Cartoon versions of Andy and Michael M, generated by ChatGPT
Published 5 May 2025
e512 with Andy and Michael – E Ink monitors, Agent run companies & towns, winning arguments with AI assistants, pixellating reality and much more.
While Michael R is away, Andy and Michael start off this episode continuing the E Ink theme from last week before shifting to AI and wrapping up with several cool makes.  
It seems that there was a great deal of discussion on E Ink in the past couple of days, and the team touch on the BOOX Mira and Dashing Paperlike displays.  Andy also mentions being on a recent episode of the Bootloader podcast, where he talked about Glance – see the links below for more.  
Moving along to AI, the co-hosts talk through the multiple themes embedded in the TechCrunch article dealing with Perplexity, the divestiture of Chrome, and the business of advertising.  Andy brings up a phrase giving a different name for AI, namely, Computational Text Generation Devices, and Michael shares a link to the Crystal Knows service he heard about during a recent interview.  Then, the co-hosts have a spirited, while still family friendly, conversation spurred on by an automobile journalist’s frustrating experience with a car’s assistant.  Next up was an article about how Carnegie Mellon professors staffed a virtual company solely with AI agents, which reminded Michael about Smallville – check out e428 and e412 from 2023 for more on AI agent interaction in a town setting.  Then, Andy touches on the Meta Ray-Bans story from Gizmodo.
Wrapping up the show for this week, Andy and Michael take a look at a couple of really intriguing makes: PixLens for pixellating reality using a specifically machined acrylic lens, a cassette emulator, and a Sony Watchman brought back to life by a Raspberry Pi.
What would you like to pixellate with the PixLens?  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
E Ink, continued
The Verge article: Boox launches its first color E Ink monitor
BOOX Mira Pro E Ink Monitor
Liliputing article: Dasung Paperlike 13K is a 13.3 inch E Ink color monitor
Dasung Paperlike 13K E Ink Monitor
grocery store price display for the Salisbury, North Carolina classic cherry flavored soft drink, Cheerwine
The Bootloader podcast, e19 Welcome Andy Piper for Glance
Glance
Who’s chatting with whom? 
TechCrunch article: Perplexity CEO says its browser will track everything users do online to sell ‘hyper personalized’ ads
Amardeep Singh blog post: Humanities AI in 2025: Brief Reflections After a Conference
CrystalKnows.com 
USA Today article: Scolded by a car? My battle with an EV assistant going rogue
Futurism article: Professors Staffed a Fake Company Entirely With AI Agents, and You’ll Never Guess What Happened
Games at Work e428: Is you is, or is you AIn’t my AI? For Smallville
ARXIV paper: Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior
Games at Work e412: 3D or not 3D also for Smallville and NPCs
Gizmodo article: Meta Is Turning Its Ray-Bans Into a Surveillance Machine for AI
Hacks & Makes
AdaFruit blog post: PixLens: Reality into 8-bit
PixLens

I've adorned my cassette emulator device with a hand whittled label. The top panel has some bumps from through-board solder pads, so nothing I can do about that. But overall it's alright, if you don't look too closely and/or judge too harshly.
#ZXSpectrum

— electron.greg (@[email protected])
2025-04-29T19:51:00.721Z

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