1531
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
1532
Found a program I wrote in 1981 and decided to bring it back to life
When you find a weird program from four decades ago and realize that it's yours.
1533
1534
2006: Dwarf Fortress
The text of Dwarf Fortress and procedural tales so expansive no human could ever explore them all.
1535
1536
The BYTE magazine covers by Robert Tinney
During the 1970s and 1980s, Robert Tinney illustrated some of the most amazing computer artwork for BYTE magazine.
1537
When McDonalds Came to Denmark
Every few months, a prominent person or publication points out that McDonalds workers in Denmark receive $22 per hour, 6 weeks of vacation, and sick pay. This compensation comes on top of the general slate of social benefits in Denmark, which includes child allowances, health care, child care, paid leave, retirement…
1538
So what is the deal with A/UX anyways?
The year is 1983, and several Apple employees visit Brown University, and get some idea of what Universities want in a computer for the coming future. The big buzz of the era was the so called 3M machine:
1539
Acoup: The Trench Stalemate
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2021126 points31 commentscited by 5History & Retro Computing details
This week (and next) I want to build a bit off of our discussion of Victoria II and talk a bit about World War I and in particular the trench stalemate on the Western Front. That trench stalemate i…
1540
The Linux Distributions of 1992
The modern Linux distros owe their existence to those early releases, back in 1992.
1541
Turing Oversold?
It is not the fault of Turing, though.
1542
1543
How factories were made safe
The fundamental cause was a wrong attitude towards the core question: who is responsible for safety?
1544
PalmOS on Raspberry Pi
My PalmOS port is making progress on a desktop computer, with keyboard, mouse and a 1920×1080 monitor for display. While that was interesting, I wanted to try a different form factor, one tha…
1545
Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”
And other misadventures
1546
No One Ever Saw the Snow Cruiser Again (2019)
"REAL stories. REAL history."
1547
Commodore 64 Ads from the 1980s
Computer magazine advertisements from the 1980s were just plain fantastic.
1548
Notes from a 1984 trip to Xerox PARC (2019)
Someone at work asked about this trip report I wrote long ago. I had not realized it was ever seen outside Bell Labs Research, but I now kno...
1549
PC-86-DOS
A number of years ago, an 8″ disk containing Seattle Computer Products (SCP) 86-DOS 1.0 was successfully imaged . The newest files on the disk are dated April 30, 1981, making the disk the oldest complete release of what was soon to be known as PC DOS and MS-DOS, about a month older than a pre-release of PC DOS from…
1550
Reverse engineering software licensing from early-2000s abandonware
This series concerns a software licensing system used in a proprietary software application from circa 2004. The software was available in an unregistered trial mode with limited functionality. A free licence could be obtained by registering online with the software vendor. The software became abandonware circa 2009…
1551
8 Bits of history: My first game is still available on the internet
Smackeyackys excellent adventure I was somewhere around eight or nine when the 8 bit era of personal computers started getting into action....
1552
Two perspectives on a designer who Steve Jobs could not hire
Richard Sapper may not be a household name, but he's on the same level of greats like Dieter Rams and Jonathan Ive.
1553
Life Before Unicode
Unicode definitely added a lot of complexity to string handling, and people who use languages with ASCII alphabets exclusively may think it's unjustified. However, I'm a non-ASCII language speaker who's old enough to remember the alternatives, and the alternatives are far worse than the complexity of Unicode.
1554
How we paid for the War on Terror
Or, why Keynesianism and functional finance demand politics.
1555
America Had an Atomic Mecha Warrior Robot
"REAL stories. REAL history."
1556
Expert help needed to decode rare piece of space history: Lunokhod data tapes
Blog di Paolo Attivissimo su Internet, social network, informatica e bufale
1557
The Ruin of War
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2021122 points31 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This is the second part of a three part series (I) examining the historical assumptions of Paradox Interactive’s 19th and early 20th century grand strategy game, Victoria II. Last week, we lo…
1558
286 vs. 386SX
The 386sx wasn't much of an upgrade from the 286, but was popular for a time. Let's take a look at the 286 vs 386sx, and what the SX offered.
1559
1560
Reverse-engineering a vintage power supply chip from die photos
I recently did a PC power supply teardown so I figured it would be interesting to go deeper and see what happens inside the power supply'...