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The Many Faces of Berlin U-Bahn Line U7
When the U7 was completed in 1984, it was West Berlin’s longest underground line and the one with the greatest number of stations. Many of those stations, constructed at a time when the western hal…
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 337 posts.
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FTP is 50 years old
FTP was first published the 16th of April 1971
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Mac Chimes of Death
We’re all familiar with the Mac’s startup chime. While it has changed over the years, it has greeted users with its friendly tone for decades. What you may not know is that for years, the Mac also came with a death sound, that would play when the machine was unable to properly boot. And they are glorious: Macintosh II…
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We Keep Telling the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age and Bad Middle Ages (2020)
“If the Black Death caused the Renaissance, will COVID also create a golden age?”
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The Shape of Rome (2013)
The new Mayor of the city of Rome, Ignazio Marino, just announced his intention to destroy one of the city’s central roads, the Via dei Fori Imperiali, and turn the area around the old Roman Forum into the world’s largest archaeological park. Reactions have ranged from commuters’ groans to declarations from…
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Was the NE2000 really that bad?
Over the last few months I have been on and off digging into the history of early PC networking products, especially Ethernet-based ones. In that context, it is impossible to miss the classic NE2000 adapter with all its offshoots and clones. Especially in the Linux community, the NE2000 seems to have had rather bad…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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A bit of XENIX history (2014)
Retrocomputing and other indulgences
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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…
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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.
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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.
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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 …
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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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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…
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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.
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Cheers to 10 Years
elementary OS rounds out its first decade
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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…
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The curious history of NovaMin toothpaste (2018)
I buy my toothpaste from overseas through eBay. Wonder why?
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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 ...
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Paul Erdős (2000)
Erdős posed and solved problems in number theory and other areas and founded the field of discrete mathematics.
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Transiting the Suez Canal in a Private Sailboat (2003)
Get full access to this domain. Easy, seamless transactions. Zero percent financing available.
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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.