News and Articles

We can all relax as Bill Gates has a good feeling about AI although it seems that 57% of the internet is AI-generated and kills search results and Microsoft's AI PCs can’t play top games. If you ever wondered if your phone is eavesdropping on conversations for ad targeting, you are correct and there's even a pitch deck for the feature. Ford is even looking into a patent to make your car spy on you to show you ads.  Do you remember the One Million Checkboxes site from the procrastination corner? People used it to hide secrets in binary! And if you feel like cheating in school, ChatGPT now runs on a ti 84 calculator!

Given that John Romero is the featured video this time, let's talk about Doom. The big item was that an AI can hallucinate a Doom game in real time running on a Diffusion Model. Much like AI also can simulate Super Mario Bros. from video footage. Doom runs on a volumetric display with more details how that was done in this blog post. It can also run on a toothbrush, on bacteria, and in Zork!

Code and Tools

Sorting algorithms are a fun thing to analyse, do you know about Timsort? Kirupa Chinnathambi has all about it. Also, you can learn about lesser known parts of Python standard library, and how to achieve multithreading in Node.js. In games and retro land, learn how to create a PS1-Inspired Jitter Shader, the effect of CRTs on Pixel Art and the art of dithering and retro shading for the web. I keep saying it, we can learn a lot from vintage computing. In the AI aided coding world, read about programming with ChatGPT, what AI-written code means in terms of data quality, learn about the most common bugs in LLM-generated code and that minifying code is pretty pointless as OpenAI is shockingly good at un-minifying it. There is also a proposal to block AI bots with a /llms.txt file much like robots.txt that was ignored by them. And last but not least, is Boolean a trap? Some say yes, others no.

Some tools for you:

• A DOS JavaScript Canvas with sound
• Rustpad  - collaborative text editor
• Check Your Redirects and Status Codes
• SeekTune - Shazam's song recognition algorithm
• Kontra - JavaScript gaming micro-library the Js13kGames game jam.

Cool code demos

Talks and Videos

John Romero, the man, the myth, the legend and more behind games like Doom is discussing the current and near future of gaming in an an AI world. Check it out! We also published a write-up of the talk in the magazine.

Other videos and talk write-ups of note:

Maria Apazoglou - Making AI understandable for all in production (35m) Also check out the magazine article about the chat with Maria.

Johanna Pirker - How AI is shaping our games (31m)

Jemiah Sius - AI-Driven Problem Solving in Engineering with Observability (28m)

Work and Jobs

In the work world, there is the question if we should always fix bugs or if it makes sense to let small fires burn? Also, it seems that doing support makes you a better engineer, AI development and agile don't mix well and Scrum is stressing people out. Wealthfront explain how they changed their performance review process to help engineers grow and Matthew Dean wonders why companies don't pay their engineers to stay. If you want to plan for your 2025 Security And Risk Budget, Forrester has a guide. If you wonder what it is like to work for Mr.Beast, he wrote a document about that highlighting everything that is wrong about growth hacking and the fast paced work world we live in.

Procrastination Corner / Wonderful Weird Web

• Is my blue your blue - some say it is  green, others blue
• Tapedeck.org - collection of tapes of yore
• Stapler: I remade a 32 year old classic Macintosh app
• Nortis: a Tetris clone for the PlayStation 1