Tedium Author: Ernie Smith

There’s Always Next Year

The state of our Tedium in 2018 looks kind of a lot like 2017, for better or worse. Let’s take a deep breath, everyone, and hope for the best.

Australian Rules Nintendo

What an Australia-only NES game secretly reveals about many of the early Nintendo games that came out in the United States.

Shelf This Elf

Why Elf Bowling, the animated holiday film, doesn’t live up to Elf Bowling, the not-a-virus computer game. The biggest problem, simply, is the animation.

Fake Elf News

Back in 1999, the viral game Elf Bowling gained an unfounded, false reputation as a piece of malware and spyware. It was viral, but it wasn’t a virus.

Gifts For Total Strangers

This year’s Tedium gift guide—designed for people you’re not particularly close to—is full of ideas perfect for alienating yourself with loved ones.

Doing It For Erma

An 1956 book about the early history of automation finally hits digital shelves, thanks to a friend of mine. And its appearance is deliciously ironic.

What The Hellmann

The hidden stories behind some of the sauces you eat every single day, from a confessed overuser of sauce. You are entitled to a little more, by the way.

Christmas In Clay

Pondering why a well-received Claymation holiday special, turning 30 this year, hasn’t become a lasting holiday classic like most of the other junk on TV.

Trimmed For Space

As the newspaper industry contracted, so too did the furniture and the newsprint. Let's check out the first victims of the digital revolution.

Our Next Annoying National Upgrade

Nine years ago, the federal government painfully pushed the public into the arms of digital TV. Soon enough, we could be making that upgrade all over again.

Do Not Trust

The ethical issues with getting a tattoo that says “Do Not Resuscitate,” then having said tattoo put to the test. Yes, a hospital had to deal with one.

Sharper Pixels

The push for pixel perfection at the heart of the enthusiast retro movement—and the company that wants those pixels to look better than you remember.

Buy, Don’t Rent

How the rent-to-own retail model, exemplified by Rent-a-Center, evolved from a mainstream model in the U.K. to one widely seen as predatory in the U.S.

Cashing In Early

As bitcoin nears an unbelievable new peak, now’s a good time to ponder DigiCash, the cryptocurrency that came first. Its idea has roots in the 1980s.

Flash Forward

CompactFlash, the first dedicated flash memory card format in wide use, was a turning point for computing—as well as a format with surprising resilience.

Older Than Ever

The man who discovered iconic NBA player Manute Bol now says he made up an age for the 7'7" icon—and Bol might’ve been around age 50 while in the league.

Smashing Potatoes

Mashed potatoes have a long, drawn-out history—especially, ironically, in instant form. Guess the recipe for the Thanksgiving icon is harder than it looks.

The Wesley Willis WinAmp Connection

Pondering Wesley Willis’ greatest mainstream contribution—the inspiration for an audio file in the 20th century’s greatest digital musical player, WinAmp.

Shanghai's Untold Story

Behind one of the ‘80s most popular computer games is an impressive story about how an early computer helped a man overcome adversity.

Google’s Zombie

Why FeedBurner, a service that Google once bought for $100 million, has become the one service it literally can’t kill. Here's why the service lingers.

Switching Labels

Hey, shoplifters: Trying to pull a fast one on a retail outlet by changing the price tags or barcodes is serious business, even when Legos are involved.

Behind By A Century

What it’s like to experience The Tragically Hip’s catalog for the first time, as a complete outsider, in 2017. Long story short: The U.S. really missed out.

Hide And Seek

For a while, hidden tracks were everywhere, especially during the CD era. But thanks to streaming music, there’s nowhere to put them. Is that good or bad?

One Bumpy Ride

The story of how asphalt came to define our highways, and why potholes are such a pain. The problem? Nobody wants to spend money on preventing potholes.

The Purple Unicorn

One of the most notable domain holdouts in internet history finally sells Purple.com to the mattress company that made its colorful name famous.

Out Of Order

Why aren’t area codes laid out in a seemingly logical way, like ZIP Codes are? Part of the answer can be found in the rotary dial of early telephones.

I’ll Do Something Innovative When I Die

How could innovative ideas improve funerals and final resting places? It’s a question not being asked enough. Let’s take a dive into funeral technology.

When Copyright Goes Copywrong

The rigid nature of copyright law during the early years of the film industry created a surprisingly robust cottage industry around public domain films.

Things That Make You Go Hmmmm …

The tale of a guy who got fined for singing along to C+C Music Factory’s most famous song. The cops made him sweat alright.

Lurking In Your Bed

The hipster mattress phenomenon gets the well-reported takedown it deserves. Here’s what it teaches about the digital economy.

Picking Up The Slack

Internet Relay Chat beat Slack to real-time chat by decades and helped define much of our early online culture, yet way more people use Slack. Why is that?

A Tale of Two Samoas

How quick thinking by a U.S. official saved thousands of lives from disease in an American territory—despite its non-American counterpart being decimated.

The Seeds Are Better

Pondering the Osage orange, the historically important fruit you probably shouldn’t eat—unless you’re willing to go to the trouble of picking out the seeds.

Flying Patents

How the unidentified flying object inspired a flurry of flying saucer patents globally—and how one guy invented his flying saucer years before anyone else.

Columbus The Enigma

Christopher Columbus, one of our most controversial historic figures, has become more myth than man for one reason: We don’t know what he looks like.

Encoded, Decoded

How Usenet—a protocol intended for conversations—was forever changed once the public figured out you could transfer binary files through it.

Congratulations I’m Sorry

The sad story and tragic death behind one of the most memorable power-pop songs of the 1990s, the Gin Blossoms’ “Hey Jealousy.”

A Eulogy for Eudora

The early graphical client Eudora was how people checked their email in the ’90s. But in the end, only the power users stuck around. Here’s what you missed.

Maximum Cargo

Sometimes the overhead bin just isn’t enough. Learn more about combi planes, nonstandard types of aircraft that mix passenger seating with cargo shipping.

Rough Edges

Why ceramic coffee cups have a spot at the bottom that’s rough to the touch, despite the rest of the cup being glossy. It's kiln you that you don't know.

An Early Touchpoint

How the graphics tablet, most notably produced by Japanese firm Wacom, helped shape our multitouch-friendly world—even if that shaping took a little while.

We Are All Made Of Stars

Modem Madness

Who said they just had to make games? From answering machines to lottery prototypes, Sega and Nintendo tried weird things with modems in the early ’90s.

The Knockoff Game

How the success of the Game Boy inspired a variety of rip-off consoles sold under a variety of bizarre corporate structures. This goes deeper than the Lynx.

Mystery Meat

A North Carolina school district invented a new sandwich in an attempt to convince kids that it wasn’t serving them meatloaf. It didn’t really work out.

We're Running Out of Widgets

What do Barnes & Noble, Radio Shack, and Blockbuster have in common? Simple: Their flawed business models relied on selling physical objects in stores.

Blogging Before it Was Cool

Jerry Pournelle, who died last week at 84, was perhaps the first blogger, even if he hated the term. Here’s a reflection on the iconic former Byte writer.

Why Aren't You Wearing Corduroy?

How corduroy, a piece of fabric with ancient ties that was built for the working-class, became really friggin' trendy all over again.

The Great Platform Problem

In an era when every content platform wants to sell you the moon, going your own way is a valid option. For one thing, there’s no risk of “demonetization.”

A Beachside Mystery

A mysterious object pulled from the sand of a Rhode Island beach was even weirder than officials expected. Anyone know what this is?

Cloth, Meet Plastic

A YouTuber uncovers a genuinely novel use for 3D printing: a method for making snazzy-looking T-shirts. The hard part? Passing the washing machine test.

Let’s Lock Information Down

DRM, one of the internet’s dark arts, was already in the works—complete with epic patents—years before the existence of Napster gave it a business case.

Shorthand For No

The incredibly frustrating tale of a college that tried to bar a Scottish student with cerebral palsy from getting a journalism certification—because rules.

Super FX Turbo Mode

How an enterprising console hacker figured out that the Super NES’ 3D graphics, seen in Star Fox, could look a whole lot better with a little overclocking.

Do You Copy?

How the lineage of the walkie-talkie reaches from World War II to the modern cell phone. Walkie-talkies even inspired a major cell phone network.

Total Eclipse Of The Counterfeit

For all of Amazon’s successes, it has a major achilles heel, and a controversy around the fake solar eclipse glasses it was selling perfectly highlights it.

Sing Your Heart Out

From 8-Track to Laserdisc to CD+G to ISDN lines to YouTube, the different technologies that made karaoke possible. (Alcohol helps, too.)

Catch The Sun

Amid recent (depressing) revelations that some cheap calculators have fake solar cells on them, a short history of real solar cells on calculators.

The Back of the Napkin

From soft dough to paper, the world’s definition of a napkin has evolved significantly over the past couple thousand years. (It’s currently evolving again.)

Reopening the Book

Another side of the CD-ROM encyclopedia’s history, particularly where Encyclopaedia Britannica is concerned, and a bit of a mea culpa on my end of things.

A Business Card With Impact

How the CD-ROM influenced a particularly tacky variant on the business card around the turn of the 21st century.

Bend, Don’t Break

When new innovations in rubber and plastic hit during the 19th and 20th centuries, hair combs usually had them first—especially in unbreakable form.

How To Checkmate Yourself

The parlor games hosted by Yahoo! once represented some of the internet’s best efforts at interactivity. But that didn’t last. Here’s how Yahoo! Games lost.

90 Seconds of Failure

Scat-singing human horn Shooby Taylor had perhaps the saddest Showtime at the Apollo showing of all time. He really didn’t deserve the boos.

When Tech Hit Retail

Point-of-sale systems dramatically modernized supply chains and allowed consumers to go cashless, but they were not without their learning curves.

Sega, In Channel Form

How the Sega Channel, a game-download service in the 1990s, helped redefine what was possible with cable lines before they became fast internet workhorses.

Who’s Who? Who Cares

How the “Who’s Who” concept of reference books devolved from a genuinely useful idea into a very costly form of vanity publishing.

The Windex Problem

The problem with information literacy we have in the age of Google: We give up too early. It’s an issue research librarians are struggling to tackle.

Who Killed The Encyclopedia?

The fast demise of the physical encyclopedia came about thanks to an upstart publisher, an indecisive giant, and the world’s biggest software company.

Strung Out

The story of the stringy part of the banana nobody ever talks about, and why it might be worth talking about a little. Yes, it has a name.

A Nod To Readability

As it turns out, not everyone is a fan of slab-serif body copy. We're making some quick typography changes in an effort to not scare folks off.

Toilet Duck Dynasty

How the Toilet Duck rode its unique bottle design to mainstream success—and brought clever design to the bathroom, too.

Cheese, American Style

Despite cheese existing long before the U.S. did, it has come to define American food culture globally—and not just because of American cheese. Why is that?

Digital TV’s Tiny Achilles Heel

The challenges of getting a portable digital television to actually show a working signal stand in strong contrast to the analog days.

The Internet On Dead Trees

Books and periodicals about the internet were a curious phenomenon—in no small part because they frequently pandered to the largest possible audience.

Fake It ’Til You Make It

How imitation crab meat, despite still being made of seafood, has a lot of lessons to offer vegan meat makers as they start to aim for realism.

More Dialing, More Weirdness

There are lots more weird phone numbers out there—and some of them have pretty fascinating stories. Read on to learn more about the vintage phone system.

Down With Snippet View

The limitations of Google Books can be seen in the way that it handles obscure trade publications. Everyone who made that old magazine? Probably dead.

Burrowing A Gopher Hole

The Gopher protocol isn't supported by the modern web basically at all, but despite this, it lingers on, a quarter century from its peak. Here's how.

It’s A Duck Blur

We may be stuck waiting until August for a DuckTales revival from Disney, but here’s a quick reflection on the importance of the original show.

In Case Of Emergency

The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor, and one that only made it past the finish line thanks to a charitable foundation.

A Love Letter to Gingko

The world's most interesting word processor is made by just one guy working alone. If more people knew about it, it would be a game-changer. Let's fix that.

Life In Four Colors

Somehow CGA graphics, the IBM PC’s first take on color, haven’t completely faded into history. But those four colors inspire a whole lot of nostalgia.

I Wanna Trademark Things All Night

Kiss mastermind Gene Simmons is getting crap for attempting to trademark the devil horns, rock music’s most important hand gesture. We’re piling on, too.

A Window Into Windex

From cleaning solutions to spray nozzles, the technology that made cleaning windows possible. And where did the word squeegee come from, anyway?

American Guano

The reason that the United States has control of so many random islands has much to do with an odd law passed just a few years before the Civil War.

Back To The Shack

RadioShack’s recent troubles might best be reflected by the recent auction of its corporate history—an auction that is actually full of interesting gadgets.

Seaweed: The Next Kale?

Entrepreneurs are making the case that seaweed, a nutrient-rich but weird food source, should go mainstream. Even if it doesn't, kelp could still prove key.

Stone Stooges

How The Three Stooges, icons of early film and late-night TV, inspired one late super-fan to carve his interest in the comedy troupe into his headstone.

Floating Fast Food

The history of the McBarge, the former McDonald’s location created for Expo ’86 in Vancouver. Shockingly, it wasn’t the only fast food joint designed to float.

Iceland’s Latest And Greatest

One of the greatest business stories in Iceland’s long history, along with the current craze that’s got Icelanders shopping like crazy.

Universal Themes

The universal remote control, love it or hate it, made our lives just a little bit simpler starting in the ‘80s. It's not as good as it could be. That's OK.

Weirdly Honest

How Lincoln, Nebraska’s very own Weird Wally rewrote the book for used car salesmen everywhere—because he was way more honest than your average car hawker.

Out Of Our League

Is there room for another mainstream sports league? Despite lots of attempts over the years to introduce new pro sports, the answer appears to be no.

Plotting A Takeover

The Texas Instruments graphing calculator, the long-neglected computing platform required by many high school math students, finally gets some competition.

86’ed

Intel's processor business was massive, but a lengthy legal battle with a former business partner exposed a major flaw in its CPU designs—a trademark flaw.

Swearing In Code

How a ’60s psychedelic band turned a four-letter word into a hummable melody—and unwittingly screwed over a radio DJ who didn’t realize it.

Building Blocks, Literally

Perhaps alphabet blocks seem like an obvious idea now, but it took a lot of foundation to build up that pretty good idea into something incredibly common.

Special Delivery

It’s not often that someone figures out a unique way to deliver a pizza, which is why we should honor the driver who delivered to a stalled Amtrak train.

The Invisible Puzzle

Wireless spectrum is scarce, and while mobile providers have made a sport of grabbing as much as they can, the fact is, allocating it has always been hard.

The Four-Minute Villain

How the classic Batman TV show created a major debate around how much TV advertising was too much—and why the debate’s lessons eventually faded away.

How The Cookie Crumbles

Why did Hydrox cookies lose out to Oreo despite being the first cookie to market? Long story short: The name seemed like a better idea 100 years ago.

Our Lives In Fabric

How T-shirts, those bastions of cotton, became the perfect way to wear our feelings, along with the easiest way to get dressed in the morning.

Clone Wars

The Apple II computer didn't attract as many clones as the IBM PC, but the clone-makers the machine did attract often had pretty interesting second acts.

“It's Weird That it Didn't Seem Weirder”

Don’t Die’s David Wolinsky, a fellow traveler in the world of tech and gaming, offers his take on NESticle’s place in the broader culture of video games.

Secretly Made With Meat

Products you probably use all the time, from fabric softeners to condoms, use unexpected animal byproducts. But not Guinness anymore, fortunately.

An Extra Serving

The history of NESticle is so rich that some details wouldn’t fit into Ernie's recent Motherboard piece. He’s putting some of them here.

The Keys To Success

A lot of early video game consoles secretly wanted to be home computers, too: Their makers either sold keyboard add-ons or failed miserably in the process.

Stating The Seemingly Obvious

As part of a new revamp of its liquor laws, Utah facilities now must feature a sign that tells customers whether a facility is a bar or restaurant.

Why Are Trains Always Late?

Despite its best efforts, Amtrak always seems like it has hugely delayed arrivals. One possible reason for that? It doesn't own most of the tracks.

Addicted To Spectrum

Wireless microphones are a hugely important technology for the stage, but the mobile industry keeps crowding out the theater industry's wireless spectrum.

Operating In Obscurity

It ain’t just about Windows, macOS, or Linux. Also-ran or fairly obscure operating systems, like OS/2, are everywhere—in some cases, hiding under your nose.

A Warped Mindset

How the Nintendo Times, a Nintendo fan site, is covering the release of the NES in real time—three decades after its original release.

CMYK All The Way

How mass-production printing technology, starting with the lithograph, was pushed forward thanks to a growing interest in color.

Hurricane Ned

There’s a Ned Flanders-themed metal band notable enough that it’s about to go on a nationwide headlining tour. Yes, you read that right.

We’ll Send Him Cheesy Movies

The much-hyped revival of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a rare thing: A chance for a creator to take a second stab at his best idea.

Lickety Split

Why lick-on adhesives on letters maintain a market presence, despite being seemingly old-hat. (Well, except for stamps. We kinda gave up on ‘em there.)

COBOLed Together

An essential part of the computer era’s birth, the programming language COBOL still hangs on—which is good for would-be retirees who know the language.

Like A Rock

What the story of Bob Seger's decision to keep most of his albums off of music services teaches about the nature of stubbornness.

Around the World

The online service Radiooooo, a global-minded vintage music project, eyes a physical form of its really awesome idea.

Tiny Data

That time IBM sold the Port-A-Punch, a device that allowed people to make their own punch cards to collect data in the field. Hey, it’s easier than writing.

Boom, Roasted

Not every fast food chain is going to be a success. And often, the best you can hope for is the kind of revival Kenny Rogers Roasters is having in Asia.

They Stopped (Sorta)

The Associated Press finally allows the singular “they” in some limited instances—a big move in the world of copy-editing.

Deep Purple

Purple.com, a long-in-operation domain owned by an individual, isn’t for sale. On the plus side, the mattress company Purple appears to not have needed it.

Seek And Spell

Teaching computers to read was one of the 20th century's great challenges. At first, the secret to optical character recognition was purpose-built type.

Stuck On You

Suction cups are the tiniest little vacuums around, and there’s one U.S. company that sells millions of them every single year. Here’s how they caught on.

Going Soft

Remembering that time the computer industry bought into soft modems, which shoved the work of managing a dial-up modem onto overworked CPUs.

Frickin' Laser Beams

The tale of Science Faction, a company that brought massive laser light shows to venues around the world. They blew a lot of minds along the way.

Ink-Stained Headlines

The printer ink racket has always been a touch unsavory, but a series of recent news stories suggest that it might be directly influencing crime.

It’s Not Styrofoam

Once seen as an incredibly innovative, lightweight material, expanded polystyrene foam is now just a big problem—in part because it’s so hard to recycle.

This Is My Top Secret Room

If your name is Chris Houlihan, you’re immortalized, somewhat obscurely, in The Legend of Zelda lore. Here’s why the series features some random guy.

Reverse-Engineering The Industry

Third-party developers weren't always quite so revered in the video game industry, but a pair of legal decisions helped them earn their place at the table.

This Van Could Change Your Life

The Shins could make a talented band’s life a little easier by giving away their old touring van. But how much of a deal is freecycling an old van, really?

The Great Gnome Fad

Roughly 40 years ago, an illustrated Dutch book about gnomes took the U.S. book market by storm—and, curiously, quickly faded out of view.

Your Code Is Junky

FrontPage tried to solve an important problem in the early-internet era—the idea of making web design accessible to mere mortals—but the code wasn't so hot.

A New Coat of Paint

The story of a body painter and storyteller who’s bouncing back in a big way after a major health scare. This creative spirit can’t be stopped so easily.

Lemony Fresh

Lemon juice has long come in containers shaped like lemons. In the U.K., the containers hold an important legacy—both with pancakes and the legal system.

a lowercase controversy

how Quinnipiac university, a school known for its polling, got embroiled in a debate over a single letter’s case.

The Game Of Life

The Wall was built to change lives, but NBC’s hit game show, in its own weird way, reflects the complexity of those lives, along with our current culture.

Pass Over The Beer

A hummus-flavored beer from Israel came about because its maker was on the hunt for a gluten-free brew. (For some Jews, it’s also kosher beer for Passover.)

Delivered To Your Door

The internet made monthly subscription boxes cool, but the roots of this business model can be found in decisions made in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Tear Down This Paywall

Bloomberg thinks you should pay them tens of thousands of dollars a year and subscribe to its terminal to read its old stories. The public should push back.

We’re Gunning For IBM

The minicomputer maker Wang Laboratories ran an ad on the Super Bowl long before Apple did. So why did the company and its minicomputers become a footnote?

The Late-Career Recovery

The art of getting rediscovered late in life—including how legendary acoustic guitarist John Fahey bounced back thanks to a 1994 Spin magazine feature.

Throwing Muses

With the help of a Florida Gators star, the granny free throw is making a comeback. We suddenly feel our shot percentage going way up.

We Nailed It

Fingernail clippers are apparently a relatively recent invention. Did we go through life without an easy way to trim fingernails for thousands of years?

Facts Are Facts

You’re using the word “factoid” wrong, and so are we. (Sorry about that.) Here’s how we lost our way with “factoid.”

Hatching a Plan

If you can’t get your hands on a Hatchimal—even a full month after Christmas—maybe you should just buy some fertilized eggs and do it the way God intended.

When Discs Die

CDs were sold to consumers as these virtually indestructible platters, but the truth, as exemplified by the disc rot phenomenon, is more complicated.

A Weaponized Slogan

Verizon’s popular “Can you hear me now?” tagline has been ruined by phone scammers trying to buy stuff with your voice, the Better Business Bureau reports.

U Can’t Touch This

Apple’s Touch Bar is proving problematic for the North Carolina Bar. It’s the latest such example of tech's drumbeat unwittingly making it easier to cheat.

An Impurrfect History

Cats.com, a domain name that has languished, is currently up for auction. Let’s take a look back of the history of the internet’s biggest domain underdog.

You’re Wearing An Antenna

Why headphones are often not optional when it comes to portable devices with FM radio functionality.

Let’s Live Forever

A recent study found that eating hot peppers could help decrease your mortality. Let’s take this idea to its logical conclusion by going as hot as possible.

Don’t Touch That Dial

Why attempts to improve AM and FM radio technologies tend to land with a thud—a thud no harder felt than with the FMX standard, circa 1989.

Ice Cream Fakery

Why you can't find the phrase "ice cream" anywhere on some varieties of Breyers, and whether it being a "frozen dairy dessert" should bother you.

Amiga Appreciation

Viva Amiga, a new documentary on the Amiga computer, highlights why the platform never completely disappeared, even after all these years.

Terrible Digital Trinkets

We did a status check on the current state of novelty USB drives so you don’t have to. (Not that we would expect you’d want to.)

All Sock Puppets Go To Heaven

If someone were to create an online store like Pets.com today, it probably would've worked. So why did it fail miserably back in 2000? A few reasons.

Weirdest Ransom Note Ever

The original piece of ransomware involved AIDS researchers, an evolutionary biologist, and a P.O. Box in Panama. Oh, and butterflies.

Cutting A Rug

Carpets used to be important cultural artifacts. Now they extend from wall to wall, got shaggy, and are sold via earworm jingles. What a weird evolution.

Countering the Counterculture

The New Creation, one of the earliest—and most unusual—examples of Christian rock, was brought to life by a mother-son team.

Let's Talk About Forks, Baby

From giant spoons to twisty forks, here are a few weird utensils that will probably make it harder for you to eat than it already is.

Streaming Before Netflix

In 1998, a Hong Kong telecom firm spent $1.5 billion trying to make video-on-demand happen. iTV was so ahead of its time that it beat Netflix's DVD service.

A Bigger, Better Tape

The story behind the Elcaset, one of Sony’s first attempts to prove that it could make a better format than everyone else.

Who Doesn’t Love Pickles?

Generally dill-flavored, always salty, and often found in iconic Jewish delis, the pickled cucumber is an icon of strong flavor. (As is pickle juice.)

Let’s Be Frank

The story of Frank Sidebottom, a character with a giant head who obsessed over both pop music and his hometown of Timperley.