1141
History of Web Browser Engines from 1990 until today (2022)
History of Web Browser Engines from 1990 until today
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
1142
Reverse-engineering an airspeed/Mach indicator from 1977
How does a vintage airspeed indicator work? CuriousMarc picked one up for a project, but it didn't have any documentation, so I reverse-en...
1143
30 years of Brainfuck
Has nerd sniping gone too far?
1144
The curious Soviet mini-sub of South Alabama (2018)
While running around South Alabama, I came across the sleepy shrimping capital of Bayou La Batre along the Mississippi Sound. The basis for Winston Groom’s (who grew up in Mobile County and f…
1145
Sierra’s Macintosh Timebomb (2021)
On Saturday, September 18 1993, Sierra's Macintosh games stopped working. Franchises froze as King's Quests, Space Quests, and even the Leisurely Suited Larries locked up. Practically every Mac SCI game had broken overnight. Sierra developed a patch within nine days, released it on their BBS, and announced it in their…
1146
8086 Processor's microcode pipeline from die analysis
Intel introduced the 8086 microprocessor in 1978, and its influence still remains through the popular x86 architecture. The 8086 was a fai...
1147
Douglas Adams on Hypercard and new educational models
Douglas Adams on Hypercard + New Educational Models
1148
Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236
How a series of errors on the ground and in the air caused a fully loaded passenger jet to run out of fuel in the mid-Atlantic.
1149
Alan Kay on web browsers, document viewers, Smalltalk, NeWS and HyperCard (2021)
Alan Kay answered: “Actually quite the opposite, if “document” means an imitation of old static text media (and later including pictures…
1150
My encounter with Medley Interlisp
Imagine someone let you into an alien spaceship they landed in your backyard, sat you at the controls, and encouraged you to fly the ship...
1151
When is a PC not a PC? The PC-98
I’ve covered PC compatibility in the past, and tried to explain how just having an x86 CPU and running DOS does not necessarily make your machine compatible with an IBM PC. At the time, this …
1152
The Rise of Steel – Part I
One of the defining characteristics of the modern world is the ubiquity of steel.
1153
How transportation technologies shaped empires
For thousands of years, a hidden rule limited the size of empires, unbeknownst to their rulers.
1154
How to slow down scientific progress, according to Leo Szilard
“Science would become something like a parlor game. There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashion would get grants”
1155
The (Almost) Definitive 486DX/50 Article
(Source: Infoworld, 25th May 1992, p56) We need to start at the beginning, because understanding the timeline of the 486 - Intel's 4th gener...
1156
The strangest computer manual ever written
It's dark and funny and unlike anything else
1157
Inside the 8086 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry
The groundbreaking 8086 microprocessor was introduced by Intel in 1978 and led to the x86 architecture that still dominates desktop and se...
1158
Building a Frankenstein 64
👶 From when Mosaic took over Gopher. 🏢 VP of Engineering @ Cloudflare 🕹️ Slightly addicted to retrocomputing 🔍 Hit Ctrl-K to Search
1159
USB-C done cheap: when 2 ports become 1 (2020)
How PC hardware is implementing USB-C in a way that may or may not violate standards.
1160
Report on an Unidentified Space Station (1982)
By good luck we have been able to make an emergency landing on this uninhabited space station. There have been no casualties. We all count ourselves fortunate to have found safe haven at a moment when the expedition was clearly set on disaster.
1161
Brute Force Colors
Using modern brute force approach to improve image quality on retro computers, by Arnaud Carré
1162
First TV Image of Mars: Interplanetary color by numbers (2016)
For the longest time I had seen this framed image entitled “The First TV Image of Mars” in an out of the way place at JPL. I loved taking people there showing them this low res image and how it had been made by coloring numbers that were stapled to a wall. When I got to curate an exhibition about data and art, I had…
1163
A seamstress who solved the ancient mystery of the Argonaut
“I armed myself with patience and courage, and only after several months managed to dissolve my doubts and see my research crowned with happy confirmation.”
1164
Stranger Things and the Amiga 1000
About a year ago, I cancelled my Netflix subscription. One of the few shows listed on the "plus" side when I made my decision was Stranger Things: an entertaining series with an excellent first and good second season. In short, I'm a fan of the show - though my appreciation of it doesn't come near my fanatical passion…
1165
Installing an Ethernet card and video card and other upgrades for a Mac SE/30
But there’s only one slot, you say? It’s all a matter of using a clever part to adapt a pass-through.
1166
Win16 Retro Development
Several months ago I had a go at producing a high resolution 256-color driver for Windows 3.1. The effort was successful but is not yet complete. Along the way I re-learned many things I had forgotten, and learned several new ones. This blog entry is based on notes I made during development.
1167
“News is what somebody does not want you to print – all the rest is advertising”
George Orwell? Alfred Harmsworth? William Randolph Hearst? L. E. Edwardson? Robert W. Sawyer? Mark Rhea Byers? Brian R. Roberts? Malcolm Muggeridge? Katharine Graham? Lord Rothermere? Lord Northcliffe? Anonymous?
1168
Building a website like it's 1999
I'm on a bit of a mission this year to bring back the spirit of the old web. The creativity and flair of the late 90s and early 2000s. So I've recreated some of that old web magic, in modern HTML, CSS and JS.
1169
The Reliability Trap: The crash of Emirates flight 521 (2020)
On the 3rd of August 2016, an Emirates Boeing 777 landing in Dubai attempted a last second go-around after touching down too far along the…
1170
How Pitfall builds its world (2021)
Games for the Atari 2600 were quite constrained. When Warren Robinett first pitched the idea that would become Adventure , a game where you would explore a world with many rooms and pick up items to help you along the way, he was denied because it wasn't thought feasible. And it made sense to do so. This was the late…