1231
Building Basilisk II for iOS (2021)
I’ve had numerous requests for a guide to building BasiliskII on iOS. Let me know of anything is unclear or would benefit from more details!
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
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1233
Memories: Edinburgh ML to Standard ML
Dave MacQueen (with Robert Harper and John Reppy) has written a 100-page History of Standard ML . Here I offer my brief, personal and utterly subjective impressions of its early days, up to the deeply unfortunate schism that created what was then called Caml . Standard ML was a tragic missed opportunity. But even…
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1235
An elegy for GNU and RMS
Assorted thoughts about rms, the GNU project, the FSF, and the future.
1236
The City of London’s oldest document is currently on public display
A document that was written just a year after William the Conquer did his conquering has gone on display in the City of London.
1237
Lua, a Misunderstood Language (2021)
AndreGarzia.com website
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1239
Ken Thompson really did launch his "trusting trust" trojan attack in real life
Ken Thompson's "Trusting Trust" compiler Trojan attack was not just a thought experiment. In fact, Usenet poster Jay Ashworth stated that, from personal communications, Thompson really did launch this attack in real life and successfully compromised the Unix Support Group at Bell Labs. Recently, I've rediscovered this…
1240
What happened to Tandy computers
Tandy took a chance in 1984 and it paid off, then they played it safe too long
1241
Not as famous as they should be (2021)
Some people in computing are famous, some are not. Sometimes the fame is proportional to their contributions to computing, sometimes it's not. That's how life and the world works: the winners write the history. Financial success and personal charisma are often deemed more interesting than quietly doing your work…
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1243
The MIPS ThinkPad, Kind Of
Pop quiz: what classic brand of laptop is this? I'll give you another hint. Bright-red TrackPoint and mouse button trim, classic keybo...
1244
When did POP and IMAP become a “legacy protocol?”
So when did POP and IMAP become a “legacy protocol?”
1245
The lost ways of programming: Commodore 64 BASIC (2020)
How we interact with programming environment matters more than the language, but such interaction has never been widely studied. Inspired by the idea of 'complementary science', this essay recovers interesting ideas from how programming used to be done using Commodore 64 BASIC. Reading about interactions is not enough…
1246
Confirmed the MOS 7600/7601 Pong chip is a true microcontroller
In a previous article I discussed the MOS 7600 and 7601 "Pong in a chip" ICs, manufactured by MOS Technology (of the famous 6502) and act...
1247
SQLite Doesn't Use Git
Instead, it uses Fossil as a version control system. Some thoughts.
1248
The Changes for the 2nd Edition of “Code”
Whenever a 2nd edition of a book is published, people ask “I already have the 1st edition. Do I need to get the 2nd?” It’s a legitimate question and I’ve asked it myself. Reading a 2nd edition after the 1st is not trivial: It’s a commitment of both additional money and additional time.
1249
New technical analysis confirms the evidence against Billy Mitchell
Hot off the heels of the new Billy Mitchell testimony published on Friday, perfectpacman.com is proud to publish a new 48-page technical analysis by hardware engineer and Donkey Kong expert Tanner Fokkens. Fokkens is a moderator and longtime member of Donkey Kong Forum, and co-founder of Snektronix Incorporated…
1250
The tyranny of the wagon equation
A mathematical extension to ACOUP's recent blog post on military logistics
1251
The history of sending signals to Unix process groups
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…
1252
Mille Bornes
Edmond Dujardin, Joseph Callenac and the design history of Mille Bornes.
1253
Writing an app is like coding for LaserDisc
11 years ago to the day, I was at a tech conference. It was 3 year after the iPhone had launched its app SDK. Those of us who had been in the mobile game a while had already spent years developing apps for Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows CE, and at least a dozen other OSes which I've since scrubbed from my memory. But…
1254
Why was western printing superior to Asian printing?
Movable type was not invented by Gutenberg but in China and later advanced in Korea, so why didn't Asia have a printing revolution?
1255
C64 Theremin
The Theremin is one of the earliest electronic instruments. It's played by moving one's hands in front of two antennas: One controls pitch and the other controls volume.
1256
The cursed computer iceberg meme (2021)
this is not a hall of shame. the intent is to awaken you to many of the peculiarities and weirdness of computers. hopefully, after reading these articles, you will have learned a lot and will embrace chaos.
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Why no Roman industrial revolution?
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2022509 points587 commentscited by 33History & Retro Computing details
This week we are taking a look at the latest winner of the ACOUP Senate poll, which posed the question “Why didn’t the Roman Empire have an industrial revolution?” To answer that,…
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Oberon (2009)
Steven Frank's essay on the current state of the desktop UI 1 reminded me of Oberon, a delightfully insane system I used back when I was studying computer science at ETH Zürich. The first thing you have to understand about Oberon is that it evolved entirely outside of the normal genealogy of user interfaces…
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Sanyo Triple Five
Even though I seem to have terrible luck with x86-based computers, that doesn’t mean I have to take it lying down. I can go out there and cause even worse things to happen to me. Like, for instance, buying a broken super-budget PC-incompatible from 1982.
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The best and worst of 1994 and predictions for '95
Disaster Relief. We saw the best of Internet users when they pulled together to help each other through several natural disasters in 1994. The year brought floods, earthquakes, and other major tragedies. Almost immediately following each of these events, Net users gathered around their terminals and formed newsgroups…