iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 23/09/2026

Good morning from @perimeterinstitute.bsky.social ! ☀️

A chalkboard on an outdoor wall next to a reflecting pool, with chairs and a sofa in front of the wall. In chalk, there is a drawing of the institute and the words “Welcome to Perimeter. Discovery starts with curiosity.”

Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

How can anyone comprehend a data center without grokking the miracle of a single transistor? To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. - William Blake #ComputationalThinking #Information

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Chekov: "That may take some time." Scotty: "Let it take time, lad." - s2e25 "Bread and Circuses" Scotty's discipline and patience saves the entire crew. A lesson to remember in these times of snake oil, contrived urgency, panic, and frantic flim-flammery. Measure twice, cut once. #StarTrekWisdom

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Jason Moore @moorejh.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Chat? No! It’s Think-a-Tron! #vcfmw

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

"Is AI a good bet?" Nerds, analysts, investors, influencers, politicians, and journalists will often answer, "Yes, we just need to be patient because we've never seen anything like this before." I have. It was called #ExpertSystems. It never scaled, triggering a decades-long AI Winter. #AI #GenAI

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Ken Shirriff @righto.com · 31/07/2026

This vacuum tube module was used in an IBM programmable calculator from 1948. This module, called a "trigger", stored one bit of information. Let's take a closer look and see the module operate.

A cylindrical tube module. It consists of a U-shaped metal frame forming a handle, with a vacuum tube and some electronic components (resistors and capacitors) mounted on insulating disks. At the bottom of the module, nine metal pins allow the module to be plugged into a socket.

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

It's nice to have so many from the Old Country joining us. Bring on the next match. Set phasers to milky and get in amongst yeh. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xar7... #Canada #WorldCup

youtube.com

Taysiders in Space

YouTube video by lessthanj

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Is something lost when life is copied (transformed) by a machine? Is live Jazz equivalent to sheet music? Ian Malcolm in JURASSIC PARK, and Seth Brundle in THE FLY (both roles played by Jeff Goldblum) addressed this question beautifully. Goldblum strikes again here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_6R...

youtube.com

Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra - Cantaloupe Island (Live)

YouTube video by JeffGoldblumVEVO

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

#BlueJays describe their first ever home run. For Daulton Varsho, it was the day his dad got fired which made it possible for him to come to the game and see his son hit his first. Wow "What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise" - Oscar Wilde www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXU2...

youtube.com

Kazuma Okamoto, Daulton Varsho, George Springer, and Addison Barger remember their first time

YouTube video by Lindsay Dunn

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

City-sized data centers seem like a misstep. AGI should really fit in a pocket computer. That's my gut feeling. Perhaps using stuff like "Reservoir Computing". youtu.be/cDxtFtoQVNc #GOFAI #PortableComputing #Calculators

youtu.be

The Most Counterintuitive Way to Build a Brain

YouTube video by Artem Kirsanov

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Digital Brain @yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

The Oldham coupling, invented in 1821, remains essential in robotics today, ensuring smooth motion between misaligned axes. A true engineering marvel in automation.

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Retro Tech Dreams @retrotechdreams.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Hewlett Packard HP 200LX Pocket Computer (1994)

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

To be a lackey in the Age of Oligarchy Or be ranked lower than a machine "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves" - Cassius, "Julius Caesar" #Shakespeare #ArtificialIntelligence

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

WOPR was right: "Strange game. The only winning move is not to play." #GOFAI #ComputationalThinking

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mr. TIM @timkellogg.me · 07/04/2026

Cleo Abram interviewed Demis Hassabis (CEO Google Deep Mind) I’ll follow up here with thoughts, as I make my way through. Clearly it’s going to be a good interview. youtu.be/C0gErQtnNFE

youtu.be

The Man Behind The Most Useful Thing AI Has Ever Done

YouTube video by Cleo Abram

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Retro Tech Dreams @retrotechdreams.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

BlackBerry 5810 (2002)

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

The COSMAC 1802 microprocessor (1976) had approximately 5,000 transistors, and 16x16-bit internal registers. The MOS 6502 (1975) had even fewer transistors, yet went on to power most of the early PC era. A human brain weighs 3lbs and draws 30W. Perhaps we're scaling in the wrong direction. #GOFAI

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Retro Tech Dreams @retrotechdreams.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Sony Video TV Recorder GV8 (1988)

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Sinclair Research @sinclairresearch.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

The Jupiter ACE was built by two ex-Sinclair engineers who helped design the ZX Spectrum — the only home micro to run FORTH! The archive preserving its legacy needs support. Help keep this Sinclair heritage alive! 🕹️ www.jupiter-ace.co.uk

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Simon Harris @simondo65.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

When I was a student, Alan Winfield, one of my lecturers started up a spin-out company to create a fast hardware Forth processor. alanwinfield.blogspot.com/2013/03/extr...

alanwinfield.blogspot.com

Extreme debugging - a tale of microcode and an oven

It's been quite awhile since I debugged a computer program. Too long. Although I miss coding, the thing I miss more is the process of findin...

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

"The Wizard of Oz" (1939). A tale of snake oil, flimflammery, androids, witchcraft, lies about the nature of true intelligence, lots of wind. It had it all. #ArtificialIntelligence

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Mark Carney @mark-carney.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

On this International Women’s Day, we remain vigilant about what we must protect. And we remain determined about accomplishing the work ahead.

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

If your pop-sci book shelf is looking for a new addition - Emma Chapman's Radio Universe is coming out this week. It's genuinely delightful and well worth picking up a copy! 👉@dreochapman.bsky.social 📖: www.waterstones.com/book/radio-u...

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Mike Sux 🍁 @distraction.engineer · 23/02/2026

I was curious to figure out what the beefiest single board computer under $30 is (AKA C$40). The first real standout is the Radxa Cubie A7Z. The model with 1 GB DDR4 meets that. Features an Allwinner A733 SOC: 8 CPU cores, PCIe 3.0, WiFi6+BT5.4, RISC-V coprocessor. 🤯 Also available with 2/4/8 GB.

Radxa Cubie A7Z in a similar form factor to the Raspberry Pi Zero.

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

An abstract representation of the #LEGO mindset has been available as a programming language since 1970. It's called #FORTH. #ComputationalThinking #AssemblyTheory #Concatenative #ThreadedLanguages

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Marc Kuchner | Author @marckuchner.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

The 1st planet candidate w/Earth-like radius & orbit transiting a Sun-like star bright enough for serious follow-up. Congrats to citizen scientists Alexander Venner, Hans Martin Schwengeler, Martti H. Kristiansen, Mark Omohundro & Ivan A. Terentev! iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... #news #astronomy

iopscience.iop.org

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

“Any planet is 'Earth' to those that live on it.” Isaac Asimov, "Pebble in the Sky" #Subjectivity #Rationality #Psychology

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Marc Kuchner | Author @marckuchner.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

More than 650 amateur scientists have now become coauthors of published, refereed scientific papers through their work on NASA citizen science. science.nasa.gov/citizen-scie... #astrophotography #space #news

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Planetary-scale Rube Goldberg machines may find occasional nuggets by sifting through Humanity's accumulated wisdom, but at what cost? Especially if one of those costs is the vast dumbing-down of people à la "Brave New World". A human mind uses tens of watts, not billions. #GenAI #GOFAI

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

"I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses" - Johannes Kepler This might be applied to AI as well as to 'the masses', especially the 'thoughtless' part. #Rationalism #CriticalThinking

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

With the crazy jump in RAM prices, the #RetroComputing community might do well to make adapters for using old memory in new computers, if that's possible. #Legacy #RAM #DRAM

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

🥳 Major milestone for the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scottish Dark Sky Observatory: architectural designs are now public and isn't she a beauty! Two 5m 🔭domes, observing deck, solar-panelled planetarium, exhibition area & cafe. Fingers crossed that planning permission gets approved! ℹ️: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 📷: arpl

An architectural model of the new Scottish Dark Sky Observatory, complete with mini trees, two large domes, mini people on the observing deck and a solar-panelled roof over the new planetarium.

By arpl architects

An architectural design for an observatory with two domes and buildings. The mountain outline can be seen in the background.

By arpl architects

An architectural design for an observatory, now from the other direction, with two domes and buildings. The mountain outline can be seen in the background.

By arpl architects

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

In the early 1980s, ordinary citizens had access to real computing. Ubiquitous computational thinking was within our grasp. But sadly, the world fell into decades of sifting eye candy, and eventually became a wasteland of zombified slopchuggers. Alas, what might have been. gofai.discourse.group

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Tynemouth Software @tynemouthsoftware.co.uk · 07/01/2026

A mini setup on the bench today, I needed to do some PET stuff and my main bench is full of a different project. One of the first batch of SD2PETs (2019). The first Mini PET (2020). The first Deluxe Keyboard (2020). Definitely not the first mini LCD from Amazon (2024). All still working nicely.

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Retro Tech Dreams @retrotechdreams.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

I miss when the OS was a self-contained tool rather than an internet service. We had to manually configure the date and time, which was a small trade off in exchange for the independence.

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Reposted by Michael Will 🍁

Retro Tech Dreams @retrotechdreams.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

HP-41C calculator from 1979

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George Beckett @markgbeckett.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Making progress with my port of #PerilousSwamp to Tree Forth on #Minstrel4. #retrogaming

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Modern A.I. research bifurcates into generative and sensorimotor. The latter is often a euphemism for #GOFAI that transforms gauche into chic and minimizes the eye-rolls I get at klatches and seminars (attending, not speaking). #AI

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Michael Will 🍁 @scidata.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Moby-Dick - the most important allegory in American literature. Still vibrant, still poignant, still scary. #Anthro

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