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Powering a Mainframe
The last few days have been eventful. I was contacted by the datacenter that the mainframe's cage is now ready for moving in, and the power ...
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Vintage video game cartridges with built-in modems
A lot of contemporary video game players take online communications for granted—after all, online services have been a standard feature in consoles for nearly fifteen years at this point1. However, before the ubiquity of the internet there was a time when some clever cartridges let gamers run up to the...
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Codecademy vs. the BBC Micro
In 1981, the BBC set out to educate Great Britain about computers. It did a really good job.
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Why we think giant pterosaurs could fly (2018)
Giant azhdarchid pterosaur in flight. Images like this virtually always trigger discussions about the validity of giant pterosaur flight h...
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The Eternal Mainframe (2013)
The urge to replace the mainframe has reinvented the mainframe and its problems.
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It took a decade for the Declaration of Independence to matter in American life
Two Stanford historians discuss how the United States’ Declaration of Independence became one of the pillars of American civic life and other lesser-known historical facts about what happened on July 4, 1776.
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A Bridge Too Far: E.W. Dijkstra and Logic
1. Introduction Shortly after the death of E.W. Dijkstra (1930-2002), K.R. Apt wrote an obituary under the title Portrait of a Genius [1]. At the time it seemed to me a bit over the top. Now, with …
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A computer built from NOR gates: inside the Apollo Guidance Computer
We recently restored an Apollo Guidance Computer 1 , the computer that provided guidance, navigation, and control onboard the Apollo flight...
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Visualizing Commodore 1541 Disk Contents
G64 files are C64/1541 disk images that contain all bits as they are physically laid out on the 5¼-inch floppy disk. Let’s visualize them! This animation shows 28 regular Commodore 1541 disks. Track 1 contains 21 sectors. Every sector is prefixed by two small red areas: These are the SYNC marks.…
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The Nobel Peace Prize 2019
The Nobel Peace Prize 2019 was awarded to Abiy Ahmed Ali "for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea"
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NetBSD on the last G4 Mac mini and making the kernel power failure proof
(First, as a public service message, if you're running Linux on a G5 you may wish to update the kernel .) I'm a big fan of NetBSD . I've ru...
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Interface Builder's Alternative Lisp Timeline (2013)
Denison “Denny” Bollay is one of the guys at ExperTelligence that crafted the first Interface Builder (IB) and showed Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Jeff Wishnie introduced me (thanks dude) recently, and I’ve been talking to Denny as I have an agenda - Pseudo-declarative UIs - that is in complete opposition to my…
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The history and legacy of jQuery
jQuery has lately fallen out of favor in web development, but it still powers an estimated 74 percent of sites and paved the way for modern web frameworks.
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The Magical Excel 97 Far East Language Build Screwdriver
For your magical build needs.
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Oldschool planar graphics and why they were a good idea
Oldschool planar graphics If you ever work with old hardware, like writing an NES emulator or reverse engineering an old Amiga game, you ...
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Timeline of Slack’s Tech Stack Evolution
Discover and share the technology stacks used by top companies. Compare tools, read reviews, and make informed decisions about your tech stack.
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How to Join a Social Network in 1998
I'm David Friedman , a professional photographer who sometimes gets ideas for photos, designs, gadgets, and other projects. I write about it all on this blog. You can find the meaning behind the name “Ironic Sans” back in the very first post .
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Lego logic gates and mechanical computing
randomwraith.com - LEGO, Beer & pastimes
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The Early History of Usenet, Part I: The Technological Setting
Usenet—Netnews—was conceived almost exactly 40 years ago this month. To understand where it came from and why certain decisions were made the way they were, it’s important to understand the technological constraints of the time.
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Debugging a Live Saturn V
We all have stories, as engineers, of fixing some crazy thing at the last minute right before the demo goes up. We have all encountered situations where we needed to fix something that was our fault and we needed to fix it now.
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A moonlit tribute to a moon landing icon
As the 50th anniversary of the moon landing approaches, we honor Margaret Hamilton’s contribution with a portrait made of moonlight.
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The Most Wonderful Map in the World: Urbano Monte's Planisphere of 1587
At some point in 1589, a Milanese cartographer named Urbano Monte made up his mind: his self-portrait needed updating. Monte carefully ...