Andy Toone

We really need to disengage from the nonsense being driven into our health system and news by American interests.

Their "values" are bad for our health, our economy and our safety and education.

That print looks immaculate! What a job! Which printer are you using?

Tonight's film - Old Guard. Good fun with Charlize Theron, a refreshing alternative to the Marvel universe and a cracking action adventure. Somehow all the better for ending up in a London pub.

Will definitely watch the sequel.

Whilst also allowing long term organisations (like large corporates and lobby groups) to embed themselves into the system as a driving force.

Brexit kinda played on that by talking about "elites", but only so far as to crystallise dissatisfaction, not address the problem.

This is an argument for most of Western "democracy". The institutions (including the law and civil service) have been around for so long that they are almost completely impervious to the views of the people they putatively represent.

And when you want it back, they look at you funny....

Stompy guy!!

We can hope.

As someone who believes, against all evidence to the contrary, that tech can deliver social good, I really wish we could see the end of this farce.

We could be building nice things.

I want to be building nice things.

"I had to see it, so you have to see it.... It stays with you, that image.... Haunts you."

Break free of Ring's servers, earn a five-figure bounty : Goal is to run software locally and stream only to owners' computers

A bounty of $10,000 is being offered for a way to run Ring cameras locally, without your data being offered to Amazon.

Why don't we go ahead and make a device that natively gives you control over your data? Why send money to Amazon to crack their kit?

www.theregister.com/2026/02/23/r...

Darwinian evolution in action.

What can possibly go wrong?

What happens if I lick these terminals?

Why has the world gone dark?

680uF??? Does it even need batteries with a cap that big?

Yeah, I get that. That's why I built MicroBeast into it's own box that you can put on a bookshelf.

The upcoming machine(s) are smaller and designed to avoid having to be laid out on a desk to work.

Feersum Beasts Brand new old computers, kits and projects. More than just 8 bits.

You can read more about current projects here: feersumbeasts.com

The goal is an affordable, accessible system. Different form factors, and use cases. Something that's instant-on and gives you full control, right down to the CPU.

The question is how to get there. How to get the word out, and what I'm doing right, or wrong. Ideas? Suggestions?

So: I need to get kits out there, and to figure out if there is any other way to support development.

I can't justify a KickStarter (not famous enough), but I'm building stuff on the level of the Spectrum Next or Commander X16. An entire new computer platform.

Hmmm... I need help from the BlueSky hive mind.

The next phase of Beast development is going to cost for prototyping and dev kits. There's some interesting stuff planned, but I can't afford to push it forward.

Selling MicroBeasts helps, though sales are hard in the current economic environment. 🧵

The overdiagnosis debate tends to be a political one, whereas the increase debate tends to be a medical one.

I was Z80, 68000, 386, PIC14 (backwards step!)... long pause... 6502, custom CPU designs.

After the 386 everything moved into high level languages, so after that assembly was either for tiny embedded things, or for fun.

I made the mistake of a wildly ambitious design that I can't possibly assemble at home (BGA chips!) so getting a new revision made gets expensive very quickly.

The best part of it is putting something you made into other people's hands. 😀

Not initially. I need to afford the design iterations to get it to a good state, and without a little bit of IP protection that goes straight out of the window.

Ironically, there's a bunch of level shifters there to allow 5v hardware to work with the internal 3v3 inputs. I *think* it would work with 3v3 as well, but that's completely untested.

The address space is limited for lots of reasons. A full console screen conveniently fits within 16K.

Feersum Beasts Brand new old computers, kits and projects. More than just 8 bits.

It's an entirely different architecture, so your timings are probably beyond what I've designed for... but this is what I'm working on (also on Lattice):

feersumbeasts.com/videobeast.h...

Psychopath's gotta psychopath.

Woah.

And we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars on 243 lines of code?

My partner teaches - the observation is that tech dramatically impacts stamina and attention spans. Kids struggle if the information isn't immediately available to them.

I've worked in ed-tech and so much focus is on short, "impactful" exercises. I could accept that plays into short attention.

Ooohh... cool battery circuit coming together.

Automatic switch over between USB and barrel jack input.
Charge the battery whilst running MicroBeast
Lots of battery status information - which power source, charge level, charge or discharge rate.

Death In Paradise this week features a Mac Classic... searching the web.