2131
Hawking Hawking
There’s a very good new book about Stephen Hawking that just came out, Charles Seife’s Hawking Hawking. Some detailed reviews can be found at Prospect Magazine (Philip Ball) and the New…
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,253 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
2132
Why do long options start with two dashes? (2019)
Around 1990, Richard Stallman (RMS) and I were writing the GNU C library getopt() and he wanted to extend it to support long (multi-character) option names for user-friendliness. He considered Unix…
2133
1984: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
When the best-loved makers of text adventures met the best-loved sci-fi satirist of the decade, the result was an unforgettable classic of interactive fiction.
2134
A bit of XENIX history (2014)
Retrocomputing and other indulgences
2135
Teaching Machiavelli through his letters
Hello! It’s been a while since I posted since, as usual, many projects press, so it’s rare for me to have the time to write the kinds of polished essays I like sharing here. But I’ve been hoping to share more things, since a lot of the history work I’ve been doing lately has helped me with reflecting on current…
2136
Closer to finding what became of Moses Schönfinkel, inventor of combinators
In a follow-up to his first article about Moses Schönfinkel, Stephen Wolfram looks for the whereabouts of Schönfinkel after 1924 through his family history.
2137
The Lost Apps of the 80s
In an email conversation, Ray Ozzie and I talked about all the writing tools of the 80s that didn't transiiton to the web.
2138
Clothing, How Did They Make It? Part IVa: Dyed in the Wool
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2021175 points47 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
This post is also available in audio form, thanks to the efforts of our volunteer narrator. This is the first half of the fourth part of our four part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb) look at the production …
2139
Apple 2001
David Shayer worked at Apple for 14 years, and he has a wild experience to share. Apple has a unique culture, and David will give us an insider view of what it was like for him at Apple during the 2000s, roughly between 2001 to 2015 when Apple transformed into the powerhouse that it is today. David worked as a…
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2141
Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today?
Windows 95 was the “next generation” OS from Microsoft: redesigned UI, long file names support, 32-bit apps and many other changes. Some…
2142
1983: Suspended
A young writer crosses paths with the designer of Zork, sparking a surprisingly experimental game where you experience reality from six unique perspectives.
2143
Cheers to 10 Years
elementary OS rounds out its first decade
2144
Arabian Nights
“It hath reached me, O King of the Age, that there dwelt in a city of the cities of China a man which was a tailor, withal a pauper, and he had one son, Alaeddin hight. Now this boy had been from h…
2145
The curious history of NovaMin toothpaste (2018)
I buy my toothpaste from overseas through eBay. Wonder why?
2146
The end of TenFourFox and what I've learned from it
Now that I have your attention. I've been mulling TenFourFox's future for awhile now in light of certain feature needs that are far bigger ...
2147
Paul Erdős (2000)
Erdős posed and solved problems in number theory and other areas and founded the field of discrete mathematics.
2148
Transiting the Suez Canal in a Private Sailboat (2003)
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2149
1982: The Hobbit
Veronika Megler just wanted a part-time job while she finished her college degree. She didn't realize it would end with her writing one of the first computer game blockbusters.
2150
The solution of the Zodiac killer’s 340-character cipher
See how Mathematica was used to solve one of the cryptograms sent in a letter by the Zodiac Killer.
2151
The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
Reading time: 15 minutes There are many significant differences between Latin and its linguistic descendants, the Romance languages. One that stands out from the rest is grammatical gender. Latin h…
2152
Plan 9 from Bell Labs in Cyberspace
Explore Plan 9, Bell Labs' innovative operating system. Discover its impact on distributed computing, network-centric design, and modern OS development.
2153
Wendy Carlos on Bob Moog (2005)
The Official Wendy Carlos HomePage. The definitive Web collection of information about the pioneer synthesist and composer (and solar eclipse photographer), including a "Write Wendy" Maildrop.
2154
Reverse-Engineering NES Tetris to Add Hard Drop
Tetris for the NES is one of my favourite versions of Tetris. My only complaint is that it lacks the ability to “hard drop” - instantly dropping the current piece and locking it into place.
2155
When you have too much memory for SheepShaver
When I first got my 133MHz BeBox (not new, sadly), it had "only" 32MB of memory and it had four more SIMM slots to fill. While Be only off...
2156
Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany
Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany. Big push for other national Demoscene applications and the acceptance for an understanding of digital cultures in general
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2158
System Shock
We approached games as immersive simulations. We wanted to build game environments that reacted to player’s decisions, that behaved in natural ways, and where players had more verbs than simply “shoot.” DOOM was not an influence on System Shock. We were trying something more difficult and nuanced, [although] we still…
2159
A Mind Is Born (2017)
Making a demo in just 256 bytes would be a formidable challenge regardless of platform. A Mind Is Born is my attempt to do it on the Commodore 64. In the absence of an actual 256-byte compo, it was submitted to the Oldskool 4K Intro compo at Revision 2017 , where it ended up on 1st place.
2160
Why use old computers and operating systems?
On this blog, I write about the various computers I use and about the operating systems I use on them. Apart from Windows 7, which is relatively modern, these include Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard, which at this point is quite old, and Mac OS 9, which is practically ancient. I’d like to talk a bit about why I use such old…