Nicola Pellow: The Quiet Hero of the Web

At 21, while still a student, she built the first cross-platform browser, letting the web go global. Then she disappeared.

Who remembers her today? Almost no one.

I wrote my longest post since 2016 to honour her and the quiet women who shaped tech.

https://blogs.aashgates.com/index.php?post/2025/07/05/The-Unseen-Pioneer%3A-Nicola-Pellow-and-the-Dawn-of-the-Web

June 29, 2007 – The first iPhone was released by Apple Inc., launching a revolution in mobile computing and redefining what a "phone" could be.

The smartphone era began today — and the world has never looked back.

What’s the one piece of tech you can’t imagine living without now?

#TodayInHistory #TechHistory #iPhone #Apple #OnThisDay #Technology #Innovation #Brewminate #MobileRevolution

Read more stories blending history and modern thought: https://brewminate.com

»Advances in silicon and processing technologies now give us clock speeds in excess of 40 MHz and chips with 1 million transistors!«

Source: Victor K. L. Huang – High-Performance Microprocessors: The RISC Dilemma, in “IEEE Micro August 1989 #vintagecomputing #risc #techhistory

Bill Gates and Linux creator Linus Torvalds met for the first time at a dinner hosted by Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich.

No major kernel decisions were made, but the meeting highlights how Microsoft’s relationship with Linux has evolved—from rivalry to collaboration.

@LinusTorvalds

https://www.pcguide.com/news/bill-gates-meets-linux-creator-linus-torvalds-for-the-first-time/

Eine Runde Internet-Geschichte, frisch von der Gulaschprogrammiernacht: "Kein Quantum Trost: Wie ein Firefox an einer Chromium-Vergiftung zugrunde ging." Darin: ein unterhaltsamer, historischer Abriss der Geschichte des Web-Browsers von @LustigerLeo Enjoy: https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn23-64-kein-quantum-trost-wie-ein-firefox-an-einer-chromium-vergiftung-zugrunde-ging #techhistory #technikgeschichte #gpn23 #mozilla #firefox

Ngā mihi harikoa ki a koutou, mo te rā whakatā ā-ture o Matariki.

Happy Matariki public holiday everyone.

In Te Reo Māori, #Matariki is the name of a star cluster known in English as the Seven Sisters. Subaru to the Japanese. Pleiades to astronomers, and ancient Greeks and Romans.

For Māori, seeing Matariki in the night sky marks the start of a new year. As winter solstice passes, a time to reflect on the year ended, and envision the year to come.

In that spirit, a little #TechHistory ...

Celebrating FreeBSD Day with a look back at the story behind our iconic BSD Daemon, Beastie!

Dr. Marshall Kirk McKusick walks us through how this legendary figure got its name, debunks the "demon" myth, and brings BSD culture to life with humor, history, and culture gems.

Watch the full video on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/bKAp9Wremd0?si=_7QylTMDku8WyXFr

Hack the Planet: 90s Hacker Culture vs. Today's AI Devs

https://gizvault.com/archives/hack-the-planet

Just wrote about that legendary 2015 Hacker News thread where everyone got emotional about BeOS
The OS that was too beautiful for this world: pervasive multithreading, metadata filesystem, perfect multimedia... in the '90s!
But we got Windows because "it's already installed"
Full nostalgic damage: https://www.desktoponfire.com/haiku_inc/782/the-great-illusion-when-we-believed-beos-would-save-the-world-and-maybe-it-was-right/

Just discovered a second podcast called Decentered (the name of the @wedistribute podcast). Listening to their fantastic interview with @rabble from Nos.social. Where he talks a lot less about the history of Titter, and a lot more about the history of Indymedia, and his more recent work with decentralised social media;

https://decentered.co.uk/building-participatory-media-with-evan-henshaw-plath-aka-rabble/

#podcasts #Decentered #TechHistory #Indymedia #IndependentMedia #decentralisation

@indymedia

Dear Computer History people: I'm searching for books covering the history of the MIT Media Lab.The only one I found so far is "The Media Lab" by Stewart Brand, released in 1988. So a bit dated. Are you aware of other titles, which also cover the time AFTER 1988? It might be titles on other subjects but with a significant amount on the MIT Media Lab.

Edit: There is some material on their website as well: https://www.media.mit.edu/about/history/

Some of you probably remember WAIS. An Internet search engine from the Gopher era (more specific: a search protocol). TIL: Thinking Machines (those with the massive red blinkenlights servers) were the main driver and developer of WAIS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server #vintagecomputing #techhistory #wais #thinkingmachines #connectionmachine

Go down Android History memory lane with Jason Howell with the Google Nexus One. A trailblazer and its DNA is sprinkled throughout much of the modern smartphone landscape. #Android #TechHistory #Technology #Google https://www.androidfaithful.com/android-history-google-nexus-one-android-trailblazer/

If history repeats, we should compare the AI bubble with the dot-com bubble.

“AI-powered” is the new “.com.” Startups are pitching thin wrappers — and this time, many don’t even pretend to own the tech they’re built on.

Look closer, and it’s a house of cards:

Wrappers rely on OpenAI
OpenAI relies on Microsoft
Microsoft needs NVIDIA
NVIDIA owns the chips that power it all

#AI #Bubble #TechHistory #DotCom #StartupCulture #PlatformDependency #DigitalInfrastructure

https://skooloflife.medium.com/99-of-ai-startups-will-be-dead-by-2026-heres-why-bfc974edd968

What if the Unimog had stayed in the commons?
Born post-WWII to serve many, built to last, the Unimog met global demand — and then its creators went bankrupt. Not from failure, but from success.

They sold to Daimler. The rest is planned obsolescence.

What if they had released the IP instead?

https://eduzen.bearblog.dev/the-unimog-that-could-have-been-a-post-growth-parable/

Camera flash could crash the Raspberry Pi 2! The "Xenon Death Flash" is one of tech's weirdest bugs. How a community solved it (with Blu-Tack!)

https://pmpt.us/wTMMz