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Celebrating 20 Years of MDN
MDN turns 20! Let's look at how we started, how MDN became the most trusted resource for web developers, the impact it's had on the open web, and yes, there's cake, too.
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 1,024 posts.
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The Golden Age of Japanese Pencils (2022)
It was the summer of 1952, and the executives of Tombow Pencil were about to revolutionize the Japanese pencil industry—or, possibly, fall flat on their faces. Hachiro Ogawa, the son of founder Harunosuke Ogawa, was Tombow's managing director, and he had just finished a years-long project, at
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A 26,000-Year Astronomical Monument Hidden in Plain Sight
The western flank of the Hoover Dam holds a celestial map that marks the time of the dam’s creation based on the 25,772-year axial precession of the earth.
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Lisa Source Code Release
CHM publicly releases the source code to Apple's Lisa computer, including its system and applications software.
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A note on the USB-to-PS/2 mouse adapter that came with Microsoft mouse devices
It's a purely mechanical adapter that relies on smarts in the mouse itself.
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Dick Smith Is the Greatest Private Equity Heist of All Time
Want to know how to turn $10m in to $520m in less than two years? Just ask Anchorage Capital. The private equity group has pulled off one of the great heists of all time
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Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle
Mickey, Disney, and the Public Domain: a 95-year Love Triangle by Jennifer Jenkins, Director, Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain On January 1, 2024, after almost a century of copyright protection, Mickey Mouse, or at least a version of Mickey Mouse, will enter the United States public domain. The first…
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What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2014
What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2014? Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1957 The books On the Road, Atlas Shrugged, and The Cat in the Hat, the films The Bridge on the River Kwai, Funny Face, and The Prince and the Showgirl, the play Endgame (“Fin de Partie”), […]
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What algorithm did Windows XP use to choose your initial user picture?
It's random, really.
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The Video Game History Foundation library opens in early access
For free. For everyone. Wherever you are.
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Three geeks rescue a 50-year-old IBM 360 mainframe from an abandoned building
In late April of 2019 Adam Bradley and Chris Blackburn were sitting in a pub on a Monday night when Chris happened across a somewhat unusual eBay listing for an IBM 360 Model 20. This eBay listing was unusual mainly because it didn’t actually list the computer as an IBM 360, but rather as an “seltene Anlage “Puma…
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Emacs: The most successful malleable system
Emacs is probably the most successful malleable system in the history of computing. What can we learn from it for designing the malleable systems of the future?
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Evidence of oldest known alphabetic writing unearthed in ancient Syrian city
Findings suggest alphabetic writing may be some 500 years older than other discoveries
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Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone (2003)
It seems that no matter what you do, somebody will get offended. Every Windows 95 box has an anti-piracy hologram on the side. The photographer chose his
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Twenty Eighth International Obfuscated C Code Contest
IOCCC Year 2024
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Racket is 25
posted by Matthias Felleisen and Matthew Flatt The First Thoughts [Matthias]: Wednesday 25 January 1995: POPL used to be a Monday-through-Wednesday-noon affair. Cormac Flanagan presented his future paper there (a static analysis on how to eliminate i...
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How to get people who installed a leaked build to stop using that build?
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
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Fast16: High-precision software sabotage 5 years before Stuxnet
A previously unknown 2005 cyber sabotage framework patches high-precision calculation software in memory to silently corrupt results.
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On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV
The Mystery of Numerical Notation on the Dial Plate - 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV
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Why are hyperlinks blue?
The internet has ingrained itself into every aspect of our lives, but there’s one aspect of the digital world that I bet you take for granted. Did you ev
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Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 was awarded jointly to Mary E. Brunkow, Frederick J. Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi "for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance"