151
Making Crash Bandicoot (2011)
As one of the co-creators of Crash Bandicoot, I have been (slowly) writing a long series of posts on the making of everyone’s favorite orange marsupial. You can find them all below, so enjoy.…
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
152
153
Homebrew Cray-1A
As part two ( see previous attempt ) of my ongoing series in ‘computational necromancy,’ I’ve spent the last year and a half or so constructing my own 1/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1. This project falls purely into the “because I can!” category – I was poking around the internet one day looking…
154
You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform (2013)
You advocate a ( ) solar ( ) lunar ( ) atomic approach to calendar reform. Your idea will not work. Here is why: ( ) solar years are real and the calendar year needs to sync with them ( ) solar days are real and the calendar day needs to sync with them ( ) the so...
155
Origins of Python's “Functional” Features (2009)
I have never considered Python to be heavily influenced by functional languages, no matter what people say or think. I was much more familia...
156
157
158
ha ha only serious
[from SF fandom, orig. as mutation of HHOK, ‘Ha Ha Only Kidding’] A phrase (often seen abbreviated as HHOS) that aptly captures the flavor of much hacker discourse. Applied especially to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes that are both intended and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting amount of truth, or…
159
ACLU History
In the years following World War I, America was gripped by the fear that the Communist Revolution that had taken place in Russia would spread to the United States. As is often the case when fear outweighs rational debate, civil liberties paid the price. In November 1919 and January 1920, in what notoriously became…
160
the Lemacs/FSFmacs schism
In 1991, I was working at Lucid Inc., and our newest product, Energize, was an integrated development environment for C and C++ on Unix. The design of this development environment involved very tight integration between the various tools: compilers, linkers, debuggers, graphers, and editors. So of course we needed a…
161
The Patriot Missile Failure
On February 25, 1991, during the Gulf War, an American Patriot Missile battery in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, failed to track and intercept an incoming Iraqi Scud missile. The Scud struck an American Army barracks, killing 28 soldiers and injuring around 100 other people. A report of the General Accounting office…
162
The History of Pets vs Cattle and How to Use the Analogy Properly
I have been meaning to write this post for a long time, but one thing or another has gotten in the way. It’s important to me to provide an accurate history, ...
163
The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown 2. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: Down for the Count 3. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: The Great Gali...
164
Quote Origin: If You Want Jobs Then Give These Workers Spoons Instead of Shovels
Milton Friedman? William Aberhart? Walter Augustus Wyckoff? Unemployed Worker? Businessman in China? UK Minister of Agriculture?
165
Tim Berners-Lee: WorldWideWeb, the first Web client
The first web browser - or browser-editor rather - was called WorldWideWeb as, after all, when it was written in 1990 it was the only way to see the web. Much later it was renamed Nexus in order to save confusion between the program and the abstract information space (which is now spelled World Wide Web with spaces).
166
Where the goblins came from
How goblin outputs spread in AI models: timeline, root cause, and fixes behind personality-driven quirks in GPT-5 behavior.
167
Hacker News Parody Thread (2013)
This page is intended to be a humorous parody of Hacker News . It is not in any way affiliated with Hacker News. The page's theme and layout are based on the original site. The usernames (with two exceptions) are intended to be fictitious.
168
Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -Mahatma Gandhi
169
When McDonalds Came to Denmark
Every few months, a prominent person or publication points out that McDonalds workers in Denmark receive $22 per hour, 6 weeks of vacation, and sick pay. This compensation comes on top of the general slate of social benefits in Denmark, which includes child allowances, health care, child care, paid leave, retirement…
170
The Linux Backdoor Attempt of 2003 (2013)
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 […]
171
The Well Deserved Fortune of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin creator
I won’t discuss anything in this post. I’m tired of discussing technical things with people with skewed opinions and monetary interest. I’ve talked enough in the Bitcointalk forum…
172
Black Triangles (2014)
One of my most popular posts was also my very first… which has since been lost to the Great Blog Devouring of ’14. So… here’s the post from over ten years ago (has it been that long?!?!?!) about an event from almost twenty years ago. Still stuff I have to remind myself about some days.
173
Letters between Backus and Dijkstra (1979)
Letters between John W Backus and Edsger W Dijkstra, 1979
174
Notes on Nationalism (1945)
"By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled 'good' or 'bad'."
175
176
X: The First Fully Modular Software Disaster
X-Windows is the Iran-Contra of graphical user interfaces: a tragedy of political compromises, entangled alliances, marketing hype, and just plain greed. X-Windows is to memory as Ronald Reagan was to money. Years of "Voodoo Ergonomics" have resulted in an unprecedented memory deficit of gargantuan proportions…
177
Clothing, How Did They Make It? Part I: High Fiber
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2021137 points11 commentscited by 12History & Retro Computing details
This post is also available in audio form, thanks to the efforts of our volunteer narrator. This week we are starting the first of a four (I, II, III, IVa, IVb) part look at pre-modern textile prod…
178
MacPaint and QuickDraw Source Code (2010)
The Apple Macintosh combined brilliant design in hardware and in software. The drawing program MacPaint, which was released with the computer in January of 1984, was an example of that brilliance both in what it did, and in how it was implemented.
179
180
Quote Origin: The Person Who is Clever and Lazy Qualifies for the Highest Leadership Posts
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder? Erich von Manstein? Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord? Douglas MacArthur? Frederick the Great? Apocryphal?