Bookmarks tagged with #story.
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A 1977 Time Capsule, Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
Right now, more than 15 billion miles from Earth, a 48-year-old spacecraft is hurtling through interstellar space at 38,000 miles per hour.
Saved
on: 2026-03-30
I charged $18,000 for a Static HTML Page
Not too long ago, I made a living working as a contractor where I would hop from project to project. Some were short term where I would work for a week and quickly deliver my service. Others lasted a
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on: 2026-01-05
'You have to just draw something that you hope is funny': How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy
Charles M Schulz drew his beloved Peanuts strip for 50 years until he retired on 14 December 1999. By then, the unassuming cartoonist had built a billion-dollar empire.
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on: 2025-11-28
Startup Lessons from my Piracy Website
A personal account of building HeheStreams, facing the consequences, and going to prison as a startup founder who had a piracy website.
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on: 2025-11-07
AWS Restored My Account: The Human Who Made the Difference
The untold story of how one AWS employee turned a 20-day nightmare into a lesson in corporate accountability. Sometimes all it takes is one person who actually gives a damn.
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on: 2025-08-07
A receipt printer cured my procrastination
Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate on simple tasks? I finally cracked the code using thermal receipt printer and game design.
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on: 2025-06-12
The 3 Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen
With the rise of Flash and CSS in 1997, three web design philosophies emerged. David Siegel advocated for 'hacks', Jakob Nielsen kept it simple, while Jeffrey Zeldman combined flair with usability.
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on: 2025-05-30
The Impact of Jungle Music in 90s Video Game Development
Jungle music was found in countless games from the early 90s. This article goes over what jungle is, where it comes from, and why it was the perfect match for PlayStation & Nintendo 64 games.
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on: 2024-11-14
IMG_0416
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app.
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on: 2024-11-11
Kurt Vonnegut’s lost board game finally published
It could have been a contemporary of Risk, Diplomacy, and other legendary wargames
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on: 2024-10-21
How were the 70s versions of pong and similar games implemented without a programmable computer?
My Dad once commented "Back in the 70s - when Wozniak was working at Atari - they were building games using electronics - not programming computers."
As a Computer Science graduate withou...
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on: 2024-10-05
What's inside the QR code menu at this cafe? - by peabee
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on: 2024-09-23
Just Our Type: The Story of Creating Figma Sans | Figma Blog
We’ve overhauled our entire visual identity from color palette to illustration style, and even commissioned a new typeface.
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on: 2024-09-09
The secret inside One Million Checkboxes
Teens wrote me a secret. I found them.
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on: 2024-08-30
Continuous reinvention: A brief history of block storage at AWS | All Thing
Marc Olson, a long-time Amazonian, discusses the evolution of EBS, highlighting hard-won lessons in queueing theory, the importance of comprehensive instrumentation, and the value of incrementalism versus radical changes. It's an insightful look at how one of AWS’s foundational services has evolved to meet the needs of our customers.
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on: 2024-08-22
Andy Warhol’s lost Amiga art found
Long-lost copies of Andy Warhol's Amiga art, produced at a 1985 event, resurfaced in July 2024. They shed light on an earlier discovery.
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on: 2024-08-05
"We ran out of columns" - The best, worst codebase
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on: 2024-08-04
The “Sun Motorway” is 65 years old: a short history of an extraordinary inf
May 19 1956 marked the laying of the first stone of the A1 Milan-Naples: check the gallery Domus and discover the story of the Sun Motorway in Italy.
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on: 2024-07-29
These Stunning Butterflies Flew 2,600 Miles Across the Atlantic Ocean Witho
Researchers combined several lines of evidence to solve the mystery of why a group of painted ladies, which do not live in South America, were found fluttering on a beach in French Guiana
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on: 2024-07-01
The story of Jim Phillips' Screaming Hand
It is one of the most recognizable skateboard graphics in the world and a living symbol of pop and street culture. Here's how Jim Phillips drew Screaming Hand.
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on: 2024-06-26
The curious case of the missing period
When Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is not simple
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on: 2024-05-22
IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design
When IBM hired designers in the 1950s to shape how the public would see the new computing technology, the tech giant changed modern corporate branding forever.
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on: 2024-05-15
I Nearly Died Drowning. Here’s What it’s Like to Survive.
On coming to terms with a near-death experience.
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on: 2024-04-17
The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk
The high-profile creator of magnetic media gave it up nearly three decades ago
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on: 2024-04-03
I looked through attacks in my access logs. Here's what I found
I've been self-hosting for over a decade. It's freeing because I own my data, and do not depend on any platform other than my cloud host, which I can easily switch off. Self-hosting gives much insight into what it takes to run a cloud service. Anyone who's had some practice doing this will likely tell you that the internet is a dangerous place.
🖖If you found this helpful or insightful leave a comment to let me know, or follow me on Mastodon - @nish@social.nishtahir.com
Exposing any IP onto th
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on: 2024-01-28
Reminiscing CGI scripts
I’ve always had a thing for old-school web tech. By the time I joined the digital fray, CGI
scripts were pretty much relics, but the term kept popping up in tech forums and discussions
like ghosts from the past. So, I got curious, started reading about them, and wanted to see
if I could reason about them from the first principles. Writing one from the ground up with
nothing but Go’s standard library seemed like a good idea.
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on: 2023-12-27
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Self-Powered Cart
A club for Meccano enthusiasts in London, holding four meetings each year and a public Meccano Show in Falconwood.
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on: 2023-12-22
The Secret Father of Modern Computing
How Ed Roberts created the personal computer industry—and then walked away
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on: 2023-12-19
A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32
On the 4th of November 2010, a Qantas Airbus A380 was rocked by a catastrophic engine failure minutes after takeoff from Singapore, hurling fragments of a turbine disk through its wings and fuselage…
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on: 2023-12-10
Hixie's Natural Log: Reflecting on 18 years at Google
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on: 2023-11-23
In the bad old days we had Punchcards. How did people deal with that?
In the fall of 1976 I started as a Freshman at SUNY Stony Brook intending to major in Math and Computer Science. I took Honors Calculus I a...
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on: 2023-11-07
Before Computers Were Logic Diagrams and Machines
I often think about ancient civilizations. I’m sure you do too. I cogitate and ruminate on all the people who lived, loved, and died, and I’m saddened by the fact that we no longer remember their n…
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on: 2023-10-25
Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk - YouTube
I got sucked into researching the origins of the 3.5in floppy disk after looking into one of my recent HP drives. That sent me on a long quest to better unde...
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on: 2023-10-23
How Disney Packed Big Emotion Into a Little Robot
Melding animation and reinforcement learning for free-ranging emotive performances
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on: 2023-10-11
RADIO LIBERE TUTTI - La storia dell’emittenza radiofonica piacentina on Vim
Piacenza, così come tante altre città di provincia, assiste a una vera e propria fioritura di piccole emittenti radiofoniche libere nate dalla creatività…
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on: 2023-06-12
Early Computer Art in the 50’s & 60’s
A deep dive on the early days of creative computing coming to life. Punch cards, plotters, light pens and lots more.
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on: 2023-05-16
Tatjana van Vark - The Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum
Building scientific instruments from the past, along with other technical projects.
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on: 2023-04-08
How Microsoft sprinted to integrate OpenAI's GPT-4 into '365' suite
Building an AI assistant into every Microsoft app—from Outlook to Word to Teams—is a big job, but one the tech giant wanted to do quickly.
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on: 2023-04-06
MIT’s Barry Duncan demonstrates the power of writing in reverse
Barry Duncan, a staff member at the MIT Press Bookstore, boasts a unique talent: writing palindromes, or prose that reads the same forward and backward.
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on: 2023-03-21
How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (202
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on: 2023-03-16
Secret colours of the Commodore 64
In 1991 I was fourteen years old. It would be fair to say I was obsessed with computers. I proudly owned a brown ‘breadbox’ Commodore 64 with an exotic upgrade - an Oceanic 5.25” disk drive:
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on: 2023-03-12
Why the floppy disk just won’t die | Ars Technica
A surprising number of industries, from embroidery to aviation, still use floppies.
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on: 2023-03-08
The Lost Art of Lacing Cable - The Broadcast Bridge - Connecting IT to Broa
Once, while visiting NBC Television studios in Manhattan’s 30 Rockefeller Center, I saw an abandoned elevator shaft with seemingly miles of different cables laced together. I took notice because it was such a rare sight — with the maze of work quite intricate and, in a way, beautiful.
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on: 2023-03-08
Bing: “I will not harm you unless you harm me first”
Last week, Microsoft announced the new AI-powered Bing: a search interface that incorporates a language model powered chatbot that can run searches for you and summarize the results, plus do …
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on: 2023-02-15
When Screens were Secondary: Mario Bellini's TCV 250 for Olivetti - Core77
Here in 2023 we carry small screens in our pocket--and have gigantic ones on our workstations, in our living rooms and even in our cars. So it might be difficult to imagine a time when screens were not as important, and even a desk-sized unit could have a tiny screen.
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on: 2023-01-31
The Story behind ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers)
This post explains how Amazon replaced ISBNs with ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers) for its Catalog Database Key
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on: 2023-01-25
Furby 1998 source code : David Hampton, Wayne Schulz : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The source code of the firmware used in the 1998 Furby.The patent wrapper containing it was obtained and scanned by Sean Riddle (seanriddle.com).
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on: 2023-01-09
Why is McDonald's Considered a Real Estate Company?
The golden arches are synonymous with burgers and fries, but business people find something meatier to sink their teeth into when looking at McDonald’s ledger: the real estate.
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on: 2022-11-19
A 900-Page Pre-Pantone Guide to Color from 1692: A Complete Digital Scan |
Human beings got along perfectly well for hundreds of millennia without standardized taxonomies of color, but they didn’t do so in a globally connected culture full of logos, brands, and 24/7 screens.
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on: 2022-11-17
MDN => Markdown
Open Web Docs supports web platform documentation for the benefit of web developers & designers worldwide. We are a community of web developers, standards makers, and technology companies that rely on this documentation as critical digital infrastructure, and we work cooperatively to ensure its long-term success and maintenance.
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on: 2022-11-05
My Top 10 Tips for Doing Time In ‘the Hole’ | The Marshall Project
In prison, going to “the hole” can mean spending 23 hours a day alone in a tiny cell. Here, incarcerated author Michael J. Nichols shares his top 10 tips for enduring long stretches of “administrative segregation.”
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on: 2022-10-31
Why A4? – The Mathematical Beauty of Paper Size - Heidelberg Laureate Forum
Unless you have skipped a lot of school, or work, or both – or you live in the USA – you have probably used an A4 sheet of paper before now. Have you ever wondered …
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on: 2022-09-06
The Sounds Of New York City, Circa 1920
A team led by Emily Thompson, a history professor at Princeton, has matched noise complaints from New York City in the Roaring '20s with the actual street sounds of the day.
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on: 2020-01-24
The machine Fired me
It was 7am when my phone rang. Instead of an alarm, it was my recruiter disturbing me from a pleasant dream. It was too early for a phone call or to be caught off guard, so I did not answer. I went to
Tags:
#story
Saved
on: 2018-06-20
Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Becoming a Secret Travel Agent [video] | Hacker News
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on: 2016-12-31
How Xerox Invented the Copier and Artists Pushed It To Its Limits | Atlas O
The Xerox machine was a piece of technology that seemed to come out of nowhere.
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on: 2016-12-22
How to Hide $400 Million - The New York Times
When a wealthy businessman set out to divorce his wife, their fortune vanished. The quest to find it would reveal the depths of an offshore financial system bigger than the U.S. economy.
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on: 2016-12-02
Bill Gates: He eats Big Macs for lunch and schedules every minute of his da
With $80 billion, Bill Gates is the world’s richest man.
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on: 2016-10-23
The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company
Magia Pixar este cronica plină de viaţă a istoriei şi e…
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on: 2016-09-22
How I built a Slack bot to help me find an apartment in San Francisco | Hacker News
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on: 2016-08-28
https://www.twilio.com/blog/2016/08/shahzeb-khan-builds-frank-ocean-album-detection.html
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on: 2016-08-19
Never a Hippie, Always a Freak
When Zappa shows up in a suit and tie debating Robert Novak on Crossfire, the effect is less the ’60s freak who became a normal adult than an uncompromising individual voice channeled into a different format.
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on: 2016-07-09
HTTP gets an official status code for legal demands: 451
HTTP status codes are a core part of helping your browser understand what to do with a page. You're probably familiar with 404 -- page not found -- but there are a plethora of others, ...
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on: 2015-12-21
Letter to My Younger Self by Pete Sampras
You’re about to go pro, and you’re pretty excited. Deep in your heart you know you’re eventually going to succeed.
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on: 2015-12-05
7 Ways My Modern Country Turned Into a Dystopia Overnight | Cracked.com
We sat down with Dimitra Nikolaou, a Greek journalist, who told us what to expect if our economy ever goes tits up.
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on: 2015-06-30
Inside the labs where Netflix is trying to make televisions suck less
Where the company is trying to shape the future of its service, and the next TV you buy
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on: 2015-05-24
Walking New York
Sonny Rollins’s favorite corner of the Williamsburg Bridge. The best can-collecting route in Bushwick. See New Yorkers’ most memorable walks in the city, and contribute your own.
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on: 2015-04-24
http://blog.mobilejazz.com/working-remotely-from-a-tropical-island-in-thailand/
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on: 2015-04-09
Felons, addicts, immigrants: This bakery will hire anyone
A socially conscious Yonkers bakery founded by a Buddhist teacher pioneers a novel "see no evil" approach to human resources -- and it works.
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on: 2015-03-07
Docker: Sorry, you're just going to have to learn about it. Today we begin
Part One: Containers! Containers! Containers!
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on: 2015-01-06
The End of Gangs
Los Angeles gave America the modern street gang. Groups like the Crips and MS-13 have spread from coast to coast, and even abroad. But on Southern California's streets they have been vanishing. Has L.A. figured out how to stop the epidemic it set loose on the world?
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on: 2015-01-01
Parents With Computers — Medium
My dad’s got a new computer. It’s not exactly new — he bought it a few months ago, but hasn’t used it since because it runs Windows 8. My dad hates Windows 8, or rather: my dad hates having to deal…
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on: 2014-12-28
On the Trail of Nazi Counterfeiters
With the recent declassification of hundreds of CIA case files, some strange tales of history have come to light.
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on: 2014-09-21
Scammed - The Matter Archive - Medium
Mike breaks things apart for a living. He’s paid by companies to find security flaws in the electronics they sell. He’s a masterful coder and a compulsive tinkerer. He earns a six-figure salary and…
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on: 2014-05-11