And There Was Digitron | Hacker News Reader

And There Was Digitron

retrobit-izlozba-digitrona.com

38 pointsdsego16 comments

Why does this EU-associated(?) article on Croatian calculators want access to my camera?

it appears to be loading an augmented reality library from here: https://brojka.8thwall.app/retrobit-ar4/

This is cool to see. I'm from the area (although a different country), but when I was little, my father often said, 'fetch me the digitron,' referring to a pocket calculator. It was only after many years that I realized it's an actual company.

You might be from Slovenia then. I occasionally pass by the Slovenian reddit and sometimes see stories about interesting computers and designs from Yugoslavia times.

I hope to spend a month on a vacation in Slovenia this summer and visit the Računalniški muzej in Ljubljana. There's a retro computer museum in Rijeka, Croatia as well, which I unfortunately missed last year.

On Firefox mobile, the site instigates multiple permission requests to record audio and take pictures with my camera. Goodbye.

P.S. Regular reader for years but never commented any post. I did an account just to put light on that camera thing. Even worse because the site is EU (so government) funded.

What camera thing?

Asks the consent to use the camera of the smartphone I'm using for browsing.

You need permission to access my camera? No thanks.

When the cartoon image of the db 800 scrolled into view, I couldn't help poking it a few times to see if it was "live" since programming that would be a few hours' work for someone these days. I guess we can move mountains now (as long as there's no metal stamping and plastic injection involved).

Such an influential device. So much that the Serbian word for the electronic calculator is digitron.

"Beyond the Iron Curtain" technology companies are really interesting. My favourite is Pravetz, makers of wonderful, wonderful clones of the computers of the 80's.

What it must have been like, to see all the Western kids getting tons of software and different computing platforms, and then .. a few years later .. see the clones of all the machines arriving locally.

Still on the lookout for my favourite Pravetz, the 8D (Oric/Atmos clone) .. if only to complete the collection. I doubt I'll use the Cyrillic modifications much.

> "Beyond the Iron Curtain" technology companies

Yugoslavia really wasn't beyond the Iron Curtain. After the Tito-Stalin split in 1948 it was "unaligned", still communist but sitting on two chairs. Lots of technology from the West was imported, even our sole nuclear power-plant was built by Westinghouse in the 80's. Sure, there was also lots of technology from the Eastern bloc (especially East Germany) and attempts to build things domestically. It was a weird mix.

Why that site wants to use the camera of my smartphone? Are the joking?!?

Accessing from a browser doesn't prompt me for any camera permissions, but talk about an egregious ask!

Why does it want to use my camera?

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