Whether it was trying to or not, Apple exposed a huge flaw with its pitch to professional video editors with a new Severance promotional video. When it comes to Apple’s TV ambitions, it couldn't buy better marketing than the buzz around Severance. (Certainly beats talking about A … | Continue reading
In case you were on the fence about whether OpenAI was a positive force in the world, they sort of revealed their hand this week by leaning into a meme. Earlier this week, there was a bit of a debate in one of the Patreon communities I follow. A popular YouTuber had put a short s … | Continue reading
What does popular culture look like when you’re in the Arctic, thousands of miles away from any major population centers? Let’s talk about Greenland and pop culture. Hey all, Ernie here with a pretty significant refresh of a 2016 piece that really needed one—a bit about popular c … | Continue reading
Considering the period in laptop history where Apple built PowerBooks with hooks that only exposed themselves when they got close to a magnet. OK, here’s the final part of our weeklong series on fasteners. This one actually has a technology angle. But if you wanna learn more, be … | Continue reading
It turns out that the history of the snap fastener is actually surprisingly relevant to the political moment that we’re currently in. Hey all, still trying something with what we’re calling “fastener week.” After Monday’s issue about side-release clamps, let’s talk about snap fas … | Continue reading
The story of the guy who nearly drowned on his way to inventing a fundamental fastening device you’ve probably already used today. Trying Something … So, I’m going to try something this week. We are going to publish three separate times, each on different wrinkles of the same top … | Continue reading
That popular single-serving site I built to work around Google’s AI snippets could, unfortunately, see an infusion of AI soon. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Over the past year or so, I have had this unusual web presence in my life in the form of udm14.com, a website designe … | Continue reading
Looking back at Gamergate, a flash point in internet history, and what it has to tell us about our current moment. Today In Tedium: You probably have noticed, just like me, that online culture has been a bit chaotic of late, and it’s been hard to even have a conversation without … | Continue reading
Companies like Amazon and Apple are attempting to do business in so many spaces that, when the cracks show, they really show. Hence why Apple Intelligence looks like a hot mess right now. Recently, word emerged that Amazon had topped Walmart in quarterly revenue for the first tim … | Continue reading
Why AT&T had to redesign its primary phone-book font in the late 1970s to keep with the times, and the clever typographical trick it used. Here’s an entire section from yesterday’s piece on phone books that I cut out to keep it at a reasonable length. If you like it when I do fol … | Continue reading
Considering the long history of phone books, particularly the Yellow Pages, where local businesses learned all the marketing tricks they eventually brought to the internet. I’ve decided to stop being so unfair to myself with these long-form pieces by forcing myself into a hard an … | Continue reading
If a company or service you rely on changes owners, you can’t be guaranteed that its mission will match what you’ve come to expect—even if, at least initially, it seems like everything’s on track. Hence why I returned a new messenger bag. Recently, I attempted to purchase a Chrom … | Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The evolution of online word games before Wordle made them popular again. You haven’t lived until you’ve played Acrophobia. | Continue reading
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
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
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
A case in favor of browser tab minimalism, or closing the tabs you’re not using. Sometimes, information overload has its limits. | Continue reading
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
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
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
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
Pondering how a meme from a quarter-century ago might have gone over in today’s much-more-mature creator economy. | Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
Why the PC industry standardized on multimedia in the early ’90s, and why that standardization effort didn’t really last. | Continue reading
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
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
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
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
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
Discussing the process of degaussing a CRT screen, which is a surprisingly awesome way to spend a Saturday afternoon with a magnet. | Continue reading
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
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