31
Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
The Color Theory Behind Industrial Seafoam Green
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,252 posts.
32
“Code” 2nd Edition
I am overjoyed to announce that the 2nd edition of my book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software will be published by Pearson on August 19, 2022. As you can see, the covers of the two editions are nearly identical except that the 2nd edition uses the “dark mode” option:
33
How SSH got port number 22
The SSH port is 22. This is the story of how it got that port number. And practical configuration instructions.
34
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?
35
36
A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet
Previously: security engineer at Square/Block, co-author of HackLang, put the 's' in https at Facebook/Meta. Maker of CTFs.
37
Xkcd 1425 (Tasks) turns ten years old today
One of the all-time great XKCDs. It's amazing that "check whether the photo is of a bird" has gone from PhD-level to trivially easy to solve (with a vision LLM, …
38
Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
39
Web Design: The First 100 Years (2014)
This is the expanded version of a talk I gave on September 9, 2014 , at the HOW Interactive Design conference in Washington, DC.
40
41
A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'
The Map Happenings series on the hugely impactful events that forever changed our world. This week: the story of a little known company called ‘Etak’. I think you’ll find it a fas…
42
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
43
44
Debian 13 “Trixie”
After 2 years, 1 month, and 30 days of development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 13 (code name trixie ).
45
Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
After I mentioned a Jurassic Park anecdote the other day , I watched the movie again. I must have seen it at least ten times now. This time, I researched every computer/software I spotted.
46
Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
Learn how one of the biggest tech companies played a major role in the reason many people stopped using RSS feeds
47
A forged Apple employee badge
Here’s a quick and cautionary tale. This eBay auction, spotted by Eric Vitiello, immediately caught my eye: Wow. Someone was selling Apple Employee #10’s employee badge?! What an incred…
48
49
Frances Allen has died
The IBM Research blog is the home for stories told by the researchers, scientists, and engineers inventing What’s Next in science and technology.
50
The Alexander: Why did you build such a long piano?
It occurred to me that long bass strings sounded better. When I was 14 I asked my piano teacher how long a bass a string would need to be if it had no copper on it at all. The answer was “Adrian the string would be so long it would go on for ever!” so with this in mind I did an experiment where I could find that…
51
Bidding farewell to Google Code
The latest news from Google on open source releases, major projects, events, and outreach programs for early career developers.
52
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.
53
Why I Quit Being So Accommodating (1922)
Update: See this post for a free ePub eBook version of this long post. A very odd essay from a 1922 issue of The American Magazine that seems to go against the general grain of most of the articles…
54
Plan 9 from Bell Labs in Cyberspace
Explore Plan 9, Bell Labs' innovative operating system. Discover its impact on distributed computing, network-centric design, and modern OS development.
55
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
56
An oral history of Bank Python
The strange world of Python, as used by big investment banks
57
Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle
That’s right — this little device is what stood between me and the ability to run an even older piece of software that I recently unearthed during an expedition of software archaeology.
58
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.
59
60
