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Those odd-looking security barriers
You've probably seen these dotted around a few places, what looks like some sort of security barrier, but wondered how such an odd thing could work.
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 233 posts.
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Reflecting on the Soul of a New Machine
Long ago as an undergraduate, I found myself back home on a break from school, bored and with eyes wandering idly across a family bookshelf. At school, I had started to find a calling in computing systems, and now in the den, an old book suddenly caught my eye: Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine . Taking it off…
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Mitchell Feigenbaum, physicist who pioneered chaos theory, has died
Mitchell J. Feigenbaum , a mathematical physicist whose groundbreaking work on deterministic chaos influenced fields ranging from cardiology to cartography, died in New York City on June 30 at the age of 74. Feigenbaum was the Toyota Professor and director of the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology at…
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The soul of a new computer company
Over the summer, I described preparing for my next expedition. I’m thrilled to announce that the expedition is now plotted, the funds are raised, and the bags are packed: together with Steve Tuck and Jess Frazelle , we have started Oxide Computer Company .
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How the Great Pyramid at Giza Looked in 2560 BCE
The current outer surface of the Great Pyramid at Giza is made of rough limestone blocks, colored a dark sandy brown from hundreds of years of pollution and wea
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NetHack 3.6.2
3.6.2 is a general patch release. It includes a large number of fixes to the 3.6.1 version, beyond the Windows issue fixed at the time of that release.
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Windows XP minimal-requirement experiments (2006)
Wettbewerb um die ultimative Mindestanforderung für Windows XP zu finden.
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The evolution of the web, and a eulogy for XHTML2
In 2009, the W3C cancelled the development of the proposed successor of XHTML, XHTML2.
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Airmash – a game that refused to die
The game Airmash was announced on Dec 10 2017 on Hacker News by a user named fivesigma. The game became very succesful in the year to come. But it would have a very rocky history.
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Betrayal at Krondor
During the 1960s and 1970s, a new type of game began to appear in increasing numbers on American tabletops: the experiential game . These differed from the purely abstract board and card games of yore in that they purported to simulate a virtual world of sorts which lived behind their surface systems. The paradigm…
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A DIY Cruise Missile (2004)
I'd like to thank all those who have emailed me with their opinions, condemnations and support. The fact that I get so many emails obviously means that my goal of raising public awareness is working. Instead of answering the same questions and restating my perspectives repeatedly, I've been talked into writing a book…
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Sexy weasels in Renaissance art
Exploring the sexual symbolism hidden in paintings of weasels in Renaissance art
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The Soviet license plate game and Kolmogorov complexity
Physicist Lev Landau used to play a mental game with Soviet license plates [1]. The plates had the form of two digits, a dash, two more digits, and some letters. Rules of the game His game was to apply high school math operators to the numbers on both side of the dash so that the
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The Path to Dijkstra’s Handwriting (2013)
How I used Edsger W. Dijkstra's handwriting as a model to improve mine.
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An Inside Look at the Backblaze Storage Pod Museum
Nearly 10 years after the first Storage Pod altered the storage landscape the innovation continues to deliver great returns to the market.
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The Nokia N9 Alarm Clock (2014)
I want to talk about the Nokia N9 (2011) alarm clock application because it’s a really nice example of thoughtful, functional design – and because it’s only on the N9, so a lot of people won’t have seen it.
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Oppenheimer and the Gita (2014)
What did Oppenheimer mean when he famously said, "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds"? A foray into the Bhagavad-Gita.
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The Paris Compressed-Air Power Network (2018)
Douglas Self, clockwork, tram, Leveaux,