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Tedium. The newsletter all your other newsletters look up to.

Since 2015, Ernie Smith's Tedium has been hunting for the end of the long tail, and we've yet to find it. But we'd sure love it if you followed us on our journey. Especially now that we're ten friggin' years old and we're still using a Street Fighter II slogan as our subscribe button. Validate the use of obscure video game slang as a successful subscription strategy. Click the button.

 

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Build Your Own Gumball
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Build Your Own Gumball

Considering how the user benefits when a mature project goes fully open-source—even one with the baggage of something like Gumroad.

By Ernie Smith • May 16, 2025
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Wrong Merger, Wrong Direction

How MapQuest, a company innovative enough to kill road atlases in one fell swoop, was turned into an also-ran by a bad merger affected by an even worse one.

By Ernie Smith • May 13, 2025

Soup To Nuts

If we’re headed for a less-globalized technology industry, the desktop version of Huawei’s HarmonyOS offers an interesting preview.

By Ernie Smith • May 9, 2025

No Sprouts

Why the fast-casual sandwich shop Jimmy John’s struggled with selling sprouts for so long, despite their obvious health risks.

By Ernie Smith • May 6, 2025

The Finance Team Lost One

For years, many of Apple’s most consumer-unfriendly decisions have felt like an extension of a revenue-optimization strategy at constant risk of backfiring. Thanks to a bracing legal decision, now it has.

By Ernie Smith • May 2, 2025

Direct Color

It’s not unheard of to discover a new color, but we’re coming up with new ways to do so—including with frickin’ laser beams.

By Ernie Smith • April 29, 2025

8 Bits & Still Brewin’

As the NES nears the 40th anniversary of its U.S. release, the homebrew scene around it is still putting out some killer games.

By David Buck • April 24, 2025

Blue Checkmark Revival

It took a little bit, but Bluesky found a way around its pesky extortion problem. That solution: The same one the former Twitter ditched just two years ago.

By Ernie Smith • April 21, 2025

When Smart Goes Dumb

We now have a lot of examples of cloud-enabled smart devices that don’t work anymore. What we don’t have is a plan B that prevents old gadgets from becoming garbage.

By Ernie Smith • April 20, 2025

Time To Buy Used?

With all the added uncertainty in the computing market thanks to tariffs, now would be an excellent time to turn into a savvy used electronics shopper.

By Ernie Smith • April 16, 2025
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