E530 — Vibe It! - Ready Player Chum Games At Work Dot Biz podcast

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e530 — Vibe It! - Ready Player Chum

17h ago 31:47

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Friendly bipedal robot strolling down a path — Photo by Kindel Media from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-robot-toy-on-gray-concrete-floor-9026299/

Published 29 September 2025

e530 with Michael and Michael – an AI extravaganza with vibe coding, AI gaming chums, rating LLMs via Infocom games, robots for construction, self assembling space habitats and a whole lot more.

Michael and Michael get things moving this episode with an AI extravaganza while Andy is away. The co hosts start things off with a vibe coding assistant to help you with your QBasic programming needs. Next up, the pair consider a couple of stories dealing with assistants who can help users be more effective in playing games. There is a real Goldilocks zone for the assistant to help the player remain in a state of flow, where the game is neither too easy due to the assistant’s help, nor too frustrating to play. Michael R gives an example of his trying to get to Orc Town to progress in Mines of Moria. Continuing on the theme of AIs playing games, Michael and Michael take a look at TextQuests, where a variety of LLMs take up the challenge of playing Infocom text based games. With all the discussion on AI slop in the news, the article from Computerworld about the mathematical inevitability of hallucinations is particularly timely.

Michael and Michael move from AI to robotics and take a look at the construction bot from Dusty Robotics, which prints out a life size blueprint directly on the floor. Michael M shares a space habitat construction solution from Aurelia that uses magnets to self assemble in orbit. Michael R shares a story about the engineering feat of moving a viking ship without damaging it, which reminded Michael M of the challenge of moving the Cape Hatteras lighthouse. Check out the links below for all the details.

What would your ideal game chum be like? What do you think about the current state of AI chum? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know!

Selected Links

AI

hackaday.io AI Coding Assistant for Microsoft QBasic

Engadget article: Google is turning Gemini into a gaming sidekick with a new Android overlay

PC Gamer article: Microsoft’s new Gaming Copilot AI tool promises to be ‘your personal gaming sidekick’ but it mostly seems to do the work of a Google search, with the potential for ‘hallucinations’

Games at Work e488: Fight. For Your Right. To Pla-aaay! for Jane McGonigal and flow

The Gamer article: How To Find Orc Town In The Lord Of The Rings: Return To Moria

404 Media article: AI-Powered Animal Crossing Villagers Begin Organizing Against Tom Nook

TextQuests.ai

Wikipedia article: Infocom

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws
https://www.computerworld.com/article/4059383/openai-admits-ai-hallucinations-are-mathematically-inevitable-not-just-engineering-flaws.html
— Charlie Stross (@[email protected])
2025-09-21T17:14:32.576Z

Computerworld article: OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws

Rule 34 by Charles Stross

Accelerando by Charles Stross

Games at Work e306: Weak Ties for Accelerando

hitchhikers.fandom.com: Infinite Improbability Drive

Washington Post article: AI firm Deepseek writes less secure code for groups China disfavors

Robots

Dusty Robotics

Aurelia: Tesserae: Self-Assembling Prototypes

Magnatiles

This is Colossal article: A Feat of Engineering Transports the World’s Best-Preserved Viking Ship to Its New Home

National Park Service article: Moving the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

Two More Things

Six Colors article: Apple Announces a New Set of Immersive Film Releases

Random Thoughts post: My AirPods Review

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

113 episodes

#Tech #Lifestyle #Tech News #Games and Gambling #Michael Rowe, Michael Martine #Michael Rowe #News #Michael Martin