61
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 97 posts.
62
Nokia’s Suicide Note
Stephen Elop has jumped his company off the burning platform, all right. And, I judge, straight into the fire.
63
64
Quotes from 1995 Steve Jobs Interview
I had the pleasure of catching the opening night showing of Robert X. Cringely's rediscovered TV interview with Steve Jobs in 1995. In the interview Steve mused...
65
66
What if Tunisia had a revolution, but nobody watched?
On December 17, a 26 year old Tunisian man named Mohamed Bouazizi reached the end of his rope. An unemployed university graduate, Bouazizi had become a seller of fruits and vegetables in the southern Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. When authorities confiscated his wares to punish him for selling without a license…
67
How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?
After building the infrastructure to analyse the code in an Ubuntu release I decided to satisfy a simple curiosity and figure out how much GNU software is actually part of a modern distribution. I picked Ubuntu natty (released in April) as a reference, am counting lines of code (LOC) as the rough metric for size of a…
68
69
jwz: Apple recently broke Ctrl-Y
Ever since MacOS 10.0 was released, text fields have supported Emacs bindings for the single-character Control commands, showing that there were people inside Apple (and, presumably, NeXT) who were right-thinking and sensible. But some time late in the 10.6 release cycle, and continuing into 10.7.1, the binding for…
70
Apple R&D (1989): Mousing is faster than keyboarding, but users don't believe it
Originally published in the AppleDirect, August, 1989 Republished as Chapter 6, in Tog on Interface
71
Why linux doesn't have a "wheel" group
The wheel group is, perhaps, not widely used today, or is seen as “archaic” and irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. The wheel group is a group which limits the number o…
72
73
74
75
76
Why Retired Aircraft are Stored in the Desert
By Mark W. Danielson Why are all these airliners in the desert? In a word, they’re being preserved. Aircraft bone yards are a testament to t...
77
Ultima Underworld bugs
As we (Blue Sky Productions, later Looking Glass Technologies / Studios) were developing Ultima Underworld in 1991–1992, largely in a basement room in an office building in Somerville’s Davis Square, we received bug reports both from our own people and the QA team at Origin Systems, who published the game. “Our own…
78
A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer
Get your very own domain easily. Fast and professional customer service.
79
80
81
82
What Alan T. did for his PhD
We’ve all been there before: by the time you start graduate school in Princeton, you’ve already invented the Turing machine, pioneered the concept of computational universality, and pro…
83
Steve at NeXT
Late in 1989 I opened my email one morning and there was one from sjobs@next.com saying “come see us.” So I went and spent the day and failed to make a sale, but so did Mr. Jobs.
84
Making of Crash Bandicoot - GOOL
I’m always being asked for more information on the LISP based languages I designed for the Crash and Jak games. This post is about GOOL, the LISP language used in Crash 1, Crash 2, and Crash …
85
86
The Demon Machine
Over the weekend I was reunited with the first two computers I spent extensive time programming. The Sharp MZ-80K (released in 1979) and t...
87
In the Shadow of John McCarthy
John McCarthy was a genius of the highest order. Much is known about his contribution to Lisp as its inventor, but he was also the mind behind much of early AI research, the progenitor of much of computer chess, and the initiator of time-sharing. As a Lisp advocate I have many thanks due to John McCarthy and it…
88
89
The Netscape Dorm (1994)
If someone has linked you to this page, they're probably trying to con you. Don't fall for it. In fact, stop reading right now. Don't read this page. Go read this page instead.
90
The Rise of "Worse is Better"
Previous: Lisp's Apparent Failures Up: Lisp's Apparent Failures Next: Good Lisp Programming is Hard