frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

We Mourn Our Craft

https://nolanlawson.com/2026/02/07/we-mourn-our-craft/
180•ColinWright•1h ago•164 comments

I Write Games in C (yes, C)

https://jonathanwhiting.com/writing/blog/games_in_c/
22•valyala•2h ago•7 comments

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/
124•AlexeyBrin•7h ago•24 comments

SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes

https://xorvoid.com/sectorc.html
17•valyala•2h ago•1 comments

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

https://susam.net/twenty-five-years-of-computing.html
65•vinhnx•5h ago•9 comments

U.S. Jobs Disappear at Fastest January Pace Since Great Recession

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikestunson/2026/02/05/us-jobs-disappear-at-fastest-january-pace-sin...
155•alephnerd•2h ago•105 comments

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

https://openciv3.org/
833•klaussilveira•22h ago•250 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
119•1vuio0pswjnm7•8h ago•148 comments

Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney

https://spillhistorie.no/2026/02/06/interview-with-sierra-veteran-al-lowe/
57•thelok•4h ago•8 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
1060•xnx•1d ago•612 comments

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

https://rlhfbook.com/
79•onurkanbkrc•7h ago•5 comments

Brookhaven Lab's RHIC Concludes 25-Year Run with Final Collisions

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/brookhaven-labs-rhic-concludes-25-year-run-with-final-collis...
4•gnufx•57m ago•1 comments

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
487•theblazehen•3d ago•177 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
212•jesperordrup•12h ago•72 comments

France's homegrown open source online office suite

https://github.com/suitenumerique
567•nar001•6h ago•259 comments

Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

https://blog.alaindichiappari.dev/p/software-engineering-is-back
226•alainrk•6h ago•354 comments

A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/a-fresh-look-at-ibm-3270-information-display-system
40•rbanffy•4d ago•7 comments

Show HN: I saw this cool navigation reveal, so I made a simple HTML+CSS version

https://github.com/Momciloo/fun-with-clip-path
9•momciloo•2h ago•0 comments

History and Timeline of the Proco Rat Pedal (2021)

https://web.archive.org/web/20211030011207/https://thejhsshow.com/articles/history-and-timeline-o...
19•brudgers•5d ago•4 comments

Selection Rather Than Prediction

https://voratiq.com/blog/selection-rather-than-prediction/
8•languid-photic•3d ago•1 comments

72M Points of Interest

https://tech.marksblogg.com/overture-places-pois.html
29•marklit•5d ago•3 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
114•videotopia•4d ago•33 comments

Where did all the starships go?

https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/science-fiction-decline
77•speckx•4d ago•82 comments

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
274•isitcontent•22h ago•38 comments

Learning from context is harder than we thought

https://hy.tencent.com/research/100025?langVersion=en
201•limoce•4d ago•112 comments

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
287•dmpetrov•22h ago•155 comments

Show HN: Kappal – CLI to Run Docker Compose YML on Kubernetes for Local Dev

https://github.com/sandys/kappal
22•sandGorgon•2d ago•12 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
557•todsacerdoti•1d ago•269 comments

Making geo joins faster with H3 indexes

https://floedb.ai/blog/how-we-made-geo-joins-400-faster-with-h3-indexes
155•matheusalmeida•2d ago•48 comments

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/
427•ostacke•1d ago•111 comments
Open in hackernews

Lee Felsenstein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Felsenstein
66•nickt•3mo ago

Comments

internet_points•2mo ago
> Felsenstein was influenced in his philosophy by the works of Ivan Illich, particularly Tools for Conviviality (Harper and Row, 1973). This book advocated a "convivial" approach to design which allowed users of technologies to learn about the technology by encouraging exploration, tinkering, and modification. Felsenstein had learned about electronics in much the same fashion, and summarized his conclusions in several aphorisms, to wit – "In order to survive in a public-access environment, a computer must grow a computer club around itself." Others were – "To change the rules, change the tools," and "If work is to become play, then tools must become toys."
snovymgodym•2mo ago
I highly recommend Tools for Conviviality, it's extremely poignant and ahead of its time.
JSR_FDED•2mo ago
I wanted an Osborne 1 so badly when I was a kid - all that power in a handy portable suitcase form factor!
noir_lord•2mo ago
8 bit guy on YouTube has a nice three part series on restoring and demoing the Osborne 1, I watched the last part this morning.

Looked like a neat little machine but (just a little) before my time, I’d have been in nursery when it released.

gnerd00•2mo ago
Coding on an Osbourne Executive.. portable yes, but the screen was so small, the external monitor was essential. Pick green or orange monitor phospher (very different looking). Big floppy disks and CP/M, Wordstar and .. Visi-Calc? Basic language.. authors workstation and could dial in with a modem to a BBS.
themadturk•2mo ago
I was in my late 20s when one of the trust managers at the bank I worked for brought in his Osborne. I was so very, very jealous. I'd just purchased the CP/M cartridge for my Commodore 64 and tried to convince him let me borrow the WordStar disk, but he wouldn't do it (and I really never went anywhere with CP/M on the C=64).
kragen•2mo ago
Could we maybe change the title to something like "Lee Felsenstein is still alive"? I was worried when I saw the title.
croisillon•2mo ago
i'd suggest "Lee Felsenstein turned 80 this year" :)
ludwik•2mo ago
Good call. I would feel extremely weird seeing "[my full name] is still alive" as a title somewhere...
kragen•2mo ago
Oh, yeah, my suggestion was pretty dumb.
croisillon•2mo ago
especially on a website formatted like a todo list :)
Iridiumkoivu•2mo ago
Yeah, that’s a good one. I also thought that he had passed away because of his age and how the title was not very informative.

( ;^^)b

robterrell•2mo ago
Please, this was my first thought too.
noufalibrahim•2mo ago
This was an era before my time but the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy does a great job of painting an evocative picture of this era. It evokes a feeling of nostalgia (as in, we missed being in those times) but when you think properly, you see that you still have the same types of opportunities in a field where the frontiers are ever widening.
partomniscient•2mo ago
I remember the quote, maybe not word for word, but Lee said something like:

"You're going to do all that for the computer? What are you going to do for the people?"

JKCalhoun•2mo ago
For someone whose claim to fame was during the onboarding of the personal computer, I wish Wikipedia would provide period-appropriate images.

For example, I found this one of a younger Lee: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/still-i...

kevinwang•2mo ago
Good idea! Anyone should be able to add it if it's in the public domain.
DonHopkins•2mo ago
I asked Lee about that great photo and he wrote:

Prototype for the Automatic Photoelectric Keratometer, (US 4,345,437 - 1966, to Westheimer and Felsenstein). Taken by myself in the lab of Gerald Westheimer in 1965.

Vacuum tube electronics of my design controlling an oscilloscope pattern focused on a sumulated eyeball with two photomultiplier tubes catching the glint (specular) reflection and reversing the sweep direction.

A poor idea which went nowhere but it got a patent for the professor who generously included me as co-inventor and coauthor of a paper.

UC Berkeley School of Optometry — I was a Lab Helper at $2.03/hour. Prof. Westheimer later moved to Physiology. He was 99 in 2023 when we last met.

kragen•2mo ago
For the primary photo on biographies of living people, Wikipedia prefers photos to be as current as possible.
Triphibian•2mo ago
Just recently read his memoir, "Me and My Big Ideas," which gives a fascinating look at the meeting of modern computing and the counterculture. It feels more and more important to get these stories down while we still can.
DonHopkins•2mo ago
To quote Lee: "To change the rules - change the tools!"

http://www.FelsenSigns.com

He's reissued the classic Homebrew Computer Club t-shirts he sold at the final meeting, and also posters!

https://felsensigns.com/engineers-and-programmers-with-attit...

>The cartoon shows a caricature of Chares Proteus Steinmetz – a hero of mine, posing for a photograph at the inauguration of one of his big generators (he taught American engineers how to calculate with alternating current starting around 1890). He was a German immigrant hunchback dwarf and was never admitted to “polite society” of the day, but he changed to world.

>The front of the shirt shows him in front of the massive, throbbing machine – hand on the switch, dressed in formal wear. The rear of the shirt shows the rear view, with Steinmetz’ fingers crossed as the photographer takes his shot.

dmazin•2mo ago
If this guy is interesting to you, I recommend "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry"[1]. Really good computing history book, and I've read a lot of them. Lee is a major character in the book.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said

croemer•2mo ago
Brother of the famous (in phylogenetics circles) Joe Felsenstein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Felsenstein
robterrell•2mo ago
Lee will be speaking next month in San Jose at an event for the 50th anniversary of the Byte Shop computer store. Incredible opportunity to hear from the man himself. For computer designers of the 8-bit era, I’d say he ranks next to Woz in terms of importance: the Sol-80, Osborne, Homebrew Computer Club, member of the Berkeley free speech movement. Curious to hear his thoughts on the industry today.
benjedwards•2mo ago
Are you related to Paul? I noticed the last name. :)
robterrell•2mo ago
Yep! Paul is my uncle. My parents had a franchise Byte Shop in Greensboro, NC when I was a kid.
dopamean•2mo ago
This is so cool. How lucky to have such a close experience to that scene. I'm jealous.
benjedwards•2mo ago
That's really neat. I had no idea there was a Byte Shop in Greensboro. My wife's family is from that area. I live in Raleigh, NC. Now I am wondering if my nerdy father-in-law ever visited it back in the day.
rohitkhare•2mo ago
Any link or details for the event?

I tried looking for SJSU events and found the earlier Vintage Computing Fair talks, but at least I can trade this time capsule link from that era even if it doesn't quote me toon the Byte Shop specifically: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1977/04/04/bytes-and-chip...

robterrell•2mo ago
I know it's been days but since you asked he made a link:

https://byteshop50thyearbirthdayp.rsvpify.com

nickpinkston•2mo ago
Lee is so cool and humble.

In my mid 20s, I ran the SF Hardware Meetup, and Lee came and just told me something like: "Oh yea, I've been into hardware for a long time.", and only later did I realize who he was haha.

Like others here, I was concerned seeing his name trending here, and I'm so glad he's still alive.

Lee represents the best of mentalities of the tech scene, and I hope we can get back to a more pro-social place and away from this profit-first bubble shit.

ohjeez•2mo ago
Jesus Christ you just scared me. Next time, post a title like "Lee Felsenstein (is fine)," please!
ChrisGammell•2mo ago
Interview with Lee at the end of 2024 on The Amp Hour podcast: https://theamphour.com/684-lee-felsenstein-the-computer-revo...
sakebomb•2mo ago
If you haven't read his book, check it out: Me and My Big Ideas: Counterculture, Social Media, and the Future http://amazon.com/Me-My-Big-Ideas-Counterculture/dp/B0DJ8T45...
lproven•2mo ago
For those afflicted by Meta syndrome, Lee F is a fairly regular poster and commenter in the Vintage Computer Club group. :-)