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“Computer science is not about computers”
Edsger W. Dijkstra? Alan Perlis? Jacques Arsac? George Johnson? Donald Knuth? Matthew Dennis Haines? Anonymous?
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 337 posts.
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Book Review: Double Fold
Finalist #6 of the book review contest
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Egyptian Circumnavigation of Africa ~600 BC
The Greek researcher and storyteller Herodotus of Halicarnassus (fifth century BCE) was the world's first historian. In The Histories , he describes the expansion of the Achaemenid empire under its kings Cyrus the Great , Cambyses and Darius I the Great , culminating in king Xerxes ' expedition in 480 BCE against the…
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“Put that in your pipe and smoke it”
accept that fact if you can—1820: Irish English and associated with the obsolete figurative sense ‘to consider’ of the verb ‘smoke’
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Caltech professor helps solve Hindenburg disaster
Konstantinos Giapis delves into the science of the iconic accident for a PBS special.
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Recovering “lost” treasure-filled floppy discs with an oscilloscope
There are many good, modern solutions for reading data off old floppy discs and drives. Perhaps the best is the Greaseweazle : it's capable,...
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The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman (2015)
In 1990, Marilyn vos Savant correctly answered a probability puzzle in her column for Parade Magazine. And then, the world called her an idiot.
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So what’s wrong with 1975 programming? (2006)
Varnish is a powerful, flexible HTTP accelerator that speeds up web applications by caching content and optimizing delivery.
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1988: P.R.E.S.T.A.V.B.A.
In communist Czechoslovakia, a network of teenage hackers discovers that text games are a completely uncensored medium.
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The origin of “tweet” at Twitter (2013)
Last week, one of my colleagues informed me that the word “tweet” was now included in the Oxford English Dictionary (see “Quiet announcement” at the end of the page.) The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED. This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a […]
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Is your son a computer hacker? (2001)
As an enlightened, modern parent , I try to be as involved as possible in the lives of my six children. I encourage them to join team sports. I attend their teen parties with them to ensure no drinking or alcohol is on the premises. I keep a fatherly eye on the CDs they listen to and the shows they watch, the company…
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The Unix Magic Poster
I understand the classic UNIX Magic poster by Gary Overacre was distributed at past USENIX conferences, and I’ve known of it for years but now in confinement, I’ve decided I want one to hang in my ...
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Dave Herman’s contributions to Rust
I think the Rust language is a big success. When I think back on it I am in awe: so much had to go right to get where we are, and there were so many opportunities to go wrong. It took many tiny miracles for the Rust language to become what it has. Those miracles didn’t happen by accident though: each one was created…
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Bootstrapping an Amiga without a bootable floppy
I have just released a serial port based Amiga disk and file transfer tool, amigaXfer .
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The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel (2007)
Who can imagine New York City without the Mission burrito? Like the Yankees, the Brooklyn Bridge or the bagel, the oversize burritos have become a New York institution. And yet it wasn’t long ago that it was impossible to find a good burrito of any kind in the city. As the 30th anniversary of the Alameda-Weehawken…
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Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
It's well known that inheritance was invented by Simula . The History of Programming Languages session on Simula tells us the motivations behind that invention. Let's take a look.
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Finding an Easter Egg in Microsoft Bob
Well, somebody had to find it.
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Ed Balls Day
Ed Balls Day is a bit of fun and the stuff of nonsense. It celebrates and remembers the day (28 April 2011) when British politician Ed Balls tweeted his name thinking he was entering it into a sear…
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The Tamagotchi Cemetery
In 1996, Japanese toy designers Aki Maita and Yokoi Akihiro debuted the first ever Tamagotchi.
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PiDP-11 – Recreating PDP-11/70 with Raspberry Pi
The PiDP-11 is a modern replica of Digital Equipment Corporation’s influential PDP-11 minicomputer. Before, we had a computer on every desk and in every home–and long before they were in every pocket–computers were large, intimidating, and locked in special rooms at universities and corporations. The PDP series paved…
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Turning an iPad Pro into a classic Macintosh
I’ve started work on the next in my 1-bit Woodblocks series: “Tekagami” (Ito Shinsui’s “Hand Mirror”). So it’s a good time to talk about how I turned an iPad...