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Systems Past: software innovations we actually use (2014)
Note: This is a position piece, not a technical article. Hat tip to Jake Skelcy for requesting such a piece. Computers didn’t always have operating …
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 123 posts.
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Die photos and analysis of the revolutionary 8008 microprocessor, 45 years old
Intel's groundbreaking 8008 microprocessor was first produced 45 years ago. 1 This chip, Intel's first 8-bit microprocessor, is the ancesto...
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20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT
On Dec. 20, 1996, Apple announced that it had purchased NeXT: Apple Computer, Inc. today announced its intention to purchase NeXT Software Inc., in a friendly acquisition for $400 million. Pending regulatory approvals, all NeXT products, services, and technology research will become part of Apple Computer, Inc. As…
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Linux at 20, some personal memories (2011)
This is going to be long and rambling. If you're going to read it, you may want to wait until you're ill, and can't get out of bed, and your head is filled with cotton, and you're eating painkillers like they were candy. I don't want you to feel pain while reading. Being unconscious and having a speech synthesizer…
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Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? (And some workarounds)
Last week, Microsoft published the binary file formats for Office. These formats appear to be almost completely insane. The Excel 97-2003 file format is a 349 page PDF file. But wait, that’s not al…
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Making an MSX font
I figured, for this and future posts I have planned about MSX, that I wanted an MSX font face. I browsed the web a bit for one and found nothing that I liked...
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Happy 23rd Birthday, DOOM
It's that time of year again, where we say Happy Birthday to one of my most favorite games, DOOM! Every year I try to reveal something about the game's development that hasn't been documented to death. Believe me, DOOM has been documented more than most games. But never fear, I have so much stuff th
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Intel x86 documentation has more pages than the 6502 has transistors
Microprocessors have become immensely more complex thanks to Moore's Law, but one thing that has been lost is the ability to fully understan...
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A Simple Explanation: VLC.js
The previous entry got the attention it needed, and the maintainers of the VLC project connected with both Emularity developers and Emscripten developers and the process has begun. The best example…
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So Long, Whitechapel Bell Foundry
It is with deep regret that I announce the closure of Whitechapel Bell Foundry , the world’s most famous bell foundry and Britain’s oldest manufacturing company. Below you can read my interview with Alan Hughes, the last in a line of bell founders stretching back to 1420, who will retire next year at sixty-eight years…
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Slack client for Commodore 64
Slack is great. Many smarter people than me also think that Slack is great. Slack is great because its simple and easier to deal with than emails. With all t...
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Geocities Cage at the Exodus Datacenter
This is what the inside of the cage looks like. Nearly all of the machines in the cage are Sun Ultra 2s. Attached to nearly all of these boxes are dual sets of MTI JBODs ("Just a Box Of Disks") (either 2500s or 8300s). The newer JBODs (the 8300) make up the majority of the storage arrays in the cage. Nearly all of the…
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Forbidden Spheres
A document from 1947 points towards an interesting Los Alamos policy: banning all spheres, innocuous or not, from technical areas.
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If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter (2012)
Blaise Pascal? John Locke? Benjamin Franklin? Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac? Abraham Lincoln ? Henry David Thoreau? Cicero? Mark Twain? Woodrow Wilson?
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ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
ICQ is turning 20 (and that is no small potatoes). A whole generation has already grown up with the forerunner of all messengers. For this…
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South Korean President Park Geun-hye's corruption scandal
President Park Geun-hye issues a public apology on October 25, 2016. ( source ) President Park Geun-hye is in deep trouble. The sto...
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A Simple Request: VLC.js
Almost five years ago to today, I made a simple proposal to the world: Port MAME/MESS to Javascript. That happened. I mean, it cost a dozen people hundreds of hours of their lives…. and there…
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Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison
In Oracle’s early days Kathryn Gould was the founding VP of Marketing, working there from 1982 to 1984. When I heard that Larry Ellison was stepping down as Oracle’s CEO I asked Kathryn to think ab…
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A Random Walk Through Ada (2014)
So the C programming language has been getting a lot of bad press recently; a really stupid bug in some C code has compromised some of the core security infrastructure on the internet. The fix is easy, but the knock-on effects are going to go on for years and will cost serious amounts of money. As a result, people…
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Donald Knuth used an Erlang-like notation
In this blogpost we'll see how Erlang's Syntax already appeared on TAOCP years before the language was even created.
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The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols
AMONG number systems, the hexadecimal system of counting (or 'radix') has a special place in the hearts of programmers, being closely relate...
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Russian ship loitering near undersea cables
**Russian ship loitering near undersea cables** Updated: Original article 9th Oct. 2016. The Russian Navy’s Project 22010 mini-sub host ship Yantar is known for loitering near undersea internet cables (known as Submarine communications Cables - SCC). It may have other special missions also…. Read More >….
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Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 9: tracing a crash through software and hardware
Last week, after months of restoration, we finally got the vintage Xerox Alto computer to boot ( details ) and run programs. However, so...
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Blitzted: The Third Reich as a Society on Drugs
So my copy of Norman Ohler’s splendidly-titled Blitzed showed up. This could have been a really disappointing book – in the acknowledgments, Ohler mentions a Berlin DJ friend who told him Nazis took masses of drugs, and I can well imagine going from that beginning to lurid Hitler Channel kitsch. But Ohler has achieved…