31
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 311 posts.
32
Gimp is 25 years old today
Exactly 25 years ago, Peter Mattis wrote a message to several newsgroups announcing a new image editor called GIMP.
33
Sega VR Revived: Emulating an Unreleased Genesis Accessory
We managed to virtualize Sega’s virtual reality headset without ever touching the hardware!
34
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2020352 points302 commentscited by 5History & Retro Computing details
We’re going to be a bit silly this week (in part because the ending of this compressed semester has left me with little time) and talk about the recently released historical action-RPG comput…
35
Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive
Great news for everyone concerned about the Flash end of life planned for end of 2020: The Internet Archive is now emulating Flash animations, games and toys in our software collection. In the early 1990s, web browsers were incredibly powerful compared to what came before - with simple files written in HTML that could…
36
37
Emojis paved the way for UTF-8 everywhere
Web developers rarely need to think to think about character sets in the modern world thanks to UTF-8. I made the journey from character hell to emoji nirvan...
38
Reverse engineering a forgotten 1970s Intel dual core beast: 8271, a new ISA
" As I recall, those two chips were fairly large. And fairly late -- to the marketplace. We had lots of issues with them. [...] Sometimes th...
39
The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)
Recently listed as the number one worse place on the planet to take a short vacation, Stolipinovo is a shocking parallel world that defies belief.
40
Why Military History?
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2020136 points63 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This week, I want to talk about the discipline of military history: what it is, why it is important and how I see my own place within it. This is going to be a bit of an unusual collections post as…
41
Origins of the youtube-dl project
As you may know, as of the time this text is being written youtube-dl’s repository at GitHub is blocked due to a DMCA takedown letter received by GitHub on behalf of the RIAA. While I cannot comment on the current maintainers' plans or ongoing discussions, in light of the claims made in that letter I thought it would…
42
AppleCrate II: A New Apple II-Based Parallel Computer (2015)
In 2004 I built the first AppleCrate , an 8-board system, as an inexpensive, easy to program vehicle for experiments in parallel programming�a kind of "blade server" for the Apple II, if you will! AppleCrate I (at the time I didn't realize that it was number "I" ;-) was great fun, and it enabled some very interesting…
43
The election of the doge
The ruler of Medieval Venice was chosen by an exceptionally complex ten-step process of alternating random lots and elections.
44
Restoring a 37 Year-Old IBM F Mechanical Keyboard
I wanted to share my journey from start to finish to restore a 1983 IBM Model F XT mechanical keyboard to it's former glory. It includes...
45
What “Roguelike” Meant
Several recently released games have rekindled the old discussions on the meaning of the word “roguelike”. This post is an attempt to…
46
Iron, How Did They Make It, Addendum: Crucible Steel and Cast Iron
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2020281 points25 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This week, as an addendum to our four(and a half)-part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb) look at pre-modern iron and steel production, we’re going to look at two alternative regional processes, where th…
47
48
Thank You for 20 Years of Discogs
Discogs Digs is the place to start your journey of music discovery. Explore recommendations, unique stories, guides, and more.
49
50
Looking Back on the Spanish War (1942)
As an independent charity, we rely on the generosity of donors, Friends and Patrons to maintain these free resources. I First of all the physical memories, the sound, the smells and the surfaces of things. It is curious that more vividly than anything that came afterwards in the Spanish war I remember the week of…
51
Photos from inside a Typhoon class submarine
Тяжелый РПКСН проекта 941 по отечественной класификации: АКУЛА,по НАТовской Typhoon/ Это РПКСН III поколения. У корабля 2 прочных корпуса расположенных параллельно и несколько прочных модулей связанных единым наружным корпусом.Он несет 20 твердотопливных БР расположенных между прочными корпусами. В…
52
Television: It’s Called a Medium Because It’s Never Well Done
Groucho Marx? Fred Waring? Ed Gardner? Goodman Ace? Jane Ace? Fred Allen? Ernie Kovacs? Deane Binder? Anonymous?
53
Glass viscosity calculations debunk the myth of flow in medieval windows (2017)
Glass scientists have taken a closer look at the urban legend of glass flow in medieval windows—combining theory and experimental techniques, the results definitely bust the myth and indicate the highest ever direct measurement of glass viscosity at low temperatures.
54
Looking Back on 35 Years as an Amiga User
Thirty five years ago I became an Amiga user. One of the first, actually. This is a meandering and reminiscent post of sorts, written to mark the Amiga’s 35th birthday and the 35 years I have known and loved the … Continue reading →
55
Per Brinch Hansen's books on compilers
Brinch Hansen was one of the pioneers of concurrent programming and operating systems (kernels). In the 1960s, Brinch Hansen worked at the Danish computer company Regnecentralen, first in the compiler group headed by Peter Naur and Jørn Jensen, and, later, as the chief architect of the RC 4000 minicomputer and its…
56
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
James Boswell and the Nature of Genius
57
LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)
AndreGarzia.com website
58
Master of Magic
Steve Barcia started thinking about his second grand-strategy game well before he had finished creating his first one. While he was waiting for his latest iteration of Master of Orion to compile each day in the cramped Austin, Texas, offices of his company SimTex, he sketched in the mental details of a follow-up that…
59
War Elephants, Part II: Elephants Against Wolves (2019)
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2020130 points49 commentscited by 3History & Retro Computing details
Today, in Part II of our three part series on War Elephants, we’re going to look at the drawbacks of war elephants. Last time (here), we discussed the factors that made war elephants so power…
60
/* You Are Not Expected to Understand This */ (2018)
<a href="https://community.cadence.com/cadence_blogs_8/b/breakfast-bytes"></a>The title of this post, you are not expected to understand this, is one of the most famous comments ever. It is in the v6 version of Unix, the mother operating system of Linux, Android,and iOS. Unix was developed by Dennis Ritchie and Ken…