#tech-history — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #tech-history, aggregated by home.social.
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Short punchy stories instead of dry chapters. Read it in pieces or one go. Either way you won't want to stop.
#books #bookreview #techhistory #Apple
https://smpl.is/am9s5 -
What if Steve Jobs never returned to Apple? Geoffrey Cain explores the butterfly effect of small choices that saved the iPhone.
Even the tiniest decisions can ripple out and reshape the world in ways we never expect.
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Steve Jobs saw campus AI in the ’80s – a vision ahead of its time. Geoffrey Cain’s Steve Jobs in Exile shows the NeXT machine cost $10 k, too pricey for schools. The tech was right, but the world wasn’t ready. Being right too early can feel like being wrong. What does that teach us about timing in tech? https://youtube.com/shorts/kuET30GT2k4 #SteveJobs #AI #NeXT #TechHistory #SteveJobsInExile
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The Tragic End of GeoCities: The Web Pioneer That Built the Early Internet and Vanished Forever - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z33zHspYfiUI remember it well! I had a "site" there. ;-)
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The Tragic End of Iomega: The $7 Billion Zip Drive Giant That Ruled PC Storage Then Destroyed Itself - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9d22CIhXaE -
Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full
https://fabiensanglard.net/quake_shareware_cd/index.html
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338328
#HackerNews #Quake #Shareware #CD-ROM #QuakeGames #RetroGaming #GameDevelopment #TechHistory
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150 years of American telecommunications. From Bell’s 1876 patent to broadband, the Internet and AI.
We’re bringing that history to life in a new online course—and looking for sponsors who want to help make it happen.
Interested? Let’s talk.
#tech #technology #broadband #history #telecom #telecommunication #techhistory #live #livestream #course #sponsors #sponsor
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The Life and Death of Direct File [pdf]
https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/vinton_report_5.pdf
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49325185
#HackerNews #LifeAndDeathOfDirectFile #pdfDocument #DigitalPreservation #TechHistory
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Steve Jobs dreamed of campus AI in the ’80s—years ahead of its time. The NeXT computer flopped not for flaws, but for cost: $10k was a fortune for schools. Innovation often stumbles on timing, not vision.
A poignant look at ambition vs. reality 👇
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Wer von euch hätte gewusst, dass die Ursuppe von Java mal Oak hieß? Und ursprünglich gedacht war für interaktives Kabelfernsehen? Zur Wochenendunterhaltung habe ich für euch heute eine gute Stunde Java-History mit den Menschen, die von Anfang an dabei waren, enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqGSg4b_cZA #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #java #techhistory
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Jobs left Apple reckless and difficult. He came back with patience and focus. Failure built what success never could.
#books #bookreview #SecondComingOfSteveJobs
#techhistory https://smpl.is/am5ne -
🚀 Breaking news from 1994: the groundbreaking discovery that finite state machines can exist in Forth without a labyrinth of IF clauses! 🎉 Read on as our hero, J.V. Noble, valiantly types out a dissertation on programming techniques as old as the punch card, all while reveling in the complete lack of modern syntax highlighting. 📜🔍
https://www.forth.org/literature/noble.html #BreakingNews #FiniteStateMachines #ForthProgramming #JVNoble #TechHistory #HackerNews #ngated -
Finite State Machines in Forth (1994)
https://www.forth.org/literature/noble.html
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223964
#HackerNews #FiniteStateMachines #Forth #1994 #Programming #ComputerScience #TechHistory
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When people grieved the loss of GPT-4o models, it showed how convincing AI’s performance has become. But history repeats itself: from 1966's ELIZA to 2011's IBM Watson, we repeatedly mistake statistical pattern matching for a soul. Modern frontier LLMs optimize next-token prediction; they don't experience life. The danger isn't that machines feel, but that we act like they do.
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🎉 Oh, the nostalgia! A riveting tale of ancient computing relics so thrilling, you'd think #UNIVAC was the latest iPhone. 🙄 But really, who wouldn't want to spend their day reading about #Skeduflo while surrounded by six modern devices just screaming for attention? 📱💻🤦♂️
https://uniqueatpenn.wordpress.com/2026/08/05/come-for-eniac-stay-for-univac-and-skeduflo/ #nostalgia #ancientcomputing #techhistory #moderndevices #HackerNews #ngated -
I think it was the BrowserID/ Persona thing that first made me realise something fishy was going on at Mozilla.
I thought BrowserID was a well-considered design - at least from a UX perspective - and I was pleased to see Mozilla funding a reference implementation; Persona. I talked to the guy who was working on it at a few conferences, and convinced at least one web platform (Loomio) to implement support for BrowserID login.
(1/?)
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People keep comparing the "AI" bubble to the DotCom bubble. This is misleading.
What drove the DotCom bubble(s) was speculation on the transition from broadcast media to network media. Which was, and is, a decentralisation of media power. The emergence of #MOLE Training is exactly the opposite, a global re-centralisation of media power.
It's more comparable to the emergence of proprietary software, DataFarms and "the cloud";
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
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🎉🎂 Wow, the IBM PC is 45! Time to dust off your floppy disks and celebrate with a futile attempt to navigate a labyrinthine website that makes #DOS look user-friendly. 🔍🔄🎈
https://sharktastica.co.uk/articles/pc-fxt-45 #IBMPC45 #FloppyDisks #Nostalgia #Celebration #TechHistory #HackerNews #ngated -
Happy 45th Birthday to the IBM PC and Model F/XT
https://sharktastica.co.uk/articles/pc-fxt-45
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49280103
#HackerNews #IBMPC #ModelFXT #45thAnniversary #TechHistory #RetroComputing
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Obituary: AmigaDOS developer Dr. Tim King has passed away
https://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2026-08-00070-EN.html
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49272655
#HackerNews #AmigaDOS #TimKing #Obituary #TechHistory #GameDevelopment #RetroComputing
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Fascinating episode of the vergecast tonight about Eliza, a "chatbot" from the 1960s
How people reacted to it has parallels with AI today, and the guy who created it had a fascinating life
Worth a watch
Eliza Demo: https://elizaemulator.com/
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On October 1, Broadband Breakfast will gather historians, policymakers, and industry leaders at the National Press Club to trace that history from the telephone to the internet to artificial intelligence, and to ask what 150 years of precedent can teach us about the debates shaping policy now.
https://broadbandbreakfast.com/telecom150/
#live #irl #in-person #tech #technology #techhistory #history #historian #panel #america #usa #politics #law #ai #ArtificialIntelligence
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Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. I read that in high school and thought it was dumb. What if IBM sucks. The sentence is not advice about IBM. It is advice about being safe from blame, which is not the same as being right.