Topics /
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,252 posts.
I set out a while ago to make a Game Boy cartridge from scratch. This is not a novel goal; bootleg Game Boy cartridges have existed almost as long as the Game Boy itself has, and there are many third-party cartridges now available for purchase , or that have copyleft designs .
The other day I read 20 most significant programming languages in history, a “preposterous table I just made up.” He certainly got preposterous right: he lists Go as “most significant” but not ALGOL, Smalltalk, or ML. He also leaves off Pascal because it’s “mostly dead”. Preposterous! That defeats the whole point of…
FTP was first published the 16th of April 1971
The original EGA art for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was done by Mike Ebert , Steve Purcell , and Martin Cameron . It was originally released in July 1989. The VGA version, first released on the japanese FM Towns computer in 1990, adds Jim McLeod and James Dollar to the credits.
I'm one of the founders at Corelatus. Our niche is telecom hardware for the E1/T1 and SDH/SONET interfaces. I work with layer 2 signalling, i.e SS7 MTP-2, ATM and frame relay, and the Erlang control system for our embedded hardware.
The world's leading society for computing and engineering. Access our research, certifications, and global community of tech innovators.
About the rise and fall of Microsoft's take on the web.
Gary Starkweather passed away on Dec 26, 2019 at the age of 81.
Hennessy and Patterson pioneered a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures that has had enduring impact on the microprocessor industry. Their reduced instruction set computer (RISC) approach has led to lasting and repeatable principles that generations of architects…
Almost exactly twenty years ago I started writing a short article about the problems with string theory. I had been thinking about doing this for quite a while, and the timing of entering the twent…
FreeBSD is a rapidly developing operating system. Keeping up on the latest developments can be a chore! To keep on top of things, check this page periodically. News is also announced on the freebsd-announce mailing list and the RSS feed .
I first met Ian Murdock gathered around a table at some bar, somewhere, after some conference in the late 1990s. Progeny Linux Systems' founding was soon to be announced, and Ian had invited a group from the Debian BoF along to hear about “something interesting”; the post-BoF meetup was actually a briefing on his…
One-indexing problems in everyday life
In 1843, Ada Lovelace published the first nontrivial program. How did it work?
In the early 2000s social media sites like Facebook and Twitter weren’t commonplace yet. Even text messages, at ten cents each, were something to be rationed. For many teenagers the primary means of communication outside school was AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). So when it was announced in October that they were…
You copied the green screen.
The SSH port is 22. This is the story of how it got that port number. And practical configuration instructions.
Thank you for the support, this blog post got featured on the front page of Hacker News (YCombinator).
Reviving an old computer is like restoring a classic car: there’s a thrill from bringing the ancient into the modern world. So it was with my first “real” computer, my Mac Plus, when I decided to bring it forward three decades and introduce it to the modern web.
That soon-to-reenter Cosmos 482 is getting increased attention by satellite trackers – and new imagery provides some interesting details.
When I visited Chernobyl 7 years ago, I didn’t think that a similar disaster could take place anywhere ever again, and certainly not in Japan.
(Note: Thanks to the effort of a kind reader, this post is now available in audio format! The playlist for the entire series may be found here.) This is the first part of a six-part (II, III, IV, V…
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:
Usenet was what the Web is missing nowadays: a genuinely public space, with unclear ownership
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of jQuery. I announced it back at BarCamp NYC 2006 when I was still in college. It’s incredible to think of how far it’s come and just how many people have contributed to its success. To them I am forever grateful, thank you.
In 1959, Volvo invented the 3 point seat belt we use today. Then they gave the design away for all other car manufacturers to use for free.
What a sad week. Rob Pike reports that Dennis Ritchie also has passed away. Ritchie was one of the pioneers of computer science, and a well-deserved Turing winner for his many contributions, notabl…
An in-depth analysis that explains how this console works internally
The strange transformation of a criticality accident into dark Internet humor
