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Inside the Apollo “8-Ball” FDAI (Flight Director / Attitude Indicator)
During the Apollo flights to the Moon, the astronauts observed the spacecraft's orientation on a special instrument called the FDAI (Flight ...
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History & Retro Computing
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Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
How many times are words, names or functions found in the Linux kernel source code? Browse an example or write your own comma-separated list to find out! You can use * for wildcards, foo|bar for sums, and a word is defined as \<[[:alnum:]_]+\> (ignoring case, considering accents).
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I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it
The systematic thinking errors that kill breakthrough technology and the decision framework that prevents these disasters
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100 years of Zermelo's axiom of choice: What was the problem with it? (2006)
Cantor conceived set theory in a sequence of six papers published in the Mathematische Annalen during the five year period 1879–1884. In the fifth of these papers, published in 1883, 1 he stated as a law of thought ( Denkgesetz ) that every set can be well-ordered or, more precisely, that it is always possible to…
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Why does my ripped CD have messed up track names? And why is one track missing?
A delve into CD ripping and metadata
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Firefox OS's story from a Mozilla insider not working on the project (2024)
I clearly remember, but can't date it. I was working for Mozilla messaging at the time ( momo ), being the QA lead for Thunderbird. It was at the end of one of the Mozilla All-hands, maybe in 2011 or 2012. At one of the ending keynotes, we were introduced to Boot 2 Gecko. A hack that would let US - Mozilla own the…
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Cray versus Raspberry Pi
Content copyright © 1995 - 2025 to Bruce Simpson (aka Aardvark), the logo was kindly created for Aardvark Daily by the folks at aardvark.co.uk
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Omnimax
In a previous life, I worked for a location-based entertainment company, part of a huge team of people developing a location for Las Vegas, Nevada. It was COVID, a rough time for location-based anything, and things were delayed more than usual. Coworkers paid a lot of attention to another upcoming Las Vegas…
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<Blink> and <Marquee> (2020)
Dan explores the history of two (much-maligned) HTML tags of the yesterweb. With blinking marquees!
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Lessons from That 1834 Landscape Gardening Guidebook
Hermann Ludwig Heinrich Count of Pückler-Muskau was born in 1785 to the Earl Pückler and was later granted sovereignty over his land by King Friedrich III. His fame is unbroken today, but not because of his political power, but because his house chef named a dessert after him. In German and Dutch, the now popular…
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Bill Atkinson has died
Link to: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10238073579963378&id=1378467145&_rdr
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Atari Means Business with the Mega ST
The first "pro" ST
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Sid Meier's Pirates – In-depth (2017)
In-depth written review with pictures of Sid Meier's Pirates! on the Amiga.
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Nitrogen Triiodide (2016)
Nitrogen Triiodide
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Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
With the rise of Flash and CSS in 1997, three web design philosophies emerge. David Siegel advocates for 'hacks', Jakob Nielsen keeps it simple, while Jeffrey Zeldman combines flair with usability.
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Why the original Macintosh had a screen resolution of 512×324
Many classic Macs came with — or supported — displays running at 512x384 pixels, but many compact Macs, ranging from the original 1984 machine up through 1991’s Macintosh Classic II had built-in CRTs running at 512x342 pixels. That covers all black-and-white compact Macs with a 9-inch screen. The later Color Classic…
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Dr John C. Clark, a scientist who disarmed atomic bombs twice
One scientist did it twice
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Power Failure: The downfall of General Electric
Power Failure by William Cohan chronicles the spectacular collapse of General Electric, once America's most valuable company. From a $600 billion giant to near-bankruptcy, GE's downfall reveals how financialization and imperial CEOs destroyed a 130-year industrial icon.
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Failure Mechanisms in Democratic Regimes – An Army's Role
The United States was born of a desire to leave behind monarchial government and instead live under a republic. Although the structure of the United States was explicitly crafted to have both …
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Why old games never die, but new ones do
It’s well known that video games today are disposable pieces of slop. Modern multiplayer games tend to fall into one of two categories: they’re abandoned after a while and the servers a…
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The Logistics of Road War in the Wasteland
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2025100 points44 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This week, we’re doing another ‘silly’ topic, but this being me, it is a silly logistics topic, because – as the saying goes – amateurs talk tactics, professionals tal…
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The Hobby Computer Culture
[This post is part of “A Bicycle for the Mind.” The complete series can be found here.] From 1975 through early 1977, the use of personal computers remained almost exclusively the province of …
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Ancient law requires a bale of straw to hang from Charing Cross rail bridge
The scaffolding surrounding the Charing Cross railway bridge has received an addition – two bales of hay/straw – because an ancient law requires it.
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The Dawn of Nvidia's Technology
Because Nvidia became one of the most valuable companies in the world, there are now two books explaining its rise and extolling the geniu...
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The forbidden railway: Vienna-Pyongyang (2008)
ABOUT ME My name is Helmut and I was born in 1980 in Graz (Austria). Trains were my hobby since childhood. My 2nd hobby is travelling. Du...
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“There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”
The greatest early photographer's portraits of Hugo, Manet, Dumas, and more
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The Lost Japanese ROM of the Macintosh Plus
If you look for information about the Macintosh Plus and its ROM, you’ll usually find that the ROM has a capacity of 128 KB and that it exists in three revisions . But that’s incorrect: there’s a fourth ROM, 256 KB in size, which includes fonts for kanji (Japanese characters). And I found (and preserved) this ROM. I’m…