It’s tax season, in case you didn’t know. Today, most people do their taxes online, via some preparation software or via a third-party service that invariably uses custom software, or some electronic filing system down the line. to get the actual data to the IRS. 30 years ago, however, it was a different story. Electronic […]
It’s time to head back to 1983, to a time when the PC as we know it was in its infancy, and the home computer market was still dominated by the likes of Commodore, Atari, Apple (pre Macintosh, mind you), and Tandy (at least, here in the North American market – it was a slightly […]
A decade after it’s release, the Apple II, one of the “holy trinity” of affordable microcomputers released in 1977, was still going strong. Constant updates and improvements kept these machines in use far beyond their original designed life, and beyond the life of 8-bit computers on a whole: I dare say in the early 90’s […]
I stumbled across this gem of a video yesterday and thought it worth sharing – a 1980 documentary from Madison, Wisconsin, about the then-new personal computer scene. The video is a little dry in some regards but it proves to be oddly perfect in its predictions for computers in the future – as a kid […]
In this very early episode of the Computer Chronicles, we take a look at computer chip technology in 1983. 34 years ago 8 and 16 bit CPU’s were dominant, RAM was measured still in the Kilobytes, sometimes megabytes for larger systems, and CMOS was an “emerging technology.” Thousands of transistors on a chip the size […]
Todays launch of the Falcon 9 carrying the Dragon spacecraft for the CRS-10 mission was scrubbed until tomorrow, February 19th. The reason? An issue with Thrust Vector Control (VTC for short) on the 2nd stage. Reports are early, so I don’t have details, but this seems to have been the key issue for the scrub, […]
Nuclear Rockets. They still sound futuristic even today. Interestingly enough, they were under active research in the late 50’s and early 60’s as part of the then-planned natural progression of both manned and unmanned space flight. Nuclear rocketry doesn’t operate the way the common man would normally think; it doesn’t ignite its fuel, but instead […]
Back in 1987, computer processors were going through somewhat of a major evolution. While software was still stuck in the land of 16-bit, the Intel x86 series processors were reaching 32bit performance. In the case of the Intel 386, there wasn’t even any software for it – the raw speed alone was enough for people […]
I’m somewhat of a purist when it comes to classic gaming. In particular, when you get to older, pre-HDMI game consoles like the Super Nintendo, the Sega Genesis, or even the Playstation 2 and Wii, I connect those consoles only to an old CRT TV. You know, the big heavy TV’s most everyone above the […]
Last week I was watching some videos receiving far-away TV transmission when this video was recommended by YouTube – it’s a 1986 American public access show which covers Soviet state TV recorded over 1985 and 1986 – this includes comedy programs, news (including an early Chernobyl report), game shows,special reports on their space program, and […]
Well, we all knew this was an inevitbility – A little while ago the NES Classic Edition got hacked, apparently, and the group behind such was able to add in around 60 games, or so I understand. Well, this past week that number grew to, oh, about 700. This basically covers the entire NES library, […]
In this 1995 episode of The Computer Chronicles, Stuart Cheifet takes a look at the cutting-edge in gaming entertainment in the mid 90’s. This was quite an interesting time for home gaming, as 3D graphics rendering was reaching a point where decent quality images could be generated in real time. Windows 95 brought DirectX technology, […]
Another video from Jim Browning today, this one another case of him hunting down the people behind a pop-up based tech support scam. Sure enough, much like the previous tech support scam video I shared, a quick bit of detective work on Jim’s part gets him in touch with a very nervous sounding company owner. […]
Defcon is quite the interesting convention, unlike most others. Instead of being devoted to anime, or video games, or comic books, this one is about technology and the hacker subculture. The talks can vary wildly, and I plan on sharing some of the best ones with you here, as I feel the urge. To start […]
From the looks of things, tech support scammers don’t hide their tracks well. They use fake pop-up warnings and fake software to scare people into calling and paying for their services, and these pages and software often have traces of the actual owner buried in them somewhere. The people at the tops of these scams […]