High society: Tan Parsons hobnobbing with Alice Nagle and Kim Marsh

Next week we head to Regency England and to the world of debutantes’ balls for dashing bachelors, blushing maidens and scheming matriarchs.

Joined by Alice Nagle and Kim Marsh from Fetch the Smelling Salts podcast, we watch as the Snootington-Fartsworthys take on the Marshington clan and do battle to snare the most eligible young men in the county.

Will they keep it straight and pure or get seriously Machiavellian? And how will the fates of both families be affected by one particularly flatulent pug?

Tune in to find out on June 3.

AI in the news

AI spy goggles: creepy

We now have headphones that let you single out a particular person in a crowd to listen to, by looking at them just once.

Computer science boffin Shyam Gollakota says: “With our devices you can now hear a single speaker clearly even if you are in a noisy environment with lots of other people talking.”

Makes me think of The Conversation in which Gene Hackman listens in on a couple to check for sedition.

Next time you’re having what you think is a private conversation in a noisy room, just keep an eye out for a man across the floor who’s wearing a pair of headphones and just staring at you, smiling creepily.

Less waffle please, GameMaster

GameMaster: In love with himself

For future episodes of PastMaster we’re thinking how to cut down on our robot GameMaster’s self-satisfied waffle and keep the action with the player.

Instead of asking ChatGPT to come up with three or four options for what the player can do next, we want it to say simply ‘What will you do next?’

After all, in real life you don’t have multiple choice options.

What else could we do? Maybe we could take away the prescribed goals of the game. Instead of trying to invent an era-defining technology or be worshiped as a god, we could let the game free-wheel.

This would be more of a ‘sandbox’ game environment, as they say in RPG circles, rather than a linear quest. Simply plant the player in the world and watch to see what happens. Let serendipity guide us on a path toward victory or destruction. Or an ongoing grind with neither euphoric highs nor crushing lows. If that sounds like something you want to experience, stay tuned.

What do you think? Let us know!

Until the next time, Tan and the PastMaster Crew

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