Tech Time Warp: The ANIMAL instinct to do good
If you have ever dabbled in Dungeons & Dragons, you are familiar with the “alignment system,” which is a way to chart characters’ tendency toward good vs. evil as well as their inclination to follow rules (“lawful” vs. “chaotic”). With...
Tech Time Warp: The USB drive that changed military cybersecurity
Persistent BadUSB-style attacks are nothing new. The spread of malware via USB once caught the U.S. military by surprise, leading to a temporary Army ban on the use of external drives and ultimately the creation of Cyber Command to protect...
Pioneers in Tech: Taher Elgamal, father of SSL
Since 2017, April has been recognized as Arab American Heritage Month, with the Biden administration recognizing the heritage month for the first time at the federal level in 2022. Chances are you have purchased something online in the past week....
Tech Time Warp: Smelling a RAT in Graybird
This week’s Tech Time Warp is one of the most insidious forms of malware: the remote access Trojan, or RAT. While other viruses brick your machine or spam your email contacts, a RAT lurks in the background, quietly stealing passwords...
Tech Time Warp: Remembering the Z80 SoftCard, Microsoft’s first hardware product
Microsoft’s success with the Surface doesn’t change the fact the tech giant is primarily known for software. After all, Windows and Microsoft Office are ubiquitous in corporate life. But don’t let these juggernauts erase memories of the Z80 SoftCard, Microsoft’s...
Tech Time Warp: Once upon a time, autofill was a novelty
At this point, autofill/autocomplete/autocorrect technology is such a part of our everyday lives that we laugh at autocorrect fails and avoid typing in our address while online shopping whenever possible. But, like everything in the technology world, this convenience was...
Tech Time Warp: How Street Fighter II revolutionized gaming
A crucial chapter in gaming history is receiving a fresh look in the new book Like a Hurricane: An Unofficial Oral History of Street Fighter II by Matt Leone.
Pioneers in Tech: Adele Goldberg, graphical user interface guru
“Behind every great man is a great woman.” No conversation about the success of Apple would be complete without a nod to the work of Adele Goldberg, a computer scientist and early pioneer in the world of graphical user interfaces...
Tech Time Warp: LA Times story raises awareness of assistive technology
Efforts to make technology accessible to all through assistive devices and international standards for HTML and CSS are still relatively new. The Computer History Museum cites a March 5, 1993, Los Angeles Times story as an early example of the...
Tech Time Warp: First computer storage warrant issued
Nowadays, everyone knows the first things sought with a search warrant will be laptops and smartphones. The digital trails we all leave are revealing whether one is involved in something illegal or simply has a potentially embarrassing health condition. But...
