31
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 59 posts.
32
33
Visual Basic Turns 25
That’s right! Today marks the 25th (“Silver Anniversary”) since VB first debuted to the world. It seems like just yesterday I’d only been at Microsoft a little over a year when VB turned 20. Looking back at the progress of 5 years—a complete revamp of the IDE and debugger, a trove of new language features, […]
34
The Independent Discovery of TCP/IP, by Ants
What does the Internet have in common with an ant colony? More than you might think.
35
36
The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion and the O-ring
A tragic case of how poor data analysis can lead to very bad outcomes.
37
38
The Deep History of Your Apps: Steve Jobs, NeXTSTEP, and Early OO Programming
Since 2008, over a hundred billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store onto users’ iPhones or iPads. However, the technology and tools powering the mobile “app revolution” are not themselves new, but rather have a long history spanning over thirty years, one which connects back to the beginnings of…
39
What was the role of MS-DOS in Windows 95? (2007)
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
40
I finally finished this awesome game called Photoshop, let me send you a video
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
41
Why do Windows functions begin with a pointless MOV EDI, EDI instruction? (2011)
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
42
How the Hunt Brothers Cornered the Silver Market and Then Lost It All
In 1980, two brothers from Texas controlled two-thirds of all the privately held silver on earth. This is the story of how one of history's biggest bets went bust.
43
Debian 8.4 released
[03 Oct 2016] Several donations boost reliability of Debian's core infrastructure [27 Sep 2016] The Debian Project mourns the loss of Kristoffer H. Rose [17 Sep 2016] Updated Debian 8: 8.6 released [09 Jul 2016] DebConf16 closes in Cape Town and DebConf17 dates announced [02 Jul 2016] Debian Edu / Skolelinux Jessie …
44
45
American Big Brother: A Century of Political Surveillance and Repression
In his 2004 book Perilous Times , Geoffrey R. Stone observes that with respect to free speech rights in wartime, “Time and again, Americans have suppressed dissent, imprisoned and deported dissenters, and then—later—regretted their actions.” In reality, as the timeline below demonstrates, it is not simply American’s…
46
Inuit Cartography: Wooden Coastline Maps That Fit in a Mitten
In Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), the Inuit people are known for carving portable maps out of driftwood to be used while navigating coastal waters. These pieces, which are small enough to be carried…
47
The Nobel Peace Prize 2016: Juan Manuel Santos
The Nobel Peace Prize 2016 was awarded to Juan Manuel Santos "for his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war to an end"
48
Amazon EC2 Beta (2006)
Innovation never takes a break, and neither do I. From the steaming hot beaches of Cabo San Lucas I would like to tell you about the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or Amazon EC2, now open for limited beta testing, with more beta slots to open soon. Amazon EC2 gives you access to a virtual computing […]
49
50
AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 1 – Pre-Release for the AmigaOne X5000
Hyperion Entertainment
51
52
Ships Buried Under San Francisco
UpOut, profesyonel ses sistemleri, LED ekran teknolojileri, konferans ve konser çözümleri ile dış cephe aydınlatma projelerinde global standartlarda hizmet sunar
53
A History of Hard Drives
2016 marks the 60th anniversary of the hard drive. Let's look back at how the tech has changed over the years.
54
‘Lost’ songs from the Middle Ages are brought back to life
An ancient song repertory will be heard for the first time in 1,000 years this week after being ‘reconstructed’ by a Cambridge researcher and a world-class performer of medieval music
55
56
57
Why Arabs Lose Wars (1999)
Arabic-speaking armies have been generally ineffective in the modern era. Egyptian regular forces did poorly against Yemeni irregulars in the 1960s.1 Syrians could only impose their will in Lebanon during the mid-1970s by the use of overwhelming
58
In His Own Words: Gary Kildall
Gary Kildall was a pioneer of personal computer software. He wrote programming language tools, including assemblers (Intel 4004), interpreters (BASIC), and compilers (PL/M). He created a widely-used disk operating system (CP/M). He and his wife, Dorothy McEwen, started a successful company called Digital Research to…
59
The original proposal of the WWW, HTMLized
A hand conversion to HTML of the original MacWord (or Word for Mac?) document written in March 1989 and later redistributed unchanged apart from the date added in May 1990. Provided for historical interest only. The diagrams are a bit dotty, but available in versioins linked below. The text has not been changed, even…