61–70 of 116 posts
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What does this "Extra!" bit mean?
When breaking news came out a newspaper would sometimes publish an extra edition to go out in the afternoon. The paperboys would stereotypically say, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”
Don Eyles has a web site, where there's an interesting article called "Tales From the Lunar Module Guidance Computer": https://doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html
But that website made me happy. It evokes memories of a simpler era on the web.
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> there was a sense that extinction could come simply from a single random error Agreed, I was there and watched the "Duck and Cover" films in school. That only stopped when leaders realized that surviving the initial blast was one thing, and surviving a month later for most urbanites was unlikely. > So, through things like the Moral Majority and the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan ... happiness and satisfaction comes…
Whose side was Reagan on? He certainly wasn't on the side of a lot of gays, blacks, or the other minorities his administration threw in jail, poisoned, or just let die through inaction.
For example, have a listen to his 1983 Address to the Nation.
Be careful, also, to view him in context of the era he was active in. It's tempting to judge historical figures' actions in a modern context, but that dramatically alters the nature of what they did and why.
> Eyles and some of his fellow Consciousness IIIers regard computer programming as a fine craft that might some day be elevated to the status of an art. “It’s possible to envision a time when there are professors of the literature of computer programming. Maybe some programmers will be minor poets of the 20th Century. The trouble is that programs are written in a language there’s no audience for. It’s like Nabokov’s…
As a programmer who loves Russian lit, this hit close to home. It's a dream of mine to one day read Tolstoy's drafts of his predecessor novel to War & Peace ("The Decembrists"), but my professor informed me that the copies that exist are entirely in russian. One day.
> Weird-Looking Freak Yet fails to show a picture of the weird looking freak?
He was physically described pretty well in the article. As for "weird" and "freak," you should probably load the 1971 context for full understanding.
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I recommend reading the first commit in the git git repo
Would you mind posting it? Or at least a link? I'm not sure where the original repo is and github doesn't allow sorting commits by date.
Don is still around, and is still awesome! His memory for events around that time is surprisingly sharp, for it being 50 years ago. He's been an invaluable resource for us at the VirtualAGC project [1]. He provided over half (!) of the AGC programs we've made available, including LM software for Apollo 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 15-17, plus several other ground development programs. He also was the source of a majorit…
Let articles die. I just want to know what happened. I don't want to read the history or a flowery introduction. They just hide the point. This is why I believe reddit2 will use either an AI or the emergent intelligence of thousands of redditors to distill articles down to a short synopsis.
I do not think reading the whole article is a sign of intelligence. If I want to read something that's going to take 30-40 minutes it will be a lot more planned out than just stumbling upon an interesting headline.
I really think the article format has had its day but it will take a while for people to admit they don't like reading long flowery opinionated journal entries.
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He was physically described pretty well in the article. As for "weird" and "freak," you should probably load the 1971 context for full understanding.
What is the 1971 context, for this millenial's benefit?
"Freak" would have been the title editor's attempt to put a particular image of hippiness into a reader's head, justified or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_scene
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> Not sure I would call it "ragequitting". Expecting to maintain a large public reputation and stay anonymous and then stopping when the facade is cracked is pretty unrealistic.
Why is it? Why should it be? What's so hard about understanding somebody's desire for their art to be in the world without violating the boundary between that and their personal life?
People seem to have forgotten the old hacker ethos: doing stuff for fun. Many people are more now attracted by publicity and fame than by the fun part - look at how many want to be influencers! Or even worse: by extracting value from than fun spirit - look at social networking being used to create fame by manufacturing outrage!
Some people who do things for fun may also want to be forgotten. They just care about the fun. Yet many people think they have a right to whatever they create. It's hard not to see that.
Personally, I see that because I do not want any of the stuff I do online have any link to what I do offline. I do not want my identity leaked either.
Yet here on HN when I will delete my account, my posts will stay. And I can't edit them in any way. So much for being about hacker values!