3781
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,253 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
3782
Matt Groening's Artwork for Apple
The story that The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening once illustrated a brochure for Apple back in 1989 has been making the rounds of the internet for a while now. However, in addition to that brochure, Groening did other artwork for Apple around that same time period. For anyone unfamiliar, Apple hired Groening to…
3783
Bradley Manning’s Statement
Yesterday Bradley explained how and more importantly, why, he shared classified documents with WikiLeaks. Rush transcript by Alexa O'Brien.
3784
3785
DWIM
1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was provided.
3786
Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?
The Romans were undoubtedly master engineers. They were experts at civil engineering, building roads, improving sanitation, inventing Roman concrete, and constructing aqueducts that adhere to tolerances impressive even by today’s standards. Perhaps the best evidence of their aptitude is the fact that many of those…
3787
Ten years of PyPy
From a software engineering perspective, 10 years is indistinguishable from infinity, so I don't care what happens 10 years from now -- as...
3788
Tim Berners-Lee: WorldWideWeb, the first Web client
The first web browser - or browser-editor rather - was called WorldWideWeb as, after all, when it was written in 1990 it was the only way to see the web. Much later it was renamed Nexus in order to save confusion between the program and the abstract information space (which is now spelled World Wide Web with spaces).
3789
The Deep Insights of Alan Kay
If you haven’t heard of Alan Kay you’ll likley have heard one of his many famous quotes, the most popular, likely his 1971 gem: The best …
3790
3791
The Original Hacker's Dictionary (1988)
[This file, jargon.txt, was maintained on MIT-AI for many years, before being published by Guy Steele and others as the Hacker's Dictionary. Many years after the original book went out of print, Eric Raymond picked it up, updated it and republished it as the New Hacker's Dictionary. Unfortunately, in the process, he…
3792
3793
3794
3795
3796
Remember when people tracked bugs?
I've done some well-known bitching about the halfassed and haphazard way that Open Sores projects have handled their bugs in the past, but man, things have only gotten worse since then. I mean, projects used to actually have bug databases. Boy, those were the days. Failing that, developers used to put their email…
3797
Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling
For the first time, Chrome and Firefox can “talk” to each other via WebRTC . WebRTC is a new set of technologies that brings clear crisp voi...
3798
3799
The PNG image file format is now more popular than GIF
The PNG image file format has been created in 1995 as a response to some patent issues around the then-prevailing GIF format. PNG has gained popularity ever since, and it is now used on more websites than GIF.
3800
The sound of the dialup, pictured
If you ever connected to the Internet before the 2000s, you probably remember how it sounded. But what do these sounds mean?
3801
Apple Core Rot: Introduction
This is the first page only. Use the popup menu at top right for subsequent pages.
3802
Inside the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor
The arithmetic-logic unit is a fundamental part of any computer, performing addition, subtraction, and logic operations, but how it works i...
3803
You've heard of Markov chains. But who was Markov?
Harvard celebrates the 100th anniversary of a computational principle that was little noticed in its time, but that underlies all of modern science.
3804
3805
3806
Edward Tufte’s defense of Aaron Swartz and the “marvelously different”
Data visualization pioneer Edward Tufte relates how he came to defend Aaron Swartz in the JSTOR incident and how he, Tufte, was a hacker himself.
3807
The forbidden railway: Vienna - Pyongyang (2008)
ABOUT ME My name is Helmut and I was born in 1980 in Graz (Austria). Trains were my hobby since childhood. My 2nd hobby is travelling. Du...
3808
MIT Legal repudiated Xbox hacker too
I am joining three academic research web sites, SIFT and Polyphen (websites for predicting disease mutations) and CRAVAT (a website for predicting cancer mutations), in a moment of silence to mark Aaron Swartz’ passing. On January 25, we will bring down our sites for the day to honor his contributions and mark the…
3809
The 6502 CPU's overflow flag explained at the silicon level
In this article, I show how overflow is computed in the 6502 microprocessor at the transistor and silicon level. I've discussed the mathema...
3810
JSTOR Statement on Aaron Swartz
We are deeply saddened to hear the news about Aaron Swartz. We extend our heartfelt condolences to Aaron’s family, friends, and everyone who loved, knew, and admired him. He was a truly gifted person who made important contributions to the development of the internet and the web from which we all benefit.