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Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?
Explore how biologist John Calhoun's controversial mouse experiments sparked debates about overpopulation, urban life, and human society's future.
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 390 posts.
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Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move
This is the third part of a three part (I, II, III) look at some of the practical concerns of managing pre-industrial logistics. In our last post, we outlined what ‘foraging’ actually e…
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The only flag of the world that is shredded by design
If you have played Kobadoo Flags you might have seen some extravagant flags with colourful designs, but you might not have seen before a fl...
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RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war
Zobacz listę najlepszych kasyn online w Polsce na 2026 rok. Porównaj bonusy, gry live i metody płatności dla polskich graczy 🎰⚡
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Filling in some gaps in the story of Space Cadet Pinball on 64-bit Windows
The story as I experienced it.
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Notes on Nationalism (1945)
"By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled 'good' or 'bad'."
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Area 5150: 8088 MPH gets a successor
In case you have missed it, over the weekend, a new demo for IBM PC with CGA was released at Evoke, under the name Area 5150. It placed first in the competition, which should not surprise anyone: I…
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The flood that filled the Mediterranean Sea - in one year
"Zanclean Megaflood? What's that, a glam-rock band?"
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The First Lisp Compiler
This page examines the earliest surviving Lisp compiler, written by Timothy Hart and Michael Levin around 1961. To avoid repetition of phrases like “the compiler”, we will use the abbreviation “ HLC ” (for “Hart–Levin Compiler”) to refer to it. The HLC was introduced in M.I.T. AIM -039 and documented more fully in the…
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Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II
As I noted in Part I, the general idea of using heat and steam for mechanical work had a long and continuous history back to ancient times. But when we talk of the breakthrough “steam engine” in the eighteenth-century sense, we don’t mean a machine that exploits steam’s expansive, or pushing force. We actually mean a…
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RIP Good Times (2008)
Back in 2008, Sequoia Capital shared with its portfolio companies tips for surviving the economic downturn. Here's the original RIP Good Times presentation.
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Random Ultima Online anecdote #2 – Horses inside players (2014)
I just stumbled across this old story I told somewhere, and thought I’d share more widely.
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Gore-TEX, a lightweight, waterproof fabric made from the expanded form of PTFE
By literally stretching materials science to the limit, Gore invented Gore-Tex, a lightweight, waterproof fabric made from the expanded form of the polymer PTFE.
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I collect and read old computer manuals
It’s my ritual: every time I enter a secondhand bookshop, I go straight to the Sciences section and search for old computer …
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Win16 Retro Development
Several months ago I had a go at producing a high resolution 256-color driver for Windows 3.1. The effort was successful but is not yet complete. Along the way I re-learned many things I had forgotten, and learned several new ones. This blog entry is based on notes I made during development.
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The Life of Pi: Ten Years of Raspberry Pi
The most successful computer ever to come out of the UK celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.
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The Charisma Machine: The life, death, and legacy of One Laptop per Child
Winner, 2020 Best Information Science Book Award Winner, 2020 Sally Hacker Prize Winner, 2021 Computer History Museum Prize
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Australia's weird little time zone (2008)
One tiny corner of Australia recognises "Australian Central Western Standard Time" (ACWST), an unofficial zone based on the quarter hour.
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3Hz Computer, Hold the Transistors
I’m not really one to brag publicly about expensive toys, but a few weeks ago I managed to get one that’s really something special. It is a Curta Type II , a mechanical digital 1 calculator manufactured in Liechtenstein between the 50s and 70s, before solid-state calculators killed them and the likes of slide-rules.
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The Mystery of 355/113 (2010)
Today's date is a good excuse to memorize a few more digits of 3.1415926 53589793 23846264 33832795....
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Retro Compaq LTE Laptop Powered by Raspberry Pi
A while ago a came across an old Compaq LTE 286 laptop. When they were first released around 1989, these PCs were somewhat groundbreaking because they were the first to be compact enough to resemble the “notebook” form factor that we take for granted today. Unfortunately this particular unit was pretty much beyond…
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Why was western printing superior to Asian printing?
Movable type was not invented by Gutenberg but in China and later advanced in Korea, so why didn't Asia have a printing revolution?
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My story on “worse is better” (2018)
“ The Rise of Worse is Better ” is a famous essay in the software industry. It says that lazily-looking code that does not provide a consistent interface is sometimes actually better than neatly layered, consistent one. I think I've experienced this paradoxical situation, so I'd like to share that story.
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When is a ‘tank’ not a tank?
(There were some technical difficulties with this post when it first went live. They should be resolved now. My apologies for anyone who got multiple email updates as a result of efforts to get the…
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How Japan saved Tokyo's rail network from collapse (part 1, 1945-1982)
The most consequential project in postwar Japanese rail history (not named Shinkansen)