Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 1,024 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
A brief history of Windows scroll bar shortcuts
Right-clicking and shift-clicking.
Claude Shannon: Mathematician, engineer, genius and juggler (2017)
By Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni, co-authors A MIND AT PLAY: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age “Do you mind if I hang you upside down by your legs?” From any other professor, this question might have elicited concern. But from Claude Shannon, it was par for the course. Shannon had in mind an elaborate…
The CPUs of Spacecraft Computers in Space
Many CPUs have been used in space craft, space stations and other such probes. Such CPUs must be highly reliable, and very durable. The temperatures in space, even with heaters, can vary widely. The radiation that a system is exposed too can be immense. So when designing one of these systems designers don't always use…
Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing
It basically falls under the de minimis rule.
Creating Windows XP Icons (2001)
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Slackware is 21 Years Old
A blog about Slackware Linux
Canaries in coal mines (2018)
Have you ever wondered what our curators' favourite collection items are? Here, assistant curator Lewis takes us through his rather surprising pick.
2017 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythm
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2017 was awarded jointly to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm"
Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (1989)
For Richard, a crazy idea was an opportunity to either prove it wrong or prove it right.
Revisiting why hyperlinks are blue
Why we need to revisit the origin of blue hyperlink While musing over my recently published article, Why are hyperlinks blue, I was left feeling a bit blue
Lost C64 Games: Daffy Duck – 1992 Hi-Tec
Cancelled & Unreleased Video Games
History of the Nautilus loudspeaker
Nautilus is all that and more. Despite being almost 30 years old, this remarkable loudspeaker can still turn heads and win hearts.
An Introduction to the WARC File (2021)
Want to know more about a tool in our web archiving toolbox? Your suggestions or questions for future posts about Archive-It technology are very welcome here .
Google was incorporated 25 years ago on September 4 1998
Find out where it all began. Read the history of how Google has grown since Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company in 1998.
The x86 architecture is the weirdo, part 2
It does everything differently, because of course it does.
“I survived the TCP transition” (2013)
This year we invited Vint Cerf to tell the story.
Operation Leg – a pilot unlike any other (2020)
Douglas Bader was a Battle of Britain pilot unlike any other. Medically discharged against his will in 1932, the outbreak of the war was an opportunity for Bader to re-join the RAF and take back to the skies.
David Holladay, blindness technology pioneer, has died
This week brings sad news for our Duxbury Systems family. Our colleague, David Holladay, passed away in a hospital on Thursday, February 15th, following an accident at home that morning. David was a cancer survivor and valiantly battled multiple medical problems over his last five years.
AARON: AI Art Generator from 1973
Harold Cohen (1928 – 2016) explored AI and art for nearly 50 years before we saw the rising popularity of these new machine learning tools. In those five decades, Cohen worked on a single program called Aaron that involved teaching a robot to create drawings. Aaron’s education took a similar pa
The long-lost Tarzan Atari game, preserved
After 40 years, the Atari 2600 masterpiece Tarzan has been unearthed.
Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)
The vinyl record is an analog medium. How can it be affected by the loudness war? So what’s the impact?
Socialist Romania Computer Chips
The socialist bloc of countries that arose after World War II was not a monolithic entity, it had significant country and cultural differences. A number of countries stood apart, one of them was socialist Romania. The leadership of Romania pursued a relatively free domestic and foreign policy, while remaining within…