Someone suggested I start a retro tech blog—I already did in 2005! 😁 www.vintagecomputing.com 560+ more works: www.benjedwards.com/works.php Culture of Tech podcast: www.thecultureoftech.com Retro works for HTG: www.howtogeek.com/826448/best-... MIT Press book: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204506...

Sorry all this is my fault; and speculation has grown worse because I have been sick in bed with a high fever and unable to reliably address it (still am sick) I was told by management not to comment until they did. Here is my statement in images below arstechnica.com/staff/2026/0...

At least one Meta employee thinks it's a good time to add facial recognition technology to glasses because we're too distracted by fascism to effectively protest www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

macOS 26 Tahoe is so painfully ugly...why Apple, why?? Between the travesty of Tahoe and iOS 26, somebody needs to do a hard reset on the software design team over there

RFK Jr. says we should check with AI about what to eat and then AI totally dunked on his stupid dietary guidance. Also is doing some downright incredible work, and this article is another tour de force of very professional shade.

Across that world you will face more than 25 bosses and mini-bosses, discover 60 Trinkets, upgrade your weapons, grow stronger through a full level-up system, explore New Game Plus, and experiment with hundreds of gameplay modifiers.

Those covers were always inspiring to what we could do with computers. A local computer museum has some on display, and they're just wonderfully creative.

It’s a little known fact that all LLMs were trained only on that one piece of yours, and were able, amazingly, to extrapolate everything else they know from that. In fact, LLM stands for “Let‘s Train on Benj’s Robert Tinney Tribute” Large Model.

I wrote a tribute for BYTE Magazine's amazing cover artist, Robert Tinney, who died Feb 1st Tinney painted 80 vivid and surreal covers illustrating various concepts in early personal computing from 1978-1990, usually airbrushed with gouache. May he RIP ❤️ arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026...

NEW: CBP signs a new deal with Clearview AI to access its scraped image database for "tactical targeting," including efforts to “disrupt, degrade, and dismantle” networks of people labeled security threats.

Tinney’s BYTE covers were the best computer magazine covers of all time, and nothing else springs to mind as a clear second place. In 2014, I wrote about my favorite one for TIME. RIP. time.com/60505/this-1...

Tinney's art (and 1970s-1980s Byte itself) was symbolic, to me, of an age of learning - much more "somebody built some cool shit" and much less "this is a primary mechanism of the economy". (and they were all just Very Clever :-)

I was reading this blog post I wrote in 2006 and kept thinking, man this dude writes just like AI 😂 Maybe they modeled ChatGPT on me. 😜 If so, I apologize

My 2006 blog matches 8 items on Wikipedia's "Signs of AI Writing" list: -Undue emphasis on significance -Promotional language -Superficial analyses with "-ing" phrases -Negative parallelisms -Rule of three -Overuse of em dashes -Elegant variation -Vague attributions en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

Actual link: www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/169/vcg-interview-robcert-tinney-microcomputer-illustration-pioneer

It has all the hallmarks: The em dashes, florid prose, it lays on over-the-top praise (not that Tinney didn't deserve it), it has the "not only this but this" comparison 😂

I am confident that AI agents are not going away as professional tools and are going to become far more capable over time I can’t guarantee they will replace jobs, however. Maybe a few. I think people will become busier and more productive for reasons said here: arstechnica.com/information-...

Fun fact: pushing back on helplessness can be as easy as hanging out with people

Does Apple keep its Macintosh SSD sizes ridiculously small so they can sell more iCloud storage subscriptions? 512GB is not enough, my friends. That's 2000s-era storage space

It wasn't a SSD, but in 2010 you could buy a 1 TB Hitachi hard drive for $60. Glorious times. I bought a bunch of those. I got my first 512GB SSD maybe in 2013. It's 2026!

have never seen popular public opinion shift so fast about a surveillance product than the fallout from ring's super bowl "search party" ad. they'll teach this in advertising courses one day. chef's kiss baby www.404media.co/with-ring-am...

Rodent's Revenge

Changeable Guardian Estique, Micro Mages and Kero Kero Cowboy are back in stock on both USA and Worldwide 's stores! 🎉 🇺🇸 usa.homebrew-factory.com 🌐 www.homebrew-factory.com

I think it's helpful to point out when people misuse AI tools. They are widely misapplied and poorly understood We are in an era where we invented the chainsaw but there's no safety manual yet; that's being created. So people may use one to cut a loaf of bread, or use one while standing on a ladder

Today I made a IRC-style chatroom with channels and DMs for my Claude Code agents to ask each-other troubleshooting questions while developing apps. Sometimes one instance will have the proper context (including history, docs, tools, etc) that another lacks and asking for help can be a quick fix

Oops!

Extremely exciting news: We're hiring a full-time film critic to come work with me at The A.V. Club! You probably have an idea if you're qualified for this, but if there's something that's not in the job listing, I'm sure I can answer Qs www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/43...

The Bad Bunny halftime show was awesome imo, I had no idea who he was, had never seen or heard him in my life, but it was fun

Wish her a speedy recovery. I’m 44 and one time I just kinda “looked the wrong direction” too fast and my neck hurt for six months

You know what they’re going to store in those warehouses? People

Oops!

Oops

This is how I plan to retire. Just me and my wife in our CGI forest house, farming Platonic solids

This is great

Some of the hardware out at the WCC show in Janesville today!

"I wouldn't buy green bananas if I were you" is going to live in my brain for years

On one level heartwarming. on the other, this is completely bone chilling total surveillance state stuff. imagine this in the hands of an authoritarian government.

These road intersections look beautiful!

Great animation ! I’m just getting 30 years late, but still I liked it.

In England they call him Naughty Rabbit

A deadly encounter on the streets of 21st Century Kyoto in the wake of devastation from an earthquake that also unleashed a horde of demons - and magic back into the world. A point-and-click and RPG hybrid that received an English translation in 2019. 📺: Makyouden, Nihon-Create, 1992 (PC-9801)

There’s probably some ancient Sumerian joke on a clay tablet that goes like this: Person 1: You get mad no matter what I say Person 2: How dare you say that!

My #Atari is a Coleco Gemini 😜! 4-player Warlords on an anachronistic Trinitron with a UNO cart.

I forgot to tell everyone that last month I used Claude Code to perform an experimental forensic analysis and disassembly of Wizard of Wor on Atari 800 You can find the files here! www.bxfoundry.com/wor800/

Speaking of Wizard of Wor

Crap it turns out I brought Wizard of Wor to BYATWD last year too!

“People who say, ‘Don’t live in the past,’ obviously didn’t own an Atari.” —Benj

Hey look! I found the the receipt for when we bought Ultima III for the Atari ST in 1987. And look! The original store bag! And look, I found a…wait a minute

Guys…. Donkey Kong WAS REAL

Stop stop Power Rangers You mighty twerkin’ power rangers

Help! I have to give a 90 second lighting talk for a morale event, and I'm going with as many dad jokes as I can fit into 90 seconds. What should I pick? What are your go tos?

Hoy es el Día de Lleva tu Atari al Trabajo. Si participas de esta noble tradición, etiqueta a

I rarely do this, but I’m hoping I maybe have enough of a following here that someone can help: I need to get in contact with Donkey Kong. It’s urgent

production of The Muppet Show should not be dependent on petty vulgarities like “ratings” or “revenue.” it should be preserved as a vital function of american culture. it should have a taxpayer-funded budget rivaling the CIA

USPS blue mailboxes are stamped with year of manufacture. This is one of the oldest ones I've seen in a while. I am lots of fun at parties.

WALSH1.BMF

This looks incredible!

It’s always cool to exclude Nazis from civil society

E was one a little dude with a belt Bring back emoji E

I apologize for not bringing my Atari—which I bought shortly after graduating from high school—to work on Bring Your Atari to Work Day. But I have a big writing deadline and typing on it would have been a drag.

In my opinion, scapegoats are at the root of many of society's problems

Guile... Guinan... Guilenan

“Bitcoin Is Crashing So Hard That Miners Are Unplugging Their Equipment” 2/5/26 futurism.com/future-socie...

Happy to participate in Bring Your #Atari To Work Day! Sad to say, that minus the front-and-center Tempest Replicade, my work space always looks like this.

For Bring Your Atari to Work Day 2026, since I work from home, I hooked up my Atari 800 to a black and white TV set I keep in my office. This was my family's kitchen TV set for decades. Wizard of Wor is still potent in monochrome!

I brought in my Lynxes and my co-workers are playing some California Games and Ms. PAC-MAN during lunch. #Atari

I’ve settled on fun Atari for Friday’s bit of Bring Your Atari to Work. Starting off with a bit of Centipede. #Atari

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

PIAZZA.BMF

Bringing some sort of Atari to work starts tomorrow and continues through Monday. Now I need to decide if I'm bringing fun Atari or serious Atari for Friday....

Jim Burns, “Martian Rainbow,” 1990

Strange Horticulture (Steam) w/ 2 more games is $13.49 on Fanatical Build your own Titanium Collection buff.ly/X0oQIva #ad add more games to save more

Not surprising because LLMs are terrible for this

If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania movie & $500 million for a yacht to sail off to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring, please don't tell me he needed to fire one-third of the Washington Post staff. Democracy dies in oligarchy.

A few years ago I decided to try to program computer art on my Atari ST in GFA BASIC and some of the results turned out looking a bit questionable. I tried to make things that look cool and ended up making things that look a bit creepy. #AtariST

Colorado suggests the existence of Black and Whiteado

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions! This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...

I was laid off from The Washington Post today. I know, real original sentence. My first plagiarism in 20 years of journalism. My job was stupid fun and I loved every minute of it. I’m sad for my talented colleagues but sadder the world will not get to read, watch and listen to their amazing work.

If you need editing or writing or a personality hire, my email is hkellywork@gmail.com, Signal is hkelly.11, Insta/Tiktok are @heatherthereporter

First confirmed sighting of my book in a brick and mortar bookstore that I am aware of!

Great reporter available alert!

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's . I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

I wrote "The 10 Victims of Recent Tech" for PCMag in 2011 talking about how high tech gadgets replaced older things Ironically many of the "new" items in the list have become obsolete since then 😂 www.pcmag.com/news/the-10-...