Maybe the reason why social networks fade away over time is simply generational. Picnic, an emerging social network with momentum, exemplifies this point. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 10 months ago

The New York Times has the most robust online archives of any newspaper, but it’s proving difficult to square their handling of a recent controversy. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 1 year ago

Why FeedBurner, a service that Google once bought for $100 million, has become the one service it literally can’t kill. Here's why the service lingers. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 1 year ago

New Ellijay TV: Making Local TV Awesome Again

In a world of media conglomerates, do regular folks have a shot at building TV for themselves anymore? In one rural Georgia mountain town, the answer is yes. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 1 year ago

A Kernel of Failure

How IBM bet big on the microkernel being the next big thing in operating systems back in the ’90s—and spent billions with little to show for it. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 1 year ago

Presidential Campaign: The Internet's First Election (2020)

The web wasn't common in 1992, but presidential candidates notably took baby steps toward the internet that year—Ross Perot in a bigger way than most. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 1 year ago

What Newsletter Authors Can Learn from the Print Newsletter Era

What can modern newsletter authors learn about newslettering from an era when people actually mailed these things? A lot, according to this book I bought. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 1 year ago

Obscure Networking Technologies

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@tedium.co | 1 year ago

ARMed with Linux

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@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Wordle’s Digital Predecessors: The Evolution of Online Word Games

The evolution of online word games before Wordle made them popular again. You haven’t lived until you’ve played Acrophobia. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Early Hard Drive History

Before hard drives became the main way for us to back up our stuff, they were a key evolution for the business world. They were also huge and costly. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Lessons in Self-Hosting Your Own Personal Cloud

What I learned about trying to run my own cloud from a few weeks of trying to run the whole dang thing myself. (Hint: I found myself trying multiple solutions.) | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Why Rubber Is Such a Problem for Retro Computing

Many retro computing enthusiasts have to deal with the headaches of decayed rubber and plastics. Here’s some advice from museum professionals and lab members. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Close Your Open Tabs (2018)

A case in favor of browser tab minimalism, or closing the tabs you’re not using. Sometimes, information overload has its limits. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

JingPad Review: A Linux Tablet with Potential, but Rough Edges

The JingPad A1, a flashy new tablet from Linux-land, shows a ton of potential, though you might want to wait for a few rounds of software updates first. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

The History of WD-40

The history of WD-40, a chemical substance with an unusual origin story and a rust-fighting ability that has become a standby of workbenches the world over. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Image File Formats That Didn’t Make It

From PCX to TGA to VRML, considering a number of image formats that the world forgot. Not every image standard is going to last, no matter how pretty it is. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Why Physical Objects Degrade over Time

Pondering the way that physical objects, like newspapers and photos, degrade over time, and why digital objects won’t fade in exactly the same way. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Hampster Economics

Pondering how a meme from a quarter-century ago might have gone over in today’s much-more-mature creator economy. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Would a Facebook Breakup Look Like AT&T’s Breakup?

The chatter around breaking up Facebook makes it a great time to talk about why the last effort to break up a communications giant, AT&T, didn’t really work. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Yikes, You Call That a Pencil?

How a pencil made out of compressed particle boards became a schoolyard fad—and what that pencil line has to do with Olestra. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

I Love Lamp

Giving some well-deserved appreciation to the LAMP stack, a key building block of the modern-day internet that you use daily. It’s everywhere. It may never die. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

The Dial-Up Volunteer Army

Considering the fact that many early online networks relied on volunteers to help build up their base—until one such network, AOL, got too big. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Kensington Security Slot History

What the heck is a Kensington security slot, and why does your computer probably have one? And how well does it really work, anyway? | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

History of Multimedia PC Industry Standardization

Why the PC industry standardized on multimedia in the early ’90s, and why that standardization effort didn’t really last. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

ProtoAppStore

Assessing the landscape of the app store concept in the years before it became an idea “originated” by Apple. The prior art is strong with this one. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Slackers vs. Strivers

How a pair of books with dramatically diverging philosophies came out in the same year—and fittingly, the more upright one became better known. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

No More Eternal Septembers

For decades, technical users looking down on the less knowledgeable have set the stage for a lot of bad online discourse. Can those users break the chain? | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Out of Memory Error – The RAM Shortage of 1988 (2016)

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@tedium.co | 2 years ago

The Distribution Vector That Changed Linux Forever

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@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Intel Floating Point Glitch History

How one of the most famous computer bugs of all time, the Intel Pentium floating-point division glitch, blew out of proportion into a PR crisis. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 2 years ago

Novell Meets Apple: How macOS Nearly Went Intel in 1992

How a networking software company with an unusual approach to competition nearly convinced Apple to bring MacOS to Intel computers in the early ’90s. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

Distorting the Electron Gun

Discussing the process of degaussing a CRT screen, which is a surprisingly awesome way to spend a Saturday afternoon with a magnet. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

2001: A Gaming Odyssey

A look back at 2001, a pivotal year for online gaming. The big-name publishers weren’t really ready, but fan games more than filled the gap. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

Respect Your Power Users

Pondering why, in the internet era, it has become so common for big tech companies to treat their power users like dirt. (Yes, this is about Google Reader.) | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

WRT54G History: The Router That Accidentally Went Open Source

How Linksys’ most famous router, the WRT54G, tripped into legendary status because of an undocumented feature that slipped through during a merger. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

How the Brannock Device made it a lot easier to figure out our shoe size. (2019)

How the Brannock Device, a measuring tool you’ve definitely seen but don’t know the name of, made it a lot easier to figure out our shoe size. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

How AltaVista, our first good search engine, fell into the digital abyss

Why you can’t find the groundbreaking search engine AltaVista on the web anymore. Friends don’t let friends visit digital.com without knowing the truth. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

The Firmware Update of Doom: Sony’s PS3 OtherOS Debacle

How Sony screwed up 15 years of goodwill with developers and open-source users by removing Linux support from its console—support hacked back in anyway. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

Disk Compressor History: A Microsoft Antitrust Prelude (2018)

How a court battle involving groundbreaking disk-compression software foreshadowed Microsoft’s status as an antitrust darling. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

Strip-Mined News

Local newspapers have already faced issues with outsourcing and an array of cuts for years. But the threat is changing—and you should know what it looks like. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

FTP Fadeout

The beating heart of the early internet may have been FTP, or file transfer protocol. But after 50 years of mainstream use, its demise may be imminent. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

An Examination of Quizbowl’s Technological Evolution

An examination of quizbowl’s technological evolution, from radio broadcasts to question archives and Discord tournaments. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

NES Advantage History: The Story of the NES’ Defining Early Controller

How the NES Advantage, thanks to its long pop-culture reach, came to define the concept of a good controller in the 8-bit console generation. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

BBS Graphics History: Pretty Until the Web Showed Up

Most people remember bulletin board systems as having chunky text-based graphics. One developer tried fixing that, but RIPscrip ran head-first into the web. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

Have we let the LED indicator light go too far?

Have we let the LED indicator light go too far? These lights are everywhere, and they make it hard to sleep. Here’s a case for some less-annoying indicators. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

Test Pattern History: How Color Bars Became a TV Staple

The history of color bars, the most common television test pattern out there, and what they actually do. (Also, Netflix has some weird test programming.) | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago

Why Apple Ditched PowerPC, and What It Says About Apple Ditching Intel

Looking back at Apple’s transition from PowerPC to Intel CPUs, and considering why Intel now finds itself in the same position PowerPC did 15 years ago. | Continue reading


@tedium.co | 3 years ago