I’ve been decompiling for the past (almost) two years, and it’s fun to see the bugs, compiler quirks, programmer superstitions, things that coincidentally work because of compiler behavior not because of correctness, as well as the things modern tooling would have caught that 30-year old versions of GCC hadn’t gotten around to yet.

There were even things I thought I had to manually optimize in the early 2000s that the GCC optimizer was already taking care of in the mid-90s.

> Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.

>

> To request images under copyright and other restrictions, …

If these are available as public domain with unrestricted use without fee, what is the use case for requesting a version under copyright with restrictions?

The M1 Air would have blown people’s minds in 2000. 128MB of RAM was luxurious at the time for a laptop. In 2003 I borrowed and bought several sticks for a presentation (senior thesis on 3D presentation software), and got to 1GB in my desktop and felt like I’d broken some law of physics.

Shortly after I had a TiBook (PowerBook G4) that was _only_ 1-inch thick! Compared to 1.75” Dells my coworkers had, it seemed like the future. DVD drive, modem, Ethernet, full sized DVI port, FireWire, WiFi, Bluetooth, optical audio in and out, gigantic display with a bezel that was unrivaled for years, even among Macs. What a beast!

(I know you meant 2020, but it’s fun to think about the air in 2000).

I recently built the NES and Game Boy sets and thought both of those were really great. The NES is probably not priced for most people (we try to stay under 10¢ a brick), but the level of detail, whimsy, and mechanics are all really well done. There are hidden scenes and Easter eggs built into the system that are revealed as you build rather than highlighted as features on the box. I was genuinely surprised and had a lot of fun sharing that with my family as we realized what was coming together.

The Game Boy was much more affordable. Less whimsical, but brought back memories of taking apart electronics and marveling at what these circuit boards and components could possibly be doing.

To add even more - I was handed down Lego that belonged to my mom in the 60s, played with them through the 80s and 90s, and now my kids have them today. I wouldn’t be able to tell you which were hers and which were mine.