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History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 97 posts.
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First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
Vesuvius Challenge \$700,000 Grand Prize “now definitely achievable”
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Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in The Netherlands
Read about the demoscene joining the Dutch national intangible cultural heritage inventory, with links to the entry and safeguarding plan.
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Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award
The A.M. Turing Award, ACM's most prestigious technical award, is given for major contributions of lasting importance to computing.
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Why was Roman concrete so durable?
Researchers have discovered ancient Roman concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated self-healing. Applying this knowledge toward modern cement production, they hope to improve the material’s environmental impact.
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Debian 12 “Bookworm”
After 1 year, 9 months, and 28 days of development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 12 (code name bookworm ).
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Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023 was awarded jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman "for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19"
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New study reveals most classic video games are unavailable
New study reveals most classic video games are completely unavailable
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Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic
How Visual Basic became the world’s most dominant programming environment, its sudden fall from grace, and why its influence is still shaping the future of software development.
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Is the Living Computer Museum dead?
PCjs offers a variety of online machine emulators written in JavaScript. Run DOS, Windows, OS/2 and other vintage PC applications in a web browser on your desktop computer, iPhone, or iPad. An assortment of microcomputers, minicomputers, terminals, programmable calculators, and arcade machines are also available…
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Pipe Dreams: The life and times of Yahoo Pipes
In 2007, a small team at Yahoo! briefly changed how we program the internet. This is their story.
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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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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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Wireshark Is 25: The email that started it all and lessons learned along the way
25 years ago, I sent this email, which ended up changing the course of my life From: Gerald Combs - Unicom Communications <gerald [at] … > To: gtk-list [at] redhat . com Subject: ANNOUNCE: Ethereal 0.2.0 Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 21:47:01 -0500 (CDT) Ethereal is a network analyzer that lets you capture and interactively…
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Calculators now emulated at Internet Archive
It's time to add another family of emulated older technology to the Internet Archive.The vast majority of platforms within what we call The Emularity happens because of the work of MAME Team, which has spent over 25 years adding support for tens of thousands of machines, platforms, and tools to their breathtaking…
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Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end
Information regarding Nintendo's rollout of the Nintendo Network shutdown
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The RIAA vs. Steve Jobs
We had no idea how close we came to being crushed.
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Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to Agostini, Krausz, and L’Huillier
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 was awarded to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier "for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter"
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Atom feed format was born 20 years ago
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the effort that became the Atom feed format. It all began on June 16, 2003,
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The Development of the C Language (1993)
C came into being in the years 1969-1973, in parallel with the early development of the Unix operating system; the most creative period occurred during 1972. Another spate of changes peaked between 1977 and 1979, when portability of the Unix system was being demonstrated. In the middle of this second period, the first…
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DOS/4GW made Windows 95 game compatibility easier, but with higher stakes
A popular path to protected mode.
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Eclipse: The Demo that Sold 3D to Nintendo
How a 17-year-old in the UK set the course for Nintendo's future.