Cassette 50 lives on in the history books of the ZX Spectrum, and many other 8 bit computers as a popular conversation topic. Join me tomorrow, 14th January as I invite you, the BASIC programmer to take part in this new CASSETTE 50 project for 2027. #zxspectrum www.youtube.com/live/vstAJ5O...

Córy Doctorow with another verbal bullseye: pluralistic.net/2026/01/13/n...

Was honored to get the call to be one of The Guardian’s Big Interviews in G2. A thorough and thoughtful piece that digs into the real fundaments of the AI bubble narrative. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Vote No voteyesornoai.com/vote/no

Windows 95: My Computer Windows 7: Computer Windows 8 (to now): This PC I do feel that says a lot, consciously or otherwise, about Microsoft's attitude!

Calling all Mattel Aquarius fans! I am getting more than a little obsessed with this machine, but have never owned one... does anyone here have one and, if so, know how easy/hard/impossible it is to hook one up to a modern monitor? VGA, SCART, HDMI, any of these?

Not my house but I know my way around

This is a little bit exciting 😁 @florinthedwarf.bsky.social

You didn't know you needed this in your life, but you do. Marine Beaufils is a French artist who creates beautiful embroideries of... The Sentinel (amongst others). It's inspired and quite beautiful. Enjoy! www.marine.st/en/pages/sen... #bbcmicro #zxspectrum #c64 #retrogaming #retrocomputing

Anyone have suggestions for YouTube channels where people are creating cool new stuff for old computers? With notable exceptions, I'm less into "here's an $OldMachine, how cool!" and want more "here's a new thing I made for $OldMachine that makes it really useful or usable today." #RetroComputing

Genuinely fascinating Drum Tower podcast from @economist.com on the sad demise of Lapsang Souchong tea. It was one of my grandma's favourite teas and the aroma of it reminds me of her. I've even enjoyed the odd cup. That Twinings have discontinued it for supply reasons feels like an 'end of an era'

Fujitsu should be banned permanently from any public sector work after what happened with Horizon.

Be kind to your site administrator 😊 Genuinely lovely to read a little paragraph like this in my 1995 guide to the internet - advice we should all continue to follow!

One thing that gives me a sense of job security is how generally poor I find juniors to be at debugging. "This failed, I don't know why" is increasingly common, and when I ask "did you read the logs?" they often look blankly at me, like logs are some kind of esoteric grimoire...

The front cover of the BBC Micro 6502 second processor user guide is one of my all time favourites, the photograph is just *so* evocative. I adore this guy's setup, it perfectly captures the spirit of 1980s home computing.

A spot of late night memory testing on the Beeb... nasty suspicion one of my DRAM chips is banjaxed 🙃

I agree, but it's also incredibly insulting that the UK government continues to use X for all of its official communications. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Apparently generating CSAM is ok, provided you pay Elon for it. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technol... Resharing this old story from 2018 for no reason at all. *stares*

www.traffic.gov.scot/gritter-trac... Scotland, I salute you! These snow gritter names are incredible 😆

BBC News report on sick men using Meta AI glasses to film women in public without their consent and then post the videos online for clicks. "We contacted Meta, who said users should not use the AI glasses in this way." Oh, so that's ok then?

Playing “Cabbage Hunter” on the Sega Mega Drive. Always get stuck on this level! 😬 🎮 #fail #retrogaming 🤪

If you're in the UK and have Facebook, a woman is giving away her late father's PDP-8/L based in Bristol. Schematics included. www.facebook.com/share/p/1A95...

No spoilers, but as someone who adored Stranger Things all the way through, I found the finale very satisfying. Great piece of television, one of the best series Netflix has ever put out.

The next step is to add a whole load of deep dives explaining how Geoff Crammond's proto-VR masterpiece works under the hood, with links into the code itself. This part will take some weeks as there's a lot to explain, but I'll try to publish them as I go. Watch this space...

How is it that HMRC can know you've completed your tax return, know that it resulted in tax to pay, but *not* know that you've already paid it? Constant gaslighting texts and emails "reminding" me to pay are really not conducive to good mental health...

If the shit pouring out of X - on all fronts - were pouring out of any other media or publishing outlet, people would be up in court. But apparently New Tech is High Magicke, in service of the great Basilisk (all hail the singularity) and cannot be constrained by the law of humans.

As many others have noted... if even DELL are admitting this, that bubble is looking pretty bursty right about now...

"Powerful Copilot prompts from Satya Nadella!" screams the Microsoft email in my inbox this morning. Get. In. The. Sea.

I have known people to have very good success with proper dictation software but it's so funny to me that they are going all in on this because 'that could have been an email' is a popular meme for a reason, often we expressly don't want to have to talk through things.

I see OpenAI are now "betting big" on audio. Once again a tech company is claiming voice-to-text will replace the keyboard. It won't. It's for bigshot CEO types dictating their bullshit into the ether. Voice-to-text is, and will forever remain, a frustrating medium for any kind of detail work.

A very kind colleague brought this into the office today for me, as he reckoned I might enjoy it - he was not wrong! The internet of 1995... almost 30 million users 😅

As I was *exiting* a trampoline arena, I jumped off the last trampoline, forgetting there were no more trampolines to land on. So instead I landed on the hard floor of the perimeter and bent my ankle around on itself. Massive sprain, couldn't walk for weeks. Total idiot.

I do not believe in the death penalty for humans. I do support the death penalty for corporations. When they murder people, let's dissolve them. Break them up, destroy their technology, nationalize their assets. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Fairly certain that regex bug I just fixed was a result of AI-generated code... Kids! Learn your regular expressions. They will never not be useful to you.

If only the world's journalists were still on Twitter to report on this MASSIVE story about Musk's AI slopbot generating child porn on demand. Too bad they all left the platform, I guess.

I had, up until yesterday, kept my dormant Twitter account (not posted anything or logged in since December 2023), the justification being "I don't want someone pretending to be me" over there. This latest Grok horror show has prompted me to login and deactivate said account.

As I'm sure you're aware, the fifth of January is the day of the Schnabelperchten, a creature of Austrian folklore who will check your house for cleanliness. If they decide you haven't done a good enough job, they'll slit open your belly and fill it with straw. Happy New Year..!

Opening my January advent calendar. Instead of chocolate, it's an email from my job asking me to do things. Outlook. I'm opening Outlook.

This is the best citation of my work yet www.theguardian.com/business/202...

It's the New Year's Postbag, 2026! youtu.be/fn87-LmMlDY

This is utterly hilarious. As anyone who's tried to use Pinterest recently will know, the site/app is completely swamped with AI slop. If Altman thinks he can use it for more image training data, he's going to be in for a surprise.

I am delighted to announce the release of my latest project: Fully documented source code for The Sentinel, Geoff Crammond’s 1986 masterpiece. Here’s the repository; deep dives coming soon. See thread for details. 1/9 github.com/markmoxon/th... #retrocomputing #retrogaming #bbcmicro #c64 #8bit

More 6845 CRTC experimentation on the BBC Micro. This time it's Mode 1 and an infinite vertical scroller. I'm probably not doing this right as it's not as smooth as I would expect. Need to do some more reading on this one. No music with this demo. #bbcmicro #demoscene

And now you know why I needed it: youtu.be/4pG8_bWpmaE?...

Just seen someone claiming the Amiga was "better than any PC In those days" in response to a post about Windows XP and early 2000s computing. I, err, don't think it was, old chap.

Sydney, that was epic! Proper fireworks display, they know how to do it #nye

Over Christmas, we were reflecting on family memories and one in particular for which I had a vivid recollection but nobody else could recall (even though they were in it!) This morning I found a photo in an album (pre-digital!) that confirmed it and I realised what a privilege it is to have (1/3)

I think this means I have to be Susan, Death's granddaughter...