benjedwards's profile picture. Senior AI Reporter, Ars Technica. Tech Historian. Fast Company / The Atlantic / Retronauts / Creator http://Vintagecomputing.com, The Culture of Tech

Benj Edwards

@benjedwards

Senior AI Reporter, Ars Technica. Tech Historian. Fast Company / The Atlantic / Retronauts / Creator http://Vintagecomputing.com, The Culture of Tech

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Look who came to visit — Ed Smith of APF! Upon seeing the Imagination Machine II, he said, “Oh man! I never thought I’d see Myrtle again.” fastcompany.com/3063298/ed-smi…

benjedwards's tweet image. Look who came to visit — Ed Smith of APF!

Upon seeing the Imagination Machine II, he said, “Oh man! I never thought I’d see Myrtle again.”

fastcompany.com/3063298/ed-smi…
benjedwards's tweet image. Look who came to visit — Ed Smith of APF!

Upon seeing the Imagination Machine II, he said, “Oh man! I never thought I’d see Myrtle again.”

fastcompany.com/3063298/ed-smi…
benjedwards's tweet image. Look who came to visit — Ed Smith of APF!

Upon seeing the Imagination Machine II, he said, “Oh man! I never thought I’d see Myrtle again.”

fastcompany.com/3063298/ed-smi…

20 years ago today, I started Vintage Computing and Gaming (vintagecomputing.com), my long-running tech history blog. I posted some reflections on the site: vintagecomputing.com/index.php/arch…

benjedwards's tweet image. 20 years ago today, I started Vintage Computing and Gaming (vintagecomputing.com), my long-running tech history blog. I posted some reflections on the site:

vintagecomputing.com/index.php/arch…
benjedwards's tweet image. 20 years ago today, I started Vintage Computing and Gaming (vintagecomputing.com), my long-running tech history blog. I posted some reflections on the site:

vintagecomputing.com/index.php/arch…

Benj Edwards reposted

I’m thrilled to announce the release of my new CD “Paradise” today. You can find it on my website billleslie.com/store and purchase the CD or a digital download. Thank you very much for your encouragement leading up to today’s release.

wralbleslie's tweet image. I’m thrilled to announce the release of my new CD “Paradise” today.   You can find it on my website billleslie.com/store and purchase the CD or a digital download.  Thank you very much for your encouragement leading up to today’s release.

Benj Edwards reposted

🎃 Trick or treat! 💀 The @InternetArchive is handing out vintage chills with THE SKELETON DANCE (1929), the bone-rattling classic cartoon where skeletons swing & sway till dawn! 🕺🦴 Fill your candy bag with it and other #PublicDomain goodies from our #SpookySeason Collection…


Benj Edwards reposted

Paul McCartney recording ‘Ram’, late 1970.

BooksBeatles's tweet image. Paul McCartney recording ‘Ram’, late 1970.

Benj Edwards reposted

"Human language acts as a compression and decompression scheme—the listener must decompress the meaning of words in the same way the speaker intended" Thank you, @BenjEdwards, for your thoughtful insights on our work 🙏 arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/whe…


I was looking through my old Dell netbook and found this interesting note on the impact of “Intelligent Generators” on intellectual property that I wrote on August 16, 2012 I’ve been thinking about what we now call generative AI for a long time

benjedwards's tweet image. I was looking through my old Dell netbook and found this interesting note on the impact of “Intelligent Generators” on intellectual property that I wrote on August 16, 2012

I’ve been thinking about what we now call generative AI for a long time

Benj Edwards reposted

Where did the QWERTY keyboard layout come from? Get this: No one actually knows. Its inventors died without leaving an explanation for the 1874-era layout, making QWERTY one of tech's biggest unsolved mysteries I took a deep look for @howtogeek: howtogeek.com/789822/the-qwe…

benjedwards's tweet image. Where did the QWERTY keyboard layout come from?

Get this: No one actually knows.

Its inventors died without leaving an explanation for the 1874-era layout, making QWERTY one of tech's biggest unsolved mysteries

I took a deep look for @howtogeek: howtogeek.com/789822/the-qwe…

The prophecy has finally been fulfilled arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/09…

Does anybody have a complete archive of iPod click wheel games? Please let me know. Apple removed them from iTunes in 2011.



Benj Edwards reposted

Clearly, no “Legal Rights” for AI, a question raised by @WIRED today. As @benjedwards cleverly notes in @arstechnica: with AI computation “we need to recognize that we have built an intellectual engine without a self, just like we built a mechanical engine without a horse.”


Benj Edwards reposted

An absolutely brilliant article by @benjedwards on the AI personhood fallacy. 'We stand at a peculiar moment in history. We've built intellectual engines of extraordinary capability, but in our rush to make them accessible, we've wrapped them in the fiction of personhood,…


Benj Edwards reposted
tszzl's tweet image.

Forget the latest and greatest. When is OpenAI's *least helpful* AI model coming out? 😜


Benj Edwards reposted

This may be the coolest emergent capability I've seen in a video model. Veo 3 can take a series of text instructions added to an image frame, understand them, and execute in sequence. Prompt was "immediately delete instructions in white on the first frame and execute in order"


Benj Edwards reposted

I'm so old I wrote that! That's assuming it's the Windows version, which is the one I worked on. The Win9x game, art, and original code, were done by Maxis/Cinematronics. I ported it to Windows NT, converted the x86 asm to C, made it work on RISC, and so on. Success has…

Are you this old?

GamewithDave's tweet image. Are you this old?


There is nothing inherently special, authoritative, or accurate about AI-generated outputs. They are statistical prediction machines that will produce whatever pattern best fits your prompt, regardless of whether that output corresponds to reality


Benj Edwards reposted

Congrats to Simon Willison (@simonw) on 23 years (!!) of blogging. Really excellent LLM blog, I sub & read everything: simonwillison.net (e.g. I sub via RSS/Atom on NetNewsWire) +If you consistently enjoy the content like I do, sponsor on GitHub: github.com/sponsors/simonw


There’s nothing radical about supporting universal human rights. Never let anyone shame you for defending something that should be the baseline for modern society


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