Browse category History and Computing
History and Computing: Transcontinental Railroad
We’re looking at the background behind the U.S. Department of Justice plan to consider antitrust action against the giants of high tech. We’ll see how ocean transportation gave way to transcontinental transportation. That’s the background we’ll need for seeing how transcontinental transportation became the antitrust action that’s setting a precedent for big tech.
History and Computing: Silicon Valley Takedown
On November 18, 2019, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen laid out a game plan dealing with tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google actively killing competition and forming monopolies. Congress has discussed the possibility of needing new laws to deal with advancing technology. Rosen’s speech, by contrast, showed us our current […]
History and Computing: My NSA Mug Shot
The secret to finding and fixing the problem was in discerning patterns in the noise. I can’t share the actual code that fixed the problem. What I can do, though, is walk you through an exercise in finding patterns in the noise of a seemingly-random number. We’ll have fun!
History and Computing: The Y2K Deadline
Twenty years later, we’ve mostly forgotten Y2K. Nothing happened. However, there were years of effort behind the non-event. Corporate delay made the endeavor far more complicated because skills had not been passed along to the next generation. What was so difficult? I’ll show you, with a few lines of code from my piece of Y2K.
History and Computing: Mastering the Craft
Truly mastering a skill means passing that skill onto others. What if the skill is so prohibitively difficult it’s not possible to pass on, not in your lifetime? Nathaniel Bowditch faced this problem 225 years ago. We’ll see the problem and how difficult it was. We’ll see how Bowditch created a way which each of us can emulate today.


