e476 — The Returns of the Pins

Games At Work dot Biz

Photo by Cristina Hernández on Unsplash

Published 11 August 2024

Co-hosts Andy, Michael and Michael start things off with a couple of callbacks to last week’s episode, including Ian Hughes’ reply on exoframes, the Logitech Forever Mouse and the reports of the rate of returns on the Humane AI pin.

Switching then to a story local to Michael, Michael and Andy, the co-hosts talk about the University of North Carolina using Oxford Medical Simulation to teach nursing students in virtual reality. This reminds Michael M of a rather old iOS game, Surgeon Simulator.

Sticking with the (quasi) medical theme, Andy then shares an experience of one of his recent blog posts going viral Hacker News. Check out the images in the show notes below to see the detailed graphs.

After sharing Ian’s recent talk at the Chartered Institute for IT and Andy’s upcoming appearance on the TechGrumps podcast, the team turns to Mac hardware and software.

Beginning with NotchNook, and the reported challenges with payment systems, the co-hosts quickly turn to the SuperDrive. Not surprisingly, all three co-hosts have a SuperDrive, though Michael M doesn’t know where his is. Michael R shared a note about one of his favorite pieces of software, VinylStudio, which sparks a discussion on what it means to own media in this day and age.

Wrapping things up this episode are several recommendations – Doom and a couple of intriguing podcasts not called Games at Work. When We Were Wizards is a podcast dealing with an oral history of Dungeons & Dragons. Acquired is a podcast that tells the stories and strategies in depth of great companies.

Do you know where Michael M’s SuperDrive is? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[e-mail] (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

Andy’s phone answering glasses – Ray-Ban Smart Meta Glasses

@gamesatwork_biz fyi I can confirm I don’t have lots of exoframes filling up office or shed space 🙂 tempted a few times but maybe when I am a little more frail I might bother. Also the Rabbit R1, got it for that precise reason to see how it felt to have physical object doing AI not just an app, but it also looks great next to the playdate game machine. Annoyingly the roaming sim I put in it didn’t work on holiday (for translations etc) and no way to mess with the mobile settings.

— Epredator (@[e-mail])
2024-08-06T15:36:44.181Z

The Verge article: Now Logitech says the ‘forever mouse’ was just an idea

Mashable article: Humane AI Pins are being returned at a ridiculous pace

Medical VR

WUNC article: UNC-Chapel Hill gets funding to continue virtual reality pilot for nursing students

Carolina Nursing post: Virtual Reality Simulations Bring Real-World Healthcare Scenarios to the Classroom

Oxford Medical Simulation

Surgeon Simulator

Going Viral

The lost outpost blog post: MNT Pocket Reform: first impressions

July 31 2024 views & visitors

August 7, 2024 views and visitors

Hacker News rankings over time

Podcasts & Talks

Techgrumps 3.18

Mac Hardware and Software

iMore article: This MacBook app generated $100,000 in seven days, now Stripe won’t pay up

NotchNook

Games at Work e383: Notchy McNotchface

512 Pixels article: The SuperDrive

VinylStudio by AlpineSoft

SuperDuper by Shirt Pocket Software

Alfred by Running with Crayons

Kelly Gallagher Sims blog post: Ownership in the Rental Age

I share my screen on Teams all the time, and I think drawing/design apps that want to sample colours outside of their windows with the eyedropper tool also need to use this API, so looks like I’m gonna be seeing this a lot…

Apple have made Mac OS into exactly the thing they made fun of Windows Vista for. After some time, no one is going to be reading these dialogues anyway, people will blindly click on “allow”, effectively working against the intent of better security.
https://mastodon.online/@9to5Mac/112916905882020099

— Tuomas Hämäläinen (@[e-mail])
2024-08-06T20:49:16.328Z

Co-Host Recommendations

Bethesda post: DOOM + DOOM II Release Notes

When We Were Wizards podcast

Acquired podcast