Published 3 November 2025

e532 with Michael and Michael – Halloween Spooktacular edition with AI whale communications & implications, robotic vacuums that phone home, ad supported TVs and a whole lot more.

For the Halloween spooktacular edition of Games at Work, Michael and Michael start things off with an article about AI decoding whale’s communications, and the potential for the recognition of whales’ rights. There have been multiple discussions about the promise of understanding non-human communications over the years on Games at Work, and a couple of these are included in the show notes links below.

Next up is a series of articles the benefits and challenges of internet of things powered hardware, and the challenges they present. First, a discussion on the remote software feature removal, in the case of the Futurism article, when the owner blocked the transmissions from his IoT vacuum, that the software running the bot was changed to make it stop working. Then, there is a story about free TV hardware that requires an ELUA to run a second screen of advertising. After considering this free, ad supported TV, the co-hosts muse what other hardware might be made available at no cost, and with an advertising stream. Changes to streaming television to insert more advertising has become more common. Michael and Michael explore the idea of an IoT refrigerator with a screen might become an ad supported platform, and that to access certain functionality, the screen may require the user to watch an advertising video. After the cloud outage from last week, there have been articles that discuss how the hardware behaves without the constant internet connection. An example of this is the malfunctions from an internet connected bed.

Sticking with the robot and advertising theme, Michael R highlights Sandwich’s immersive commercial making use of the new Blackmagic camera to capture an immersive video for Robot.com. After touching on Apple’s Family Sharing and CarPlay capabilities and Windows 11 immersive ultra wide mode, Michael M wraps up the show with a quick point on The Simulation Hypothesis book and the LEGO Arcade Machine that opens up to have a minifig’s gamer room inside the cabinet.

What ad supported free hardware would you accept? What data streams would you not allow your IoT devices to hear / see / say? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (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

Inside Climate News article: AI Is Decoding Whales’ Communications. Could That Be a Turning Point in the Push for Their Rights?

Games at Work e466: AI’s Perfect Vacation from May 2024 for machine learning decoding the sperm whale alphabet

Games at Work e495: Personal Planetarium from December 2024 for talking with animals via AI, Sandwich Vision

Technology

Futurism article: Man Alarmed to Discover His Smart Vacuum Was Broadcasting a Secret Map of His House

Games at Work e235: Bots on Batuu from June 2019 for discussion on vacuum bots

Games at Work e260: 1984 Tesla for Sale from February 2020 for discussion on remote software feature removal

Creative Bloq article: You can now get a TV for free… and I’m worried this is the future of tech

Ars Technica article: Samsung makes ads on $3,499 smart fridges official with upcoming software update

Ars Technica article: AWS outage reminds us why $2,449 Internet-dependent beds are a bad idea

More Technology

Six Colors article: Hello, Robot: Sandwich launches “immersive commercial”

9 to 5 Mac article: Mother describes the dark side of Apple’s Family Sharing when a relationship ends

Daring Fireball article: CarPlay Seems Essential for Rental Fleets

The Verge article: Windows 11’s Vision Pro-like remote desktop is now widely available on Quest 3

Two More Things

The Simulation Hypothesis 2nd Edition by Rizwan Virk

LEGO Arcade Machine 40805

Two Bonus Game Things

The Register article: This is Doom, running headless, on Ubuntu Arm… on a satellite

Engadget article: Board is a $500 board game console with 12 original titles

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

Michael Martine