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Bill Atkinson has died
Link to: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10238073579963378&id=1378467145&_rdr
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 359 posts.
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Google open-sources the Pebble OS
The source code for the Pebble operating system in now open, to support the volunteer community maintaining Pebble watches.
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From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."
The one email I ever got from Steve Jobs, and it said …
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MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today
40 years later and the art people painstaking made in MacPaint on their little Macs still amazes me.
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Mr TIFF
For as long as I have published my books, one of my overarching goals was to give credit to those who actually invented the hardware and software that we use. I have spent 10,000+ hours to create an accurate record of their work but I'm not complaining. The
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Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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Debian 13 “Trixie”
After 2 years, 1 month, and 30 days of development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 13 (code name trixie ).
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It's time to make computing personal again
Adventures in vintage computers and retrogaming. Includes articles on classic games and obsolete computers.
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I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it
The systematic thinking errors that kill breakthrough technology and the decision framework that prevents these disasters
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Microsoft makes Zork open-source
Microsoft’s Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), Team Xbox, and Activision are making Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III available under the MIT License.
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The demoscene as a UNESCO heritage in Sweden
The demoscene has become a national UNESCO-heritage in Sweden, thanks to an application that Ziphoid and me did last year. This has already happened in several European countries, as part of the international Art of Coding initiative to make the demoscene a global UNESCO heritage. I think this makes
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Nobel Peace Prize 2025: María Corina Machado
The Nobel Peace Prize 2025 was awarded to Maria Corina Machado "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy"
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Happy 20th Birthday, Django
Posted by Thibaud Colas & Benjamin Balder Bach on July 13, 2025
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Half-Life
Around twenty years ago, people would have laughed if you told them that videogames would end up at the Smithsonian, but the Half-Life team really did want to make games that were more than just throwaway toys. The rule against cinematics — which made our jobs much harder and also ended up leaving a lot of my favorite…
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-2000 Lines of code (2004)
In early 1982, the Lisa software team was trying to buckle down for the big push to ship the software within the next six months. Some of the managers decided that it would be a good idea to track the progress of each individual engineer in terms of the amount of code that they wrote from week to week. They devised a…
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Why Archers Didn't Volley Fire
This week we’re looking at a specific visual motif common in TV and film: the arrow volley. You know the scene: the general readies his archers, he orders them to ‘draw!’ and then…
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Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?
It's waiting for Godot and eventually gives up.
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How the U.S. became a science superpower
Prior to WWII the U.S was a distant second in science and engineering. By the time the war was over, U.S. science and engineering had blown past the British, and led the world for 85 years. It happ…
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Nokia N900 Necromancy
Building a fake battery, adding a USB-C port, booting from SD card, and giving a new life to a classic Linux smartphone.
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Bill Atkinson's psychedelic user interface
How an Apple legend approached the world’s most powerful psychedelic as a user-experience problem to be solved.
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108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring
Girl with a Pearl Earring
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Nobel Prize in Physics 2025
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 was awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit"
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Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)
Same people, 13 years later.
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Joining Apple Computer (2018)
40 years ago today, I joined Apple Computer on April 27, 1978. It was a big turning point in my life and I am glad I said "Yes".
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The movie mistake mystery from "Revenge of the Sith"
Movies are handmade, and just like any other art form, sometimes the seams that hold movies together become visible to the audience. For mov...
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Obituary for Cyc
After 40 years, 30 million rules, 200 million dollars, 2000 person-years, and many promises, Cyc has failed to reach intellectual maturity, and may never will. Exacerbated by the secrecy and insularity of Cycorp, there remains no evidence of its general intelligence.
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