That's really neat. I had no idea there was a Byte Shop in Greensboro. My wife's family is from that area. I live in Raleigh, NC. Now I am wondering if my nerdy father-in-law ever visited it back in the day.
If anyone is curious, in 2009, I discovered that Jim Storer was the author of the first Lunar Lander game and interviewed him about it (and also chronicled the history of the game beyond that). He later provided the source code, which was awesome.
“After leaving high school I never thought about the game again,” says Storer. “Until about a couple of months ago when someone e-mailed me about this, I was completely unaware of any Lunar Lander game other than the one I wrote in high school.”
This is a fun post, I appreciate the mentions. Matt missed my later piece from How-To Geek where I talked to Stan Honey and the Etak engineers again, then interviewed Asteroids designer Ed Logg, and he sent he his original sketch for the cursor. Indeed, his inspiration was Space War.
Fully-human author here. I wrote it as a joke (a play on a common phrase), since numeric keypads were often used as data entry for accountants and people using spreadsheets.
I dislike this too, although I can understand arguments for it in software that keeps iterating and (hopefully) improving over time.
I wrote an article about this issue for How-To Geek earlier this year that explores the reasons why the subscription model has become so prevalent: Why Is Everything a Subscription Now?
Treating AI models as autonomous minds lets companies shift responsibility for tech failures.