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Why GitHub won
How GitHub _actually_ became the dominant force it is today, from one of it's cofounders.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,024 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
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Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (1989)
For Richard, a crazy idea was an opportunity to either prove it wrong or prove it right.
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The origins of the steam engine (2023)
An essay with interactive animated diagrams
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Archiving "The Famous Computer Cafe"
A previously lost cache of celebrity and historical interviews from a long-dormant radio show have been discovered, digitized, and made available for all. The Internet Archive is now home to 53 episodes of The Famous Computer Cafe, a 1980s radio show about the new world of home computers. The program included computer…
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Moments in Chromecast's history
Take a look back at Chromecast’s history over the past 11 years — and learn about the future of streaming TV with Google.
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Uncovered Euripides fragments are 'kind of a big deal'
CU Boulder Classics scholars identify previously unknown fragments of two lost tragedies by Greek tragedian Euripides.
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Apprentice, Journeyman, and Master: The Medieval Guild (2018)
I became fascinated with guilds when I moved to Germany. Being an avid reader of all medieval history I could get my hands on, I was well aware of the Hansa (slang for Hanseatic) League’s ris…
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MPPP – The first 'designer drug' disaster (2023)
The origin of the term is credited to Dr Gary L. Henderson, of the University of California at Davis. A designer drug is based on the structure of an existing drug – which may be naturally sourced from a plant (like cocaine or morphine ) or be synthetic (like amphetamine ) - but with a slightly different structure…
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The Objects of Our Life (1983)
Exclusive video footage of Steve Jobs talking about his design vision and philosophy and how design worked at Apple.
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Floppy8 – A Tiny Computer, in a Floppy Drive (2023)
This post covers the design and creation of the Floppy8, a microcomputer and cartridge system which fits inside a floppy drive. To see it in action, checkout this video! The Floppy8 plays 4K movies and games on custom cartridges, features wireless controllers, status lights, motorized cartridge ejection and more! Simil
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Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery
Techniques developed to analyse the ripples in spacetime detected by one of the 21st century’s most sensitive pieces of scientific equipment have helped cast new light on the function of the oldest known analogue computer.
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The history of Alt+number sequences
Code pages and custom keyboard handling.
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Trilobites killed by volcanic ash
Some of the most perfectly preserved trilobite fossils ever found have revealed details of the extinct arthropod unknown until now.
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Round Rects Are Everywhere
Bill Atkinson worked mostly at home, but whenever he made significant progress he rushed in to Apple to show it off to anyone who would appreciate it. This time, he visited the Macintosh offices at Texaco Towers to show off his brand new oval routines, which were implemented using a really clever algorithm.
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Remembering the LAN (2020)
Learn more about the early days of LAN.
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Aster shootdown over Sydney in 1955
FOR more than three hours on a fine, calm August morning in 1955, the eyes of Sydney’s suburbia were fixed skyward, anxiously watching the flight of a pilotless Auster aeroplane
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Edward C. Stone, 1936-2024
Caltech mourns the loss of Edward C. Stone, leader of humanity’s first foray into interstellar space.
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The long-lost Tarzan Atari game, preserved
After 40 years, the Atari 2600 masterpiece Tarzan has been unearthed.
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Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet
In a post to China’s popular WeChat platform last week, one writer bemoaned the shocking loss of nearly a full decade of information from the early days of the country’s domestic internet. Within hours the writer's reflections had vanished too.
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25 Years of Krita
Halla Rempt Twenty-five years. A quarter century. That's how long we've been working on Krita. Well, what would become Krita. It started out as KImageShop, but that name was nuked by a now long-dead German lawyer. Then it was renamed to Krayon, and that name was also nuked. Then it was renamed to Krita, and that name…
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38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later
A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible.
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Adobe Photoshop Source Code (2013)
When brothers Thomas and John Knoll began designing and writing an image editing program in the late 1980s, they could not have imagined that they would be adding a word to the dictionary.
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Ancient Egyptian Stone-Drilling (1983)
<p>More than most technical procedures in the ancient world, drilling of hard stone such as quartz and granite has evoked […]</p>
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Unix and Multics (2019)
Story from the development of the Multics operating system. Unix, our famous child.
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40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be again broadcast over FM radio
Anyone who still has a working Spectrum ZX will then be able to test the game.