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Morris Chang and the Origins of TSMC
Book review of the autobiography of Morris Chang.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 304 posts.
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I thought I found a bug
So I was working on improving a DOS emulator, when I found that something seemingly trivial wasn’t working right when COMMAND.COM was asked to do the following:
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Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory
a perfectly miserable son of a gun builds Silicon Valley
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Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804
In 2016, an EgyptAir A320 spiraled into the Mediterranean, killing 66 people. Was it an act of sabotage, or something even scarier?
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1584 LAN party photos from 1996 – 2010 from Australia's island state archived
In July 2023 I was reminiscing about a thing of the past, large-scale public LAN parties. I remember them being a semiregular occurrence around Tasmania, only attending a couple in my young age before they disappeared. I wondered if I could find some photos of these events to help the memories come back clearer. After…
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On the nature of computing science (1984)
Now this summer school draws to a close, it seems appropriate to try to put its topic into some perspective
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A data table thousands of years old (2020)
I knew that data tables had been around a long time, but I didn't appreciate how long until I read recently about account-keeping in ancient Mesopotamia.
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DOS APPEND
For a long time, I couldn’t quite grasp what the DOS APPEND command could possibly be good for. Until I came across a situation which APPEND was made for.
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Is stuff online worth saving?
I’ll admit, the question took me back a bit. But I’d say yes, it is.
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Running NetBSD on IBM ThinkPad 380Z
Launched in 1998, the 380Z was one very fine ThinkPad. It was the last ThinkPad to come in the classic bulky and rectangular form factor. It was also one of the first to feature a huge 13.3" TFT display, powerful 233MHz Pentium II, and whopping 160 megs of RAM.
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The Power Mac 4400
In November 1996, Apple released the Power Macintosh 4400 with a starting price of $1,725. Also sold as the Power Macintosh 7220, it’d be easy to write this machine off as just another grain of sand on the beige beach that was Apple’s product line in the 1990s. I mean, just look at this thing, pictured here with an…
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Nokia 5110 – Back from the Dead (2022)
I loved my Nokia 5110 and I wonder if it was possible to breathe new life into this long-shelved and still-memed mobile phone. As it turns out, not only is it possible, but it's going to be a lot easier than I anticipated.
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The Antikythera mechanism – 254:19 ratio
A couple of followups on a recent episode of In Our Time.
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Silicon Valley Tea Party a.k.a. the great 1998 Linux revolt take II (1999)
Anyway, here's what happened: Not to say that big brother is everywhere, but short of having microsoft people monitoring our lists and newsgroups (with wouldn't overly surprise me, after all they also tried a PR compain with magazines, posing as simple users who liked microsoft products), the announcement was…
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The Rise and Fall of Ashton-Tate (2023)
Vulcan & dBASE
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Fermat's Last Theorem – how it’s going
So I’m two months into trying to teach a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem to a computer. We already have one interesting story, which I felt was worth sharing.
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The Albuquerque "Broken Arrow" Nuclear Accident
In 1957, a B-36 nuclear bomber accidentally dropped a Mark 17 hydrogen bomb while landing at Kirtland Air Force Base just outside of Albuquerque NM. Mark 17 hydrogen bomb, on display at the Nationa…
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"All your base are belong to us" intro to my 2004 MIT Spam Conference talk
As I've mentioned before my talk at the 2004 MIT Spam Conference was about using one machine learning system to beat another. In that case ...
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The Myth of Bananaland
The marketing and reality of the United Fruit Company
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Reverse engineering the Sega Channel game image file format
Sega Channel was a games-on-demand service that gave cable subscribers access to a library of around 50 Sega Genesis games per month in exchange for a monthly fee (typically $10-$15/month depending on the cable provider). It operated between June 1994 (with a nationwide rollout in December 1994) and June 1998. Cable…
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Why did clothing become boring?
An investigation into when, how, and why everyone started dressing the same — and what it was like when they didn't
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They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard
Nothing says ‘80s pop’ like a DX7.
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Tweaking Stunt Island's 30-year-old 3D engine
Note: the patch is available at the end of the article ( HERE ). This post is about its making-of.
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The Problem with Sci-Fi Body Armor
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2024130 points62 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This week we’re covering the winning topic from the latest ACOUP Senate poll, which is a look at some of the odd designs and mechanics for futuristic science fiction body armor, particularly …
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The Influence of Bell Labs
We’ve talked previously about Bell Labs’ long, storied history as an innovation engine and a generator of new technology.
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The UX of Lego Interface Panels (2020)
LEGO interface panels are beautiful, iconic, and great for learning interface design basics. I bought 52 of them from BrickLink to explore the design, layout and organisation of complex interfaces.
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MIT Aluminum Bicycle Project 1974 (2016)
1974 MIT Aluminum Bicycle Project, we describe some of Marc’s design, the frames he and Harriet built in Shawn Buckleys IAP course, and how these played a role in the Klein vs. Cannondale patent litigation in the mid-1980s.
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The Art and Mathematics of Genji-Ko
You might think it’s unlikely for any interesting mathematics to arise from incense appreciation, but that’s only because you’re unfamiliar with the peculiar character of Muromachi (室町) era Japanese nobles. There has never been a group of people, in any time or place, who were so driven to display their sophistication…
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The capacitor that Apple soldered incorrectly at the factory
There have been some past rumblings on the internet about a capacitor being installed backwards in Apple’s Macintosh LC III . The LC III was a “pizza box” Mac model produced from early 1993 to early 1994, mainly targeted at the education market. It also manifested as various consumer Performa models: the 450, 460…