Photo by Valentin Ivantsov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/geometric-still-life-with-orange-and-white-balls-36151755/ Published 7 September 2026 e567 with Michael M and Andy – Stories and discussion on Xteink reader mods, PONG, mathematical innovations for dice, walled garden vs open vibe coding, World Models, AI productivity and a whole lot more! While Michael R is away, Andy and Michael M start off this episode with a follow on story to last week’s note on the Xteink reader – this time, a Pokémon game. And it seems that the folks over at the Atlantic have also picked up on this device – after recording the show, an article highlighting the virtues of the Xteink X3 was published on Sunday September 6th. Next up, the pair boot up the virtual black & white TV to talk about the video game PONG from Atari. But this is a newer version, available on Steam where PONG is a roguelike dungeon crawler with opportunities to unlock secrets, enjoy up to 4 players in multiplayer mode, and buy outfits for your intrepid paddle. Don’t know about PONG? Have a look at the YouTube video in the show notes below for an example of the gameplay from this 1972 game. Ever been frustrated when rolling dice to see who goes first in a game, and time after time, multiple players each roll a 5 on a six sided die? Well, fret no more, as there is now a set of 60 sided dice that when rolled together will mathematically ensure that only one of them is the winner! Andy and Michael then turn to AI – and a discussion on the vibe coding possibilities of Pocket’s “gizmos” within the Meta ecosystem. Creating and sharing these gizmos can be done by anyone in the Meta ecosystem, but not outside. Next up is the recent announcement by Runway – the Solaris Interface World Model – which takes the gizmo concept to an interactive visual experience, where the interface is visual. This reminded Michael of the NVIDIA Omniverse world digital twin idea. For more on the topic, have a look at the Not Boring essay linked in the notes below. After a discussion on AI driven productivity, the team takes a look at the wasteful bulldozer crawler approach for querying the Linux kernel, which is anything but productive for the CPUs serving up the git commits. Wrapping up the episode, the team looks at the 2026 Tiny Awards – and you can vote for your favorite! How would you envision using the Interface World Model? 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** ### **Games** Github: Xteink Pokémon Game The Atlantic article: This Tiny E-Reader Is the Single Best Piece of Technology in Years Games at Work e566: Making Fetch Happen (for eeink custom firmware for Xteink ESP32 series) Atari’s PONG Quest on the Steam Store Wikipedia article: Pong NewScientist article: Dice discovered that solve decade-long mathematical problem Fast Company article: These 60-sided dice never have to be rolled twice ### **AI** Ars Technica article: Pocket’s AI made my game ideas real. Now Meta controls the results. Runway Games at Work e316: Omni Metaverse (for NVIDIA’s Omniverse discussion) NVIDIA Omniverse Libraries Not Boring by Packy McCormick essay: World Models: Computing the Uncomputable > American businesses spent well over a TRILLION DOLLARS on AI in the past year, but business productivity went DOWN. Here's why: https://www.computerworld.com/article/4215022/why-ai-doesnt-make-companies-more-productive.html > > — Mike Elgan (@MikeElgan)2026-08-30T11:37:44.372Z Computerworld article: Why AI doesn’t make companies more productive people.kernel.org post: Creepy crawlies Anubis ### **Award Season** Vote for the 2026 Tiny Awards Winner Neal.fun’s Cursor Camp https://hallucinate.site https://media.blubrry.com/gamesatwork/op3.dev/e/gamesatwork.biz/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/E567.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:29 — 12.1MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Podcast Index | Youtube Music | RSS | About this podcast ### Share this: * Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email *

I have been interested in the different ways to capture thoughts I have but with the wave of AI nonsense I have seen stuff which seriously is quite scary. With my focus on local AI control, I found the Pebble index 01 an interesting proposition. So I bought the Pebble index 01, as an external trigger for local recording. I thought it would be useful, as I like the idea and found speech to text very useful generally when trying to spell words or sharing my thoughts. However the problem always tends to be is getting my phone out trigger the recorder. In a world where phones are regularly being stolen on streets, the less I use my phone in public the better really. Some may say, your watch can do a great job at this and I agree, I did install quick voice notes. But I noticed something of a unique case, which relates to something I’ve been thinking about for a long while. After coming out of hospital and watching likely too much Inception on repeat (although I also had read about dreams previously), I had a long think about dream sharing via mydreamscape. What got me thinking is dream capturing is a nightmare, as you usually have to switch a light on, shaking you out of your slightly relaxed state. Most people use a note pad next to the bed or even record their quick recap on their phones. The phone requires the screen to be turned on causing you to be more awake than you might like again. The Index 01 can be worn during sleep and when in a slight awaken state could be used to record a dream for a few minutes. Then sync it to the phone and turned into editable text using a chosen remote or local LLM. On top of this all, the whole thing can be encrypted to keep all those _interesting_ dreams secret. Who knows maybe I’ll give it a try and if my thoughts are right, setup a prototype with a Anytype project/template.

Old-school teletext with its pixelated text and block graphics may now be largely a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean it’s without enthusiasts or there’s no more life …read more