Latest posts
- Bring Back Crappy ForumsJul 01, 2026Ernie Smith
Web forums were rough around the edges and faded in relevance as seemingly better options emerged. But what if we had stuck with them? Today in Tedium: Recently, I passed 20,000 followers on Bluesky, which I didn’t really say anything about. Sure, I thought about it, but then I had decided to myself, what’s the point? Soon, there will be another mark I can point to and feel weird about. The thing
- Hazy MemoryJun 27, 2026Ernie Smith
Who’s to blame for the memory crisis that turned Macs and Steam Boxes into unobtanium this week? The memory-makers have a convenient answer. If I was Micron and everyone was hating on my company for making life just a little more unaffordable, I might try looking for a scapegoat, too. But given how little the RAM folks have stuck their necks out in the year of the RAM crisis, this quote from a re
- What Was Matt Thinking?Jun 22, 2026Ernie Smith
The high schooler who developed everyone’s forums and guestbooks in 1996 didn’t really think about security when he was building all that software. But Matt’s Script Archive was more than exploits. Currently, I’m in the midst of writing a big post about the roots of web forums, but I hit on an aside weird enough that I decided to stop writing that and work on a separate post. Because I think it a
- My Portable HeaterJun 11, 2026Ernie Smith
This new eGPU barely works in Linux, gets quite hot, and is based on tech gamers already rejected. So why am I so excited about it? It’s hot. It’s kind of heavy. And on my computing weapon of choice, it’s hard to set up. But honestly, I love that it exists. Recently I’ve been taking a look at an eGPU, the Gigabyte Aorus RTX 5060 Ti AI Box, which is essentially a desktop GPU in a relatively small
- Copping My StyleJun 07, 2026Ernie Smith
Can you legally protect an artistic style? Not currently, but an Adobe-backed bill, a seeming reaction to AI, is pitching the idea. Personally, I see a bunch of blurred lines. Two companies that have enabled literal decades of creativity have both landed on the same question around the same time: Who owns a vibe? One makes $5,000 guitars. The other makes software that they’d charge $5,000 a year
- One &udm After AnotherMay 31, 2026Ernie Smith
Google made everyone mad again, so another wave of people just learned about &udm=14. Maybe we should all take the hint. Today in Tedium: When I spent two hours of my time, working against a deadline, deciding that I needed to build a workaround hack for Google’s AI overviews, I had no expectation as to what that would end up being. Two years later, the site is still online, despite people consta
- The $500 Price IncreaseMay 21, 2026Ernie Smith
Plex sends a message to the self-hosting community with a massive upcharge targeted at the very people who hate monthly fees. For nearly two decades, Plex has served as self-hosting’s great gateway drug. It’s the one self-hosting tool that normies know about, and it looks slick and modern. (It’s even a streamer itself these days!) Despite the fact that it’s often associated with piracy, it has tr
- The Biz ReaperMay 14, 2026Ernie Smith
If Byron Allen shows up at your door, you did something wrong with your media business. And BuzzFeed has a visitor. Also: I built a thing. I have written quite a few times over the years about Byron Allen, the legendary television business model exploiter who has managed to build an island of misfit toys into a business empire of his own. Allen is a unique figure in media, because he can effectiv
- The Bold Ones WinMay 08, 2026Ernie Smith
We lost Ted Turner, a patron saint of Tedium, just as an entrepreneur made an audacious Turner-style bet. What can we learn from that? This week, word came out that the CEO of a name-brand, heavily memed company was trying to do something completely audacious. Also, Ted Turner, the guy who arguably invented that trick and arguably did it better than possibly anyone else of his generation, just di
- Reinventing the WheelMay 03, 2026Ernie Smith
You’ve probably heard it’s futile, but that hasn’t stopped plenty from trying—some successfully, shockingly. Hey all, Ernie here with a piece from a periodic contributor, John Ohno, who last showed up in these parts around 2019. We’re happy he remembered the URL. Anyway, let’s get to it: Today in Tedium: Wheels (along with mousetraps) are the iconic inventions. And why not? The wheel is among the