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Forty years of programming
I am about to turn forty-six. This means I have been programming for forty years, half of them professionally. During most of that time, I used a "standard" setup with 104 keyboard, a flat mouse, and a sitting desk.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 422 posts.
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The Last Express
A moving train at night is an incredible place to hear stories. Like a campfire.
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Thirty Years Ago: MS-DOS 6.00
A retrospective on MS-DOS 6.00 and my small contributions to the product.
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Nobel Prize Chemistry 2023
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023 was awarded to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Aleksey Yekimov "for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots"
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Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
Homemade clone of the Dick Smith Wizzard/VTech CreatiVision game console.
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Translating Latin demonology manuals with GPT-4 and Claude
At long last, a real-world use case for AI!
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Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to Agostini, Krausz, and L’Huillier
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier "for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter"
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Windows NT 3.1 on Dec Alpha AXP
As I was preparing the Windows NT RISC exhibit for VCF west , I realized that I’m missing a rather important piece of the history. While I was showing the potentially last DEC Alpha Windows build ever – AXP64 2210 , I don’t have anything earlier than NT 3.51. It would be nice to showcase the very first RTM version …
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Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023 was awarded jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman "for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19"
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The short life of New York City’s first skyscraper
In 1889, a slender building was unveiled on a commercial stretch of Lower Broadway, snugly situated between two older structures. Rising 11 stories, it wasn’t the tallest tower in the city. N…
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The Irish Logarithm
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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The Curse of Dialup World
An acquisition gets weird.
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The TRON Project: How Japan almost ruled IT (2022)
Stockpicking of unloved and undervalued Japanese companies using the Graham and Dodd framwork of value investing.
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How flip-flops are implemented in the Intel 8086 processor
A key concept for a processor is the management of "state", information that persists over time. Much of a computer is built from logic gate...
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A couple of messages about changes to ianVisits
I've been contacted a few times recently about the sharp decline in descriptive images on the events listings.
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Things Every Hacker Once Knew (2017)
One fine day in January 2017 I was reminded of something I had half-noticed a few times over the previous decade. That is, younger hackers don’t know the bit structure of ASCII and the meaning of the odder control characters in it.
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Who invented the alphabet?
Who really invented the alphabet? Although we are still uncertain about precisely where the world’s most influential communication system came from, we know more than we did 20 years ago.
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Japan’s silent movie culture is still going
There was a cultural divide in benshi preferences, rather like the difference in taste between those
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Google's 25th Birthday
For Google’s 25th birthday, we’re celebrating alongside our users with a special Doodle and some surprises in Search.
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Usability of Old Computers
I set up a Retro PC recently. One of the reasons I did this is because I was inspired by this thread:
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How to Roman Republic, Part IV: The Senate
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2023200 points121 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This is the fourth part of our planned five part series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IIIc, IV, V, A1, A2) on the structure of the Roman Republic during the third and second centuries, the ‘Middle’ Republic.…
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Hedy Lamarr (2018)
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress and inventor who pioneered the technology that would one day form the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems
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Nintendo 3DS Architecture
An in-depth analysis that explains how this console works internally
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How Equifax Was Breached in 2017
On a Saturday night, a security engineer at Equifax was updating an SSL certificate on a Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS). Immediately after, suspicious connections were detected. After a more in-depth investigation, it became evident that the situation was far graver than anticipated. A service had to be…
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Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure
Archaeologists discover world’s oldest wooden structure
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Historical maps probably helped cause World War I
On cartography as historical argument
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My trip to the Communication and Laptop Museum in Estonia
I ended up going to a small museum run by a passionate enthusiast in the beautiful countryside of south-east Estonia while on vacation, here are my notes on it.
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Van Gogh’s Self-Portraits
What did Vincent van Gogh look like? His self-portraits provide a good indication. Read on to find out all about them.