Feb 24, 2020

The floppy disk was a ubiquitous technology for nearly 40 years. From mainframes to home computers, the plastic disk was everywhere. And in the decades it was around there were very few changes made to how it fundamentally worked. So how did it get so popular? What made the floppy disk so flexible? And how did it...

Feb 10, 2020

Our modern world is full of software, it's what makes everything tick. The sheer amount of code that goes into something like keeping the internet running is staggering. Programming isn't the easiest profession, but there was a time when it was much much harder. It took a huge shift in thinking, and some impressive...

Jan 26, 2020

Many video games today make use of randomized content, some more than others. It may seem like an obvious feature, but it turns out that procedural generation didn't really catch on in video games until the 1980 release of Rogue. The game itself never saw much commercial success, but was wildly popular among UNIX users....

Jan 13, 2020

It's time to continue our deep dive into the legacy of Intel's processors. This episode we will be looking at the 8008, the second microprocessor produced by Intel and the progenitor of the x86 family. Along the way we will see how an innovative terminal from 1969 inspired the chip, how Intel lost a contract, and...

Jan 6, 2020

In this mini episode we will look at the Y2K bug, and some of the recipes it spawned. That's right, we are talking about Y2K cookbooks!

You can find all more Y2K compliant food here: https://web.archive.org/web/19991012032855/http://y2kkitchen.com/

Get your very own Advent of Computing merch and support the show here: