Tedium Newsletter

Last year, I wrote about MapQuest, and presented the company’s story as one that was fundamentally changed by a poor decision—AOL’s purchase of the company, which only completed after the tech IPO bubble burst. AOL, like its merger partner Time Warner, was a frequent target for acquisition. But unlike the modern day Warner Bros. Discovery, it lost cachet every time an acquirer swooped in to pick it up.

Earlier this year, I wrote a big thing about where self-hosting was going, and looked at a number of emerging software tools. One comment I heard as I went deep into all the competing tools is that some folks just kind of wanted a template to work with. Less magnifying glass, more 30,000-foot view. This time, I’m going to keep it simple. Like last time, I’m doing this with the support of a review unit, the Acemagic K1.

Hey all, I’m working on a new newsletter dedicated to mini-PCs that I’m planning on launching soon, but I wanted to kind of give a sneak peek of what I’m thinking. If tiny computers are your thing, sign up here! Earlier this year, I wrote a big thing about where self-hosting was going, and looked at a number of emerging software tools. One comment I heard as I went deep into all the competing tools is that some folks just kind of wanted a template to work with.

Today in Tedium: No matter how hard you try, disruption comes for you. It might be slow and gradual, or it may be fast and brutal. But eventually, you will find yourself at the end of your line, attempting to hold on to the past with the thinnest of threads. That, friends, is the state Columbia House finds itself in after a solid 71 years of existence. At one point in the 1980s and 1990s, it was a dominant way many people acquired music.

Today in Tedium: One of the most-common complaints that you hear about modern media is that it’s often a retread of retreads. (One word: Marvel.) The Big Bang Theory, a show that was on the air for a dozen seasons and remains a rerun juggernaut, recently launched its third spinoff, *Stuart Fails to Save the Universe*. It looks like an interesting show, but it’s getting the backing of Warner Bros Discovery because it feels like a sure thing.

I remember when I came up with my first idea that I shared with the world. It was a dating site for people who didn’t want to share photos of themselves, but build text-only connections. I didn’t know what I was doing; I only really knew HTML and CSS at this point. The idea, so esoteric, died on the vine; I often forget about it myself. Eventually, I found another idea that I thought had real potential.

A few months ago, when I was walking around a mall on a ninety-something-degree day. I made a claim to my wife that I thought profound, but she kind of saw through pretty quickly. “If you walked through a mall 20 years ago, everyone would basically look the same,” I said, noting that fashion has barely shifted since the mid-2000s. She called bullshit, noting that folks simply wearing T-shirts and jeans and khakis wasn’t enough to say we still dress the same.

Today in Tedium: Determining how much something costs shouldn’t be difficult, but in an ecosystem where everything is driven by highly personalized data, concerns are rising that prices might not be on stable ground. Recently, some states and regulators have started to scrutinize e-paper price tags out of a concern that those tags will enable pricing that adapts to demand—or worse, to the customer.

Old habits die hard, and the one that led to this post died a lot harder than some of the others. Recently, I made a realization: I have been unwillingly addicted to Facebook for a long time, and it’s not even because I like Facebook. Rather, it’s because I find it an extremely easy URL to type into a modern web browser’s omnibar.

Today in Tedium: What does it mean for a road to end? Particularly, a big, imposing one that represents an essential connection for millions of people across an entire country? Often, major highways take up massive numbers of lanes, become both the primary path and bottleneck through which people travel. But that’s usually in the middle. Often the terminus of a big road, no matter how important or influential it is, can be anticlimactic in nature.