How did a single computer worm written by a Cornell graduate student in November 1988 crash roughly 6,000 machines and force the internet to invent security?
How did a single computer worm written by a Cornell graduate student in November 1988 crash roughly 6,000 machines and force the internet to invent security? On the evening of 2 November 1988, a Cornell grad student named Robert Tappan Morris uploaded a…
In a Milwaukee workshop in the 1870s, Christopher Latham Sholes spent years rearranging the keys of his mechanical Type-Writer so that commonly paired letters sat far apart, ensuring the metal typebars would swing from different directions and not jam mid-word
In a Milwaukee workshop in the 1870s, Christopher Latham Sholes spent years rearranging the keys of his mechanical Type-Writer so that commonly paired letters sat far apart, ensuring the metal typebars would swing from different directions and not jam…
I’m 38 and I watched my parents retire with everything they worked for — a paid-off house, savings, good health — and then slowly, year by year, become two people who sit in separate rooms scrolling their phones because they forgot how to be interesting to each other
I’m 38 and I watched my parents retire with everything they worked for — a paid-off house, savings, good health — and then slowly, year by year, become two people who sit in separate rooms scrolling their phones because they forgot how to be…
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use…
In 1995, Microsoft shipped a cartoon-house interface called Bob, led by Melinda French, who married Bill Gates while it was in development — it demanded twice the memory of a typical home PC, sold roughly 30,000 copies, and was dead within a year, leaving behind the font Comic Sans and the animated assistant that became Clippy.
In 1995, Microsoft shipped a cartoon-house interface called Bob, led by Melinda French, who married Bill Gates while it was in development — it demanded twice the memory of a typical home PC, sold roughly 30,000 copies, and was dead within a year,…
Almost all of the world’s internet traffic does not travel by satellite but through fibre-optic cables lying on the ocean floor, a hidden web of wires crossing the deepest parts of the sea to connect the continents.
Almost all of the world’s internet traffic does not travel by satellite but through fibre-optic cables lying on the ocean floor, a hidden web of wires crossing the deepest parts of the sea to connect the continents. The excellent mass of documents…
When Apple shipped iOS 12 in June 2018, a small feature called Screen Time slipped onto every iPhone with a counter nobody had quite prepared for — a tally of pickups — and within a day Tim Cook was telling CNN the number of times he picked up his own phone was simply too many
When Apple shipped iOS 12 in June 2018, a small feature called Screen Time slipped onto every iPhone with a counter nobody had quite prepared for — a tally of pickups — and within a day Tim Cook was telling CNN the number of times he picked up his own…
When Frank Maixner’s team reconstructed Ötzi the Iceman’s 5,300-year-old stomach bacterium in 2016, the Helicobacter pylori strain looked less like modern Europe’s hybrid form than Asian lineages common today in South and Central Asia, leaving a migration signal no pot or stone tool could have shown
When Frank Maixner’s team reconstructed Ötzi the Iceman’s 5,300-year-old stomach bacterium in 2016, the Helicobacter pylori strain looked less like modern Europe’s hybrid form than Asian lineages common today in South and Central Asia, leaving a…
In 1964, IBM risked its entire corporate empire on the System/360, a chaotic gamble to make all of its future machines compatible with the same software — and the architecture proved so robust that modern enterprise mainframes today are still running sections of binary code written more than sixty years ago
In 1964, IBM risked its entire corporate empire on the System/360, a chaotic gamble to make all of its future machines compatible with the same software — and the architecture proved so robust that modern enterprise mainframes today are still running…
In the early 1980s, a Dutch radio broadcaster figured out how to transmit video games over standard commercial radio broadcasts — and teenagers across Europe would sit with blank cassette tapes waiting for the local station to broadcast a series of high-pitched squeaks and buzzes that they could record and load into their home computers
In the early 1980s, a Dutch radio broadcaster figured out how to transmit video games over standard commercial radio broadcasts — and teenagers across Europe would sit with blank cassette tapes waiting for the local station to broadcast a series of…