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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 386 posts.
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Atari Falcon030
Impressive, but too late to the party
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We were wizards – a foreword to Learning Perl (1993)
In the 1990s, computers were magic and we were wizards. Want proof? I offer below, Larry Wall’s foreword to Learning Perl from 1993. It greatly inspired a very young me who wandered into a book shop, picked up an odd book with llama on the cover and a seemingly misspelled title. The first few pages had me hooked and…
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IBM 360’s are searching for a new home
Hello! If you’re still here reading this blog, I’m impressed. We haven’t posted anything of note for some years now and frankly, thats because we haven’t done anything of note with the project. The machines have been sitting in their home, virtually untouched, for 4 years now. Chris & I (Adam) are just too busy with…
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What's worked in Computer Science: 1999 vs. 2015 (2015)
In 1999, Butler Lampson gave a talk about the past and future of “computer systems research” . Here are his opinions from 1999 on "what worked".
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On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV
The Mystery of Numerical Notation on the Dial Plate - 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV
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How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
I didn’t know what to expect from this 1937 video explanation of how wire photos were transmitted to newspapers, but a double stunt sequence featuring an airpla
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How Miles Davis hired John Coltrane
A fascinating interlude from James Kaplan's new book '3 Shades of Blue'
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Exploring Bauhaus: Revolutionary design school that shaped modern world
Bauhaus was a german art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that transcended traditional boundaries, boldly embracing the fusion of form and function. The founder of the school, Walter Gropius, believed in the "fundamental unity of the arts" and he anticipated the challenges that 20th-ce
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Rebuilding memchess.com from its archive
Learn chess openings and variations online by repeating the most popular chess Master moves
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Japanese Handsaws: The Maebiki Ooga
A famous blockprint by Hokusai titled “Mount Fuji Seen from the Mountains of Totomi,” showing a crew of sawyers rip-sawing a timber into boards using maebiki ooga saws, one man on top a…
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Bell Labs: An Institute of Creative Technology (2015)
This week I finished the most recent book in my self-guided study of 20th century technology, namely The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, by Jon Gertner. As the title implies, it’s a chronicle of research and development wing of AT&T, a history that lasts...
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How the Devteam Conquered the iPhone
The summer of 2007 was an eventful one if you were into cell phones. It all started on June 29 when Apple announced the release of the iPhone. If you have never taken the time to watch the full keynote, I highly recommend it.
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A helicopter and boats to perform a rare ceremony at the Tower of London
Next week, a fairly rare ceremony will take place in and around the Tower of London, and it's even more special than usual this time.
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The Berkeley Software Distribution
UNIX is always litigious
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This Is Knuth 3:16 (2002)
A Celebration of Donald E Knuth
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The Future That Never Was
In 1990, the strategic PC operating system of Microsoft and IBM was not DOS, not Windows, but OS/2. The first 16-bit OS/2 was initially released in 1987 with a reduced feature set, but by the end of 1989, OS/2 1.2 completed two major features: The Presentation Manager GUI (first seen in OS/2 1.1) and installable file…
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The Evolution of a Haskell Programmer (2001)
Some time later, I came across Iavor�s "jokes" page, including a funny bit called � The Evolution of a Programmer � in which the traditional imperative "Hello, world" program is developed through several variations, from simple beginnings to a ridiculously complex extreme. A moment�s thought turned up the factorial…
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Singapore Airlines Concorde
Sleek, supersonic, and short-lived. Here’s how Singapore Airlines’ Concorde service to London fell victim to politics, nationalistic jealousies, and soaring costs.
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A woman named "Steve" – IT pioneer, entrepreneur, philanthropist (2019)
Among computing pioneers, Dame Stephanie "Steve" Shirley is one of the most celebrated for building a $3 billion empire in the 1960s with an all-female staff.
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David Holladay, blindness technology pioneer, has died
This week brings sad news for our Duxbury Systems family. Our colleague, David Holladay, passed away in a hospital on Thursday, February 15th, following an accident at home that morning. David was a cancer survivor and valiantly battled multiple medical problems over his last five years.
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An Apple district manager's Macintosh Portable in 1989-91
A few months ago I introduced you to one of the more notable Apple pre-production units in my collection, a late prototype Macintosh Porta...
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Byte Interviews the Apple Lisa Dev Team (1983)
A behind-the-scenes look at the development of Apple's Lisa.
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I accidentally deleted a bad game revision from MAME
Awhile back, I had the chance to dump a game for MAME. I told myself that if the chance ever came up again, I’d contribute again. Luckily, it turns...
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A History of the TTY
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology. From cloud operator servers to embedded controllers in appliances, there must be uncountable devices that think they are connected to a TTY.
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Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
Learn how one of the biggest tech companies played a major role in the reason many people stopped using RSS feeds