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Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 422 posts.
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As I retire, my goal now is to release 40+ years of source code
Dunfield Development Services
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First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
Vesuvius Challenge \$700,000 Grand Prize “now definitely achievable”
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The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge
This pedestrian bridge crosses I-494 just west of the Minneapolis Airport . It connects Bloomington to Richfield. I drive under it often and I wondered: why is it there? It's not in an area that is particularly walkable, and it doesn't connect any establishments that obviously need to be connected. So why was it built?
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My 24 year old HP Jornada can do things an iPhone still can't do
Published: 15-06-2023 01:30 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
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Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in The Netherlands
Read about the demoscene joining the Dutch national intangible cultural heritage inventory, with links to the entry and safeguarding plan.
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What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
Date: 01 Apr 88 1620 PST From: Les Earnest < LES...@S... > Subject: The "previous account" referred to in RISKS-6.51
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Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award
The A.M. Turing Award, ACM's most prestigious technical award, is given for major contributions of lasting importance to computing.
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Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
“Good night, Malaysian three seven zero.”
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“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”
The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now
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IDEs we had 30 years ago
A deep dive into the text mode editors we had and how they compare to today's
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A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32
How a mistake of less than half a millimeter in a single part nearly brought down the world’s largest passenger aircraft.
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3dfx: So powerful it’s kind of ridiculous
the history of 3dfx Interactive
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Why was Roman concrete so durable?
Researchers have discovered ancient Roman concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated self-healing. Applying this knowledge toward modern cement production, they hope to improve the material’s environmental impact.
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Debian 12 “Bookworm”
After 1 year, 9 months, and 28 days of development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 12 (code name bookworm ).
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Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023 was awarded jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman "for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19"
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Discord, or the Death of Lore
I chose the life, it didn’t choose me. I could have walked away from it a long time ago, and I’ve certainly shifted my focus over the years. But I still hold the heft and halter, the on…
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Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami
There’s no way for me to know where your awareness starts with all this, so let’s just start at the beginning. Computer Shopper was a hell of a magazine. I wrote a whole essay about it,…
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Xmas.c (1988)
The second block has more real work going on. If the character stored in the variable _ does not match the first character of the string a , the code recurses in such a way that this same block of code will again be entered. That is, t=-65 forces a return to the if (t < -50) block. The recursion steps through string a…
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A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis
The original specimen of the Dutch Fell Types, their digitisation by Igino Marini, and further enhancements by Lin Yangchen as a font for thesis typesetting in LaTeX.
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New study reveals most classic video games are unavailable
New study reveals most classic video games are completely unavailable
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Aardvark'd: The Fog Creek documentary, 18 years later
Not many people remember this 2005 documentary featured early interviews with Paul Graham, Aaron Swartz, Alexis Ohanian, and Steve Huffman.
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RePalm
Dmitry.GR: PalmOS on new hardware!
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Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)
I think it is healthy to compare historical and modern computing. Let's see how the CPUs contained in recent USB-C wall chargers compare to the power of the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC). The Apollo 11 spacecraft carried 3 humans to the moon and back in 1969.
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Kottke.org is 25 years old today
I realize how it sounds, but I’m going to say it anyway because it’s the truth. When I first clapped eyes on the World Wide Web, I fell in love. Here’s how I de