When CompuServe Was the Internet (1985-1995)
CompuServe pioneered email, forums, and real-time chat for three million users a decade before the open web. The platform-as-internet pattern keeps returning....
Crypto Is Bad in All Sorts of Ways
Environmental destruction, greater fool economics, regulatory arbitrage, and ransomware's favorite payment method. The SEC was right all along....
The Inventions I Never Shipped
Over 45 years, I noticed a pattern: I keep building things that later become billion-dollar companies....
The Best Code I Ever Wrote Was Deleted
The hardest skill in software engineering isn't writing code - it's knowing when to delete it. Stories of systems that improved by subtraction....
FidoNet: The Internet Before the Internet
FidoNet was a global network connecting thousands of BBSs via scheduled phone calls....
Barren Realms Elite and the Golden Age of BBS Door Games
Trade Wars, Legend of the Red Dragon, Barren Realms Elite - BBS door games created the template for online gaming....
What the Navy Taught Me About Perspective
I joined the Navy at 18 and got deployed to Desert Shield right out of boot camp....
The Integration Tax: Every API Has a Price
Third-party API integration costs 56% more than initial estimates when you account for maintenance, breaking changes, and troubleshooting....
Technical Debt Is a People Problem, Not a Code Problem
Technical debt accumulates because of organizational dysfunction - pressure to ship, fear of refactoring, knowledge silos....
I Solved Spam in the 90s (Nobody Cared)
In the 1990s, I built RUM (Real User Mail) - a challenge-response system to fight spam. It worked. I never released it. Years later, the industry reinvented it....
I Evaluated Dozens of Blockchain Startups in 2018
What I learned doing technical due diligence on blockchain startups seeking funding. The technology works - for exactly one use case....
What BBS Culture Taught Us That Silicon Valley Forgot
1980s BBS culture created authentic communities through sysop relationships and local control. Taiwan's PTT still has 1.5M active users....
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