iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

But lately, "Twilight" by John W. Campbell, has been on my mind a lot too for some reason :)

Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"The Day Before the Revolution" by Ursula Le Guin. The deftness with which the p.o.v. character's internal landscape is painted is incredible.

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media archaeology lab @mediaarchaeology.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Our new zine, 'How to Spend Ten Years Repairing a Computer and Why You Should Too', is here! We'd like to send out some free copies, so the first 50 emails with the subject line "Zine, please" to mediaarchaeology+zine@proton.me will get a copy (U.S. only, sorry folks)

4 copies of How to Spend Ten Years Repairing a Computer and Why You Should Too

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

We can make things better: "A remarkable effort by the government and the city’s distribution utilities has turned Delhi’s grid into a reliable, modern system. Power losses have shrunk from over 50 percent in 2002 to 5 to 6 percent in 2026—on par with France and Belgium."

spectrum.ieee.org

From Candlelit Kitchens to Electrified Everything: Delhi's Grid Comeback

It slashed electricity losses from 50 to 5 percent

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I'll be honest: when Dave Schneider started pitching the idea of measuring the starlight shadow of an asteroid as it passed across the face of the Earth for an @spectrum.ieee.org Hands On, I thought it sounded impossible. But I was wrong! #diy #astronomy #CitizenScience

spectrum.ieee.org

Measure An Asteroid’s Shadow With a Small Telescope and Some DIY Gear

Watching space rocks obscure stars is easier than you think

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I have just discovered, from some of the comments on my last Packrat Monday's video about a sample of Trinitite, that there is an active conspiracy theory that nuclear weapons don't really exist. What's next? Nitrogen is a hoax? Blood circulation is fake? Kangaroos are real?

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A Z80 version of BBC Basic? Fascinating!

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I jest though: I used to love exploring ideas in books by programming on a BBC micro: the chaos game from Glieck's book, or writing (incredibly slow) implementations of Conway's Game of Life, etc.

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Nicolas Hénin @nicolashenin.net · 17/09/2026

Nice campaign by the Norwegian Consumer Council about the declining lifespan of products. Enjoy!

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Came here looking for this citation :)

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Now all I can think of is the scene in "Big" where Tom Hanks has to correct his made-up social security number in the middle of an interview...

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I signed up to look at the full results, and while there is still a lot of posts missing (mercifully) from newsgroups that I knew I used to frequent, there's definitely more than was available in Dejanews, so he's got multiple sources all right.

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Urk, this guy's really dug deep: stuff I had wiped from the Dejanews archive before it got bought by Google is in here, 25 blissful years of amnesia about college-era angst and gaucheness gone!

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Latest Packrat Mondays, in which I delve into the radioactive portion of my stash... #radiacode #gammaray #trinitite www.youtube.com/shorts/-QDeU...

youtube.com

Packrat Mondays: Embers of an A-Bomb

YouTube video by IEEE Spectrum

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I liked Mastertronic: you gave their games a go, and if one wasn't great, you didn't feel ripped off, and enough times they were good enough to keep you trying.

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404 Media @404media.co · 14/09/2026

And by the way, from our scoop, we also discovered that Anthropic is also using human reviewers to read conversations.

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 14/09/2026

Elsewhere on Bluesky folks are noting that The Kids These Days aren't much into Douglas Adams. As someone who is much into Douglas Adams (and in fact wrote an intro to new edition of his works) allow me to remind folks that it's not actually surprising when The Kids aren't into decades-old stuff.

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Thank you so much! That's a great paper: "Cottony, down-like coatings of needle-fiber calcite associated with purple or transparent living mycelian mats have even been found in a Merovingian sarcophagus from Mont-Aime" is a heck of an mental image!

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This isn't aragonite, but calcite with a needle-fiber habit? Wow! (I ask because, somewhat bizarrely, for a few brief months in the 1990s, I was a cutting-edge researcher on magnetic water treatment, which boiled down to [pun intended] measuring aragonite vs. calcite ratios :) )

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Oh interesting! He's a thoughtful guy, that should be worth a read.

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Ken Shirriff @righto.com · 12/09/2026

In 1980, Intel introduced the 8087 floating-point coprocessor chip. Plugging this chip into your IBM PC made math 100 times faster, good for CAD and spreadsheets. I opened up the chip to reverse-engineer exactly how it does complicated calculations. Let's take a look inside...

The integrated circuit is a black ceramic rectangle with 40 metal pins sticking out, in two rows. (This is known as a DIP, a Dual Inline Package.) It has three rows of text: "D8087-1", a cryptic version label, and then the copyright line with a big lower-case I, INTEL m c 1980 1984. The m and c are in circles for the mask-work symbol and the copyright symbol. The chip has a small semicircular notch on the left side, indicating its orientation. The package consists of two thin ceramic layers, bonded together with a gray substance; the metal pins stick out from this gray substance. The ceramic package is important to me because tapping the gray layer with a chisel will cause the two layers to separate, revealing the silicon die inside. In contrast, most chips are in epoxy packages, which are very difficult to open, usually requiring strong acids.

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

lol! Bluesky wont let me post a pdf, but if you dm me your email, I'll send you the article

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

But more to the point, Hans Camenzind did develop a true Mark II version of his 555, the ZSCT1555, which could operate at lower voltages etc.. He did a write up of it in 1997 for my mag, @spectrum.ieee.org It's too old to be on our own website, but if any one is interested, I can send out a few PDFs

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Just an absolute banger of a game! Colorful spacecraft, blinky light stars, and then... then they come

static.klipy.com

Lock In Parasyte

ALT: Lock In Parasyte

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

My God, that's a lot of exhibitors! I'm a VCF East regular, but next year I gotta go out....

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

This and the X-Wing of similar vintage were really great games. I had a lot of fun playing this one, hunting those X-, Y-, and A-wings defending the rebel scum in their capital ships...

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

No, this is one I want to see in the theatre, where I can covertly mutter "Borag Thungg" in the lobby to my brothers and sisters, wearing my 35-year-old Rogue Trooper badge dug out of storage...

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

100% — I just want run, say, Mechwarrior Mercenaries on my system without 5 hours of picking through old DOSbox forums, not have it all blinged up with someone's Clever Ideas. Clever Ideas are for your own new installment!

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Dan Farrimond @illarterate.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Our #teletext art exhibition with Finland's Yle Teksti-TV has begun! "Yle 100" celebrates a full century of the broadcaster, and is the first of a 2-part celebration that continues with "Yle Text 45" next month. View here: yle.fi/aihe/tekstit... teletextart.co.uk/yle-100-on-y...

teletextart.co.uk

Yle 100 on Yle Text: A Super Teletexthibition (9 September – October 2026)

On 9 September 2026, Yleisradio Oy (AKA the Finnish Broadcasting Company) will celebrate its 100th anniversary with the scintillating sixels and astounding alphanumerics of – you guessed it, teletext ...

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

"Audiophiles buy the aesthetic on the sleeve notes, Lyra. Trust me nobody can tell what’s real once you slap 40% reverb on it, sad but true"

static.klipy.com

Lisa Simpson Turns Off TV on Ralph Wiggum

Alt: Lisa Simpson Turns Off TV on Ralph Wiggum responding to a brutal comment from her.

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

This was an interesting one to edit: come for the future crewed spaceships to Mars, stay for the time they deliberately blew up a prototype nuclear rocket engine back in the day: spectrum.ieee.org/bimodal-nucl...

spectrum.ieee.org

Dual Loop Nuclear Spacecraft Promise Years Of Power and High Thrust

The synchronal bimodal nuclear rocket could slash travel time to Mars

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

It's only if Larry takes it off the table that you need to worry.

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Mark Dingemanse @markdingemanse.net · 27/08/2026

As we conclude, > [LLM] users encounter a fundamental asymmetry: they must singlehandedly supply much of the sequential structure that is ordinarily co-constructed by multiple participants ... This hidden labour challenges accounts of LLM use that focus on performance and optimization

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Few things in life more delight-making than a keyboard overlay for a game. "Lo!" they proclaim, "Here is a serious person, expanding their mind by exploring the possibilities of a rich synthetic world, unlike those monkeys flailing about with nothing but joysticks and fire buttons."

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

16,777,215 jiffies is enough for anyone.

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Luis Villa @lu.is · 27/08/2026

There are very few specific objects (especially 1-of-1 devices) I can think of that have a specific tie-in to open culture and open knowledge in the way this one does. Amazing find.

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Stephen Cass @stephencass.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

When "concerning" replaced "worrying" within the space of a few years like a linguistic find-and-replace, that was odd enough, but now "lessons" is being replaced wholesale by "learnings" the same way. Or is this just my own personal Mandala effect?

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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 25/08/2026

This girl I used to waitress with in Austin, we moved to New York together in 2003 on a literal Greyhound bus. Shared a fifth floor walk-up studio that, when it rained, had more leaks in the ceiling than we had pots and pans. We used to get drunk and smoke off the fire escape and do “sad-offs.”

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Jes Steele ✌️ @piratito.com · 25/08/2026

Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris performing “Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow” on The Dolly Parton Show (1976)

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