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....
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. First-person perspective from a former SysOp....
The Day Netscape Changed Everything
Netscape's IPO established the template for modern startup culture: growth over profit, massive early valuations, and boom-bust rhythms. Understanding that August day in 1995 helps explain why startup...
Why ICQ Died: Lessons From the First Instant Messenger
ICQ invented instant messaging and reached 100 million users. Then it died through corporate neglect, software bloat, and missed mobile transition. Every messaging platform today faces the same forces...
The Shareware Model Nobody Remembers
Before SaaS and app stores, shareware let independent developers make money through an honor system. The model worked for decades and contains lessons about distribution, trust, and monetization that ...
Programming Before Google: When You Had to Actually Know Things
Programming in the pre-internet era meant libraries, magazines, and BBSs. The struggle was the education - deep reading because you couldn't skim, memorization because lookup was expensive....
How 'Piracy' Actually Helped Technology Move Forward
Software piracy in the 80s and 90s built the networks, protocols, and communities that became legitimate tech infrastructure. BitTorrent, streaming, cloud storage - all have roots in the scene....
My First Computer
1977 was the year everything started. The Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore PET created personal computing. What it was like to be seven years old, wanting one desperately....
Debugging Before Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow launched in 2008. For the first thirty years of my career, 'Google the error message' wasn't an option. The debugging skills that era required are different from what developers learn t...
What Prodigy Taught Me About Walled Gardens
Prodigy invested $1 billion building walls that collapsed when the open internet arrived. The pattern has repeated with every major walled garden since....
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That's everything for now.