2821
iAPX432: Gordon Moore, Risk and Intel’s Super-CISC Failure
The legacy of Intel's over-ambitious 32-bit 'micromainframe' failure.
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,252 posts.
2822
The CIA-in-Chile Scandal at 50
Washington, D.C., September 9, 2024 – Fifty years ago, as the New York Times prepared to break a major exposé on CIA covert operations in Chile, the architect of those operations, Henry Kissinger, misled President Gerald Ford about clandestine U.S. efforts to undermine the elected government of Socialist Party leader…
2823
Kevin Mitnick Hacked California Law in 1983
Early in his career, Kevin Mitnick successfully hacked California law. He told me the story when he heard about my new book, which he partially recounts his 2012 book, Ghost in the Wires. The setup is that he just discovered that there’s warrant for his arrest by the California Youth Authority, and he’s trying to…
2824
Lessons for software developers from 1970s mainframe programming
Meet the experts. Explore the digital magazine where innovators share tech strategies, executive insights, and advancements in AI and IT transformation.
2825
The Decade of Deep Learning
As the 2010’s draw to a close, it’s worth taking a look back at the monumental progress that has been made in Deep Learning in this decade.[1] Driven by the development of ever-more powerful comput
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A closer look at the Tabula Peutingeriana
This map story is about one specific map, the only one remaining from the Roman …
2828
Inside the HP Nanoprocessor
The Nanoprocessor is a mostly-forgotten processor developed by Hewlett-Packard in 1974 1 as a microcontroller 2 for their products. Stra...
2829
Ancient Egyptian Stone-Drilling (1983)
<p>More than most technical procedures in the ancient world, drilling of hard stone such as quartz and granite has evoked […]</p>
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The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part I: Bargaining for Goods at Helm’s Gate
This is the long-awaited first part of a series (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII. VIII) taking a historian’s look at the Battle of Helm’s Deep from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers…
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It was all downhill after the Cuecat
Sometime in 2001, I walked into a Radio Shack on San Francisco's Market Street and asked for a Cuecat: a handheld barcode scanner that looked a bit like a cat and a bit like a sex toy. The clerk handed one over to me and I left, feeling a little giddy. I didn't have to pay a cent.
2834
10 Years of Nukemap
NUKEMAP was released into the world a decade ago, believe it or not.
2835
Chrome Developer Tools: Back to Basics
It’s been an exciting past few months in the Google Chrome Developer Tools world as we keep adding new features, while polishing up existin...
2836
Why airplane windows have round corners (2016)
It's to prevent them from killing you
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American Big Brother: A Century of Political Surveillance and Repression
In his 2004 book Perilous Times , Geoffrey R. Stone observes that with respect to free speech rights in wartime, “Time and again, Americans have suppressed dissent, imprisoned and deported dissenters, and then—later—regretted their actions.” In reality, as the timeline below demonstrates, it is not simply American’s…
2840
Examining circuit boards from the Space Shuttle's I/O Processor
The Space Shuttle's five 1 general-purpose computers played a critical role in each flight: controlling the engines, monitoring thousands o...
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Researchers find 3,500-year-old loom that reveals textile revolution
UA researchers find 3,500-year-old loom that reveals key aspects of textile revolution in the Bronze Age
2843
Dirt in Medieval Books
When you use something for a thousand years, it is bound to get dirty. Medieval books often show stains and marks on their pages, usually from readers who did not always take very good care of the …
2844
C64 Theremin
The Theremin is one of the earliest electronic instruments. It's played by moving one's hands in front of two antennas: One controls pitch and the other controls volume.
2845
Was BASIC that horrible or better?
Everything was fine until BASIC entered the picture. Edsger Dijkstra in a hallucination of 2023’s AI Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo Da Vinci It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally…
2846
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025 was awarded "for having explained innovation-driven economic growth" with one half to Joel Mokyr "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress" and the other half jointly to Philippe Aghion…
2847
America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report
America in 1926 was obsessed with technology, immigration, women, work, and money. Sound familiar?
2848
Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"
The appearance of shadowy ghosts has plagued some of the Elizabeth line's central London stations, and now TfL is trying to banish them.
2849
Netheads vs. bellheads redux: the strange victory of SIP over the telephone
How much do you know about how the PSTN (that is, the public telephone network) works? At some point long long ago, it was signalled using in-band frequencies, which facilitated the infamous phreaking using so-called “blue boxes”. This led to a switch to out of band signalling, ultimately culminating in something…
2850
The myth of Snow Leopard
It was a hot mess, but the myth is useful today.