481
WordPerfect for UNIX (1992)
I found this interesting print-ad for WordPerfect for UNIX, apparently the best UNIX product of 1992! (Very) Belated congratulations Corel!
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 701 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
482
Greece
Greece is a remarkable country full of wonderful people, but along dimensions of development and governance, the place is plainly pretty fucked up. It has been fucked up that way for a long time, for decades at least . This has never been secret. Anyone who has visited Athens knows it has far more in common with…
483
Perlis Languages
A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. – Alan Perlis
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Who smeared Richard Feynman?
Richard Feynman's FBI file contains one very pointed, personal, anonymous attack. But can we figure out who wrote it from the context?
486
SimCity: Will Wright's City in a Box
In “The Seventh Sally,” a story by the great Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, a god-like “constructor” named Trurl comes upon a former tyrant named Excelsius, now exiled to a lonely asteroid by the peoples of the planets he used to terrorize. Upon learning of Trurl’s powers, Excelsius demands that he…
487
Memorandum on Microsoft’s strategy against Linux and Open Source software (1998)
In the last week of October 1998, a confidential Microsoft memorandum on Redmond's strategy against Linux and Open Source software was leaked to me by a source who shall remain nameless. I annotated this memorandum with explanation and commentary over Halloween Weekend and released it to the national press. Microsoft…
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The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman (2015)
In 1990, Marilyn vos Savant correctly answered a probability puzzle in her column for Parade Magazine. And then, the world called her an idiot.
490
Filling in some gaps in the story of Space Cadet Pinball on 64-bit Windows
The story as I experienced it.
491
Memories of Kurt Gödel
[This memoir essay appeared in the magazine Science 82 in April 1982, and in my 1982 book Infinity and the Mind. It’s based on the “Conversations With Godel” documented in my previous post. Some of the photos are from a recent trip through the West, others from the 1970s.] [This is a cropped version of
492
A 48Khz digital music player for the Commodore 64
Move over, Sennheiser. Make yourself scarce, Bose. Here comes the ultimate Hi-Fi solution for your living room: The Commodore 64! I s it sa...
493
The Rise and Fall of Commercial Smalltalk
Relics Gilad Bracha recently posted an article "Bits of History, Words of Advice" that talks about the incredible influence of Smalltalk but bemoans the fact that: ...today Smalltalk is relegated to a small niche of true believers. Whenever two or more Smalltalkers gather over d
494
Raster CRT Typography According to DEC
A closer look at the glyphs drawn by the DEC terminals VT100 and VT220.
495
The Deep Insights of Alan Kay
If you haven’t heard of Alan Kay you’ll likley have heard one of his many famous quotes, the most popular, likely his 1971 gem: The best …
496
Report on an Unidentified Space Station (1982)
By good luck we have been able to make an emergency landing on this uninhabited space station. There have been no casualties. We all count ourselves fortunate to have found safe haven at a moment when the expedition was clearly set on disaster.
497
DAK and the Golden Age of Gadget Catalogs
Hi. My name is Cabel. And I’ve probably got the neatest job in the whole world. I wear many hats. But here on my personal blog, I get to write about the things I really care about, just for y…
498
The soul of a new computer company
Over the summer, I described preparing for my next expedition. I’m thrilled to announce that the expedition is now plotted, the funds are raised, and the bags are packed: together with Steve Tuck and Jess Frazelle , we have started Oxide Computer Company .
499
Remembering Doug Lenat and his quest to capture the world with logic
Stephen Wolfram shares memories of Doug Lenat, early AI pioneer and developer of the CYC system. Their discussions around AI & logic and the potential combined uses of their respective discoveries.
500
Latin as she is spoke: How classicists tricked themselves (2019)
How Classicists tricked themselves into not learning Latin well.
501
Which Machines Do Computer Architects Admire? (2013)
The Toolsmith Conference was held in Chapel Hill, NC, in October, 2001, to honor Fred Brooks. Dr. Brooks was a student of Howard Aiken at Harvard, joined IBM to work on the Stretch Project, and later served as chief architect of the IBM S/360. He founded the Computer Science Department at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1964 and…
502
Where Did Combinators Come From? Hunting the Story of Moses Schönfinkel
A dive into the unknown personal and academic history of the mathematician who developed combinators, Moses Schönfinkel.
503
Hexadecimal clock counting down to 2038 problem
It is now ??????????.??? ( ????-??-??T??:??:??.???Z ) in Unix time , according to your local system clock.
504
“You’re Not the Customer, You’re the Product”
Richard Serra? Carlota Fay Schoolman? Steve Atkins? Tom Johnson? Claire Wolfe? Andrew Lewis? blue_beetle? Tim O’Reilly?
505
The Nokia N9 Alarm Clock (2014)
I want to talk about the Nokia N9 (2011) alarm clock application because it’s a really nice example of thoughtful, functional design – and because it’s only on the N9, so a lot of people won’t have seen it.
506
Browser-Wars History: MD5-Hashed Posts Declassified
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-authored unless otherwise noted.
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Building Photoshop 1.0
On February 13, 2013, the Computer History Museum reported that they had received the source code for version 1.1 of Photoshop from Adobe, and had permission to release it for non-commercial use. This is the second time recently that something like this has happened, the first being the release of the Quickdraw and…
509
The Linux Backdoor Attempt of 2003
Josh wrote recently about a serious security bug that appeared in Debian Linux back in 2006, and whether it was really a backdoor inserted by the NSA. (He concluded that it probably was not.) Today I want to write about another incident, in 2003, in which someone tried to backdoor the Linux kernel. This one […]
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The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)
In 1998 Looking Glass Studios released the stealth game Thief: The Dark Project . This was just as 3D hardware acceleration was taking off, so due to the development cycle it didn't use hardware acceleration; it was a purely software-rendered game.