screen capture of a presentation agenda with a photo of a painting of a mountain
Published 23 March 2025
e506 with Andy and Michael M – stories and discussion on the attention economy, focus, pirated data used in training LLMs, snarky software and much more.
Andy and Michael M get things rolling with an intriguing article dealing with focus and attention.  Part of their reaction was that there are so many competing sources for attention.  And that the pressure to respond with speed to these competing sources compounds the challenge.  The conversation reminded Michael of a memo that Steve Jobs wrote to his team at NeXT 39 years ago imploring them to have time of uninterrupted individual work.  Check that out in the show notes below.  Michael and Andy give a couple examples of what they suggest to bring balance and creativity back to the fore.
Continuing on to the advances made with large language models, Andy and Michael take up the discussion on the data needed to train the LLMs.  The Atlantic article on the use of pirated books to train AI also includes LibGen, their search tool The Atlantic created for their analysis of the Library Genesis data set.  This subject has cropped up in earlier episodes – such as the discussion on the Sarah Silverman example.  Next, the team turns to an AI coding assistant named Cursor.  After a developer had spent an hour of vibe coding with Cursor, the AI reportedly gave feedback to the developer that he should complete the work himself to ensure he understands the logic and can maintain the code.  Computer applications with snark are nothing new – take Carrot Weather or the Talking Moose for example.  Cursor’s reply echos practically every geometry teacher who insists that going through the mathematical proof is crucial to understanding why A^2 + B^2 = C^2 is true.  Not necessarily a bad idea, yet surprisingly comes from an AI assistant.  
After a surprising article about speed runner successes on aging and accelerating Super Nintendo hardware, Andy and Michael reflect on games embedded inside of other games from a How to Geek article.  This appeals greatly to Andy’s love of game preservation, and strikes Michael’s fancy for how art echos through the years, sharing a prior incarnation of this topic with paintings having paintings in them.
Then, a story about the LEGO x Pokémon teaser.  The team wraps up this episode with a couple of stories about the challenges indy software developers face.
What suggestions and techniques do you have for recapturing your time and attention?  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
Attention Economy
Wikipedia article: Daylight Savings Time

ploum.net blog post: A Society That Lost Focus
Games at Work e67: Free Bitcoins! for the attention economy
Wikipedia article: Battle Chess
Edward Tufte
AI
The Atlantic article: The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem
The Atlantic article: Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI
Games at Work e443: In the Stone for the Sarah Silverman discussion
Wired article: An AI Coding Assistant Refused to Write Code—and Suggested the User Learn to Do It Himself
Cursor
Games
404 Media article: Super Nintendo Hardware Is Running Faster as It Ages
How to Geek article: These 15 Games Have Other Games Hidden Inside Them
Daily Art Magazine article: Paintings Within Paintings: Time to Go Meta in the Art World
The Verge article: This watch has Pong and Missile Command instead of apps
Ars Technica article: Sobering revenue stats of 70K mobile apps show why devs beg for subscriptions
Gamesradar article: “Valve knows it, I know it, and you need to know it”: Steam expert tells indie devs to “give away” demos, because actually playing a game beats all other marketing
LEGO

Oh hello, what do we have here? 👀
#pokemon #lego #leakhttps://retrododo.com/pokemon-lego-set-reportedly-leaked-by-lego-mexico/

— Daniel (@[email protected])
2025-03-18T14:16:13.486Z



Retrododo article: Pokémon LEGO Set Reportedly Leaked By LEGO Mexico
Lego Germany Pokémon 



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

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