601
Whence '\n'?
If you do just foo , the following justfile will write a single byte 0x0A to a file named bar:
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
602
Reverse engineering and dismantling Kekz headphones
Close to a year ago, I stumbled upon the Kekz Headphones, which seemed like an interesting approach on the whole digital audio device space. They claimed to work without any internet connection and all of the content already on the headphones itself. They are On-Ear Headphones, which work by placing a small chip (I…
603
The Heart of Unix (2018)
Despite all of its warts, I like working in Linux. I've used it for 15 years and I've never been as productive in another environment. Most people claim that it's the configurability of Linux that keep the users coming. That may have attracted me at first, but what attracts me now is its programmability.
604
You Too Could Have Made Curl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCJmAyUr1j4 This is the video recording of my talk with this title, done at February 4, 2024 10:00 in the K1.105 room at FOSDEM 2024. The room can hold some 800 people but there were a few hundred seats still unoccupied. Several people I met up with later have insisted that 10 am on a ……
605
COBOL has been “dead” for so long, my grandpa wrote about it
Delving the depths of computing, hoping not to get eaten by wumpus
606
Boris Vallejo and the pixel art of the demoscene
Boris Vallejo is an epic fantasy painter, who has had an immense influence on fantasy book covers, computer game box art, and even the demoscene. Throughout the decades, his works have often been replicated by pixel artists, leading to controversy. I rediscovered Vallejo's great work for myself, looked into the…
607
The Dogma of Otherness (1986)
The Dogma of Otherness insists that all voices deserve a hearing, that all points of view have something of value to offer.
608
Reverse-engineering a three-axis attitude indicator from the F-4 fighter plane
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that uses a rotating ball to show the aircraft's orienta...
609
My MEGA65 is finally here
Taking a good look around (both inside and out) of my brand new MEGA65 computer system from Trenz Electronic GmbH.
610
The lost language extensions of MetaWare's High C compiler (2023)
This book I got in a pile of FM TOWNS books turns out to be a lot more interesting that I was expecting an '80s C compiler manual to be. For as long as C and its relatives have been in mainstream use,…
611
I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
A story about data and a very foolish hobby
612
Xkcd 1425 (Tasks) turns ten years old today
One of the all-time great XKCDs. It's amazing that "check whether the photo is of a bird" has gone from PhD-level to trivially easy to solve (with a vision LLM, …
613
What happened to the Japanese PC platforms?
(This was originally posted on a social media site; I’ve revised and updated it for my blog.) The other day a friend asked me a pretty interesting...
614
Quote Origin: I had exactly four seconds and Google had told me it wasn’t enough
Question for Quote Investigator: Apparently, sometime during the 1950s a popular writer of detective fiction crafted a short passage parodying science fiction. Within the passage the word “Google” appeared long before the company Google existed. The passage displayed remarkable prescience. The word “Google” referred…
615
D&D is Anti-Medieval
You can be forgiven for thinking that OD&D is a medieval European fantasy game. After all, Gary Gygax himself says so. He describes the original D&D books as “Rules for Fantastic Medi…
616
AT&T's Hobbit Microprocessor (2023)
An unexpected journey for AT&T with it's own low power processor
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I wish I didn't miss the '90s-00s internet
about me I am 18, born in 2006. This is generally a good thing as I am in the prime of life currently. I am not one of those people who think they were “born in the wrong decade”, I think I was born at the perfect time to take advantage of superlinearly growing technological advancements. the internet today I…
619
Multispectral Imaging and the Voynich Manuscript
(with thanks to René Zandbergen, Ray Clemens, Roger Easton, Claire Bowern, Bill Endres, and the curatorial and conservation staff at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library) I have some exc…
620
Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison
NT is often touted as a "very advanced" operating system. Why is that? What made NT better than Unix, if anything? And is that still the case?
621
With more legal action on the horizon, how long before Archive.org closes?
Connect with Lunduke and other members of Lunduke community
622
Graphics Tricks from Boomers
Technical details about a recent 4096bytes Atari-STE intro, by Arnaud Carré
623
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The Beginnings of FM Radio Broadcasting (2018)
The beginnings of FM radio broadcasting in the USA
625
Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
I happened to look at a slide deck from Sandia National Laboratories from 2007 that someone had posted on Reddit late last night (you know, as one does,...
626
PC Floppy Copy Protection: Softguard Superlok
This is part 2 of a series on PC floppy copy protection methods. You can read Part 1, covering Formaster Copy-Lock here . Softguard System...
627
The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside
The Untold Story Behind a Meteoric Rise
628
They don't make 'em like that any more: the 3.5mm headphone jack socket
What’s the real reason that cellphone manufacturers stopped fitting this simple, robust connector?
629
Massachusetts Bodged Transistor Authority
in which two women are driven into madness by poorly documented cab signaling gear
630
Tabbed out on the Oregon Trail
Powell's is rightly famed as a destination for book lovers, and I finally made my pilgrimage last weekend. The perils of air travel limited the inevitable splurge -- I had to fit my haul into a single backpack -- but I wound up with some nifty ...