I think it's instructive to compare the U.S. and Soviet stances in Europe after WW2. To maintain a military presence in Eastern Europe, the Soviets had to rely on repression, coercion, and occupation. This was expensive and fragile and eventually fell apart. The U.S. was openly welcomed into Germany and other countries in Western Europe. This was the value of "soft power."
This video [0] shows someone using Gopher (and other common pre-web Internet tools) in the early 90s.
I used Gopher when I did a high school summer science camp at Indiana University in 1994. It was a really interesting time of transition when the graphical Web was just coming on-line with Mosaic, but most tools were still textual/command line (FTP, pine/elm email/Usenet clients, MUDs, etc.)
Author of the OP here. The "spray" technique was known in the early 80s, if not earlier. It's mentioned in Michael Tomczyk's "Home Computer Wars":
> The solution came in several forms. One way was to embed ferrite balls in the plastic case. Another way was to spray the inside of the case with a metal coating. But the best way was to encase the offending electronics in a small metal box inside the case, which is what was done with the VIC-20. [0]
Why a metal box is the best way, he doesn't say and I don't know. My best guess is that it was more effective/reliable at passing the tests.
I think the GP's point is there is no meaningful nutritional difference between a from-scratch cake and a box cake. Both are pretty unhealthy and should be eaten only as special treats. "Ultra-processed" is not a useful way of separating healthy from unhealthy foods.
That is precisely the point that should be discussed because, from what I've read, UPFs are much worse than plain fatty or sugary food cooked by human hands.
The extra stuff in UPFs interacts with your body in ways that you are not prepared for and some of them are designed to make you consume more. The first example that comes to mind is the sodium added to make you tolerate more sugar.
They may not differ much in terms of calories or nutrients, but there absolutely is a difference - the ultra processed cake has preservatives and additives that are way harder on your gut microbiome, which affects your body's ability to process other food.
It looks like the trend started circa the 1920s in the U.S. Kotex (1920) [0], Kleenex (1924) [1], Kool-Aid (1927) [2], Kool (1933) [3], Krispy Kreme (1934) [4].
Kraft might look like one, but isn't, it's named after James Kraft [5], which presumably traces back to the german word Kraft.
Author here. Yes I could be more accurate here. It was called just "Apple Computer" in some contexts, e.g. this ad [0]. This manual calls it "Apple-1" on the cover [1], but "Apple Computer" in the contents. But you are definitely right that it was often called the Apple-1 in 1976 and into 1977.
Obviously he misremembered the name. I wasn't able to find other references to corroborate more details of the scam, but of course now I know that I wasn't searching for the correct name.
Every time a list like this shows up on HN, multiple commenters will show up to say things like this. Do you really have such a hard time believing that other people sincerely have different taste from you/the general population?
If you ask people about their favorite restaurant, some people will give you the name of a high-end steakhouse, others will say Taco Bell. This is just the reality of human difference.
It’s like when people think anyone reading in the park is pretentious and showing off - nooo, it’s just media. I like slow burns of stories, and was riveted by War and Peace just as much as the show Midnight Mass.
But on the other hand I get it, school taught me to hate reading, and it wasn’t until my late 20s that I realized that you could enjoy novels.
I’ll still never enjoy Joyce Ulysses because there’s too much context you need to know, but I get why people who do have all that context love it on a visceral level.
I interviewed Thomas Kurtz at his home in 2010 for my dissertation on the "computer utility" vision of the 60s and 70s (which foresaw a world of large computer utilities that would function like AT&T or an electrical power company, but for electronic services).
He was long-since retired, but still living in the hills of New Hampshire near Dartmouth. Unfortunately I can't find my interview notes right now, but I do remember that he was very kind and welcoming. What he and John Kemeny did at Dartmouth was truly remarkable. For them the technology (time-sharing and BASIC) was a means to an end of educating and empowering students, and ultimately society as a whole.
I did capture there his most choice quote from the interview:
> Kurtz later said that he and Kemeny saw MAC's agenda as totally different from Dartmouth's--MIT was trying to design the theoretically best computer utility, with layers of security "and all that kind of crap."
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