Great article, thanks for posting. It makes me think about car detailers obsessing over paint matching for repairs on older vehicles. As a petrolhead I sometimes wonder to what extent there will be an equivalent collectors community of old PC hardware to the car community. Obviously there already is substantial interest in older PC's but if you compare the similarly widespread use of cars and computers I'd say that there are many more forums discussing old car maintenance, availability of very specialized detailing products for cars, marketplaces for collectible cars, concours for showing cars off etc. than there are for collecting/restoring PC's.
Maybe PC collecting, restoring etc. will be as big a deal but it's just early on the curve still. Or maybe the comparatively much higher steepness of the progress curve for PCs will prevent any sort of similar widespread enthusiasm for older stuff.
There are people collecting and repairing 80's computers already.
I guess the biggest difference is that you can still use a collector car to go for a drive today, but on the other hand there is not much practical use to get from a collector computer. Sure, you can play old games, but most of the task you'd do with a modern computer can't be done with an old one (unlike cars).
I'm definitely not arguing there aren't people collecting these iconic old computers - just the mismatch between how many people have used computers daily for 20/30 years now and how few people seem to collect them. In my small-sized city in a small country there are maybe 25 car clubs I could be part of, specialist garages for just about every brand of car - even really niche shops that just do custom re-upholstery only for certain brands etc. Whereas for computers there's just a handful of people using the local auction and classified sites.
I think the reason you cite for the mismatch is the strongest one. If you're into collecting 80's BMWs you can still easily drive with a club including newer cars every weekend on the same roads, use the same petrol, easily get plugs, belts other parts etc. But an 80's PC is much more "stuck in time" and you need to be quite knowledgeable to maintain and enjoy in the same way.
2-3 years ago I found my mom's old clamshell G3 iBook in her garage (from around 2000). Surprisingly it still booted up and worked great. I wanted to do some writing that trip and instead of using my own laptop which was full of distractions, I opted to use Word on the iBook. Which was also fun.
I saved my work as a text file on a USB stick, which was no problem bringing over to my modern Mac.
It's gonna be interesting to see how well old USB ports will be supported in the long term with everyone rushing for thin machines with USB-C (sure you could buy a hub).
Back in 2000 my first laptop had a serial port and i bought a Wacom serial based tablet for it. A couple of years later that was gone and i had to buy a USB Wacom (that still works with win10 on modern machines!!). So for some other HW project i had to find a USB-Serial converter, so the question will be, are we really supporting the same old standards if we're forced to chase dongles?
Meanwhile, on a system from the 80s, you wouldn't have a word processor, you wouldn't have support for any of the filesystems supported by modern OSes (well, maybe FAT?), and you wouldn't have USB anyway. Heck, you'd need either a serial port or a floppy drive on a modern computer in order to even have a chance of transferring data between them.
You wouldn't have a word processor? There's lots of word processors for CP/M, MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari, Tandy TRS-80, Tandy CoCo, not to mention proprietary machines like the Tandy 100/102/200 portables. A USB-Serial adapter works just fine. Or you can get a bluetooth or wifi modem that connects your old machine to the net.
Umm...just download it? https://winworldpc.com/product/wordstar/ Sure you need to transfer the files over, but that's quick work with a cheap serial to USB adapter or a USB floppy drive if the target machine has 3.5" drive
You could hook up a Mac to the internet in 1985-ish, transferring files using telnet.
Mac OS still ships with BinHex (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BinHex), I think, so for Macs, that might already be the simplest way to exchange data between an early Mac and a modern machine (even if you have a floppy drive, does it read Mac disks?)
Edit: maybe my memory is of, and it was direct dial-up to another machine, not across the internet. NCSA Telnet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_Telnet) supported TCP/IP before the OS did (yes, that was possible. I don’t know whether you still could do that on a modern system), though, so who knows?
> supported TCP/IP before the OS did (yes, that was possible. I don’t know whether you still could do that on a modern system), though, so who knows?
In general you can. If the OS lets you open raw sockets, you can implement TCP and all yourself in userspace. Although in those days, I'm guessing it was actually implementing the entire AT modem stack too, and just driving the modem directly via a serial port.
> You could hook up a Mac to the internet in 1985-ish, transferring files using telnet.
I'm sure you could. In 1985-ish.
How much of the required hardware still exists? How much of the required software can you find? Is that software (or another version of it) also compatible with your modern computer? etc.
Also WordPerfect for DOS! We had an old XT that was "my" computer, and I did a lot of homework on it. Pretty sure it was WP5.1, which would have come out in '89, which matches the timeline pretty well (I think we got that computer around '92 or so).
At least in Germany, I think you can absolutely compare the usage of retro computers to the usage of retro cars. Noone uses their retro car for day-to-day business. They maybe use it to drive out on a warm summer day, but not to go to work. Just like how you'd use a retro computer in your spare time to enjoy some classic games and not to post on Hacker News or get actual work done.
Technically, sure, you can use your retro car every day. But most people don't, probably because it would be less practical and also lower the value of the car over time.
I think one of the reasons the retro car thing is so huge in the USA is that the cars STILL EXIST on the road - there are (poor) people using ancient cars as daily drivers, so when the desire comes to find a retro vehicle, they're out there and available and cheap.
Not so much with old computers - NOBODY, not even the poor in the USA, are trying to make do with a 8086 as a daily computer. Phones and better computers are simply too cheap and available.
Are car licenses (whatever you want to call it) more lax in the US? In the UK it is more expensive running old cars because there's an annual "Ministry of Transport test" (which is broadly just referred to as "MOT") with really strict regulations. If your car fails it then it's not road legal.
I remember from my trips to America that even some of the well maintained cars there wouldn't have been legal in the UK. For example some didn't have orange indicators, instead using the red break lights as an indicator.
Most states actually make it CHEAPER to use an older car - for example, California does NOT require smog checks on cars made before 1975.
A very few states have a more stringent "inspection" but it mainly checks that the car has working lights and brakes - nothing like an actual costly check.
The USA doesn't even mandate daytime running lights as far as I know.
Some states also have 'classic' registration which (in WI at least) is paid once and lasts as long as you own the vehicle. It's more expensive up front than a regular yearly registration, but once it's done it's done. It also carries additional restrictions befitting the intended operation of a 'classic' (e.g., owner must also have a regularly registered vehicle, not allowed to drive in January, hauling restrictions if it's a truck) which make it cheaper only as a second vehicle.
The rules are designed to apply to vehicles being preserved, and are a help to hobbyists who can afford to own two or more cars. They seem to be designed - for better or worse - to exclude people who happen to rely on an older car as their only vehicle.
For example, I’m from Illinois, and you only have to have an emissions test in the Chicago and East St. Louis regions. I grew up near Peoria, where you can seemingly drive whatever disgusting uranium-and-coal-fired jalopy you want.
It depends on the state, some do annual emissions and/or safety inspections and require failed vehicles to get fixed. But a lot will just let you drive nearly anything.
Depends in the state and county. Some require both an emissions and safety check, but the safety is far less strict than the MOT. Some only require emissions testing. In some cases no testing is required at all, e.g. niche vehicles like motorcycles and conversion kits for SxS ATVs.
You can find a lot of posts with people successfully using cream hair bleach and UV lights to restore 80's PCs. They call it "retrobrighting". One resource: https://powercc.org/retrobright/
People already collect and restore computers. Retro gaming and retro computing is a big scene already. However most IBM-clone towers aren't worth restoring because they're common, not particularly powerful and thus cheap to come by. Much like how a 1990s Ford Escort is going to fetch less interest than a Jaguar from the same era.
This is also a really good point - I was specifically thinking of PC's in my point above and you're right there is a lot more interest in old gaming systems. Maybe part of it is also the emotional connection and what does or doesn't have it, there are definitely a lot of old cars no one is collecting! Nassim Taleb's "graveyard of silent evidence" at play in my first comment.
>Maybe PC collecting, restoring etc. will be as big a deal but it's just early on the curve still
It is a fairly big deal for a lot of us, just in this room I'm sitting in I've got 3 vintage machines from the late 70s to early 80s, and 3 generations of Windows machines (95, 98, XP), alongside my work and personal computers. There are vintage computer fairs the world around, there are vintage computer clubs (ours here in the general Indy area meets monthly) the world around, there are numerous podcasts and some sizable YouTube content creators too.
There is even a healthy level of developing new software and hardware for vintage computers and consoles.
https://atariage.com/ is a quick look at (mostly, but not exclusively) Atari related for example. Then you have
There is also a very healthy vintage computer preservation community on the Internet Archive - preserving magazines, zines, newsletters, manuals, schematics, software, etc.
If you don't mind my asking - do you know any channels or places that do full longplays of games on original hardware with no emulation? I try my best to find walkthroughs on games on youtube but they very rarely specify that it is using the original hardware. And Xbox og/360 longplays are the easiest because they haven't been emulated properly so almost all videos are on the hardware afaik.
Looking for 1997-2006 PC gaming and PS1/PS2.
I guess I just like videos that aren't emulated and people like LGR only provide clips:P
I believe this post ignores the implications of increased surface level radiation (Mars does not have a protective magnetosphere). See the two articles I link below.
A structure like this might make sense for a shorter mission - but considering the thought experiment asks what structure would be suitable for a long term Musk-style settlement I don't think thin ETFE would be enough.
At least part of the radiation risk is temporary solar events, so perhaps you could use a slightly hardened version of ETFE as the author suggests but keep all human activity near regularly placed deep shelters to retreat to when radiation spikes are detected?
The article's author points out that normal radiation on Mars is about the same as background radiation in Ramsar, Iran. Residents there have normal lifespans and cancer rates. Solar storms are a problem but fortunately, they give you enough warning to take shelter.
Thanks for this interesting link - I take back my criticism of the article! Based on your comment and that of t3hz0r it sounds like the martian colonists would be fine with this setup, as long as they mainly worked and lived in shielded habitats within the ETFE covered areas and also had underground shelters for emergency radiation protection.
I'll just point out that a Boring Co machine will fit inside a Starship.
Underground may be the only way to live, given that radiation dosage is cumulative, 24/7, it may not be possible to live on the surface at all in inflated domes. Maybe they're better suited for equipment storage and agriculture.
I think the implication is that under this tented tensile structure you could build whatever radiation shielded (or not) structures you wanted, and this just contains the air.
Radioactive particles (dust) in air are problematic. The gas in air does not become radioactive (at least in a dangerous way) from exposure to radiation.
If the surface of mars is exposed to radiation capable of making particles become radioactive, does that mean the surface is already radioactive? Or would this only happen to airborne dust particles, not to sand particles on the ground?
If you're breathing silica dust you're going to get silicosis anyway, so there's not much point worrying about it.
Maybe the living area buildings inside the tent can have a vestible / "dustlock" for keeping the dust outside, and outside those it just becomes standard to wear a dust mask.
If you’re putting all of your eggs in the “shielded other structures” - why have the other structure in the first place? It’s not as if you can live outside those “other structures” if you’ll just die of radiation poisoning.
Or, to put it another way, any structure capable of shielding against cosmic radiation should be capable of also holding air (we’ve gotten really good at that).
The biggest problem of these artificial environments is the threat of sabotage from either disgruntled, suicidal or criminal minds.
You can vet people as much as you want but with the pop they are talking about someone’s bound to go crazy or be an agent of discontent. And then if they are settlers of course their children can be as varied as they are on Earth, which means the possibility of the same.
I don't see where criminal fits in aside from the fact that a sabotage of that sort would rightfully be hideously illegal. What is to gain personally from that destruction?
It might be a pedantic quibble but I can see power as the only "rational" sabotage motive. Which could include some disgruntlement. Either to oust management or rivals to gain control or possibly international politics where one thinks they can gain from the loss of the colony for the sake of their earth nation.
Suicidal can be taken as granted to be irrational and disgruntled relatedly as "so fed up they want to see everything collapse to make them suffer".
Imagine beeing sentenced to a desert prison, by your parents, a monastry of eternal work and little fun, where all the beauty of world, is that coming from another world, as videos, games and mail, which you can never reach.
Maybe a part of the mission is to design a society to minimize or eliminate violence, mental illness, crime, etc. What would a society look like that depends on near-perfect harmony and peace for its very survival?
I would argue that it would be a dead society. It just takes one person who feels that being hurt themselves is worth it just to hurt others for whatever reason.
After completing the course I can't recommend Startup School enough. For a free course the value I got out of it was amazing.
* Our group's mentor (James, co-Founder of Lista YC S09) was totally committed and freely giving of his time. We could set up individual office hours for 1-on-1 advice and he put a ton of effort into surveying us & adjusting his approach so we could get maximum value.
* Being part of a 25 startup cohort (the size of our group) was hugely motivating. Even when the conversation in our video chat office hours wasn't perfectly incisive it was still energizing to hear other founders pushing at the same things you're facing.
* The internal Startup School networking tools were decently effective and I don't think YC talked about them too much when inviting people to apply. Building a network of other founders when you're bootstrapping in Cape Town, South Africa can be a little tough. Now I've got around 30 different folks I'm emailing with - all of whom have resonating experiences due to the Tinder-style networking tool in the Startup School portal.
* I also got around $5000 in AWS, Azure and GCP credits. Apart from being able to spend this year's infrastructure money on other business things (awesome!) I can also experiment pretty freely with the different platforms and pick the most ideal setup for my app.
I'm building a tool for ongoing monitoring of your HTTPS state & configuration. Feel free to mail me (address in profile) to chat about it or Startup School!
It now looks like there were some technical issues with the demo day page and it's been taken down for now. The time limit for me to deleting my post has expired so maybe a mod who sees this can remove it?
After completing the course I can't recommend Startup School enough. For a free course the value I got out of it was amazing.
* Our group's mentor (James, co-Founder of Lista YC S09) was totally committed and freely giving of his time. We could set up individual office hours for 1-on-1 advice and he put a ton of effort into surveying us & adjusting his approach so we could get maximum value.
* Being part of a 25 startup cohort (the size of our group) was hugely motivating. Even when the conversation in our video chat office hours wasn't perfectly incisive it was still energizing to hear other founders pushing at the same things you're facing.
* The internal Startup School networking tools were decently effective and I don't think YC talked about them too much when inviting people to apply. Building a network of other founders when you're bootstrapping in Cape Town, South Africa can be a little tough. Now I've got around 30 different folks I'm emailing with - all of whom have resonating experiences due to the Tinder-style networking tool in the Startup School portal.
* I also got around $5000 in AWS, Azure and GCP credits. Apart from being able to spend this year's infrastructure money on other business things (awesome!) I can also experiment pretty freely with the different platforms and pick the most ideal setup for my app.
I'm building a tool for ongoing monitoring of your HTTPS state & configuration. Feel free to mail me (address in profile) to chat about it or Startup School!
My main focus is ongoing alerting of changes to HTTPS configs rather than just a one off check. So you can be confident that everything is up to your spec or know as soon as something isn't.
Because we'll know your setup we can also alert you to things you specifically should be aware of - for instance a browser policy change that would affect user experience due to your certificates not meeting the browser policy etc.
Feel free to mail me if you'd like more info! (email in profile.)
(PS. YC Startup School's virtual demo day is tomorrow if you're interested! All the startups that completed the course are posting a short demo video.)
This is a useful resource - thanks for compiling it.
I'd suggest allowing users to submit short reviews of each ebook. I'd imagine it would be useful to have some insight as to which book would be most helpful for different circumstances - especially once you start to get some more submissions and there are more books per category.
Web of Trust is a browser extension that claims 140 million installs. The marketing language on the home page [1] is all about how the extension will help users decide which websites to trust.
Their privacy statement [2] includes a section that describes "Browsing usage, including visited web pages, clickstream data or web address accessed;" as one of the categories of "non-personal information" that they may disclose or share with 3rd parties.
I'd imagine most users installing an extension to make their browsing safer would not be happy to know they were also making their entire browsing history available to 3rd party data brokers at the same time.
Unscrupulous business practices are definitely made easier when no one actually reads Privacy Policies...
The info collected is not considered as consented by the user in Germany by the Hamburg commissioner for data protection:
"disclosure of personal data, companies need basically a data subject's consent." "an extensive evaluation the data by Web of Trust is therefore under German law "not allowed"
And I think, assuming its the same as many other EU countries, that means active consent, not just implicit (e.g. you used the product so you implicitly consented to the privacy policy)
They would just start obfuscating the data (with ciphers, word replacements, encoding, minification, etc.)
They'd then claim it was for your security/privacy/protection. You know, like how Microsoft encrypts your Windows 10 usage data it sends them.
At least you could use the presence of such obfuscation as a sign there's probably something bad afoot. Presuming only a tiny number of extensions try to encode the data they send.
I do not think collecting data on users is necessary. You still can show ads in search results even if you don't know anything about a user. And you don't need user's browsing history to sell him an airplane ticket.
Most people would just press "Agree" without reading it, but giving the possibility to read the data only when you want would give to expert users the way to occasionally check what the addons are doing.
In the article you posted the WOT spokesperson appears to say that they'll be making sure that data is better anonymized in future - not that they will stop selling it. I don't think this type of response is going to work out well for them...
"When there are cases where information has not been anonymized and protected, we will, of course, review this and, if necessary, take steps to ensure adequate protection for our users."
Maybe PC collecting, restoring etc. will be as big a deal but it's just early on the curve still. Or maybe the comparatively much higher steepness of the progress curve for PCs will prevent any sort of similar widespread enthusiasm for older stuff.