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Visualizing World War II
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that maps and history are two of my favorite things. I love history because I love learning about the vast panoply of the human …
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
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Testing the Z80 Chip with a 1970s Beauty
The Fairchild Sentry 610 was optimized for engineers
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The Internet Gopher from Minnesota
Structured Text on the Internet before the World Wide Web
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Grim Fandango
My one big regret was the PlayStation version [of Broken Sword] . No one thought it would sell, so we kept it like the PC version. In hindsight, I think if we had introduced direct control in this game, it would have been enormous.
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A mistake that killed Japan's software industry? (2023)
This is our 200th episode, so I wanted to do something special. Everyone loves to complain about the poor quality of Japanese software, but today I’m going to explain exactly what went wrong. You'll get the whole story, and I'll also pinpoint the specific moment Japan lost its way. By the end, I think you'll
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New Acquisitions: 1933 and the Definition of Fascism
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2024cited by 14History & Retro Computing details
Today we’re going to look at definitions of fascism and ask the question – you may have guessed – if Donald Trump is running for President as a fascist. Worry not, this isn’…
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Alonzo Church: Architect of computer intelligence
The man who gave us the solution to the Entscheidungsproblem
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The history of Unix's ioctl and signal about window sizes
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
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The rise of the U.S., the rise of China
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly reading about the times and places where radical changes in manufacturing were taking place: Britain in the late 18th century, the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japan in the second half of the 20th…
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A deep history of Halloween
Or, how far back can historical analysis take us?
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Buy payphones and retire
Dropshipping AliExpress watches, AI-generated SEO spam websites... marginally legal and ethical passive income schemes, that serve to generate that income mostly for their promoters, can feel like a modern phenomenon. The promise of big money for little work is one of the fundamental human weaknesses, though, and it…
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ST Book, the Notebook Atari ST
A surprisingly innovative portable ST
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How to grip Bronze Age swords
An ordinary Late Bronze Age European sword of the so-called Naue type II. It has a bronze hilt of hollow scales riveted to the...
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Playstation Vita Architecture (Part 1)
An in-depth analysis that explains how this console works internally
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MQTT turns 25
October 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of MQTT, a crucial protocol for connecting devices in diverse environments. With origins in lightweight networks, MQTT has flourished, empowering countless a…
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One Plus One Equals Two (2006)
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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Scratches in 2001: A Space Osyssey (2018)
A set of scratches in Stanley Kubrick’s '2001: A Space Odyssey' is visible at the same moments and locations within the frame in most copies of the movie.
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An Illustrated Guide to Maritime Signal Flags
Rabbit Waves
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Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that they would have defenestrated it years ago...
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A History of Microwave Ovens
Some humans put a ~2.4GHz magnetron on a ventilated metal box with a fancy door.
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Owe your banker £1k you are at his mercy; owe him £1m the position is reversed (2019)
Question for Quote Investigator: The relationship between bankers and borrowers is symbiotic and occasionally counter-intuitive. Here is a pertinent adage:
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On 17th century "cocaine"
A new analysis of mummified brains pushes back the timeline for the globalization of coca
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Rabbit hole: stumbling across two Portuguese punched cards
Look, here's the thing, I don't like mysteries that involve technology. I think I hate them because I know that some other human created the...
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We'll buy back your Typewriter for Uncle Sam
In this blog post, we will explore another poster I recently bought, which highlights Smith-Corona’s campaign to buy back typewriters for the U.S. government due to wartime shortages during World War II.
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The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Soviet spaceflight (2023)
The Soviet space program used completely different controls and instruments from American spacecraft. One of the most interesting navigati...