d1ss0nanz

When I started my first job in the late 90s, they had Linux floppy disk based thin clients running over coax token ring.

The cable was laying right under my desk. When I touched it with my feet, there would be a disconnect because the coax t-connector was not sitting firmly enough on the network card of my device. All unsafe work would be lost.

Fun times.

"separate taps for cold and hot water" (even in public places)

If y'all could just log off for the day, that would be great!

Always was.

CompHist is a very incomplete history of computer science. Researching the history of computer science and the fabulous people that made it happen is one of my hobbies since many years. I had the great pleasure to talk to a lot of the first computer scientists in Germany. On this page, I try to document the people, machines, languages, and failures that shaped computing, from Babbage’s Analytical Engine to the LLM era. Each entry traces technical facts and human stories. The Dead Ends section is the most instructive part.

CompHist is a very incomplete history of computer science. Researching the history of computer science and the fabulous people that made it happen is one of my hobbies since many years. I had the great pleasure to talk to a lot of the first computer scientists in Germany. On this page, I try to document the people, machines, languages, and failures that shaped computing, from Babbage’s Analytical Engine to the LLM era. Each entry traces technical facts and human stories. The Dead Ends section is the most instructive part.

CompHist is a very incomplete history of computer science. Researching the history of computer science and the fabulous people that made it happen is one of my hobbies since many years. I had the great pleasure to talk to a lot of the first computer scientists in Germany. On this page, I try to document the people, machines, languages, and failures that shaped computing, from Babbage’s Analytical Engine to the LLM era. Each entry traces technical facts and human stories. The Dead Ends section is the most instructive part.

> I discovered that I don’t actually read names, I just pattern match, and I have sometimes gotten hundreds of pages into a novel before I realize that I have no clear sense of the the middle syllables of the protagonist’s name.

Same. TIL this is not just me being lazy.

They only sell indirectly. Common concept in Europe.

Same. And even for Tailscale we use a European alternative (Xplicittrust), because this aggressive growth of VC backed American tech is a real turn-off. We have seen where that leads often enough by now.