08:49,000 --> 00:09:14,720
Michael Rowe: things that animals had done for humans in the past. So whether it's oxen pulling a plow in the lake and also mimicking animals in terms of robotics, both of those things were quite cool. Alright, so moving along from the avian world, we now have an article about PDA's and we've all had PDA's in the past. So that's a cool thing in a lot of ways,
75
00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:12,799
Andy Piper: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
76
00:09:14,720 --> 00:09:19,039
Michael Rowe: This one is an e-paper-powered PDA.
77
00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:26,000
Michael Rowe: or provided PDA, and we'll keep all the peas going as long as we can.
78
00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:30,019
Michael Rowe: Michael looks like you found this one. What was your general sense of the pocket
79
00:09:31,500 --> 00:09:44,759
Michael Martine: I just love, again, the idea of more restricted purpose built electronic devices that use lower less expensive tech.
80
00:09:44,759 --> 00:09:51,279
Michael Martine: We talked about the light phone a couple of years back that I tried to get working.
81
00:09:51,279 --> 00:09:54,679
Michael Martine: We talked about stuff recently in this same vein.
82
00:09:54,679 --> 00:10:01,159
Michael Martine: And having a PDA with any paper screen is right in that space.
83
00:10:01,500 --> 00:10:06,919
Michael Martine: I've actually found myself going back to an e-reader for reading stuff instead of using my iPad,
84
00:10:06,919 --> 00:10:10,259
Michael Martine: just because it's restricted content in the sense of,
85
00:10:10,259 --> 00:10:15,799
Michael Martine: I'm not going to be checking my mastodon feed or catching an email coming through.
86
00:10:15,799 --> 00:10:22,879
Michael Martine: And while this one does have the idea of incremental functionality and adding apps and blah, blah,
87
00:10:22,879 --> 00:10:25,879
Michael Martine: blah, blah, I found it cool.
88
00:10:25,879 --> 00:10:29,559
Michael Martine: I do like the fact that it has a QWERTY keyboard.
89
00:10:29,559 --> 00:10:31,080
Michael Martine: Kind of reminds you of the--
90
00:10:31,500 --> 00:10:36,700
Michael Martine: Was it the sidekick with the flip-up screen with the little keyboard on it?
91
00:10:33,500 --> 00:10:36,100
Michael Rowe: Yeah, the danger one, yeah.
92
00:10:36,700 --> 00:10:45,179
Michael Martine: And then, also, PDA, you and I both have soft spots for the old palm pilots.
93
00:10:45,179 --> 00:10:51,899
Michael Martine: I had the original one, the two, the five, I think you had the seven, I had the work pad.
94
00:10:51,899 --> 00:11:00,340
Michael Martine: These were all fun little semi-purpose built or restricted-purpose built devices.
95
00:11:00,340 --> 00:11:01,500
Michael Martine: And I just thought this one was cool.
96
00:11:01,500 --> 00:11:09,860
Andy Piper: I had a Casio, a little Casio PDA type thing, it was gray, I guess it was about hand sized,
97
00:11:09,860 --> 00:11:14,899
Andy Piper: and I had a flip-flip-up lid, and yeah, just a tiny little screen.
98
00:11:14,899 --> 00:11:21,779
Andy Piper: I like what you just said Michael Rowe about, you know, these smaller, more purpose-built,
99
00:11:21,779 --> 00:11:23,659
Andy Piper: smaller power devices.
100
00:11:23,659 --> 00:11:31,500
Andy Piper: If you look at what's going on in the supply chain, of course we know that it's been crushed by, or the consumer slider has been crushed.
101
00:11:32,500 --> 00:11:40,500
Andy Piper: The AI bubble and other things going on, and the desire to have bigger, better, more powerful things all the time.
102
00:11:40,500 --> 00:11:47,500
Andy Piper: And actually, we've got much more than we need already, much more than we need.
103
00:11:47,500 --> 00:11:52,500
Andy Piper: And these kinds of things, I think you're right about having things at a more purpose built,
104
00:11:52,500 --> 00:11:54,500
Andy Piper: because it can help us to be less distracted.
105
00:11:54,500 --> 00:12:00,500
Andy Piper: I say this, because in the full knowledge that I am an easily distracted human at this point in my life,
106
00:12:01,500 --> 00:12:08,500
Andy Piper: I've had my attention span whittled down by all of the devices I have and their capability.
107
00:12:08,500 --> 00:12:09,500
Andy Piper: Oh, I can do this.
108
00:12:09,500 --> 00:12:10,500
Andy Piper: Oh, I can do this.
109
00:12:10,500 --> 00:12:11,500
Andy Piper: Oh, I can just go and check this.
110
00:12:11,500 --> 00:12:16,500
Andy Piper: And actually, it doesn't always lead to productivity by any means.
111
00:12:16,500 --> 00:12:20,500
Andy Piper: So, I want a few things to add on this.
112
00:12:20,500 --> 00:12:23,500
Andy Piper: I'd also seen this story come across my radar.
113
00:12:23,500 --> 00:12:28,500
Andy Piper: I think before my eyes might be posted into our group chat.
114
00:12:28,500 --> 00:12:46,500
Andy Piper: And one thing about it is that it brought back was the whole resurgence or interest around cyber decks that cobbling together assistance from that kind of look cool that have a level of functionality that are kind of generally laptop-ish in form factor.
115
00:12:46,500 --> 00:12:53,500
Andy Piper: This is smaller, but there's a lot of these kinds of devices on the crowdfunding market at the moment.
116
00:12:53,500 --> 00:13:01,500
Andy Piper: This one big E-paper obviously means that, or with an earlier as well, means that it's low power, it can be lighter.
117
00:13:01,500 --> 00:13:11,500
Andy Piper: Even arguably, these are the kinds of things you could go down the road of solar powering or having some other kind of lightweight way to harvest power.
118
00:13:11,500 --> 00:13:15,500
Andy Piper: It reminded me that next week I'm going to be an electronic magnetic field.
119
00:13:15,500 --> 00:13:19,500
Andy Piper: And I'll be there for, I won't be able to recall the show next week.
120
00:13:19,500 --> 00:13:30,500
Andy Piper: But really the whole ethos of that event is a bunch of geeks and makers and techies and people interested in sustainability and community and lots of other good things getting together and sharing fun stuff that we've been doing.
121
00:13:31,500 --> 00:13:39,500
Andy Piper: We're working on thinking about and usually it's completely silly and pushing an idea to its furthest extent.
122
00:13:36,500 --> 00:13:38,500
Michael Martine: Silly is good, though.
123
00:13:39,500 --> 00:13:48,500
Andy Piper: So I'm sure there's going to be a lot of installations along that line. This year's theme, or this every two years, this year's theme is space.
124
00:13:48,500 --> 00:13:59,500
Andy Piper: The previous one was solar punk, the previous one that was underwater. So there's a ton of sort of space age kind of oriented stuff that I've been messing around with that I'll be doing.
125
00:13:59,500 --> 00:14:24,779
Andy Piper: I'll be doing but one of my friends has created a marketplace on sellshirts.com for what he's calling HTTP shirts so that's basically a bunch of geek t-shirts with comedy HTTP codes on but as well as that there's a range of other things that have come into it and one of them is which I picked up straight away was computers are better computers were better when they were worse
126
00:14:25,899 --> 00:14:31,340
Andy Piper: which I think is a fantastic slogan and I really enjoy so I bought that one for myself to
127
00:14:26,500 --> 00:14:28,500
Michael Martine: [laughing]
128
00:14:32,059 --> 00:15:01,500
Andy Piper: to rock at the event next week. The other thing that this laid me down the path of thinking about is not only the the PDA's and the cyber decks that everybody's you know excitedly building and cobbling together from whatever level of technology but another project that's on we're going to be on crowd supply it is on crowds play they haven't started crowdfunding yet which is the open printer which we may have spoken about a year ago.
129
00:15:01,500 --> 00:15:12,500
Andy Piper: So it's been sort of knocking about as an idea for a while now, but it's a French organization who are building an inkjet printer from scratch that's going to be fully open source, open harder open software.
130
00:15:12,500 --> 00:15:21,500
Andy Piper: The bill of materials is going to be available and it will either print to A4 or A3 sheets or onto a roll.
131
00:15:21,500 --> 00:15:25,500
Andy Piper: It can be hung on a wall and it's sustainable.
132
00:15:25,500 --> 00:15:31,500
Andy Piper: The goal of this thing is to be sustainable. If the goal of this thing is not to be closed, printer can see more.
133
00:15:31,500 --> 00:15:54,500
Andy Piper: eco-system where you're buying your fancy inkjet printer or laser printer from one of the incumbent manufacturers who then demand to keep you on the hook for consumables to the point that they deliberately make their products worse and make them fail more quickly and make their ink cartridges DRM encumbered, that's not the goal of this.
134
00:15:54,500 --> 00:16:01,500
Andy Piper: The goal is to make some good technology so I wanted to bring that into the conversation as well because I really love crowd supply. I keep an eye on crowd supply.
135
00:16:01,500 --> 00:16:20,299
Andy Piper: you can get some conquers from there that people haven't really thought about the manufacturing and ongoing life of a product, but you can also find some absolute gems of products from smart people who want something unique, want something more sustainable, and want something better
136
00:16:21,179 --> 00:16:33,500
Andy Piper: from technology. One more thing I mentioned since neither of you have immediately responded to that is that there's an organization called the Society for Hopeful Technology.
137
00:16:31,500 --> 00:16:40,220
Andy Piper: We've recently become a cooperative organization in the UK and there's going to be a membership
138
00:16:40,940 --> 00:16:46,620
Andy Piper: element to it coming soon, but I've been involved in the organizing chat for this for a while now
139
00:16:47,899 --> 00:16:59,980
Andy Piper: and I will be taking some of their stickers and badges along to EMF and encouraging people to think about this because technology can be there to be empowering. That's why I'm involved,
140
00:16:59,980 --> 00:17:01,539
Andy Piper: That's why I'm it. That's why I get
141
00:17:01,500 --> 00:17:23,019
Andy Piper: excited about technology still. I get depressed about the way the economy and the world and technology is part of it all come together sometimes, but we have agency, we have hope, we have the opportunity to build cool things. And again, crowd supply for me is part of that kind of continuum of positive things.
142
00:17:23,019 --> 00:17:27,099
Andy Piper: I will stop talking because I feel like I've just taken up a big chunk of time.
143
00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:30,119
Michael Martine: - Yeah, no, not at all.
144
00:17:30,119 --> 00:17:32,920
Michael Martine: And I was chiming in a positive way,
145
00:17:32,920 --> 00:17:35,180
Michael Martine: but I guess you were talking you didn't hear.
146
00:17:35,180 --> 00:17:37,279
Michael Martine: [laughs]
147
00:17:38,599 --> 00:17:40,720
Michael Martine: Or maybe I just wasn't close enough to the microphone.
148
00:17:40,720 --> 00:17:43,319
Michael Martine: I think this is really, really cool.
149
00:17:44,359 --> 00:17:48,640
Michael Martine: And as soon as I got to the article on the printer,
150
00:17:48,640 --> 00:17:51,160
Michael Martine: which I, again, think is kind of neat,
151
00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:56,240
Michael Martine: I immediately started going down the rattle of other interesting things on crowd supply.
152
00:17:55,500 --> 00:18:08,460
Andy Piper: Grad supplies great grad supply. I've got they've got an add-on board for the bamboo X1c None of the other bamboo printers because at that point after the recent sort of kerfuffle around open source closed source
153
00:18:09,859 --> 00:18:15,779
Andy Piper: The X1c was their first model on this person managed to figure out how he could about build his own controller for it
154
00:18:16,980 --> 00:18:20,140
Andy Piper: So I'd have one of those so mine is completely kind of
155
00:18:21,299 --> 00:18:25,299
Andy Piper: open or much more open than it comes but they've kind of locked it down now.
156
00:18:25,500 --> 00:18:40,500
Andy Piper: Again, there's some really cool stuff on crowd supply across a range of axes, whether it's gaming, whether it's printing, whether it's PDAs or electronics testing, there's some cool stuff on there.
157
00:18:42,500 --> 00:19:11,539
Michael Martine: Yeah, I'm wondering, and I've got to find, we've got an old Lenovo laptop that is still in excellent condition, except for one thing. And the one thing is, this was back when wireless was still considered to be possibly a security issue. And well, now we know it is, but it physically
158
00:19:12,500 --> 00:19:19,460
Michael Martine: on the side of the machine that would turn off the Wi-Fi. Yeah. And the toggle has gone bad.
159
00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:16,000
Andy Piper: Oh, yeah, I remember. Yeah.
160
00:19:20,579 --> 00:19:42,259
Michael Martine: And so what happens is, you boot up and so what happens is, you boot up, you start working on Wi-Fi and the Wi-Fi shuts off. And then you fiddle with the switch and then it turns on. And then it turns itself off again, because the switch has gotten bad. And it's not quite a short, but any jostling or
161
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:24,559
Michael Rowe: Is it locked on or off, Mike?
162
00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:33,900
Michael Rowe: So it's working not as designed.
163
00:19:42,500 --> 00:19:57,460
Michael Martine: ever of the laptop will jiggle that switch and turn it off, which makes it an unusable laptop for the things that we want to use it for. And I actually went and reached out to a local company that supposedly does work on think pads and old ones like, oh, yeah, you just buy a new one's like, no,
164
00:19:44,500 --> 00:19:45,339
Andy Piper: Right.
165
00:19:57,460 --> 00:20:12,660
Michael Martine: we don't want to buy a new one. This one has every feature we want, et cetera, et cetera. We just need you to open it up, find where that switch is, replace it, solder a new one on the motherboard. I don't anything. No, no, no, no, that's too much work.
166
00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:00,000
Andy Piper: Mm-hmm
167
00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:13,000
Michael Rowe: You need an electrical engineer for that.
168
00:20:12,500 --> 00:20:14,500
Michael Martine: [laughter]
169
00:20:13,500 --> 00:20:22,880
Andy Piper: the the other thing that emf has is actually a minute field has is a swap shop and I've seen so you can take a long and pick up
170
00:20:23,900 --> 00:20:31,200
Andy Piper: stuff electronics typically I've seen somebody say donating a think pad and at pre-announcing that they don't need to think pad there
171
00:20:32,980 --> 00:20:37,059
Andy Piper: So I'm sure that will go very fast because they're great machines usually
172
00:20:36,500 --> 00:20:38,619
Michael Martine: - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
173
00:20:38,619 --> 00:20:52,299
Michael Martine: But looking to take it back to the story to crowd supply, my immediate thought was I wonder if there's anything little hack piece that allows me to maybe reattach a new wireless or something in there.
174
00:20:53,299 --> 00:20:59,339
Michael Martine: I know you can get, and I think this one doesn't have the PCMCI slot in it anymore.
175
00:20:59,339 --> 00:21:00,460
Michael Martine: This is after they got rid of that,
176
00:21:00,460 --> 00:21:05,460
Michael Martine: 'cause I used to have a 802.11 AB PCM,
177
00:21:06,500 --> 00:21:11,819
Michael Martine: a CIA card that you'd slip into your laptop and you had this little bubble thing stuck out to the side,
178
00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:13,000
Andy Piper: Yeah
179
00:21:11,819 --> 00:21:13,119
Michael Martine: which was the antenna.
180
00:21:14,259 --> 00:21:15,660
Michael Martine: It'd be really cool to get that thing working.
181
00:21:15,660 --> 00:21:23,539
Michael Martine: I guess I wonder if there's a USB plug that's actually a Wi-Fi network.
182
00:21:22,500 --> 00:21:26,220
Andy Piper: So we've gone thoroughly rabbit-hold,
183
00:21:23,539 --> 00:21:24,380
Michael Martine: There has to be.
184
00:21:26,220 --> 00:21:27,619
Andy Piper: rabbit-hold here.
185
00:21:26,619 --> 00:21:28,460
Michael Martine: Into the weeds, I love it.
186
00:21:27,619 --> 00:21:31,140
Andy Piper: But I will just mention--
187
00:21:28,460 --> 00:21:30,019
Michael Martine: And that's what crowd supply does.
188
00:21:31,140 --> 00:21:33,660
Andy Piper: also crowd supplies for crowd funding, new things,
189
00:21:33,660 --> 00:21:35,539
Andy Piper: of those kinds.
190
00:21:35,539 --> 00:21:40,500
Andy Piper: There are three good electronic marketplaces for independent makers.
191
00:21:40,500 --> 00:21:44,059
Andy Piper: One of them is called Tindy, T-I-N-D-I.
192
00:21:44,059 --> 00:21:46,539
Andy Piper: However, it recently had some controversy,
193
00:21:46,539 --> 00:21:51,059
Andy Piper: because it went through an unexpected and unexplained change of ownership, had a long period of downtime,
194
00:21:51,059 --> 00:21:54,500
Andy Piper: weren't, wasn't paying out to the
195
00:21:52,500 --> 00:22:22,259
Andy Piper: the store owners and so on. There's been a European alternative to Tindy called Electrons, the early CTRO and ZZ or Z, which has been going for a while. And a lot of people move from Tindy to Electrons or set up an additional storefront on Electrons while Tindy was down for an extended period. But the thing with Electrons is it doesn't support PayPal, I believe, which is what a lot of, especially U.S.
196
00:22:22,500 --> 00:22:52,059
Andy Piper: has wanted. So there's another one called Small Run, as in Small Run. These are all kind of small community driven, make-and-market places. And again, if you're looking for weird esoteric things like what you've just described, Michael, those two places I would encourage you to have a look. I can't tell you that you will definitely find a solution to this specific problem you have. You will probably find lots of other gadgets that they're really cool and useful instead.
197
00:22:51,500 --> 00:22:53,500
Michael Martine: Yeah, and that's the problem
198
00:22:53,500 --> 00:22:57,660
Andy Piper: But yeah, it has been.
199
00:22:57,660 --> 00:23:00,900
Andy Piper: And it's interesting because from an economic perspective,
200
00:23:00,900 --> 00:23:09,779
Andy Piper: the bulk shipping from China thing has gone away both in the US and Europe now,
201
00:23:09,779 --> 00:23:16,700
Andy Piper: where they've taken away the free shipping for small items.
202
00:23:16,700 --> 00:23:18,779
Andy Piper: So they're putting on, what's it called?
203
00:23:18,779 --> 00:23:22,339
Andy Piper: My brain is blanking on the name of the minimuses.
204
00:23:22,500 --> 00:23:27,140
Andy Piper: But they're just taken away the minimus in Europe as well,
205
00:23:27,140 --> 00:23:31,940
Andy Piper: because they were worried about the way that the products were coming in.
206
00:23:31,940 --> 00:23:34,180
Andy Piper: And especially when they hadn't necessarily...
207
00:23:34,180 --> 00:23:36,420
Andy Piper: So if you tested or didn't meet relevant standards,
208
00:23:36,420 --> 00:23:40,619
Andy Piper: but that's making a lot more difficult for some of the independent makers.
209
00:23:40,619 --> 00:23:46,259
Andy Piper: But there were a bunch of folks who do make some quite fantastic bits of kit.
210
00:23:46,259 --> 00:23:49,259
Andy Piper: And again, I'm excited to meet some of them at M.F. next week,
211
00:23:49,259 --> 00:23:52,460
Andy Piper: because I know that I'll be in a night market, we'll be selling
212
00:23:52,500 --> 00:23:58,859
Andy Piper: a lot of prints, and they'll be selling home brew computers and things.
213
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:23,000
Michael Rowe: So, Andy, you need to know about this maybe to Michael as I was looking for a small run that you're talking there is a small run.com.au And those guys will let you create your own music on vinyl so that they will do custom vinyl records looks like liner notes the whole kit if that's something that you are interested in doing.
214
00:24:12,500 --> 00:24:17,299
Andy Piper: Ooh, that's crazy.
215
00:24:21,859 --> 00:24:29,299
Andy Piper: This is really cool because my father-in-law makes music and I think that'd be a really cool thing we could do for him.
216
00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:25,000
Michael Rowe: Isn't that fun?
217
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:32,000
Michael Rowe: There you go.
218
00:24:30,220 --> 00:24:33,339
Andy Piper: With one of his Wreck one in my- Oh, wow, that would be cool.
219
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:37,000
Michael Rowe: Do you think he's a listener?
220
00:24:34,420 --> 00:24:39,019
Andy Piper: Oh, yeah, whoops, I may have just- sorry, Barry, if I've just ruined the surprise.
221
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:42,000
Michael Rowe: Well, we may need to edit that out, Michael.
222
00:24:37,500 --> 00:24:49,859
Michael Martine: we may and and you guys just solved a major problem for me because it got me running down rattles now
223
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:47,000
Michael Rowe: Or maybe not.
224
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:50,720
Michael Rowe: Yes, all right. So speaking of rattles.
225
00:24:49,500 --> 00:25:00,059
Andy Piper: We were worried about having a non-enough link to talk about on fill our time because we'd cut out lots of stuff we didn't want to talk about and now we've managed to fill the time with unexpected
226
00:25:01,500 --> 00:25:07,579
Michael Rowe: Yes. Exactly. So, so speaking of, you know, these sidelines and, and rattle kind of things,
227
00:25:07,579 --> 00:25:15,259
Michael Rowe: there is a pair of videos. It's pretty substantial here, Andy. You shared with us about Pico Park.
228
00:25:15,259 --> 00:25:18,059
Michael Rowe: Why don't you unlock this story?
229
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:22,140
Andy Piper: Well, first of all, how either of you had either of you come across Pico Park before?
230
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:25,000
Michael Martine: I had, yes.
231
00:25:25,279 --> 00:25:29,480
Andy Piper: Okay, so for listeners and I'm not familiar with Pico Park. It's a
232
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:32,279
Michael Rowe: And, Michael, thank you.
233
00:25:30,559 --> 00:25:38,640
Andy Piper: And Michael One of the michaels originally it was 2016 it came out. It's been on a few platforms including windows and the switch
234
00:25:39,279 --> 00:25:45,119
Andy Piper: Is on steam. It's got these little cute little colorful characters that look a little bit like cats
235
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:50,759
Andy Piper: Really matter Is cooperative game? It's developed by Japanese
236
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:50,000
Michael Martine: Yes.
237
00:25:53,119 --> 00:25:59,519
Andy Piper: Developer and the whole point of it is it is cooperative so you need to work together to achieve goals and typically that involves
238
00:26:01,279 --> 00:26:05,279
Andy Piper: Reaching certain points by climbing on one another by moving around
239
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:11,920
Andy Piper: Pushing you know jumping into places to press a button to enable the other character to get to the place
240
00:26:13,599 --> 00:26:27,000
Andy Piper: So yes, it's a fun game, regardless, but what happened in these two videos that came out, I think in the last couple of weeks was somebody decided to wire in some AI's to them.
241
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:40,000
Andy Piper: The first video is where they take what they call, they label the five best smartest, most capable AI and then tell these five characters to work together to achieve a goal.
242
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:46,000
Andy Piper: And they have to do it essentially by screenshotting, but I literally freeze framing the whole game and screenshotting every time.
243
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:52,000
Andy Piper: So they're telling each of them, giving it back to each of the AI so that they can all determine what to do next.
244
00:26:52,000 --> 00:27:03,000
Andy Piper: And it's quite a fun video where you hear them all, and it gives voices to each of the AI so that you can hear them all kind of narrating and interacting with one another.
245
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:13,000
Andy Piper: They develop an election system to determine which one should be in charge for each game cycle or each site cycle.
246
00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:16,000
Andy Piper: The following one is where they take a hundred days in Cleveland.
247
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:24,000
Andy Piper: They're providing like every model that you've never heard of, and put them all in.
248
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:25,200
Michael Rowe: Yeah, I had to dig into this Kimmy one, because I didn't know very much about it, you know, before this.
249
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:30,000
Andy Piper: Right, so tell us about Kimmy now that you know about it.
250
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:34,799
Michael Rowe: Well, I don't know an awful lot more than I did before. It's apparently from China. It's part of the moonshot AI.
251
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:49,440
Michael Rowe: And there's plenty of articles saying it's a great thing and let's compare it to other models here too, which this is a good way of doing sort of a model to model comparison is applying it into a game type structure and see how that goes, right?
252
00:27:47,500 --> 00:28:13,140
Andy Piper: >> Sure. In this case, they have to collaborate, so you don't necessarily see which one is more capable or exactly, but you do see which one is how they're capable of collaborating and with agentic processes where things are delegating either to versions of the copies of themselves as agents or in this case copies of other AI. It's quite interesting.
253
00:28:13,140 --> 00:28:17,480
Andy Piper: I found it, we had a bunch of AI links this week, which we, shows not.
254
00:28:17,500 --> 00:28:29,500
Andy Piper: to go into because they're all a bit depressing, but I found this one because of the game and elements and the collaboration, corporation element and the kind of decision making processes that come along.
255
00:28:29,500 --> 00:28:36,500
Andy Piper: You also see some kind of funny, snarky kind of chat come out between them.
256
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:38,759
Michael Martine: Yes, you can see their personalities come out. I was gonna say when there's like
257
00:28:39,359 --> 00:28:41,359
Michael Martine: Kimmy stop doing that
258
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:47,599
Michael Martine: Go to the left. No the other left. No, stop jumping up. Stop jumping at the same time
259
00:28:43,500 --> 00:28:47,420
Andy Piper: Yeah, it's a good...
260
00:28:47,500 --> 00:28:51,500
Andy Piper: It's a good piece of YouTube and entertainment. I think I enjoyed it.
261
00:28:50,359 --> 00:28:52,359
Michael Martine: Yes, it really is
262
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:58,319
Michael Martine: It it was loads of fun. I I probably spent way too much time watching them
263
00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:03,920
Michael Martine: Because I watched both back to back and then zip back and went through parts of it and it's just like it's
264
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:10,519
Michael Martine: It's so entertaining and knowing kind of the underlying tech underneath all of it. It made even more sense
265
00:29:12,519 --> 00:29:15,640
Michael Martine: So yeah, very very fun stuff
266
00:29:16,500 --> 00:29:28,299
Michael Rowe: Yeah, it reminded me a little bit of the the different AI's talking to one another through smart speakers So I have to go hunt that down when we talked about that last and we'll put that link in as well
267
00:29:27,500 --> 00:29:35,500
Michael Martine: That was Alexa and Siri and what was the third one, whatever the Google one was all, like trying to get each other to do stuff.
268
00:29:32,099 --> 00:29:34,099
Michael Rowe: Yeah
269
00:29:35,059 --> 00:29:40,019
Michael Rowe: Yeah, what wasn't using the names because I didn't want the wake word to happen to anybody, but yeah
270
00:29:39,500 --> 00:29:44,700
Michael Martine: I didn't say hey, I know.
271
00:29:40,460 --> 00:29:44,779
Michael Rowe: Yeah, you don't have to anymore as you as you know
272
00:29:46,500 --> 00:29:55,259
Michael Rowe: So last on our list here. We won't dive super deeply, but this is it was an article that I came across an ink magazine Not one of the ones I read all the time
273
00:29:55,819 --> 00:29:59,539
Michael Rowe: but they was talking about an issue with the Starbucks app and
274
00:30:00,539 --> 00:30:16,339
Michael Rowe: the issue with the Starbucks app was that the app was down which broke a lot of people's normal morning routines of Putting something into the app so that their order was exactly right exactly the way they wanted so they could pick it up and
275
00:30:16,500 --> 00:30:28,500
Michael Rowe: to keep on rolling. And the article had some intriguing comments in there and I know each of us had our own perspective. My one pull out was convenience creates its own fragility.
276
00:30:28,500 --> 00:30:37,500
Michael Rowe: And I thought that was an interesting observation that the marketing team and Starbucks themselves could have done something really positive with this.
277
00:30:37,500 --> 00:30:46,500
Michael Rowe: All of what Levi's did when they were told that they had to hide their brand. But that was that was my quick takeaway. Michael you said you had another.
278
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:55,960
Michael Martine: Yeah, I took it down the fact because as many of our listeners probably know, I was a very,
279
00:30:55,960 --> 00:31:01,960
Michael Martine: very early customer, I think the second week they opened of my favorite local coffee shop.
280
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:08,640
Michael Martine: And they've had a Starbucks move-in twice near them, the first one shut down.
281
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:17,960
Michael Martine: And now Starbucks bought a physical site so they can move in, literally within hundreds of yards of their store because there's this great habit formed of people who go to
282
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:23,539
Michael Martine: traders, which is such a wonderful little coffee shop, great five, great coffee.
283
00:31:23,539 --> 00:31:30,720
Michael Martine: And my thought process was there is habit and there is loyalty.
284
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:37,640
Michael Martine: And you don't really build loyalty to a faceless brand or an app as such.
285
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:43,880
Michael Martine: But if you know the people and you know the place and the vibe and everything else you can build that out.
286
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:47,839
Michael Martine: And then when we started thinking back of last week, we talked about, um,
287
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:54,400
Michael Martine: Ian Bogos article, uh, it kind of aligned with that to me too on, on little,
288
00:31:54,400 --> 00:32:11,680
Michael Martine: small things. Uh, and to me, the fact that something so trivial as an app going down is going to cause you who supposedly are just so dedicated to this habit of, of, of getting your daily Starbucks. Uh, it just, it didn't surprise me
289
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:15,519
Michael Martine: that you couldn't even be bothered to like go to another coffee shop. You just said,
290
00:32:15,519 --> 00:32:36,400
Michael Martine: Oh, screw it. I'm out of here, right? Uh, you being the people in the article. Uh, and uh, I, I was, it got me down. Like I said, down the path of what is, um, a real habit versus something that's just driven out of habit for lack of better term. I know those overloaded terms. Andy,
291
00:32:37,500 --> 00:32:49,339
Andy Piper: I found it interesting because I don't have a clear awareness of how I used the mobile ordering experiences in the UK in particular.
292
00:32:49,339 --> 00:32:50,339
Andy Piper: I do use it.
293
00:32:50,339 --> 00:32:51,339
Andy Piper: I have used it.
294
00:32:51,339 --> 00:32:54,380
Andy Piper: I use it maybe once or twice a month.
295
00:32:54,380 --> 00:33:03,420
Andy Piper: If I know I'm in a location, specifically when I do my make-a-meter pack Wimbledon, because I know there's a Starbucks down the road and I want to go and do a coffee run for a few folks.
296
00:33:03,420 --> 00:33:05,059
Andy Piper: I can put an order in ahead.
297
00:33:05,059 --> 00:33:06,059
Andy Piper: Walk five minutes down the road.
298
00:33:06,059 --> 00:33:07,420
Andy Piper: we'll be ready when they get there and come back.
299
00:33:08,500 --> 00:33:17,500
Andy Piper: That is generally an unusual way for me to interact with a store or take away or pick up or any of those kind of things.
300
00:33:17,500 --> 00:33:18,500
Andy Piper: I don't use it very much.
301
00:33:18,500 --> 00:33:25,500
Andy Piper: I think the habit forming you both just discussed is the key element of the whole story, right?
302
00:33:25,500 --> 00:33:28,500
Andy Piper: If you've trained people to, this is the only way to interact with you,
303
00:33:28,500 --> 00:33:35,500
Andy Piper: the best way or the way to interact with you, then why would they do anything other than go somewhere else and give up?
304
00:33:35,500 --> 00:33:37,500
Andy Piper: I'm not
305
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:45,019
Andy Piper: I'm surprised though that and I feel I want to say that it wouldn't have such an impact in the UK or in any other market
306
00:33:45,500 --> 00:33:47,500
Michael Rowe: And what's that? I think we're done.
307
00:33:47,500 --> 00:33:50,019
Michael Martine: [laughing]
308
00:33:50,019 --> 00:33:52,240
Michael Martine: Through the magic of editing.
309
00:33:50,900 --> 00:33:53,500
Michael Rowe: There you go. See you later, everybody.
310
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:54,359
Michael Martine: [laughing]
311
00:33:53,500 --> 00:33:55,500
Andy Piper: All right, bye
312
00:33:54,500 --> 00:33:57,079
Music: [upbeat music]
313
00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:02,359
Intro / Outtro: You've been listening to games@work.biz, the podcast about gaming technology and play.
314
00:34:02,359 --> 00:34:05,880
Intro / Outtro: We are part of the Blueberry podcasting network, and we'd like to thank the band,
315
00:34:03,500 --> 00:34:06,079
Music: [upbeat music]
316
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:08,760
Intro / Outtro: Random Encounters for their song, Big Blue.
317
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:12,920
Intro / Outtro: You can follow us at our website at games@work.biz.
318
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,579
Music: [upbeat music]
319
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:37,239
Music: [clapping]
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:20,000
Music: [Music]
2
00:00:10,500 --> 00:00:15,839
Intro / Outtro: This is GamesItWork.biz, your weekly podcast about gaming, technology, and play.
3
00:00:15,839 --> 00:00:19,240
Intro / Outtro: Your hosts are Michael Martine, Andy Piper, and Michael Rowe.
4
00:00:19,240 --> 00:00:22,820
Intro / Outtro: The thoughts and opinions on this podcast are those of the hosts and guests alone,
5
00:00:22,820 --> 00:00:28,420
Intro / Outtro: and are not the opinions of any organization which they have been, are, or may be, affiliated with.
6
00:00:33,019 --> 00:00:37,620
Intro / Outtro: This is episode 561, For the Birds.
7
00:00:38,500 --> 00:00:41,079
Music: [upbeat music]
8
00:00:44,500 --> 00:01:01,640
Michael Rowe: Hello, and welcome again to another addition of games at work.biz. This is Michael Martin one of the three co-hosts and we're all here today So you get to hear from each of us happy to participate join and talk some tech as Michael Rolex to say for this short short slot in your
9
00:01:02,579 --> 00:01:05,859
Michael Rowe: Commuter whenever it is that you're listening to us. Michael. How you doing today?
10
00:01:06,500 --> 00:01:16,700
Michael Martine: I'm fine. It's for me for my bathtub, right? Because, you know, no, it's it's it's time for fun and excitement. Andy, how are you?
11
00:01:10,340 --> 00:01:12,819
Michael Rowe: Ooh well, okay
12
00:01:17,500 --> 00:01:22,379
Andy Piper: I'm doing well. It's very warm as I think, um, lots of places on the planet are unfortunately
13
00:01:23,180 --> 00:01:29,260
Andy Piper: encountering some slightly warm weather at the moment. Uh, but beyond that, I, um,
14
00:01:29,500 --> 00:01:31,939
Michael Martine: It's only there was a term for that.
15
00:01:30,539 --> 00:01:37,260
Andy Piper: I know, beyond that, I'm doing okay, and there's always some fun things to talk about when it comes to our
16
00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:41,040
Michael Rowe: make a me cop over here.
17
00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:45,480
Michael Rowe: So we're gonna start things off today with some robotics.
18
00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:48,200
Michael Rowe: We do talk about robotics every so often on the show.
19
00:01:48,200 --> 00:02:01,680
Michael Rowe: And yesterday I heard a piece and that caused me to go search it out because the Thursday edition of the Journal of Science had an article on a new robot
20
00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:09,020
Michael Rowe: from the MIT lab that has the ability to fly not only through the air, but also
21
00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:22,000
Michael Rowe: through water, and we know that maybe not everyone, but a lot of people probably know that penguins fly if you will through water. They don't fly through well in the air. They can wave their fins a bunch for that.
22
00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:37,000
Michael Rowe: And there are other sea diving birds that will do both. And this was really intriguing to hear about how the creators of this did their work to say let's create something that has battery powered.
23
00:02:37,000 --> 00:03:00,000
Michael Rowe: it is small enough to to create the lift that is necessary, that they went through the exercise of waterproofing everything around it. If I remember correctly, there was something along the lines of the wings beat about 5 times per second, while it is in flight and to come up from the water and launch out of the water, it does about 10 per second in order to go do that.
24
00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:06,000
Michael Rowe: Really incredible stuff.
25
00:03:00,500 --> 00:03:08,740
Michael Martine: What I thought was really cool about this is they modeled it after puffins, which are sea birds
26
00:03:09,699 --> 00:03:17,620
Michael Martine: that hunt in the water and live on land and fly in the air. And the key thing is it's the transition
27
00:03:18,099 --> 00:03:26,099
Michael Martine: between the mediums, which if you think about it, that is kind of the challenge in many things,
28
00:03:26,099 --> 00:03:30,500
Michael Martine: is when you transition between mediums, you build up frictions of some sort.
29
00:03:30,500 --> 00:03:40,000
Michael Martine: That can cause challenges. And I loved the fact that, you know, even the weight of the thing was was so light.
30
00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:45,000
Michael Martine: But it had these huge monstrous wings. I mean, there were three feet.
31
00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:52,400
Michael Martine: And I don't think a puff in this structured that way. I think a puff in has much smaller wings to body mass ratio difference.
32
00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:54,000
Michael Rowe: Yep
33
00:03:52,400 --> 00:03:57,500
Michael Martine: But I'm not sure. I'm not a big puffin person. But yeah, I did.
34
00:03:55,199 --> 00:03:59,280
Michael Rowe: Well, there's a there's a picture of a puffin on the post
35
00:03:57,500 --> 00:04:00,500
Michael Martine: But I know. But it's not.
36
00:04:00,500 --> 00:04:05,500
Michael Martine: I don't have scale in that picture. It's underwater, right?
37
00:04:05,500 --> 00:04:09,500
Michael Martine: So again, not being a puffin' person.
38
00:04:09,500 --> 00:04:11,500
Michael Martine: I thought it was really cool.
39
00:04:11,500 --> 00:04:17,500
Michael Martine: I loved the little video where they actually show the transition between the two media of water and air.
40
00:04:17,500 --> 00:04:28,500
Michael Martine: And the other thing that I always find interesting, and yes, we can go back to the right brothers and everybody before them too, is they invented flight that can go between these two transition modes.
41
00:04:28,500 --> 00:04:41,939
Michael Martine: modes like well, no, you invented the mechanical version of that flight, you didn't invent flight. Yeah, well, again, the right fire didn't invent flight either. They emitted mechanical flight. That's the point,
42
00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:36,000
Michael Rowe: And the right flyer doesn't go in the ocean.
43
00:04:41,939 --> 00:04:47,699
Michael Martine: not the transition. But we invent, quote, unquote, a lot of things based off of nature, and
44
00:04:50,500 --> 00:05:14,420
Andy Piper: I think exactly what you just said, the idea of taking inspiration from nature gives us these opportunities and I think really deeply looking at how biological systems have worked through evolution and applying that to mechanics is really, really interesting. Yeah, I love it. I think
45
00:05:15,699 --> 00:05:48,300
Andy Piper: the the challenges here are also as well about that that needing to waterproof every thing because it's just essentially constantly submerged. The body of the thing is constantly submerged. I think, yeah, it could be really fascinating to see where they take this and what they do with it. I think it's okay that it's not a giant robot or even a human-sized robot. It's a little thing that has got a little bit of flexibility and opportunity to move around in different places. We'll see what happens.
46
00:05:47,500 --> 00:05:51,360
Michael Martine: But could you scale it up to a large robot, right?
47
00:05:47,500 --> 00:05:53,019
Michael Rowe: So what? I don't know why not. Why not?
48
00:05:51,100 --> 00:05:59,600
Andy Piper: Well, to do that, the to do that, I think the forces are going to be the problem, right, because they're talking about the fact that they need it to flap its wings.
49
00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:52,600
Michael Martine: What would that look like?
50
00:05:54,519 --> 00:05:55,360
Michael Martine: Physics.
51
00:06:00,899 --> 00:06:13,100
Andy Piper: A significant amount of time, I think they're talking about, is it five to six times a second to maintain flight and then 10 times a second to leave the water and get into the air.
52
00:06:07,500 --> 00:06:11,500
Michael Rowe: Right? Watch.
53
00:06:13,600 --> 00:06:20,500
Andy Piper: So to be able to do that, and then deal with extra weight, exercise of the wings, extra forces you.
54
00:06:20,500 --> 00:06:24,000
Andy Piper: They need to generate the thrusts.
55
00:06:22,500 --> 00:06:30,399
Michael Martine: Yeah, it's why aren't there six foot tall ants, right? It's physics. They're certain you know levels when things scale that they break
56
00:06:31,500 --> 00:06:32,699
Andy Piper: Look, um, I--
57
00:06:31,500 --> 00:06:35,300
Michael Rowe: So what do you guys think about the use cases of such a thing, right?
58
00:06:35,300 --> 00:06:43,399
Michael Rowe: When you think about a robot that can transit between water and air like this, what do you think would be great use cases?
59
00:06:45,500 --> 00:07:03,899
Michael Martine: about a bird. Yeah, yeah. Or, or they could put little wings on penguins. So penguins could actually do this second half of the journey, right? They can get out of the water and fly up to the cliff and say jumping off the cliff to get into the water.
60
00:06:49,399 --> 00:06:52,000
Michael Rowe: Effectively consuming fish, you heard it.
61
00:07:03,500 --> 00:07:07,379
Andy Piper: Well, the article talks about what they're thinking that it could be useful for.
62
00:07:07,379 --> 00:07:15,740
Andy Piper: So the biological monitoring of algal blooms, I hear that some of those around the DC area at the moment.
63
00:07:15,740 --> 00:07:23,980
Andy Piper: And coastal erosion and other things, and I can see it's only see those as opportunities.
64
00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:18,079
Michael Martine: [laughing]
65
00:07:23,980 --> 00:07:32,620
Andy Piper: It's not going to be a deep water type thing, but it could have the right level of agility to stay with
66
00:07:33,500 --> 00:07:35,259
Andy Piper: for example. So it could be interesting.
67
00:07:34,500 --> 00:07:49,500
Michael Martine: I mean, any kind of a sensor device is really what we're talking about that needs to go into areas that are not right next to land and you're not going to drop a buoy because you can do buoys and do algae blooms, right?
68
00:07:49,500 --> 00:07:53,500
Michael Martine: And they don't need to fly because they can just transmit the data.
69
00:07:53,500 --> 00:08:03,500
Michael Martine: And so there are a lot of use cases I can come up with that I don't like, like military use cases and violent use cases.
70
00:08:04,500 --> 00:08:18,500
Michael Martine: But the interesting ones I think can you make them cheaper, more flexible, able to access different spaces than you could with something as simple as a buoy.
71
00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:22,839
Michael Rowe: Yeah, I mean, the thing that I was thinking a little bit about was aquaculture,
72
00:08:22,839 --> 00:08:25,800
Michael Rowe: you know, so that if you are doing fish farming or
73
00:08:27,399 --> 00:08:48,840
Michael Rowe: clams, oysters, that sort of thing, you could more easily monitor and inspect without being on a boat, for example, as a human, this sort of thing could be good, and then you could kind of survey the entirety of it. I also really liked when we talked about Dr. Darling and her experiences about robotics doing
74
00:08:49,000 --> 00:09:14,720
Michael Rowe: things that animals had done for humans in the past. So whether it's oxen pulling a plow in the lake and also mimicking animals in terms of robotics, both of those things were quite cool. Alright, so moving along from the avian world, we now have an article about PDA's and we've all had PDA's in the past. So that's a cool thing in a lot of ways,
75
00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:12,799
Andy Piper: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
76
00:09:14,720 --> 00:09:19,039
Michael Rowe: This one is an e-paper-powered PDA.
77
00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:26,000
Michael Rowe: or provided PDA, and we'll keep all the peas going as long as we can.
78
00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:30,019
Michael Rowe: Michael looks like you found this one. What was your general sense of the pocket
79
00:09:31,500 --> 00:09:44,759
Michael Martine: I just love, again, the idea of more restricted purpose built electronic devices that use lower less expensive tech.
80
00:09:44,759 --> 00:09:51,279
Michael Martine: We talked about the light phone a couple of years back that I tried to get working.
81
00:09:51,279 --> 00:09:54,679
Michael Martine: We talked about stuff recently in this same vein.
82
00:09:54,679 --> 00:10:01,159
Michael Martine: And having a PDA with any paper screen is right in that space.
83
00:10:01,500 --> 00:10:06,919
Michael Martine: I've actually found myself going back to an e-reader for reading stuff instead of using my iPad,
84
00:10:06,919 --> 00:10:10,259
Michael Martine: just because it's restricted content in the sense of,
85
00:10:10,259 --> 00:10:15,799
Michael Martine: I'm not going to be checking my mastodon feed or catching an email coming through.
86
00:10:15,799 --> 00:10:22,879
Michael Martine: And while this one does have the idea of incremental functionality and adding apps and blah, blah,
87
00:10:22,879 --> 00:10:25,879
Michael Martine: blah, blah, I found it cool.
88
00:10:25,879 --> 00:10:29,559
Michael Martine: I do like the fact that it has a QWERTY keyboard.
89
00:10:29,559 --> 00:10:31,080
Michael Martine: Kind of reminds you of the--
90
00:10:31,500 --> 00:10:36,700
Michael Martine: Was it the sidekick with the flip-up screen with the little keyboard on it?
91
00:10:33,500 --> 00:10:36,100
Michael Rowe: Yeah, the danger one, yeah.
92
00:10:36,700 --> 00:10:45,179
Michael Martine: And then, also, PDA, you and I both have soft spots for the old palm pilots.
93
00:10:45,179 --> 00:10:51,899
Michael Martine: I had the original one, the two, the five, I think you had the seven, I had the work pad.
94
00:10:51,899 --> 00:11:00,340
Michael Martine: These were all fun little semi-purpose built or restricted-purpose built devices.
95
00:11:00,340 --> 00:11:01,500
Michael Martine: And I just thought this one was cool.
96
00:11:01,500 --> 00:11:09,860
Andy Piper: I had a Casio, a little Casio PDA type thing, it was gray, I guess it was about hand sized,
97
00:11:09,860 --> 00:11:14,899
Andy Piper: and I had a flip-flip-up lid, and yeah, just a tiny little screen.
98
00:11:14,899 --> 00:11:21,779
Andy Piper: I like what you just said Michael Rowe about, you know, these smaller, more purpose-built,
99
00:11:21,779 --> 00:11:23,659
Andy Piper: smaller power devices.
100
00:11:23,659 --> 00:11:31,500
Andy Piper: If you look at what's going on in the supply chain, of course we know that it's been crushed by, or the consumer slider has been crushed.
101
00:11:32,500 --> 00:11:40,500
Andy Piper: The AI bubble and other things going on, and the desire to have bigger, better, more powerful things all the time.
102
00:11:40,500 --> 00:11:47,500
Andy Piper: And actually, we've got much more than we need already, much more than we need.
103
00:11:47,500 --> 00:11:52,500
Andy Piper: And these kinds of things, I think you're right about having things at a more purpose built,
104
00:11:52,500 --> 00:11:54,500
Andy Piper: because it can help us to be less distracted.
105
00:11:54,500 --> 00:12:00,500
Andy Piper: I say this, because in the full knowledge that I am an easily distracted human at this point in my life,
106
00:12:01,500 --> 00:12:08,500
Andy Piper: I've had my attention span whittled down by all of the devices I have and their capability.
107
00:12:08,500 --> 00:12:09,500
Andy Piper: Oh, I can do this.
108
00:12:09,500 --> 00:12:10,500
Andy Piper: Oh, I can do this.
109
00:12:10,500 --> 00:12:11,500
Andy Piper: Oh, I can just go and check this.
110
00:12:11,500 --> 00:12:16,500
Andy Piper: And actually, it doesn't always lead to productivity by any means.
111
00:12:16,500 --> 00:12:20,500
Andy Piper: So, I want a few things to add on this.
112
00:12:20,500 --> 00:12:23,500
Andy Piper: I'd also seen this story come across my radar.
113
00:12:23,500 --> 00:12:28,500
Andy Piper: I think before my eyes might be posted into our group chat.
114
00:12:28,500 --> 00:12:46,500
Andy Piper: And one thing about it is that it brought back was the whole resurgence or interest around cyber decks that cobbling together assistance from that kind of look cool that have a level of functionality that are kind of generally laptop-ish in form factor.
115
00:12:46,500 --> 00:12:53,500
Andy Piper: This is smaller, but there's a lot of these kinds of devices on the crowdfunding market at the moment.
116
00:12:53,500 --> 00:13:01,500
Andy Piper: This one big E-paper obviously means that, or with an earlier as well, means that it's low power, it can be lighter.
117
00:13:01,500 --> 00:13:11,500
Andy Piper: Even arguably, these are the kinds of things you could go down the road of solar powering or having some other kind of lightweight way to harvest power.
118
00:13:11,500 --> 00:13:15,500
Andy Piper: It reminded me that next week I'm going to be an electronic magnetic field.
119
00:13:15,500 --> 00:13:19,500
Andy Piper: And I'll be there for, I won't be able to recall the show next week.
120
00:13:19,500 --> 00:13:30,500
Andy Piper: But really the whole ethos of that event is a bunch of geeks and makers and techies and people interested in sustainability and community and lots of other good things getting together and sharing fun stuff that we've been doing.
121
00:13:31,500 --> 00:13:39,500
Andy Piper: We're working on thinking about and usually it's completely silly and pushing an idea to its furthest extent.
122
00:13:36,500 --> 00:13:38,500
Michael Martine: Silly is good, though.
123
00:13:39,500 --> 00:13:48,500
Andy Piper: So I'm sure there's going to be a lot of installations along that line. This year's theme, or this every two years, this year's theme is space.
124
00:13:48,500 --> 00:13:59,500
Andy Piper: The previous one was solar punk, the previous one that was underwater. So there's a ton of sort of space age kind of oriented stuff that I've been messing around with that I'll be doing.
125
00:13:59,500 --> 00:14:24,779
Andy Piper: I'll be doing but one of my friends has created a marketplace on sellshirts.com for what he's calling HTTP shirts so that's basically a bunch of geek t-shirts with comedy HTTP codes on but as well as that there's a range of other things that have come into it and one of them is which I picked up straight away was computers are better computers were better when they were worse
126
00:14:25,899 --> 00:14:31,340
Andy Piper: which I think is a fantastic slogan and I really enjoy so I bought that one for myself to
127
00:14:26,500 --> 00:14:28,500
Michael Martine: [laughing]
128
00:14:32,059 --> 00:15:01,500
Andy Piper: to rock at the event next week. The other thing that this laid me down the path of thinking about is not only the the PDA's and the cyber decks that everybody's you know excitedly building and cobbling together from whatever level of technology but another project that's on we're going to be on crowd supply it is on crowds play they haven't started crowdfunding yet which is the open printer which we may have spoken about a year ago.
129
00:15:01,500 --> 00:15:12,500
Andy Piper: So it's been sort of knocking about as an idea for a while now, but it's a French organization who are building an inkjet printer from scratch that's going to be fully open source, open harder open software.
130
00:15:12,500 --> 00:15:21,500
Andy Piper: The bill of materials is going to be available and it will either print to A4 or A3 sheets or onto a roll.
131
00:15:21,500 --> 00:15:25,500
Andy Piper: It can be hung on a wall and it's sustainable.
132
00:15:25,500 --> 00:15:31,500
Andy Piper: The goal of this thing is to be sustainable. If the goal of this thing is not to be closed, printer can see more.
133
00:15:31,500 --> 00:15:54,500
Andy Piper: eco-system where you're buying your fancy inkjet printer or laser printer from one of the incumbent manufacturers who then demand to keep you on the hook for consumables to the point that they deliberately make their products worse and make them fail more quickly and make their ink cartridges DRM encumbered, that's not the goal of this.
134
00:15:54,500 --> 00:16:01,500
Andy Piper: The goal is to make some good technology so I wanted to bring that into the conversation as well because I really love crowd supply. I keep an eye on crowd supply.
135
00:16:01,500 --> 00:16:20,299
Andy Piper: you can get some conquers from there that people haven't really thought about the manufacturing and ongoing life of a product, but you can also find some absolute gems of products from smart people who want something unique, want something more sustainable, and want something better
136
00:16:21,179 --> 00:16:33,500
Andy Piper: from technology. One more thing I mentioned since neither of you have immediately responded to that is that there's an organization called the Society for Hopeful Technology.
137
00:16:31,500 --> 00:16:40,220
Andy Piper: We've recently become a cooperative organization in the UK and there's going to be a membership
138
00:16:40,940 --> 00:16:46,620
Andy Piper: element to it coming soon, but I've been involved in the organizing chat for this for a while now
139
00:16:47,899 --> 00:16:59,980
Andy Piper: and I will be taking some of their stickers and badges along to EMF and encouraging people to think about this because technology can be there to be empowering. That's why I'm involved,
140
00:16:59,980 --> 00:17:01,539
Andy Piper: That's why I'm it. That's why I get
141
00:17:01,500 --> 00:17:23,019
Andy Piper: excited about technology still. I get depressed about the way the economy and the world and technology is part of it all come together sometimes, but we have agency, we have hope, we have the opportunity to build cool things. And again, crowd supply for me is part of that kind of continuum of positive things.
142
00:17:23,019 --> 00:17:27,099
Andy Piper: I will stop talking because I feel like I've just taken up a big chunk of time.
143
00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:30,119
Michael Martine: - Yeah, no, not at all.
144
00:17:30,119 --> 00:17:32,920
Michael Martine: And I was chiming in a positive way,
145
00:17:32,920 --> 00:17:35,180
Michael Martine: but I guess you were talking you didn't hear.
146
00:17:35,180 --> 00:17:37,279
Michael Martine: [laughs]
147
00:17:38,599 --> 00:17:40,720
Michael Martine: Or maybe I just wasn't close enough to the microphone.
148
00:17:40,720 --> 00:17:43,319
Michael Martine: I think this is really, really cool.
149
00:17:44,359 --> 00:17:48,640
Michael Martine: And as soon as I got to the article on the printer,
150
00:17:48,640 --> 00:17:51,160
Michael Martine: which I, again, think is kind of neat,
151
00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:56,240
Michael Martine: I immediately started going down the rattle of other interesting things on crowd supply.
152
00:17:55,500 --> 00:18:08,460
Andy Piper: Grad supplies great grad supply. I've got they've got an add-on board for the bamboo X1c None of the other bamboo printers because at that point after the recent sort of kerfuffle around open source closed source
153
00:18:09,859 --> 00:18:15,779
Andy Piper: The X1c was their first model on this person managed to figure out how he could about build his own controller for it
154
00:18:16,980 --> 00:18:20,140
Andy Piper: So I'd have one of those so mine is completely kind of
155
00:18:21,299 --> 00:18:25,299
Andy Piper: open or much more open than it comes but they've kind of locked it down now.
156
00:18:25,500 --> 00:18:40,500
Andy Piper: Again, there's some really cool stuff on crowd supply across a range of axes, whether it's gaming, whether it's printing, whether it's PDAs or electronics testing, there's some cool stuff on there.
157
00:18:42,500 --> 00:19:11,539
Michael Martine: Yeah, I'm wondering, and I've got to find, we've got an old Lenovo laptop that is still in excellent condition, except for one thing. And the one thing is, this was back when wireless was still considered to be possibly a security issue. And well, now we know it is, but it physically
158
00:19:12,500 --> 00:19:19,460
Michael Martine: on the side of the machine that would turn off the Wi-Fi. Yeah. And the toggle has gone bad.
159
00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:16,000
Andy Piper: Oh, yeah, I remember. Yeah.
160
00:19:20,579 --> 00:19:42,259
Michael Martine: And so what happens is, you boot up and so what happens is, you boot up, you start working on Wi-Fi and the Wi-Fi shuts off. And then you fiddle with the switch and then it turns on. And then it turns itself off again, because the switch has gotten bad. And it's not quite a short, but any jostling or
161
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:24,559
Michael Rowe: Is it locked on or off, Mike?
162
00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:33,900
Michael Rowe: So it's working not as designed.
163
00:19:42,500 --> 00:19:57,460
Michael Martine: ever of the laptop will jiggle that switch and turn it off, which makes it an unusable laptop for the things that we want to use it for. And I actually went and reached out to a local company that supposedly does work on think pads and old ones like, oh, yeah, you just buy a new one's like, no,
164
00:19:44,500 --> 00:19:45,339
Andy Piper: Right.
165
00:19:57,460 --> 00:20:12,660
Michael Martine: we don't want to buy a new one. This one has every feature we want, et cetera, et cetera. We just need you to open it up, find where that switch is, replace it, solder a new one on the motherboard. I don't anything. No, no, no, no, that's too much work.
166
00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:00,000
Andy Piper: Mm-hmm
167
00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:13,000
Michael Rowe: You need an electrical engineer for that.
168
00:20:12,500 --> 00:20:14,500
Michael Martine: [laughter]
169
00:20:13,500 --> 00:20:22,880
Andy Piper: the the other thing that emf has is actually a minute field has is a swap shop and I've seen so you can take a long and pick up
170
00:20:23,900 --> 00:20:31,200
Andy Piper: stuff electronics typically I've seen somebody say donating a think pad and at pre-announcing that they don't need to think pad there
171
00:20:32,980 --> 00:20:37,059
Andy Piper: So I'm sure that will go very fast because they're great machines usually
172
00:20:36,500 --> 00:20:38,619
Michael Martine: - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
173
00:20:38,619 --> 00:20:52,299
Michael Martine: But looking to take it back to the story to crowd supply, my immediate thought was I wonder if there's anything little hack piece that allows me to maybe reattach a new wireless or something in there.
174
00:20:53,299 --> 00:20:59,339
Michael Martine: I know you can get, and I think this one doesn't have the PCMCI slot in it anymore.
175
00:20:59,339 --> 00:21:00,460
Michael Martine: This is after they got rid of that,
176
00:21:00,460 --> 00:21:05,460
Michael Martine: 'cause I used to have a 802.11 AB PCM,
177
00:21:06,500 --> 00:21:11,819
Michael Martine: a CIA card that you'd slip into your laptop and you had this little bubble thing stuck out to the side,
178
00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:13,000
Andy Piper: Yeah
179
00:21:11,819 --> 00:21:13,119
Michael Martine: which was the antenna.
180
00:21:14,259 --> 00:21:15,660
Michael Martine: It'd be really cool to get that thing working.
181
00:21:15,660 --> 00:21:23,539
Michael Martine: I guess I wonder if there's a USB plug that's actually a Wi-Fi network.
182
00:21:22,500 --> 00:21:26,220
Andy Piper: So we've gone thoroughly rabbit-hold,
183
00:21:23,539 --> 00:21:24,380
Michael Martine: There has to be.
184
00:21:26,220 --> 00:21:27,619
Andy Piper: rabbit-hold here.
185
00:21:26,619 --> 00:21:28,460
Michael Martine: Into the weeds, I love it.
186
00:21:27,619 --> 00:21:31,140
Andy Piper: But I will just mention--
187
00:21:28,460 --> 00:21:30,019
Michael Martine: And that's what crowd supply does.
188
00:21:31,140 --> 00:21:33,660
Andy Piper: also crowd supplies for crowd funding, new things,
189
00:21:33,660 --> 00:21:35,539
Andy Piper: of those kinds.
190
00:21:35,539 --> 00:21:40,500
Andy Piper: There are three good electronic marketplaces for independent makers.
191
00:21:40,500 --> 00:21:44,059
Andy Piper: One of them is called Tindy, T-I-N-D-I.
192
00:21:44,059 --> 00:21:46,539
Andy Piper: However, it recently had some controversy,
193
00:21:46,539 --> 00:21:51,059
Andy Piper: because it went through an unexpected and unexplained change of ownership, had a long period of downtime,
194
00:21:51,059 --> 00:21:54,500
Andy Piper: weren't, wasn't paying out to the
195
00:21:52,500 --> 00:22:22,259
Andy Piper: the store owners and so on. There's been a European alternative to Tindy called Electrons, the early CTRO and ZZ or Z, which has been going for a while. And a lot of people move from Tindy to Electrons or set up an additional storefront on Electrons while Tindy was down for an extended period. But the thing with Electrons is it doesn't support PayPal, I believe, which is what a lot of, especially U.S.
196
00:22:22,500 --> 00:22:52,059
Andy Piper: has wanted. So there's another one called Small Run, as in Small Run. These are all kind of small community driven, make-and-market places. And again, if you're looking for weird esoteric things like what you've just described, Michael, those two places I would encourage you to have a look. I can't tell you that you will definitely find a solution to this specific problem you have. You will probably find lots of other gadgets that they're really cool and useful instead.
197
00:22:51,500 --> 00:22:53,500
Michael Martine: Yeah, and that's the problem
198
00:22:53,500 --> 00:22:57,660
Andy Piper: But yeah, it has been.
199
00:22:57,660 --> 00:23:00,900
Andy Piper: And it's interesting because from an economic perspective,
200
00:23:00,900 --> 00:23:09,779
Andy Piper: the bulk shipping from China thing has gone away both in the US and Europe now,
201
00:23:09,779 --> 00:23:16,700
Andy Piper: where they've taken away the free shipping for small items.
202
00:23:16,700 --> 00:23:18,779
Andy Piper: So they're putting on, what's it called?
203
00:23:18,779 --> 00:23:22,339
Andy Piper: My brain is blanking on the name of the minimuses.
204
00:23:22,500 --> 00:23:27,140
Andy Piper: But they're just taken away the minimus in Europe as well,
205
00:23:27,140 --> 00:23:31,940
Andy Piper: because they were worried about the way that the products were coming in.
206
00:23:31,940 --> 00:23:34,180
Andy Piper: And especially when they hadn't necessarily...
207
00:23:34,180 --> 00:23:36,420
Andy Piper: So if you tested or didn't meet relevant standards,
208
00:23:36,420 --> 00:23:40,619
Andy Piper: but that's making a lot more difficult for some of the independent makers.
209
00:23:40,619 --> 00:23:46,259
Andy Piper: But there were a bunch of folks who do make some quite fantastic bits of kit.
210
00:23:46,259 --> 00:23:49,259
Andy Piper: And again, I'm excited to meet some of them at M.F. next week,
211
00:23:49,259 --> 00:23:52,460
Andy Piper: because I know that I'll be in a night market, we'll be selling
212
00:23:52,500 --> 00:23:58,859
Andy Piper: a lot of prints, and they'll be selling home brew computers and things.
213
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:23,000
Michael Rowe: So, Andy, you need to know about this maybe to Michael as I was looking for a small run that you're talking there is a small run.com.au And those guys will let you create your own music on vinyl so that they will do custom vinyl records looks like liner notes the whole kit if that's something that you are interested in doing.
214
00:24:12,500 --> 00:24:17,299
Andy Piper: Ooh, that's crazy.
215
00:24:21,859 --> 00:24:29,299
Andy Piper: This is really cool because my father-in-law makes music and I think that'd be a really cool thing we could do for him.
216
00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:25,000
Michael Rowe: Isn't that fun?
217
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:32,000
Michael Rowe: There you go.
218
00:24:30,220 --> 00:24:33,339
Andy Piper: With one of his Wreck one in my- Oh, wow, that would be cool.
219
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:37,000
Michael Rowe: Do you think he's a listener?
220
00:24:34,420 --> 00:24:39,019
Andy Piper: Oh, yeah, whoops, I may have just- sorry, Barry, if I've just ruined the surprise.
221
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:42,000
Michael Rowe: Well, we may need to edit that out, Michael.
222
00:24:37,500 --> 00:24:49,859
Michael Martine: we may and and you guys just solved a major problem for me because it got me running down rattles now
223
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:47,000
Michael Rowe: Or maybe not.
224
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:50,720
Michael Rowe: Yes, all right. So speaking of rattles.
225
00:24:49,500 --> 00:25:00,059
Andy Piper: We were worried about having a non-enough link to talk about on fill our time because we'd cut out lots of stuff we didn't want to talk about and now we've managed to fill the time with unexpected
226
00:25:01,500 --> 00:25:07,579
Michael Rowe: Yes. Exactly. So, so speaking of, you know, these sidelines and, and rattle kind of things,
227
00:25:07,579 --> 00:25:15,259
Michael Rowe: there is a pair of videos. It's pretty substantial here, Andy. You shared with us about Pico Park.
228
00:25:15,259 --> 00:25:18,059
Michael Rowe: Why don't you unlock this story?
229
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:22,140
Andy Piper: Well, first of all, how either of you had either of you come across Pico Park before?
230
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:25,000
Michael Martine: I had, yes.
231
00:25:25,279 --> 00:25:29,480
Andy Piper: Okay, so for listeners and I'm not familiar with Pico Park. It's a
232
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:32,279
Michael Rowe: And, Michael, thank you.
233
00:25:30,559 --> 00:25:38,640
Andy Piper: And Michael One of the michaels originally it was 2016 it came out. It's been on a few platforms including windows and the switch
234
00:25:39,279 --> 00:25:45,119
Andy Piper: Is on steam. It's got these little cute little colorful characters that look a little bit like cats
235
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:50,759
Andy Piper: Really matter Is cooperative game? It's developed by Japanese
236
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:50,000
Michael Martine: Yes.
237
00:25:53,119 --> 00:25:59,519
Andy Piper: Developer and the whole point of it is it is cooperative so you need to work together to achieve goals and typically that involves
238
00:26:01,279 --> 00:26:05,279
Andy Piper: Reaching certain points by climbing on one another by moving around
239
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:11,920
Andy Piper: Pushing you know jumping into places to press a button to enable the other character to get to the place
240
00:26:13,599 --> 00:26:27,000
Andy Piper: So yes, it's a fun game, regardless, but what happened in these two videos that came out, I think in the last couple of weeks was somebody decided to wire in some AI's to them.
241
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:40,000
Andy Piper: The first video is where they take what they call, they label the five best smartest, most capable AI and then tell these five characters to work together to achieve a goal.
242
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:46,000
Andy Piper: And they have to do it essentially by screenshotting, but I literally freeze framing the whole game and screenshotting every time.
243
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:52,000
Andy Piper: So they're telling each of them, giving it back to each of the AI so that they can all determine what to do next.
244
00:26:52,000 --> 00:27:03,000
Andy Piper: And it's quite a fun video where you hear them all, and it gives voices to each of the AI so that you can hear them all kind of narrating and interacting with one another.
245
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:13,000
Andy Piper: They develop an election system to determine which one should be in charge for each game cycle or each site cycle.
246
00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:16,000
Andy Piper: The following one is where they take a hundred days in Cleveland.
247
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:24,000
Andy Piper: They're providing like every model that you've never heard of, and put them all in.
248
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:25,200
Michael Rowe: Yeah, I had to dig into this Kimmy one, because I didn't know very much about it, you know, before this.
249
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:30,000
Andy Piper: Right, so tell us about Kimmy now that you know about it.
250
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:34,799
Michael Rowe: Well, I don't know an awful lot more than I did before. It's apparently from China. It's part of the moonshot AI.
251
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:49,440
Michael Rowe: And there's plenty of articles saying it's a great thing and let's compare it to other models here too, which this is a good way of doing sort of a model to model comparison is applying it into a game type structure and see how that goes, right?
252
00:27:47,500 --> 00:28:13,140
Andy Piper: >> Sure. In this case, they have to collaborate, so you don't necessarily see which one is more capable or exactly, but you do see which one is how they're capable of collaborating and with agentic processes where things are delegating either to versions of the copies of themselves as agents or in this case copies of other AI. It's quite interesting.
253
00:28:13,140 --> 00:28:17,480
Andy Piper: I found it, we had a bunch of AI links this week, which we, shows not.
254
00:28:17,500 --> 00:28:29,500
Andy Piper: to go into because they're all a bit depressing, but I found this one because of the game and elements and the collaboration, corporation element and the kind of decision making processes that come along.
255
00:28:29,500 --> 00:28:36,500
Andy Piper: You also see some kind of funny, snarky kind of chat come out between them.
256
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:38,759
Michael Martine: Yes, you can see their personalities come out. I was gonna say when there's like
257
00:28:39,359 --> 00:28:41,359
Michael Martine: Kimmy stop doing that
258
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:47,599
Michael Martine: Go to the left. No the other left. No, stop jumping up. Stop jumping at the same time
259
00:28:43,500 --> 00:28:47,420
Andy Piper: Yeah, it's a good...
260
00:28:47,500 --> 00:28:51,500
Andy Piper: It's a good piece of YouTube and entertainment. I think I enjoyed it.
261
00:28:50,359 --> 00:28:52,359
Michael Martine: Yes, it really is
262
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:58,319
Michael Martine: It it was loads of fun. I I probably spent way too much time watching them
263
00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:03,920
Michael Martine: Because I watched both back to back and then zip back and went through parts of it and it's just like it's
264
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:10,519
Michael Martine: It's so entertaining and knowing kind of the underlying tech underneath all of it. It made even more sense
265
00:29:12,519 --> 00:29:15,640
Michael Martine: So yeah, very very fun stuff
266
00:29:16,500 --> 00:29:28,299
Michael Rowe: Yeah, it reminded me a little bit of the the different AI's talking to one another through smart speakers So I have to go hunt that down when we talked about that last and we'll put that link in as well
267
00:29:27,500 --> 00:29:35,500
Michael Martine: That was Alexa and Siri and what was the third one, whatever the Google one was all, like trying to get each other to do stuff.
268
00:29:32,099 --> 00:29:34,099
Michael Rowe: Yeah
269
00:29:35,059 --> 00:29:40,019
Michael Rowe: Yeah, what wasn't using the names because I didn't want the wake word to happen to anybody, but yeah
270
00:29:39,500 --> 00:29:44,700
Michael Martine: I didn't say hey, I know.
271
00:29:40,460 --> 00:29:44,779
Michael Rowe: Yeah, you don't have to anymore as you as you know
272
00:29:46,500 --> 00:29:55,259
Michael Rowe: So last on our list here. We won't dive super deeply, but this is it was an article that I came across an ink magazine Not one of the ones I read all the time
273
00:29:55,819 --> 00:29:59,539
Michael Rowe: but they was talking about an issue with the Starbucks app and
274
00:30:00,539 --> 00:30:16,339
Michael Rowe: the issue with the Starbucks app was that the app was down which broke a lot of people's normal morning routines of Putting something into the app so that their order was exactly right exactly the way they wanted so they could pick it up and
275
00:30:16,500 --> 00:30:28,500
Michael Rowe: to keep on rolling. And the article had some intriguing comments in there and I know each of us had our own perspective. My one pull out was convenience creates its own fragility.
276
00:30:28,500 --> 00:30:37,500
Michael Rowe: And I thought that was an interesting observation that the marketing team and Starbucks themselves could have done something really positive with this.
277
00:30:37,500 --> 00:30:46,500
Michael Rowe: All of what Levi's did when they were told that they had to hide their brand. But that was that was my quick takeaway. Michael you said you had another.
278
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:55,960
Michael Martine: Yeah, I took it down the fact because as many of our listeners probably know, I was a very,
279
00:30:55,960 --> 00:31:01,960
Michael Martine: very early customer, I think the second week they opened of my favorite local coffee shop.
280
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:08,640
Michael Martine: And they've had a Starbucks move-in twice near them, the first one shut down.
281
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:17,960
Michael Martine: And now Starbucks bought a physical site so they can move in, literally within hundreds of yards of their store because there's this great habit formed of people who go to
282
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:23,539
Michael Martine: traders, which is such a wonderful little coffee shop, great five, great coffee.
283
00:31:23,539 --> 00:31:30,720
Michael Martine: And my thought process was there is habit and there is loyalty.
284
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:37,640
Michael Martine: And you don't really build loyalty to a faceless brand or an app as such.
285
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:43,880
Michael Martine: But if you know the people and you know the place and the vibe and everything else you can build that out.
286
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:47,839
Michael Martine: And then when we started thinking back of last week, we talked about, um,
287
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:54,400
Michael Martine: Ian Bogos article, uh, it kind of aligned with that to me too on, on little,
288
00:31:54,400 --> 00:32:11,680
Michael Martine: small things. Uh, and to me, the fact that something so trivial as an app going down is going to cause you who supposedly are just so dedicated to this habit of, of, of getting your daily Starbucks. Uh, it just, it didn't surprise me
289
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:15,519
Michael Martine: that you couldn't even be bothered to like go to another coffee shop. You just said,
290
00:32:15,519 --> 00:32:36,400
Michael Martine: Oh, screw it. I'm out of here, right? Uh, you being the people in the article. Uh, and uh, I, I was, it got me down. Like I said, down the path of what is, um, a real habit versus something that's just driven out of habit for lack of better term. I know those overloaded terms. Andy,
291
00:32:37,500 --> 00:32:49,339
Andy Piper: I found it interesting because I don't have a clear awareness of how I used the mobile ordering experiences in the UK in particular.
292
00:32:49,339 --> 00:32:50,339
Andy Piper: I do use it.
293
00:32:50,339 --> 00:32:51,339
Andy Piper: I have used it.
294
00:32:51,339 --> 00:32:54,380
Andy Piper: I use it maybe once or twice a month.
295
00:32:54,380 --> 00:33:03,420
Andy Piper: If I know I'm in a location, specifically when I do my make-a-meter pack Wimbledon, because I know there's a Starbucks down the road and I want to go and do a coffee run for a few folks.
296
00:33:03,420 --> 00:33:05,059
Andy Piper: I can put an order in ahead.
297
00:33:05,059 --> 00:33:06,059
Andy Piper: Walk five minutes down the road.
298
00:33:06,059 --> 00:33:07,420
Andy Piper: we'll be ready when they get there and come back.
299
00:33:08,500 --> 00:33:17,500
Andy Piper: That is generally an unusual way for me to interact with a store or take away or pick up or any of those kind of things.
300
00:33:17,500 --> 00:33:18,500
Andy Piper: I don't use it very much.
301
00:33:18,500 --> 00:33:25,500
Andy Piper: I think the habit forming you both just discussed is the key element of the whole story, right?
302
00:33:25,500 --> 00:33:28,500
Andy Piper: If you've trained people to, this is the only way to interact with you,
303
00:33:28,500 --> 00:33:35,500
Andy Piper: the best way or the way to interact with you, then why would they do anything other than go somewhere else and give up?
304
00:33:35,500 --> 00:33:37,500
Andy Piper: I'm not
305
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:45,019
Andy Piper: I'm surprised though that and I feel I want to say that it wouldn't have such an impact in the UK or in any other market
306
00:33:45,500 --> 00:33:47,500
Michael Rowe: And what's that? I think we're done.
307
00:33:47,500 --> 00:33:50,019
Michael Martine: [laughing]
308
00:33:50,019 --> 00:33:52,240
Michael Martine: Through the magic of editing.
309
00:33:50,900 --> 00:33:53,500
Michael Rowe: There you go. See you later, everybody.
310
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:54,359
Michael Martine: [laughing]
311
00:33:53,500 --> 00:33:55,500
Andy Piper: All right, bye
312
00:33:54,500 --> 00:33:57,079
Music: [upbeat music]
313
00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:02,359
Intro / Outtro: You've been listening to games@work.biz, the podcast about gaming technology and play.
314
00:34:02,359 --> 00:34:05,880
Intro / Outtro: We are part of the Blueberry podcasting network, and we'd like to thank the band,
315
00:34:03,500 --> 00:34:06,079
Music: [upbeat music]
316
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:08,760
Intro / Outtro: Random Encounters for their song, Big Blue.
317
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:12,920
Intro / Outtro: You can follow us at our website at games@work.biz.
318
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,579
Music: [upbeat music]
319
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:37,239
Music: [clapping]
