241
Why did Prolog lose steam? (2010)
Its declarative lunch was partly eaten
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 422 posts.
242
Eton and all the murder (2019)
As recent politics illustrates, Eton has a reputation for producing pupils who achieve high office, but who are not sufficiently competent to hold high office. One thing that is rarely mentioned, however, is all the murder.
243
The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
Tunneling is an important technology for modern civilization, as a tunnel is often the only reasonable way to create a direct path between two points.
244
Margaret Mead, technocracy, and the origins of AI's ideological divide
The anthropologist helped popularize both techno-optimism and the concept of existential risk
245
My trip to the Communication and Laptop Museum in Estonia
I ended up going to a small museum run by a passionate enthusiast in the beautiful countryside of south-east Estonia while on vacation, here are my notes on it.
246
Nintendo 64 Test Cart ROM
We were sent a Nintendo 64 test cartridge ROM that was dumped anonymously. Zoinkity wrote up a nice readme explaining the details which is included in the 7ZIP file we’ve uploaded to the Internet Archive for safekeeping. Download it by clicking here .
247
Why did The Beatles get so many bad reviews?
An inquiry into how critics stumble
248
249
All the hominins made tools
A study of associations between stone tool evidence and fossil hominin remains shows that a wide range of species made stone artifacts.
250
How HyperCard got its color back
Uli’s blog on programming, game development, pop culture and other boring things.
251
Black currants were banned in the USA (2017)
Do you know what got black currants banned? They nearly destroyed a huge part of American forests. Find out how this healthy berry became a threat.
252
The Apple Network Server's all-too-secret weapon (featuring PPC Toolbox)
Most of my systems are microcomputers (and commensurately sized), though I do have some moderately larger beasts: you've met homer , my 1987...
253
Ibn Battuta: A Scholar's Epic Journey (2018)
This morning I stumbled upon [a video](https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/films/title/ibn-battutas-search-for-knowledge) that mentions one of the famous traveler, Ibn Battuta. And the deeper I dig, the more fascinated I am by his journey. It is one thing to visit a place and buy merchandises before return to home…
254
Van Gogh’s Self-Portraits
What did Vincent van Gogh look like? His self-portraits provide a good indication. Read on to find out all about them.
255
How flip-flops are implemented in the Intel 8086 processor
A key concept for a processor is the management of "state", information that persists over time. Much of a computer is built from logic gate...
256
Historical maps probably helped cause World War I
On cartography as historical argument
257
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
258
259
Early Days of AI
Rather then view LLMs, Transformers, and diffusion models as part of a continuum with past "AI", it is worth thinking of this as an entirely new era and discontinuity from the past
260
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Self-Powered Cart (2021)
A club for Meccano enthusiasts in London, holding four meetings each year and a public Meccano Show in Falconwood.
261
How to Roman Republic 101
This is the first of a planned five-part series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IIIc, IV, V, A1, A2) looking at the structure of the Roman Republic as another example of civic governance structures in antiquit…
262
Terry Pratchett and the Maggi Soup Adverts (2011)
Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. A rather radical move in the market for someone who had been published by Heyne fo…
263
264
The short life of New York City’s first skyscraper
In 1889, a slender building was unveiled on a commercial stretch of Lower Broadway, snugly situated between two older structures. Rising 11 stories, it wasn’t the tallest tower in the city. N…
265
Reverse-engineering the conditional jump circuitry in the 8086 processor
Intel introduced the 8086 microprocessor in 1978 and it had a huge influence on computing. I'm reverse-engineering the 8086 by examining t...
266
Hacking the Book8088 for better accuracy
The Book8088 is an interesting little machine. It is essentially a 1980's computer in a laptop form factor. With apologies to Sergey Kiselev...
267
IBM Blue Lightning: World’s Fastest 386? (2014)
One of the OS/2 Museum’s vintage boards is a genuine Made in U.S.A. Alaris Cougar. These boards were produced by IBM for Alaris and are a bit unusual: There’s a small IBM DLC3 processor in plastic package soldered on board, and there’s also a Socket 2 which accepts regular 5-Volt 486DX/SX processors or a Pentium…
268
Modern TLS/SSL on 16-bit Windows
Lately, there's been an resurgence of new programs written for retro computers—everything from a Slack client to many Wordle clones, to a Mastodon client. But most of these programs, if they connect to the Internet, require a proxy running on a modern computer to handle the SSL/TLS connection, which almost all APIs…
269
Cistercian Numerals
Cistercian numerals were invented by the Cistercian order of monks in the 13th century. Giuseppe Frisella explains how the notation system works: A vertical str
270
