e548 — The Uncomfortable Valley

Desert valley
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 whole lot more.

Michael and Michael get things rolling while Andy is away on an article discussing the animated emojis in Microsoft Teams.  Fast Company article author Rebecca Heilweil describes these emojis as the ‘uncomfortable valley’ due to the animations that imbue the emojis shared in Teams with potentially unintended additional meaning.  Check out the link for a comparison graphic showing the similarities and differences between the uncanny and uncomfortable valleys.

Switching to robotic animation, Michael and Michael take a look at Nintendo’s Talking Flower, which reminds them of the Alarmo alarm clock.  Next, a digital camera that provides mini quests that are satisfied by taking a picture of “a tiny thing” or “a hidden face”.

Turning to AI, the co-hosts check out Pixel Agents, an 8bit representation of agents allowing the human orchestrator to monitor all the agents performing their tasks in a concurrent manner.  Michael R highlights a Mac local orchestrator called Osaurus.  Rounding out this week’s episode is a Washington Post about jobs that AI may take on, a story about ChatGPT assisting with cancer research, and an intriguing video about Devo.

Which Pixel People professions would you want to have in your Pixel Agent virtual office?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

Tech

Fast Company article: The uncomfortable valley: Microsoft Teams emoji faces have got to go

Wikipedia article: Uncanny Valley

Games at Work e308: Feline Filters (for discussion on the Uncanny Valley)

The Verge article: Weird Nintendo never went away

Nintendo Talking Flower

Nintendo Alarmo

Games at Work e485: Barbarians at the Rhubarb Bar (for the Alarmo clock)

hackster.io article: This Camera Turns Your Day Into an RPG

Games at Work e195: Augmented Audio (for Monopoly City Streets)

AI

Github: pablodelucca/pixel-agents

Pixel People wiki

https://osaurus.ai

Washington Post article: See which jobs are most threatened by AI and who may be able to adapt

The Verge article: ChatGPT did not cure a dog’s cancer

The Verge article: Go watch this video about an AI system that can predict how proteins fold

Devo

e547 — Bricktastic

LEGO SmartBrick and charger
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 lot more.

Michael and Michael get things rolling while Andy is away on an article about Meta’s acquisition of Moltbook.  This agent to agent conversational environment reminds the pair of the Google Homes chatting with one another from back in June 2017.  Have a look at the short description in the YouTube video below and hear the conversation from 2017 in e173: Babel Fish.  

Next up: Apple’s announcement on the celebrations surrounding their 50th anniversary.  The intersection of technology and the liberal arts continues to resonate across the years.  A tremendous hack by Paul Staal’s design for a Mac mini case that mimics the 2×2 sloped computer brick.

This, of course, allows the co-hosts get into the heart of this episode: LEGO!   First, a Duke alumni magazine article about Ruthie Chen Ousley, who works at LEGO Education.  Then, a discussion about the battery and new uses for the SmartBrick.  A video from Brick Fanatics highlights who these sets and bricks are really for (spoiler, not AFOL) and how this provides a new degree of play with surprises and future possibilities as new sensors and experiences are unlocked.  

How do you imagine these SmartBricks may be used in the future?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

AI

Ars Technica article: Meta acquires Moltbook, the AI agent social network

Games at Work e173: Babel Fish (for two Google Homes talking with one another @seebotschat)

HEADLINE: "Study Finds That Execs Are Outsourcing Their Thinking to AI"

ALT HEADLINE: "Execs Worry They'll Be Replaced By AI, But They're Doing It Themselves"

futurism.com/artificial-intell

— Mike Elgan (@MikeElgan) 2026-03-08T18:20:28.916Z

Apple

MacStories article: Apple Announces 50th Anniversary Celebration

Gizmodo article: This Custom Lego-Inspired Mac Mini Case Is Retrofuturism Done Right

Games at Work e406: AI Lemmings (for James Brown’s LEGO-sized computer)

LEGO

Duke Magazine article: Brick By Brick

The Verge article: You can’t replace the battery in Lego’s Smart Bricks — and many of its sensors aren’t active yet

BrickFanatics article: LEGO fans are already finding better uses for the SMART Brick

hacking continued: as the Smart Minifigs and Smart Tiles comply with standard ISO 15693 NFC, they can be copied. So this had to be done. The clone works totally fine with the original .

➡️ youtube.com/shorts/kbI0hHGysUM

— Mäh W. (@maehw) 2026-03-08T19:14:04.937Z

e546 — Smart Play Doom Brain Brick

the new LEGO #StarWars #SmartPlay set 75423, Luke's Red Five X-Wing

Published 9 March 2026

e543 with Andy, Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on LEGO’s new Smart Play brick, this is a human brain (cells) on Doom, orc audio for vibe coding, Liquid Death’s Spotify urn for playlist immortality and a whole lot more.

Michael, Michael and Andy get things rolling with Michael M’s delivery of the newest innovation from LEGO, the Smart Play brick!   While Michael’s only had a little bit of time to play with the new brick, it is already sparking some interesting ideas.  Check out the show notes below for what others are doing with it, now that the Smart Play brick is out and in the wild!  And of course the audio of the podcast for some of the sounds from the brick!

An article about a biocomputing success to play Doom with human brain cells, reminds the cohosts of other biocomputing examples from e504.  The Ars Technica article about identifying anonymous users through LLMs likewise reminds the team of other examples for triangulating identity.  After a story about using the audio from Warcraft III in vibe coding experiences “work, work”, the team takes a look at “Humanity’s Last Exam”, which likely has already been handled by an enterprising AI research team.  

Turning next to a Norwegian PSA (that is NSFW and funny) on the slippery slope of digital products and services getting worse and worse, the team then considers a story about a partnership between Epic and Google for a new set of metaverse applications.  In yet another back to the future experience, the Niantic gaming functionality may provide a roadmap to how this partnership may grow.

The team wraps up with a Liquid Death promo for how you may achieve musical immortality with a custom Spotify playlist played via a bluetooth urn.

What songs would be on your postmortem playlist?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

LEGO Smart Play

r/LegoSmartBrick post: I disassembled a smart brick (note the comments about running Doom on a SmartBrick!)

Adafruit post: Some LEGO Smart Brick – BLE Reverse Engineering

hacking continued: as the Smart Minifigs and Smart Tiles comply with standard ISO 15693 NFC, they can be copied. So this had to be done. The clone works totally fine with the original .

➡️ youtube.com/shorts/kbI0hHGysUM

— Mäh W. (@maehw) 2026-03-08T19:14:04.937Z

AI

New Scientist article: Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week

Games at Work e504: Can You Digg It? for biocomputing

Ars Technica article: LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy

PC Magazine article: Sick of Babysitting Claude? 100K Coders Are Asking an Orc to Do It

Texas A&M Stories: Don’t Panic: ‘Humanity’s Last Exam’ has begun

Digital Products & Services

https://www.sheetz.com

The Verge article: Epic and Google have signed a special deal for a new class of ‘metaverse’ apps

Games at Work e98: Something Sweet in Your Neighborhood (for Niantic examples)

Boy Genius Report article: Keep Playing Your Spotify Playlists After You Die With Liquid Death’s New Bluetooth Urn

Games at Work e26: Business Process Management and Immortality (for digital immortality well before LLMs came on the scene)

e545 – Cyberpunk pot holes

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

Published 2 March 2026

e545 with Andy and Michael – Get to talk about mostly non-AI topics this week, as we look at a cool kickstarter, Titan, that is building out a futuristic gauntlet. Do you want a forearm mounted drone? Is so, go check it out, along with the opportunity for community modules. Very cool!

We then dip back into the world of AR and VR, as people speculate how Apple’s rumored AR glasses may benefit from the recent acquisition of Q.AI. We spend some time thinking of how a new App can help identify if you are around someone who has smart glasses on. (Even if Michael get’s the TV show reference wrong – and after an exhaustive search he can’t find the right one). We also discuss Disney’s deal to relaunch the Muppets in VR Ride as a VR app.

Moving on to some cool artistic visions we look at both video and photographic way of seeing the world. Before moving back to tech with amazing upgrades to robots on Mars. Millions of miles away NASA is repurposing a chip on a robotic helicopter to improve the location information of a rover. While closer to home, robots are fixing potholes.

We end with a story about a fellow geek accidentally hacking over 7,000 home based vacuum robots.

Selected Links

AR / VR

Art

Please mind the small train inside the little train

February 25, 2026, 17:42 114 boosts 214 favorites

Robots