atannen
Re:Tmp.0ut Volume 5
on Monday August 31, 2026 @03:04PM (#49513605)
Good interview with McIlroy. Fix this:
Goldstine, as in the citations, not Goldstein, as in the body text.
Also, the text mentions CDC 1620. I don't think this existed. Either it was IBM 1620 or CDC something else.
I'd be just as happy with clear readable type, but the content is the thing.
Re:SSH Secret Menu
on Wednesday March 11, 2026 @02:06PM (#47339038)
The ~ (tilde) escape character in UNIX cu (call UNIX) did the same thing in the 1970s, when the remote system was on the other side of a telephone modem or other serial port. I think it's safe to say that ssh is a descendant of cu. (I don't mean that cu printed a help menu, I mean it had the tilde escape.)
Re:Die shots of as many CPUs and other interesting chips as possible
on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @10:27AM (#45669663)
see also
https://wikichip.org/
Re:Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has passed away
on Monday October 20, 2025 @02:35PM (#45647449)
Ouch. Danya was a great player (world rank 151, USA rank 17). Popular player, teacher, streamer and chess event commentator. Studied at Stanford. The NY Times' current chess columnist. About to turn 30 years old.
Re:A Unix Quiz (2012)
on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @05:47PM (#22122893)
I can get a bunch right, especially question 48 - that's me. (hi rob) :)
Still hacking after all these years.
Re:Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
on Thursday October 03, 2019 @06:06PM (#21152761)
Re:Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @02:53PM (#20347405)
I think I remember (1980s/90s) if you were copying a file to/from a remote host (with ftp or something), you could improve the throughput speed by pinging the remote. Maybe ethernet, or maybe ppp/slip, I'm not sure.
Re:Floppycasts – 1.44MB Podcasts
on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @12:41PM (#20276036)
Regarding resampling to 8kHz, traditional telephony resampled to 300 Hz to 3400 Hz. AM (medium wave) radio was up to about 5000 Hz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_frequency
Re:The Yoda of Silicon Valley
on Monday December 17, 2018 @02:24PM (#18701370)
re: At the time, Unix wasn't even widely available outside Bell Labs and a few places; it definitely wasn't available to Knuth or most of the column's readers.
At that time, 1986, Unix was widely available - there were more than 100k Unix installations around the world by 1984. AT&T Unix Sys V and UCB 4.3bsd were available. Knuth was friendly with McIlroy, who was head of the Bell Labs computer science research group that begat Unix. Sun Microsystems was formed in 1982 - their boxes ran Unix, and Sun was a startup spun off from Stanford.