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Reverse-Engineering NES Tetris to Add Hard Drop
Tetris for the NES is one of my favourite versions of Tetris. My only complaint is that it lacks the ability to “hard drop” - instantly dropping the current piece and locking it into place.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 337 posts.
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When you have too much memory for SheepShaver
When I first got my 133MHz BeBox (not new, sadly), it had "only" 32MB of memory and it had four more SIMM slots to fill. While Be only off...
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Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany
Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany. Big push for other national Demoscene applications and the acceptance for an understanding of digital cultures in general
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System Shock
We approached games as immersive simulations. We wanted to build game environments that reacted to player’s decisions, that behaved in natural ways, and where players had more verbs than simply “shoot.” DOOM was not an influence on System Shock. We were trying something more difficult and nuanced, [although] we still…
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A Mind Is Born (2017)
Making a demo in just 256 bytes would be a formidable challenge regardless of platform. A Mind Is Born is my attempt to do it on the Commodore 64. In the absence of an actual 256-byte compo, it was submitted to the Oldskool 4K Intro compo at Revision 2017 , where it ended up on 1st place.
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Why use old computers and operating systems?
On this blog, I write about the various computers I use and about the operating systems I use on them. Apart from Windows 7, which is relatively modern, these include Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard, which at this point is quite old, and Mac OS 9, which is practically ancient. I’d like to talk a bit about why I use such old…
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All Futurama Opening Quotes
All Futurama Opening Quotes in order, Futurama is the whipping boy of modern prime time cartoons, Made by the creators of Simpsons.
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Spartan School (2019)
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2021172 points154 commentscited by 23History & Retro Computing details
This is Part I of a seven part series (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, Gloss., Retrospective) comparing the popular legacy of Sparta (embodied in films like 300) with the historical ancient state. Toda…
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade EGA/VGA Comparison
The original EGA art for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was done by Mike Ebert , Steve Purcell , and Martin Cameron . It was originally released in July 1989. The VGA version, first released on the japanese FM Towns computer in 1990, adds Jim McLeod and James Dollar to the credits.
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Amazon S3’s 15th Birthday: 5,475 Days and 100T Objects
I wrote the blog post that announced Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) fifteen years ago today. In that post, I made it clear that the service was accessed via APIs and that it was targeted at developers, outlined a few key features, and shared pricing information. Developers found that post, started to write…
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Narco Submarine Found in Spain
**Disguised Narco Submarine Found In Europe** Police in Malaga, Spain have reported that they have discovered a narco-submarine aboard a ship. It is the fourth so-called narco submarine found in Europe in the last 15 years…Read More >….
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Loom EGA/VGA Comparison
The original EGA background art for Loom was made by Mark Ferrari . The character art was done by Gary Winnick and Steve Purcell . Gary Winnick designed the sprites and did most of the sprite animation, while Steve Purcell did the larger character portraits and some additional animation. Ken Macklin did the effects…
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A brief history of router architecture
Here's what we've learnt about networks and the routers that interconnect them in the last 50 years.
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1980: MUD
The story of how dozens of British college students would stay up all night to adventure together in the game that would spawn a thousand sequels.
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The Most-Used Mathematical Algorithm Idea in History (2016)
Stephen Wolfram shares a glimpse into his conversations with Solomon Golomb, developments on shift registers, polyominoes, scientific contributions.
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Wing Commander III
Movies and computer games are my two favorite things. If I weren’t doing one I’d be doing the other.
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Clothing, How Did They Make It? Part I: High Fiber
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2021137 points11 commentscited by 12History & Retro Computing details
This post is also available in audio form, thanks to the efforts of our volunteer narrator. This week we are starting the first of a four (I, II, III, IVa, IVb) part look at pre-modern textile prod…
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Lotus 1-2-3 arbitrary resolution
I tend to use a lot of retro software, partly because I’m a big nerd but also because I just prefer to work in a terminal. There were a ton of major commercial software products for MS-DOS that were highly polished, and can still be used effectively in an xterm today.
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The Last Message Sent on AIM
In the early 2000s social media sites like Facebook and Twitter weren’t commonplace yet. Even text messages, at ten cents each, were something to be rationed. For many teenagers the primary means of communication outside school was AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). So when it was announced in October that they were…
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Strange chip: Teardown of a vintage IBM token ring controller
IBM used some unusual techniques in its integrated circuits, and one of the most visible is packaging them in square metal cans. I've been...
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Weird architectures weren't supported to begin with
This post contains my own opinions, not the opinions of my employer or any open source groups I belong or contribute to.
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Ancient Babylonian Algorithms: The Earliest Programs
An interactive, illustrated timeline of historic moments in humankind's quest for information. With annotations by Jeremy Norman.
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Architecture of the Playstation 2
An in-depth analysis that explains how this console works internally
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Booting the IBM 1401: How a 1959 punch-card computer loads a program
How do you boot a computer from punch cards when the computer has no operating system and no ROM? To make things worse, this computer req...
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Nintendo DS-TV-Out Restoration Project
How Instagram helps gamers build authority, attract sponsors, and grow a loyal community beyond the game.