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Alonzo Church: Architect of computer intelligence
The man who gave us the solution to the Entscheidungsproblem
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 386 posts.
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The history of Unix's ioctl and signal about window sizes
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
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Claude Shannon: Mathematician, engineer, genius and juggler (2017)
By Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni, co-authors A MIND AT PLAY: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age “Do you mind if I hang you upside down by your legs?” From any other professor, this question might have elicited concern. But from Claude Shannon, it was par for the course. Shannon had in mind an elaborate…
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The rise of the U.S., the rise of China
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly reading about the times and places where radical changes in manufacturing were taking place: Britain in the late 18th century, the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japan in the second half of the 20th…
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The history of Monokai
The history of the Monokai color scheme and the evolution of Monokai Pro
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A deep history of Halloween
Or, how far back can historical analysis take us?
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Buy payphones and retire
Dropshipping AliExpress watches, AI-generated SEO spam websites... marginally legal and ethical passive income schemes, that serve to generate that income mostly for their promoters, can feel like a modern phenomenon. The promise of big money for little work is one of the fundamental human weaknesses, though, and it…
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ST Book, the Notebook Atari ST
A surprisingly innovative portable ST
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How to grip Bronze Age swords
An ordinary Late Bronze Age European sword of the so-called Naue type II. It has a bronze hilt of hollow scales riveted to the...
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Playstation Vita Architecture (Part 1)
An in-depth analysis that explains how this console works internally
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How DRAM changed the world
From an idea in 1966 to a patent in 1968, DRAM has had an outsized impact on the world with its dynamic random access memory technology enabling everything from mobile phones to automobiles. Cheers to 50+ years of innovation!
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MQTT turns 25
October 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of MQTT, a crucial protocol for connecting devices in diverse environments. With origins in lightweight networks, MQTT has flourished, empowering countless a…
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One Plus One Equals Two (2006)
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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Scratches in 2001: A Space Osyssey (2018)
A set of scratches in Stanley Kubrick’s '2001: A Space Odyssey' is visible at the same moments and locations within the frame in most copies of the movie.
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An Illustrated Guide to Maritime Signal Flags
Rabbit Waves
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DHL pioneered the sharing economy (2016)
DHL was guaranteed timely delivery of critical business documents by giving away airplane tickets. That made it was a pioneer in the sharing economy.
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Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that they would have defenestrated it years ago...
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A History of Microwave Ovens
Some humans put a ~2.4GHz magnetron on a ventilated metal box with a fancy door.
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Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo
The Nobel Peace Prize 2024 was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again"
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Owe your banker £1k you are at his mercy; owe him £1m the position is reversed (2019)
Question for Quote Investigator: The relationship between bankers and borrowers is symbiotic and occasionally counter-intuitive. Here is a pertinent adage:
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On 17th century "cocaine"
A new analysis of mummified brains pushes back the timeline for the globalization of coca
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Rabbit hole: stumbling across two Portuguese punched cards
Look, here's the thing, I don't like mysteries that involve technology. I think I hate them because I know that some other human created the...
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The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2024
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2024 was awarded jointly to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun "for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation"
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We'll buy back your Typewriter for Uncle Sam
In this blog post, we will explore another poster I recently bought, which highlights Smith-Corona’s campaign to buy back typewriters for the U.S. government due to wartime shortages during World War II.
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The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Soviet spaceflight (2023)
The Soviet space program used completely different controls and instruments from American spacecraft. One of the most interesting navigati...