Hacker News: timthorn

New comment by timthorn in "CIA funding helped keep NeXT afloat in the 80s"

timthorn — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 07:59:18 +0000

It's a rhetorical device to emphasise the reason for cancellation, not a revision.

New comment by timthorn in "Beware Management Consultants"

timthorn — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:23:49 +0000

Richard Walker tried to become a Conservative MP, but when no constituency party selected him as their candidate defected to Labour, who put him in the House of Lords.

New comment by timthorn in "IBM Simon (1994): the original smartphone, explained in its own ad [video]"

timthorn — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:47:46 +0000

> I probably missed a lot of them

Psion is the big one - the Organiser, Series 3 and Series 5 in particular. The latter was the genesis of Symbian, which Motorola was also a partner in.

New comment by timthorn in "Twenty Years of RISC OS Open"

timthorn — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:13:18 +0000

Paul Fellows absolutely claims that. From https://astrospeakers.org/provider/paul-fellows :

> He worked on the first generation of home computers and lead the design of the RiscOS operating system for the ARM processor, including inventing the apps and icon bar user interface that has since spread to phones and computers across the world

New comment by timthorn in "Twenty Years of RISC OS Open"

timthorn — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:10:38 +0000

Well, a reminder of the origin story of RiscOS: https://binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Acorn/fellows.php

Paul Fellows later went on to be the CTO of AlertMe, which became the basis of British Gas' Hive service, and then Lowes' Iris product line.

UK Online Safety Consultation: Giving users more choice control and trust online

timthorn — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:16:05 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/giving-users-more-choice-control-and-trust-in-their-online-experience

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48863347

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Frank Land obituary: programmer of the first business computer

timthorn — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:14:44 +0000

Article URL: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/frank-land-obituary-programmer-of-the-first-business-computer-52w8s0csz

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48599577

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by timthorn in "Ask HN: What old developer tool do you still miss?"

timthorn — Wed, 27 May 2026 07:27:40 +0000

Dot matrix printers + fanfold paper

New comment by timthorn in "The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)"

timthorn — Mon, 11 May 2026 13:18:32 +0000

> Connections, Cosmos, Civilization, The Ascent of Man and Attenborough's Life on Earth

Civilization and The Ascent of Man were both commissioned by Attenborough - he had a major impact on the broadcast landscape well beyond natural history.

New comment by timthorn in "The gay jailbreak technique (2025)"

timthorn — Sat, 02 May 2026 07:51:07 +0000

It's the same Greek root as Kubernetes

New comment by timthorn in "IrDA"

timthorn — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:13 +0000

The article is a great read. Though it talks about OBEX, and how Bluetooth wiped out IrDA, but not that Bluetooth took OBEX straight out of the IrDA stack.

Not IRDA, but there was also IRTalk built into some of the Power Book series, allowing native AppleTalk to a diffuse IR access point. I really wanted to try that out but never had the opportunity.

The silent coup: How AI captured Westminster

timthorn — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 06:46:19 +0000

Article URL: https://www.newstatesman.com/technology/2026/04/the-silent-coup

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47700111

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by timthorn in "NHS staff refusing to use FDP over Palantir ethical concerns"

timthorn — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:21:02 +0000

Partially redacted details here. The award was over 5 years for half that amount, but could be extended to 10.

https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/0f8a65b5-2...

New comment by timthorn in "The Appalling Stupidity of Spotify's AI DJ"

timthorn — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:59:37 +0000

> click on the “books” tab - the author is a technologist

That's rather underselling him. Charles Petzold wrote the canonical reference works for programming Win32 and MFC.

It's like calling Donald Knuth a lecturer.

New comment by timthorn in "An old photo of a large BBS (2022)"

timthorn — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 15:44:13 +0000

And a Televideo 910. Keyboard with added reverb :)

January 1877 – Sir Titus Salt obituary

timthorn — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 11:57:37 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/archive/january-1877-sir-titus-salt-obituary

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47046561

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by timthorn in "Can my SPARC server host a website?"

timthorn — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 10:11:52 +0000

Typically, fun memory they'd move to a secure connection for credit card input, but most of the site would be open HTTP - why secure what isn't confidential? Concerns about 3rd parties eavesdropping on the sites you visited weren't a big thing at the turn of the century.

New comment by timthorn in "Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78"

timthorn — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:39:15 +0000

I bought myself a 3 year subscription with my very first pay cheque. I got 2 or 3 issues before it went under. As a way of teaching a teenager about the full range of computer technology from the Cambridge Active Badge through to Big Data, it was and is unmatched.

New comment by timthorn in "Thirty Years of the Square Kilometre Array"

timthorn — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:20:58 +0000

The MRAO is a fascinating place, with things left as they were the last time an instrument was used. The floor of the hut where the array cables were aggregated for connection to the cable back to the Cavendish is covered in little plastic caps from the connectors, discarded as the instrument was being set up.

The article talks about HERA; MRAO hosts the prototype for that. IIRC, they experimented with methods to build the dishes with off-the-shelf parts - such as drainpipes to build the ring.

New comment by timthorn in "Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires"

timthorn — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 11:11:59 +0000

It's possibly because of a ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority back in the ADSL days: https://www.asa.org.uk/resource/broadband-speed-claims-guida...