Category: Tech Insight
Tech Time Warp: Nimda worm slows traffic with multiple propagation methods
In this week’s Tech Time Warp, we look back to September 2001. While the world was reeling from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, hackers unleashed a new threat: a worm that could modify existing websites to trick users into downloading malware....
Pioneers in Tech: Happy birthday to AI pioneer John McCarthy
This week’s Pioneers in Tech takes a look at John McCarthy, the technology pioneer who coined the term “AI” back in 1955. Born Sept. 4, 1927, McCarthy first used “AI” in his proposal for the 1956 Dartmouth Conference, a gathering...
Tech Time Warp: Woz dabbles in music festivals
In this week’s Tech Time Warp we discuss how we all know Steve Wozniak as the co-founder of Apple—but did you know Woz also dabbled in rock festivals? Forty-one years ago, while on hiatus from Apple after a plane crash,...
Tech Time Warp: Why the Panix attack was a wake-up call
In this week’s Tech Time Warp, we take a look at how a work emergency is never good news—and when notice of it comes late on a Friday afternoon, it’s even worse. Especially when the news is that your internet...
Tech Time Warp: Happy birthday to SHARE, the first computer user group
In this week’s edition of Tech Time Warp, we look at troubleshooting computer issues—or at least finding information about ideas to try—is far easier than it used to be. Simply type a description of the issue you’re experiencing into a...
Pioneers in Tech: Logging birthday greetings to Gordon Bell
In this month’s edition of Pioneers in Tech, we wish a happy birthday to technology visionary Gordon Bell, who turns 89 August 19. Born in Kirksville, Missouri, Bell is a co-founder of what is today the Computer History Museum in...
Tech Time Warp: Worm named Code Red wakes users up to security risks
In this week’s tech time warp we look at how, following a month of DDoS attacks and security bulletins—including an attack on whitehouse.gov—computer users were on high alert Aug. 1, 2001, as they waited to see whether the Code Red...
Tech Time Warp: Barbie’s complicated relationship with STEM
In this week’s tech time warp, we’re taking a look at Barbie—yes, the iconic doll turned blockbuster movie heroine. She has had a complicated relationship with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) would be an understatement. Teen Talk Barbie, released...
Tech Time Warp: How human error leads to July 1997 email outage
This week’s Tech Time Warp looks at how, in a world that’s so utterly reliant on the internet, service outages are hardly uncommon anymore, whether they’re the result of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, like that which caused Microsoft...
Pioneers in Tech: Joan L. Mitchell, co-inventor of the JPEG
This week’s Pioneers in Tech looks at how today’s social media influencers owe much to Joan L. Mitchell, a self-professed “Sputnik baby” who came of age during the space race and ended up co-creating one of the file formats most...
