The Egghead breach of 2000

The Egghead breach of 2000

It was 25 years ago, December 22, 2000, that Egghead’s website, egghead.com, was hacked, exposing 3 and 1/2 million credit card numbers. This incident raised a question we’ve been asking ever since. How do we know that our payment information is safe?

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What happened to Maxtor hard drives

What happened to Maxtor hard drives

On December 21, 2005, Seagate announced a $1.8 billion agreement to acquire rival Maxtor. The deal closed May 22, 2006. Seagate then proceeded to RIF 6,000 former Maxtor employees, half the former company’s workforce.

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The biggest CRT ever made: Sony’s PVM-4300

The biggest CRT ever made: Sony’s PVM-4300

Move over, GE Widescreen 1000. In 1989 in Japan, Sony introduced to the largest Trinitron CRT ever built, the KV-45ED1, also known as the PVM-4300. And in 1990, they imported 20 of them to the United States, just in time for the recession. About 34 years later, one of these enigmatic TVs surfaced.

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The most excessive dotcom: Internet America

The most excessive dotcom: Internet America

The dotcom boom was an era of excesses. And there is no greater example of the dotcom excess than what happened to a company called Internet America on December 21, 1999.

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Altair 8800 kits went on sale December 19, 1974

Altair 8800 kits went on sale December 19, 1974

On December 19, 1974, MITS started selling kits for its computer, the Altair 8800. It was the first commercially successful personal computer, driven partially by its appearance on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine’s January 1975 issue. The kit cost $439, equivalent to $2885 in 2025 dollars.

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MP3.com launched December 17, 1997

MP3.com launched December 17, 1997

On December 17, 1997, Michael Robertson and Greg Flores launched mp3.com. Flores had noticed that MP3 was a popular search term, so he and Robertson purchased the domain from the owner and went into business.

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IBM ends sales of OS/2, December 16, 2005

IBM ends sales of OS/2, December 16, 2005

It’s hard to be an underdog operating system when you’re produced by a Fortune 10 company. But somehow, OS/2, IBM’s heir apparent to MS-DOS and PC DOS, managed to be exactly that. It’s the operating system everyone who was around in the 90s heard of, but few understood. And it has a reputation for being something nobody used. So it surprises people sometimes that IBM ended sales of OS/2 in December 2005. Most people assume it was much earlier.

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What happened to 3dfx

What happened to 3dfx

On October 15, 2002, 3dfx went out of business. It was really a technicality, however. 3dfx hadn’t been a viable company for about 2 years, having sold the majority of its intellectual property to rival Nvidia on December 15, 2000 after its creditors forced it into bankruptcy. In this blog post, we’ll explore what happened to 3dfx and why 3dfx failed.

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How Jeff Bruette trolled his boss, Jack Tramiel

How Jeff Bruette trolled his boss, Jack Tramiel

When I interviewed Jeff Bruette about Andy Warhol, of course I couldn’t resist asking him about other things about Commodore. Bruette wasn’t strictly an Amiga guy. He started at Commodore during its 8-bit era, including programming Commodore versions of hit arcade games like Gorf. So of course I asked him what he thought about Commodore founder and longtime CEO Jack Tramiel. To celebrate Jack Tramiel’s birthday, December 13, 1928, let’s retell his favorite Jack Tramiel story.

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65c816 CPU: The chip in the Apple IIgs, SNES, and more

65c816 CPU: The chip in the Apple IIgs, SNES, and more

The Western Design Center 65c816 is an underdog CPU from the 1980s. It was never the best available CPU of its time and it was never the cheapest. It was a 16-bit CPU from a time of transition from 8 bits to 16 and 32 bits, released around the same time as the first fully 32-bit CPUs. But it’s an interesting CPU, even if it doesn’t get the attention other contemporary CPUs received. It was introduced the week of December 12, 1983.

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