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As I retire, my goal now is to release 40+ years of source code
Dunfield Development Services
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History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 325 posts.
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The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge
This pedestrian bridge crosses I-494 just west of the Minneapolis Airport . It connects Bloomington to Richfield. I drive under it often and I wondered: why is it there? It's not in an area that is particularly walkable, and it doesn't connect any establishments that obviously need to be connected. So why was it built?
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My 24 year old HP Jornada can do things an iPhone still can't do
Published: 15-06-2023 01:30 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
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What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
Date: 01 Apr 88 1620 PST From: Les Earnest < LES...@S... > Subject: The "previous account" referred to in RISKS-6.51
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Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
“Good night, Malaysian three seven zero.”
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“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”
The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now
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IDEs we had 30 years ago
A deep dive into the text mode editors we had and how they compare to today's
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A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32
How a mistake of less than half a millimeter in a single part nearly brought down the world’s largest passenger aircraft.
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3dfx: So powerful it’s kind of ridiculous
the history of 3dfx Interactive
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Discord, or the Death of Lore
I chose the life, it didn’t choose me. I could have walked away from it a long time ago, and I’ve certainly shifted my focus over the years. But I still hold the heft and halter, the on…
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Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami
There’s no way for me to know where your awareness starts with all this, so let’s just start at the beginning. Computer Shopper was a hell of a magazine. I wrote a whole essay about it,…
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Xmas.c (1988)
The second block has more real work going on. If the character stored in the variable _ does not match the first character of the string a , the code recurses in such a way that this same block of code will again be entered. That is, t=-65 forces a return to the if (t < -50) block. The recursion steps through string a…
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A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
The original specimen of the Dutch Fell Types, their digitisation by Igino Marini, and further enhancements by Lin Yangchen as a font for thesis typesetting in LaTeX.
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Aardvark'd: The Fog Creek documentary, 18 years later
Not many people remember this 2005 documentary featured early interviews with Paul Graham, Aaron Swartz, Alexis Ohanian, and Steve Huffman.
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RePalm
Dmitry.GR: PalmOS on new hardware!
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Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)
I think it is healthy to compare historical and modern computing. Let's see how the CPUs contained in recent USB-C wall chargers compare to the power of the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC). The Apollo 11 spacecraft carried 3 humans to the moon and back in 1969.
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Kottke.org is 25 years old today
I realize how it sounds, but I’m going to say it anyway because it’s the truth. When I first clapped eyes on the World Wide Web, I fell in love. Here’s how I de
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Twenty-five years of curl
Time flies when you are having fun. Today is curl's 25th birthday. The curl project started out very humbly as a small renamed URL transfer tool that almost nobody knew about for the first few years. It scratched a personal itch of mine, Me back then I made that first curl release and I've packaged … Continue reading…
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"Hacker News" for retro computing and gaming
I noticed over time that I was drawn to the retro computing or gaming posts on Hacker News . So, I've set up a dedicated web site in the sam...
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The strangest computer manual ever written
It's dark and funny and unlike anything else
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Netscape Meteors
I went on a small journey the last couple days to find the original Netscape Navigator “meteors” animation. This one has a special place in my head and heart because it is so clearly connected to my memories of discovering the web as a kid. Here it is in its original 60×60 px glory:
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Things Every Hacker Once Knew (2017)
One fine day in January 2017 I was reminded of something I had half-noticed a few times over the previous decade. That is, younger hackers don’t know the bit structure of ASCII and the meaning of the odder control characters in it.
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When did people stop being drunk all the time?
Trends in alcohol consumption from the middle ages to the modern world tell a story.
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How transportation technologies shaped empires
For thousands of years, a hidden rule limited the size of empires, unbeknownst to their rulers.
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Cray-1 vs Raspberry Pi
Cray 1 Supercomputer Performance Comparisons With Home Computers Phones and Tablets