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Why etymologies matter: How tracing words can illuminate history (2024)
2 months ago
- Etymology reveals historical shifts in meaning, such as the Farsi word 'div' changing from 'god' to 'demon' due to ancient Zoroastrian religious schism.
- Cognates across Indo-European languages, like Farsi 'abru' (eyebrow) and English 'eyebrow', or 'lox' (salmon) preserved for millennia, highlight deep linguistic connections.
- Etymology helps historians trace ancient stories, like 'The Smith and the Devil', which may date back 6,000–7,000 years to Proto-Indo-European times.
- The word 'hello' shows how technology (the telephone) shaped modern language, shifting from expressions of surprise to a standard greeting in the late 19th century.
- Shared etymological roots underscore the interconnectedness of human history, bridging cultures often portrayed as separate, such as English and Persian.
How Old Is Ann?
2 months ago
- The classic age puzzle 'How old is Ann?' was popularized in the early 1900s, first appearing in the New York World around 1903, causing a nationwide craze.
- The problem: Mary is 24 and twice as old as Ann was when Mary was as old as Ann is now. The correct answer is 16, though common wrong answers include 12.
- The puzzle spawned songs, plays, and widespread public debate, with many prominent figures offering incorrect or humorous solutions.
- The origin is credited to Robert D. Towne, who first published it in the Newark Evening News in April 1903 under the pen name Perkin Warbeck.
- A related puzzle is also included: A man is twice the age his wife was when he was her age; when she reaches his age, their combined ages will be 100.
Before the theorem prover: verification is older than the alphabet
2 months ago
- Verification predates writing; around 3300 BC, sealed clay envelopes with redundant marks evolved into writing itself.
- Ancient civilizations had checksums, audits, inverse-operation verification, acceptance tests, split-key authentication, and signed certificates.
- Athens' 375/4 BC coin law carved a complete verification system into marble: written spec, daily verifier, per-defect actions, and sanctions on the checker.
- Ancient checks had known limits: casting-out-nines misses errors divisible by nine; the Talmud admitted its letter-count expertise had decayed.
- The 20th century added formal specifications as theorems (for all inputs) and automated verifiers that can themselves be verified.
A Playable History of Sudoku
2 months ago
- Sudoku evolved from Latin squares, which require each symbol to appear once per row and column, but Sudoku adds the 3×3 box constraint.
- The modern puzzle first appeared as 'Number Place' in a 1979 Dell magazine, likely created by retired architect Howard Garns, though no signed proof exists.
- The puzzle gained its name 'Sudoku' in Japan after Nikoli introduced it in 1984; Nikoli later limited starting clues to 32 and required symmetrical arrangements.
- Wayne Gould developed a program to generate Sudoku puzzles and offered them to newspapers; The Times published the first daily grid in November 2004.
- Sudoku spread globally due to its language-free rules; the first World Sudoku Championship was held in 2006 with 22 countries and 18 puzzle variants.
History of PuTTY's development
2 months ago
- PuTTY began as a personal project (STel) in 1996 to address poor terminal emulation in Windows Telnet clients.
- In 1998, it was converted into a multi-protocol client with SSH-1 support and renamed PuTTY.
- First public release in 1999 with a single executable and no installer, manual, or zip file.
- Key features were added through community contributions: SCP (1999), X11 forwarding (2001), TCP port forwarding (2001), and Unicode support (2001).
- A manual was finally written in 2002.
- In 2002, the terminal emulator was ported to Linux, creating pterm and a full Linux version of PuTTY.
- Later major features include serial port support (2007) and connection sharing (2015), both requiring significant code restructuring.
- A server-side SSH refactoring in 2019 was done as a development tool, not for production use.
- Development was driven by 'dogfooding' (using the software personally) and community contributions, with little long-term planning.
- Serial port support was an exception: written by the original author due to user demand, despite lacking personal need.
telecheck and tyms past
2 months ago
- TeleCheck was founded in 1964 by Harry M. Flagg as a check guarantee service that used a centralized database of bad check writers to help retailers verify checks in real time.
- The service operated via phone calls to operators who checked the database, and TeleCheck guaranteed approved checks, reimbursing merchants if they bounced.
- TeleCheck expanded rapidly through franchises, built a nationwide network, and diversified into medical billing, matchmaking, and other data processing ventures.
- In 1980, TeleCheck was acquired by Tymshare, a time-sharing and networking company that built the Tymnet packet-switched network used for transactions.
- After Tymshare, TeleCheck passed to McDonnell-Douglas and then First Data (now Fiserv), evolving into a general payments processor, including electronic check conversion via ACH.
- The company faced legal challenges over its credit reporting practices, including linked identity databases, and spun off its debt collection arm as TRS Recovery Services.
- Despite the decline of personal checks, TeleCheck still operates as a legacy cash cow, integrated into modern payment terminals and online ACH payments.
the totalisator
2 months ago
- Gambling has become a primary engine in the software industry despite its unsavory history.
- Horse racing, with roots in 16th-century England, was the main venue for legal sports betting in the US until Murphy v. NCAA.
- Parimutuel betting, invented by Josep Oller, calculates payouts from a pool rather than fixed odds, making betting against other bettors.
- George Julius developed the first parallel automatic totalisator in 1913, a massive mechanical calculator for racetrack betting.
- The totalisator evolved from all-mechanical to electromechanical systems using relays and solenoids, then to computer-based systems in the 1960s.
email encryption
2 months ago
- Email was designed in an era of trust, lacking security features like confidentiality and integrity.
- MIME was created to handle non-ASCII content but added complexity and inefficiency.
- X.400 was a comprehensive but failed OSI standard for encrypted email, reliant on a global directory.
- PGP introduced end-to-end encryption with a 'web of trust' key model, but suffered from usability and scaling issues.
- S/MIME became the corporate standard using PKI and certificate authorities, yet remains complex and non-interoperable.
- Modern email encryption often relies on in-transit protections like STARTTLS, DANE, and MTA-STS, which are transparent to users.
- End-to-end encryption (PGP/S/MIME) has low adoption due to complexity, while service-provider encryption is more common.
The hardest working font in Manhattan
2 months ago
- Gorton is a monoline routing font used in engraving machines, originating from Taylor, Taylor & Hobson in 1894 and later licensed to George Gorton Machine Co.
- It is ubiquitous on keycaps, signs, intercoms, military equipment, nuclear facilities, and even the Apollo spacecraft, but remains largely unrecognized and unnamed.
- The font has many variations and names, including Leroy, Wrico, and others, and has been used for over 135 years.
- The author walked over 100 miles in Manhattan to photograph Gorton, documenting its widespread but overlooked presence.
- Gorton is characterized by its imperfect, weathered, and honest appearance, which the author finds appealing and endearing.
- The article serves as both a historical tribute and a eulogy for a disappearing font that is no longer widely used in new installations.
Iconography of the PuTTY tools
2 months ago
- PuTTY's original icon (late 1990s) featured two computers connected by a yellow lightning bolt, using a 16-color palette at 32x32 pixels.
- PSCP and PSFTP icons reused the same computer design with a document, while Pageant introduced a computer wearing a hat, adding a 16x16 size for the system tray.
- PuTTYgen's icon paired a computer with a key, and the configuration dialog added a spanner overlay, both for visual consistency.
- In 2007, a script was created to auto-generate icons at 48x48, 32x32, and 16x16 sizes, plus black-and-white versions, improving consistency and quality.
- Linux ports (pterm) reused the computer icon, and later true-color support allowed brown for the installer's cardboard box icon via halftoning.
- Recent SVG versions of the icons were created for scalability, though the original 1990s styling is intentionally preserved as 'reassuringly old-fashioned'.
Weekly Links for August 8, 2024
2 months ago
- Airlines are facing a shortage of flight numbers and are unsure how to address it.
- Newly discovered fragments of Euripides' works are considered significant.
- A reverse-engineering project analyzes the 59-pound printer used on the Space Shuttle, questioning its design choices.
- The European Space Agency warns that space is becoming an unsustainable environment in the long term.
- The second edition of the book 'Artificial Intelligence and Games' is now available as a public draft.
- A computer archeology exploration examines the anatomy of an MS-DOS virus.
- The final days of the lonely interstellar spacecraft are documented.
Weekly Links for September 8, 2024
2 months ago
- The oldest company in the world has survived for nearly 1,500 years.
- An explanation of how banking works.
- A report on an air conditioner costing $1,697 for just an on/off switch.
- A reflection on playing the Oregon Trail game.
- An unverified but plausible explanation of the 'Buy, Borrow, Die' tax strategy.
History of PowerDNS: 1999-2003 - Bert Hubert's writings
2 months ago
- PowerDNS was launched during the dot com boom, initially to create geographical load balancing DNS software for V3's redirection service.
- The early PowerDNS version, called AhuDNS, was a closed-source C++ project with modular database backends, replacing a djbdns prototype.
- PowerDNS shared offices with ZEP Holding in The Hague, moving to a former embassy building that was slated for demolition.
- The main business opportunity was fulfilling the need for database-driven DNS, as BIND scaled poorly and relied on text-based zone files.
- PowerDNS struggled with sales because its pitch threatened sysadmins' jobs, and it failed to connect with senior management.
- After downsizing due to lack of revenue, PowerDNS open-sourced its software under GPLv2, which kept it alive despite company struggles.
- Key employees included Stefan Arentz (logo designer), Floor Plikaar, Hartger Ruijs, and Michel Stol (Windows port), but not all hires were successful.
- PowerDNS 1.0 failed due to lack of strategic vision and inability to attract talent for telecom market, while competitors like Infoblox and Nominum succeeded.
A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages
2 months ago
- 1801: Jacquard's loom uses punch cards to weave text, lacking modern features.
- 1842: Ada Lovelace writes the first program without a computer.
- 1936: Alan Turing and Alonzo Church independently invent all future programming languages.
- 1940s: Early computers programmed with wires and switches to avoid syntax debates.
- 1957: IBM's FORTRAN is created, requiring formal attire.
- 1958: LISP is invented but suffers from parentheses shortage.
- 1959: COBOL emerges from a bet with L. Ron Hubbard, leading to later controversies.
- 1964: BASIC is developed for non-computer scientists.
- 1970: Scheme and Pascal are introduced, criticized for not being C-like before C exists.
- 1972: Dennis Ritchie invents C and Unix; Prolog answers 'No.' to every query.
- 1973: ML is created based on M&M type theory, leading to SML and other variants.
- 1980: Alan Kay defines Smalltalk as objects all the way down to turtles.
- 1983: Ada is designed for the US DoD, with few completed programs; C++ is bolted onto C.
- 1986: Objective-C combines C and Smalltalk with memory safety issues.
- 1987: Perl is born from Larry Wall's accidental keyboard impression.
- 1990: Haskell introduces monads, confusing critics.
- 1991: Python is created with dictatorial principles.
- 1995: PHP, Ruby, and JavaScript are invented; JavaScript renamed multiple times.
- 1996: Java is released, heralded as novel despite similarities to earlier languages.
- 2001: C# follows Java's pattern, also hailed as novel.
- 2003: Scala unifies object-oriented and functional programming, angering both camps.
How real are real numbers? (2004)
2 months ago
- The paper is categorized under Mathematics > History and Overview.
- Submitted by Gregory J. Chaitin with multiple versions (Nov 18, 24, 29, 2004).
- The page lists various bibliographic and citation tools (e.g., Bibliographic Explorer, Connected Papers, scite).
- Tools for code, data, and media (e.g., alphaXiv, CatalyzeX, Hugging Face) are included.
- Recommender and search tools like Influence Flower and CORE Recommender are provided.
- arXivLabs enables community collaboration on experimental projects.
Online Historical Encyclopaedia of Programming Languages
2 months ago
- The online roster lists 8,945 programming languages from the 18th century to the present.
- It includes 7,800 influence links and over 11,000 citations.
- The genealogical tree of HOPL is maintained by librarians Diarmuid J Pigott and Bruce M Axtens, with quartermaster Steve Poulson.
- The content is copyrighted by Diarmuid Pigott from 1995-2020, with a prohibition on copying or reproduction.
- Errata and crash notifications can be sent to hopl.acquisitions@gmail.com.
The Origins of Modern Mathematics in Russia
2 months ago
- Peter the Great founded the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1724, prioritizing mathematics to modernize the state.
- Christian Wolff recruited Daniel and Nikolaus Bernoulli from Basel to the St. Petersburg Academy, bringing Leonhard Euler as a young prodigy.
- Euler spent 31 years in Russia, mastering Russian, producing most of his 900 works, and training the first generation of Russian mathematicians.
- Euler defended Mikhail Lomonosov against Academy officials, recognizing his genius and preventing his marginalization.
- Mikhail Ostrogradsky became the first native Russian mathematician of European caliber, known for the divergence theorem (Gauss–Ostrogradsky), variational calculus, Ostrogradsky's instability theorem, and founding Russian mathematical physics.
- Viktor Bunyakovsky contributed the Cauchy–Bunyakovsky inequality, the Bunyakovsky conjecture on prime-valued polynomials, early probability theory texts, and served as a stabilizing institutional leader.
- Nikolai Lobachevsky invented hyperbolic (non-Euclidean) geometry, challenging the parallel postulate, but faced rejection in Russia; his work was later validated by Beltrami, Klein, and Poincaré.
- Pafnuty Chebyshev established the St. Petersburg school, excelling in number theory, probability, and approximation, and trained students like Markov, Lyapunov, and Steklov.
- Moscow mathematics developed later with Dmitry Egorov and Nikolai Luzin, who introduced set theory and measure theory from France, founding the Moscow school of mathematics.
How the God of Israel Was Born
2 months ago
- The traditional narrative of a sudden monotheistic revelation at Mount Sinai is contradicted by archaeological and textual evidence, which shows a complex historical process.
- Two distinct traditions merged: a northern Canaanite tradition centered on the supreme god El, and a southern desert tradition centered on YHWH, originally a subordinate deity.
- The name 'Israel' and many biblical names ending in '-el' reflect the northern El tradition, while names ending in '-yah' or '-yahu' reflect the southern YHWH tradition.
- Moses likely had Egyptian origins, and the Kenite-Midianite hypothesis suggests his wife Zipporah's family introduced him to YHWH worship.
- The Levites, a priestly tribe with Egyptian influences, enforced exclusive worship of YHWH, as seen in the Golden Calf massacre.
- Josiah's reform in 622 BCE centralized worship in Jerusalem, and the Hebrew Bible was edited to harmonize El and YHWH into a single God.
- The infancy narrative of Moses appears to be a later addition modeled on the Legend of Sargon, providing a Hebrew genealogy for an Egyptian-named leader.
- Jewish monotheism evolved gradually through the convergence of Canaanite, desert, and Egyptian influences, rather than a single divine revelation.
In the 1950s, a Soviet engineer proposed damming the Bering Strait
2 months ago
- Soviet engineer Petr Mikhailovich Borisov proposed damming the Bering Strait to pump cold Arctic water into the Pacific, aiming to melt Arctic ice and warm Siberia's climate.
- The plan, developed in the 1950s during the Cold War, reflected an era of confidence in technology's ability to solve problems, but faced criticism from scientists who warned of complex ecological consequences.
- Today, similar geoengineering ideas are studied as theoretical climate interventions to stabilize ocean currents, but are not seen as alternatives to reducing emissions.
Sports solved a problem that nearly killed television
2 months ago
- Television faced a 'vicious triangle' where it needed content to attract viewers, viewers to attract advertisers, and advertisers to fund content, making early adoption difficult.
- Sports became the killer app for television, offering ready-made productions with established stars and fan bases that helped break the vicious triangle.
- Early televised sports events, like the 1946 Louis-Conn boxing match, drew large audiences and demonstrated TV's potential, with bars playing a key role in exposing people to the medium.
- Despite high costs and technical limitations (blurry black-and-white, small screens), television quickly spread, with two-thirds of American homes owning a set by the mid-1950s.
- Contrary to fears that televised sports would reduce live attendance, they actually boosted popularity and ticket sales, as seen in record-setting events like the World Series and college football games.

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history

Why etymologies matter: How tracing words can illuminate history (2024)

How Old Is Ann?

Before the theorem prover: verification is older than the alphabet

A Playable History of Sudoku

History of PuTTY's development

telecheck and tyms past

the totalisator

email encryption

The hardest working font in Manhattan

Iconography of the PuTTY tools

Weekly Links for August 8, 2024

Weekly Links for September 8, 2024

History of PowerDNS: 1999-2003 - Bert Hubert's writings

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

How real are real numbers? (2004)

Online Historical Encyclopaedia of Programming Languages

The Origins of Modern Mathematics in Russia

How the God of Israel Was Born

In the 1950s, a Soviet engineer proposed damming the Bering Strait

Sports solved a problem that nearly killed television