tag · History
16 piecesthe only way to win
Richard Hamming explained it to a room at Bellcore in 1986. It reads differently now that the typing is free. Immerse yourself in the work. It’s …
a thing to make another thing
In 1773 James Boswell wrote down a definition of a human being: an animal that makes “a thing, by means of which he can make another …
do not select P01 during flight
Margaret Hamilton's first fix was a line in the manual. The manual failed twice. The code held.
slate on top
In normal archaeology you dig down to reach the old thing. In Norway’s mountains the old thing is lying on the surface, and that fact is the …
from lambdamoo to voyager
Thirty-five years of player-authored worlds, where what broke first was never the sandbox.
the room that forgot what it was for
Forty years of research built a place for each context and a memory of what it was for. Only the place shipped.
a moment with no time on it
Six of the seven moments of silence have a minute attached. The seventh doesn’t, and the reason is in a footnote. At the Memorial plaza on …
the brahmin class
Entry eight of ten in “the end of the wire,” a series on the terminal. Each one stands alone. Every democratization of computing produced …
one character, one night
Entry five of ten in “the end of the wire,” a series on the terminal. Each one stands alone. The pipe is the most consequential character …
the fork at the demo
Entry four of ten in “the end of the wire,” a series on the terminal. Each one stands alone. The GUI and the terminal are two answers to …
eighty columns
Entry three of ten in “the end of the wire,” a series on the terminal. Each one stands alone. Nearly every arbitrary-looking thing about …
telesphoros
Archaeologists at Aspendos, in southern Türkiye, pulled a 2.2-meter marble group out of the ground this month. Asklepios, god of medicine, …
worse is still better
Gabriel's 1989 essay is still the only theory of software that predicts anything.
fortran's wager
Pascal built the Pascaline in 1642 — one of the first mechanical calculators. Gears, dials, carry mechanisms. He spent years trying to offload …
xfce audio control, remove vlc.
Xfce is great full time, but full-time VLC in your audio control is not. Info how to remove it with dconf here: …
central to de-central to re-central.
If the mainframe evolved into desktops, isn’t web hosted email a re-centralization of what already was not? If the mainframe didn’t evolve …