🎉 I made a Twitter bot that announces activity from the #mega65 Filehost, including new and updated files and new articles! Follow it here:
https://twitter.com/MEGA65Files
I don't currently have plans to have it also post to Mastodon, but I'll read up on Mastodon.py and keep it in mind. lmk if that'd be useful to you personally.
Let me know what you think! 💫
I wrote a #mega65 Welcome Guide for new owners! It's a supplement to the User's Guide that captures the gap between the factory-installed software and current state of things, providing a smooth on-ramp to long-term enjoyment. Feedback welcome! https://dansanderson.com/mega65/welcome/index.html
Having a fantastic time with the new #Mega65, a modern recreation of the Commodore 65, the legendary unreleased successor to the Commodore 64. Injection molded case, vintage keyboard layout, 3-1/2” floppy drive, classic cartridge port, C65 OS with BASIC and a C64 compatibility mode, 40 MHz. HDMI and VGA out, microSD card, Ethernet, modern fixes to vintage bugs, Cherry kbd switches. FPGA-based, can run other “cores” including a full C64 core (work in progress). Vibrant, nascent community.
I want to bring attention to #Calypsi which is a C and assembly compiler toolchain that supports #6502 #65816 and #68000 processors. https://www.calypsi.cc/
It runs on Mac/Win/Linux and has direct support for building programs for #C64 and #c256foenix machines with serial port debugging (maybe not working on C64, yet). It comes with excellent user manuals for each architecture, this is the 6502 manual: https://tinyurl.com/mw8rfzb5
Apple’s backhanded PR language has always fascinated me. This announcement about discontinuing the iPod is three paragraphs that don’t mention the iPod and one sentence about how “customers can purchase iPod touch.” https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/05/the-music-lives-on/
I think often about "Killing Time at Lightspeed," an interactive short science fiction story told through a social media interface. Putting a "reminds me of" behind the CW because it's a spoiler, you should just play it. http://www.antholojam.com/gamesite/ktal.html
As you access a Twitter-like site intermittently over many years due to the time dilation of space travel, you watch all of your friends leave this site for another one, until all that's left is ads and bots. It's admirably well done.
There's plenty of room to demand improvement. End-to-end encryption and tighter controls on (or elimination of) the use of "aggregate" personal info would be huge wins over the status quo. I even have faith that we can build privacy tech to be deployed widely and easily. Until then, only a few companies actually meet the bar, and they are the big ones everyone worries about.
Apparently some people I follow here are of two minds on how to model private user info security with hobbyist-run federated services vs. monolithic tech co's. There are only a few big co's I'd trust to defend user info from both external and internal attacks, but I'd trust them a lot more than anyone smaller, no matter how well intentioned. Tight fine-grained internal restricted access, logging, and auditing are hard problems requiring experience, public pressure, potential whistleblowers.
Theater, video games, #pico, piano, comp sci, electronics, retro computing, Python. Wrote a book once, would do it again. he/him