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P. J. O'Rourke, 1947-2022
Brilliant writer, beautiful soul
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,253 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
1802
The Life of Pi: Ten Years of Raspberry Pi
The most successful computer ever to come out of the UK celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.
1803
Documenting equipment losses during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
By Jakub Janovsky , Naalsio , Aloha , Dan , Kemal , and Alexander Black This list only in...
1804
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The internet was designed with a narrow waist
When you hear the term, you should picture an hourglass with M things on one side, N on the other, and an important concept in the middle.
1806
On the Origin of the iPhone
As a product, the original iPhone exemplified Apple’s holistic approach to hardware and software that are designed for each other, yet, at the engineering level, the iPhone hardware and software teams were almost completely siloed, with only Jobs and a mere handful of his most trusted (and talented) senior executives…
1807
Make Linux look like Windows 95
Blasphemy? Probably! But still pretty awesome!
1808
Understanding the War in Ukraine
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2022429 points605 commentscited by 5History & Retro Computing details
This week, I want to break from our usual format and respond to the fairly unusual global events. I expect a lot of my readers are trying to get a grasp on what is happening right now in Ukraine an…
1809
The cats sitting on a fence in early builds of Windows 8
Something to look at when all is lost.
1810
Live Streaming a Macintosh Plus
Since recording a handful of C Programming on System 6 videos, I've occasionally wanted to live-stream the more casual daily programming being done on my Macintosh Plus. After getting all of the pieces together, I now have a working self-hosted broadcasting setup.
1811
The Price of Nails Since 1695
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.
1812
Bytecode interpreters for tiny computers (2007)
I've previously come to the conclusion that there's little reason for using bytecode in the modern world, except in order to get more compact code, for which it can be very effective. So, what kind of a bytecode engine will give you more compact code?
1813
Medieval Photoshop
Manipulating and enhancing images may seem something that is particular to the current digital age. The Kattendijke Chronicle, a late fifteenth-century manuscript from the Low Countries, contains fascinating examples of analogue image editing.
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The only flag of the world that is shredded by design
If you have played Kobadoo Flags you might have seen some extravagant flags with colourful designs, but you might not have seen before a fl...
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I collect and read old computer manuals
It’s my ritual: every time I enter a secondhand bookshop, I go straight to the Sciences section and search for old computer …
1819
Lorinda Cherry, author of dc, bc, eqn has died
Aisha Washington is a global people and culture executive with more than two decades of experience driving enterprise growth through HR M&A integration, workforce AI transformation, high-performance culture, and team
1820
A Small Ode to the CRT
I used to hate Cathode Ray Tubes . As a kid in Europe, everything flickered at 50Hz, or made a loud whistle at 15.625KHz (back when I could still hear it). CRTs just seemed crude, “electro-brutalist” contraptions from the valve era. They were heavy, and delicate, and distorted, and blurry, and whistled, and gave…
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The Life of MS-DOS
First released on August 12, 1981, MS-DOS became the foundation for business computing for almost two decades. This article details different versions and releases that all stemmed from Gary Kildall's QDOS.
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Rome: Decline and Fall? Part III: Things
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2022225 points62 commentscited by 8History & Retro Computing details
This is the third and final part (I, II, III) of our series tackling the complicated and still debated question of ‘how bad was the fall of Rome (in the West)?’ In our first part, we lo…
1826
SNES Development Part 1: Getting Started
I fell down the rabbit hole making a homebrew SNES game a few days ago, and since I couldn't find many good resources, I figured I'd write something of a tutorial.
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A look inside the chips that powered the landmark Polaroid SX-70 instant camera
The revolutionary Polaroid SX-70 1 camera (1972) was a marvel of engineering: the world's first instant SLR camera. This iconic camera wa...
1829
10 Years of Nukemap
NUKEMAP was released into the world a decade ago, believe it or not.
1830
CR+LF Has a Long History
The ASR33, like most teletypes of the era, works at a fixed rate. It does 10 characters per second. It is 110 Baud, using 1 start, 8 data (i...