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Who smeared Richard Feynman?
Richard Feynman's FBI file contains one very pointed, personal, anonymous attack. But can we figure out who wrote it from the context?
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,252 posts.
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"It'll never work": a collection of failed predictions
physics, history of science, pseudoscience, hoaxes, writing, education, skepticisism, humor, quotes, illusions, 3d stereo photography.
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When did Alan Partridge first appear on television?
Here’s a question for you. When did Alan Partridge first appear on television? Caveats: a) I specifically mean television. Radio is brilliant, and also outside the scope of this article. b) F…
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30 years of <br> tags
Three decades of making things on the internet
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25 Years of Krita
Halla Rempt Twenty-five years. A quarter century. That's how long we've been working on Krita. Well, what would become Krita. It started out as KImageShop, but that name was nuked by a now long-dead German lawyer. Then it was renamed to Krayon, and that name was also nuked. Then it was renamed to Krita, and that name…
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Instant stone (just add water) (2018)
If cement weren't 10,000 years old, it would seem like a futuristic technology: liquid rock!
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Aaron Swartz shows his FBI file
I got my FBI file today. ( Request yours! ) As I hoped, it’s truly delightful. It has only minor redactions for reasons of personal privacy (basically, they deleted agents’ names and so on). It all started when the—actually, I’ll let the file tell the story:
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The time I hacked my high school
When I was in high school, I started the Chess Club. I needed money to buy chess sets and chess cl...
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The Missing 11th of the Month (2015)
Personal website of David R Hagen, scientific software engineer
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The machines of Tatjana van Vark
Building scientific instruments from the past, along with other technical projects.
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SimCity: Will Wright's City in a Box
In “The Seventh Sally,” a story by the great Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, a god-like “constructor” named Trurl comes upon a former tyrant named Excelsius, now exiled to a lonely asteroid by the peoples of the planets he used to terrorize. Upon learning of Trurl’s powers, Excelsius demands that he…
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A Tribute to Andy Grove (2015) [video]
Andy Grove, former Chairman and CEO of Intel, came to the United States as a refugee from Hungary. With a relentless energy and exceptional mind, he helped build the iconic tech company Intel — and in the process, Silicon Valley itself. Ben Horowitz offers a tribute to this legendary leader (and his own inspiration)…
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Demystifying DVDs
Hidden Palace and Last Minute Continue PROUDLY present... Shadow the Hedgehog (May 27, 2005 prototype) Shadow the Hedgehog (Sep 15, 2005 prototype) Shadow the Hedgehog (Sep 22, 2005 prototype) More Gifts and Stocking Stuffers: Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (Jan 12, 2006 prototype) Sega Classics...
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Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models
Explained by a former Sony engineer
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The AARD Code and DR DOS (2021)
In this long article, I, being as far as I know the first outside Microsoft to have learnt how the AARD code works, explain that I condemn its form but broadly sympathise with its function.
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Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit (2023)
Tove Jansson illustrated books of other appreciated authors during her career. One of them was J. R. R. Tolkien's classic The Hobbit.
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Moscow Publishes Photocopies of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Secret Protocols
Paul Goble Staunton, June 1 – For the first time, a Moscow portal, Istoricheskaya pamyat , has published photocopies of th...
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The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select
Before Warcraft became a legend, it was a risky DOS-era experiment. This is how it actually began.
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When Pepsi Had a Navy
In 1989, just before the collapse of the USSR, the Pepsi Company cut a deal with Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev that left it with a fleet of Russian military ships, making PepsiCo temporarily th…
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Woz’s take on the Apple 1’s noisy -5 volt supply
There was a recent thread about the Apple 1’s noisy -5 volt supply on Applefritter , so I asked Woz the following:
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Wii Architecture – A Practical Analysis
An in-depth analysis that explains how this console works internally
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The 7-bit Internet
When I first started digging into the bowels of the Internet, I was fascinated by how many of its protocols—like HTTP and SMTP, for example—were entirely text based.
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Nintendo DS-TV-Out Restoration Project
How Instagram helps gamers build authority, attract sponsors, and grow a loyal community beyond the game.
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Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing
Alan Kay — “father of personal computers" — is best known for his work on personal computing and for leading the team that developed Smalltalk.
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Salt and salary: Were Roman soldiers paid in salt? (2017)
Roman soldiers weren't paid in salt, and they weren't given "salt money". Dictionaries of the 1700s and early 1800s are to blame for this myth.
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Why we need Lisp machines
A personal mind dump on operating systems