UK

An important development (*) that may have serious impacts on many forms of Digital DIY:

[In July 2016] the UK government extended copyright for designs from 25 years to the life of the designer plus 70 years. In practice, this is likely to mean a copyright term of over 100 years for furniture and other designed objects.

Thanks to the music industry, it is illegal to make private copies of music — again, at least in the UK. While in most countries the making of copies for personal use (of your own music, films...) is exempt from copyright control, the UK has tried to introduce such exemption, but the judicial review has withdrawn this regulation.

35 years ago I bought a BBC micro computer. It was big and clunky and did not have many games, but it had a structured programming language (BBC Basic), and lots of ports and I knew I wanted it.  Although I had dabbled with programming before it was then that my programming ability really took off.