Tagged “history”
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TIL why jpeg vs jpg image extension history
In DOS systems, a filename extension was a different part of the name stored in a different field that can only be 3 characters. You still see this legacy today in Microsoft's .NET software, where most system calls that use the word 'filename' in their name don't really mean the whole filename. They mean just the part without the extension.
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TIL the first webcam history webcam coffee
The Trojan Room coffee pot was a coffee machine located in the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, England. Created in 1991 by Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky, it was migrated from their laboratory network to the web in 1993 becoming the world's first webcam.
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TIL the history of fonts fonts history browser
We came up with all sorts of clever techniques to do what was called 'image replacement' for text. Some of the techniques involved CSS and background images. One of the techniques involved Flash
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TIL Rainbow Books for CD formats history cd data videogames
Several volumes of specifications covering the topic, together called the 'Rainbow Books', were released over a period of 20 years from 1980 to 2000.
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TIL how JSON bet on simplicity json api history
I had a goal of being able to put JSON standard on the back of a business card
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TIL IBM had corporate songs history
In 1927, Watson ordered the company to publish a songbook titled 'Songs of the IBM,' to be distributed to employees
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TIL about why Node was invented node history javascript
Node.js applications never buffer data, which dramatically reduces the processing time of uploading files, such as videos or audios. In other words, it simply outputs data in chunks, meaning that, for example, a user can watch videos without any interruption.
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TIL a junior dev who programmed a World Heroes Genesis by himself gamedev history
Yeah, World Heroes (even the original) wasn't anything to write home about. I had to squeeze 82M into a 16M cartridge. The source code was in assembly with absolutely no documentation. There were no testers. There was no one to help me port the artwork.
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TIL the first computer bug history bug
On September 9, 1947, a team of computer scientists and engineers reported the world’s first computer bug. The team at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, found that their computer, the Mark II, was delivering consistent errors.
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TIL the origins of the term Algorithms history math trivia
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi's name is a reference to where he was from — 'al-Khwarizm' means that he was from Khwarazm, a region roughly on the border of modern-day Uzbekistan and Turkmenista. Al-Khwarizmi was, somehow, recorded as something close to 'Algorizmi' which, in turn, became our all-purpose math word: algorithm.
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TIL about a a 12 year old bug that finally get's squashed. wordpress history bugs
Someone noticed a potential optimization issue, and the technical debt piled on thanks to new features, encapsulating them for reusability, then calling them over and over.
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TIL that there was a menu element in prior HTML versions history html web-development
There was a menu element that we replaced with ul and li elements
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TIL how the old generation of engineers thought about their code quotes book history
At it's core, all engineering was about making trade offs between the perfect and the workable.
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TIL SmooshGate javascript history
It was a a proposal for a JavaScript language feature called `Array.prototype.flatten`.
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TIL why NASA will not be able to have usable spacesuits history
The answers were mostly because the space suits of the past were made in a specific way that we can't replicate without building it from scratch again.
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TIL 1999 security preach in Hotmail accounts history
Anyone could read or send email from a Hotmail account
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