"A digital ID makes it much harder for people to work in the illegal economy."** Whut? How?? Are crime bosses asking for ID now? You know a policy is BS when they're excusing it with obvious nonsense. **Heard on the radio as I walked into the room so no idea who it was.

Nice summary:

Grok is being sent to the reeducation camp

In case you missed it: they are considering expanding the #OnlineSafetyAct into a general purpose surveillance obligation "to keep people safe"

UK Government announcement of additional Online Safety Act regulations, not yet published www.gov.uk/government/n... Note the direction of travel: OSA requirements that currently oblige platforms to proactively "protect" children from content will be extended to protect adults.

Whatever changed with YouTube back between August 10 to August 17 has resulted in every video I've released since to get the same message and a massive drop in views .... * SIGH * When YouTube decides your subscribers aren't interested, it buries the video and stops recommend it. Demoralizing....

BBC Breakfast this morning had a long segment about the 30th anniversary of Windows 95. So what vintage computer did they put in the studio as a handy prop? #windows95

Over the last couple of months I've been trying to get a recreated William Stuart Sound Card for the ZX81 working. Today I think that I've worked out why it's not working properly... timing. It looks as if modern TI versions of the 74LS30 and LS27 are just too slow. AY not latching valid data.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Home Office Safety Minister demands safer devices for children, will have to ban secondhand device market / require ID card checks to purchase new or used phones & tablets.

I’ve been back trying to work out why the ZX81 AY-3-8910 based sound card won’t work. All checks with a logic analyser show all the signals to be correct and all data lines hold their correct values for over double the required 100ns after the control signals change. I’ stumped.

Online Safety Act was botched from the start | The Times https://alecmuffett.com/article/114434 #AgeVerification #OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #surveillance #vpn

James Baker of @OpenRightsGroup: son is using East Anglia fishing videos to circumvent Google’s AI age verification profiling https://alecmuffett.com/article/114430

Could Wikipedia be censored in the UK? | John Lubbock https://alecmuffett.com/article/114407 #AgeVerification #JimmyWales #OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #surveillance #vpn #wikipedia

“UK police knocking on doors demanding details of social media accounts of people, to pass to [US] government, simply because they happen to live near where a US politician wanted to have a holiday” https://alecmuffett.com/article/114336 #JDVance #SocialMedia #censorship #surveillance

Trying out the new cvplay ColecoVision game compatibility program for the Memotech MTX Series machines. Zaxxon anyone?

There are many reasons to criticise the #OnlineSafetyAct but the bizarre #Ofcom approach to #AgeVerification demanding vast proliferation of personal information rather than obligatory acceptance of a validated credential, defies belief and exceeds all other failures.

“I’m confused that the government advises never to give out your personal information, then introduces a law that means we have to send photos of our passports & driving licenses to anyone who asks” https://alecmuffett.com/article/114206

Ofcom says that if you refuse to censor yourself under the Online Safety Act, it will force payment processors and ISPs to stop doing business with you. When the government can't shut you up, the banks and credit cards will. Absolutely terrifying. www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/r...

Sinclair QL without a keyboard? No problem, use a USB one instead. 😊 I’ve just created a @raspberrypi.com pico board which can act as if it’s a keyboard matrix. With correct software should be able to be used on any machine with 8 scan and up to 12 sense lines.

Just one more thought. Some people are saying the Online Safety Act’s about surveillance. Others that it’s about censorship. It’s both. The two go hand in hand. Surveillance supports censorship - if you know what people are saying, it’s easy to censor it. Further, it encourages self-censorship.

UK Government Warns Promoting the Use of VPNs Could Attract Fines | ISPreview UK https://alecmuffett.com/article/113998 #AgeVerification #OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #ofcom #surveillance #vpn

The law of unintended cautioned quenches

I love this kind of thing but I do wish people stopped demonising "big tech" - which is not to absolve them of their failings, however criticism of the online safety act needs to come from the impact upon human rights and digital civil liberties, not "we think it might be good for people we hate"

All historians know the sinking feeling of tracking an "authoritative" reference back through several generations of writers to an unsourced assertion by someone nobody's ever heard of. Now AI can make up new ones in no time at all.

First it's about minors not being able to access pornography. Next it's about women not being about to access reproductive resources. And so on.

Due to age authentication mandates, we're witnessing the real-time destruction of the Internet as we know it. The barriers invade our privacy & block kids'--& adults'--access to material they are entitled to access. My paper explains why none of this helps children ssrn.com/abstract=520... 🧵 1/3

Now ask them: - If you were to visit a porn website would you be willing to give over your identity information? - Should LGBTQ people be required to give over identity information in order to read gay support forums on Reddit? - similarly: addiction recovery forums? bsky.app/profile/step...

Make no mistake: these problems are baked into AV no matter how it's rolled out. The sex industry has screamed about these issues — the porous internet borders, the easy workarounds, the potential for government censorship, the privacy issues — for years. But consumers are only now realizing.

Some commitment right here, dead 300 years but still grinding the Spotify algorithm.

Quelle Surprise: UK households could face VPN ‘ban’ after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill | Birmingham Live https://alecmuffett.com/article/113855 #AgeVerification #OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #vpn

Ha!

#retrocomputing #hardware people... Well those of you who know about the AY-3-8910 anyway... I need some help. I've built a recreation of the William Stuart sound card and I can't get the AY chip to do anything. I've worked out the addressing and this is what the chip sees. /1

Police officer: "… mentioning freedom of Gaza … comes under support of a prescribed group … terrorism …" Um. This is not good.

Today seems to be "Show your 1980s audio-visual tech day" on Bluesky.

TNMOC are having a "Bring'n'Byte" sale it seems. Pity I'm busy that day.

Retro Jumble -Step back to the 80s on Saturday, July 19th, 2025, 10 AM - 4 PM Grab a piece of computing history (Amstrad, Commodore, Dragon & more!). Your ticket includes £10 off any Jumble purchase & FREE museum entry. Don't miss out! Book now: ow.ly/nqZv50WhhCO #VintageComputers #1980sTech

My #Sinclair #QL bare metal diagnostic ROM is now good enough to use in anger and has been made version 0.10 to celebrate. github.com/stephen-ushe... As long as the machine has minimally working ZX8301, ZX8302 and CPU it should be able to output useful data to a serial port. No RAM required.

Meanwhile…. Vladimir Putin tells a news conference in St Petersburg ‘I consider the Russian and Ukrainian people to be one nation. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours… There is an old rule: Where a Russian soldier sets foot, that is ours.’

I've spent the morning completely replacing the base memory error reporting for the #sinclair QL diag ROM. It now actually produces something useful and usable. Serial port gets fault address and bad bit mask. Screen gets colour bars, first denoting which RAM bank plus 8 more for the bits 7 -> 0.

After battling documentation which was unclear or just plain wrong and an emulator which required status registers to be read twice to get a valid value I've finally got IPC communications working on the #sinclair #ql bare metal diagnostic ROM. It was a major roadblock. youtu.be/Uvuj6TJSwe4?...

I'm currently trying to write a diagnostic ROM for the #sinclair #ql which replaces the main ROM and should give diagnostics out of ser1 even if the base RAM is missing. Currently very rudimentary, should be useful for memory testing. Collaboration for coding welcome. github.com/stephen-ushe...

🌍 | This Sunday (8 June) is #WorldOceanDay Helen Johnson, Professor of Ocean and Climate Science @oxuniearthsci.bsky.social‬, is unlocking the mysteries of the ocean. Find out about her work and the role our oceans play in mitigating climate change. ⬇️ www.ox.ac.uk/climate-and-... #OxfordClimate

Good news. The conductive paint arrived today and it completely repaired the Zero 1 keypad.

Today's fun was not computer related... Fixing my Denon mid-90s tape deck which had stopped listening to tapes. Got no-where until I washed the control/display board with isopropyl alcohol to get rid of flux residue so as to see the solder joints. Flux residue had become conductive!

Well, that's why the keypad on the Zero 1 was not working correctly. The conductive paint on the rubber pads which contact the contacts on the PCB have worn through. I have conductive paint on order but as a contingency I've designed a replacement keypad PCB which uses SMD switches.

Back home after RetroFest2025 and shattered. I'm going to have to take a look at the keypad on the Zero 1 master controller and see if I can renovate the carbon impregnated rubber pads. By this morning it was hardly working. I was lucky to manage to get anything working.

Had a dry run of transporting, setting up and running the layout for #RetroFest2025 tonight. I took it to the model railway club and the two main lessons from the outing are: 1) Take a track rubber. The rails will need a lot of cleaning. 2) Make a "timetable" of loco and rolling stock movements.

ebay.us/m/WmFW4L Ahh crap! Is ebay now offering AI generated images?? 🙁

With a week and a half until #RetroFest2025 starts I've got the Zero 1 demonstration layout practically complete. It's a good thing too as the weather is changing and I don't have enough space to work upon it indoors. Come and play with it at STEAM in Swindon on the 31st May/1st June.