Weblore

Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Donate via PayPal: 💸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠paypal.me/PhilipT284⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ On 3 January 2009, someone called Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, embedded a newspaper headline in the code, and set in motion a financial revolution worth trillions. Then they vanished. Their fortune—over a billion dollars—hasn't moved since....

Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Donate via PayPal: 💸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠paypal.me/PhilipT284⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In 1986, two brothers in Lahore wrote a few lines of code to punish software pirates. They had no idea they were about to unleash the first global PC virus, spawn a multi-billion-dollar cybersecurity industry, and change our relationship with technology...

Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Donate via PayPal: 💸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠paypal.me/PhilipT284⁠⁠⁠⁠ In 1981, a mysterious arcade game appeared in Portland, Oregon. Kids who played it suffered amnesia, nightmares, and seizures. Men in black suits arrived to collect data from the machines. Then the cabinets vanished without a trace. For decades, gamers have...

Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠⁠⁠⁠ Donate via PayPal: 💸 ⁠⁠⁠⁠paypal.me/PhilipT284⁠⁠⁠ Every device in your home speaks Ethernet. Your laptop, your phone, your smart TV—they're all connected through a technology that, by all rights, should never have won. Before Ethernet, connecting computers meant either walking floppy disks between machines or...

Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠⁠⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠⁠⁠ Donate via PayPal: 💸 ⁠⁠⁠paypal.me/PhilipT284⁠⁠ Before Facebook, before MySpace became a punchline, there was Friendster—the site that invented social networking as we know it. In 2003, it was the hottest thing on the internet, pulling in millions of users and turning down a $30 million acquisition offer from Go...

Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠⁠ Donate via PayPal: 💸 ⁠⁠paypal.me/PhilipT284⁠ Q-W-E-R-T-Y. Six letters that make no sense, yet they've defined how 2 billion people interact with machines for over 150 years. In this episode, I trace how a handful of inventors in a Milwaukee machine shop accidentally created one of the most enduring standards in h...

Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠ Donate via PayPal: 💸 ⁠paypal.me/PhilipT284 In January 2012, a cryptic image appeared on 4chan with a simple challenge: find the hidden message. What followed was a global scavenger hunt spanning five continents, requiring expertise in steganography, classical ciphers, medieval Welsh literature, and even musical cry...

Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284 On 29 October 1969, a programmer at UCLA attempted to send the first message across a computer network to a machine at Stanford Research Institute, 350 miles away. He intended to type "LOGIN." The system crashed after two letters: L-O. That failed transmission—just two charac...

Ways to support the podcast: Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompson Donate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284 Channel trailer. The internet has given us some of the strangest mysteries, most fascinating communities, and wildest stories in human history. Weblore dives deep into the digital world's most compelling tales. From cryptic puzzles that stumped the smartest minds online, to t...