Yesterday I visited @manchicken and saw his basement workshop. As a hobby, he combines art and technology.
He let me preview two projects, one involving some humor about Star Trek and another he's preparing for a prominent tech conference.
(https://manchicken.com/2026/03/10/3-openscad/)
He keeps things legal, but if life were a heist movie, @manchicken would be the guy who says "Don't try to break into the vault. Just drop this tiny device behind a seat cushion anywhere in the building."
A little while ago @NikkiM asked me what might be done to help a person who has speech and physical disabilities that make Siri unusable.
I don't know if we can fix Siri, but I bet if the three of us put our heads together we could come up with some assistive tools that would make a big difference.
@ptvirgo @NikkiM There are a bunch of different voice-based assistants out there now adays. I haven't gotten into those yet, but I've seen some pretty interesting setups.
I've got this Tachyon device, it's a single-board computer, and I had hoped to get into it a little with that one. I was unable to get the firmware flashed onto it, but someone with more patience probably could. It's got a 5G radio and an edge-side AI accelerator chip.
If y'all want it for a project like this I'd happily give it to y'all on the agreement that I get to see and smile at what you do with it :)
ptvirgo
manchicken