811
A 35-year-old bug in Patch found in efforts to restore 29-year-old BSD
A 35 Year Old Bug in Patch. Larry Wall posted patch 1.3 to mod.sources on May 8, 1985. A number of versions followed over the years. It's b...
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 3,229 posts.
812
New York City photographed with the Game Boy Camera in 2000
I'm David Friedman , a professional photographer who sometimes gets ideas for photos, designs, gadgets, and other projects. I write about it all on this blog. You can find the meaning behind the name “Ironic Sans” back in the very first post .
813
Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
It's well known that inheritance was invented by Simula . The History of Programming Languages session on Simula tells us the motivations behind that invention. Let's take a look.
814
Letters between Backus and Dijkstra (1979)
Letters between John W Backus and Edsger W Dijkstra, 1979
815
Dinosaur and Lisp
Dinosaur is old enough, as well as Lisp, they may like each other. When I am talking about dinosaur here, I mean the dinosaur hiding in Google Chrome, it shows up when "There is no Internet connection".
816
817
Morris Chang and the Origins of TSMC
Book review of the autobiography of Morris Chang.
818
819
8-Bit Generation Documentary
UPDATE: Please read this later entry for update on this documentary. I’m putting this here to get some attention. There’s a documentary in production, or which was in prod…
820
Atari's Mike Jang
Some sad news to report on the blog this week. I got word that long-time Industrial Designer at Atari coin-operated division, Mike Jang, has passed away. I’ve known Mike since 2016, and whils…
821
Tim Bray on Dennis Ritchie
Writing operating systems in a compiled machine-independent programming language.
822
I wish I didn't miss the '90s-00s internet
about me I am 18, born in 2006. This is generally a good thing as I am in the prime of life currently. I am not one of those people who think they were “born in the wrong decade”, I think I was born at the perfect time to take advantage of superlinearly growing technological advancements. the internet today I…
823
Greece
Greece is a remarkable country full of wonderful people, but along dimensions of development and governance, the place is plainly pretty fucked up. It has been fucked up that way for a long time, for decades at least . This has never been secret. Anyone who has visited Athens knows it has far more in common with…
824
The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams
The man who invented the interactive fiction genre talks about its past and future.
825
826
The web’s most important decision
I got a bit caught up this month, so I had to delay a couple of things, but I’ll be […]
827
Sierra’s Macintosh Timebomb (2021)
On Saturday, September 18 1993, Sierra's Macintosh games stopped working. Franchises froze as King's Quests, Space Quests, and even the Leisurely Suited Larries locked up. Practically every Mac SCI game had broken overnight. Sierra developed a patch within nine days, released it on their BBS, and announced it in their…
828
Perlis Languages
A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. – Alan Perlis
829
What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000
I liked the UIs of the entire era from 3.0 to 2000, really. I'm mostly using Windows 2000 as an example here because it runs so well in QEMU/KVM and that allows me to easily take screenshots.
830
What ever happened to Wordstar?
One of the most interesting stories in the history of computing surrounds the dominant word processor of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s — Wordstar.
831
What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO
Linus Torvalds worked for them after he completed his degree, but left in 2003
832
Why 56k is the fastest dial up modem speed
10stripe is a collection of computer and technology information, providing answers to common questions and concerns.
833
Engineering Pornography (2002)
This is one of my favorite geek stories of all time. I know I've mentioned it to a few of you recently, and you hadn't seen it, so here it is for posterity. Date: Wed, 27 Sep 89 10:27 PDT. From: "Thomas L. Mc Mahon" <tlm@riverside.scrc.symbolics.com> Subject: Cuts and jumpers (on a different scale) To…
834
FPGA Based IBM-PC-XT
Recently I undertook a hobby project to recreate an IBM XT Personal Computer from the 1980s using a mix of authentic parts and modern technology. I had a clear goal in mind: I wanted to be able to …
835
Richard Feynman's Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife
Where the hard edge of physics meets the vulnerable metaphysics of the human heart.
836
Alan Kay on web browsers, document viewers, Smalltalk, NeWS and HyperCard (2021)
Alan Kay answered: “Actually quite the opposite, if “document” means an imitation of old static text media (and later including pictures…
837
Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236
How a series of errors on the ground and in the air caused a fully loaded passenger jet to run out of fuel in the mid-Atlantic.
838
A Brief History of Fish Sauce
A brief history of fish sauce, from Ancient Asian recipes, Roman times, and through to today's many (delicious) uses.
839
Apollo Guidance Computer switching power supply works after 50 years
We recently restored an Apollo Guidance Computer, the revolutionary computer that helped navigate to the Moon and land on its surface. 1 At...
840
When the sun will literally set on what's left of the British Empire
A while ago I treated you to a dissertation entitled “Does The Sun Set On The British Empire?”, and concluded that it doesn't. The UK's widely scattered overseas territories, sparse though they are, mean that the sun is still always shining, somewhere in the world, over British territory.